Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Category: Life Stories Page 21 of 46

The Case of Bird vs. People

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On April 26, 2017

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

It’s a beautiful and yet uneasy feeling. Walking into a territory where you belong but do not speak the language or even barely understand what the high and low notes mean. That’s what an ordinary morning does: it turns on you. The guest, you.

Pup and I walk the couple of blocks to the park and then we let loose. She’s off her leash, allowed by higher authorities than me, and I am off mine (everyday rush and craziness). A couple of crows swoop close enough but not like last year’s bullies that almost got me twice. Not yet anyway. Building nests and having babies is serious business, I know that. Humans can meddle, as they’ve shown on many an occasion. We’re on the black list, no pun intended, and the crows show it when they have a chance.

Pup and I hike the hill taking the narrow steep trail, all the way to the top. If you steer a gentle left you leave the highway buzz behind and the crystal-clear song of a meadowlark (now I know) reaches straight into your soul as if to show what you’re missing on when immersed in urban cacophony.

Just like that, you’re hooked; you’ll be seeking this cascade of sounds every morning. I do. The meadowlark perches herself (himself?) on the very top of the tree and delivers a loud, clear and perfectly harmonized song it makes me wonder the same every time: where does so much sound come from when the body is so puny?

I choose to think of it as a greeting. I am no birder, hence sweet ignorance protects my feelings. It could be a threat call (pup and I are the threat, again), or it could be a song delivered despite our presence there for other purposes. My new reading ‘What the Robin Knows’ (author John Young) is building a pyramid of question marks in my head. The more I read, the clearer it becomes: I know nothing of birds. I thought I did, a bit. Sweet ignorance, how thick your veil.

The resident hawk I often see swooping from a scraggly tall dead-looking (I know it’s not) Ponderosa pine dances rather than flies. Elegance. I think of us humans walking, often waddling, hunched forward, ungraciously forgetting to even breathe deep enough in our rush, forgetting to look up at the sky, overwhelmed by problems, often self-created, painful many of them yet diligently maintained. Yes, I envy the hawk easiness of being…Grace.

Robins. We saw two this morning, possibly a couple. Staring as if to detect our intentions. Friendly. How do I say that in bird language? I stop and stare. They’re beautiful and remind me of my mom. Here’s why.

One flies away to get the pup’s attention. Protecting a mate perhaps. The one left on the branch looks at me. I am fascinated, mute in my delight and sorrowful in how most of us humans have forgotten to sit quietly and observe… Sparrows dart every which way, cheeky and cheery, even on a rainy day. The life continuum sketched by outstretched wings, chirps, and intentions I will most likely never be able to interpret.

The other day I found a dead bird on the side of the path. As if asleep, its tiny body frozen yet soft to the touch. Light as feathers… patches of sparkling yellow on its sides and head, beautiful gray and charcoal ones adorning the body, wings and tail; delicate black feet. The boys and I identified it; an Audubon warbler. One less song. Warblers sing just because, for the love of it… I would have never known. It took this bird on the side of the path. Why did it die, the boys asked? I had no answer. Quiet reverence as death stares us in the face. So easy to forget we’re all due one. Infatuation over our self-proclaimed superiority doesn’t help when humility is needed.

We know so little. It’s easy to let go when you know little. There’s but one answer: we ought to learn more. Understanding even a fragment of that continuum; the language of songs that fill mornings with wonder, with panic, with love, with sounds that perpetuate life. Our songs are the same, except that we sing inwardly and mostly forget to do so by the time we need it the most. We ought to relearn, we ought to rediscover serenity, grace, and that sliver of gratefulness… the robin knows…

Happy Earth Day Beyond Earth Day

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On April 25, 2017

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

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on Monday April 25, 2017. 

There is an interesting realization that sneaks up on you once you spend enough time in nature to be humbled by it: that you know squat about it, other than the very basics, if that, unless you dedicate time to learn about it. It is mind-boggling to think that for the most part, our awareness of the living world is minimal. That hinders much of our chance to succeed at saving ourselves.

Children have the right idea when they start out as wee curiosity-fueled machines. Nothing is yucky in their path, nothing too disgusting to look at, smell or touch. The world is an endless array of networks to learn about, to wonder at and to return to every day.

Nothing is ugly or boring. Rain or shine, hot or cold, children want to be out and exploring. As they grow up, we qualify the living world around them using words and concepts meant to provide safe boundaries which often end up becoming the reason children’s curiosity subsides. They learn to disengage.

Moreover, that childhood nowadays comes with screens and alternative reality fast-paced games and movies that take the young minds even farther from the slow-paced real life is not helping much either.

The human brain is amazing in how it can absorb and use information, in how it can solve problems and find solutions. And puzzlingly so, it is also, especially in our young ones, easily addicted to things and activities that create pleasure loops to get lost in, all supplied by an array of marketing ploys that are, as per their intended design, overwhelming.

Such activities, toys and gadgets, provide the kind of stimulation nature cannot provide. Not because it lacks anything, but because the nature’s rhythms are not meant to create addiction of any kind, but to soothe, heal, and allow for space to find ourselves and the inside voice that suits us best. That voice is, for lack of better way to explain it, in tune with the living world around.

That kind of meaningful, life-enriching and enabling duet, is more visible in some fellow humans than others. Come Earth Day, we are invited to remember the things that matter. No economic growth plan matters much if a community is under the threat of natural disasters, often induced by improperly and abusively conducted human activities. It could be clear cutting, mining, building of dams, you name it. Not just in BC and Canada but throughout the world.

Nature’s little note, never illegible I dare add, reads the same every time: work in congruency with nature’s way, never against it. Make operations sustainable and respectful of the living world, and things can work just fine. The one caveat: there would be lower profits perhaps, though bringing ethics into it can make it fair for everyone. The reward, though, would be longer term projects and much healthier outcomes environmentally and human health-wise; common sense replacing greed and the utter conviction that nature is ours to grab from, dominate and squeeze dry.

Awareness of the earthly gifts in all of us, from the very young to the very old, can make Earth Day a culmination of sorts rather than the isolated day when we celebrate our planet. An hour of turning off the lights is a good thing, but better yet if we do it daily. Just imagine having an hour a day, at least, when you spend time with your loved ones, or rest, walk and listen to the sounds of the world around you, anything that can be done with lights off and without any devices close at hand.

The earthly gifts are many and varied, but the basic ones are the same everywhere: water, air, and food. Imagine the kind of awareness that can be created if we had days dedicated to learning about hunger and thirst for example. By experiencing them, no less. Imagine a day when we would have a limited supply of food available, or clean water.

Imagine having the kind of overwhelming marketing campaigns that promote the selling of goods, and then more goods and gadgets, promoting awareness instead, based on what we need to know of the living world, people included.

Imagine being made aware (and becoming more appreciative of your own blessings and abilities to help) of issues that can be alleviated or even mildly improved, by knowing more about: lack of food or proper food, lack of clean water (more than 80 Indigenous communities in Canada are under boiled water advisory and many other communities are plagued by industrial pollution of their drinking water), lack of proper legislation that would see natural habitats protected and thus helping restore any environmental imbalances that ultimately come to affect our lives.

Imagine a day when those in a position of power, whether in manufacturing or marketing, would come together to realize that there is already enough stuff to go around and would press for developing aggressive alternative strategies to address the surplus through reusing, repurposing and overall reducing consumption. Delivery from slavery on both sides of the spectrum you could say…

On Earth Day and beyond, remembering that we have become so used to having convenient rather than respectful to nature, is worth yet another reminder. We have become used to resealable, non-recyclable bags for everything we consume, from produce and fruit to snacks and wipes; we have become accustomed to simply grabbing our cold drinks in single-use plastic cups covered with the plastic lid (number 6, non-recyclable in most recycling facilities), with a straw planted in it, no less, and we choose to not spend too much thought on why Canadians now produce approximately 10 billion tonnes of garbage yearly (9.6 billion tonnes in 2012) while the world’s oceans receive a staggering 8 billion tonnes of plastic from all of us earthlings.

During a recent talk at TRU on the topic of the health of our oceans, Fabien Cousteau shared one of his favourite quotes by Richard Louv. ‘We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot love what we do not see. Or hear. Or sense.’

Hence the need to return to the simple things: exploring nature alongside our children. Playing in the muck, sitting in the shade of old-growth trees and listening to birds, wading in streams, and growing some of the food we put on the table. Discovering more so we can live with less. Knowing. So we can love and protect.

Happy Earth Day beyond Earth Day!

The Case Of The Wildflower vs. People

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On April 25, 2017

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

Say you pass by a wildflower somewhere on a trail. Its splendor is impossible to miss, as wildflowers truly are like jewels sparkling in what is still dry grass mixed with new shoots of green blades.

If you get close enough and look at the flower head, observe how perfectly arranged all the parts are, how harmoniously distributed the colour, how beautifully oriented to receive sunlight, the only logical reaction is to ask how and why?

I know, we have heard the story a million times over. Spring, renewal, hope, green, warmth… in the end words, no matter how you bunch them together, mean nothing if our minds don’t peek into the very story to get to the wonders hidden in petals, leaves, the dirt hugging the roots and the profound love for every ray of sunshine.

Just think about it: what would happen if you were to spend the time to learn everything you can about that wildflower? The way the plant resurfaces every spring, the way it goes from a fuzzy bud to a vivid colour petal crown dancing graciously with the morning breeze… deeper still, the way atoms (which ones?) are arranged to form complex pigment molecules, the way these pigments break down and reveal a different shade (why at a certain time?), the way a plant cell wall is organized, different from an animal cell (why?) and how the petals and delicate inside parts do not wilt under the strong midday sun but thrive, pulsing with a life current so strong it pulls your gaze into it…

Just a wildflower, which you get to know enough about to cherish. To notice with the corner of your eye, to marvel at, to want to learn to know more…

Just a wildflower. Just enough to get you to love nature so much you’ll never take it for granted…

The Sense That Is Never Lost

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On April 20, 2017

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

It was as if someone lowered pup and I into a glass of milk. We were walking on the dirt trail up on the ranch in the rain. It was foggy but it became so dense the trees were but ghosts guarding a world of chirping and dripping.

Creepy you say? Not a tinge. Comforting and soothing, spring curled up at our sleep, succumbing to incessant and much needed rain. It’s the place where you hear birds and become aware of how little you know past that. Birds? Yes, but which kind? What’s the song about? Are you part of the landscape enough for them not to worry over you, or are you the intruder that rudely converts the sweet morning tunes into alarm sounds? Not that you’d notice…

To call it deafness would be inaccurate. It’s complicit ignorance… to the world that does not require us to know but what a gift towards becoming better versions of ourselves if we do. It is striking that the average person taking a stroll through the woods knows so little about what they see or hear.

Delicate stems of grasses that might as well be invisible for how little we know of what they are and why they’re there, wildflowers so pretty that we perhaps take photos of but do not take the thought far enough to learn their names… Trees with lives so mysteriously and beautifully intertwined with ours; trees that many (most?) of us call but trees, and go maybe as far as divide them into coniferous and deciduous, leaving way too much into the realm of ‘one day I will know more…’ because really, the day is today. That is all we have.

 

What then? Take a long enough breath to feel tingly all over and grateful beyond words for being able to so do. Make it so that you learn one thing on any given day, about the world so humbly laid at your feet you forget to give it thanks for providing the very ground you step on, a solid one. For the way it is mysteriously draped from the sky all over to where your lungs and eyes can be satiated without even you realizing it.

Save your sense of wonder. Save it from the daily rush, save it from careless gazing upon things you might not even notice after all, and save it from becoming uprooted in any way. We’re born with a sense of wonder; when we first touch the world our senses are steeped into all that the world has to offer, and then at some point – you’d be right to ask why and where, therein lies the trouble – we steer away from it.

 

Truth is, it’s still within, all of it. All it takes is silence punctuated with bird songs, rain dripping cold and soothing on your face, slipping on a patch of mud just enough to almost step on a delicate ring of flowers you then go and learn the name of… it’s all there. Pup and I keep finding that out. You do it too, why not?

A Basket Full of Easter Memories

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On April 17, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Learning, Life Stories, Self-improvement

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

I must’ve been 10 or so when I got that orange plaid dress for Easter. It had delicate lace around the pockets and a set of nice white buttons down the front. It had spring written all over it. The sun seemed to shine a tad brighter when I stepped outside wearing it.

Among many other things, Easter in Transylvania meant that we dyed eggs, often using onion peels, which gave the shells fascinating shades of dark red, brown, and purple. We’d gather handfuls of bright green grass and make a cosy fresh nest for all the dyed eggs in there. To this day, I manage to get a raised eyebrow or two when I step into a grocery store and ask for onion peels prior to Easter weekend. My explaining of why I need them leaves people with a smile and a sigh. Often time I hear ‘My grandmother used to do that…’

Chocolate was not a fixture at Easter when I was a kid. There was lots of good baking to be had, and wherever you went, everyone would have platefuls of goodies to indulge in for days after. A bit of a statement, if you will, that celebrations are never meant to be had by yourself.

Easter breakfast, which always followed the (very) early morning Easter sermon at the nearby Orthodox church, had a display of ‘firsts’: first green onions, first radishes, first fresh herbs. Those Easter eggs tasted different than any other boiled eggs. Subjective, you say? Of course, but that is both implied and necessary. There was a deep sense of reverence towards all that we shared on that day.

My sister and I would get something new, whether sandals or dresses, and I always treasured those items a whole lot more than any others I got on other occasions. If I had to venture into guessing why that was… I’d say that a colourful jolly dress matched the almost unmatchable feeling of renewal that filled the air, bursting through every leaf and flower bud.

That early Sunday morning when we’d be dressed anew and setting up the colourful breakfast table meant the culmination of a lengthy, sober and hopeful at the same time, process that contained the Easter lent, which my family observed, that early morning service that had us tired, yet never grumbling, and all the goodies my mom prepared for days in advance with us kids helping as much as we could.

It was part of it all, a completion of sorts, year after year, of a tradition that you find a good spot for in the basket of memories you balance on your arm as you walk along the path, only to access it years later and be grateful that it has become part of who you are today.

My maternal grandmother passed away when I was 6, and my maternal grandfather after my 9th birthday. I remember standing next to my mom during the following Easter service, holding a trembling candle in my hand, and wanting so much to believe that one day I will see my grandparents again. I missed them so.

The Easter chant that people united to sing in a chorus every year professed the very thing. Life and death are intertwined in ways that are impossible to understand when you’re a child, but those moments added a dimension of hope that helped with transitioning to accepting the reality of an everchanging surrounding world.

My paternal grandparents passed away a few years later, and recently, my parents too. Needless to say, no day, ordinary or celebratory, has been the same with my parents gone. Every day has its own joy and pain weaved into it, and gratefulness abounds. As they should.

Every spring when the first green onion shoots poke their heads out in the garden, my mind goes back to the days when I would gingerly pull a few out of the dirt in preparation for that breakfast that had joy, togetherness, sweetness, and more goodness than a child’s soul can embrace.

The smell of something I choose to cook or bake for my family in preparation for Easter brings back memories of the laughter my sister and I would have with my Mom over some failed pastries or another small kitchen disaster; memories of the bonanza of flavours our pantry held in anticipation of the day when the lent would be broken with that first bite that made up for all the waiting. Not a hint of instant gratification…

That our days now are hurried and the world has new crazy happenings just when you think one more would be too much, is true. That’s when is most important to hit the brakes allow ourselves to go back as far as we can remember, to where the magic of times past resides.

Reaching into that space that holds so many sunny Easter morning stories becomes the very pencil with which I draw the circle where I invite my boys to step in to listen to stories, to taste food, spring, and hope at the same time, and learn that perhaps one of the secrets of the big celebratory days such as Easter is hidden in how they help us weave an added armful of gratefulness into every ordinary day. Happy Easter!

The Spaces That Keep Our Children Safe

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On April 4, 2017

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

Originally published as a column in CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on March 27, 2017. 

For two days in a row last week I drove my oldest son to Harper Mountain. He had two ski passes left from a bunch he got for Christmas. I relish the time with each of my sons alone. There is chatting to be had, silence too, there are things I remember and think about long after.

Most of all, there is the reminder that what counts most as children grow up is being present. Going through the moves of parenting teaches you a thing or two about what being present really means; it teaches both humbleness and gratefulness at once. I get reminded often that we stray from both only to return with more of each.

Over the last year I have amassed a solid collection of comments about how challenging life with a teenager must be. And with a budding one coming close behind. They are 14 and 10. Every time I take a moment to ponder but the same answer comes out ‘No, not really. There are occasional bumps but it’s a good ride.’

On our second day on the way to the mountain, the radio was humming in the background, and we were chatting driving along. A story on the radio caught our attention. We both stopped talking and listened instead. A man was telling the heart wrenching story of his growing up.

It involved abuse, addictions and three little boys aged three, four and five, left to fend for themselves for weeks. There was living in foster homes, temporarily living in the grandparents’ home, facing racism because of their Indigenous heritage from their mother’s side, though the three kids were never told the details of their heritage. There was anger and loneliness.

He started using drugs and alcohol as a teenager. The only place where he did not have to face any realities, the place where he did not have to search aimlessly for what he did not seem to be able to find.

My son and I both listened. The man talked about becoming heavily addicted to crack cocaine and how overpowering that was. How overwhelming the high he was after, how misleading, and inescapable and deadly. He became homeless and living on the dark side of life for ten more years, his will only centered around figuring out how to feed his addiction.

The gap that opened closed without swallowing him up though.

Nowadays, Jesse Thistle knows that he is a Metis-Cree from Saskatchewan, and he is pursuing a doctorate at York University. He is the receiver of many an academic accolade. His focus, unsurprisingly, is homelessness, Indigenous history, mainly intergenerational trauma, social work including addiction studies.

My son and I had plenty to talk about once the story was wrapped up. Fentanyl overdoses news abound lately; questions without answers for now. Listening to Jesse’s story shed yet more light on why this is such a tough issue to solve.

We can roll out numbers and outline the dangers for our children, yet as many of us know, curiosity, peer pressure (or both), bullying and abuse of any kind, loneliness and the sad reality of not knowing where to turn for safe space, that can lead many astray. Listening to someone’s life story outlines all of that.

That’s where parents come in, or significant adults that have the privilege to be in children’s lives. There is no script for any of this, which sends us scrambling looking for ideas and solutions. We jump in with both feet and figure out how to stay afloat as we go, after life dunks you a few times for good measure. That is all part of being human and being present as a parent.

Most of all, being there where our children are, listening to them, not judging, and not lecturing but simply doing our best to forge a bond that can withhold challenges ahead… I choose that as my saving parenting grace. Parenting and grace rarely waltz together, but building trust need not call for graciousness but for honesty. If you carry your heart on your sleeve, your children will too. I choose to believe that.

It’s no wonder they call parenting the hardest job in the world. It calls for guts at times when you feel like an empty vessel, save for the butterflies that flutter within. Yet that is where it’s at. The vulnerable space where we have to do our best to listen, share our own fears and stories and encourage our children to grow by listening too, understanding that their worthiness will never come from an outside source. As we have to realize that our children’s choice of positive ways in life will not come from our policing their every move and raising them with fear, but from building trust.

There are many difficult issues parents face today, including drug use, internet-related perils and all that lurks in the space that parents and children most often don’t venture in together. The scary stuff. Yet listening to people telling their stories of getting lost and, if lucky, found, of needing to have a space to find themselves safely in, renews my belief that children today need us more than ever to provide that. If we don’t, someone else may offer but the illusion of shelter as a lure. That is scary.

Yet the chat about the tough stuff does not start when kids turn 14. It starts when they are two and snuggled against you reading their favourite story again and again. It goes on as they turn ten and you find time to snuggle still and read together, making time to talk about all the things you encounter in the books you discover together. There is a lot of life in there.

As it happens, the books they read by themselves later on, and the life stories they come upon, some as real and scary as can be, they will come and reach out to you and share them too. They are often not looking for solutions, but for confirmation that there is a place where they are welcome, where they are heard and listened to.

Parenting is never be about building walls and having surveillance of all kinds in place. It’s about making sure that the big wide world our children trek through will have an oasis here and there when they need it, and enough islands for them to swim to and rest on when the water they find themselves in tosses them every which way. Because it will. Life has it that way. No promises of perfect form, but plenty of opportunities to make the journey worthwhile.

A Tribute To Life And Gratefulness, And To Making The Most Of Each Day

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On March 13, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories

Originally published as a column in CFJC Kamloops Today and Armchair Mayor News on March, 13, 2017.

‘I wave bye bye
I pray God speed
I wish lovely weather
More luck than you need
You’ll only sail in circles
So there’s no need to cry
No, I’ll see you again one day
And then I waved bye bye…’ (Jesse Winchester, I Wave Bye Bye)

It was almost tangible, the first breath of spring. Almost. Yet Friday morning arrived dressed in a white coat draped over the thick one from the day before. Still winter then. Grumbling ensued. We’ve all had enough of shoveling, enough slipping, and wiping out. I miss warmth and sunny green days too, but over the years, through ups and downs, I’ve learned this one thing: make the most of the day you have. Snowy or not, it only comes once.

So I greeted the day the way I do every day: pup and I hit the trails. We’ve walked those trails at length, yet the feeling of being there is as crisp and fresh as the day itself. There’s a new song every day, the cacophony of life sounds jumping out of nowhere one second only to disappear the next. As if you’re witnessing the world breathing.

We made it up to the plateau. There was no sky; all was white, trees growing on the ground as they did in the sky. So much beauty it melts thoughts into one: gratefulness.

For our natural world that offers so much, every day, no matter how snowy. For the gift of seeing it all and have time stop for a bit, for that simple yet joyous feeling of walking through fresh snow and having yield under your feet, for the sweet memories of summers past, now present as graceful dry grasses balancing small clumps of snow on their heads. There’s no room to grumble here. There are no sidewalks to shovel, or patches of ice to slip on… Here you can be breathing winter in and letting it kiss your cheeks, and your steps are steady. No need to argue with it. For even a few minutes, you can be away from all that seems bothersome.

There were deer and coyote tracks and the pup’s nose was hard at work sniffing every swift air current that danced around its nose carrying bouquets of smells. Not to me. The scent world is mostly available to pups and their powerful noses. More to wonder at. More to be grateful for.

Somewhat reluctantly, we headed home, to warmth and boys waking up. Come midday, the sun pokes his face through clouds and sprinkles brightness all over. I take the boys and pup to the wonder place that stole my heart in early morning. ‘You got to see, it’s so beautiful it brings you to tears…’. Faces squint wrestling with sunshine, cheeks are red as we hike, and slippery downhills cause cascades of laughter as we try to avoid wipe-outs. Time together becomes yet another story unfolding on a bright winter day when we forgot to miss spring.

The evening brings the sad news of a dear friend’s passing. During his life, Richard Wagamese carried much grace and much pain, and most of all courage to balance both as he went on. He acknowledged his own lack of gracefulness at times, and that brought forth others’ courage to acknowledge theirs. He had an infectious laughter over the silliest of things that would come up in a conversation, and he had an immense love for music. He shared both heartfully.

He had gratefulness, but his demons cared for no such things. Life had not been kind to him and that left marks that showed. They showed in how he told not only his own story, but stories of old that would have you sit and listen. He drummed those stories and he talked of how they remind you of your mother’s heartbeat in the womb, if only you closed your eyes long enough to be able to listen and feel.

Gratefulness becomes the ribbon I now tie all those memories together.

There’s no room for grumbling in a day that reminds of so much. Reminds of life, of its increments of wonder we can choose to open our hearts to or let them fall on the ground only to step on them and say things should be better if we are to be grateful. It reminds of the short time we have to make it all count.

On a day when you see overwhelming beauty in snow-clad old pines, when children’s belly laughs and silly jokes add more precious pages to your life book, when you find yourself broken-hearted and in tears upon losing a friend… it all melts and becomes but ink in which you dip your pen in to keep on writing. Written words or not, relating our stories as we go, with gratefulness, sorrow, and a never-ending sense of wonder, that might just take away what we perceive as ugly bits.

Life is never about the dark clouds that crowd overhead every now and then, but about the light that stubbornly pushes its way through no matter what. Because it does.

Rest in peace, Richard, the stories will keep on rolling. Gratefulness abounds.

 ‘Oh, how many travelers get weary

Bearing both their burdens and their scars,

Don’t you think they’d love to start all over

And fly like eagles

Out among the stars…’ (Johnny Cash, Out Among The Stars)

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