Snow/sand

Making Marley proud: setting my piggies free! (thanks for the pedi, MDM!)

I recently had the extraordinary luck and joy of travelling to Bermuda (found a too-good-to-pass-up seat sale) to visit our good friends S&P V who have been living down there doing an artist-in-residence program. She: painter extraordinaire, he: ingenious carver/sculptor. Quite the talented duo!

To understate it, Bermuda is a small island. This was made abundantly clear as the plane made it's steady descent toward a massive expanse of... water. No land. No runway. I have never flown into a place without seeing land from quite a distance away. Umm, ok, land anytime would be good. Seriously people, where's the land? Of course I had complete and utter faith in the pilot, but I'll admit I was relieved when land appeared (seemingly just moments) before touching down, and yes, I'm exaggerating, but only a little. It just seemed too easy to overshoot. It's at those moments when you stop taking something for granted that you realize how ludicrous/absurd/amazing something like flight is, and I wonder how we got there at all. And in just 3 hours from Toronto. Amazing.

It was so great to see our friends again after many months, and have so much fun exploring and feasting (two of my favourite things)! I had a phenomenal time, and it was so good to get away, have some fun and let the spring warmth seep into my bones.

I tried to make a sponge of myself: taking in all the new sights and sounds, and the colour, the glorious colour! Water in impossible and infinite hues of turquoise, hibiscus (flowers in bloom!) in peach, scarlet and gold, new and unknown flora in verdant shades of green. And the sounds: waves crashing and birds chirping! And the silent, but somehow melodic, flit of butterflies dancing. And the smells: slightly-fishy, salty, ocean air, tiny white flowers with an intoxicating scent like jasmine, and that distinct freshness that you smell when the greenery is blooming and growing! Life! Oh, how I've been sealed up in the house/workplace for too long, steeled against the deep and mute freeze outside.

I love travelling for the profound, physical change that occurs. You are taken out of one place, and transported to another place that has been existing concurrently with the place that you came from. Yet, because we are all mere single beings, we cannot be in two places at once. I know, I thought by 2011 we'd be past that obstacle already. Seriously, where's my jet pack? Where's my teleportation device? 

Such a change is always welcome. Something to remind me of the impermanence and finiteness of things. In those deep, dark months of winter (times when I'm not enjoying the wonders of winter) it seems impossible that there's somewhere else that's not experiencing a minus twenty windchill. And yet I know there is, it's just hard to comprehend the reality of a place you're not.

And yet these places are there, all the time, and knowing that is the torturous irony of travel. You get a taste, and then you know there's an alternative, when you're stuck late at work, or having a bad day, knowing it's there, but you can't get there (again, because of said jet pack/teleport problem).

Of course by virtue of being on vacation and delightfully away, the workaday worries do fade, but sometimes that slight tinge of sadness creeps in, cruelly reminding me of how fleeting the time away is. Thereness works the opposite way too! No, I don't want to go! I want to stay!

There was one afternoon, when the late afternoon sun was particularly lovely and set the buildings of St. George aglow, revealing their sculptural qualities. You could see the mottled texture of the stucco that from a distance looks so smooth and pristine. Up close, and with the slanting light exaggerating the texture, you could see the handwork that went into its construction.

And there was this tree, or, rather, a series of trees that deserves a full post. But here's just one shot of this amazing ficus tree: