the pursuit of Happiness (Merry Christmas)

On my way to Victoria tomorrow, then back here for a Tofino Christmas! Pretty happy about it. Pretty happy about living here..
Pretty happy about life. Pretty happy.

My brother's name is Arthur. We share a destiny in some way. I always wondered as a kid if I was Merlin. Not sure if I'm wise or powerful. But I was a very somber serious kid in many ways. Merlin aged backwards. That's one way we're alike. As I go on I seem to get simpler and take more joy out of life.

I love living here!
This is the most beautiful place I've ever been, and my spiritual home. I click with the people here. And the land. And the Sea.

Nothing is guaranteed in life, but for now I am grateful for the glories I have.

I remember hearing on cbc radio years ago - I was driving south down Hollis St, almost at the end of it, in my 1997 four door toyota tercel (I still love you), and someone quoted Carl Jung as having said, "happiness does not make people happy, meaning makes people happy."
Clearly - I've never forgotten it.

I saw it again this evening
black sail on a pale yellow sky
and just as before in a moment
it was gone where the gray gulls fly

Happiness is elusive. As meaning. What has meaning for us today may not tomorrow. And what we seek for tomorrow as our source of meaning - may not have it when we get there.

So I'm thrice blessed. I guess I could say again at this juncture- I write this blog for a reason. My life is not always easy. But it's good.

"One with your solar and lunar positions can achieve happiness by channeling your diverse interests and enthusiasm into service for others."


That's a quote from my "free-online-astrological-profile." Clearly (or not) I post it because I think it describes me. But I know not everyone will find meaning the same way I do. And that lots will. I wear a cape (see my 1st entry - http://errandknight.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-blog-my-chosen-lifestyle.html) so it's easier for others to too. I know lots already do, better than I ever will.

This is my backyard:

My cup overfloweth...

This place is so rich with meaning, and I am here for love. Am I still a traveller, why do I have what started as a travel blog? Yes, and - because we are all travellers, from our cages to our destinies, from birth till death. I have friends and a lovely person coming out to visit me. I won't have to count my blessings this year - they will count me.

Peace on Earth.

Goodwill to All.

through the Owl-Gate...

It was night-time when I drove back to Tofino last week, after a few days in Vancouver. The moon was bright. My one headlight wouldn't go on high-beam, so I drove by the moon.
My stereo wasn't working either. But if it was - I guess it woulda been playing - when the world is runnin down - you make the best of what's still around...

You think more without the stereo. I do anyway.

It wasn't "the pass", long past that - but a pass. And the point when I feel like you enter the Tofino-realm, where the rest of the world no longer holds as much sway. Like a Gate-Way. And I blessed this gate as I crossed. It's some mountains around Kennedy Lake that mark it for me. I felt, driving by the moon, tired, like it was the door to my house, and I was coming home. And as I stepped over the threshold I looked up, and said thanks.

I remember a few years ago noticing how people have quiet superstitions about passing through those little triangles by electric poles. You know - where a cable with a yellow plastic tube around it comes down on an angle. They're often in places on corners that make it more convenient to pass through, yet people go around. Why?

Once I thought about it I started seeing it a lot - people avoid anything that seems, psychologically - like a gateway. I eventually concluded, rightly or wrongly - that it's because portals represent change, irreversible change.
I started walking through them all. Bring it on, I figured, and have walked through yellow-plastic-wrapped triangles, crawled through holes under fallen logs in the woods, and certainly passed through any formal gateways at castles I've gone to school at.

Driving through that mountain pass the other night felt that way. I am making a life here in Tofino. It's irreversible.

There was an eclipse the other night -the 10th. I set my alarm for 5:50 am and went out in the yard in my underwear to see that it was raining and I could go back to bed. I saw instead, hanging in front of me - a twisted moon - an orange globe with a slice of silver. I went and watched it on Chestermans Beach with Gord Downie. It was at full eclipse when a shooting star blasted by next to it, cutting the last stitch holding me to any sense of "only what is possible, please".

Sunday afternoon I was walking in town to get my car and a snowy owl flew over and past - down Niel St., past the hospital and left out to Tonquin beach area.. I was ... floored?
Totally unsurprised?
It was pure white, the span of the largest gull, but muscular, with two cotton balls for feet. I drove to the end of Niel St. and scrambled down through the scrub to a little gravel beach, to find him (small for a snowy = male), but didn't. Didn't matter = message delivered.

I saw one last April. After dreaming about them two nights in a row. I know - let's not cling to outdated notions of reality here. They both reminded me of Mt. Shasta. Not sure why, except that it's also called  - The White Mountain. And it was where I saw a vision of the future. How many me's do I need to let go of to get there?

"...so I thought: maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us - as soft as feathers - that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica, to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow - that is nothing but light - scalding, aortal light - in which we are washed and washed out of our bones."
- White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field - Mary Oliver

People don't like Gateways because they represent permanent change. You can only bring through a gateway certain things, and other things cannot pass through. You can't control which is which.

I felt that way driving through that mountain pass. I felt that way when I saw the owl. I felt that way with the shooting star. Life is irreversible. Resisting permanent change is resisting the essence of what it is to be alive, to exist.

Let the owl take you. Fall through the Gate into the unknown future, and meet a self you never knew...

I come from downtown

born ready for You...