snow storms

I've never watched a blizzard from this high up. While watching snowflakes from a house, you only see the flakes as they reach their resting place on the ground. 15 floors up, it's a riot of wind currents, swirls of snow, torrents of downfall, west and eastern winds tossing the flakes to and fro. The north wind comes down over Mont Royal, carrying more snow towards our apartment in great big gusts. And I've got nowhere to go. Monday is my day off, and class was cancelled tonight. I feel like a kid on the best of snow days. It was just me in the apartment with chores, homework, great big mugs of tea, and a wild storm to watch.

Lately I keep finding myself sounding like a voiceover on the beginning of a tv drama. Hope nobody minds.

Today I decided to follow up on my earlier commitment to go to a friendly neighbourhood clairvoyant. This lady practiced psychometry, or token-object reading (she does the reading by holding a personal object in order to "connect to" her client's energy). We spoke behind indigo silk curtains. The only light was the late afternoon sun streaming in through a small, dusty window frame.

It was intense, to say the least. She told me my reading was one of the most positive ones she's ever given. A dream come true, for most people she said. "I wish this reading was for me." But I wasn't as pleased as she might expect me to be. Every person's dream doesn't necessarily hold the same appeal for me. There was talk of more schooling, gardening, dinner parties, ritzy neighbourhoods, blonde children who will take ballet classes, and things I haven't really been working towards, at least not yet. First of all, I always fancied myself a bohemian, not a socialite. Second of all, I don't want to know about my future kids and retirement hobbies! I want exciting, near-future stuff!

She told me I have the mind of a 35-year-old. Be that as it may (or isn't), I don't want to know about my 35-year-old self. I want to know about now, and what's on the near horizon. Her answer?

School, school and more school.

Great.

If this is to be the case, it looks like you, my faithful readers, are in for a few more years of me talking about books. I imagine you are thrilled, or are removing me from your links list immediately. And I was really hoping she'd give me descriptions of safaris from Cairo to Cape Town, or llama riding in Macchu Picchu. Nope, books it is, apparently.

Don't worry, I'm not taking this all to heart. I've always enjoyed going to psychics as a way of waking up all the lazy parts of me, the ones that are getting stuck in ruts, and into routines, and out of fresh ideas. When someone gives you an idea of a possible future, sometimes it just gets you thinking along a different line, or opens you up to paths and patterns you might not have thought of otherwise. I'm not destined to be a wealthy housewife, but her suggesting I might be is just enough to motivate me to carve another fate.

I really think that futures and possibilities blow around us like wind currents. They are invisible, yet always there. Snow makes wind patterns visible to the eye. A reading makes different possibilities visible to our hearts, and we decide which ones we like, which ones feel right, which ones to follow. But they can also blow right through our fingers if we don't make up our minds.

If you want the details of the reading, let me know. They were pretty interesting, actually.

Also, today's recipe: Blackberry Salad
- baby spinach
- ripe blackberries
- soft goat cheese
(chopped red peppers and pecans optional)
-balsamic vinaigrette

yum :)