Mullberry Blue

Visions of blue paper fill my head. Colours, swirling, churning. Strips of paper in a heap, dropped from a fourth story balcony into the street below. The street is lined with trees and a little girl walks underneath. She wears a white dress and her long hair is unruly. I see the paper from her perspective, soft, beautiful. Mulberry strips being pulled by gravity and lifted by wind. Wind lifts them in places like a bat's wings: the paper takes on a balloon shape from the force of air underneath. I am amazed that air can do such a thing - that it can lift inanimate objects and give flight to the animates. It can be so very gentle or bitingly cold. Today the wind brought the gift of autumn. The breeze had a chill bringing back a quarter century of memories; everything from new school books to first dates, first kisses, bicycle tyres crunching in leaves gathered on the side of the road, late season football games won and lost, classrooms becoming enlightenment and torture, family gatherings becoming enlightenment and torture. The smell of the changing season was on the breeze; today the breeze gave me my smile. Textures my skin has become unfamiliar with become long lost friends as wool is again given the opportunity to create static with fleece. Fall rains bring damp, earthy, manytextured memories of old love. Desperate memories, awkward in their remembrance. What am I holding onto? What am I grasping at? Or am I merely holding something pleasant? The colour of the leaves in the river valley. I don't know the trails because I used to live nearby, I know them because I've walked them late at night in love. I know where the crunchiest leaves pile in the bicycle lanes. I remember the smell of a building that has housed coffee for so long the very wood is porous with the scent of grounds. I remember a kiss in the rain, wet wool beneath my hands. It is one of those beautiful moments I will likely remember forever. I know the smell of our sweaters and the rustling of my drum as it thumped against my hip as I tried to get closer to him on the streetcorner. It feels like yesterday but I know this cannot be. I remember an early morning, finding frost on the grass. I slipped out before anyone else was awake and stood barefoot on the frozen lawn, soaking up the sunshine, leaving melted barefootprints behind as I danced. I wonder if anyone saw the footprints. My impressions of beauty pegged me as a closet romantic, a trait I no longer deny. I see beauty in many places, and when something beautiful happens in my life, I am often mindful of the little things - the colour of the grass, the scent in the air, the shifting scratchiness of fabrics, the crunch of feet on the ground. I remember what looked like a large pool of drink spilled on the ground the night I wanted to jump in all the puddles on the way home. I remember my friends and the homemade veggie burgers but I also remember the deep sorrow. A day later I left them. I packed my bag and said goodbye to a city it hurt to leave, goodbye to friends who still write, goodbye to a neighbourhood where, for once in my life, I was considered normal. I knew people I passed on the streets. I left all of that to return to this place, where the few people I knew outright or through misunderstanding disowned me. This is the physical place I write from now. It is far from anywhere. It is home because I have lived here, but it doesn't feel like my home. The last few returns have been from far away places, with stories of exotic locals and late night long distance phone calls to the other end of the earth. I miss you. Do you remember when? And then you kissed me for the first time, while gently sweeping my hair from my neck and then it was alright for me to relax into your embrace. Do you remember that first night? We awoke at sunrise with the call to prayer at the mosque nearby. The closest I can get out here is the sound of the coyotes in the middle of the night. In the day, their beautiful haunting song is replaced by the sound of construction. They're building a freeway over the wetland end of a lake near here, a lake that was home to thousands of nesting birds. Not only can I no longer reach the edge of the lake to watch the sunset, but my silence is shattered by the noises of construction. My beautiful photograph of a daisy in a field is actually of a non-native weed growing right beside the road construction. I feel far away from everywhere. My connections here are thinning, but intensifying in nature. The season of change is upon us and we are all torn in various and sundry directions allowing for very little time to actually gather. New moons and full moons pass uncelebrated as the leaves change, fall to the ground, and are crunched underfoot by the gleeful schoolchildren on their way home at the end of the day. This carries on until Thanksgiving when we are beset upon our families in holy gathering to celebrate the gifts we have been given. My family traditionally goes around the table (in many cases two or three tables because we invariably have large gatherings) and each person is given the opportunity to give thanks for whatever has come to be in their lives in the last year, in front of an audience. It is a show of gratitude that my culture usually lacks. In our daily lives we forget to thank people for their gifts, the gift of their presences in our lives, the gift of their abilities. What would the world be like if we thanked our friends every few days for being themselves in our lives? Thanks for being you. I appreciate and love you like no other. What does that feel like? What does it feel like when we greet each other with compliments borne of love? Hello Beautiful, how are you? What would the world be like if we said I love you whenever we felt it, regardless of the circumstances? How many managers ever hear their staff say I love you? And what about our families? When is the time to show pride in the accomplishments of our families? Why not now? I know what mass gratitude feels like because I witness it every single year. It is the most powerful feeling of love I've ever felt. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all expressed these things regularly? This kind of revolution fills my head with joy and goosebumps. As the leaves begin to turn colour and fall to the ground, I imagine each leaf a visionary, each fall to the ground an act of gratitude to mother earth for a bountiful summer of growth. In this vein, thank you for the memories. The resistance of wet wool on wet wool. The crunching of leaves. The feeling of pedaling and watching your feet fly through the leaves. The gentle touches, foreign sunrises. The smell of damp leaves on your clothing. The beautiful greetings. Thank you for the gift of your presence in my life. Thank you for reading my letters and thanks for the offer of hugs, if the ocean weren't in the way.