Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Category: Environment Page 8 of 19

When Smoke Swallowed Summer

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On August 1, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Climate change, Environment, Health, Kamloops, Life Stories

Pup and I set out for the afternoon walk shortly after 4pm. The smoke is thick and strong-smelling. I wish for no campfires for a long time from now. We walk down to the creek looking for the only kind of salvation while out of the house: the noise of water gurgling, the green of trees draping over the creek, the illusion of cleaner air.

The sun is orange and weak, but the air is warm. Stale. Not a living being on our path. This morning’s birds are hiding, and if it wasn’t for the dog needing to stretch her legs, I’d do the same.

She jumps in the water, wades in almost up to her neck and laps a few good mouthfuls. It feels good seeing her. She walks ahead without a sound and turns her head to check on me every half minute. We keep on walking along the creek. She’s restless; we both are.

It’s almost 5pm and everything looks darker all of a sudden. The smoke seemed to have thickened, swallowing city and trees and summer. Unless my hopeful thinking just took a plunge, that is. The sun is an unhealthy red.

It’s harder to breathe when you don’t see what’s in front of you. As if the available air ends just three steps in front of you. Secluded in a white space that is unforgiving and ashy, pup and I walk home, quiet and saddened. This is not the place we know. Transformed into unfriendly, life sucked out of it for now, how can we claim it back?

I pick a half-ripe chokecherry for confirmation of life still unfolding. It’s sour; real. The creek sings, a song we have come to associate with comfort during days like this. I walk in the water; cold, comforting, incessantly reviving. Tiny fish swim hurriedly, weaving through red grasses that adorn the sides of the creek. Quietly so. Everything is. Everything is pending, my thoughts included.

This is today. Tomorrow might be better. We tread on home. Inside is clear but smells like smoke. Outside, the smoke looks yellow and ready to spit out the blue it swallowed two days ago. Unless it’s my wishful thinking revived after walking through the creek…

The Place To Be When There’s Nowhere To Go

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On July 20, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Climate change, Environment, Health, Kamloops, Life Stories, Self-improvement, Social issues

Monday, July 16. The air is white and heavy this morning. Last night’s air was the same though a breeze was raking its long windy fingers through it trying to disperse it. I greet the morning the same way I do every day, trying to tell myself the world is just the same, just smokier…

I try to take my mind off the fact that the air I breathe in has small unfriendly particles I cannot see but are present nonetheless, so I can still be grateful for the day ahead.

I try to take my mind off the fact that there are hundreds of wildfires burning throughout the province, displacing thousands, ripping them out of their homes and making them travelers to nowhere for a while. Wherever I look, I am captive in a white world that seems to end nearby, and it’s only the distant noises that remind of the reality wildfire smoke is trying to steal away.

I am not surprised that wildfires have sprouted with such adversity. It has been said by many, that our world is changing in ways that we will not able to predict, or withstand, for that matter, with much grace. In fact, grace has little say when fear steps in. It resurfaces when people hurry to help those in need, which I see plenty of here these days. The innocence of a world where shelter was taken for granted has been lost, but something else gets rebuilt instead. Hope through open arms.

I try to remember that the resilience of the human spirit is stronger than any fire, but taking another breath in reminds of a simple truth: I am not in control. Neither of us is. We are still at the mercy of forces that dwarf us. It’s truth that today’s comforts coax us into underestimating (ultimately a self-harming societal habit.)

I will try today, as I do every day, to remember that I still hold the gift of life within, thick smoky air notwithstanding. I will try to remember that when it feels like the sky is falling over, white and suffocating, I should stay within the boundaries of now, rather than try to make sense of what comes after.

I will try to remember today that holding hope is the way out of fear. Blue skies will surface.

Thursday, July 20. It rained last night, on and off. More is always needed. The plume of smoke that made the city its home was temporarily chased away by rain pelleting in large drops. Salvation delivered in buckets of rain water. Adequately so, the message is written in the clouds above: water is precious.

The sky this morning was a beautiful blue with white clouds stuck to it in carefree patterns. Pup and I took our morning walk near the Golden Sands, as our family has come to call the area near the airport. The river runs on one side, and on the other side a field of green embraces my gaze, hungry for vivid colours and starved after many hazy days.

It’s the simple things that count, the refrain comes back again and again. Clean air. My breathing has turn shallow over the last few days, as if to avoid putting my body through the stress of having to deal with the many particles invading the air. It’s in your mind, some might say. You see the smoke and you feel like breathing is impacted. If only. Smoke is real, dense at times, and it presses on your lungs in a merciless way that is spelled out as ‘shortness of breath.’

Today’s air is pure (informally peaking) in that visible sense that is comforting. There is more stormy weather chasing us as we walk along; pup sniffs rain-accentuated patches of canine wonder along the path, and I keep taking my camera out for another shot. Beauty sublime. Humbling. I wish it were possible to release all these shots of colour and wonder in the days that follow when the smoke returns. Like you release butterflies, you know.

We walk through the trees through a parade of mosquitoes which I am breakfast-on-the-go to; mucky sinkholes, hungry bugs and snapping branches cannot thwart a happy heart though. The air is clean, it matters most.

We reach the water edge, sand pours in my sneakers from all sides and I stay connected to all that I feel, mosquito bites included, because the sky is blue and my eyes are glued to it, to the hills I can see so clearly, and to the stormy clouds that roll up in a chase behind us. The pup runs in and out of the water, exhilaration left as paw prints on the narrow beach.

I am present. Humbled by how easily I can breathe, and by how nothing else matters. It reminds of the obvious. Clean air is where it starts. Life, that is.

The wildfires will continue for a while. Tomorrow might be smoky again and breathing will not come easy, again. The back and forth creates awareness, I hope. That we need to have the essentials in place. Clean air. That we need to think our collective lives and choices better to keep air, water, and soil pirates away and dwindling. So we can be. Humbled by blue skies and able to breathe. Will we?

The Time For Trade Offs Should Be Behind Us

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On July 17, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Climate change, Environment, Health, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement, Social issues

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today Kamloops and Armchair Mayor News on July 17, 2017. 

It’s a smoky morning in Kamloops and about to get smokier still, judging by the large plume riding down the North Thompson. I took the dog out for a walk but we’re both slowing down our usual pace on days like today. It’s more work to take each breath in. I think of people struggling with respiratory disease on a good day (my youngest included). It is only mid-July and summer is still unfolding as we speak. More wildfires to come.

Will next year be the same? Worse? Better? How about the one after? That we cannot foresee the future, let alone create a better one, is a sobering thought. At the same time, one could argue, we do have a say in what is to come. With some margin for error (and growing every year,) but still.

So, the smoke. Particulate matter is hell on earth for all of us. More coming as fossil fuel consumption increases and the resulting greenhouse gases causes temperatures to increase.

More dust and particulate matter coming if the extraction sector continues its forays into the underground riches. Case in point here in Kamloops: the Ajax mine.

City council is about to cast their decision today. A relevant step. I have stated where I stand on a few occasions: a firm no. There is not enough money in this world to buy health or a mouthful of fresh air. I know what it’s like not being able to breathe from watching my son fight to breathe on more than one occasion.

I cannot picture adding the dust and increased amounts of exhaust gas from mine traffic to the city air on a day like today. Jobs are needed, that is true everywhere. But the trade-offs are to be considered carefully. Now more than ever.

If a hundred years ago, or even more recent in our history, we had enough clean environment to spare (I stubbornly believe there never is ‘enough’ clean air, water, and soil to spare), we are now seeing the results of that way of thinking in many places around the world, our own country-wide backyard included.

Industrial developments that put a community’s health and well-being at risk ought to make people rethink priorities. Mines without solid safety standards in place end up costing a community more than all the jobs combined. Examples abound, more so in a province like ours where the lax mining standards have been costly, socially, and otherwise. Hence the need for objectivity and a clear vision of the future, no pun intended.

It’s been said repeatedly by our governments, provincial and federal, that decisions on mines, liquid natural gas operations and pipeline construction are done with science in mind. ‘Facts-based decisions’ is the refrain that keeps on coming to remind us of the soundness of the decision-making process.

In case of the Ajax mine, science reports came back rather unequivocal. Not in favour, that is. In other cases, such as Mount Polley Mine, science seems to be employed as a weapon of betrayal (presently, treated wastewater is dumped in the lake, as per our former government’s decision following a ‘science-based’ process. The initial spill cleanup has not happened yet.)

The human population is growing, hence the need for more. Emphasis on ‘need’. We are making use of wants though, more often than we should, and we do that in ways that prove detrimental to our own well-being: our environment is polluted in the process of extracting resources, manufacturing goods, transporting them, and in the process of disposing of them. Garbage is at an all-time high on land and in the oceans, and, much like the human population, on a growing trend.

We’re bulging at the seams, yet more is produced, and more developments are underway. Life is not a one-way street, where you leave stuff behind as you go. It is a circle, and in true circle fashion, everything is engaged on a trajectory that keeps returning to the starting point. We’re part of it too.

We know, factually speaking, that our environment is aching; it has been for some time. Helping a community thrive while considering possible deleterious health effects of a local economic project is where the balance stands. The time for trade-offs should be behind us, because no matter how you stack it, money can never buy health, no matter how much of it you pile up.

Consensus Takes Us Far, But Truth Takes Us Farther

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On July 3, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Health, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Self-improvement

Originally published as a column on CFJC Kamloops Today and Armchair Mayor News on July 3, 2017. 

It’s the day after fireworks and music and food trucks, the day when small glittery plastic maple leaves lie forgotten in the grass where yesterday’s crowds gathered to celebrate Canada Day.

Happy for many, the celebration has been controversial and painful for others. Indigenous people, who brought their peaceful protest all the way to Ottawa, spoke of broken treaties and basic human rights such as access to clean water that are sorely missing in some parts. There are 150 First Nations communities with water advisories in place, 71 of them in place for more than a year now, according to EcoJustice, Canada’s largest environmental law charity.

The reasons that First Nations held back from joining the celebratory parties going on across the country lie in the reality they carry with them. There are one too many trauma-laden communities where substance abuse, violence, teen suicides and poverty are part of daily life, and there is much delay and lack of action in bringing closure to families who are still mourning their missing and murdered sisters, mothers, and daughters. There are too many places where a small First Nations community attempts to fight for their right to live off the land the way they always have, against large corporations, mostly concerning gas or oil explorations. Yes, there are some big conversations to be had, and, as they say, what better time than now.

Before brushing over their demeanour and concerns with the party pooper brush, let’s just pause for a second and think about this. When they speak, they do so hoping that their voices will be heard and their concerns addressed. People whose ancestors roamed this country far and wide and have had much of their life altered by the waves of people who settled here, and people whose immediate ancestors have been through the unimaginable pain of having their children taken away (or they themselves are those children,) decided to speak against the consensus of celebrating the 150th birthday of Canada.

To have the freedom to speak up is a wonderful thing. There is a reminder for all of us. To hold the hope that your words and your message will be listened to, is a compliment that speaks highly of what Canada is today. Here’s to hoping that one day soon, these issues that may seem uncomfortable to deal with, but are what many Indigenous people live through, will all be behind us and another big round Canada Day celebration will have us all join in without any reservations.

Canada is a beautiful place to be, not just landscape-wise. It is a place where many new-comers find a home and they marvel at how ‘at home’ they feel shortly after arriving. Canadians are, for the most part a friendly bunch. More so in some parts of the country than in others, some would say, but that is the story that has to do more with people in general, rather than any of our co-nationals in particular.

There are many reasons why Canada is to be loved and celebrated. And then there is much to work on, and that can only make our country better for everyone. It is easy to smile when you have nothing to frown about. But Canada is, as we know and we claim it to be, a place of inclusivity. To shun those who bring their concerns, pains, and frustrations over many injustices, would be wrong and against what we stand for.

Understanding that all the grievances are, in fact, opportunities to start a dialogue that will bring long overdue changes can take us all towards a better future. Allowing people who have been here for longer than 150 years to be recognized as an essential part of Canada as we know it today, that is also overdue and dignifying for everyone.

Truth invites to openness of minds, hearts and understanding of each other’s values. That is what makes a nation strong and proud. As my late friend Richard Wagamese, award-winning writer and journalist, and proud Ojibway from the Wabasseemoong First Nation in northeast Ontario, once said ‘It is a big word, reconciliation. Quite simply, it means to create harmony. You create harmony with truth and you build truth out of humility.’

I hold a strong belief that, past shadows, and resentment, asking ourselves what it means to be Canadian will take us to where truth resides. If we choose to see it, we are better for it. Happy Canada Day and beyond!

*At the time of this writing, Desmog Canada is reporting that the Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear an appeal brought forth by two First Nations, West Moberly and Prophet River, concerning the possible infringement on their constitutional treaty rights should the Site C megaproject be built in the Peace River Valley. The appeal was filed following the federal government refusal to address the possible treaty rights infringement at the time when a Joint Review Panel looked at the adverse affects of building Site C.

It’s All Connected And Life Depends On It

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On June 26, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Health, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Self-improvement, Social issues

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today Kamloops on June 26, 2017. 

A few things have happened in the last few days. The Rae Fawcett Breast Health Clinic at RIH is now officially open in Kamloops, after being active for a month already, providing women with streamlined care, from examinations to diagnostic. A beautiful example of putting money to good work – the Fawcett family has donated $1 million towards the centre.

This comes as positive news after the recently released study by the Canadian Cancer Society. The report predicts that 1 in 2 Canadians will develop cancer during their lifetime, and 1 in 4 will die because of it. Can you say dire?

The report states that the rather dark predictions have to do with with aging. An aging population is indeed subject to more chronic disease, that is what we learn. With a catch: the report places old age past the age of 50. Wait, that is not that old, I can hear many say. True. Life does not take a downturn after you turn 50. Not if lifestyle choices include healthy eating, exercise, and stress-busting strategies of some sort, be it volunteering, reading, gardening, making time for precious family time, you name it.

When I first learned about cancer, I also learned that if a person lives long enough, they’ll eventually develop the dreaded disease simply because the cells in their body age.  The DNA ages too and that induces changes that translate into the ultimate cellular havoc we all know about. Yes, all true, except that ‘old age’ in this case was placed closer to 100 than at the halfway mark like mentioned above.

So, many will say, that refers to the older people. Young ones are safe then? I wish I could say yes, yet before the young population feels relieved, here’s some sobering thought bites:

  • Cancer is often intertwined with lifestyle choices: radiation exposure, smoking, unhealthy food consumption which leads to obesity, combined with lack of physical activity. Genetics plays a role as well, that is true, but giving ourselves to fate alone would be disempowering to say the least
  • Young people and even children do develop cancer, and the rates of cancer in kids under the age of 19 have been increasing over the last decades. That treatment and survival chances have also gone up is true, but that does not change the increased rates.
  • In many types of cancer, the risk of recurrence can be significantly lowered by daily physical exercise. Moderate intensity, that is, and performed for a certain length of time, benefit both body and mind, mood if you prefer, a definite helper in beating cancer
  • Our world is getting more chemically loaded by the day. Of the chemicals that are found in our homes, work places and in the great outdoors, especially in various bodies of water, many are found to be carcinogenic, or potentially carcinogenic. Exposure matters. ‘Nuff said.

It so happened that the latter is made more relevant by news pertaining to events such as the Mount Polley spill disaster. As of April 7, 2017, the BC Ministry of the Environment has granted permission to Mount Polley Mining Corporation to transfer their mining waste water into Quesnel Lake. Entertaining the thought of having to drink water from what used to be a pristine source, but is now laced with many chemicals from the spill, which was never fully cleaned up to begin with, is enough to make one shudder. Yet people will.

It will take years to see the unfortunate consequences of drinking polluted water years from now. That water was deemed clean and safe by government official through environmental assessments that might or might not be biased, and by the corporate management team who likely gets their drinking water from a different source, only adds to the controversy and the wrongness of it.

Kamloops has been in the decision trenches regarding the Ajax mine for a few good years now. We’ve heard it all and then some, the pros and cons. In the wake of the report that the Canadian Cancer Society released, I feel compelled to say that in every decision we make, as individuals, or as communities, health should be first on the list. Truly, we have nothing if health is affected.

Should a mine or any other project be built, strict safety standards closely monitored by a government that has the best of its citizens in mind, that would allow for an economic boost without the risks. If priorities other than health crowd the list, we will simply get used to getting dire stats, shrugging once we have digested the news and opt for… well, adapting, which is what one radio show host was suggesting as a solution for dealing with climate change.

Adaptation is a wonderful gift that the living world is blessed with, but there’s only that much we can stretch the concept until it becomes another nail in the coffin. And until proven otherwise, no scary-sounding stats will make a corporate heart bleed and turn a compassionate eye towards the community its profits come from.

It comes down to every one of us getting the facts and making individual and community-wide decisions that will ultimately enhance quality of life, long-term, for everyone. That’s partly how I think a cancer prediction-beating strategy could work.

Holding Onto Hope Is The Only Way Out

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On June 5, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Climate change, Environment, Health, Homeschooling, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories

Originally published as a column in CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on Monday, June 5, 2017. 

I admit to no longer looking forward to checking the news. After a weekend spent with my family, out of reception, on the shore of a little-known lake near Little Fort, the return to the fast-moving, permanently-connected-to-the-internet world, is nowhere near pleasant.

We had a weekend of stories and adventures, laughter over the silly antics of a dog so happy to be exploring the woods and jumping into the lake as she pleased, and full of the togetherness that words like ‘family camping’ do not do justice to. We went paddling in early mornings and late evenings when the water is as smooth as glass and the haunting calls of the loons are but wrapping around your thoughts like vines.

The phone was but a camera. When we left on Friday I was still processing the troubling thoughts caused by the US president’s decision to withdraw his country from the Paris climate change agreement. Overwhelming is an understatement. We are not yet in dire straights environmentally speaking, not over where we are anyway, but the threads that hold it all together disappear with every bad decision.

Lately I have been immersed in a book called ‘The right to be cold’ by Sheila Watt-Cloutier. It is a fascinating read with lots of Inuit history and, at the same time, an accurate and heartbreaking description of the way life in the Arctic has been affected by many factors, mainly climate change. The climate change-induced transformations of the Arctic world are happening twice as fast compared to changes in the rest of the world. A cautionary tale at best.

Yet, there are still climate change deniers. That I will never understand. I’d do but one thing to appeal to their minds and hearts: I’d take them to one of the many places where the sun splashes on a lake trying to coax waterlilies to reach to the surface, and you feel dwarfed by trees of all kinds shading delicate fairy slippers, wild strawberry flowers and newly emerged arnica flowers. Then I’d ask: What if this corner of paradise and many others would cease to exist? What if basic life needs could no longer be satisfied because the planet is simply not enabling for it?

There is still time. There’s hope.

A recent study done in Germany concluded that planting trees to sink carbon is simply not enough to counteract the effects of climate change. Though trees do absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, which makes new trees grow a lot faster due to its high concentrations these days, we would need immense surfaces – the equivalent of all the agricultural land plus some more, if we are to slow down climate change. We need to let go of fossil fuels and focus on alternatives.

Yet letting go of hope is not an option, no matter how deeply disturbing one president’s decision to embrace denial is. Hope we must, hope we will. There are still many countries (some US states too), committed to act towards making life on earth last, Canada included, which is a comforting thought.  Yes, Canada will have to forgo pipelines and dams and LNG soon enough if the commitment is to be a fruitful one.

That was, as I said, the thought context in which I entered the blissful ‘out of reception’ zone with my loved ones. Upon our return, connection grabbed onto our phones half an hour or so after leaving the campsite.

We got home, unloaded, scrubbed dishes, and sorted through the camping gear to store it away till next time. It was my oldest who checked the news first. There was another attack in London, he said.

More people senselessly killed, others critically wounded, more fear and terror spreading, more questions that will remain, once again, unanswered.

I know this is but the one of the facets news outlets focus on. I know that the famine in South Sudan is beyond tragic and millions are on the brink of death due to starvation and diseases; that boats of hopeful migrants, many of whom children, still engage in crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better life, and that the Middle East is still ravaged by bombings, and senseless dying happens everywhere you look.

It’s that and more that made me steer away from connecting back to the world. It’s sad, it’s scary, it’s angering, and it’s not going to end anytime soon, unfortunately. Yet, just like I stated above, it’s hope we must commit to. There simply is no better way.

Hope makes anger dwindle; when solutions are needed, rather than more resentment, hope, and willingness to hold onto what makes us human (kindness is what comes to mind first) must be strengthened. It’s the hardest thing at times.

Whenever dark, hopeless thoughts invade my mind, I seek the one refuge that somehow stays unaltered every time: the hope that the world can be changed. It takes many (most of us?) but it’s possible. Somehow, some of the areas of the drawing board on which we sketch life have become blackened by horror acts and fear. But the big picture can still be lit up if enough well-wishing hands keep on sketching bright, hopeful bits of life. It takes many. Most of us and each of us.

Life Bites. Chew Slowly

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On May 2, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Health, Homeschooling, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood

If light could be song, this morning’s bright appearance was a symphony, loud and overwhelming. The green is exploding everywhere, soft and decidedly stubborn, hijacking the desert’s brownish, dry demeanour for a few weeks from now.

Trails are narrower because grass and dandelions claim the edges. Tread with care, but should the dog venture off the path…not a worry, there’s bounciness to cover the tracks so she can start all over again. After all, there are birds to be chased. Pup is the smile and laughter machine. She’s a song playing new each day, sauntering and jumping and then crawling when a new dog appears.

It’s her best friend whose head appears at the bottom of the knoll. A dog that’s equally agile and sweet natured and willing to play until his tongue hangs loose all the way to the ground. A high standard in the dog world.

She hides in the tall grasses and studies his every move. Closer, closer, jump! They both jump, front legs forward and embracing the other’s neck. Define happiness. Wait, don’t. Let it be. That’s exactly it.

It’s a trivial truth bite in the end… When you’re giving in to sunshine and sparkle, when you hop over inflated, bubbling creeks and greet birds swooping by, that’s when it catches up with you, that bite of truth: the plenty-ness we seek all our lives will never come from owning anything. It comes from being, from letting the sunshine reach all the way inside and from hanging all the dark thoughts into the light. It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Breathe deeply. You have arrived at the start of a new day.

That is the feeling of plenty that awaits on the side of the trail every morning. That the dog jumps in the creek and then runs up the hill with all her might only helps with the fine touches.

She runs zigzags with her furry friend, and then they both dive at the bottom of a big sage brush. Tails showing briefly, rustling, more tails and noses sniffing. What are they after? That kind of strong intent no dog school could ever unhinge. I love that. They stop, only their noses pulverize dirt from some newly found tunnel.

A mouse makes its scared slow way from under the sage bush. Busted! Poppy throws a gaze his way, then she looks at me, then the ‘now what?’ becomes evident. Indeed, we have stumbled upon life buried in the world that complements our sunny one. We pull the dogs to the side, the mouse crawls away into another hole.

Today is the mouse, yesterday her uphill playing took us to a patch of newly blossomed shooting stars. I lingered more over the flowers than I do over the mouse, which is where our interests part ways. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

 

Mouse gone, friend gone home too, we follow the trail towards ours. Above us, the resident hawk flies above a magpie. There’s air tumbles, black and white feathers swooping under the wide-winged brown hunter, then above, stumbling in a desperate attempt to escape. The high-speed pursuit is enveloped in sunshine so bright it hurts my eyes. I’ll never know who prevailed. So it is. There’s as much mystery to life as there is clarity.

The grass in our yard is the tallest on the block. ‘Can we have it like that, please?’… Sasha pleads, my heart does too; tall grass is charming and soothing and beautiful to walk on. Alas, city rules oblige. Tony gets the push mower going. Green blades falling, green smells infuse the air.

‘Mom, should I leave the dandelion patch standing? They are so pretty…’ Yes please, thanks for asking. Half of the yard will be, for now, bumblebee and butterfly playground. I can hear the sun laughing.

Sasha and I read outside in the front yard. ‘On the shores of Silver Lake’. He picks a few dandelions while I read out loud. ‘I’ll make you another bouquet, Mom…’ Spring and love are synonyms. The pup lies near, her fur hot and soft and her eyes imbued with laziness.

There’s magic in it all. It comes from being. From choosing not to rush anything, even if it’s just for a few moments.

Later, I tend to Tony’s blisters. Life bites indeed. Learning continues.

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