I love starting a new journal with its blank pages waiting to be filled with words from my life.

Writing in a journal is one of my “being present” practices. I really can’t imagine not writing.

I realize now that while in Victoria for radiation treatments for five weeks, I engaged in rooting myself in the present. With plans put on hold, there was no future beyond the weekend when I’d return home. And so I explored Victoria each day. My only decision: which way to walk today.

At home now for five weeks, I’m ready to make plans but it’s not yet time. I’ll hear about a surgery date any day now.

Sarah and I went to an indoor farmers’ market last week called Island Roots. An appropriate name as I attempt to root myself in the present.

Even my chiropractor spoke to me recently about roots going down into the earth from my feet and an imaginary tail with red energy coming back with each inhalation.

It isn’t easy to feel rooted in the present while sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation. Breathing of course is an excellent being present practice.

Eckhart Tolle in Practicing the Power of Now (New World Library, 2001), says “Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present.”

It’s true that many people do spend their time waiting until the kids are in school or out of school; until they have the time; until they’re retired.

My form of learning to live in the present is to not make any plans for the next several weeks. Possibilities go into my calendar and I decide on the day whether I’m available. This is a lesson worth carrying on into next year. The calendar is fine but decisions can be made that day. Is it a full-body yes?

“Snap out of it,” Eckhart Tolle says when you catch yourself slipping into waiting. “Come into the present moment. Just be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything.”

He also writes about being “deeply rooted within yourself” to stay present in everyday life. “It means to inhabit your body fully.” Conscious breathing helps us to get in touch with our bodies.

Sarah Manguso in her book called Ongoingness: The End of a Diary (Graywolf Press, 2015), says: “I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention.” She was referring to a diary she kept for twenty-five years.

I look at my orange journal that I started on June 15, 2015. That day I had listened to Lorna Crozier’s convocation speech at Simon Fraser University where she had received an honorary degree on June 1st. Forty years ago she chose to be “maker of words,” she said.

It was a new moon and I was looking at the status of my various projects. A month later I had the diagnosis of Spindle Cell Sarcoma following a biopsy of a lump on my leg. There could be radiation and surgery my family doctor said and he was right.

I don’t usually look back through my journals as I’m satisfied to record what’s going on without a need to relive a day or an event. The orange journal is different.

I’ve looked back at the dreams I’ve described and the snippets of emails I’ve kept for reassurance and affirmation.

The orange journal was a constant companion who listened every evening, anticipated my dreams in the morning, and helped me to feel what was going in the present.

My new journal is green. I bought it on a sale table outside Bungalow, a shop in Estevan village. That was a discovery on one of my Victoria walks. I took myself to lunch that day to a bakery called Pure Vanilla.

I can’t help be curious about what will be written in the blank pages of the green journal with a design called Esmeralda.

Since writing this blog, I have a surgery date of December 16th. Later than expected but it means I get a month’s notice rather than a week.

My journal will be full of ideas which doesn’t mean it’s the time to embark on them. It’s a time to clear the way as I did for knee replacement surgery almost six years ago. It’s an interesting challenge to prepare the way for further recuperation when right now I’m raring to go. The main thing is to remain present and to be as calm as possible for the surgery and recovery.

Here’s a poem I wrote yesterday, inspired by a passage by Per Petterson in his novel Out Stealing Horses (Picador, 2003).

A Place Like This

In the middle of an embrace, a lover
whispers words in your ear.

You long to be in a place
where there is only silence.

You may not always think about it
yet the longing persists.

Now you are here.
It is almost exactly as you imagined it.