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So here's the thing: I spent a reasonable amount of this last year in a lot of pain. Lots of people did. A lot of bad things happened this year for a lot of people I both know and don't, and the general consensus seems to be that 2011 can go screw itself.
And a lot of bad things happened to me too, y'know? It came in with funerals and it's going out with funerals, and I spent at least two months of it grieving so hard I was dead in my head and dead in my heart and had to crawl my way out of the fiercest depression I've even contemplated in years, and it was a slow damn crawl. I failed at relationships right and left. There are people I love I'm worried about right now. There were people I cared about who proved themselves not to be who I thought, and not in good ways, and it broke my heart. There was a shocking amount of random malice in the air. There were some very cherished illusions that I had to finally let go, and they broke my heart too, and I don't think I've slept well or peacefully for a long time now.
But, y'know, here's what I remember:
This year I taught one of my (suddenly, startlingly) dearest friends how to eat passionfruit under the totem poles in Stanley Park. I saw the Pacific Ocean and the crows and seabirds wheeling over it at sunset, and hugged redwood trees. I wandered along Queen West at three in the morning on Nuit Blanche, singing nineties songs with one equally drunk friend and one bemusedly sober one, and waved like the Queen at Parkdale from the second-floor balcony at the Gladstone. I stayed up all night at City Hall to watch stranger after stranger give deputations on how they love this city fiercely, and how much it needed to be preserved, drinking coffee that a stranger bought us all like it was absolutely nothing, and felt the thing that the G20 weekend broke inside me quietly, softly mend. I threw a long, loud, thorough kind of party for my birthday that didn't let up until past last call, and then wandered through the Annex sitting on picnic benches and nosing through alleyways until 4:30 in the morning while the person beside me chain-smoked cigarettes and talked about the things you talk about in the dark. I stood in the dark kitchen of CSI Annex passing around a bottle of wine with people I only know from volunteering together and talking about the future of urban agriculture in this city, all in the remains of the most excellent fundraiser we'd all helped put together.
I went, unexpectedly, to New York to be An Author. I went, unexpectedly, to King West to be An Author. I realized from how everyone was acting about this book that holy shit, I am An Author, and I'd better get used to it fast, and that this might turn out to be very, very good after all.
I saw a lot of music. I discovered some terrifyingly good bands. I saw a double rainbow over Coxwell Avenue on Victoria Day, on the way to the beach for fireworks. I wrote. I struggled with words and they fought me and, here and there, they came clear in bursts of light and poured poetry out between my fingers.
I met good people. I reconnected with good people. I kissed some dead gorgeous boys under bumping umbrellas; in front of silent movies flickering on the TV screen.
The Roommate and I took long summer evening walks in Christie Pits, and I lay in the grass while she did goofy tai chi moves and talked theoretical psych, and I watched the bats wheel cautiously in the sky as the night came in. I saw weddings. I saw new baby pictures. I set things in motion I won't be able to undo.
I walked up Brunswick Avenue from the market, or from work, or from wherever out late I'd been, and reached up, and ran my fingers along the bottom of each curling leaf.
And...that's all I remember. All I remember is that I'm alive, and that while I have a funeral to go to tomorrow, tonight is steak for dinner, warm houses and good company, champagne with some of my dearest.
Isn't that just the oddest thing?
Stay good, loves. Happy New Year. Drink to all the things that aren't funerals tonight, and I'll see you on the other side.
And a lot of bad things happened to me too, y'know? It came in with funerals and it's going out with funerals, and I spent at least two months of it grieving so hard I was dead in my head and dead in my heart and had to crawl my way out of the fiercest depression I've even contemplated in years, and it was a slow damn crawl. I failed at relationships right and left. There are people I love I'm worried about right now. There were people I cared about who proved themselves not to be who I thought, and not in good ways, and it broke my heart. There was a shocking amount of random malice in the air. There were some very cherished illusions that I had to finally let go, and they broke my heart too, and I don't think I've slept well or peacefully for a long time now.
But, y'know, here's what I remember:
This year I taught one of my (suddenly, startlingly) dearest friends how to eat passionfruit under the totem poles in Stanley Park. I saw the Pacific Ocean and the crows and seabirds wheeling over it at sunset, and hugged redwood trees. I wandered along Queen West at three in the morning on Nuit Blanche, singing nineties songs with one equally drunk friend and one bemusedly sober one, and waved like the Queen at Parkdale from the second-floor balcony at the Gladstone. I stayed up all night at City Hall to watch stranger after stranger give deputations on how they love this city fiercely, and how much it needed to be preserved, drinking coffee that a stranger bought us all like it was absolutely nothing, and felt the thing that the G20 weekend broke inside me quietly, softly mend. I threw a long, loud, thorough kind of party for my birthday that didn't let up until past last call, and then wandered through the Annex sitting on picnic benches and nosing through alleyways until 4:30 in the morning while the person beside me chain-smoked cigarettes and talked about the things you talk about in the dark. I stood in the dark kitchen of CSI Annex passing around a bottle of wine with people I only know from volunteering together and talking about the future of urban agriculture in this city, all in the remains of the most excellent fundraiser we'd all helped put together.
I went, unexpectedly, to New York to be An Author. I went, unexpectedly, to King West to be An Author. I realized from how everyone was acting about this book that holy shit, I am An Author, and I'd better get used to it fast, and that this might turn out to be very, very good after all.
I saw a lot of music. I discovered some terrifyingly good bands. I saw a double rainbow over Coxwell Avenue on Victoria Day, on the way to the beach for fireworks. I wrote. I struggled with words and they fought me and, here and there, they came clear in bursts of light and poured poetry out between my fingers.
I met good people. I reconnected with good people. I kissed some dead gorgeous boys under bumping umbrellas; in front of silent movies flickering on the TV screen.
The Roommate and I took long summer evening walks in Christie Pits, and I lay in the grass while she did goofy tai chi moves and talked theoretical psych, and I watched the bats wheel cautiously in the sky as the night came in. I saw weddings. I saw new baby pictures. I set things in motion I won't be able to undo.
I walked up Brunswick Avenue from the market, or from work, or from wherever out late I'd been, and reached up, and ran my fingers along the bottom of each curling leaf.
And...that's all I remember. All I remember is that I'm alive, and that while I have a funeral to go to tomorrow, tonight is steak for dinner, warm houses and good company, champagne with some of my dearest.
Isn't that just the oddest thing?
Stay good, loves. Happy New Year. Drink to all the things that aren't funerals tonight, and I'll see you on the other side.
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green_trilobite and I've been rewatching/listening-to The Hitchhiker's Guide in its various incarnations, and because of what you said about McKillip in your last post, I've realized that Adams does the same thing; partly of course because he rewrote the story for various media, so that the same turns of phrase crop up but in different orders; it's like hearing a myth retold.
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Oh, huh. I'll have to look for that now...
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Hope things are wonderful for you guys, and yes! That you're back at some point, or I'm there!
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We aim to be there in May, as usual, and will have to make sure we see you! ^_^ I don't know what the odds are of a second trip there this year, since Japan is likely to be very expensive, but here's hoping.