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

Yay!

I did it!

Saturday Night in Don Mills, Aw Yeah

Oowee! Your writing is gettin' real good, my friend. I love this line from your previous post: "My nose feels positively radiant, a month and a half away from those narrow roads." I couldn't have said it more eloquently.

Well, the fact of the matter is, I can't say that at all, poetically or not. That's great that our old friends (the hanger-ons) haven't found their way to your doorstep. 'Cause they sure keep knockin' on my door, and every two weeks, against my better judgment, I let them in.

Today is day 14 of the current cycle.
I feel pretty good and energetic. Productive, even.
But you know what that means: Ants in the pants.
And I got 'em. And my girl J is banging the gong.
And there's a good DJ at Footwork tonight.
So it all spells trouble for my resolve.

BUT:

I need to move forward. And I can't get anywhere on this crappy bi-cycle.
So, I'll make a pledge to our blog: If I do go out, I'll go home too. Unenhanced.
Because god knows I've made enough pledges to myself and haven't honoured them.
But I long for the restfulness you describe. I long to be somewhere new like you.

I'm thrilled to hear you like it where you are. It really sounds like the best choice for the first stop on your tour. Not so jarringly different that it's hell to process, but different enough to know you're away. Perfect. A perfect way to cultivate your travelling legs.

Tell me about your neighbourhood. Have you started to find those little things that mark a community for you? For me, one of them is finding a place that sells a food item I can become obsessed with and eat constantly. In Paris, it was crepes from a street vendor. In Montreal, it was smoked meat and custard tarts. In Toronto, it's a hundred different things. Chicken sandwich from Terri's Garden. Gyros from Messini. Roti from a shop in Scarborough.

Another one is finding a street I love to walk on. What about you? I'm dying to hear about your life there.

Speaking of roti, the one in the fridge is calling to me. So I go. I'll keep you posted on the whereabouts of my self-restraint.

Bye for now. I miss you. I almost cried when I read your sign-off, 'cause that how I sign off too.

Love you.

Love, me. :)

Let's Restart (With Jumper Cables)

The new job, as far as I can tell, is fine; as in mediocrity-fine. Nothing special, and nothing, besides nominal funds, to gain; but it's fine. "Fine. Fine!" I'm often saying.

I'm working in a pub; a bar bitch, really. Muscles and beer: I'm slinging both all day. 10 hour shifts, and non-tipping Kiwi's everywhere, chattering at me, and not paying me a measly dime more than is on their bill.

It's come to me, that waiting on tables when you have no possibility of making a lot of money makes it very hard work, for very little payoff. My co-worker, a Swedish physiotherapist unable to get certified to work in her field here, stopped me today, looked me directly in the eye over the stack of her stomp encrusted plates, and said: "I can't believe that I'm working this hard for THIS little money."

So, I think I'm going to try and move to retail. The wage is apparently better, and though I don't need much, per say, this is really only the first leg of the world tour, so I'd better be making enough to enjoy myself at least.

I'm glad to hear that the job is bordering on that country Rewarding, the cleaner body nonwithstanding. New Zealand looks to be synonyms with "Dry-out" for me... although me and the booze haven't parted ways exactly, we're more neighbors now than live-ins; and our other friends haven't made it across the ocean. My nose feels positively radiant, a month and a half away from those narrow roads.

I like it here. It feels far away and close at the same time: sometimes as if it could masquerade as being a part of North America, and then at others it's so quintessentially different that you know that the surface of the planet pulls out around thousands and thousands of kilometers of volcanic rock. I'm on the other side of what I know.

And the time away is starting to feel restful. I was getting caught up in so much back-log, the residue and resonances of all the constructions that had been the day to day of Toronto. What? Trunks? Leaves? I can see the roots, for sure...

There's no fucking forest.

That's starting to go away.

Though I'm also in the tail end of summer here, and the air feels familiar... it makes me think of Al's cottage, and my heart compacts, a little.

To answer your question, I am getting your texts, and they do make me feel less lonely. I know that I haven't left. I'm just away.

Love you.

Love, me.