More Greece

For the next 6 weeks I've started a new blog to record my time in Greece as an archaeologist. Check it out here...

This feels so very, very, familiar.
I am in the lounge in Toronto again, and because it feels so nice and familiar I decided to continue with the deja vu trend and drink some Scotch.
Niiiiiiiice.
This time it is a lot busier though; it is not dark outside; I am eventually heading towards people I know rather than the wild wild West.
I am not nursing a soon-to-be broken heart, nor am I gone for 5 months.
And yet, it has that wooonderful, swingin' old time music, good time feelin' that I miss. Missed. The travel feeling.
All senses on alert. You can almost literally reinvent yourself as anyone you want. The aura you project.

Last time it was wealthy, I think.
This time it's grungy, hip d.j./archaeologist (the dj part because I got brand new giant red headphones that make me feel oh so cool).
Air Canada didn't feed me on my first flight, so when I got the lounge I had three helpings of tortellini alfredo and salad and hummus and veggies and a banana. I think the people around me were astonished. I didn't get lunch! I felt like shouting at them, Not even pretzels!
Good thing I am stowing three bags away now for later. Oh, unlimited food. How I love thee.

Now to just read my Vanity Fair in quiet with my Scotch and avoid all eye contact with the over-fed business men sitting around me...

I promise to stay away from motorcycles.
I promise to reapply sunscreen three times a day.
I promise to wear a hat, and drink tons of water.

I promise to try and be nice to everyone.
And have a blast.
I promise to try and remember that life isn't the destination, but the journey.
Yay.
7 weeks is nothing according to those left behind. But to those of us going, it feels like freakin' forever.
love,
me

Old Prose Again

Well I guess cleaning out your house again and again and again (sifting, shifting, filtering, gloaming) means that inevitably you uncover scraps of paper with words on them from the distant past. Perhaps I'm the only one who finds them wildly entertaining. But nonetheless, I am going to share some of my favourites.
This one is from not too very long ago, February 2010, but still I had no idea what was going on. Things change so fast when you are young. Enjoy...

It wasn't good, she admitted to herself, not good at all. She was at that point where she was beyond reckless, beyond buoyancy, beyond light. The flashing lights and smoke machine seemed to catch at her clothes, her hair, her eyes, and she marched in a straight line to the bar.
"Another shot, please" she said to the bartender.
"Had a bad day, hun?" he asked, sympathy and pity mixed on his face.
"Just long, that's all" she smiled weakly and tossed another one down before going back to the dance floor. She spotted her friends in a group among the sweaty, half-naked bodies but it just made her feel ill. She paused, leaned against the wall, checked her phone: there. A new text.
                         Just walking by the club. Walk with me home and back?
She left then and there, bounding down the stairs to the cold fresh air. He stood waiting against a lamp post, looking at the long line-up to get in. The bouncer stopped her as she half fell out the door.
"You coming back?" he asked.
"No, I'm done thanks" she said and she ran past and hugged him. He smiled hugely at her.
"Nice glasses," he said, motioning to her head.
"Oh!" She had forgotten they were there. She pulled them off, orange plastic frames in the shape of stars.
"Can you carry them for me?" she asked, handing them to him, "I'm a bit tipsy."
He laughed and put them in his jacket pocket.

They walked in the cold air, laughing and talking and him grabbing her arm to stop her from falling off the curb. Once they got to his place she made fun of how messy it was, and made friends with his fish while he dropped off his work clothes and computer. They started back the way they came when her friends started calling and texting her. Where are you?!? Are you by yourself??? Are you drunk?!  We are leaving now!!!
A block before they got back to the club, she stopped him. "I'll say goodnight here," she told him, "or else my friends will know something's wrong."
"What do you mean?" he asked, as they faced each other, closer now.
"They can sense emotion," she said quietly, "like a dog can sense fear..."
He held her now.
"Want to know a secret?" she stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear.
"Maybe," he said. "Ok, tell me."
"I missed you, sort of," she whispered almost inaudibly, lips tickling ear.
His face was turning towards her.
"See?" she murmured, "That was a good secret, non?" And then he was kissing her and they kissed sloppily, hungrily, on the sidewalk, in the dark, not feeling the cold.

They broke apart. "My friends!" she breathed, and gigglingly she dragged him the rest of the block. As they waited on the corner to cross she noticed her friends on the other side glaring at her. She waved, and leaned softly against his chest as he was behind her, and he stopped her as she almost started crossing too soon in front of a car.
"Sorry, I'm ready to go now," she said to the stony faces of them waiting for her. She turned to him and said "Let's hang out this week." He smiled and started walking away.
Then she was enveloped by the oppressiveness once again as he left, and she felt cold, and tired yet wild. She wouldn't give her friends a straight answer. She knew he wasn't right, but she couldn't tell them that, couldn't tell them who he was, and she decided that tomorrow there would be enough time to feel guilty yet elated at what she had managed to pull off, and that for tonight she would revel in the dirt, the glorious dirtiness, humaness she felt, and she knew in that instant that she would never regret her actions, not now or tomorrow, or the next day, because she had hated how she had felt in the club, on the dancefloor, drinking too much alone and people staring, and she had never felt so peaceful, so in tune with herself and the world as when she had been enticing him into having an affair.

                                                                  ----------------------------------

Signs of Spring

This weekend has been one of those glowy spring ones where the sun is hot on your skin but the breeze is cool and the blossoms absolutely reek of perfume in such a slutty manner, luring the bee's in with the overpoweringly sweet scents of a trashy hoe in a club.
It has been bare tanned legs and gauzy tank tops that flutter open in the back to dry off the sprinkle of perspiration, and cut off jean shorts that desperately need patches on the back, and playing basketball slowly and lazily on the back driveway.
It has been sunglasses all day all the time, and broad smiles, and good tired silences, and drinking gin and tonics in the cool of Jonah's basement with Sean and Mikhail and Joel, and running around on the grass barefoot trying not to step on any prickles.
It was admitting defeat to the idea of going out after dark to a pub with loud noisy people, and instead curling up in a three-way cuddle puddle to watch the Muppet movie: the first step in our "bike gang" (the Rivervalley Riders) bonding. And no, really, we all ride bikes. Like, mountain/road bicycles. We have bandanas.

This weekend I fell half in love with Sean, but I think it was just the wild whipping wind and the flowers and that blood-quickening nonsense. I felt the same amount of affection to the world in general when we ate dinner outside every night, so maybe "love" is too strong a word. We ate well, too, all fresh herbs and gazpacho soup and chocolate dipped strawberries, and cold white wine that bit at your throat. Sean was just the human embodiment of that affection, the physical manifestation of Spring. Full of energy and life and a young, smooth attractiveness, a well-spring of the ideas and songs and thoughts.
But no, I don't really love Sean. I haven't loved anyone in that way for a long time now.

This weekend D and I got up early Sunday morning and strolled down our back alley to the park overlooking the river, and lay on the grass and cheered on the chef who works at our restaurant as he ran past in the annual Mother's Day Marathon. It is tradition now. And this evening, D and J and I snuck out on to the roof of our house with a blanket and watched the sky drain of it's colour and the bugs come out and hover over our heads, and we listend to quiet music and sang and talked. It was bittersweet because we won't be able to hang out very often anymore. Every time we do stuff just the 3 of us I try so hard to just be in the moment, but there is always that niggling thought in the back of my mind: savour this. Remember this. Treasure this. It might be the last time. Maybe this is it.

This weekend is one of the few weekends I have left in this house. This home, I guess. And I'm tired of thinking about it. I'm tired of crying at the drop of a hat. I cry ALL THE TIME NOW. I had gotten pretty good at holding back my tears for whatever reason, but the past couple of months I am a veritable water feature. Crappy tv shows make me cry. Dumb movies. Books. Newspaper articles. Somebody saying something. I need to figure out a way to hold it in again. Pinching my arm doesn't work anymore. Suggestions?

And this weekend, maybe because I had no expectations, surprised me with it's loveliness. It's beauty, it's grace, it's enjoyment. This weekend was about filling up the potholes left over from winter, repairing the damage done by the frost and the darkness. About healing and growing and recharging my batteries in the sunlight, drying my clean sheets in the sunlight, reading by sunlight, exploring and loving by sunlight. The start of this spring is so radically different from last spring that I can't help but believe that it is a sign that this will be not just a good summer, but an incredible summer.

I was watching The Real Housewives of Vancouver (mainly because I had heard such awful things and had to see for myself) and one of the women asked another What was her favourite place in the world? And she answered I don't know, it depends. Like, favourite for relaxing, or partying, or shopping, or whatever.
And I paused it (and actually stopped watching FOREVER because it is that terrible) and thought about MY favourite place in the world... at first I thought Rome, no, Vancouver, no wait, definitely some small island in Greece, but hold on, I reallllly loved Turkey...
and then it hit me. It sort of slid in sideways into my mind, and settled there like a cat onto your lap when you aren't looking. It made itself seem so RIGHT, and I don't know why I hadn't thought of it sooner.
It's Christina Lake. My favourite place in the world is Christina Lake.
Serene, unchanging, escape from reality. I would drive 16 hours without stopping to get there. I dream about it constantly, about fires and earthquakes and mudslides and the end of the world happening and we run away to the lake and it is safe, a haven.
Anyway, spent the day with sunshine-y Sean yesterday. Bought matching shirts at H&M, and sat in the sun outside drinking freshly squeezed lime juice. I fell half in love with him, the sly charmer. He always does that to me. I am susceptible to charisma. Or maybe just Sean.

Music and Memories

This is slightly different than Postman's music post... but this memory kept coming into my head whenever I tried to think of a song to write about. So here it is.
I was 13, or somewhere close to that awkward, gangly, just-drifting-into-self-awareness age, and my music repertoire seemed to consist of Amy Grant, Hill Song, the Barlow Girls- in other words, soft and appropriate girly Christian singers.
I don't want to blame my mother. I am not saying that at all. And we did have lots of Beatles, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison drifting through the house. It's just, I don't know, I wasn't allowed to listen to the Spice Girls, N*SYNC, etc. I wasn't even allowed to listen to the radio, except the Christian station. I thought that rock and roll was evil. Corruptive.

But, when I was 13 or so, I did a lot of babysitting for my parents. And as a reward, every once in a while, my mom would take me to the Christian music store and let me pick out a CD.
This one time, the time I'm talking about, I was browsing the store. I found a CD with a bright pink cover, and it drew my eye. I pulled it off the shelf- Relient K. I had no idea who they were, what it was, but I took it over to the CD player and popped it in.
And-
it was-
so dirty-
so-
fast. 
So very, very, unlike anything I'd ever heard before.
After the first few seconds of drums and insane guitar this sweet boy's voice was sing/speaking so quickly I couldn't understand the lyrics.
I stood there, mesmerized by the bass and the utter energy that came through the headphones and flooded my body. It made me feel angry a bit, passionate, like I wanted to run around and break things; shake my head and stomp my feet. It was as if They knew exactly how a confused, angsty teenager felt, and had put it into music and were commiserating with me. I couldn't get enough. I skipped through all the songs, listening to the first 30 seconds of each, and I was in love. Whoever these guys were, I had to hear more. Every day. All the time.
I knew my mother would never buy the CD for me. But I asked her anyways, and even made her listen to the first track, and she shook her head and took off the headphones after the first few seconds. Her brow wrinkled and she looked disappointedly at me-
Honey, I am not buying you this. Are you sure you don't want the new Jacqi Velasquez tape? Or that Point of Grace CD instead? What about this Rebecca St. James, she sounds good. I'll get you that instead.

I argued a bit. Probably whined. But she didn't buy me the CD.
I thought about them for a long time afterwards. Everything I listened to was too slow, too flat, too booooor-ing. Something I had heard on that Relient K CD had awoken something inside me, and it wasn't going away. I felt trapped, stifled, misunderstood. Unhappy for no apparent reason.

Christmas morning we were unwrapping our stockings, and I found the tell-tale perfectly square, flat shape of a CD. As I was unwrapping it, I spotted something hot pink. My heart sped up, and I ripped off the paper. There it was.  For some reason unknown to me even to this day, my conservative protective mother had changed her mind and bought me this punk rock boy singer's CD.

And so began my love affair with Relient K, the first punk-rock band I had ever heard. I got my brother and sister addicted too, and I swear they are the band that opened all 3 of us up to secular music and an entire exciting new world we didn't know had existed. My mother too gradually became way more liberal, and guess what- last Tuesday she even came to the Coldplay concert with me. Progress, friends, progress.