Surprise Trampolines and Endless Stars...

Just got back from a few days in Powell River and on Savary Island. I've been very introspecitve lately, and going over the last 6 months/ 38 years of my life, as I head up to another birthday and more changes. And I guess I must've been a little down because the Universe kept sending me huge reminders - that life is not just what it is and has been - but the future is simply unknown, and holds all kinds of marvellous marvels to splash around in, jump on, and gaze at... things you could never have imagined.

Went up the Sunshine Coast with a great friend, a brother from another mother, and met my other BFAM, and met a whole bunch of new awesome people too. Gatlin ranted to me on the phone about  - GodzBallz - before I went up, some punk band that he said is his favourite band on earth. I thought he'd seem them a dozen times.. so I was surprised to find out that it was only their third show.

We went to this little pub in the old part of Powell River, and hung around waiting for the band (whom we had met three members of the night before at Blackberry Festival), and then they started to trickle in. Gatlin had his Godzballz shirt on, which he had specially made and says "Crew" on the back... so - we were in like Flynn. :)

And he's right - Godzballz rock! And I saw them for only five bucks!! They are all late 30's and early 40's, and they don't know that many songs, but they are friggin great - not the negative stuff you've come to expect from some punk bands, but fun, just pure fun. People up there having fun, expecting you to have fun too. So afterwards (of course, when Gatlin's around:) we went and partied with the band and a bunch of other people we didn't know - it was a great time, unexpectedly great.

Sunday it was too windy for all of us to go to Savary Island in Gatlin's little boat so we got a water-taxi and he took his boat alone. We went there and partied a little bit, and I explored, and we barbqued pork chops, yum. It rained that night and we all woke up bleary, a little hung over, and damp and dirty. Monday morning. One of our crew had to go back to town, and again it was too windy and crappy for the boat, so we walked her to the watertaxi. The island is long and narrow. We were camped on the beach on the sheltered side of the island, and crossed it to walk along the beach on the unsheltered side, in the blustering wind and spattering rain.

It was lovely - it reminded me of Nova Scotia, and everything I love about it, and I was singing Farewell to Nova Scotia to myself as I hopped along from log to log, rock to rock, climbing things and generally enjoying myself. But still part of my mind was far away, in the past, and the future, regrets, hopes, mullings..

I spotted it from the top of this big rock I had clambered up onto - it was a big purple and green thing up ahead. I clambered back down and hopped along towards it,  mildly curious about what the storm of the night before had washed up. As I got closer my whole world took on an unreal tone, it was a cold windy hungover day, easy to be cranky, and here was the most amazing thing - I started running towards it, skimming over the tops of wet rocks and splashing waves - it was a TRAMPOLINE!, a goddam trampoline - on a giant rubber floating frame, like a fifteen foot wide, four foot high, inner-tube with a drum stretched over it.
It had torn away from someone's property in the storm the night before and ended up here - I leaped the four feet up onto it and immediately started bouncing, saying "whee, can you believe it, it's a friggin trampoline!" over the howling wind and crashing waves - I was transformed into an eleven -year old boy again, the dissappointments of the recent past instantly dissappeared.. I could see the waves under it, crashing, as I jumped and bounced and yelled at my friends to come up and join me, or take pictures, or something - a giant purple rubber trampoline had been dropped out of the sky in the most preposterous of conditions and places - to yell in my ear - "You never know what wonders the future holds!... "

Later, back at the beach campsite, the weather calmed and I went swimming. The clouds started to break by evening, and the wind changed direction to bring us clear air. We made another fire of hand-smashed cedar, and everyone went to bed early except me. As the fire died down low I watched the last of the clouds melt away, and a million, billion, guhzillion stars come out...

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. - Van Gogh


Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.