Ben is stoking the fire for Chief Reuben’s sweat lodge, on the Tsleil Waututh reservation on the Burrard Inlet. He places another log onto the big fire over the grandfather stones and I ask him, so…how intense is this sweat, usually…like, on a scale of 1 to 10? In the gap between my question and his …
Author: carmen
I have no pictures of my mother
I remember my mother as a small solidly built woman with eyes like angry blue marbles. I see her sitting at the kitchen table, smoking Matinée Lights and drinking cold coffee. I can’t remember ever having had a real conversation with her. We hardly knew each other except as adversaries.
Listen to the belly
The belly knows. I wake in the night with that hissing and sizzling in my gut. That is my intuition talking. It is not to be silenced and it won’t let me sleep. There have been times my belly said go forward, or stand still, or run away. It has said, jump on that approaching …
The case for cougars
What’s the deal about women being with younger men? Why does it freak people out, what is the big taboo? I got to ruminating about this in the shower this morning, while still groggy from another night punctuated by hot flashes (which, I am reassured, will ease off within two to five years. Good to …
Robin under the hawthorn tree
We buried Robin’s ashes yesterday in the roots of a black hawthorn tree out behind the Gumboot. As the tree went into the ground three eagles circled overhead, and it being Roberts Creek, a few lazy dogs and feral children wandered through the circle of held hands. Someone blew marijuana smoke from a fancy glass …