Last Days
Loving the unplanned goodness, excitement, and delight of Blue Jays baseball. And ready for release from October's visual banquet.
We’re expecting a storm for Halloween. Melissa will be far offshore, but according to the forecast she (it?) will meet up with another weather system which will deliver wet and windy weather.
I’m eagerly anticipating a good storm though I feel bad for how this will dampen trick or treating.
The Sanctuary residents (if you you’re new here, these are the peeps that live on our familial property - my parents, my brother and nephew, my husband and myself) have been watching the World Series. In our house (can’t speak for the others), our schedule has had to adjust. Later bedtimes, later morning rising.
The games start at 9 pm Atlantic Time and even with caffeine I’ve only managed to stay up to the very end of one game, last night’s Blue Jays 3-2 series win. There was no hope for me in watching the 18 inning game earlier this week that ended just short of 4am!
I basically only started watching baseball 3 weeks ago. I’ve had a lot to learn in that time but I’ve got the basics down now and have my favourite players (and crushes). Stats is next level and I’m not there yet but I’m invested in the game to the point that I watch baseball commentary, replays, highlights, and interviews on YouTube.
It’s been a lot of fun to get caught up in the fever and excitement of it all.
Unlike hockey, I never watched baseball as a kid. I have zero recollection of the Blue Jays back-to-back World Series wins in 1992 and 1993. I was finishing high school and starting my first year of university in those Octobers and I would have been surrounded, at least culturally, by Jays fans. But I don’t remember it and can’t remember having ever watched a baseball game on TV until, like I said, the beginning of this month.
I love this part of life. How we can fall into, discover, and experience new things, without planning and expectation. I also love the joy of rallying around something fun.
I do a lot of thinking and strategizing about how to orchestrate my life for the outcomes I want. Planning, organizing, doing. So I find unplanned (and completely independent of my own actions) goodness, excitement, and delight especially wonderful.
Of course to make that possible a whole lot of other people have been planning, organizing, and doing. But that’s what’s great about human collectivity. We don’t have to do it all or excel at the same things. We can benefit from (enjoy and appreciate) each other’s excellence, talent, interests, and efforts.
Similar to watching the Oilers in the Stanley Cup Championships these last two Junes, sharing the World Series with my family of origin at the Sanctuary was just never on my life list. The unexpectedness of it is as enjoyable as the event itself.
In these last days of October I am ready, aesthetically and energetically, to turn the corner past harvest season and into the dark months of the year. I’ve been anticipating and feeling a heightened sensitivity to this change, a readying for the transition, since coming back from Celtic Colours mid-month.
October’s resplendence, like decadent feasting for days on end, isn’t sustainable. October is brilliant and lustrous and stirs in me a frenetic-tinged energy to notice, observe, hold, and appreciate the splendour. Pay attention now or you’ll miss it, with every tree shouting “look at me!”
Entering this visual feast I am delighted, giddy in fact, to have been invited to the banquet. But I can’t eat this much and feel this depth of awe all the time. Whatever human faculty is responsible for my aesthetic sense - mind? soul? - it is relieved by the time November arrives and I can put down the plate, put down the goblet. I can let go of the vigilance of taking it all in.
The stormy weather forecasted for Friday will bring down more leaves, further relieving me of my aesthetic duties.
The fire will be going as it has every morning this week. I’m especially looking forward to the sound of rain on the roof. We’ll watch the storm during the day, and then come 9 pm we’ll join millions of Canadians to cheer our team to the win.
Go Jays.
I have been enjoying the Blue Jays all season long, what a team they never give up, Go Jays Go! Curious who your favourite players are, I love Vladdy, Kirky and Ernie but...honestly I love them all!!