On Fri­day, errands and a meet­ing brought me to Queen Street West, an area of the city that brings up fond mem­o­ries of art col­lege days. 

Usu­al­ly I would rum­mage through antique shops and read as many cro­chet and knit­ting books as I can at Rom­ni Wools, but I was­n’t hav­ing a very good day, still recov­er­ing from a par­tic­u­lar­ly tough day at work ear­li­er in the week. Self-doubt came rush­ing in like a giant wall of waves. And the future sud­den­ly seemed very bleak. Like noth­ing I do is ever good enough, or ever going to be good enough.

After run­ning those errands I still had plen­ty of time before the meet­ing, so I decid­ed that I would try to find the white squir­rel at Trin­i­ty Bell­woods Park. But not only the white squir­rel, all the squir­rels must be hid­ing in cool places in the trees — I could hard­ly see any squir­rel at all! I dragged my heavy bags and tired legs for­ward in an attempt to find a park bench in the shade — avoid­ing the sun­ny spots was what need­ed to be done here — but the only free ones were those bak­ing in the sun, of course. So I walked toward a friend­ly-look­ing tree that offered a large area of shade. Once I was under its shade I looked up, and real­ized that it was a gink­go tree — a liv­ing fos­sil, my favourite kind of tree! That made me hap­py, like spot­ting a friend in a par­ty of strangers, or receiv­ing kind­ness from a passerby. 

 

I sat in the shade for a bit, and when I was less tired I got bored, so I walked around the park, and found a small flowerbed, with flow­ers of all dif­fer­ent colours, like a celebration.

 

There were lots of these flow­ers that looked like they were made out of crepe paper. I don’t know much about plants and dont’ know what they’re called. Per­haps you can help me out?

 

After wan­der­ing in the park I still had more time, and I was feel­ing a bit bet­ter, so I thought I’d wan­der in the streets. After all, while being all gloomy ear­li­er I skipped some of my favourite shops. So I wan­dered into Mag­ic Pony, and was sur­prised that they car­ry the Yum­my Dessert key­chains by Hei­di Ken­ny ‑ I thought they were only sold in the US! Hei­di Ken­ny’s blog was one of the first ones I fol­lowed and inspired this lit­tle blog of mine. So I thought I must get one of those keychains!

Prob­lem was, they were sold in blind box­es, which meant that one could­n’t choose the par­tic­u­lar toy one want­ed. You know which one I want­ed to get most? My favourite is the jel­lo mold. 

 

I read on the box that I had a 1/25 chance of get­ting the jel­lo mold. I thought as long as I did­n’t get the white and brown cook­ie I would be hap­py (not that it was­n’t cute, it just did­n’t quite look like a cook­ie…). I picked up a box with my eyes closed. As the friend­ly Mag­ic Pony staff cheered me on, I anx­ious­ly opened the pack­ag­ing and out it tumbled…

A JELLO!!!

OMG I GOT A JELLO!!!

XD 

The Mag­ic Pony is indeed magical.

It’s even slight­ly squishy like real jel­lo! XD

I made it just in time to my meet­ing with my super­vi­sor. I real­ized how much I miss being in a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple who do the same kind of work — the same kind of wide­ly-mis­un­der­stood-and-unrec­og­nized-by-the-main­stream work — and under­stand. I was once again remind­ed of the pur­pose of my work, and the skills that I do have. And the future seemed a bit more hope­ful. (If you want to know what kind of work I do head over to the about page. I updat­ed it recent­ly :D)

When I got home it was late. I checked my emails and Word­Press told me that a love­ly vis­i­tor had com­ment­ed that she liked my favourite things posts and may con­sid­er writ­ing in her blog again. These words of kind­ness remind me of those moments when a client looks up from the art she’s mak­ing and smiles with her eyes, sat­is­fied by a moment of joy or heal­ing or insight or con­nect­ed­ness with a vibrant­ly cre­ative part of self. It’s about offer­ing what lit­tle I have and see­ing oth­ers turn it into some­thing amaz­ing beyond my imag­i­na­tion. I mean, the abil­i­ty to turn ordi­nary things into amaz­ing things is already inside every­one, whether I put things out there or not. But I guess the dif­fer­ence is that I did put things, or some­times myself, out there. Some­times it does noth­ing, but I know that some­times it can make a dif­fer­ence. And that, I remind myself, is what I will have to hold on to as I trav­el along.

Today we walked passed a food mar­ket and saw this bloom­ing suc­cu­lent plant (again, I have no idea what it’s called). I’ve seen the same kind of plant before, and when it blooms it has a long stem com­ing out of the mid­dle of the plant with small pink flow­ers branch­ing out at the top. I always thought it looks like it’s offer­ing its flow­ers to the world.

 

It’s a bit of a long-wind­ed post. A bit all over the place, too. But I guess at the end of the day it’s just about catch­ing the bright things, and find­ing parts of myself and my place in the world in the midst of the bright things and not so bright things.

And see­ing that it’s almost Sun­day, I’ll end with a video that cap­tures a small, but very bright moment :D

 

Have a good day, friends!