LOOKING AT MY SHOES...

i have always taken photographs of my feet...of late i have puzzled over why...i was struck with a revelation while walking the other day...i was recalling my childhood...a strange foggy place full of images and sensations but very few memories... i recall being dressed for church in my hat and proper coat...my patent leather shoes with the strap...a child of 5 or 6 going to church with my father....

our church was in yorkville, in toronto, the posh spot to be in the toronto of today...in those days it was yorkville, the hippie haven...gogo dancers in windows, musicians playing on the streets and the smell of weed everywhere...i would hold tight to my father's hand as i passed by these strange and curious people, feeling quite over-dressed and foolish...the hypocrisy of church not lost on such a little girl..

my father was a soloist in the church and i would want to stay and listen to his songs and feel compelled to clap at the end, instead i was dragged to sunday school in the scary basement of the old church with the musty smell and the many closed doors....i would study the bible and get stickers of crosses and jesus...and at easter time...bunnies and eggs and pretty sparkly pastel crosses...i didn't understand any of it...my mind always a confused swirling of mixed emotions and many unanswered questions...the story of christ of no interest to me..my own life so painful and puzzling...i had no time for this man who was nailed to a cross...i felt imprisoned in my own life...without the nails...but enslaved and chained in my own way..

after this tradition of sunday worship i would then follow my father to someones' apartment...always different...i would sit like the good girl that i was...colouring book and crayons...in some unknown living room at some strange coffee table...while strange sounds would disturb and confuse me coming from behind a closed bedroom door...i knew my father wasn't with my mother...these women were patronizing and sickly sweet to the little girl with the bouncing curls and the fancy hat...my patent leather shoes looking back at me...

i would colour in the lines...wishing i could just scribble all over the page and continue scribbling until i had covered each and every surface of the womans apartment...whore...

i would look at my shoes and see my reflection...i would make faces at myself in the shiny black surface...i would wonder what my life meant and why i was here when i would rather be anywhere else...digging for worms in my backyard in my sneakers...getting my hands dirty...earth beneath my fingernails....

the shiny clean girl...dressed in her sunday best...looking in her patent leather shoes....looking for salvation...looking into the future...my shoes were my crystal ball and i searched in vain for better days that never came...

spring flowers, swine flu, canadian hockey and my love...

it has been a strange couple of weeks for me, most of which i spent flat on my back in my daughters' bed with the worst flu i have ever had...if it wasn't swine flu, i wouldn't want to know what that feels like...i could barely lift my head from the pillow to eat the condensed chicken noodle soup that my mom lovingly made, forgetting to dilute it with water...basically soggy noodles and salt...desperate for nourishment, i ate it...

i would awake in the bed, soaking in sweat, almost delirious with visions of  things i couldn't grasp as reality or make-believe....strange dreams and nightmares left me wondering day after day if i would ever recover from this crippling illness...

...one of my dreams was of my boyfriend and i marrying in a beautiful outdoor celebration..i was wearing a lacy short dress and a strange headgear made by famous hat designer philip treacy...my groom was all in white...so handsome...and our friends' dogs, slim shady and kitty were the best man and maid of honour complete with matching outfits....there were rose petals and champagne and the sound of the ocean and much kissing and dancing...when i awoke from that dream i was so disappointed to find myself still

 lying unable to move..

on the heels of this illness, my love visited me for a week...it was a blissful time of walks and talks and dreams....our love is beautiful and passionate...our age difference is un-noticed by either of us...i am young for my 56 years and he is wise beyond his 39....age means nothing...and when you truly fall in love it is irrelevent....

and then there is the vancouver canucks...the last canadian team left in the playoffs...i am still hoarse from screaming at the last game of their season that they lost to the chippy chicago black hawks...frustrating that 4 of the hawks are from vancouver originally...so actually...they are not an american team...most aren't...the majority of nhl teams are still made up of good canadian boys with a spattering of russian, swedes, finns and so on....so when the chicago arena erupts at the singing of the american anthem...they should take note...most of their team spend their summers at cottages in canada and drink canadian beer and say 'eh'.....and what about another team in southern ontario???   mr. bettman.....we can fill the stands...and we are the original hockey country...give us a break...whoever believed a hockey team could survive in the desert in the first place...no one with a brain and knowledge of our favourite sport...i wonder aloud if he paid off the refs to help chicago eliminate the canucks....why do you hate us canadians so???.....go back to the n.b.a.....we need an ex-n.h.l.er in charge of our game...a hockey man who knows that putting 'bums in seats' as they so crassly put it, isn't about expanding into cities who need to hire cheerleaders and special effects to instill excitement about the game, it is about placing teams in cities that are passionate about hockey...give the coyotes back to winnipeg, or saskatoon, or hamilton, or kitchener ontario...

now...back to the point of this entry...spring flowers...this spring is astoundingly beautiful...the colours of the tulips are endless and delicious...it is a 

slow spring and the blossoms are taking their time to bloom, the sun is letting them shine before taking away their vibrance with its blinding rays....i am delighted as a photographer by the endless beauty that surrounds me....

i read a line in a book of short stories by Harold Brodkey entitled ' first love and other sorrows'

' are flowers vain?  are trees?  are they consumed with vanity during those days when they are in bloom? '....