I am home. Having arrived on the island shortly after noon today. 

It's feeling really great to be back in the familiar new space of home.  As we're building our life here on the coast, there's really no place I'm interested in being other than here.  "Back home" in Ontario, I felt very alien as I whisked through a flurry of connections with friends and family over six days (my sister is now married, a good friend is about to give birth!!! Grandma's dog was put down and my dad is looking really old...we're all going through so many changes and it's all so amazing...AniccA) on our way to a brief four day holiday at the cottage in Sauble Beach on Lake Huron-Michigan. 

Then it was on the road again.  The bus left Toronto on Saturday evening at five and arrived this morning in Vancouver.  OOF!  The trip across the country on a Greyhound bus is challenging at the best of times but even moreso whilst almost eight months pregnant.  laura's discomfort was apparent (why she didn't try cannabis...it transformed the challenging into trippy for me).  I'm amazed at her resiliance and her beauty.  We were both amazed at how incredible was sOMa's  demeanor for the journey.  He was frustrated with anticipation a couple of times and crearly bored a couple of others but slept pretty soundly and quite a bit. 

I was tripping out on no sleep... that and the cannabis!  I'm heading off to bed pretty soon and am really excited about sleeping more than two hours in a stretch.  It does something to general perception to be awake for long periods.  Dream world and waking life meld into something pretty interesting and worthy of further study.  I'm not finished with bustrips across the country for this reason alone, though i've got absolutely NO desire to leave the island in the immediate.

Perhaps a bustrip to the north coast....

When we make Love,
I feel...

It's like the Universe is speaking
Through our Spirit United.
It feels like home,
Loke a dark pathway lighted.

...Like there's a choir somewhere
Inside our soul
That bursts out into passionate song.

When we make Love there is no wrong,
Anywhere in the world, it seems.
Everywhere is at peace
And growing moreso every moment.

When we make Love...
I feel like i'm being awakened to something new,
And that the world that I knew
won't ever be the same:

Like when I learned to ride a bike
or to tie my shoes or read
...Like every time I pray.

When we make Love
and join in these passionate moments
of intimate play,
this forever, so real,
I feel...

oh! how I feel.

I have a friend named Beaver, who tends to a pear orchard.  A few years ago, in a package of some Hemp goods that we bought from him,  he included a little baggie of some dried pears.    Pears have  always been my favorite tree fruit.  Their sweetness, regardless of which variety I've tried, is such a passionate kiss in every bite.  Trying them dried was like an AHA! moment for me.  It not only affirmed  my Love for this mystical fruit, but it  took that Love to another level.

On my journey to Pear Heaven, I need to let you know that Duncan is a dumpster-diver's paradise... So after getting the dehydrator, I've had a pretty steady supply of dried pears.  On a couple of occasions we've gone dumpstering and have come up with a volume of Pears.

It's amazing what grocery stores will throw away!  Think about it for a second.  We visit 2 stores in Duncan, BC and get a lot of the produce we need.  There is most always more than we can take.... There are thousands of grocers in British Columbia (then extrapolate this to nationally) who, similarly I'm sure,  throw away volumes of (varying degrees of) fresh produce.

Then if one includes foodservice scraps from restaurants, hotels, clubs etc....  Is it any wonder that food costs so much?  And then secondly... How come there are people starving?

While visiting with Sarah on the evening after our massive Pear score, she shared a recipe for Pear butter.  Of course! (i could feel an AHA! moment coming on...).  Her recipe involved a lot of spices and such but we opted for straight Pear.  We washed and cored them, then put them through the Champion juicer into a pot.  They spent the day reducing and when I smelled them this evening (only moments ago, really) it was sniffing bliss!  I could smell the sugars beginning to caramelize.  I can't believe I waited almost an hour from that first sniff until having a taste just now and

O.M.F.G!!!!!!

or whatever other kind of uber-expressive net-emo symbol that would indicate something approaching Nirvana or....

That spoonful of brown mush has got to be the most perfect sweetness that has ever graced this tongue. 

Heaven??? 
if there is such a place,
exists in the taste
of a spoonfull of Pear
reduced over medium-to-low heat
for most of the day....

after all that, i'm reducing it some more.  it's in the oven at about 300.  Can the bliss get better than this?  we'll see.