Sometimes, I am disoriented.
I walked down St Hubert earlier, with Adam, the biting cold turning our faces red. My scarf was freezing to my upper lip as I breathed; my glasses kept fogging with a thin layer of ice as condensation from my exhalations froze and thawed, froze and thawed. But dizzily, I thought I was in Northbridge. My mind flashed, "We'll pass Gelare up here on the right, and then I can...no, wait..."
Stepping into the metro the other day, I waited for the recorded voice message to say "Station Ploenchit" before realizing I wasn't in Bangkok. I woke up thinking about going to yoga class and, before I opened my eyes, found myself picturing Wild Rose's courtyard, pulling down the ramp on my no-speed bicycle and chaining it to the bamboo fence. I fell asleep a few nights ago wondering why I couldn't hear the Armadale train zipping past every few minutes, and caught myself thinking They must be working on the tracks again.
Part of it is reading "The Slap", a book written by a Greek-Australian that is so vivid in its descriptions of barbecue, driving around, the slang, the attitude, that I find myself shocked when I go outside and encounter the frozen unfamiliar landscape of Canada. I think it's just so different to me, given that I haven't lived here in so very long, that my mind is compensating by throwing up all these other places I've lived and loved, in an effort to make Montreal familiar.
As I was walking towards Mont Royal earlier this evening, a flat of thirty local eggs from Jean Talon market wrapped in newspaper and rattling safely in my backpack, a man stopped me. "Excusez moi," he said, "ou est la station de metro?" Where's the metro station?
I pointed ahead of us. "C'est juste la-bas," I said. It's right over there.
At least I know where I am some of the time.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
New York and back again
The Adirondack Trailways bus from New York City to Montreal costs $84 and takes approximately 9 hours, unless you are unlucky and it is snowing through the mountains, or you have any dark-skinned people on your bus. It is a well-known and never overtly stated fact that over-land customs guards, particularly entering the United States from Canada, do not like you to be brown.
It used to be that I was frequently "randomly selected" for "screening" at airports and US border crossings. Despite my dual citizenship and tidy booklet of passports, my bizarre outfits, spurious companions, and, at the time, inscrutable bags of musical instruments and bellydancing swords meant that I was probably a drug dealer. One customs agent tried to have a heart to heart with me (this was after Burning Man, to be fair, and I was driving across the US-Canada border near Vancouver, with pink hair, pounds of dust on my car, and a bumper sticker that said "It was on fire when I got here") and said, "Do you have any narcotics in the car? You can tell me if you do. It's better if you tell me than if I just find them." Does anyone actually fall for that?
Naturally, after September 11, 2001, a slow steady bias against brown people crossing the border started up; my friend Jake said he once sat at the crossing to Vermont for 2.5 hours, while customs interrogated the dark-skinned Canadian citizen who had been born in Iran. Everyone has to get off the bus and go through screening and get back on, so the entire bus had to wait for this one guy. On my last trip to New York in November, with the Russian Mafia (don't ask), the one dark-skinned girl on the bus spent forty minutes trying to convince them that, yes, she was in a doctoral program to be a museum curator, and yes, that was a real job. They didn't believe her. They put a lookout on her file because they were convinced nobody could make a living being a curator. Probably accurate, but that's more a factor of how North America values art than a cover for a smuggling ring.
So this time, I was hanging around outside the customs stop, breathing the fresh air. The waiting room inside was full of Amish people and smelled like handmade sausages, and I'd been on the bus for about 7 hours. A young man with a tidy goatee came out and lit a cigarette. "Did they ask you a lot of weird questions?" he said.
They hadn't. For some reason, customs is always very VERY interested in my interpersonal relationships. In November, they asked me why I was going to New York. "To visit a friend." You have friends in New York? "Yes." Why are you coming from Montreal when your residential address is in Ontario? "I have friends there too." You have a lot of friends, don't you? "I guess so?" This time, I just got: Why were you in New York? "To visit friends." Do you visit them a lot? "Whenever I can?" It's nice of customs to be so concerned with how often I see my social circle and what I do while I'm there. Maybe they just wanted to be invited the next time we go for dim sum. Or I could have taken them to a museum and shown them what a curator was.
But goatee guy was olive-skinned, and I said, "What kind of questions did they ask you?"
Turns out he was Jordanian, but living in New York to get a degree in Communications at Columbia. He was obviously from a rich family -- his mother bought him the fanciest new Samsung phone for Christmas, and bought his sister a Blackberry and a jacket from Barney's. How do I know all this? He told me EVERYTHING. Chain smoking furiously, he sighed and said, "I'm really glad they didn't search me. I have a prescription bottle full of different kinds of Xanax. I already took 80mg so I could sleep on the bus." He took another puff on his cigarette. "I don't think I should do any coke tonight, after that much Xanax. I just have this crazy high tolerance, you know?"
"Maybe because you take so much of it?" I pointed out gently. He grinned.
We had a lively conversation, so much so that he sat next to me on the bus when it reloaded. He told me about his copious drug use, his heavy drinking, his mother's recent 2-month visit in his one-bedroom Upper East Side apartment (another clue that he's rich). He said he'd woken his roommate up at 5am the previous night crying because he was convinced he was fat and therefore couldn't go to Montreal.
"I would have killed you," I said.
"I knoooooow," he squealed.
On the bus, he told me about his recent HIV test (negative), and the sex education he'd received afterwards, which he was very happy about. "Did you know you shouldn't use two condoms at once?" he said, entranced. "I always do that! Not anymore! Also you're not supposed to use Vaseline for lube! That's the only thing I use!" He had a cheerful tone and pitch to his voice which I wouldn't have minded, if all the Amish people had not gotten onto our bus. Directly in front of us was a young Amish couple. The woman was holding a baby. Guaranteed they could hear our discussion of anal lubricant. I didn't even bother trying to shush my new friend.
"Just get some of that silicone stuff," I advised him. "Use a lot and you'll be fine."
He told me a bit about his love life, how he was tired of being the downlow guy for every straight man who wanted to explore his sexuality. He told me about his blind date from OKCupid, who turned out to be so boring that Jordanian guy put a Xanax in his own drink at the bar, and the date became convinced he was about to be date-raped and left. He Skyped his friend from Montreal on the spotty bus wifi. He was a bundle of energy for someone who'd just taken 80mg of Xanax.
When we got to the Gare de l'Autobus, he unloaded his bags and bags of stuff, wrapped his scarf around his head, tidied his stuff. I gave him a hug. "Good luck," I said. "I hope I don't find you passed out in a dumpster tomorrow morning."
He smiled. "That wouldn't be so bad," he said.
Some people don't like the bus. If you have the time to spare and the proper attitude, you get the best experiences.
It used to be that I was frequently "randomly selected" for "screening" at airports and US border crossings. Despite my dual citizenship and tidy booklet of passports, my bizarre outfits, spurious companions, and, at the time, inscrutable bags of musical instruments and bellydancing swords meant that I was probably a drug dealer. One customs agent tried to have a heart to heart with me (this was after Burning Man, to be fair, and I was driving across the US-Canada border near Vancouver, with pink hair, pounds of dust on my car, and a bumper sticker that said "It was on fire when I got here") and said, "Do you have any narcotics in the car? You can tell me if you do. It's better if you tell me than if I just find them." Does anyone actually fall for that?
Naturally, after September 11, 2001, a slow steady bias against brown people crossing the border started up; my friend Jake said he once sat at the crossing to Vermont for 2.5 hours, while customs interrogated the dark-skinned Canadian citizen who had been born in Iran. Everyone has to get off the bus and go through screening and get back on, so the entire bus had to wait for this one guy. On my last trip to New York in November, with the Russian Mafia (don't ask), the one dark-skinned girl on the bus spent forty minutes trying to convince them that, yes, she was in a doctoral program to be a museum curator, and yes, that was a real job. They didn't believe her. They put a lookout on her file because they were convinced nobody could make a living being a curator. Probably accurate, but that's more a factor of how North America values art than a cover for a smuggling ring.
So this time, I was hanging around outside the customs stop, breathing the fresh air. The waiting room inside was full of Amish people and smelled like handmade sausages, and I'd been on the bus for about 7 hours. A young man with a tidy goatee came out and lit a cigarette. "Did they ask you a lot of weird questions?" he said.
They hadn't. For some reason, customs is always very VERY interested in my interpersonal relationships. In November, they asked me why I was going to New York. "To visit a friend." You have friends in New York? "Yes." Why are you coming from Montreal when your residential address is in Ontario? "I have friends there too." You have a lot of friends, don't you? "I guess so?" This time, I just got: Why were you in New York? "To visit friends." Do you visit them a lot? "Whenever I can?" It's nice of customs to be so concerned with how often I see my social circle and what I do while I'm there. Maybe they just wanted to be invited the next time we go for dim sum. Or I could have taken them to a museum and shown them what a curator was.
But goatee guy was olive-skinned, and I said, "What kind of questions did they ask you?"
Turns out he was Jordanian, but living in New York to get a degree in Communications at Columbia. He was obviously from a rich family -- his mother bought him the fanciest new Samsung phone for Christmas, and bought his sister a Blackberry and a jacket from Barney's. How do I know all this? He told me EVERYTHING. Chain smoking furiously, he sighed and said, "I'm really glad they didn't search me. I have a prescription bottle full of different kinds of Xanax. I already took 80mg so I could sleep on the bus." He took another puff on his cigarette. "I don't think I should do any coke tonight, after that much Xanax. I just have this crazy high tolerance, you know?"
"Maybe because you take so much of it?" I pointed out gently. He grinned.
We had a lively conversation, so much so that he sat next to me on the bus when it reloaded. He told me about his copious drug use, his heavy drinking, his mother's recent 2-month visit in his one-bedroom Upper East Side apartment (another clue that he's rich). He said he'd woken his roommate up at 5am the previous night crying because he was convinced he was fat and therefore couldn't go to Montreal.
"I would have killed you," I said.
"I knoooooow," he squealed.
On the bus, he told me about his recent HIV test (negative), and the sex education he'd received afterwards, which he was very happy about. "Did you know you shouldn't use two condoms at once?" he said, entranced. "I always do that! Not anymore! Also you're not supposed to use Vaseline for lube! That's the only thing I use!" He had a cheerful tone and pitch to his voice which I wouldn't have minded, if all the Amish people had not gotten onto our bus. Directly in front of us was a young Amish couple. The woman was holding a baby. Guaranteed they could hear our discussion of anal lubricant. I didn't even bother trying to shush my new friend.
"Just get some of that silicone stuff," I advised him. "Use a lot and you'll be fine."
He told me a bit about his love life, how he was tired of being the downlow guy for every straight man who wanted to explore his sexuality. He told me about his blind date from OKCupid, who turned out to be so boring that Jordanian guy put a Xanax in his own drink at the bar, and the date became convinced he was about to be date-raped and left. He Skyped his friend from Montreal on the spotty bus wifi. He was a bundle of energy for someone who'd just taken 80mg of Xanax.
When we got to the Gare de l'Autobus, he unloaded his bags and bags of stuff, wrapped his scarf around his head, tidied his stuff. I gave him a hug. "Good luck," I said. "I hope I don't find you passed out in a dumpster tomorrow morning."
He smiled. "That wouldn't be so bad," he said.
Some people don't like the bus. If you have the time to spare and the proper attitude, you get the best experiences.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Fast away the old year passes
 |
| Out the front window of my apartment December 27 |
 |
| My Australian dog |
And now, even though I am ostensibly settled in Montreal, my nesting skills spreading their wings, I find myself in New York City, in someone else's house again. It was my choice to come here: I'm here to see Amanda Palmer and her musicians play Prince's "Purple Rain" and ring in the New Year with a friend I've known for four years. I'm also here to visit other friends...see a new baby, see an old baby, make some bad decisions. Nothing says "New Year's Eve" like doing things you promised yourself you wouldn't do. When I think about how I spent my last two New Year's, staying up all night with Jason in the hot Australian evening, walking the streets, buying chickens, this one seems like it might be a bit tame! I'll probably be in bed by two.
Someone should definitely take this kettle corn away from me, speaking of bad decisions. Urgh.
Friday, December 14, 2012
So, it turns out winter is a thing
 | ||
| When Canada geese attack, really slowly, and honking. |
Since then, it's basically been years of endless summer. Oh, sure, they have "winter" in Australia -- it rains and gets chilly enough for your nose to run. Some nights it even goes down to 1 or 2 degrees (this is Celsius, Americans)! Gosh! It's important to note, though, that West Australian houses don't have insulation or double glazing, so whatever the temperature is outside, that's what it is inside. When it's 2 degrees Celsius in your bedroom, I can tell you, it feels like minus 50. Everyone spends all winter huddled over these little gas heaters instead of investing in some fibreglass wall insulation. Then they get black lung from inhaling all the fumes. Then they do weird stuff like go swimming in shark-infested waters. I've just explained why Australians do all the potentially life-threatening things they do: poisoned on gas heater fumes.
So this year, I left Australia in March, which is the beginning of autumn. I went from there to Vietnam: a sweaty, sticky country with blazing sun. I hopped right over to the hot season in Thailand, and the rains started to come just as I left at the end of May, bringing me in to summer in Canada. However, I knew it was coming, and as I ticked through September, and then October, and the chill hit the air, I realized: I don't have any winter clothes anymore.
I got rid of my good boots and coats and gloves and things way back in 2009, figuring I'd get some more later when I needed them. Or, more likely, that I'd never need them again, since either global warming would hit and everywhere would be balmy and tropical, or I'd give up any idea of living in a country so gauche as to have a cold winter. Instead, my Australian visa ran out, and I was left with the option of returning to the frozen tundra of Canada, or the morally frozen tundra of the un-socialized United States. Preferring the country with universal health care, I was stuck with winter.
So now that I live in Montreal, a noticeably chilly location, I am finding myself reconsidering this whole "boot" notion. In that I need to go get some. Immediately. The boots I have are lovely boots for winter if you are in California. In fact, that's where I found them: I picked them up out of the gutter in San Francisco, a perfectly good pair of Uggs that didn't smell like urine or anything. They're not waterproof though, and, as I found out in the freak nor'easter that hit New York (and me) immediately after Hurricane Sandy at the beginning of November, they suck balls for cold wet weather. So I need waterproof boots.
But otherwise, I'm doing okay. Although I'm actually living here now, like actually with some furniture and my art about to go up on the walls and my books for the first time in five years...it feels unsettled. I've been moving so long, I don't actually trust that I won't be leaving again in two months. I flirt with the idea of buying some bread flour and then decide against it, because I don't want to leave it when I go. Go where? I'm staying here! My mind plays tricks on me, since I've been so used to nesting in other people's houses for the past nine months, a little mockingbird minimizing my impact on the space around me so I don't intrude. This is MY house now; I'm supposed to intrude. I'm supposed to make it look like me. (Well, like me and Marc, my housemate)
The Canadian cold brings back memories of childhood winters, of wrestling my car up over the Sierra Nevadas in the winter of 2008. It reminds me how long it takes to go outside -- when you need to spend ten minutes to put on your pants and then your other pants and your gloves and your mittens and scarf and hat and coat and then you have to take everything OFF when you get to the other end...let's just stay home. It reminds me of the pleasure in seeing the snowplow go by when I don't have a car to get plowed in. I don't like being cold. I don't like winter. But I think I like this place I find myself in, cold outside, but definitely, most definitely, warm inside.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
People talk to me in California
"You want to hear something neat?" the woman sitting across from me in the Planned Parenthood waiting room asked. She was blonde and pretty, in her early 40s, with a luminous Californian grin.
"Sure," I said.
"I got pregnant when I was sixteen years old," she said. "I didn't know what to do, so I went to the clinic for an abortion, but they said it was too late, four months. I would've had to go to a hospital and have an overnight stay. So instead I found a nice couple and they adopted her. She just texted me on Friday." She smiled brightly. "You want to see a picture?"
Her daughter, nineteen, looked just like her. She told me some more of the story: the younger daughter, from a relationship that was already on the way out. That they would be going to see her eldest at Christmas, that this was the first contact they'd had in ten years. That she never would have gotten the text if she had, as originally planned, been out on a date with a new boyfriend on Friday -- instead, he had told her that morning that he wasn't sure he saw a future with her, and so she was at home drinking wine when the text from her daughter came through. That he had called her the day before and said he wanted to be her boyfriend, that they were in it for the long haul. "So now I'm in here getting birth control," she said. "I think God brought my daughter back to me at exactly the right time."
Then they called her name and she went to the back rooms and I was still sitting there.
People talk to me. They always talk to me. I don't know if it's because I look non-threatening (or ridiculous, as my current sartorial style could best be described as either "deranged vagrant" or "muppet") or because people are so full of stories and nobody to listen to them, that they just spill out all over the place.
I'm back in California. I made a bad lifestyle choice, in that I became a vegetarian in Perth about a year and a half ago, and now that I am in California for an extended period of time -- California, where the cheap tacos are a dollar and the carnitas melts on your tongue and the gorgeous smoky carne asada would make you kill a man -- I have to stare mournfully at the taco trucks and pass them by. I wish I wasn't so ethically congruent. I would be chowing down on slow-cooked ribs within a second and then lying about it. Instead, I have to eat quinoa burgers with the rest of the health-obsessed. Of course, when Ray took me to Trader Joe's for my first trip in over a year, after I finished doing a happy dance, I loaded our cart up with miniature peanut butter cups, lemon and ginger snap ice cream, and pita chips. So maybe I should revise that "health" assessment.
Fortunately, since I am in San Luis Obispo, there aren't that many Mexican restaurants. Or Mexicans. Or anyone who isn't white. SLO is the whitest Californian town I have ever spent any time in; I thought San Francisco was pretty white, but SLO takes the cake. Cal Poly, the top notch engineering school in California, serenely presides on the hill over the town, and the ocean is only ten miles away; this is simultaneously a student town and a retiree town, so the vast majority of people are either under twenty or over fifty. I've been spending all my social time with Ray's Burning Man friends, though, and they definitely don't fit this demographic so at least I'm bucking the trend wherever I am.
The funny thing to me about being back in California is that although I have the attitude of a Californian (or an Australian: laid back, easygoing, prefer being barefoot and eating quinoa burgers), I walk like a New Yorker. Brisk, weaving efficiently through crowds, I know exactly where I'm going and how to get there, and god help anyone who gets in my way. Fortunately, nobody ever walks in California, so I usually have the sidewalks to myself.
I'm here in SLO until the beginning of December, with a side trip down to LA-ish over Thanksgiving, and then up to the Bay Area, and then I fly back to Canada to collect everything and finally, thankfully, settle. I have an apartment and a hydro bill waiting for me in Montreal, and despite the cold, I am so looking forward to having everything of mine in one place once again. Now all I'll be missing is my suitcase in Australia that has all my good jeans in it, but I'll at last have my books, my art, my kitchen supplies. I wish I still had my large cast-iron frying pan, but that got lost to the depths of Justin's house, along with my dance sword and my dignity. As it is, I have most of everything I own, and it will once again be in the same place, and that makes me so happy, you have no idea. I didn't realize how much I missed a sense of permanence until I set up my life to not have it for about five years.
"Sure," I said.
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| Why people trust me, I don't know. I look ridiculous. |
Her daughter, nineteen, looked just like her. She told me some more of the story: the younger daughter, from a relationship that was already on the way out. That they would be going to see her eldest at Christmas, that this was the first contact they'd had in ten years. That she never would have gotten the text if she had, as originally planned, been out on a date with a new boyfriend on Friday -- instead, he had told her that morning that he wasn't sure he saw a future with her, and so she was at home drinking wine when the text from her daughter came through. That he had called her the day before and said he wanted to be her boyfriend, that they were in it for the long haul. "So now I'm in here getting birth control," she said. "I think God brought my daughter back to me at exactly the right time."
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| Everyone could use a little gratitude du jour, right? |
Then they called her name and she went to the back rooms and I was still sitting there.
People talk to me. They always talk to me. I don't know if it's because I look non-threatening (or ridiculous, as my current sartorial style could best be described as either "deranged vagrant" or "muppet") or because people are so full of stories and nobody to listen to them, that they just spill out all over the place.
 | ||
| I loved this woman's style. |
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| 826 Brooklyn and superhero supplies. |
Fortunately, since I am in San Luis Obispo, there aren't that many Mexican restaurants. Or Mexicans. Or anyone who isn't white. SLO is the whitest Californian town I have ever spent any time in; I thought San Francisco was pretty white, but SLO takes the cake. Cal Poly, the top notch engineering school in California, serenely presides on the hill over the town, and the ocean is only ten miles away; this is simultaneously a student town and a retiree town, so the vast majority of people are either under twenty or over fifty. I've been spending all my social time with Ray's Burning Man friends, though, and they definitely don't fit this demographic so at least I'm bucking the trend wherever I am.
The funny thing to me about being back in California is that although I have the attitude of a Californian (or an Australian: laid back, easygoing, prefer being barefoot and eating quinoa burgers), I walk like a New Yorker. Brisk, weaving efficiently through crowds, I know exactly where I'm going and how to get there, and god help anyone who gets in my way. Fortunately, nobody ever walks in California, so I usually have the sidewalks to myself.
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| Are you a villain? I was. |
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Return to the homely Isle
I was born on Prince Edward Island.
The smallest of Canada's provinces (for those who don't know anything about Canada) and almost the most remote, Prince Edward Island is an hour later than Ontario in time zones and about fifty years to the side in atmosphere. Using sophisticated instruments (a map and our fingers), mom and I discovered you could probably drive around the entire Island -- like circumnavigate it -- in ten hours. This is the kind of place where everybody literally knows everybody else; the whole Island only has a population of 141,000. There is a murder rate of ZERO. Probably because you'd never get away with murdering someone if they just smacked you and said, "Aren't you Mildred Gallant's boy? I thought you were raised better than that! Go on home!"
PEI isn't BEHIND the rest of the world, exactly; it's not like it's super conservative (it's full of organic farming hippies and elderly women who go to erotic movies, sometimes even on purpose) or technologically backwards (even the most remote corners of the Island have cell coverage, and I know some people who update Facebook while farming). It's definitely sideways. It's like PEI took one look at where the rest of the world was going and said, "No thank you, we'll just stay over here with our potatoes."
The biggest industries in PEI are potatoes and lobster. And now, apparently, Taiwanese Buddhist monks, who are quietly and enthusiastically building a monastery about half an hour outside of the only major city, Charlottetown (population 60,000, most of whom know each other on sight). It is a strange and lovely place.
Since I was born here, I will forever be an Islander. I haven't lived here since 1988, but when people ask me if I'm from here, that's what they mean. My mother, on the other hand, who lived here before I was born and is now planning to retire here, will always be "from away" even if she spends the next thirty years here. We're long-lived in my family. This will probably happen. Owning property, living here year round through the brutal and solidarity-inducing winters, none of that makes a difference...BECAUSE YOU WERE BORN IN CONNECTICUT.
When I was seven or eight, the big controversy on PEI was whether or not to build the "Fixed Link": what's now called the Confederation Bridge. The longest free-standing bridge in Canada, it's 13 kms and connects PEI with the mainland so those potato deliveries can flow more smoothly. Before the bridge, there was only a ferry, and in the winter, I remember seeing little ice breaker boats cheerily allowing us to get back home so we wouldn't be stuck in New Brunswick until the thaw. When I was a kid, winter lasted approximately 297 months of the year and it got down to -40. Now, probably because of the bridge and those DAMN FOREIGNERS, winter is milder and there's less snow, less low temperatures, more confused Canada geese who forgot to migrate.
As an Islander, whether I live here or not, whether I love it or not, this is my home. It's funny to think that in a whole world of wandering and travel, I might someday end up living down the road from my oldest friend. Not that she's the oldest -- she's the same age as me -- but we've known each other literally since we were born. My mother is looking at property that is literally down the road from where M will build her future house, and where her mother's house stands right now: the bizarre hexagonal fairy house that I grew up in, reading Archie comics and staring at the poster of cloud names on the wall outside the bathroom (cumulonimbus...cirrostratus...).
For someone as crazily nostalgic as me, it seems fitting that I'm currently, literally, living in the past.
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| It looks like this. |
PEI isn't BEHIND the rest of the world, exactly; it's not like it's super conservative (it's full of organic farming hippies and elderly women who go to erotic movies, sometimes even on purpose) or technologically backwards (even the most remote corners of the Island have cell coverage, and I know some people who update Facebook while farming). It's definitely sideways. It's like PEI took one look at where the rest of the world was going and said, "No thank you, we'll just stay over here with our potatoes."
The biggest industries in PEI are potatoes and lobster. And now, apparently, Taiwanese Buddhist monks, who are quietly and enthusiastically building a monastery about half an hour outside of the only major city, Charlottetown (population 60,000, most of whom know each other on sight). It is a strange and lovely place.
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| I am totally catching lobsters RIGHT NOW. In my bathtub. |
When I was seven or eight, the big controversy on PEI was whether or not to build the "Fixed Link": what's now called the Confederation Bridge. The longest free-standing bridge in Canada, it's 13 kms and connects PEI with the mainland so those potato deliveries can flow more smoothly. Before the bridge, there was only a ferry, and in the winter, I remember seeing little ice breaker boats cheerily allowing us to get back home so we wouldn't be stuck in New Brunswick until the thaw. When I was a kid, winter lasted approximately 297 months of the year and it got down to -40. Now, probably because of the bridge and those DAMN FOREIGNERS, winter is milder and there's less snow, less low temperatures, more confused Canada geese who forgot to migrate.
 |
| A door on Water St. Of course there's a Water St. |
As an Islander, whether I live here or not, whether I love it or not, this is my home. It's funny to think that in a whole world of wandering and travel, I might someday end up living down the road from my oldest friend. Not that she's the oldest -- she's the same age as me -- but we've known each other literally since we were born. My mother is looking at property that is literally down the road from where M will build her future house, and where her mother's house stands right now: the bizarre hexagonal fairy house that I grew up in, reading Archie comics and staring at the poster of cloud names on the wall outside the bathroom (cumulonimbus...cirrostratus...).
For someone as crazily nostalgic as me, it seems fitting that I'm currently, literally, living in the past.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Chiang Mai love song
For a place that I enjoyed so much, and spent almost a month in, I haven't said anything at all about Chiang Mai. A monastery is pretty weird, right? Everyone wants to know what you're doing in there. Are you sacrificing babies to Buddha? Are you allowed to eat anything? How do monks keep their robes on? (answers: no, not really, and staples)
Chiang Mai, despite being such a touristy city that I heard someone refer to it as Farang Mai, was less exciting. Yeah, there's a lot of temples to see...but I'd just been living in one, so I didn't really need to go stare at another vihahn. You seen one ornate gilded building with carved naga on the top covered with mirrorball style glass pieces, you seen them all. Chiang Mai, for me, was pretty much an instant hometown.
I only expected to stay for two weeks. I had all these plans: I was going to stay in Chiang Mai for long enough to get re-assimilated to normal society and stop waking up at 5am to meditate, and then as soon as I'd gotten back to normal, I would go stay at Watra Songtham Kalyanee (Thailand's only feminist monastery, run entirely by fully-ordained women). I'd maybe go to Ayuthaya or maybe I might even go down to Phuket or something. I had a lot of time to kill before having to be in Bangkok for my flight to Canada on May 30. Time was a yawning gulf stretching out in front of me; I had nothing but time.
Instead, I stayed in Chiang Mai for almost a month, and seemed to fill almost every waking hour with some awesome new thing. This was probably mostly because of the spontaneous and amazing friendship circle that rose up around me -- after the first week of meditating alone, walking around alone, and working in internet cafes a lot (although I did have a nice routine going), I suddenly fell smack into a vibrant social life.
As an example of how perfect this was, I posted on the Chiang Mai couchsurfing forum looking for people who don't like drinking or staying out late, stating that I'd rather watch movies at someone's house than go to a bar, and rather do yoga than kegstands. Wave a magic wand and a week or two later I was getting invited to movie nights, making salad for dinner, and discussing asanas. Basically, it only took a few days for exactly what I wanted to land in my lap.
My Chiang Mai crew were primarily yogis -- through a complicated pathway of chatting with a teacher after class and slowly insinuating myself into activities (although this group is mostly amorphously hanging out with each other all the time: you go for dinner, they're all there...you want to go to the movies, everyone will come), I suddenly ended up being on the invite list for swimming pools, yoga practice, lunch at Pun Pun, and dinner at the macrobiotic restaurant. I was teased and hugged and welcomed and given a nickname. I was family. And then on top of the yogis, there was also Dustin, the computer film buff guy...you know, exactly who I've been best friends with my entire life. He and I went on a photo shoot adventure together (these remain the only photos I took in Chiang Mai), ate lunch, saw The Avengers, texted.
Friends made Chiang Mai amazing. Chiang Mai is pretty great, with its organic vegetarian restaurants and friendly faces, its misting machines outside restaurants and beautiful looming mountain, at the top of which Wat Doi Suthep glowers down like a white and gold deity. Chiang Mai has leafy back alleys and open, airy houses with lush backyards. Chiang Mai is pretty good. Friends made it fantastic.
I can't really tell you what it's like, except for everything I've already mentioned. It's basically the best city in the world for me except for the oppressive humidity and constant mosquitoes: there are secondhand shops, markets where you can get an all-fruit smoothie put together especially for you for only 20 baht, a vegetarian buffet with fresh local food made daily for about 10 baht a plate, art exhibits, yoga yoga yoga. I got everywhere by cycling, a rickety fixie rented from my hostel. Even the rain was warm. If you could have made a town especially for me, I don't know how different it would have been. Maybe the rain would have been made of chocolate.
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| Tiffin boxes: part of the dark rituals of Buddhism. |
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| I lived in soi 9. So did a lot of other hippies. |
I only expected to stay for two weeks. I had all these plans: I was going to stay in Chiang Mai for long enough to get re-assimilated to normal society and stop waking up at 5am to meditate, and then as soon as I'd gotten back to normal, I would go stay at Watra Songtham Kalyanee (Thailand's only feminist monastery, run entirely by fully-ordained women). I'd maybe go to Ayuthaya or maybe I might even go down to Phuket or something. I had a lot of time to kill before having to be in Bangkok for my flight to Canada on May 30. Time was a yawning gulf stretching out in front of me; I had nothing but time.
 |
| You know what's weird? Pickaninny lawn ornaments in Thailand. |
Instead, I stayed in Chiang Mai for almost a month, and seemed to fill almost every waking hour with some awesome new thing. This was probably mostly because of the spontaneous and amazing friendship circle that rose up around me -- after the first week of meditating alone, walking around alone, and working in internet cafes a lot (although I did have a nice routine going), I suddenly fell smack into a vibrant social life.
 | ||
| Usually once a day, these tuk tuk parades would go by. |
As an example of how perfect this was, I posted on the Chiang Mai couchsurfing forum looking for people who don't like drinking or staying out late, stating that I'd rather watch movies at someone's house than go to a bar, and rather do yoga than kegstands. Wave a magic wand and a week or two later I was getting invited to movie nights, making salad for dinner, and discussing asanas. Basically, it only took a few days for exactly what I wanted to land in my lap.
 |
| Very! Emphatic! Sign! |
My Chiang Mai crew were primarily yogis -- through a complicated pathway of chatting with a teacher after class and slowly insinuating myself into activities (although this group is mostly amorphously hanging out with each other all the time: you go for dinner, they're all there...you want to go to the movies, everyone will come), I suddenly ended up being on the invite list for swimming pools, yoga practice, lunch at Pun Pun, and dinner at the macrobiotic restaurant. I was teased and hugged and welcomed and given a nickname. I was family. And then on top of the yogis, there was also Dustin, the computer film buff guy...you know, exactly who I've been best friends with my entire life. He and I went on a photo shoot adventure together (these remain the only photos I took in Chiang Mai), ate lunch, saw The Avengers, texted.
 |
| Oh Buddhists. You sound creepy sometimes. |
Friends made Chiang Mai amazing. Chiang Mai is pretty great, with its organic vegetarian restaurants and friendly faces, its misting machines outside restaurants and beautiful looming mountain, at the top of which Wat Doi Suthep glowers down like a white and gold deity. Chiang Mai has leafy back alleys and open, airy houses with lush backyards. Chiang Mai is pretty good. Friends made it fantastic.
I can't really tell you what it's like, except for everything I've already mentioned. It's basically the best city in the world for me except for the oppressive humidity and constant mosquitoes: there are secondhand shops, markets where you can get an all-fruit smoothie put together especially for you for only 20 baht, a vegetarian buffet with fresh local food made daily for about 10 baht a plate, art exhibits, yoga yoga yoga. I got everywhere by cycling, a rickety fixie rented from my hostel. Even the rain was warm. If you could have made a town especially for me, I don't know how different it would have been. Maybe the rain would have been made of chocolate.
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