We Travel For Different Reasons

By Maryanna Gabriel 

Small town living, charming as it can be, has it's down sides and we travel for different reasons. A lovely woman here lost her husband to

I Imagine Her By The Sea Somewhere 

cancer a ways back. They were soul mates, the kind that look like each other, and his loss was keenly felt by her. At one point I drove by her shop - I had the strongest feeling she was leaving soon. I went in. "You're still here," I said. "I just want to go somewhere and have a glass of wine on the patio of a cafe where nobody knows me." she said. I understood immediately. I got that being in a new place was a way to discard the heavy mantle of grief, which even if she was ready to shed it, well meaning but overly sympathetic friends were never letting her forget. "You could do day trips," I said trying to be encouraging. I could tell by her quietude that a more dramatic departure was the alleviation sought. Months later I saw the ad in the paper and I knew she was selling up and going. She hasn't been seen or heard from since. I miss her. I imagine her by the sea somewhere, anonymously sipping slowly, breathing deeply and relaxing.

Animating The Spirit

By Maryanna Gabriel 

When cancer patients were asked what they wanted to live for, the cancer patients that recovered with the highest success rate, were not those who chose fear of death, and not those that chose living for others, but those that chose to live to live for themselves – to sing their own song, to live life to its fullest, to embrace and cherish themselves, to be creative, and to grow and expand. It is good to have the research to back up what animates the spirit. 

"Poetry and writings, are bags of blood for the hungriest arterial system we possess that can so easily wither when restricted unjustly - meaning, the animating ones spirit."
"Untie The Strong Women" Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Phd. 

The Skinny On The Carbs

By  Maryanna Gabriel

I raised the question about the Mongolian diet. In my last blog I asked what exactly is the carbohydrate? I would seem that rice is not it after all. My source tells me that there are no carbohydrates. Maybe it is like an Inuit thing with seals. Yak meat has the fat the body needs. I am told the diet appears to be based around the Yak and cheese. Hmm. So there you have it. Grateful I do not have milk yaks or eat them, I have been busy sourcing what is locally grown and fortunately for me there are strawberries, radishes, wonderful beets, and all kinds of greens, to bring home. I am probably happy about not having to live on the steppes of Mongolia.

Here on the island where I live the wild roses are blooming, I am making jelly, the frogs are singing, the weeds are proliferating in the garden, and the skies are clear. The blues skies and seeing stars is always encouraging.

“We are the stars which sing,
We sing with our light;
We are the birds of fire,
We fly over the sky.
Our light is a voice:
We make a road
For the spirit to pass over."

- Algonquin Song of the Stars

Out Of The Blue

By Maryanna Gabriel

“I have traveled more than anyone else and I have noticed that even the angels speak with an accent.” Mark Twain

Out of the blue, someone dear to me is suddenly and unexpectedly travelling to Mongolia today via Seoul and Bejing. It’s pretty exciting. The land of Genghis Khan, primitive windswept steppes, and the Trans Siberian Railway await. Maybe not the destination of choice for many, but you have to agree it is going to be interesting. We were wondering about this mysterious country squeezed between the two giants, Russia and China. We thought they might eat yak meat, and a lot of cheese from yak milk, but we were stumped on the carb. This morning I thought, of course! rice gathered by river’s edge. It’s a guess. I will get the skinny and let you know...