As with all long-term relationships, we seem to be having our ups and downs at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I still think we can sort them out, but I just wanted you to know I’m concerned. Maybe you’re going through a midlife crisis or something.

We just don’t seem to be talking about the same things anymore. Sometimes I wonder: Could it be we’re growing apart? I hope not.

I’ve been very supportive of you over the years. Never has a moment slipped by when I haven’t taken the opportunity to talk about your accomplishments or achievements to anyone who would listen.  I defend you when people say you’re boring. I tell them you just see things differently, you’re a bit cautious, that’s all.You’d prefer to sit back and think about things a bit, and when you’ve made your decision it’s usually the right one for all the right reasons.

I know we’ve had our share of issues in the past. I know I need to take my share of the blame, and I do.  It’s just that we’ve been able to work through some of our issues and move on. Now I’m not so sure.

I think we still want the same things. I’ve heard other people commenting on your behaviour as well. People are starting to talk. I just wanted to let you know we’re all a bit concerned.

It’s great you’re exploring new ways to express yourself. I, for one, never want to stop you from growing, and I know you feel the same way about me. I guess that’s why I’m a bit shocked with the choices you’ve been making.

But today is a time to celebrate you. We’ve certainly had our share of great times together.

Happy Birthday, Canada.

I expected to find cobblestone-paved streets, renaissance- inspired buildings and castles, and daunting majestic statues holding court in public squares and markets. I found all that and so much more in Malmö. Behind every corner I turned, and every crooked little street I followed, were the rhythms of daily life with the architectural reminders of a long and rich history as the backdrop.

Now imagine the juxtaposition of Calatrava’s deconstructionist Turning Torso. Twisting 90 degrees on its own axis, 190 metres high, and nine cubes stacked one on top of each other, looking every bit like a  a geometric exclamation point  punctuating itself against  the blue skies of Øresund Strait.  

I was quickly fixated on this structure.  I needed to linger, study its lines, contemplate its engineering. From every angle it seemed to defy anything I knew about the law of physics. When you’re on the ground looking up at the edifice, it truly does not look like it should be standing. The sweeps and angles it takes seem too drastic for one building.

Designed by famed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the Turning Torso is another example of his work laden with flowing, sweeping curves, a swirling design with bending and curved silhouettes, clearly displaying his training as both sculptor and civil engineer.

I spent the better part of this one afternoon enjoying the waterfront of Malmö taking photos. I’ve been stretching myself beyond the art form I am most comfortable with: writing. Learning how to train my eye to see things differently, to capture what is around me through the lens of my camera. I feel awkward and uncoordinated in this new medium, but it stimulates my brain and creativity in other ways. There is also this incredible sense of possibility that comes from learning something new and expanding beyond my known capabilities.  

 The longer I spent examining this structure, figuring out the vantage points to capture what I was seeing (shots from the waterfront or children’s park across the street),  my appreciation of its richness and complexity grew. As I reflected on the sheer hard work, dedication and creative focus that had been condensed into this singular act of creation, I could only be humbled.

(I’d like to thank contacts from the Swedish Tourism Office who supplied this photo. I knew there was no way I’d be able to find a way to get a similar shot)

Catching the train from Kastrup was so easy to do. Ticket counters are situated just beyond passport control, and escalators taking you down to a waiting platform are well signposted. Within minutes, just long enough to revel in the fact I was in Denmark, the train arrived whisking passengers onto Malmö.

The first thing I noticed as the train slowed to a stop were the big, bold bicycle  images on each of the doors. I knew the region’s reputation for being bicycle-friendly, but this was clearly a sign that I had entered a cycling utopia. As I would soon witness for myself, for every one person in a private car, there were probably 50 on bicycle.

 It was sunny when I arrived, so the chance to catch a glimpse of the large offshore windfarm was in my favour. I did. And it was merely a glimpse, thanks to the commitment of highspeed trains as part of the public transportation infrastructure.

Structurally impressive and aesthetically pleasing, the Øresundsbron stands as an engineering masterpiece, connecting hundreds of years of common history and language, and transforming this area of southern Sweden and eastern Denmark into a significant transnational economic region since it opened in 2000.

I knew Denmark and Sweden were quite similar in many ways. Both have similar historical paths to their modern political and social structures. Both are welfare-states, both have well-developed democratic structures, both are rooted in old monarchies, and both are geographically small with a strong sense of social equality and just distribution. Yet, I also knew that despite these similarities, overcoming the challenges of nationalistic sentiments on both sides of the bridge has proven much more difficult. In particular, each country’s divergent interpretations of diversity and multiculturalism. Danish public policy has traditionally focussed on homogeneity and Sweden’s emphasis has been multiculturalism.

Crossing the Øresundsbron I couldn’t help think how these two countries have been enemies, trading partners, and at times, even part of the same country, and now, for better or worse, firmly attached by this fixed-link.

I left half my brain in the air between here and Europe. Jet lag, I have discovered, is like being a half wit. You may have your own symptoms of jet lag, but mine make me feel half as smart as I am. This is a considerable disadvantage when I’m trying to write something of interest. Who I am in the pre-trip planning phase and who I am for a few days post-travel are often two completely different people.

The pre-trip me is ruthlessly focussed on the preparations: a carry-on suitcase meticulously packed so as not to weigh me down during my travels; getting as much information ahead of time about what to see, who I should speak to; how I will plan my days so as not to miss anything. My journals swell with notes of interest, dates and times – an abundance of destination details and questions to be answered.  I take comfort in the pre-planning and organizing before a trip because I know that putting this structure around my days gives me the freedom to find the rhythm of each day and “let go.” It also helps me identify emerging themes and unique story ideas for each of my trips. In this instance, the theme for my trip was cycling. I was staying in Lund and Malmö. Cycling is a way of life in Lund. No other municipality in Sweden can match the frequency of bicycle travel achieved in Lund.

As for the post-trip me, well, it’s a far cry from this.  

When I return, my jet lag symptoms are really an overload of the senses. I soak up so much while I’m away it takes me a while to sort out what I have captured, and since I’ve been home I realized some things about my trip that naturally follow only after the experience.

I’m working on more blog entries – thoughts about my trip and what I learned. Once I’ve sorted myself out, I’ll share those with you as well as some notes of interest about Sweden.

But to say that he sings about these matters sounds just so bland. It does not begin to express the experience of being with him on stage.

This is the first principle of what Martin Joseph and his brilliant friend, poet Stewart Henderson, bring to their performance: it is a matter of communion, a spiritual bonding of two friends, guitars, and voices with an emotional range that engages the mind and beating hearts of those around their stage.

Any combination of people can be on stage and give the audience a performance. Yet, the deep seriousness and artistic integrity of Joseph and Henderson is so thoroughly in the moment and in communication with the attentive ears and voices in the room that evocation – the show of it all – is merely ornamental.

 When they take the stage, it is a cathartic, liberating experience that transcends our thoughts into believing all the problems in this world can be solved and that there is peace, that a healing is taking place in every listener’s heart and mind.

When Martyn Joseph sings he gently urges us to look into our own hearts to see what is in his. He draws upon a deep and rich instrument that searches for a resonance in each of us. He takes us on a journey that ranges from the soft pleadings of his half-whispered tenderness to the huge power of his righteous protest that seems to well up straight from the fierce love of his heart.

These friends of ours engage us in the delightfully detached ironies of our aging bodies posing and decomposing (onstage and off) through the deadpan and hilarious humour of the mundane, delivered in Stewart’s Liverpudlian intonation and rhythm, and the magical ringing and singing of Joseph’s  much-travelled Belfast-born deformed guitar.

The art and practiced craft of Henderson and Joseph is admirable indeed. But they do not show it off, nor do they need to. They are just being themselves and we are invited to be ourselves and to be together with them.

I just want to congratulate these two amazing talents on their first tour together across Canada, and hope they return again soon. I also want to thank them for their commitment to support World Vision Canada during their tour.

Spending over a 1000 km in a car in one day allows your brain to wander; as usual, my thoughts turned to travel, more specifically, how we define our travel.  I realized it is the emotional connection we have to the journey before us that pretty much determines how we define it.

Putting aside the professional/business kind of travel, I started listing the breadth of adjectives used to define our journeys.

Whether the impulsive need by couples or close girlfriends to mischieviously plot a quick escape to relax and unwind, we call it a get-away.  If we need time to nurture ourselves, experience new or hidden territory within, or confirm the rut in our natural habitat needs changing, we call it a retreat. If we want to experience life differently, find out who we really are by the way strangers perceive us, we call it an adventure. 

Sometimes, we just need to re-connect with the great unknown and unexplored reflected by the bigger world around us. Those are my road trips, and inevitably find me close to large expanses of water. There is the rendezvous, and not always the illicit kind. We have had the flying visits borne out of the impromptu need to see dear friends; and depending on the emotional stability of family, there is the homecoming, reunion, or just the graceful return.

Finally, there is the pilgrimage. Where we tend to the spirit inside us; a chance to think about humanity, break bread, share a smile and remember what this living thing is all about: seeing our similarities, rather than our differences.

Something happens to me when my mind turns to thoughts of travel. My appetite swells and I become ravenous for the road. An easy smile comes over my face as I imagine what I will see, the people I will meet, and the general relaxed feeling a certain cultural atmosphere gives me. It’s like a massage of the senses.

Not everyone likes travelling. We deal with a different kind of unpredictable these days when we travel. Yet I don’t think that’s the real risk, although at times it may seem so. The real risk is what it takes to say yes to the emotional connections we take with us when we begin our journey. 

There are two big challenges ahead of us.

The first is dealing with personal financial security. We need to disengage ourselves from the psychological and emotional power money holds over us, turn our attention to the priorities of our lives, and recognize that money is nothing more than a tool, a commodity that helps to establish the type of lifestyle we want. This happens when we begin to understand the shift from a consumer culture to one that enbraces a creator culture: how we create our daily existence, how we want to create a sustainable environment around us. We don’t need more self-help books making us feel guilty about the way we handle our money. For generations, women have known how to stretch a dollar and do very well with very little.  We have also learned how to manage needs and to distinguish them from our wants, thank you very much.

It is the second challenge I think we need to really spend more time focussing on. Recognizing the drastically inappropiate global economic systems that are clearly not keeping up with realities of change in our individual lives. 

A United Nations Human Development report insists “the new rules of globalization – and the players writing them – focus on integrating global markets, neglecting the needs of people that markets cannot meet. The process is concentrating power and marginalizing the poor, both countries and people…The current debate (about globalization) is too narrow, limited to concerns of economic growth and financial stability and neglecting broader human concerns such as persistent global poverty, growing inequality between and within countries, exclusion of poor people and countries and persistent human rights abuses.” That was written in 1999, and not much has really changed since then.

Canada will be hosting the 36^th G-8 Summit this year in Huntsville, Ontario. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to witness discussions on policy initiatives that encompass a much broader approach to economic security for all women.

I admit it. I used to groan under the weight of excess baggage when travelling. Suitcases bulging with stuff hastily packed for those “just in case” scenarios.  Free loading pairs of this or that shoved deeper into the case, only to resurface once I got home because the “just in case” never occured.

Steamer Trunks and Travel Stickers

I was thinking about those old travel trunks the other day, well-worn and battered, seasoned by the places they had been and the remnants of lives they had transported. I like the romantic notion of these trunks being a repository for life’s treasures wrapped in tattered threads, but that’s where sentimentality stops. I can’t imagine how women managed, and I certainly can’t imagine myself lugging one around. It’s just not in my temperament.

My Carry-On State of Mind

Life is so much lighter when you lessen the load. I have been taking stock of unclaimed and lost baggage tags of the past, discarding scattered junk that lays inert taking up precious space. Lessening the load, I now pace myself more easily from one day to the next, and one trip to the next.

First thing I do is check negative baggage on any journey, though this is sometimes easier said than done. I figured out I don’t have to claim all the baggage scattered around me, I can toss out the mismatched pieces or those exceeding what my internal weight scale can handle.

Other People’s Baggage: Know What You Are Carrying

I also figured out that good travel rules apply to good life lessons.  I am now prepared to answer those questions we are always confronted with at the airport: “Who packed your bags?”, “Have you been asked to transport a package that isn’t yours”…you know the drill.

We all know someone who wants to share their baggage. Most of the time I am more than willing to help a fellow traveller on her journey, but there comes a point when packing it in just makes more sense. We have choices, and that goes for the unclaimed or abandonded baggage of others, the stuff that just keeps going around, and around on the carousel.

My Carry-On Challenge

Much of my travel now is work-related, and I have become critical of what I am packing, of the things, the stuff that surrounds me. Do they represent where I am now and where I want to go? 

I’ll be in Sweden in a few weeks, England and France later in the summer. Each of these trips will be putting my challenge to the test. I will keep you posted on how I am doing, because I have finally learned when we travel, we bring our baggage with us.

I’ve had the prescription for a while, and only got around to filling it a few weeks ago out of pure frustration -my little social experiment to see how long I could go with whipping off my glasses to read the fine print (everything seems to be fine print these days)  came to an abrupt halt when trying to read a map became intolerable.

Each day got progressively more frustrating, and at times debilitating. I now believe the source of my strained eyes, tension in my neck and shoulders had everything to do with compensating for trying to see properly;  a big reminder to me how your whole body begins to shift and change to accommodate with the transitions it goes through, and the importance in listening to our bodies when they are telling us something is out of kilter. 

My biggest concern with my new specs was adjusting to depth perception in the beginning. I had always heard you needed to be careful with progressives especially going up and down stairs. Well, here I am into my first full week and I have had no problems at all. Though I must admit the first day I spent grabbing every piece of reading material to find that sweet spot allowing me to see even the tiniest of print, and shouting to no one in particular, “I can read it!”  

I’ve always thought of my glasses as another accessory for me to play around with, to use as a prop to express to the world who I am. No different than how we clothe our bodies, wear our hair, whether to put on makeup.  So I like that I can negotiate the aging process yet still find a way to express who I am. 

Here I am with new specs. The future looks brighter indeed.  

 Debra Windsor, Executive Director, TWUC, Ross Laird, and Betsy Warland offered a day-long session with some of the best information I’ve heard in a while about the changing realities of writing in Canada; of course I was walking into the session with a similar sense of optimism and opportunity as the presenters so for me it was a bit of an easy sell. Bottom line, this is a fabulous time to be a writer – to be an independent creator. 

 But I soon recognized that for some the sell is not so easy.

 I had a brief conversation with a woman during one of our breaks who expressed feeling at the thought of what seemed like so much more “work” she would have to do just to market herself and her writing, and how all this extra work would take her away from her writing.  I heard similar concerns throughout the day, and although I think I can appreciate the sentiment I disagreed and suggested the shift(s) in thinking how we market ourselves and our craft might in the end be more liberating.

Personally, I like the idea of having choice, of having more control and autonomy over my writing: how I get it out to readers, what medium or format I can deliver to audiences, and what creative opportunities I can leverage in presenting brand “me”. I never felt dependent on traditional modes of publishing, and now more than ever, there are opportunities where we can integrate new and traditional methods as and when appropriate.

 But here’s what I think: with opportunity comes responsibility, and sometimes personal accountability and responsibility are too much for some people.

 We also heard a great presentation on contracts, and I want to express my thanks to Debra for her thoughtful presentation on the matter.  In the end, a contract is the final written expression of a business relationship based on four basic questions:

 What do you the author want to give?

 What do you the author want to keep?

 What do you the author want to get?

 And when does what you gave away, (the clearly defined and agreed upon rights to your work) come back to you?

 Be in control and in charge of the negotiations around your creative work. Good writing and good stories will always find an audience who will respect and honour it for what it is. If not, walk away. 

TWUC did a great job offering these sessions. Sometimes we enter a PD session hoping to learn something new, oftentimes, we hope to hear confirmation of what we already know.