11 October 2021 – This Thanksgiving Day, I walk down the street in breezy sunlight and, as I approach a corner, memory suddenly tugs. Am I right? Is this the corner with that poem about birds spray-painted on the S/E building wall?
And even if I’m right, spray-paint comes & goes. Will the poem still be there?
I peer eastward around the corner.

I am thankful that I remembered to look, that the poem is still here — and that I still enjoy it. (Revisiting old delights is sometimes a bad idea.)
Later, walking my “Cambie Loop,” I find myself looking for birds above power lines. Not obsessively, you understand, but as part of paying attention to the here-&-now of my walk.
And yes, just past my turning point, just down that spiral staircase from the Cambie Bridge to the south side of False Creek, I do indeed pause in the shade of a tree and look up to watch the dance of birds and power lines.

Only two birds. Not very dramatically criss-crossing anything much.
Ordinary.
But, perhaps because of that poem and the title of this holiday, I think about John O’Donohue’s “eucharist of the ordinary” and I am thankful for these birds and for everything else I have just experienced, these last five kilometres: lots of ordinary people doing a whole range of ordinary things on the paths and on the water, walking/dog-walking/child-walking/hand-holding/bench-sitting/jogging/dawdling/cycling/kayaking/ferry-riding.
All that activity! And all of it in peace and safety.
Oh yes, I am thankful.
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
/ 11 October 2021A lovely tribute to the day.
bluebrightly
/ 16 October 2021Yes! I like the dignity that is “more gracious than the smallness that fuels us with fear and force.” Good thoughts!
mistermuse
/ 17 October 2021Would that more of us “Pause for a moment” to reflect on substance (rather than surface).
I was struck by the name “False Creek” — there must be an interesting story behind that name.
icelandpenny
/ 17 October 2021Thanks, and yes there’s a reason for the name: it isn’t a creek, arising from a water source to empty somewhere else, it is a stubby tongue from a larger body of water, the Burrard Inlet (itself part of Strait of Georgia, in turn part of the Salish Sea, and on it goes, right into the Pacific Ocean…)
icelandpenny
/ 16 October 2021Thanks for this!