Wind Blows Deeply

I remember my first computer experiences: playing Rabbit Reader on the Apple IIe at school and switching between DOS and this new-fangled Windows thing on the home PC. (Somehow DOS seemed so much easier, especially after I crashed Windows and my parents had to call the computer guy in to fix it.)

I remember getting Internet access at school: checking email over lunch breaks and learning how to quickly minimize screens when the librarian would walk by. And those chat rooms that seemed so very prolific at the time but made me wonder about trusting complete strangers. And who could forget the sound of the dial-up modem? And the load times on pages that didn’t really seem that long at all?

I remember hearing about blogs for the first time: someone was travelling in the UK and set up this online journal for anyone to read. I thought it a bit odd to post things for strangers. Why not just email the people you wanted to have the information.

I vaguely recall my own first blog, in a now defunct hosting realm. I bounced around using different hosts and templates, picking up a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS along the way. I don’t have archives of all those early blogs or emails or chatroom conversations. Sometimes a secret part of me wishes I did, to see where I came from. Mostly I am content to remember them in my mind’s eye.

I do have a post from autumn 2002 that remains at the beginning of the current archives: “Thank God for cucumbers”. I had moved out of my parents’ house the previous year and settled in with a couple of close friends. That summer we planted a garden in a plot that had been seriously overrun with grass and weeds. I’m not sure that anyone expected much of that garden. Our initial enthusiasm turned to haphazard neglect. Still, the seeds grew in poor soil, amidst weeds and with occasional watering.

The next two posts are about family. In the first, I mention my paternal grandmother. She turned 90 this year. I think that’s rather incredible. I had the honour of MCing her birthday party. I learned some family history: my grandfather milked his cows after his own wedding ceremony. I saw longstanding friendships: my grandmother’s friends, from her single days, were at her party. I was a part of a larger family: distant relatives, second-cousins, frequent questions to figure out the ever-larger family tree. (And yes, my own family still plays tile rummy.)

After a long hiatus, I am not sure if anyone still comes by this address anymore. You might get the RSS feed, but you might load up the actual site. If you did stop by, you would see a few cosmetic touches: a new design and a new banner quote. The new quote has some meaning to it, as any quote should.

During my hiatus, a summer of moving and settling-in and workplace transitioning, I tried to figure out who I was. Was I the pharmacist? The servant? The intriguing but not-quite-exotic-enough one? How would I, or should I, define myself? After all, I had just turned thirty and my world needed clarity.

Many of my best thoughts come at the edge of a body of water. And so my answer came beside a man-made pond on a cold, windy autumn day. I create. I find and caress words onto a page. I capture moments in photographs. I choose yarns and coerce them into patterns and shapes and forms and functions. I combine ingredients and tweak recipes. I assume and shape new roles and positions in the professional landscape.

As I end the hiatus and relaunch Wind Blows Deeply, I invite you on my journey of rediscovering creativity.

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
~John le Carre

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