Jen Morrison, Freelance Writer

"Welcome, O Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." - James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

journal archive 2004

journal archive 2003

journal archive 2002

finland/russia trip journal

27 July 2006
Happy birthday, two very special chicks in my life.  Lainey, bright and funny little faery child - eight years old!  And Debbie... well... the same age as me!  I'm thinking of you both today.

23 July 2006
Early Sunday evening I arrive in Eagle Lake the place I’m staying, during my week-long course in Haliburton. The house is up at the top of a winding road, a charming thing, painted green with yellow shutters. My hostess greets me as I’m getting out of the car, and takes me right around the back to where I access the rental apartment, which is the lower level of the house. I’m over the moon. The view over Eagle lake is spectacular. There is a deck wrapping around both living room and the bedroom, with chairs, table and barbeque. Even a bug tent off in one corner. The bedroom is set up so that when you wake up you look out the sliding glass doors to that gorgeous view. The other bedroom is vacant, so I get the whole apartment to myself at the cost of renting a room. After she leaves I can’t stop smiling and giggling as I walk around, and I realise in this moment how much I needed this time away. It has been 14 months since my last vacation, after all.

I take a drive into Haliburton to gauge how long it will take to get to classes for the next five mornings, and to get some money from the bank and a bite to eat. I sit down in a pub, and order a glass of wine, coconut shrimp and a salad. In one corner is an elderly couple, finishing up dinner. In the other corner are two middle-aged men, tucking into hamburger platters. Like me, and unlike the couple, they look like visitors. A drunk guy, who I had seen outside earlier, comes in and sits down at the bar and has a beer. Three people sit across from me and I hear them name-dropping famous people who have property in the region. A short while later another gentleman comes to pick up the drunk guy, who insists on finishing his beer first. My shrimp and salad are surprisingly good.

12 July 2006
Today at work I post an article on the internal website that highlights a job well done by some colleagues and shows how, as a company, we've all benefitted from their work. It's been quite awhile since I had a job I liked this much.

I'm starting to think about my upcoming holiday to Haliburton for my yearly week-long course. Up to the heart of Muskoka to write for a week; poor me! But I really do need a bit of time off. My life is good right now; a happy job, my family is well, and close... but it's important to get in the car and just drive away once in awhile. To find a thing to do - like go up north and exercise some creative juices in the middle of a landscape that fills you right up with its rugged, mystical beauty. It's been a long time since I've had a proper week off. Since the last time I went to Haliburton, in fact. Last year it was spring. This year, mid-summer. I will come home with a basket or two of blueberries, a few new friends, and feeling like I've done something good for myself.

10 July 2006
Today is one of those crazy summer weather days. We get bursts of hard rain and thunderstorms, and then suddenly patches of blue sky appear. A couple of us take the new girl at work out to lunch, and of course the sky opens up just as we park the car at the restaurant. But the between times are lovely – we keep getting that “just rained freshness” every time the sun comes out, when it smells so alive and the air is luscious against the skin. I start driving home from work, and hit the highway with windows wide open and my hair flying and it’s one of those perfect summer moments. Ten minutes later it’s dark as dusk and rain’s pelting down again. I hope it clears up long enough so I can take a walk in my freshly doused little world tonight.

9 July 2006
Well here I am, another educational goal achieved. And it’s time now to re-assess my goals and adjust my plans. Some things have changed since I started this education degree, some haven’t. Maybe some new goals will jolt me out of this current “sitch.” I’m trying to visualise – just to allow the visualisations to creep in. It’s time to let the universe help me move into the next stage of my life. And I’m ready for one of those magical periods when things just seem to happen; when things start falling into place. For now I’ll focus on me, and being nicer to me. And that’s not just about getting enough sleep and exercising more. I need to practice more compassion inwardly.

There’s something else I need to purge from myself. It occurred to me yesterday that I may have thought this person was gone from my life, but just slamming the door, repeatedly, doesn’t do the trick. I really need to focus on letting go, ridding myself of him. I need to let myself grieve instead of being angry. Grieving is harder because it’s about letting go. It’s hard to come to terms with the idea that you were wrong for a long time. Hard for me anyway. And it’s extra hard to let go of something that was a fantasy from the beginning, because to do that you have to admit it was a fantasy. Ouch! Am I really just this walking, breathing fictional character? I don’t know how to move out of the drama of my own life; it’s something I need to work on. Because you can’t transfer that script to other actors, they’ve got their own agendas. I think it’s something about living in the moment.

It’s gone cloudy today, and the moon’s almost full. I was looking forward to sitting out on the balcony gazing at the thing tonight. Perhaps tomorrow. Tomorrow is the full moon.

Here’s a goal to focus on. Get the h*** out of Burlington. I don’t belong here, that’s for sure. It’s nice walking, my apartment’s nice with it's lakeview, but there is no spirit here. It’s dull. A couple of nice pubs and a nice waterfront park don’t make a home. Either I go right into the big city, or get out of the burbs altogether and find a place in a little town on the outskirts, or even better, the countryside. Visualise Jennifer…

2 July 2006
Sunday morning, Jeff, Carol and the kids depart on the first boat. I’ve got another day. I tuck into the novel Carol has read over the last few days, bits of which she has read aloud to me and we enjoyed its cleverness. I put the book down for a little while to freshen my toenails – pink polish for a change – and all of my weekend goals are coming to fruition. I loaf around for much of the day, nose in the book.

Later in the afternoon my sister and I realise we don’t have much (non-homemade) wine left to go with the steaks she and Stan have brought for this nights dinner. We hop in the car and enjoy the gorgeous landscape as we drive, the long way, out to Mindemoya. It hasn’t even occurred to us that the liquor store wouldn’t be open on a Sunday. Sometimes it’s hard to take the city out of the girls. We try again in Sandfield, but no.

On the way back we find ourselves driving through a R.I.D.E program – in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Manitoulin in the middle of the afternoon! We assure the officer there are no intoxicated drivers in the car and drive off wondering where we can get a bottle of cabernet.

We soak in the countryside that is both rugged and gentle and I’m already thinking I don’t want to go home. This always happens when I’m up on the island. I start to want this peace. I want to live in a cottage with that lab I saw on the boat and go for walks every day and drink in the smell of cedars and pines. I’m working toward a life of that someday. But I want it now. How can I get this now?

Or what is it I’m really craving? Simply an inner peace? Sometimes I think I just crave what my dad has in this place. He’s the one with a spiritual connection to it. He’s the one who transforms when he is there. I think I’m just wanting that inner thing he has. And I’m kidding myself if I think a place is going to give it to me.

We have drinks on the cottage deck for ‘happy hour,’ joined by one of the neighbouring cottagers. She joins us for dinner and games of euchre and Cathy and I walk her back to her place. Bumping into other neighbours on the way home, we’re invited to a party/bonfire at the Harwood cottages. We go home to get Stan, who declines, and some beers and head over. But the party has a weird, and drunken vibe, so we bow out after one drink and it’s back to bed and dreamland, and the knowledge that it’s back to the city and real life tomorrow.

1 July 2006
First morning of the holiday weekend I wake up at 5 minutes before 5 just as I do every day before work. I really don’t mind when I wake up early on weekends through. It’s a luscious feeling, in fact. I lie there and listen to the nature sounds that are different than the ones I listen to at home, and I drift back off to sleep. A couple of hours later I trip downstairs with coffee on the brain and it doesn’t take long before we’re all up and tucking into eggs and pancakes and more coffee.

Canada Day in South Baymouth Manitoulin Island traditionally goes like this:

A rummage sale, silent auction of donated goods, and barbeque at the Schoolhouse museum, the proceeds of which go to the tiny community.

The parade, usually consisting of a fire engine or two, a police car, an ambulance, a couple of vintage cars, some kids on decorated bikes, and a couple of homemade “floats” and hay wagons with various kids and other community members, including my nieces and nephew and my stepmother and her “Red Hat” gang.

A community fish fry at dinner and then fireworks, on the shore, right after the last boat leaves for the day.

It’s beautiful. I think about Carly who is up in Ottawa at the biggest party in the country and think this party is every bit as beautiful.

Right after breakfast, Cathy and I go for an hour’s brisk walk out Ducks Bay road. We come back into town and check out the rummage sales (and the firemen in charge of the rummage sales) and catch up with the rest of the family. The kids buy some books and Jeff buys a little motorized drink blender.

After the rummage sales have been browsed, Cathy and I clean up and drive out to Sandfield to get some items at the store. We see a sign on a corner post just into the little hamlet that says “Rhubarb and Worms” with an arrow, presumably pointing the way to this highly specialized vendor. I take a picture of it. Back in South Baymouth, we stop to browse the silent auction and buy hotdogs for lunch at the barbeque, catching up with family again. Our esteemed sister-in-law suggests that the three of us embark on our traditional “escape over beers and snacks” at the Pierside café/pub, where we can watch the parade from the patio.

Thankfully, the parade finishes right before a rainstorm and we’re glad the kids weren’t disappointed. And Jeff, who is riding with them on the ‘float,’ snaps a picture of the ‘escapee sisters’ waving from the deck of the pub. And, as if to punish us for our indiscretion, the rain pelts me, Cathy and Carol as we plod back to the cottage.

The kids and I make puppet heads with the clay I have brought on sticks they have gathered. Grandpa sticks most of them in the vice out in the shop because it’s too wet outside to stick them in the garden in the sun.

After collecting Stan who has arrived on the afternoon ferry, we go straight to the park and join the rest of the family and a few hundred other folks. Despite the intermittent rain, we think it’s the best turnout we’ve ever seen. And the dinner is luscious.

Rain again, off and on. Nevertheless, the fireworks go on as planned, right after the last ferry, and we watch from the cottage. Sleep comes soon after.

30 June 2006
Friday I work straight through so that I can leave at 2:00 and head north to the Manitoulin Island for Canada Day weekend. I haven’t had a vacation for more than a year and I’m looking forward to a few days of being with my family and having a mental rest. My goals for the weekend: read a novel, go for some walks and give myself a fresh pedicure.

I make it to Tobermory in plenty of time ahead of the last ferry – unheard of for me! We’re usually flying up the highway at the last minute, making it onto the blessed boat in the nick of time. But this time, I’ve got an hour and a half to spare. I buy my ticket and then have dinner at a café by the pier and watch the local goings on and read.

The crossing is smooth and goes quick. I spend the last part of the ride out on the deck where all of the dogs and their owners are stationed, admiring a particularly sweet looking lab and envision myself with my own cottage and my own lab. It’s dark,close to 10, when we glide into South Baymouth, and as always, the familiar shoreline and cottages make me feel happy and peaceful. Cathy and Dad are waiting for me when I debark, and five minutes later we’re at the cottage. Sydney and Chris were allowed to wait up for me. I haven’t seen Syd since April and she gives me a long hug. I exclaim with appropriate drama that she’s grown AGAIN and how could she possibly be only nine, and she says matter-of-factly, “I know!” Jeff is also waiting up, and after the kids get shuffled off to bed, I chat with sister, brother and father and we finish a bottle of wine and all is well in my world.

26 March 2005
A fulsome, mystical moon shocks me when I wander into the living room and glance out the window last night.  I draw my breath in at the sight of it, lighting a path across the lake as far as I can see.  Diamonds float here and there in the purplish black water.  One star hangs just below the moon to the left; and the lake, after days of crashing lustily into the shore, is quiet and gentle.  What do I do with this sight?  Grief strikes with a wicked blow.  I'm looking at the moon in a new way now, from one direction.  Part of the joy of a sight like this has, for a long time, been in the sharing of it with an appreciative audience.

The moon calls me outside and I'm glad I go.  With each step the sharpness of the grief is chipped away.  The moon is faithful, it doesn't lie.  I'm trying to think of that poem about the everlasting star by John Keats but I can't remember the words beyond the first line: "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art..."  I will look it up when I get home.  The moon is steadfast, and that's a comfort.  I go home and try to work on my paper, but I'm sleepy, so I just go to bed.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
     Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
     And watching, with eternal lids apart,
     Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
     The moving waters at their priestlike task
     Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
     Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
     Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
     No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
     Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
     To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
     Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
     Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
     And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

21 March 2005
The Spring Equinox is here, my Feng Shui calendar says.  Funny how we know that internally.  It's one of the times in the year when we look forward.  I'm doing a lot of that these days, and back at myself.  Reassessing, re-establishing, re-writing.  My calendar says it's a good day to conduct an energy cleansing, and that's entirely what I'm going to do.  It began with yoga this morning, and will end with a long walk tonight - there's a lot of shit to be cleansed.  From here on in it's all new.

14 March 2005
So, I'm putting together this big project, a story.  I'm thinking about the layout of it, and beautiful ways to present the pages with elements of collage and creative typesetting.  The story is one I've thought about for a long time, and images of beauty and love and synchronicity propel it; it's a project that will unfold itself as long as I just do the work.  Like when suddenly I find the story comes to an abrupt change.  Key concepts like "love" and "beauty" and "synchronicity" are re-worked and take on entirely new meanings I didn't even know they had.  The story has become a fantasy-fiction, with a surprise twist ending.  Sort of like Bob Newhart waking up and saying "it was only a dream" and getting up to go to work.

They say you should write in the genre you understand and know the best.  Of course, silly - sometimes my own denseness surprises even me.

13 March 2005
Carly and I paint the living room, and the change is dramatic and wonderful.  Amazing how the application of a rich, good colour in place of a bland, boring colour can change the essence and energy of a home.  I need some good essence.

11 March 2005
About a week ago, I painted a bird's nest in my journal, without much thought as to why.  I'm thinking now that I was sensing a new beginning of some sort.  New beginnings are a good thing, but when they are unexpected you can feel suddenly lost without a compass.  I'm all about adventure and spontaneity, but when the path is jerked out from under you it leaves you feeling motion sickness.

5 February 2005
There is a community of birds who have taken ownership of an unfrozen patch of water, a few hundred yards out in the lake.  Mostly ducks and geese, mingling, relaxing, stepping in for a swim and a dive for something to eat.  I miss the sound of the waves crashing into the shore, but I've now become accustomed to the honking "good morning" as I stumble into the kitchen to make coffee.  As I wait for the kettle to boil, I peer out at those birds worrying that some of them might have become flash frozen into the ice.

Sometimes swans visit - in fact I see them more often now that the lake has frozen.  This afternoon there were four of them out there.  I texted Andy to tell him so, and he returned with swan language.  I think that's what it was anyway.

28 January 2005
One of my friends said, "who would have thought, Burlington would be THE place?"  I wouldn't have thunk it.  And a year ago I wouldn't have thought I'd have the opportunity to wake up and watch the sun rise over Lake Ontario every morning either.

Moving cities knocked me off kilter.  I'm trying to work my way back, to settle down.  And I am.  I left many of my friends back home wondering if I was still alive.  In many ways, I suppose I've been skipping by life for the past few months, scrambling around trying to "get started."  Granted, finding work and a home is rather distracting.  I've found a lovely home.  My daughter is coming up to share it with me.  It's time to settle in and live again.

I'm coming back.  This feels right.  What was I avoiding in not writing anyway?

4 October 2004
Hooray! Today is the day I find a good coffee shop in St. Catharines.  I go out in the late morning with the intention of visiting the library and working for a long, quiet period on homework and my plans for a creative-journalling class for kids.  The library is closed.  I walk down to a used bookstore that I alternatively love and am rather afraid of.  Three floors are jam packed with piles and stacks and boxes of books.  The only order is in the locating of the themes… otherwise, you're stepping around dusty stacks and old boxes and precarious looking shelves.  I try not to think about mice, and sudden fire, as I go upstairs to the art section.  Popping out at me is a book on nurturing the child artist.  I buy the book and walk up the block only to find a coffee shop I had not seen before.  Nina Simone on the cd player draws me in and I sit down in the almost empty place.  I stay for hours, enjoying first Nina, then Neil Young, then other great music… I get lots of planning done for my class and enjoy watching the regulars popping in and out and getting their own coffees behind the counter.  There is something about the karma in a good establishment; I'm never more productive than when I'm in a good coffee shop/café.  I get a promising call from an employment agency while there.  It's a good omen.

27 September 2004
I'm intending to run right back to St. Cath's and get on with the homework and job search.  Doing homework makes me feel like I'm at least productive, like this void of homelessness and joblessness is at least going to come to a conclusion.  I'm on a path.  I know I am.

Anyway, Cathy and I go for a spontaneous trip to the art supply store and then lunch.  Mussels and salad and shrimp over Stellas and warm sun and a toke with your sister make a wonderful Monday.  And it's important to remember how rotten my Mondays have been before I came here.  I am on a path.

26 September 2004
Dinner today with family - a thing I have, for so long, felt missing out on because I was so far away.  I couldn't be a part of the spontaneous get-togethers.  Today we were at Cathy's, for her famous barbequed hamburgers.  A gorgeous day, like almost every other day of this month.  I feel as if I should have more of these afternoons with my mother, but I'm having trouble climbing into this new life.  I don't have a life yet.  When I get a life I feel I can operate again.  I love you Mom.  I love all of you.  I'll be back, please be patient.

27 August 2004
Last night I dreamed they shot down the moon.  There it was, floating over the cityscape, shining on a river and a bridge.  Fulsome and lusty, in the star-filled, purple/black sky.  And up went a missile and shot the full moon down.  Bits of moon floated down in a glittering stream and dissipated into the universe forever.  No more moon.

There were news stories and people milled about, watching the replays.  In fact my dream replayed itself over again, as if it was trying to tell me to remember it.

In my dream I had the feeling like, 'well the world has changed, but there is no going back.  Live with it.'  It's achy, just thinking about that dream.  Could they… would they, shoot down the moon?

I feel like I am being asked to address those things that are constant in my life - things I had thought to be steady as the moon.  I struggle with the thought of being knocked off my feet, losing something I had imagined to be steadfast forever.  We all have a faltering hold on this life, but certain things will never stop.  Certain things can't stop, right?  The moon can't be shot down, can it?

18 August, 2004
Tonight I go for a bike ride on the canal.  Soon after I pedal off White Street, the raindrops begin.   But they're insignificant and soon stop.  I like riding on the canal because there are fewer people than there were on the riverfront path in Windsor - I can ride faster.  I wave at a deckhand lounging over the side of a freighter as they wait to get through the next step down the narrow waterway.  The water is much more still than that of the wider river at home, I find I don't look at it as much.  But there is action in other elements of the nature: birds darting in front of me and trying to divert me when I get too near their homes.  And I love to look at the freighters make their gentle way down the canal.

After a half hour, I turn around when the rain returns with more insistence, and the wind begins to whip about.  The smell of the water and the rain and potential storm are intoxicating.  I pedal fast, electrified by the weather, working hard against the wind, huffing and puffing and welcoming the raindrops on my arms.  Now I know how the wicked witch of the west felt, propelled by the twister.

nu nu nun  na naa naa   nu nu nun  na naa naa...