Yesterday we went to Fairhaven, a historic district of Bellingham, WA, to finish off our Christmas shopping. Bookstores are like my own personal brand of heroin (you may recognize that line from Twilight). When I walk through a bookstore's doors, two feelings flood - a mix of instant relaxation and sunshine-y happiness. Village Books, yesterday's fix, is three floors of printed pages. The realization that most do not have equal feelings towards the local bookseller hit yesterday, while I looked at the people next to me browsing the shelves. They were not wearing the beautific smile I was, their eyes weren't shining, they weren't absentmindedly stroking the book covers and spines, they didn't have to tear themselves away from an Annie Dillard novel! I was the weird one. These people weren't here for love, they were here to check items off their lists. They weren't rhapsodizing over new editions and typography worthy of the words between the covers, they wore furrowed brows and seemed impatient. The thing is, I couldn't change this even if I tried. When you really love something (may it be books or chemistry or Jamie Oliver) the nerdiness shines like a beacon. You just can not help yourself - luckily, I think our nerdy obsessions are the things people love most about us.

3 days 'til Christmas.

Today, I sat in the dining room and watched Jen and Lisa lay out their bounty for a mediterranean grocery feast/pasta - they laughed, joked, whirled as I looked on. And whooshing out me unbidden came, "I am going to miss this." This place, these people.

We have discovered scotch of late. While they are outside, drawing smoke filled breaths, I am inside writing to you. Present here and dreaming of the prairies and the people that inhabit them simultaneously. Josh Rouse is loud and the bass is vibrating through my repainted desk. Dancing to Barry White in a room full of ecstatic people, egg shaker in hand and glass with ice in the other, my ears starting to buzz from the loud volume. With the return of my compatriots, light floods the room, the incense heavy (Nag Champa) and Tim closes his eyes to remember the words. Dr. Dre and Eminem collaborations, white t -shirt, glass in hand. Tupac's greatest hits.

Warmth. Lamp light from a newly repaired lamp and a black shag rug. Jen on the couch, with her wine.

I'm going to miss this place.

Lately, I've drawing and painting. Et voila. Below, some samples.

Paris Mime

 
Moleskin 85

I am back on the road again, for a time, come January. Back to the only home that claims me - the prairies. I will spend the coldest month or so of the year between Regina/Winnipeg - tears freezing in my eyeballs, lips numbing and with at least (at least) one guaranteed, utterly embarrassing and totally painful wipeout. Flat on my back, cold in every direction, looking up at a bright blue sky.

The prairies are beautiful in the winter, blindingly white and endless - the pressure lifts in the expanse, letting you breathe. They're the setting for dreams and a beginning to a new year.

It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. - Carson McCullers

Images from Tim Burton's show at MoMA.






I find myself gratefully enveloped in the warm hum of life and connection - the ease of being with people minutes after you wake up and have been propelled toward the kitchen in search of coffee. The lottery are the days when someone has made a fresh french press while you were just opening their eyes and offers you a cup or half a bodum upon arrival to the dining room. No grinding needs doing, the water has already been boiled and the four minutes has passed - with a plunge I have begun my first ritual of the day. I love the sound of coffee when poured into a cup, any cup - the material from which it's made doesn't seem to matter, I experience the tiniest of thrills each time. Maybe it's simply the anticipation, but whatever it is, it is lovely and silly and I like it. With coffee in hand, one may sink into an ugly, yet incredibly comfortable couch and have a conversation with a roommate about love and life. How there is no us and no them, just a whole lot of people and a lot of beauty.

Or maybe, it is one's turn to make supper and after an exhausting day, with a couple hours worth of anxiety on the clock already, it seems an insurmountable task. No money, no groceries, no inspiration - but a partner is met outside the door of Unit A. We are both coming home and before we are at the top of the stairs, soup is settled on and there is a new, slight spring to be found in our steps. Supplies are acquired, rain has curled our hair and our bounty is spread out on the counter - ready to chopped, diced, etc. We make Zuppa Achidossana, soup from Archidossa (Tuscany, Italy, the world) and as it simmers, more and more people follow their noses into the kitchen. Thus before supper begins, there is happy hum to be observed, one that has not yet reached impatience. Olive oil from Greece, fresh bread and freshly mortared pepper and sea salt on a platter, bowls are filled and emptied, music plays, voices speak and dimmed light sets the mood for our nightly feast.

Contrastingly, I am often squirelled away in my room. Sometimes lonely, sometimes sleepless and sometimes quiet. Painting, writing, watching. Wondering. Awe-fully happy, and organ crushingly affected. A world of contrasts.

Tomorrow there is school and class and books, and always the rain.

 




Photos by Beth Mans.

I left and when I came back, the halls were decked with holly. All alone in the halls at 2 am. The yellow tinged light illuminated my tired shuffle to the back of the building and room 220. A movie done, a roommate gone out for a smoke break, I venture out of my room to heat the water for tea. Doors are open as I walk down the hall. Mark is recording in the pantry. Jamie is leaving the kitchen. I rifle through tea bags in the front coffee/tea room, glance forlornly at my empty mailbox, and someone is playing the piano in the entrance below. These are comforting things.

All these people alive behind closed, or open, doors, sounds giving the proof of their existence and inspiration. Tea pots still warm from the last person to heat water. Proof of life.

The December sun is dawning, and with it, crisper air and all that comes with such a month. The celebration of another year. There is always much proof of life at Christmas.

Paintings by Zadie Xa.



 


A second round of sickness has re-muddled my mind. Words creep through my head instead of flash, blankets hamper my ability to type and there's an ever present pile of kleenexes within arm's length. My temperature is up and down like a kangaroo baby sans ritalin - I shed and pile on layers in between rounds of nausea. 

Words from friends are welcome in my (these days) shrunken little world. I have holed up inside brick walls, 8,000 square feet and with over 20 housemates. Yet, my thoughts are so often with people scattered across the country - Meg in her new home, Eoin on tour and all the LV's, my family in their beautiful house on Angus, Joh and Ben in their house cooking - all this cords tying me to different places then the one I inhabit. I'm not going to venture to guess what this does to my sense of home - which, honestly has always been a little strange - bringing me back to a different sort of befuddlement.

A single drop rolls down my wall, the misty rain leaving it free from pattern today. My head however, is a million patterns, criss-crossing and confused, though hopeful, at what comes next. Hey, Snow White - it's gonna be alright, be allright, be allright.
I'm gonna take my cue from that pale lady, as I match her today in pallor, and lay down. Boring, yes. Unbelievably comforting? Oui.  Bonne nuit.

There was a small boy sitting on a concrete ledge while I waited in line for my cappuccino. He sat, swinging his short legs off the edge. We drove away, after getting bread and we were stopped at a light. In front of me was a man sitting, leaning against a building - he had a beard and a hat and a very lean face. He held up to his mouth a tinfoil wrapped something and with great pleasure, dug in. I felt his satisfaction & was content in matching it - not as a voyeur, but as a stranger sharing a simple pleasure. I watched the light turn and we continued on. I am in the bath, languid and brown limbed. I hear water trickling through the pipes overhead. Books are piled on either side of my glasses and I sit half in, half out of the water, writing of people I do not want to slip away and be forgotten. I want to hold them between these pages, not captive, but remembered.

//

The dedication of Rolheiser's The Holy Longing:
For Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996, our generation's Kierkegaard. By sharing his own struggle, he mentored us all, helping us to pray while not knowing how to pray, to rest while feeling restless, to be at peace while tempted, to feel safe while still anxious, to be surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness and to love while still in doubt.

//

Come back darkness, come back muddled mind, do not yet disappear into the light of thought - there's only so much genius to be found in sanity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I wake, I stand before the bathroom mirror, eyes half open, lost in a dream. I feel it's a good time to take my pills - when I am half lucid and the other half crazy. I hear voices. I long for comfort. I have to take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 pills. Medication, supplementation. I brush my teeth vigorously, my teeth bleed.  I spit 1, 2, 3 times - fascinated by the way my blood looks mixed with saliva in the sink.

//

Happy Birthday Timothy James. It's the 16th of October.

 

 

Photographs by Joseph O. Holmes
of New York City

There are floor to ceiling curtains that need to be steamed. There is tea and coffee to make and doors to open - beyond them is restoration. Curled in chairs, afghan swaddled, we sit. We rest. We remember, something. There are homes to make like magic, they contain us after late night inky black  bike ride, snow flakes falling, the streetlights guiding us home. Most assuredly, I would curse an October snow if I remained in my home province, but hearing of its descent I was immediately nostalgic of the kind of winters I don't get to have in my current place of residence - romanticizing the hell out them. It's all fireplaces and warm drinks and cuddling up with something (ex: down comforter) or someone you love. And that pristine winter snow, thick and blanketed overs trees and ground through frost dusted windows.

Back to the present. The no snow present. I crawled around on bookstore floors searching for the perfect book for you. But I didn't find it. Shit. They were all too expensive, all the ones I wanted.  I got rug burn from one shop and bruises from the other. And maybe a neck crick. Crack. Crick. Damn. I scanned their spines reading each vertebrae, searching for everything - for everything you ever wanted in a book.

I'm dreaming of trains and cross-Canada trips. And beds and candlelight, and endless books. And record players in new homes with a top bunned woman.  I want to hear the strains of vinyl reach around walls and fill rooms - its warm sound is an undoubted a winter essential.

Adieu snowflake babies,
I go back to my rain.

B