Weekend Installation!

I installed this :)

Another Life

A long time ago, in another life, I knew a boy. He made me happy, he made me mad, he made me obsessive, he made me calm, he affected me on just about every level a human can be affected. I loved him. I hated him. I made strange decisions because of the way that I felt about him. I hurt other people and I didn't care. I hurt myself. I let him too close. I pushed him away. I gave him things that were not mine to give. I felt inexplicably connected to him. I idolized him in a way, I suppose. And then one day, he broke my heart. He cracked it right in two with one phrase. I could tell you what that phrase was, I could repeat it word for word exactly as he said it, but it would be useless. I could never communicate the way that it hit me, like a bullet ripping through my chest. How one minute, everything was fine and normal and the next minute everything was different. Everything was so so bad.

We were two lost souls back then. I was a shadow of the person that I am now. I tried for a while to make things better. To fix things, as I'm prone to try to do. We shared a friend in common and the three of us had all been close at one time. But after a while there was no fixing in the place that we were in. The mutual friend moved away and I let go. We lost touch, we went in different directions, neither of them particularly good, but his was more physically dangerous.

Years later I got a call from the mutual friend to say that he'd gotten married and his first child was on the way. We met and laughed and reminisced. He asked me about the boy from a life time ago and I was surprised. They had been much closer and longer term friends with each other than either of them had been with me. The mutual friend had been looking for the boy, but had not found any trace of him. We both searched harder. We came up empty handed. We tried to contact family members with no luck, we tried every method we could think of. After a year, we feared the worst. The last that either of us had seen him, hard drugs were a steady part of his diet. I assumed that I would never see him again. I assumed that it was no longer a possibility. I was sad that things had ended the way that they had, but I closed the book. I kissed that part of my past goodbye.

So, imagine my surprise when I'm watching a random video from a local two months ago and he is merrily playing bass, alive and well, two years after we stopped looking for him. Click the link. Yes, there he is. Bass player. Band from a nearby town. No specific contact information for him but they are playing a gig, here, in the city I live in on July 1st. No fucking way. It can't be. I watch the video over and over again. I'm mesmerized. This person that I had already buried. It's been 8 years since I've seen him and I can walk downtown on July 1st (tomorrow) and speak to him face to face. This is what I decide to do. If, after all this time, there is nothing to be fixed, then closure awaits in its place. And I can replace this sad, final ending that lives in my heart with a different one. And if nothing else, I can reunite him with his best friend from kindergarden.

For the last 2 months, my anticipation has grown. What will I say? What will he say? How will it feel? I've rewritten my script a hundred times and I've grown excited at the idea of seeing someone who was so influential in my old life. Someone that I loved once. Someone that made me feel alive, whether that was good or bad, someone who made me feel so vivid.

So, I go back on the myspace for the band he's with today, to check the time of the concert... and he's no longer listed. He's left the band. He's not there. He's not in the video of their last show.

He's gone.

Again.

Fuck.

The Love Vigilantes

We've found a new activity, the boy of complex description and I. First introduced to me a long time ago by the clients I took on long canoe adventures in the northern wilderness and then reintroduced to me by my brother a few short weeks ago. Geocaching. Modern day treasure hunting with a gps and a laptop. But, yes friends who don't know, it does actually involve wilderness a lot of the time. Like when the bocd had to climb all over that tree to find the cache that didn't turn out to be there or when I cursed the fact that I'd worn shorts and sandals and then found myself knee high in a wild raspberry patch (which, btw, I'm going back to pick next week).

It's a family event too, Sam running around us, dragging his leash in and out of puddles, sniffing out bunnies - really not interested in treasure at all. His treasure is the smelly liquids left by other animals... ewwww.

It's the finding and the opening that gets me so excited. And the fact that there's been a treasure in a place I've passed so many times, and not known. Just waiting to be discovered. Just waiting to be read and pawed through. And the community. All these treasure hunters, doing their thing, expressing themselves in their own small way. Leaving love letters for strangers.

And because we can't do anything simply, the bocd and I, we've chosen a name and made logos - stickers and tags. And we are designing our own caches to delight the members of the geocaching community. Why the love vigilantes? Well, it's our mantra, I suppose. To love and in turn to appreciate and respect. And even if you think that we are foolish romantics, you'll still smile when you find our love letters, I'm sure of it.

xo

Holly Hobbie

This is Holly Hobbie. At the age when other little girls were wearing plastic barbie heals and clip on plastic earrings, I was emulating Holly Hobbie. In drawings of her, her look changes - you can't peg her as an age, you can't really get a sense of what she's about. She's patchwork through and through and I can empathize.

Logan

I had a beautiful relationship with a fiercely independent cat named Logan. I adopted him as a kitten and when I lived in an apartment, we cuddled and loved and were essentially inseparable. When I moved to a house and my rather irresponsible roommates left the front door open and he tasted outside - that was it. It was all he craved. In summer, he ripped the screens of the windows to get out. In winter, he hid and waited for someone to come home and then darted out between their legs. He was impossible.

Inside, he was a mopey, sad, depressive soul. Outside, he was a happy, free, pouncing spirit.
And so I let him out.

He disappeared once for 3 weeks. He had all his shots and he was microchipped. I hunted high and low for him and then one day the humane society called to say that they'd found him in the country chasing mice, 20 kilometers from where I lived. I took him home and locked him in. He howled, he cried, he sulked. Spring came and he ripped my screens. He struggled hard for his freedom. I struggled with my role in providing his safety versus my role in providing his happiness. I couldn't keep him caged. I let him out.

That spring he came and went (sometimes with live presents... eek!) and sometimes he smelled like a different house. As the summer progressed, I saw him less and less, but when I did, he was well fed and so happy.

And then one day, he stopped coming home at all.

I looked for him, I called to check on his microchip. nothing.

That winter, I followed kitty footprints from my house to a house in the neighbourhood. Maybe they were his. But what was I going to do? Knock on the door when he'd likely been going there for months? Take him home? Lock him up again? I couldn't do that.

I thought I had come to terms with it. Then one day at dinner with friends, someone asked me about him. I said that I was fairly sure that he was happy somewhere. He was a fierce creature that could take care of himself and he wasn't dead, they would have found his microchip and called me.

The someone said this, "Oh are you sure, cats get hit on roads and get run over so many times that they are squished like a pancake and they won't bother to find the microchip in that case."

I think I gaped so much that my food fell out of my mouth.

And my heart broke. And I questioned every decision I had made concerning Logan. And I doubted myself and I started looking for him again. And it became a bit of an obsession. And the guilt... oh, the guilt.

The boy of complex description assures me that my job was to love him, was to make the decisions I thought were best for him at the time. That I made the best ones I knew how and that they were so obviously made out of love.

And I know these things. I know that we don't get to control the things that happen. That when it comes to living beings with complicated minds of their own, you can't own them. You can only love them and do your best by them. And that life often doesn't give you closure in things like these. You've got to make your own sense out of them and let them go, no matter what the person across the table says to you.

In my mind, I know all these things.

In my heart, I'm not there yet.

"You know that regular people don't do things like that, right?" the boy of complex description informs me after i told him that i taught myself how to install ceiling lights from a book. "of course they COULD, but most people don't think they can. you know that, right?"

Maybe I knew that on some level. That most people likely don't teach themselves to crochet one stitch at a time by step by step pictures. Or turn off the main power and mess around with wires.

Maybe that makes me a nerd. But that's not going to stop me from doing a full bathroom renovation this long weekend... now where did i put that book???

playing with a full deck

My parents are hustlers. They hustle to get what they want and what they need. They think up dreams and when those dreams don't pan out, they think up other dreams. They're dreamers, but they are practical dreamers. They make dreams reality. My dad's always got a side business and often has a Big Project on the go which if it works, it will be 'outstanding'. A lot of these dreams are never realized but the few that are, these are the ones that he lives for. My mother is a sales hustler, a deals hustler, a pincher and a scraper, a wearer of designer clothes bought at discount prices. And their secret to staying young, to staying alive in their lives, their mantra really, is to never stop hustling. Go for it, hustle, make it work.

So, it's not surprising that I was raised to hustle. What is surprising is how it is in every part of my life. On recently looking back on my past relationships and interactions with people, i realize that I am an emotional hustler. As I get to know someone, part of me assesses how I can enrich their lives and how they can enrich mine. What the trade will be, how best to make it work. What things to leave out.

Metaphorically, I decide what cards I'm going to show and what cards I'm going to keep in my hand. And if all the cards we're both showing match well, I invest, I make the wager. Different cards for different people. Sometimes I choose wrong, I make a slip in judgment, sometimes I get played. That's how it is for me, a game. Which sounds somehow cold and shallow, but it's how I cope. It's how I make things work. It's how I know where I stand.

Some people want to delve deep into my deck and I into theirs and that is the shape that our relationship takes.
Some people want to visit parts of my deck over and over, we share an interest, a passion for something and that's the way we know each other.
Some people just want to be shown a card trick or two.

And then comes along someone that can see my cards without me showing them. Something in my poker face gives me away. And he stays. This is confusing and scary. This is something that has taken me a long time to get used to, something that I'm still getting used to. The idea that someone could know all about me, about what makes me up and how I work, and still choose to stay. And worse than all this, I can't read his! I'm so very good at reading people, but I only know what he shows me. It makes me want to stomp. It makes me want to scream 'no fair'. If I want to see his cards, I have to.... gasp... ask! I have to ask for what I want. No hustling.

This is a lesson in trust and perhaps my wildest adventure to date. I have to know what I want, believe that I'm worth it, then ask. It's his mantra. Sounds easy... it's hard work for a hustler. Sometimes I complain. Sometimes I point out the power imbalance. And when I do that, he laughs and raises his left eyebrow in this look that says 'yeah right, I know you've got a card or two up your sleeve!'

see how well he knows me?