metanoia

I woke early to the cries of seagulls, and felt a thrill of excitement before I remembered to be stressed and tense. once I thought this would never get old: living on an island, walking distance to the ocean, windows open through the summer night, the sounds of a small city by the sea.

now I’m sitting at a table on Humboldt Street with a coffee and scone, while, it seems, a parade of annoyances come and go. a huge garbage truck with those awful, shrieking brakes; a big old tourist bus beep-beep-beeping its way into the loading zone. someone I didn’t recognize taking my coffee order as if I don’t come here every day! a beam of bright light glancing off the windows and corkscrewing into my eyeballs.

I used to love this place.

I still love this place.

lately, though, it’s been harder to access those transcendent moments of pleasure and joy I used to slip into easily. lately it all feels so precarious. even here and now, in this moment — on this glorious morning — beneath the lindens in full bloom, their honey-sweet perfume gently drifting over the whole neighbourhood.

once, I used to revel in my freedom. after that, during the pandemic lockdown, I used to ache for my freedom. then I got a taste of that freedom back, somehow multiplied in its absence, and it was the sweetest thing I’ve ever known. but now I have my ordinary freedom and yet I am afraid, boxed in and shut down, as if the whole damn world wasn’t my oyster. but it is! nothing has changed… has it?

well. everything feels harder lately. when did life get so hard? every decision feels fraught, even on the (less and less frequent) occasions when I know exactly what I want and need. I feel these powerful forces acting on me: the rising cost of living. the building in which I’ve lived most of my adult life being up for sale. my closest people making plans that will take them far from me. chronic pain and health issues in my body. the corporate greed and cynicism, the sheer monstrous appetite and undisguised exploitation of our capitalist society. the climate changing before my eyes, the living world paying for our choices. uncertainty in the face of various oppressions. I know that it isn’t just me. I know we as a species are sharing this experience of everything feeling harder.

but in another sense, all of those things have always been more or less true — at least on a granular level, for me personally, as just one tiny being in a frighteningly large, vanishingly small world: sure, I may have felt certain in the past, but it was just an illusion.

and here’s the thing: I still want it all. I want all of it. all the richness and texture of a life in the world — this very world. the joys and complications of connection with other people. I still want everything, and I do not have to stay small. I DON’T WANT THE WORLD TO BE SMALLER ANYMORE, as I wrote here in the fire and frustration of 2020. except now, I can do more things about it.

I am going to Italy in October (!!!!!) and while the details and logistics are a whole other issue, the general vibe of the trip is very much on this topic. throughout the month of May I sent myself into intensive (ish) physical training, by which I mean I started taking my strength, flexibility and stamina seriously and going to the gym and doing yoga and eating leafy greens FOR ITALY. it’s been harder to keep that up through June due to some physical and mental health things, but at least I know what it looks like in case I can get back on the wagon in July.

but! what I also think I need, perhaps even more, is intensive spiritual training. I’m not sure I am spiritually fit right now. because honestly, it is so hard to be present these days. it is so hard to stay in my body, in my mind, in these fleeting moments. I’m always rocketing back and forth between the stark pain of facing the unconscionable things happening in the world and dropping into, say, four-hour internet shopping rabbit holes in which I rarely even buy anything because I never seem to find what I am searching for. this is not a genre of behaviour I associate with strong mental wellbeing in myself.

so can I, FOR ITALY, take some time this summer to retrain myself to feel good and to feel fully? yes, even in the grief and madness of the world; even in the physical distress of my body? can I relearn the secret arts of savouring every sunbeam, every sip of coffee, every waft of linden blossom? can I reclaim my birthright of snatching up all the joy and fun and pleasure I can get away with? the work of a spiritual path, I’ve heard it said, is to live the life fully.

lately, I have been eating focaccia dipped in olive oil and balsamic, alongside sliced ripe tomatoes with sea salt. lately, the summer fruits have been trickling into stores and now there are cherries and apricots and raspberries. lately, I have so many friends and family members in my day-to-day life that it feels like I’m almost double-booking hang outs, which is basically unprecedented. lately, I’ve been spending time in the arms of someone who is kind and is also truly one of a kind. I’ve been dreaming bigger and starrier, at least in terms of travel. I’ve been looking after my little garden and it has been responding with exuberant growth. I’ve been thinking about buying some new bottles of ink and getting out the old brushes and painting with hot pink and neon orange, brilliant turquoise and bold cobalt.

and I’ve been having my coffee out on Humboldt Street, under the lindens, instead of inside the cafe — myriad annoyances be damned. I still love this place, and the world is my oyster, and I have right now what I’ve always wanted. and I want to be here for it; I don’t want to miss another moment.

turning.

I’ve come to believe that everything is cyclical.

I’m sitting cross-legged on a chair in the quiet lobby jungle of the hotel next door, drinking coffee with a sprinkle of cinnamon. this used to be my regular writing spot circa 2017. so peaceful, listening to the fountain, catching a glimpse of the big koi as their fins break the surface of the pool. the tourists are not in evidence this morning, although I know — I know — they’re coming. it’s thanksgiving weekend, and, after all, everything returns.

I return every autumn to moody melancholy, even when the weather is so disobliging as this — sunny day after sunny day, just when I’d prefer the rain to help me sink into it — to feel all the sadness I saved up through the spring and summer. I return every autumn to the dark water of Scorpio, to my inclination toward magic, mystery, power, the unknown. I slip off the map, slide under the radar, and dive deep into introspection.

but everything changes, everything moves on. come winter — another six weeks, maybe — I’ll be transforming from witch to warrior, to wear my outdoorsiest and most fresh-faced capable self, to do lots of wholesome physical activity and get my home organized and glow rosy-cheeked from cold weather walks. a few months beyond that and I’ll be blooming into a cozy femme Taurus, goddess of spring.

my body hurts a lot these days, and I honestly can’t tell you whether it’s new or if it’s always been so and I was just blocking it out. pain seems to have planted itself somewhere around my pelvis and grown taproots all throughout my lower body. I can’t tell if it hurts more lately or if, having finally pursued some kind of diagnosis, I am just much more aware. I am learning how pain alters my experience of everything else in my mind: I think it makes me tense and snappish, less patient, more reactive. I think it makes it hard to keep my heart open. I try to tell myself Right Now, It’s Like This, but the static volume of the twinge zipping up from my kneecap to my abdomen almost drowns out the words. I’m trying to be a scientist of my own experience, to learn how sensation ebbs and flows throughout my days, weeks, months. I’m trying to be an artist of my own experience, to spin the raw materials of resistance and fear into something I can touch with my senses.

it works sometimes. but a lot of the time lately, I am just afraid, without any profound philosophical effect. I am just uncertain and suffering and coping and getting through days. no surprise then that I’ve felt my sense of wonder exceedingly low in the well. I’m not only existentially afraid about my body, either, as the blighted trees show signs of their water stress, giving up in the face of the ongoing drought, as the natural world changes profoundly.

still: like I said, I believe everything is cyclical, and in that idea is all the comfort I’m likely to get at this time. resist all you want, but everything recedes and everything returns. you always hope to be on the side of the wheel going up — and maybe you even believe that you are — but if you step back, you may find that you’re barely at the edge of the downward curve, about to go for a rollercoaster plummet. if you zoom out more, then even a bit more than that, you may be lucky enough to see the floor, the nadir, the curve of the wheel hitting rock bottom and immediately beginning, so, so slowly, to climb.

the seasons, the years, the moon and the sea. the fluctuation of desire in my body, of intention in my mind. the tourists flooding into this small island city in sunlight and sweeping back out in the chilly damp dark. the days into nights. everything turns, but we rarely know where we are on the wheel; we don’t know how far up, how far down, how soon it will slip from our grasp. equally, we may wake tomorrow to find rebirth impending: the wheel’s on the up, the rain comes, the dry moss and grass reanimate themselves, the world greens, the body heals, the heart forgives. we may wake up any day to find ourselves returning to something we thought we’d long lost, returning to an old favourite spot for dreaming and sipping coffee, returning to our bonds to others, returning to magic and mystery and the thrill of the unknown as points on the great wheel — falling, falling, rising.

aries exultant

it’s been a minute since I was here, but the spring breeze brings me back again.

and right now, it’s ruffling the soft scaly needles of the incense cedar I sold this morning to its forever home. it’s whispering in the brand new chartreuse maple leaves unfurling across the university campus outside the office where I sit. it’s curling the tops of the waves riding in on the dark beaches, ushering storms across water, singing on the faraway mountains.

and, like I said, it’s bringing me back again.

lately I’ve been wishing to open up my windows. I find myself longing for fewer screens and ever less clutter. I want to take off my headphones and listen to the trees and the traffic and my own thoughts. can I shake the distractions? can I put down the damn phone and just dream? I have such a deep hunger for all these moments that are constantly fleeing me.

these days I am so aware of the nature of change. not that it’s ever been far from my mind, but of recent weeks I’ve found myself pausing to snap pictures of the turquoise fountain outside the shopping mall downtown, the interior of Caffe Fantastico when the sun slants in just so, the number 7 bus, the cherry blossoms as viewed from my desk in the office. I am holding such an intense understanding of impermanence that I can easily imagine the future moments when it’ll be a great, bittersweet comfort to see, for example, the inside of the grocery store I’ve shopped at for many years.

I am learning once again how to let my skin be thin cotton, entirely permeable — just the flimsiest and most ineffectual of barriers between my soul and the whole gorgeous, convoluted world. I am remembering how to let emotions wash right through me like the wind. I am retraining in how to allow everything, everything, everything (even the deep darks like jealousy and fear; even the high highs from which I’m liable to fall a dizzying distance).

I believe and affirm that the most good I can do in the world is to let the world’s goodness shine through me in my being, thoughts, words and actions, and to do that I absolutely must let it in, with both vigour and rigour. I believe the only god I’ll ever have or need is the immense tenderness of sunlight falling through green leaves. I believe that my wildness, not to mention my reputed singular strangeness, is nothing desirable to be tamed after all.

I would rather open my windows, set my cotton sails and fly out on the spring breeze than learn to behave myself ever again.

“whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination”
– Mary Oliver

untitled

my Buddhist teacher says the world that we experience is created by our own mind. in a sense, we each live in our own world, taking it for granted that all we see and touch is real in just the way we perceive it.

and so the world that I live in is flavoured with loneliness. the tinge of isolation colours all I see, all I feel, all I know.

there has never been a time for me when this has not been true. when I was five, rejected on the playground by other kids until I made friends with rocks and trees and played by myself every recess. when I was ten and read a novel where every person had an animal spirit companion who could never leave her side, and felt such an intense longing that I dreamed myself into that world for years after. the first time as a teen I realized you could feel even more alone beside your love than on your own.

on and on — you get it, I don’t need to go into the details. I am missing something fundamental. I’ve thought I had it beat any number of times these last few years, thought I’d finally figured out how to be a person with other people. but now I wonder if I was just on an incredibly lucky streak for a while there, because here on the other side of it, I have no clue how it happened or how to get it back.

whatever courage I once had in forging connections has deserted me now. I don’t want anyone to see me. I don’t want to be known. if I feel attraction to someone, it registers as pain and distress. if I feel kinship with someone, I experience it as worry and loss. vulnerability is out of the question. I stopped writing here for weeks before I remembered that no one reads this except all the versions of me throughout the years, and somehow those selves still feel safe enough to reach out to. I guess there is some comfort in knowing that at least I trust myself.

obviously I am not doing very well right now. that’s pretty clear. hopefully one of my future selves is reading this with compassion from a much higher point in our life, full of warm and safe connection with others. hopefully she feels loved. I wish I knew how to get to her. what if I never get to her?

when you’re lonely, ironically, you isolate yourself still further, and I don’t know how to break the cycle, how to stop building this world block by solitary block. I can’t imagine a time when anything will be different than it is right now. I can’t imagine kissing anyone ever again — my thoughts recoil from the concept. I can’t imagine feeling like my friends are my family.

there is no conclusion here except that I am where I am, which is sitting on my bed watching a huge beeswax candle flicker and listening to moody autumn music. my heart is pounding and I’m seriously considering deleting this, but it’s as true and valid as anything else I’ve ever written here. yes, I can get up and function most days. I can do my job and answer emails and feed myself dinner and look after Finnegan. I can feel deeply for trees and birds, and I can talk to my parents with convincing enough humour. I just don’t know how I’ll ever let anyone into my heart again, nor how the world my mind creates might ever start to render itself in a shade other than the wintry underwater-pale blue of deep loneliness.

style advice.

sometimes it feels like each day is a new lesson in how, precisely, to be myself.

the self is fluid, amorphous, evanescent. the self is a river. the self is just a fleeting sensation being experienced in a vanishing instant of time.

that being said, I need a haircut. this time of year is so frustrating for me: showy Leo energy running hot all around me, and my muddy self sinking (somewhat self-piteously) below the radar of attention. this time of year, I strongly long for personal transformation, yet find my usual alchemical powers curiously weak.

lately I catch myself trawling the internet for style advice, which is to say, some kind of magical advice that will help me bring the outside of my self into visual alignment with the inside. what exactly do I wear with a leather jacket and white t-shirt to set me apart from the infinite multitudes of white-t-shirt-leather-jacket-wearers and proclaim “now you see before you my unique soul”? and what the fuck do I do with my hair? cut it? not cut it? bangs? curls? who am I?! and why does everyone else have to like wearing Doc Martens these days too?

and what, to me, is cool? I know it when I see it on others: it’s something that expresses ineffable solidarity in who they are, a distillation of their them-ness. what could that be for me? sometimes I feel sure that my most notable quality is how strenuously I resist being known at all. I have too much of the dark water of Scorpio in my soul: as soon as I am beheld, I must change or perish.

I ordered some light grey skinny jeans with ripped knees and a superhigh waist. and I have my men’s combat boots from the 80s which are comfy and are not, after all, Docs (although I have my platform-heeled Docs too). I have my gorgeous ash leaf tattoo covering my shoulder and arm, along with others. I have my nose ring, eyebrow barbell and double-pierced earlobes. so why can’t I just feel like myself enough? why ask for more than these markers of individuality?

the crux of it: I still feel invisible.

I am working on the practice of *feeling like I belong in every room I enter*. I went to yoga and looked my reflection in the eye from across the room and said, (very quietly), “you belong here too”. even amongst the thin bodies and toned muscles, yes, even here within the veritable kingdom of Lululemon outfits.

I would like to apply the same sweet generosity to *feeling like I belong in every item of clothing I wear* also — why is that even harder?

I remember that old quote: “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” (Marianne Williamson, not Nelson Mandela, for the record). I think that I see my own beauty and power in the mirror, but not reflected back in the eyes of the general gaze. so is it that I am holding back, holding out? do I so dread being known that I melt into the walls and shimmer into the empty air? is there a way, then, to flip the switch, to wear it all on the outside — not for the consumption of others, but purely for the expression of my soul?

it’s a tough question. there are so many protective layers between the harsh world and my raw self that I’d have to shed.

and where exactly does style advice come back into it? well. probably toward the general idea of trying some things I’ve been afraid of. probably getting a damn haircut, and letting myself make a change instead of playing it super safe (I’m thinking of curtain bangs). maybe getting some rings to try wearing on non-work days — I’ve always admired rings but never worn any. maybe getting a colourful scarf and not worrying about my non-swanlike neck and shoulders. maybe digging out those stately men’s brogues I bought two autumns ago that ripped my feet to shreds, and trying again with better socks and bandaids.

maybe going big! in every aspect of my life in the world. maybe learning to play, to move lightly through these Big Deep Serious Matters of Personal Identity that usually weigh so heavily on me, especially at this time of year.

maybe remembering to let myself be known, every once in a while.

Beatrice

the things I end up loving often catch me entirely by surprise.

for example, I never expected to enjoy riding a bike. I actively avoided ever having to do so for over ten years. it just seemed like an activity calibrated to hit all my weaknesses: feeling on display, inept, too big, uncoordinated, out of shape, like I don’t know the rules everyone else knows, and afraid of cars.

I do enjoy throwing myself a curveball, though. so here I am, after ten weeks of commuting regularly by bike, and it turns out that I adore cycling. it reminds me of the time six years ago that I randomly decided to train for a 10k run, ended up loving it, and suddenly running became my life for about a year. after that, the joy in it faded, and I haven’t ever quite recaptured it.

it’s possible that this is not an admirable quality and actually makes me a huge flake. but I am hoping not, because I dropped a sizeable chunk of my savings on a new refurbished bike today. my previous bike lasted me 15 years, so I’m really planning on this being a worthwhile investment.

anyway, what I wanted to write about here isn’t my questionable financial choices: it’s the way that riding makes my mind go quiet. not just “focus on the breath” quiet, where everything going on beneath still makes ripples, but quiet quiet. quiet like a held breath, like an empty room. in that quiet, my heart soars. in that quiet, my body comes into her power.

sometimes I think that when I am restlessly mulling over issues around my gender identity/expression, what I am actually grappling with is my animality, my innate wildness. because who in our society is allowed to be a creature? for the most part, I do identify as a woman, but what I really am is a powerful, omnivorous, female mammal. so many of the ways I experience a sense of my masculine energies are tied up in physicality, in instinct, in appetite. some of the ways I experience my feminine energies are also wild — intuition, the desire to nurture — but a lot of the learned behaviours and standards around femininity are all about curbing the feral.

when I’m riding my bike beneath the dappled canopy of maples, breathing that cool air, going fast, I feel like a creature of the forest and the field. my breath settles into a rhythm as I push my muscles on, on, on. everything seems to work, and I forget about the gaze. I forget about everything. my body in motion is a joyful body.

anyway, now that Beatrice, my new bike, is in my life, I’m hoping to enact another lofty life ambition: to actually remember how good it feels to be in motion. throughout the pandemic, I’ve often felt like a floating head — totally disconnected from myself and the world — and it’s made my bouts of hungry discontent much harder to handle. I’m hoping that when I’m out here feeling like I just HAVE TO HAVE whatever it is (food, new clothes, wonder products, a date) I can take to the trails instead and get back inside my animal self. this will hopefully help to: a) restore my bank account to its pre-Beatrice levels, and b) preserve my sanity in the coming return to… whatever it is we are returning to.

constant craving

it found me yesterday, on a day I’d finally remained still long enough for it to catch up, and only then did I recall why exactly I’ve been keeping myself in constant motion.

what brought it on? I remember I glanced sideways at my bookcase from where I sat, cross-stitching a new cushion cover on my bed. my eyes landed on a book I haven’t touched for years. ostensibly, its premise is how to live a good life on the cheap, but really it’s about the author’s own adventures in doing so. glamour and elegance and thrift stores. a struggling but plucky artist takes on New York City in the 1990s, wearing a vintage floral sundress on a crowded subway in the summer heat with no bra. and I’m sorry, but you can just tell without even googling her that she’s skinny and conventionally beautiful, and that explains a lot.

anyway. this is not about that book, which I’ll reread someday maybe. this is not about the cushion cover I’m embroidering, with its geometric lines and bold, saturated colours to match my handmade blanket. this is not about mediterranean-inspired recipes made with fresh, clean ingredients. this is not about sustainable-living blogs and books; a plastic-free and organic mason-jar aesthetic; minimalism and quality vintage clothes that fit just so; the exact right beauty routine and products; a bluetooth speaker that looks just like an elegant old-fashioned radio.

this isn’t about any of those things in particular — it’s actually about the endless well of hunger that opens suddenly in me, the ground dropping perilously from beneath my feet. it’s nostalgia for a time and place and feeling I’ve never actually had but have vividly imagined. it’s like the craving for coffee while you are drinking a cup of coffee, like longing for summer in mid-July. I’m so hungry for the richness of life, for what could potentially be, that I can’t feel what is. I have the sneaking suspicion that it was all supposed to be so much more everything than this. and that’s when I start restlessly skimming magazines and blogs and instagram and shopping sites: looking for all that everything I feel I’ve lost or missed or is just over the horizon.

I’ve been keeping busy for the last six weeks, learning how to be a person who rides her bike to and from work, hauls around heavy trees, gets muddy every day, is outside rain or shine. that’s been good, and for a while I mistook it for the cure. but the hunger, the nostalgia, the loneliness is waiting for me whenever I stop moving and stay still: I just seem to want so much. I have a lot of ideas about how I want things to be, and they all seem to centre on a certain vibrancy of sensory and emotional experience.

lately I’ve been thinking often of the first summer after I discovered meditation and Buddhism. damn, was I ever high on my own supply at that time, and I’m sure I must have been terribly self-righteous and annoying to be around. but I thought I had found the answer at last, that I’d never be hungry again. my first experiences of mindfulness felt so good. I was also writing diligently in those days, every morning in the sunlit botanical lobby of the Parkside Hotel. and oh, my life was just a terrible mess in many ways right then, and it would catch up with me by August, but what stands out in memory is that sense of liquid, bright lucidity that I still call in my thoughts the river. both in meditating and in writing fiction, I am one with the river; I am present with the flow of experience; I am dissolved into all things.

as I weather this pandemic year and counting, I’ve come to a new understanding of how my hunger(stalgia) and the river relate to each other. that is, that they are antithetical: one cannot exist in the presence of the other. that hunger is what blocks me from writing fiction or dropping all the way into meditation these days by keeping my mind focused on self-interested desire. that I can feed that void in me with all the indulgences and experiences I can afford, but the only thing that can truly satiate it is to be in the river, which I haven’t been able to access much lately due to all the hunger.

oh, it’s precarious to navigate a human heart. it’s very tricky to finally come to terms with how bottomless desire can be. I want this thing, and it seems like if I get it I’ll finally be free and satisfied at last. but lo and behold, along comes another thing and once again I am burning up with the need to have or experience it. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to live in the river like I did that summer of 2017 — it strikes me that it was a type of novice’s grace. I think to return to that transcendent clarity, I’ll need to invest in and work at it. most likely, I’ll need to requisition the resources I’ve currently been putting into keeping my hunger at bay.

perhaps it’s not surprising that the pandemic has made it seem so much harder: the river always felt like a function of deep connection with the world around me. it felt like getting swallowed up in the vast context, where it’s so clear I am a mere atom of a drop in the endless water. fiction, too, has always felt that deep to me. it was easier to access both in a library, in a coffee shop, on a bench in Chinatown, or in a meditation classroom with the feeling of twenty other souls concentrating on their own breath. no product or lifestyle could ever supply that veritable firehose of connection, of love, of presence, of source. here in its relative absence for over a year, I can hardly help but to crave.

adventures in discipline

that title makes it sound quite a bit sexier and more exciting than it actually is: I’ve always admired people who demonstrate great personal discipline; people who do challenging, stimulating things on the regular just because they decided to, and without flagging when it feels haaard.

most unfortunately, self-discipline is simply not my jam. no quantity of carrots or threatening sticks has ever effectively motivated me to do something unless I wanted to do it, for whatever reason. fortunately, however, devotion does happen to be my jam, and what I’ve been realizing lately is how close and intertwined those two siblings are.

I landed a part-time job at a local garden centre and nursery this week. it’s quite far from my neighbourhood, tucked into a small stretch of farmland that is well off the beaten track of my usual ramblings. it could take me around an hour, maybe more, to bus out there. but the city spent the last two years installing bike lanes that run pretty much from my front door to the two regional trails I could take out to the nursery. when I first saw the ad for a seasonal position, into my mind flashed a delicious image: Ideal Summer Me, tanned and strong, cycling out to work alongside the ocean and through the woods. spending the day lugging trees and shrubs around, talking to people about plants, caring for and being near growing things. maybe socializing a little bit with coworkers, and riding home again in the bright gold evening sun, zipping along the trails, maybe with a cute bike basket full of farm-grown eggs and veggies. feeling useful, purposeful, healthy, fit and badass, while (ya know) also looking fabulous.

of course, Ideal Me is always up to something — and for the most part, I tend to let those imaginings come and go. “maybe someday, but not now,” I tell myself a bit wistfully. “I’m just not disciplined enough to follow through.” but the vision stayed with me for a few days, impinging frequently on my awareness. one result of this pandemic year has been that I don’t feel as inclined to put off living as I used to do. I don’t take for granted that I’ll have endless opportunities for personal fulfillment. I have less patience with the fears that pin me down and hold me still.

it’s true: I lack discipline. if I don’t want to do something, I won’t do it. I don’t need this job, and it would be easier not to work right now. it would certainly be easier to work somewhere closer to home, and it would still be easier to take the bus.

but I do have abundant devotion. if I want something, if I believe in it, if I am interested in it — I’ll find a way. I’ll arrange things to make it possible. I will commit. and so it is that I have spent the last few days securing that job and getting my bike ready. yesterday, in the warm sunshine, I walked the entire length of the route. it is even more lovely than I could have imagined. I got out my helmet, bought and installed a new bell. I bought a pack of face wipes to stick in my backpack for swiping after a sweaty ride. I do not have a cute basket on the front to fill with farm-fresh eggs and veggies, but that may come in time.

I’m committing to what I always commit to: my elusive, ever-changing glimpse of what life could be if I made it that way. I’m committing to belief in my own creativity, my ability to bend and manoeuvre and coax the world into the shape of that golden, ideal moment so that I may inhabit it for a time. I’m committing to my own power of manifestation.

life is short, but I can make life good in those few important ways. I can ride my bike along the trails, even if I’m out of practice and it takes me twice the time it should. I can craft a spring and summer where I’m happier and more fulfilled than I have been anytime recently. I can take the dirt I’m given and sow myself a garden there, take the baggage I’ve accumulated and unpack it into a home. I can take the time I have and spin it into a memory of light, sun, strength and movement.

the dream changes.

it’s mid-Sunday afternoon and I’m at home in my apartment. the sky outside is calm and pearly grey. we’ve had a couple almost-sunny days of late, and the world is waking up, greening. a pan of (keto) brown-butter blondies is cooling on my table, filling the room with the scent of caramel. I meant to make brownies, but burnt out extremely early in the day and could not contemplate going to the store for cocoa powder. I’ve been socializing quite a bit more than average this past week. last night, Sam came over, and I outdid myself on the cooking front: balsamic zucchini noodles with creamy sauce, roasted butternut squash, toasted walnuts with sage and caramelized onions (served layered in a bowl with a healthy scoop of ricotta).

I have markedly levelled up my cooking over the last year, and that’s what got me thinking this morning. I used to find the idea of dinner parties unbearably pretentious and overwhelming, along with hosting people in general. it belonged in the ever-expansive category of “grown-up shit I will never ever do”, and back then I defined myself mostly by nots and nevers.

now the idea of gathering friends around a table in my home (when I picture this, I imagine a home I don’t yet possess: real kitchen, capacious wooden table, four or more chairs) and settling in with a good meal, lots of wine, deep conversation and belly laughs, board games afterward — well, it sounds like paradise. I want to create that, although I remember a time when it was totally uninteresting to me.

and even right there in the seed of that imaginary dinner party: the idea of the home I envision hosting it in. I used to think I would be happy enough living in a little studio apartment forever. what more could a single person need? as long as the world exists outside my door for when I get restless, why do people insist on more than one room? why ask for more? and yet, here I am a couple years deep into home-ownership fantasies. true, it’s not like I want a huge place. but a lawn would be nice (I would dig it up and plant pollinator-friendly clover), and a backyard patio with string lights. a garden and some trees, a living room, kitchen and bedroom.

and I used to think, somewhat abstractly, that I could be content getting by on a shoestring. but as my fantasy home life develops, I’ve been coming around to the idea that I’m going to need a real income. and for that, I’m most likely going to need a more solid career. and to be honest, if I want to be healthy and strong, I’m going to need dental care too. not sure what this says about me, but I guess some part of my younger self thought I could just skip all that stuff and fly by the seat of my pants forever, living the dream. writing in all my spare moments, making enough to pay the bills, enjoying mostly the free pleasures on offer.

but the dream changes. and then it changes again.

somewhere, on some long-discarded cassette tape, I believe my parents got five-year-old me on record stating categorically that I would never a) get a tattoo, b) get any piercings, and c) fail to dress appropriately for cold weather. I think we all know how those promises turned out, although I held to my word for longer than I wanted to. similarly, in my twenties, I thought I wanted as unconventional a life as possible. I very much believed, for example, that it was likely I would never want to have kids. I certainly believed I would never want to get married. responsibility! conformity! captivity! I held myself above and beyond such quotidian things.

which is why it seems surprising that I recently spent an entire day researching everything there is to know about how to adopt a child. and also, why it seems surprising that when I consider, I feel like adopting is something I have always wanted — very much, very deeply — even though I don’t recall specifically imagining it in the past. furthermore, I’ve known for some time that I do want a committed partnership. I don’t care about a wedding, but a “marriage”, whether officially sanctioned or not, is absolutely something I want. I know that I can go it alone and be happy, but… if I don’t have to?

and just like that, this is how I imagine my future now. it’s where I am going, and it feels right.

the truth is, I am ambitious. it’s hard to put it out on main street when my ambitions are things I am uncertain I will be able to attain. a good job, a house, a kid, a loving partner. will I regret stating for the record that I want these things (now, in late February 2021) if it turns out I can’t have them? even declaring to the world that I want to be a dinner party host extraordinaire, here in the mid-pandemic landscape, feels risky and frustrating. maybe someday I’ll have that house et cetera, but no friends to fill it up with. maybe I’ll get a good job and still be cooking balsamic zucchini noodles and roasted butternut squash for one. maybe things won’t work out, and I’ll be sadder for having let myself dream.

but it doesn’t matter now. all that matters is to know that the dream changes. who I am changes. what I want changes, and it should, and it’s right to let myself grow. it’s right to redefine what exactly makes up a big life. a rich life. a bold life. it’s right to recalibrate my decisions to align with the changing path ahead. I hope that I will always let myself change my mind.

together.

every morning between eight and nine, my next door neighbour opens her blinds.

because our windows are adjacent at a square angle, and because there are extremely few places for me to be at any time of day anymore, I am almost always witness to this event. it has become a way by which I mark time. we are on friendly terms, but I don’t know her name. yet every morning, between eight and nine, she raises her blinds and stands for a minute, looking out to the west down our quiet street. framed by the daylight behind her, she arches her back and stretches. and it’s not like I’m watching watching, but I still see — and sometimes it is the closest thing to contact with another human being that I experience all day.

I miss people. I miss their humanity, their fragility. I miss mediocre social occasions, the kind you make an excuse to leave early. I miss spaces of hubbub and commotion. the shrieking hinge-squeak of a door in my other neighbour’s apartment used to drive me crazy, corkscrewing through our shared wall, but now I am incredibly grateful for the reminder that another life is unfolding right on the other side of the divide, that I am not alone. I miss the smell of someone’s else jacket; miss the waft of somebody’s perfume as they brushed by.

I used to walk by the library after dark sometimes, and look down through the sidewalk-level windows to the reference section. people, heads bent over their laptops or books, stationed at the carrels — and more often than not, at least one would be asleep with their head laid on their arms or bag. I would feel such an upswelling of love for these random strangers. what is it about the universal back of the neck, exposed, the hunch of a shoulder, the curve of a spine, that provokes such exquisite tenderness?

these days, the library is closed and those who might have slept there sleep in cold tents in the city’s parks, to be chased and insulted by property-owning neighbours.

on March 14, 2020, Sam and I stood in line at Pearson International waiting to go through Canadian customs with thousands of other travellers. it was a harrowing day, but in my exhaustion I remember looking around with clear eyes and knowing: this is the closest I may be to this many other human beings for a long time. the surge and press of humanity, the wailing babies and sniping couples; everyone frustrated and furious and bored. I remember thinking: all of these are my people. the anxiety and tension in the air were palpable. everyone wanted only to get home, feel safe, and be done with waiting in line.

I miss concerts and clubs and sporting events. I miss strangers. I miss waiting for my order at a coffee shop. I miss awkwardness and the dance of politeness; I miss overhearing snatches of dialogue; and I miss those rare but illuminating conversations with someone you cross paths with once and then never see again.

and this is just to say that it is a loss, this last year, and its attendant grief is ongoing. but as long as my neighbour keeps opening her blinds between eight and nine, to stretch and greet the day; as long as people still walk their dogs by the ocean; as long as there are small acts of generosity and solidarity and eye-crinkled smiles above masked mouths and noses —

I can hold out until the time when we can stand together again.