June 18, 2002

It's a beautiful late spring day in Toronto. I'm sitting outside in the gazebo (kneeling, actually. There is a decided lack of seating in said gazebo,) looking down at the words I'm putting to paper and trying to decipher my handwriting. It seems my penmanship has quite gone down the toilet over the past decade or so of continual keyboarding. Only the first paragraph and already writers cramp is setting in. God only knows how I managed to survive those high school exams in which multiple 500 word essays were written.

The smell of the cedar is dancing around my nostrils. Combined with a partly-cloudy sky and the windblown rustle of leaves from the nearby forest and one almost feels a part of nature rather than being smack-dab in the middle of the largest city in Canada. Only the sounds of the schools air conditioning units and the mowing of a lawn across the creek valley shatter the illusion.

I've shifted to sitting on the gazebo floor, my back against one of the octagonal corners and my raised knees acting as an impromptu table. The knees started screaming "Enough already!"

I don't normally write any entries with pen and paper. That medium is reserved for scribbling down poetry. Even that now I find myself plonking into existence with a computer keyboard. I can see the appeal of this though. It's something I've lost over the years. At one time I would be writing down whatever my imagination would come up with. Somewhere buried in the office closet and storage room are reams of paper filled with the grandiose words of an 18 year old.

My penmanship seems to be smoothing itself out as I continue to write. No doubt my fingers and hand are remembering what it is like to form the shapes of the letters and how to swoop them into words and sentences, some of which may even be coherent.

I am now sitting cross-legged; my 38 year old back reminding me that I am no longer 18 and that the stiff vertical surface of the cedar gazebo is not terribly comfortable, thanks all the same. I am glad school is finished for the students though. I don't know that I would be able to put pen to paper and concentrate on what I'm thinking and writing with a gaggle of school boys screaming nearby, locked in the throes of recess.

This is good, however. Not the quality of my writing necessarily, nor the lack of green-jacketed boys. Just sitting here, with my thoughts, uninterrupted. Watching the clouds and the bugs and the fluff balls float by. I should do this again sometime, and soon. I think it could be cathartic.

Just next time, let's lose the lawn mower, okay?

Bugs spotted whilst sitting here: male mosquito, roly-poly, jumping spider, wasp, ant, fellow staff members (ha ha.)

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