Things I love. (19)

I love nudity. Or, to be more specific, I love being naked. Even being nearly naked is wonderful - but being naked is a truly wonderful experience. Not because I claim to be a particularly beautiful person or because I like to look at other people being naked but because there is something about the feeling of being naked that is refreshing.

Things I love. (18)

Like all people who have been raised in the Canadian Prairies, I bear one love/hate sensation that returns every year for at least 5 months. Personally, this relationship is mostly defined by love.

I love snow.

I hate it when it first arrives, but it grows on me throughout the season - until it is, at this point, absolutely stunning. To the point that I forget what grass looks like until it finally breaks through its white prison cell in April or May. I love the way it sounds beneath your feet as you walk through a field of fresh sparkling crystals, and the way that it absorbs sound. The world becomes still, covered in a blanket, slumbering. Beautiful in its sleep.

I love the promise of snow-shoeing, and cross-country skiing, and skating, and sledding, and watching hockey, and walking around town the see the ice sculptures, and attending winter festivals, and drinking at an ice bar, and curling (and just watching curling with my grandmother), and making forts with my god children (please never let them age, for my sake). I love the memory of making piles of snowballs to throw that some unsuspecting victim - hiding the pile in my backyard for just the moment when I will unleash my terror on my neighbour or my mother.

When there is snow on the ground, there is a reason to be outside.

Things I love. (17)

Dogs. I love dogs. I always have - but my love grew exponentially when, at the age of eight, a new neighbour moved into a house down the street and brought with her a pack of Golden Retrievers and a recently born litter of pups. What absolutely stunning animals they were. For weeks I watched them through the chain-linked fence, and then she invited me in to play with them and handle the 3 week old scrunch-faced animals with care, and then (years later) she invited me to house and dog sit for her. And now her children are my godchildren (though this is really tangential to my love of dogs).

My own dog is blind and deaf, and aging rapidly (as is expected of animals you have loved for fourteen years), and I don't expect him to see another Christmas. But I love him too - there is nothing like sitting on the stairs of my house in the summer, with the light of the window beaming through the stained glass art that my father delicately constructed and dancing is shades of amber and gold on the hardwood floor below. I will sit there, read a book in one hand and pet him with the other. And he will lie - contented. For hours. I miss him more than anything else at home when I am away. He may actually be my best friend.

Things I love. (16)

I love road trips, the longer the better. It is an experience so rarely shared between friends and strangers these days - when you are forced into a small compartment and have no option but to find means of entertaining each other through conversation. Road trips are where relationships are made and friends discover new things about each other. And they are infinitely more entertaining than an airplane ride - you get to see so much, with the freedom to stop and gander at new and previously found beauties.

I think I would like train rides in Europe too.

Things I love. (15)

I really do love eyes. Big ones, small ones. Aggressive or docile. Eyes are not only the window to a soul, but they have the potential to shine somebodies personality. I have not yet found another part of the human body that can tell you so much about how somebody feels and, at the same time, be the vessel into which you release your own soul and feeling. Eyes are everything human, animal, animate and living.

Things I love. (14)

I love the human body. For all of the right reasons, and for all of the wrong reasons. First the right. It is intricate, it is detailed, it is an object of creativity. I am fascinated by the linkage of muscle to bone and bone to cartilage, and nerve ending to nerve ending. Second the wrong. The body responds - and oh how it responds. We are people - we are individuals. We are masters and victims of our daily temples, and it is for them and against them that we live. We can feel touch. But, most stupefying of all, we can feel love.

Things I love. (13)

I love the moment when the power goes out in the middle of something that is of immense importance. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it is like a scream from the world. In the immediate isolation comes the realization that whatever it was that you were doing was not really that important. Not so important to call the power company and get angry with your power supplier for something that is likely beyond their control. And then you can step outside. Relax. Walk.