pg 48

and for once i wake up when i’m supposed to and get out of bed straight away to celebrate. oatmeal and chocolate milk in my underwear in the kitchen when liz comes in and tells me to put on some pants. i say no no no. and then the internet for half an hour before a subway ride that makes me question the world we’re living in where so many people cram themselves so close for so long. someone touches my butt and i touch someone else’s butt. a lot of butt touching. a lot of shifting. up the stairs and out into the world. a short coffee line and a walk along the street. i see varsity stadium’s winter blimp has deflated and smile with the realization that this means it’s really summer. a skip in my step to celebrate. making it to the library 3 minutes after it opens is a good feeling, a better feeling than making it to the library 5 minutes early like yesterday. i don’t think there is a bathroom on 9th and i don’t know what i’m going to do as i don’t relish walking with a laptop and making my bladder wait. i’m sorry in advance, bladder. the television show that is soon to arrive, girls, made me laugh in bed this morning and i wondered if maybe i’m not a little bit girl. in bed this morning i watched a youtube video in which someone said they’d be gay if it wasn’t for the sleeping with men part, meaning stereotypical likes of gay men. i understand this. not because i like stereotypical gay things (this person used their like of project runway and also shoes as an example) but because there are ways of phrasing things that make the world make a little more sense. i like finding these sentences and phrasings. i’ve written only about 300 words here so far and it makes me tired the thought of having to do this over and over and over again today when writing about things like housing co-operatives and participatory research and lutheran literacy. i’m going to spend my remaining 9 minutes before i’m committed to doing work surfing the internet and finding things that make me feel good. good day to YOU.

“i always think when you really want to talk about something with someone it’s a really good idea to start with a question” -bec

so i took the test and when it came up positive i went to the beach and looked out at the waves and realized that for now i’m the only person in the world who knows about this pregnancy.

on our way to a bar in the village we’re separated when i make it onto the subway and you do not. i grab after you and laugh through the window and the people in the car smile with me. i decide to make it to the transfer point instead of getting off at the next station though i do consider it and see myself running the christie platform looking in each car for you. but i make it to the transfer point and grab a newspaper, standing against a pillar but too close to two downtown business women talking about the it department that’s going to get downsized. the newspaper has an article about the mayor’s preparing for election despite it being two years away. i read most of it and then the next car downstairs must’ve arrived for there are people streaming up the stairs and you’re toward the back. i put down the paper and see you before you see me. we walk down the platform and wait for a train which ends up taking at least ten minutes so we talk about whether it was a suicide that had delayed us. the train arrives and we enter and stay standing, only one stop to go after all.

and i can give you a lesson in why i’m wrong and why i can see it going poorly and maybe in the face of an almost certain derailment further on down the line but knowing all this still i know i have to follow through with this path aware that to redefine the success of a relationship is necessary because death together isn’t the marker of success as it always is though it can be that.

i don’t know why i feel so old when i know i’m so young. i think it’s the way the world works and the way it works so that i don’t know as well the people i used to never be able to live without. i miss all of you.

i run with reason. with the memory of chicago in my ears and heart and wonder how the ten of us will fare now that we’ve been split apart for years. there were ten of us on that trip. there are a milliion ways that the 10 of us could go and how it doesn’t seem sad until i think about the 10 of us as a whole and the years that have passed and how much fun we all had together. i slept in the closet for a few hours and then i slept in a fort for the final night. two of those people are in korea. two of those people are in vancouver. one is in toronto. another in waterloo. another in stratford. another in simcoe. the other maybe in hamilton. the other in alymer. that’s ten. that’s it. and there are other examples of a group that was once together so tight but life intervened. as it will and will continue to. we don’t know where the truth of it all is but i do, deep inside the connection that comes with a group of people, some almost strangers brought together in a moment by chicago chili dogs. we’ll never know each other again but we will find similar energy in the most surprising of places.

the world looks different when my friends get older. tonight out and one of them gets a stomach ache that won’t be solved by the tea she orders and so leaves early. it leaves the two of us. the three of us have a history that doesn’t have a place for talking about. it could be talked about but what’s the point, we’re so much older now. it hurts a little bit when the conversation dies with these people. how can it when i know them so well or used to and how talk never dies these days with the people in my life. the national soothes things on the subway ride home. the three of us know it’s dying and it makes me sad. i know so clearly the memories of having everything to say to these people and now years later it feels forced and i’m empty. how we grow and change and how i can balance the feelings of knowing these are the people i think are closest to me and yet the nature of our encounters now tell a different story. do, will, these people understand me. i’m going forward and meeting and learning from new people that put these people in the past when my heart says this shouldn’t be the case. or maybe this is what happens to us who have known each other for years. what do they think of me i wonder when i know what i think of them and question if that’s actually who they are. the world is lonely and the big and i don’t know that i’m not alone.

“don’t worry about your mother come live with me.”
-one guy to another guy walking by the front porch

i’d like to know the streetcar tonight, cut off the subway early and make up the time from walking east. this night is not what i thought it would be and that’s okay. there isn’t a pressure to be at home and move and dance and push and split the world. why would we need to think collectively when two of us are going to the movies and the rest will be staying home and to themselves. the type while holding a cigarette, the intoxication of knowing this woman more and deeper and seeing her more often. the world looks alive and there are more choices when there are none, the grass greener the people friendlier. night doesn’t have to be a bad thing and a night spent quickly, unto itself but with a friend. a movie that could turn out to be the beginning of a new way of looking at the world. this could be it. i could be two hours, three hours away from being a completely different person and all because of this movie. what it will tell me about life and what i will be inspired to do afterwards. everything will smell of success at first before returning to way exactly like we have now, ups and downs, patient moments and frantic ones. i don’t know this city by car as i do by foot and by bike, by transit. will i come to have one. will this come to be the city in which i live. for the rest of my life or will we move. will we take off, further, to the mountains and the truth. i don’t know what it would be to know this person. i’ve known someone before. i appreciate sarcasm as i do an assured sense of self. it’s intoxicating. it’s, well, where does it come from when it seems so rare most of the time. it’s sexy. it’s the beginning and the past. it’s getting stoned and writing on your front porch while a bunch of folks sit in your kitchen waiting for the one to wake up, come out of their room and disperse what they think their brains want. and i’m not welcome. it’s okay but it’s not when i start from an emotional place and not a rational one. what’s wrong with me when that happens? or rather, how does that happen when at the same time rationally the point is clear and understood. the mind and the body are ridiculous things. and how, though i feel them, the words and the ‘insights’ can read as though i am fifteen with dreads and stoned for the first time, having my blind blown by simple life. but then again that is a window into that idea of feeling one way and knowing the other way is actually true. that i can feel okay with making me statements but knowing these statements read like obvious stoneries. not completely the same because it’s not a one or the other example. okay writing that now i know that this isn’t making sense outside of myself as it won’t make sense when i come back to it tomorrow. it’s fleeting already gone. changing the way i think about punctuation and commas, reading like we’d speak. learning. teaching. growing. loving. or to liz: living, loving, learning that’s what it’s all about. look and learn.