3 Months Later...

...I return to the blog. I'm sorry. Your poem in the last entry made me cry, I loved it so much.

Can I tell you a secret?

I was a little scared to read it. No one has ever written a poem for me before. That's a big deal, yo. So I kept it hidden away. I think I wanted to save it, like a treat you hold off on 'til you've done all your work or something. But who am I kidding? When have I ever done that? I hid from it. For some dumb reason I think I wasn't ready for it. I often hide from things that are important in my life...

(Thanks, drugs!)

But today I was in the right place. I've been clearheaded for a few weekends now. I visited with my family earlier and was thinking of you on the drive home. When I checked my e-mail, there was a message from you. (How do the e-mail gods know?) And then we were online together. So here I am.

And now I have a poem. And it's quiet and shining and simple and wonderful. And it makes me feel exactly like I'm back on the hill at Broadview with you, and it speaks of the things I miss most. I absolutely love it.

Thank you my friend. You are my first poem! I am very lucky indeed.

For Small Soup

I have discovered that we have been lucky.
Fires start, but fires do not go away.
We all remember what burns.

What sparks
Glitter like willow trees,
And what embers shower
Our rooftops, our shelters;

What secret fireworks we can see from up high...

We can only see because we were meant to.

We are lucky.

What I Notice

Is that I am not, no matter what I want to be, safe to my own intentions.

I finished my time at a horrible job tonight. Somewhat disreputably, it might be added. Ah! I sigh. Continents can't divide me from myself.

If there was a better way to go it would find me....

Thank you for that song, by the way. Thank you for so many things, but that song especially. I don't know what I'm doing here, exactly, but I know that I miss who I love; and that Toronto is terribly special, despite all it's frustrations and dead ends.

I'm going to write something better when I'm sober.

Love you.

Toot toot!

Happy birthday, friend!

Whatever you're doing across the many ponds, I hope you're having a wonderful time. I wish I were there to celebrate with you.

Love you lots and lots and lots,

me.

Of Hair and Other Matters

Soda water, eh? Who are you and what have you done with my friend?!

But really, it sounds like you're stepping wisely. Small communities sometimes like to eat people. And I don't want you to be eaten! And if the cute factor is not so much? Meh. You gonna have bigger fish to fry... in S-town!!!

How did things go at the wine store? You're a shoe-in for that job. Wine acumen, new good haircut, and accent? Cha-ching! I hope it went well. :)

I'm feeling the need for haircut soon too. It's almost time. My hair is so long and nappy. I think I am going to go short-short. But I'm plagued by fears of my head looking too big. But I should just take the plunge and cut the shit off. I'm terrified of everything these days. It's really boring.

But I have started cleaning out my room -- finally! Remember I said that was part of the reason I was moving home? Well, as my aunt arrives to stay with us in a matter of days, the urgency for me to clean things up for her arrival is more pressing. So I've adopted this 6-box system I found on a holistic healing web site. Apparently if I clear away my clutter, I'll make room for newer, gooder things!

So far, things are going well. I didn't feel one twinge of pain when I threw out my atm receipts from 1998. Old beat-up slipper? See ya! And that nail file I never used? Gone and already forgotten. I can feel the new me already! :D

Ok, so the pack-rat tendencies are harder to shake than I thought.

I did pause to look over an old cell phone statement from April 2002, a few months after we met again, I think. There's a whole lotta phone calls on the weekend, usually starting Saturday morning after 4am and ending Sunday night with a call to a cab company. Imagine that!

But I'm blabbering on... I'm sorry you got hit with far-away sadness. It sucks. I'm glad you feel better now, though. You took many brave steps to travel a great distance. Don't be too hard on yourself for not 'accomplishing' things quickly, 'cause you've accomplished a good many of them leading up to this point. A little lull seems ok to me! But now I'm preaching. And you've already pulled up your socks. yeesh. way to go, me.

So I end here. I love you and hope to hear from you again soon. I'm digging this blog thing!

xoxo,

me.

Working on the Details

It is I! Not dead, or even sleeping. Up and atom, atomized I suppose; a little scattered, but A-O-K.

I'm just waking up.

blink. blink.

And coming into focus.

I just finished a six day long work stint, which has been the main impediment between me and productive sessions with the keyboard; that, and I got hit with my first genuine wave of far-away sadness last weekend, post St. Paddy's Day, feeling a little alone and disconnected from all my friends; and like I wasn't accomplishing anything fast; and that I was (am) poor again, only now in a foreign country where they call really simple things by really stupid names; and there's not even any cute boys. It may have also been the precipitate hangover which kicked me like a heifer to the head.

Heather found some new friends, that hoary shamrock evening, and we stayed up into the next day, carousing in our little apartment with the beautiful view; and then I crashed, rather hard. Having already worked a 10 hour shift, I was a little overextended to begin with. Ooopsie.

But I pulled up my socks, um, last Tuesday, I think, and plunged headlong back into life after a very despondent three days, and now I feel fine again. Tired, but fine. The goal today is to get a toe in the door of a new job. I've decided that the private wine shop down the street is going to hire me, whether they like it, or not.

And tomorrow I'm going to get a hair cut. This is very exciting because I haven't had a shear since January, and I'm not looking as cute as I would like. I ran out of hair wax last week, as well, so I'm looking a little mousy and fluffy at the moment, but I'm not really out to impress.

On the cute-boy front, the natives here are a little scruffy and unkempt compared to what I'm used to, and the community is s-m-a-l-l; like Kitchener small, so I'm thinking that if I want to live in peace here, I might have to ration my exposure to the "gay scene" (keep the mystery alive, so to speak) and just wait until Sydney, when I can really gay-it-up. I think if I stirred up any trouble here, I would probably become notorious (or perhaps infamous) rather faster than I would like. So I'm keeping my head down, and drinking a soda water instead of a double vodka.

Who have I become?

Hello? Caller, are you there?

I miss you. How are things going? Send me a sign that you are doing ok!

xoxo