Strong Winds of Spring

It all started yesterday with another glorious sunset. I grabbed my camera and snapped off some shots as it fell into the harbour. It was an image that I have collected in my mind's eyes, but had yet to capture it in real time. I smiled as it dropped from my sight, then climbed on the back of an ATV vehicle, and wound through an interwoven collection of trails complete with roots on the path. I was bounced around this way and that, loving the speed and the brisk Newfoundland wind in my face. The driver, a young sixteen year-old Newfoundland kid, born and being raised.

Feeling the temperature falling lower and lower, I remembered there was a toasty woodstove warming up at the house I was staying in. After clambering off the four-wheeler and walking the short distance back to the house, I decided to do some writing on my book.

And thus began the beginning of the night I was to lose six years of my life. Here you go, and may you enjoy.

I walked into my room, and placed my laptop on the small sidestand next to the bed. It seemed a mite rickety, but all in all, I figured it would hold. I booted up the power, and cleaned up the room until it was ready for me to write some more words.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the table shudder under the weight, and turned to watch as the laptop slipped off...and fell to the ground with a crash. My first thought as I watched it slide off was if my removable hard drive disk was tucked away in its box for safekeeping...or still in its port on the back panel.

With a small shock of dismay, I remembered it was indeed still plugged into the back of my now upturned portable computer just as it made contact with a sickening crunch. Then it sunk in that I had no other recent backups of what I have been writing for the last six years. I went over, picked it up, and observed the disk. It was bent at an obscene angle, but yet was still in place.

It was when I pulled it out that I saw the motherboard was pushed up out of its shell, and two hairline fractures ran down the side of its plastic casing.

Gone. 100, 000 words, 108 computer pages, 22 chapters, and six years of my blood sweat and tears. Six years of writing all gone. I racked my brain as I catalogued disks I may have saved a hard copy on, or maybe I could salvage what I had on hard drive at school. Either way, I knew I had at least lost the last 14 chapters I had written in the last six months alone.

I am in a place on the west coast of Newfoundland, and it is a hell of a distance away from any source of city or anywhere I could take to have it looked at. Instead of a really nice laptop, I figured I may now have a really expensive piece of useless plastic.

Gone.

I fell asleep around 3 in the morning, after spending most of the time before tossing and turning. Working things out in my head as to what I must do next, and when I would at least start to pick up the longhand version where I left off. Ironically enough, it was at the end of the most recent chapter I was working on. It was a start. More so, a little voice told me that I was not allowed to be upset or distraught...I could always start again.

Today, the woman I am boarding off of, recommended a friend of hers who knew about computers, and after work I went to see him; removable hard disk in one hand, and the laptop in the other. What was there to lose, right? The strange thing was that I was surprisingly calm because I see these accessories for what they are: possessions. I might have a long road ahead of me with all the backtracking and such, but in the end I still had my memory, and well, it is my life I am writing about so I think I remember how the story goes.

Then sat in amazment as he plugged in the disk into his laptop, and it brought up all the history I thought I had lost. And then we took out the battery, put it back in, and I watched as my laptop came to life. Turns out those little drives are tough little suckers, and it cushioned the impact of the fall and saved the day in the end. I am now saving to a rewritable CD and will make sure to make backup copies in triplicate.

The little disk that could. Just like the story it is holding in its palm. And back to the craft I go. Until we meet again, people, until we meet again.

"A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong." - Orson Welles

Where the World Once Joined

Cascades of orange and red floating over an ocean of calm. Window panes turned golden in reflection upon their mirrored surface. A sky turned into pink clouds of fluff that make your soul ache to lay your head upon them and just rest for a century or two. Mountains as old as time that beg you to remember the past while knowing they have never understood the true meaning of the present. Graveyards that ask you not to forget and to always remember.

An anchor sunken deep into the grassy lawn of a front yard. Lobster traps no longer sitting on the ocean floor, instead now laying on solid ground waiting patiently to one day be full again. Kids jumping and playing on a trampoline, their laughter filling the air with innocence and pure abandonment of worry. An inlet of water seperating where the world's crust once upon a time split apart and sailed away, seeking its own fortune in other lands. Feeling the warming roast of a woodstove burning silently into the night.

Even a moose outside my office window to greet me in the early morning.

All of this and more; the sights and sounds that fall before my eyes and ears in my first week back in my homeland again. What I have learned in that short amount of time is another story altogether. Here you go, and may you enjoy.

I am starting to feel the energy source here. It is like a light touch of fingers that forces my chin up from the ground in front of me, and beckons me to take in what surrounds my waking moments...what has forever been here and will be for an eternity after. I look around and see so many images that I can actually feel them burn into my memory, like the footprints I leave upon soft clay as I walk up a short trail, and then come upon the most peaceful sight I have ever laid my eyes on. I look back and see where I came from is only where my path now leads...forward, onward, and upward.

I am learning patience here, more so than I have ever learned in one sitting before. Time does not exist in this land of history, and if I squint real hard, I could imagine ancient tribes of natives gliding upon the ocean surface in their whaling boats of yore. If I stretch my imagination to heights of grandeur, I can almost see Vikings sailing the coast just off from where I sat today; can almost hear their songs of voyage and safe journey.

It is the sense of history that grabs me; the idea that these rocks and stones have been here for millions of years and yet are in no hurry to leave just quite yet. The repetition of integrity that is up to only us to ensure that we manage their land...that we manage not to let it slip away on the curtails of immediate gratification and selfish greed. As the ocean sifts and the soil sighs, we are reminded that we are but tiny remnants of sand in the large hourglass of time.

But it is what we do with that time that matters most. Do not let it slip away from you like sand falling through a clenched fist. Use your moments as they are meant to be used...time to make your image the lasting legacy you will one day leave behind.

I see it in the smiles of people I pass on the rustic side roads. I see it in their eyes and knowing nods of hospitality and offered friendship. I am home again, people, and in the end of it all, that is what really matters to me. That I came to see one of the ninth wonders of the world, and that it existed in a plane of time and space I could not even have imagined...and to think it was always here. Until we meet again, people, until we meet again.

"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest." - Henry David Thoreau