Making It Up As I Go Along #363

WEDNESDAY...
— Course day. Five of us go to the west end of the city for a Photoshop computer course. It’s alright.
— I’m angered when I get home. A bill from Bell and they’re still charging me for phone services I had cancelled last month. I e-mailed them tonight and will have to call tomorrow. Stupid big companies are quick to charge you for an extra service... but willing to drag their feet when you cut things with them. Slimy.
— Survivor on HD is a pretty cool show to watch.

THURSDAY...
— Ok day at work. Morning is quiet and the afternoon busy. I get a nice mid morning bite to eat thanks to Janice... and lots of birthday wishes all day today... including facebook, e-mails, texts, and a call from Jim. Talk to mom, dad and sister once I’m home... but before that, a nice night out with Melissa at Mountain Equipment and Dick’s for a burger. Good birthday.
— I even get a well timed DVD from Columbia House. The latest James Bond movie waiting for me on my birthday!

FRIDAY...
— Nice day. Sun and between 10 and 12 today. I get new stickers for the car, and work is ok. Hit the gym tonight and get some laundry in before hitting bed Saturday morning.

SATURDAY...
— Too nice a day for work... sun and 15. But work it is all the same. It goes fine tonight.

SUNDAY...
— Sleep until about 11:30 and then hang out lazily until 3:00. Off to ball from there.
— Our last game of the winter season is our best. 21 to 5 victory to win two in a row to end. Crazy the difference.

MONDAY...
— A house work day. Since it’s cool (2 to 5 degrees) and wet out today, it’s no real waste. So I hit the spare room and rearrange stuff there. The old TV is now up there and hooked to the old VCR. The bed is moved and the room is actually a bit more useful for guests now.
— After the room was done, I stayed on the role and cleaned some downstairs. Now all that’s really left in need of cleaning is my bathroom. Tomorrow perhaps.

TUESDAY...
— May have fractured a toe today. Don’t know... but I stub my pinky toe and it’s pretty purple along the inside of the toe within a couple of hours. Putting the boots on to go get some groceries wasn’t real pleasant either. I’m guessing it’s more likely sprained than cracked though... but with pinky toes, it’s hard to tell.


Rocky Journeys
In the beginning it’s mud. A conglomerate of silt and sand and tiny stones all deposited on a sea floor and covered over by years of other silts, sands and tiny stones.

Time goes by. So much time that none of us can even think about it and clearly understand the length. If you sat on your sofa as that material sits on the sea bed... and you just sit there doing nothing, not moving from that spot, you’d pass so many lifetimes that, if time went backwards, when you reached that period when seas were parted, burning bushes spoke, and the son of God just came into being... you still wouldn’t be a tenth of the way there.

So much time passes and so much weight of other materials compresses this deposit of which I speak, that it begins to harden.

As snow crusts and eventually turns to ice at the bottom of a pack, this mud has crusted and turned to rock on the bottom of the sea.

More time goes by. More time that we can’t fathom. Enough time that continents shift and move about. Sea beds rise and mountains slump. And when great sheets of ice come, burying the land and scraping away the top layer, our little conglomerate of silt, sand and tiny stones, which have since hardened to one solid mass, suddenly finds itself sitting outdoors.

Up from the sea and breathing fresh air with that great blanket of soil and stone atop it now pulled away by ice.

Water rains upon it. It finds cracks and depressions within it and, at the right time of year, freezes within. This shrinks the conglomerate down. Splintering it at these points of weakness.

Lichens come, clinging to the sides of it tightly. Yellows, oranges and shades of beige painting it with life.

Insects crawl about it. Some sunning themselves atop it’s pebbly surface and others slipping into that space between it and the soil. Insect worlds under a stone. Generations of insects have lived and died in this space. When it comes to life, one’s whole world can be as simple as that which lies under a stone.

Birds perch on it, pecking into crevices in hopes of fishing out a crawling lunch. Shrews huddle against it when caught in a driving rain blown in from the sea.

Thousands of seasons go by in this way. The nearby ocean blasting against it’s nearby neighbours further below. But by luck, this rock escapes the harshness of the sea. It’s perched atop the sea cliffs where forests begin.

People come. Paths are worn around it. The feet of soldiers marching along the coast, keeping an eye across the hills and seas, searching for their enemies. The rock wobbles with the shifting weight of these soldiers as they cross the barrens to the outpost, too caught up in people dramas to notice a wobbling foothold beneath them.

Then others come, many years later but only a short time for such an old rock. Fathers who walk slowly and pause next to the rock as they stare out over the sea in a trance that only the sea can bring. Children, not yet struck by sea spells, run and scoot along... a seven year old balances upon the wobbling rock long enough to prepare for the great leap off... plummeting some two inches to the land below.

The pet dog hops about happily. Barking at overhead gulls, lapping at the sea air, and sniffing about the rock it’s master’s child just leaped from. Over and over this routine has happened, for tens of years. With those children who once balanced upon it, now standing over it, pausing and staring out over the sea, having been found by that trance they had once evaded. Their own children now discovering the rock and testing their own balancing skills atop it. Sometimes the pet dog has his sniff and wanders on, other times he lifts a leg over the rock and rains down upon it, marking the spot as his.

One time, a lone man comes by the rock. Breathing in the sea air and shifting his glance from the horizon, over the sea, across the cliff and to the forest. Taking in all he could on a final trip to this favourite place before moving far away.

Seeing the rock, he stops and tests himself with it. Big, but not too big. Heavy, but not too heavy. The man lifts the rock, dusts off as much of the clinging soil as he can, and deposits the rock into his back pack. The rock is nothing special. It doesn’t stand out among these cliffs and has been left here unmoved ever since emerging from the sea and ice. But this is why it’s chosen. It represents the place. It stands out as being from here and this is what the man wants.

Boxed and put aboard a truck, the rock goes a few weeks hidden from the light. Across the land and over the sea, it reaches new shores and makes it’s way inland.

Thus begins the new life for the rock. Still with remnants of lichen and a look of the sea, it’s unboxed and laid atop a carpeted floor within a temperature controlled room. No wind, no rain, the rock sits there against the wood of a stairwell atop the polyester of a carpet.

A fine retirement for a rock. Out of the harshness and cared for in this home, displaced but sharing in it’s displacement with the man who no longer lives by the sea.

Sometimes the rock misses it’s home. Misses the winds and rains and insects beneath. Yesterday was such a day. Feeling hard done by and bitter towards the man who brought it all this way from its home... the rock strikes out. And where once lichens grew, and insects crawled... where children wobbled and soldiers marched... where rain fell and ice carved... where pressure made mud into stone... now a toe strikes upon the rock. Bare and lazy, fresh from sleep, the toe collides with the hardness of the rock... and the toe loses. The man stumbles and bemoans the pain. The toe turns purply black. And the rock...

The rock is shifted slightly... in hopes that such a collision will not happen again. And time goes by for the rock, just a little tighter to the stairs atop a new bit of carpet... in rock retirement... longingly looking back to when a river of mile high ice pulled back it’s blanket... so many years ago.