"momentum...for the sake of momentum..."

I wonder if anyone would notice or care if I skipped my job(s) and class & just skied around & around & around the woods all day? Every morning lately I wake up feeling like I haven't slept, my heart beats too fast & my groggy brain keeps repeating Run away! Run away! I know that I'm far too busy right now, that I have taken on too much, and I should not complain about it because it's my own fault. I had hoped that it would distract me & keep me from thinking about things I don't want to think of, but now it's just starting to become very stressful. My body is rebelling & leaving me with sick stomachs & tension headaches and face-aches, because I told it to shut up, we can't stop yet. There's nothing I can really let slip right now.

But I skied for over an hour today, just before sunset. I came upon a I felt so clearheaded, with a good, new healthy ache in my shoulders. I feel so much more like a balanced human once I've been moving around in my forest, much less like the maladjusted extra-terrestrial I usually am. (or at least I am a better adjusted alien, there...) & I love this snow, the cold weight is satisfying, the fluffy amalgamations of flakes comforting. This winter has been strange and tiring enough, I would have been even more confused if it had been snow-less. It's reassuring.

The trees were so lucid this afternoon, & on the back stretch near the edge of the earth, a cloud of waxwings passed over me, all fluttery and srrrreeeeeeing. They settled in a tree & I stopped in the middle of the long hill to listen to them, watch them fluff their feathers up & perch on the tops of the aspens. It was so lulling, little waves of birds waxy in the sunlight moving between the tree-tops. I felt very lucky. The forest is a potent cure & I am grateful.

* * *

This week I have also been listening to the Neko Case CD continuously. One of my other most lovely moments in a while involved her in my headphones singing 'Lion's Jaws' & me dancing around in a deserted parking lot making waltz-steps in the untouched snow. (I should listen to Audrey, & dance more...)

I wish I had Neko's ringing voice. I sing 'Star Witness' in the shower & wish everyone sang more often, more spontaneously. I know my baba did, all the time, but she comes from a countrywhere their latest revolutionary actions mostly involved folk music and rebellious rock songs.* My mother used to sing more too... but my sister always got embarrassed or something when she sang & yelled at her, so she stopped.

Most nights, when I wait for the bus at the Westmount transit station, a man in a mustard-yellow puffy coat comes in. He looks permanently distracted, & carries a plastic bag from Grand and Toy. Sometimes he eats a bag of dill pickle chips, & paces back & forth until the Kingsway bus arrives. But the most striking thing about him is how he'll abruptly burst into song -- not just any song, but something in French, almost operatic. Ah, je veux arriver...! He's done it twice now; once he sang to the window, the other time to the vending machine. It was highly amusing. People look at him like he's absolutely crazy, & maybe he is, but I don't think that is indicated by his singing. Bus stations, with their concrete & plexiglass have quite good acoustics.

I keep wanting to sing my grandmother's songs but they tend to make me choke a little, still.

* Dr. Bohdan Klid at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies did a presentation recently on "Rock, Pop and Politics in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Elections and the Orange Revolution."

* * *

... and the melon sky
& my snowy eyes
see a different night...
the night i fade into the lion's jaws
of my regrets, & young love...
those teeth themselves could not divine,
their pressure estimate,
the haze i wish to never break
& never contemplate
momentum
for the sake
of momentum...

[neko case, 'lion's jaws]