small cow

The day after you left, a biting wind brewed in the city. I walked down familiar streets, the streets parallel to our route two days prior, with my black jacket on, the thin metal butterflies on my earrings tinkling violently against each other, gold against green against gold.

I exited campus, passed by Grange Park, veered around the construction that I had noticed when we first met, all to the sounds of this wind, which was voiceless and mindless to me. When I finally arrived, I did not wait long to be greeted by R, who brought me what I had asked to take care of. He carefully took out the small bonsai tree from his plastic bag to fit it into my tote bag, and handed me a spray bottle— “I believe you have to mist it everyday.” I wished him a safe flight home.

The pines were shedding, they stung too. I crossed the street to the coffee shop where we had our first date, opened the door to be met by a wave of afternoon chatter. I stared at the table where two ladies now sat and where once you were waiting with your then-cropped hair and wide hazel eyes, as I rushed in with my bike helmet still on.

I kept on walking back up the street, gripping the tote bag carefully away from my body so that the wind would not veer it into my legs and break a branch of the bonsai. Past the Park I arrived next to the AGO and entered, took off my jacket and stuffed it in my backpack and got it checked, like you had done with yours the many months ago (it was only three… only three). I carried my notebooks and I carried my tote bag, walking quietly past the Canadian Art to the expresso bar overlooking the street through wooden patterns. I ordered a mint tea, found a table and placed the bonsai on the table. The light outside was the white light of light grey clouds, a dream somehow. I called you for a short while, imagining the night in front of your eyes.

Before the gallery was to close I made my way to those gentle, twisting, wide wooden stairs you had voiced wonderment for, and as I trudged upwards I felt a stifling heat, and I felt my body giving way to something tearful and visceral. When I reached the top, I folded my arms on the wood and hid my sobbing. The city still looked beautiful, and I was still at the beginning of my loss.

I left the gallery hungry, and walked with an almost fated purpose to the Korean restaurant across the street, where we had eaten three days prior. I made my way through two glass doors and gestured one finger to the waiter. I placed the tote bag on the chair in front of me, and ordered pork with broth, which came, as usual, with five side dishes. (I made sure to eat the sweetened potatoes the slowest, you had liked those the best.) We texted and I used many napkins, even though the broth wasn’t that spicy.

The final walk back to campus was a blur in a falling evening, 5-second heavings that I would suppress with a hand to my mouth. The wind was ever-looming, and the temperature was dropping. When I finally made it to my door, I stumbled in my room, looked at my empty bed, and lost myself to a heavy desperation, an offbeat wailing that blindingly demanded, “Why did you leave—Why did you leave—Why did you leave…”

Eventually my pacing lightened, and eventually I called my mom, and eventually I called you again, for longer this time. It was Day 1.

I am listening to a song and I can no longer listen, but still I listen to the song, because… Well, I don’t know at all. I don’t think I have ever remembered the feeling, the exposure of a moment so deeply. It turns deeply beyond my mind and within my stomach. It was the beginning and somehow already the end, though everything is already an end (01/12/20).

 

Australia is burning. The American flag is being burned in Iran.

There is no adequate, virtuous-enough transition that permits me to gently guide myself into telling the goodness of my day. (So why I did not just start with a less grabbing line… Why I did I simply not count my blessings…)

10 in Vancouver, 4 in Toronto, and -3 in Winnipeg. It was bliss – warm, “literally hot,” as I told the barista at Thom Bargen, who laughed as he repeated it back to me like I laughingly repeat back things I find funny in its helpless dumbness. Oatmeal with “whole milk” again, but this time barely enough of the milk. Most mild and delicate oatmeal I’ve had in a while; couldn’t have been steel cut.

June, Gift & Thrift, Bison Books, short stint in the Air Canada building, Mom and I walking down Princess Street for a Friday lunch! We order 3 sides at Clementine’s and the waitress utters in the most neutrally unimpressed tone: “that’s it?” Yes Ma’am, that’s all, we won’t eat ourselves full anyways, although maybe water full, thank you, water! All of the potatoes, cauliflower, panna cotta were fabulous. I was hungry by 2 PM.

Back at the Forks I did nothing but sit myself down on an EQ3 chair (look at how well integrated advertising works!) and feel jolted by the rounded loudness of the conversations around me. I had visited my old supervisors at work; they, welcoming as always and I, realizing the forest green of the building was really suited for Christmas decorations, especially the 60s tint kind. Following was the light trek to the Forks, the divine smell of Tall Grass Prairie entering the market (cinnamon, bread, warmth, the right amount of favourable spices).

Canadian hitchhiking poetry, a nap, an Elizabeth Bishop poem and a Johny Cash song.

I returned home giddy with life. Did my Day 2 of 30 Days of Yoga with Adriene (and Benji). Chatted with two of my friends. Worked on a little project. Finished the little project. Starting writing this post to attempt to begin piercing the bubble of experience that has been growing since I was born, but for this case in purpose, especially since reading week in November.

Do I make it my own? Do I make it my own?

Is something you decide on, and something you must accept for yourself.

This life would be all the worst without yearning. Whether I’m trying to make an assurance for myself or a truth, I am not sure, and I am not sure if it matters, because what is said has been said.

If I’ve read more than I’ve lived, than I know nothing of either. Either way, I know nothing of either. The only thing I can know better are people, and somehow this always becomes a funny game that shows itself in the most unexpected matters. Still funny, but uncomfortably human. That’s the closest to comfort we will get.

Nothing is ever said in a vacuum, or under the propensity of universality. These are all pretences, but perhaps you are a much more considerate writer. Still, I think of the smallest human unit. Things as written for the smallest human unit. Perhaps this idea is too romantic, or too idealistic, or too grandiose. But what is there to feeling alive than that?

Much more! But that’s for another time, for which I yearn in anticipation and dread.

In words, in the very thought of words, I find the only comfort I am able to give myself. Not the words as memory, or as anticipation, or as honouring.

The words as their very presence, because any more and I shall gain them, meaning I will lose them, meaning I will need to restart somehow.

But no meaning, in fact, and no gains and losses, in fact, but in universe, and in my heart, in the one single atom of life.

You, of all people, should understand this. You, of all people, I know not to disturb.

 

To hear your voices and to hear them still, and then to hear them no longer and to begin typing the end of this sentence. To cup my hands to my face, in the weight of silence, and to run your words over my mind until my cheeks are warm. To formulate this loneliness, this darkness painted blank, and to feel the time running and opening and not opening at once. To give in to the line… the line still… To digress because the sake of digressing is all we have.

 

And I thought to myself, the night does not choose to hide. It shows itself to us fully and fully it gives way to our inner emotions, the mirror as shadow. Winter announces its long arrival and slow departure. What is darkness to those of us with promise’s light? What is this drawn breath from the heart? Wind in cycle and snow in cycle, land sounds in cycle. Countless messages, to past lives.

The streetcar down Spadina lulls one’s senses to that something beyond, the grey cloud and the red cloud, the lapping water and the calm water. This is no longer a world of wheels, nor that of beginnings and ends. When it turns (that sweet, metal curvature), the Earth turns, and we turn, and the sky deepens slowly.

 

The act of collecting little things of nature is delightful, children’s tales told in the early evening delightful. The granite rocks and acorns from Muskoka this weekend. The plump chestnuts on the bikelane of Hoskin Street this afternoon. The dried spotted corn from seasons ago, the mini pumpkins from Kensington Market. Those that are free are the most delightful, but regardless, they are all beautiful in their permanent impermanence.

Last week during a creative writing workshop, I was given six words by the person sitting beside me, and I was to write something from them. Here’s the first stanza of that swift poem:

In the small crack of your voice,
a greening blossom,
a raising bursting
from rain.

Here in Toronto, things are picking up for me. I’ve greatly overcommitted, I’ve slowly realized this consumerist attitude I’ve led my young adult life on. Yesterday there was a discarded box of free CDs by the English Lounge. There were some bangers in there: Regina Spektor, The Strokes, The War on Drugs, The Weakerthans…

Look, I respect The Weakerthans and I know they’re Winnipeg’s jem. But sometimes I can’t help but associate their music with bland white food. Now, I hate myself for even writing that sentence, as it’s the sort of generalized Internet-culture language that I feel is not conducive to “dialogue”. Now, I also don’t admire myself for writing this previous sentence – there’s so much to imply with dialogue and I’ve appropriated the word by carelessly sticking quotation marks around it. I just… don’t feel like “One Great City!” is still of complete relevance in our more awakened times. “…our Golden Business Boy will watch the North End die.” There’s a certain level of discomfort with such a line now. It’s what Jia Tolentino said about privilege. It’s what I’m exhibiting right now.

Personal blogs are dead. Fake deep rules. Authenticity remains as the God who never wanted to be God.

Today was the Climate Strike of Toronto, and it was a damn beautiful day, clear skies and mild wind. It felt good for the spirit. Toronto’s attendance (~75 000), paled in comparison to Montreal’s 500 000. Numbers are everything, but only everything to a certain extent. Some of my friends suggested storming a Bank next time.

How do we awaken within the urgency of the situation? I know I go back and forth. Slumbering in the suburbs is quite easy, while in the big city, not so much. It’s unfortunate reflection of urgency depends on space, but I suppose it’s inseparable from it. From morning to evening people took pictures of the searching me and my poster. (What is it with artists and their empathy within an insufferable egotism?)

Walking down the streets against people and against the sweet sun I unwillingly found myself in a parade of sorts (“parade”, as my friend put it). Spontaneously and greatly, protestors blocked the intersection of College and University until around 7:00 PM. Night had fallen quickly. I felt lost, although juicing apples helped a little, like the band-aid you are grateful for.

Anything I could say on a day like this is weighed with too much philosophical air to amount to something I’d accept as good honesty. (I’m starting to think that honesty itself doesn’t really matter, and what does is whether it’s good or not.) Although my friend said something I wanted my heart to remember forever and forever: “Just remember… whatever you do, you cannot ignore him. You need to be nice to him, because he didn’t do anything. It’s all in your mind.”