This week I dreamt of a blue lynx, nudging me as I walked alone along a path in a forest – archetypal and totemic for sure. It was a lynx with its characteristic flat face, tufted ears and big paws. A lynx just like the one I thought I saw in Canada last year.

On the Icefield Parkway in Banff National Park, Canada last year I saw a wolf.  It walked past the car I was in. It was so close I could have easily touched it. It eye-balled me so calmly I stopped scrambling for my camera and just looked. My first thought was that it was a lynx even though I’ve never seen a lynx or live wolf before. When the French first settled Canada, though, they too thought a lynx was a cross between a domestic cat and wolf. So no surprises there.

But here I was dreaming of it. Why?  I’ve been confronted and comforted many times by my dreamscapes. Some portend events, like swirling rivers in New Orleans or crashing planes into towers. Others simply process information and food!  The difference seems to be that the ‘big’ dreams occur in times of personal change or crisis. 

I did a Google search which revealed that a multi-lingual recruitment agency, called Blue Lynx operates in Europe. This was strangely comforting given my desire to change work.  I wonder if dream language qualifies?

The Lynx symbology, my second Google search revealed, was probably more useful. The Lynx is honoured in a number of mythologies in Finland, Africa, Greece and the Americas. It is a totem of clairvoyance, vigilance and personal power. Because of her beauty, the African Lynx was beloved by the Northern Star who assumed human form to marry her. In 17th Century Italy the Academy of the Lynxes, of which Galileo was a member, was dedicated to the search for truth and the fight against superstition.

This totem Lynx teaches when to speak and when to hold silence – a great lesson for me who is figuring out the right level of engagement in my current workplace.

Mythology tells us Lynx got her flat face when she tried to jump through a wall chasing one of her forest buddies, another pertinent lesson for one who keeps hitting her head against a brick wall at work.

Wolf or lynx, dream or waking doesn’t really matter. My blue moment lynx reminds me to trust my intuition and inner eye more than surface information. Although vigilance and suspicion are valuable tools, the secret for me, right now is to just slow things down so as to really eye-ball the events and people that cross my path.

Once you really look at a situation you can see everything as it is, not as you wish it to be. I am where I am because I’m meant to be here.There’s no hidden meaning or reason for things that I can’t figure out for myself. This lynx dream also reminds me thatI have all the personal power I need to do just that.

And for the record, I do believe it was a Lynx in Canada just pretending to be a wolf.

Sweet dreams

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When you start on your journey to Ithaca,

So starts the remarkable poem Ithaca by K. P. Kavafis. The message of the poem is a simple one that most travellers have figured out. It’s all about the journey and not about the end.

I wanted to write my first ever blog about the surprises you get on the journey if you keep your eyes open. Luckily I have a very patient friend, James – who teaches me all sorts of things on the new media journey -who told me to start my blog with a story. So here we go..

I re-discovered Ithaca on a transatlantic crossing, when I heard the poem read aloud by a  RADA trained, Greek actress one night on the QM2.  Does it get any better? Actually it does.

I took a copy of the poem with me for the remainder of my trip to USA and Canada determined that the meaning in the poem – to live in the moment – wouldn’t be lost on me. It was especially pertinent, as the journey to America was to be a circuit-breaker following the death of my darling husband “bloke”.  I had to get on with life, nothing was going to bring him back. And as I didn’t want to spend my 50th birthday alone - I took off on a whirlwind trip to spend it with my twin sister Cate, on a road trip through New England. 

On all trips there’s a balancing act between wanting to stay in a gorgeous new place, and moving on to what will undoubtedly be another gorgeous place. And so it was for me, leaving New England to go across Canada. So a couple of weeks later, after seeing Montreal and Quebec, I boarded a train in Toronto to make the trip across country to Vancouver. I had a sleeper, there was snow, I had my paints, and as far as I was concerned, I was happy to just look out the window. What I hadn’t expected was that I was to make some fabulous new friends on board. Friends who wouldn’t let me stay in the sleeper cabin, friends who taught me lots about loss, love, life and of course the journey. 

And at the heart of this group is my brand new mate, Ismail. Now there’s a whole other story about the synchronicity of names (given the time of my life and the state I was in, but that’s for another blog). Ismail turned my head, for the simple reason he was wearing a T-shirt that read, Ithaca is gorgeous.

He and I hit it off immediately. We talked about painting, about Vancouver, about tarot, about study, about Amsterdam, about life, about journeys and destinations. ”What’s your Go-to  (ie favourite) word?” he asked me one day.  “What’s the word you go to all the time, the word you use, the word people associate with you?” It only took a minute to answer. Gorgeous. My Go-to word is gorgeous, which made his first day T-shirt all the more significant. He and the trip, and the actress, and the poem were all part of a great and gorgeous circuit breaker. Journeys are about that. Going all the way across the world to come back changed, altered, somehow healed and to pick up where you left off and get on with what you need to do.

Ismail and I keep in contact and he will be a friend to other good mates who are moving over to Vancouver soon. We play it forward – how gorgeous is that! And this year I’m off again to spend time with my family, to celebrate the 21st birthday of my twin niece and nephew. Guess where? In Greece on Kefalonia – just across the water from Ithaca.

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