smiling strangers

If ever I find myself having some negative thoughts about strangers, or feel my attitude start to turn a little sour, I will have to remind myself to remember something. There are so many kind-hearted people all around, and a sure-fire way to spot them in the crowd is to hobble around on crutches. Everywhere I have ''walked'' for the past six days, I have been faced with smiles, sympathy-eyes, offers of assistance, doors held open, arms held out, looks of concern, coffee delivery and endless words like ''j'espère que tu n'a pas loin a traverser'' or ''I once busted my knee up too, and I know how much crutches suck''. I feel like even though it's precarious to crutch through the slush, there are enough people watching me and waiting to see what is going to happen, that I'll somehow be caught if I fall (again). Or at least helped up or something. People are sweet.
Today was the first day that I caught my positive attitude fading, because I was getting so sweaty in my struggling and I kept remembering how good it feels to walk home from work listening to music and enjoying the fading daylight and just having a spring in my step, and getting so frustrated because I can't do that. It's an incredible thing to have legs that work, which you can push extra hard to make them strong and flexible. It's amazing to be able to jump up to grab something, or to sit cross-legged or to put on your own socks. Or just forget that your legs just do work for you and you don't even have to think about it. I guess it's good to try to think about that stuff when you have it to appreciate, and I know that I do that too. I think about it especially now though, that I have a bit of a challenge to overcome. It's really not that bad and there are many good things coming from it. My upper body is exercising in ways it hasn't since July, I have been sleeping so soundly by the night nighttime rolls around and I am lying down and I automatically get a spot whenever I take transit. But it's the best being the object of all this smiling and so thanks to all of those people for all of that kindness, it's really reassuring.

tea with eva b.

got lost a little while in the stacks and piles of things bringing my inner taurus packrat out kicking and grabbing and no i can't even wear earrings but i want those dangling things and probably i will never wear that but gosh it's so pretty and i guess i am pretty much flat broke but still i guess it's okay to get just this and this and okay this too. the tea was free. walking home then swinging that bag of loot i find myself dancing a bit at every red lit corner and smiling at every stranger and then home mooz is a purrbag and i am eating pickles and rolling around ideas about summer and the future is wide open and time time time is not even going as fast as it usually feels but feels just right...

blame it on my wild heart

It began with one cold glass of leftover wine. Something fancy that you picked up for dinner that night. It emptied when you came over first, saying you were feeling funny and you didn't know why and we listened to those songs and awaited the evening. Then you came bearing gifts like you always seem to, funny shoes and hot drink holders and we delved into those bottles, admiring Mooz and feeling cozy and trying to figure the camera timer to have a souvenir image of us three like this before you go off and away to your love boat. Then you came over, rang someone else's buzzer and wandered the halls until you you called and came in the door to find us listening to Jay Z croon about new york, three winecheeked girls. Making sailboat plans and travel dreams and then you came next in your professor getup, and I may have told you how I felt about you when we first met this time two years ago, but maybe not. Funny night blurs around, small space filled tight with lovely faces and music and wine and beer and snacks and the mission, as always, to find that one song that everyone knows and loves. Was it amazing grace? Maybe knows, but what's the song that everyone loves too? Settling down and leaving and singing quietly as you figure out the songs that you haven't played in awhile and a shy singsong makes me smile even brighter about you. A dream day ensues where I can't muster up enough to really awaken, but 10pm rolls around and I finally venture out into the busy night, the crowded streets, the lights and music and the coming night. Coffee and a full subway car, the walk to your place, the dep who encourages me to buy six cans instead of four. Both of us still wrecked but dressed up pretty, listening to french music on the radio and then nothing as we drink and dream and sit and smoke and then you come over too and we suit up to hit the streets once more. Bus shelter waiting, flask and cola, missing the bus, Pierre the cabbie takes us to the place where the line up is giant but we get friendly with you two who share your brandy sip and and we wait with frozen toes until we enter this crazy zoo of night creatures who amalgamate so late in the evening to escape real time and dive deep into this dream of music and braincandy and dance dancing close together and by ourselves and just lose time and just sweat and just let me put your bank card in my bag i'll keep it safe, I promise. Then after that dream for hours you stop the music because that's the rules and you open your yellow duffle bag and share your rations of snacks and juice and supplies to keep you going and we three walk back out into the night which seems less cold and we wander through the glowing bulbs and decide that we can't just end the night, can't sleep, don't want to end this time and so we go underground again, it's the early morning and only a couple of people are awake and out and we are being silly making ourselves at home in there, the filterless peache smokes, the photobooth where we sit on your lap and squeeze into that frame, caught off guard in four funny photographs, then get onto an empty car and rumble two stops over and creep into my house where Mooz is puzzled but purrs and we eat those orange slices and embark on another vegetable journey even though it's 7:30am and we are all crazy and wildhearted and we laugh our heads off at all of the absurdities and things breathe and pulse and grow and shake and we laugh and my eyes water and we are floating once more into a dream state so we make a nest or was it a coccoon and we drift through our crazy imaginations into something like sleep. It was daytime, still is daytime when we wake and then it becomes dark and you leave to get some shit done and you and I are laying in the dark in separate rooms having a conversation and trying to convince ourselves to maybe move until we finally decide to eat some mexican food so we venture out again, feeling rich or just not caring and feeling anxious with our nerves shot and our heads on backwards and we enter this crazy place with strange music where maybe we imagined those barking dogs and the beer and the beans and the nachos are just going down, and we laugh at the man whose eyes are closed thinking maybe he's been just as wild but nope he is praying and we laugh about this until we cry. You fill up my already full cup with just one drop and this is also too much to handle and you say isn't it amazing, the pleasure that we get from our imaginations and yes this is true and thank goodness that we have each other to laugh with, we laugh about the little old ladies at the table beside us picturing ourselves when we are old and we cut our long brown hair short and sit drinking beer in a mexican restaurant, we laugh about the idea of tauri on drugs. And although we are loopy we are not ready to face home and the end and so we go for abricot hookah and share one more pitcher, and talk about life and laugh about everything and still the end can't arrive and so we venture to that favourite dive, facing reality as that little hill stretches our lungs and singing i'se the b'y and then taking in those lovely blugrass performers once more, less loopy than the first time but fuzzy edges and familiar faces and funny people and then we are outside and I have seen the beginning of the end and it has called to me and so I make my way to go, we are talking to Bob who is making fun of the nasty cigarettes that I can't even give away to the down and outs and I am showing strangers my beautiful cat friend and then I am treking home so fast and finally excited about giving life a rest, I eat a sandwich and lay day dreaming until finally I give in and get back into bed and dream wildly through a twelve hour sleep. Oh my goodness.

park light, ice walk, nice day

Walking round the park in that golden light of afternoon, my favourite light. Every step spent looking at the iced over ground, tangible possibility of falling, so walking very slowly so to still take in the sights of this Tuesday evening, fourth day off. One man slips and his hand held skates take flight in different directions. His fall is so heavy and crashing, I take my headphones off and wait to see. He is quick onto his feet and sprite in his recovery so I just put Yeasayer back into my ears and keep to my careful moseying. I am smiling at the skaters on the half melted pond, the rosey cheeked hockey players, sticks over shoulders, the babies being pushed about on wheels. Feeling like smiling at the whole world because it has been smiling at me, especially now when this sort of light is shining on me and on everything.

beautiful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFIMs-1W7W0

morning chat

Sometimes talking to your Mum in the sunlight on a Saturday morning while drinking coffee and playing fetch with the cat is all it takes to restore that sense of goodness and that feeling of home. Thank goodness for Mums and sunlight and Saturdays and coffee and cats.

slowly settle in

On New Year's day in the morning I lay in bed and felt my body shudder and try to recover. You brought me a cup of weak coffee, milky white but still hot. I lay in the sunlight and let it warm my hand and I watched the ribbon of steam fold and unravel like a corkscrew. I watched it in amazement, really. Thought about the air in that room, ever-present but never really in my thoughts. Thought about currents and temperature, liquid versus solid, particles and waves, and then thought about my lungs, my veins, and my breathing, pulsing, heaving body. I took a sip. Then I watched the cup some more, until the coffee had turned tepid and the ribbon sighed and dissipated.

Walked up to the top of Mont Royal in the light of yesterday's afternoon. The just-thawed paths are hard again, and so slick with ice. Everyone's arms stretch out for balance, and their feet shuffle clumsily and their faces are smiling because it's like they are eight again and skating on the ground. The police people go by, atop majestic dark horses. The weight of them has crushed a scattering of oval holes in the iced pathway, in which I step to keep my balance as we wind up and up.

I feel my rosy cheeks and wipe my sniffling nose on the back of my mitten. My springy lungs feel stretched out and hot, yet my body is thankful because this high winter air is filling me up to the brim with all kinds of things. And to look out at a city stretched out, surrounded by water and distant mountains. We drink our vending machine cafe mocha and imagine this landscape before it was populated with people and industry. The mountain way over there would have been some kind of destination. To get there, we would have walked straight that-a-way. Crossed the water in a great canoe, or maybe by front-crawl. But we are here, now, and the light is fading. We wind down that mountain, back into the dirty streets and home to hot peppermint tea and a purring cat.

You left this morning, setting out for an adventure that will keep you away for awhile. Mooz has been looking out the window and I find myself doing the same. But I know that time is just going, and that there are plenty of ways to fill up time. This new year is one in which I would like to settle and unravel, to figure and find, to keep learning. So, twothousandandeleven, good morning! I am making you a quilt.