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Best of 2017: With Light and Star-Like

2017! Looking back it was an eventful year.

We began the year with the funeral of a very close friend, one of the original instigators of our long running game group, and ended the year with the wedding of one of the newer members (meaning just a few years, not decades) of our gaming group at a castle in Victoria, B.C. (It was delightful!).

I began the year with this made up word in mind: creativism (creative activism) and this guiding quote:
"...with light and star-like, for there is no place/that does not see you. You must change your life." — Archaic Torso of Apollo, Rainer Maria Rilke
These themes were very much fulfilled this year.

I left my job. Focused on writing. Began volunteering at an animal sanctuary. And I am now working there on an entirely different career track as an animal caregiver.

I am happy. I feel blessed. And grateful.

My word of the year for 2018 is kinship and my guiding quote will be:
"Skill in living, awareness of belonging in the world, delight in being part of the world, always tends to involve knowing our kinship as animals with animals." — Ursula K. Le Guin in the foreword to her poetry collection "Late in the Day"
Along the way in 2017, I drafted two novels (one during my first participation in National Novel Writing Month), submitted a number of short stories, pitched my novels to agents at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference and gathered some rejections.

Honestly, I did not expect to end this year on such a positive note. Smog fell over us after the election and, following the news on a national level, it has been a daily struggle to breathe. See Worst of 2017.

However, in my green writing den with my rituals of incense, candles and tapping keys I envisioned utopias and "with light and star-like" changed my life.

Tastes of 2017: scotch bonnet sauce at Bread and Chocolate in Grand Cayman, lavender green tea, Finnriver black current lavender cider; barbecue sauce made with Rainier Cherries, the grenache at Mike's Cafe and Wine Bar in Friday Harbor and Wayward Vegan Cafe's new sunrise poutine

Sights of 2017: candled mornings, pureed purple sweet potatoes, crescent-shaped shadows - eclipse, moon jellyfish aurelia aurita, turquoise, cerulean, and aquamarine waters and these boots.

Sounds of 2017: barking, whining, moaning, grunting, clucking, cooing, crowing — animal voices

Songs of 2017:
Overheard of 2017: "I don't know why I am so into pirates. It's just something in my soul."

Smells of 2017:
Funnel of Love - Only Lovers Left Alive BPAL
Chai chocolate Indi lotion (purchased at Food Empowerment Project's Great Vegan Chocolate Meltdown event)

Touches of 2017:
llama kisses, donkey nose, nuzzles, snuggles, goat fur, chicken feathers, holding hands — Pounce!

Quote of 2017:
"And it was a sunny day and my joy/didn't fit within me." — "I Had Not Seen It," Pablo Neruda Book of Twilight

Book of the Year: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Story of the Year: "The Elixir of Youth" by Brian Stableford

It was a great year for reading short story collections for me this year. See my year in books.

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