The Pretty little leaf is what’s sexy this week!

There I was, shit, showered and shaved, dressed and ready for the day, over my morning anxiety with my “kick ass” attitude dialed in at a level ten as I went out the door to face the day. My clothes perfectly coordinated of complimentary colours, matching jewelry, makeup applied with the precision of surgeon, and my hair all neatly hot-rollered and set. I was ready! With chin held high, shoulders back, tits out, and stomach in, I walked to the bus stop to patiently wait with all the other morning riders.

On the bus, I made myself comfortable for the 15 minute ride to the skytrain reading the morning paper as we rode over the bumps and potholes that dotted the downtown streets of beautiful Vancouver; the city I call home. The bus’s arrival at the skytrain always greats me with a certain amount of irony, its the skytrain, but at this juncture it runs underground. It always gives me a brief moment of contemplation as I descend to the train’s platform quietly crop dusting as I make my way deeper into the ground.

Hey, there are many times when the human condition takes over, we’re not all that different from each other.

The train ride is usually uneventful, and fast. A total of 8 minutes and I am there at the other end ready to transfer to the next bus to take me to my final destination and start work. However today, my “kick ass” attitude has me deciding to walk that 20 minute jaunt rather than bus it.

Feeling good and halfway there, I’m suddenly assaulted with a heavy and loud plop onto the back of my head, and gorgeous, I remind you, neatly hot-rollered and set hair. My cool calm confident demeanor was suddenly destroyed. I could feel the anger rising up in me like the red liquid in a candy thermometer that quickly rising to that hard crack stage. I was mad!

All I could think about was that big blob of fresh steaming bird shit mixing with my beautiful hair with the moistness settling on my scalp. I know it’s considered good luck to have that dropped on anyone, but today, I just wasn’t feeling the luck. Reaching up with my leather gloved hand, I expected to wipe away the remnants of that casually dropped bird bomb. Instead, as I picked out what had settled on my hair, I was presented with a small red leaf.

A pretty little leaf, perfect in all manner, and still glistening with the not yet evaporated morning dew. I stopped to study this beautiful leaf! As I began to look closer, multi coloured, almost holographic shades of red were glowing back at me. This leaf was beautiful!

I followed the stem through to the veins that spread out across this leaf to form the panels of colour between each vein. Colour that started as a lovely warm orange bleeding into a fuschia red, deepening to lip smacking crimson, and finishing at a warm purplish brown. Although it was a dying leaf, the colours were to many to describe, yet in this dying leaf, still vibrant, alive, it was beautiful!

A little leaf that in an instant made me boil over with anger at my perception of it being a dreaded bird turd.

Questions formulating, from why to how resulting in the heat of my anger. Why did I get so mad? Why did I let that happen? How is it that a simple thought created that anger? Was it much deeper?

I didn’t want to delve to deep into my mind there on the street, but rather shrug it off, laugh at the absurdity of my reaction and move on. In future, to learn to not get so heated, because whether a bird dropping or leaf, it shouldn’t have mattered to that extreme. Rather to believe and know that I need to slow it down, look at life from the perspective I always did and usually do.

The perspective that life is beautiful, bird shit and all, and take it in stride, it could have been something altogether different!

Love, learn and laugh