I want to feel what my father felt, Avery repeated, sitting on the edge of the bed on the Nile, what the marmisti know, what the blind man knows when he's on Ramses' knee. What my mother calls 'flesh-knowledge.' It's not enough for your mind to believe in something, your body must believe it too. If I hadn't witnessed this particular pleasure in my father when I was a child perhaps I wouldn't feel the lack of it. But I do. I can imagine what a chemist feels when he looks in a microscope, how his mind can practically touch what he sees. Or a physicist who can feel an equation tearing molecules apart along the shear, like tearing a handful of bread from a loaf. Or the tension in a meniscus. The closest understanding I have of this is when I look at a building. I feel the consequences of each choice; how the volume works, how the building eats teh space it inhabits, even how it carries its ruins.-- Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault
I love it when authors articulate things for me in such an eloquent way. Because, honestly, despite being someone who adores language and has chosen it as her life's work, sometimes it refuses to do what I want it to or need it to. I love this description of the physicality of any sensation. It's something I know to be true for myself.
I've taken to walking down abandoned railroad tracks. It turns out they are good places to think these strips of solitude that run along the edge of town. There used to be trains running between here and Halifax, carrying people with stories of their own toward lovers and family and friends, or away from lovers and family and friends. I think of them and their stories. And as I walk I find myself pushing past trees that have taken root along the rails, pushing my way deeper into silence, deeper into solitude, deeper into history. And I think about the workers who laid this track. I wonder if they carried a picture of someone in their pocket - a sweetheart, a mother, a daughter, a sister - and if they took it out to look at when the work seemed like too much. I wonder if they missed home. For some unknown reason, a strange personal superstition, I suppose, I only step on the ties. I focus intently on this task, and suddenly that old childhood singsong rhyme floats into my mind. "Step on a crack and you'll break your mother's back." I smile, because my mind stores strange and useless information like this and because here there are no cracks, or perhaps there are only cracks, and I am not entirely sure what this means. This practice makes walking difficult though. Sometimes the ties are too far apart, sometimes they are too close together, so I have to leap and shuffle along this path into the past. And I find this appropriate, for the weight of history always seems to make us walk a little oddly.
"You look totally knackered." That's how I was greeted by a prof one morning last week. Granted, I was exhausted, but that's just never the first thing you want to hear in the morning. Yup, the stress and exhaustion are starting to show themselves. I haven't quite gotten to the crazy-eye stage yet (if you were an English major with me at King's you probably know what I'm talking about), but I'm pretty sure I'll be there in a couple of weeks. There are definite physical manifestations going on though. Serious headaches, eye twitches, serious shoulder and back pain, unfinished sentences, random crying jags, and increased sarcasm have all begun to make regular appearances. Such fun. (Yeah, that would be the sarcasm talking.)
If you've been following me for a while you might remember that back in September I shared a sepia version of this photo. It's from an afternoon I spent on my roommate's family farm in Lacombe. And I couldn't resist sharing the colour version with you as part of this Iconic Alberta series I've been doing for the last couple of days. Here's why: the sky. I know I've been talking about blue skies and white clouds, but there is this thing that the sky does here that I haven't experienced anywhere else I've travelled and this picture captures it perfectly. It can be completely cloudy out and yet it is so bright out that you feel the need to wear sunglasses. Perhaps this happens elsewhere and I just haven't been around at the right times, I don't know. But I always think of this as a curiously Albertan phenomenon. It's right up there with sun showers. The joke here often goes, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. Because it will change. And with no warning. And as a result we get these strange contradictory phenomena existing at the same time. Rain and sun, or, in this case, sunlight and clouds. It's kind of cool.
I'm rereading the Harry Potter series right now. After seeing the final movie I figured I should get it in before I'm swamped with school-related reading. I'm a little over halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban. You know, the one where Harry gets the Marauder's Map and there's a secret passage that leads to a trap door in the cellar at Honeydukes? I think the Marauder's Map is fabulous. Next to the bag Hermione charms in Deathly Hallows so that she can put as much as she wants in it and still be able to carry it around, I think the map is the thing I would want if the Harry Potter world was real. The bag wins though. I mean, the map is amazingly cool, but the bag is would just be useful. This book also happens to be the one where two of my favourite characters show up, Sirius and Lupin. Yup, an all-around good one. But as I was reading today I came across this:
Harry climbed the spiral stairs with no thought in his head except how glad he was to be back. They reached their familiar, circular dormitory with its five four-poster beds and Harry, looking around, felt he was home at last.
This just seemed so appropriate in light of yesterday's musings on home. As we were leaving the wedding on Saturday night, and during brunch on Sunday, my friends and I were talking about how weird it is to not be returning to dorms. I'm working at the school right now and orientation excitement is building all around me and it is the weirdest feeling to not be getting caught up in it. Because this is exactly how I felt every time I headed back to dorms.
Ah, books and your amazing ability to capture any situation perfectly and to be mysteriously related to whatever is going on in my life at that moment.
I am a rather odd creature. By and large, I'm a creature of habit. I tend to eat the same things, wear the same colours and style, and go to the same coffee shops. I like routine and knowing where I'm going next. And I get attached to things. Usually for aesthetic reasons; if I like how something looks a certain way then I am unlikely to change it. Once I get an outfit a way I really like I don't tend to change things up too much. Once I find a wall colour I like, I want every wall to be that colour. Once I find a meal I love, I eat it all the time. But there are some things that I get bored by easily. I think it's particularly true of things that don't please me visually. My hair is often the victim of this boredom. This blog seems to be another. I just haven't found a really awesome design for it yet, so I keep changing it. Ah well. At least it is more easily fixed than my hair if it turns out horribly. And sometimes a little change is good.
