Old Haunts

Despite the fact that I am technically living in Halifax now, I seem to be spending a lot of time in Wolfville. I miss the place. Also, Halifax and I are having a rough go of it, so I often want to escape and try and think things through. And, of course, I have no desire to spend my days off in a mouse-infested apartment, and Wolfville seems like as good a place as any to get away rom that situation. I had a couple of days off at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend and came out here. My friend's family adopted me for dinner on the Monday night, and basically for all eternity with an open invitation to stay there any time I want, and it was lovely to be around a family. On the Tuesday evening I wandered down to the train tracks with my camera, and it felt like a homecoming. The light was beginning to fade, but the colours of the turning leaves were incredible, and I spent about an hour walking and taking photos. Sometimes going back to old haunts is exactly what I need. Although I am slowly acquiring new haunts in Halifax, it is a long and arduous process. It's nice to have a place to come back to where I can just slide back in effortlessly.

I should probably apologize if this post isn't the most coherent thing ever. I'm deep into SSHRC proposal writing and have very little brain power left for anything else.

The Brutal Mechanics

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Cow Head. The sign briefly points, a small road branching, winding among dunes and I want to follow it, imagining long-legged piers, sand spits trailing houses into the sea, but the pavement unrolls smoothly pulling me north, motion itself a tunnel, a spell, and I miss the turn, my chance of seeing Cow Head the way so many chances beckon flickering past, the streams, the little graveyards fenced with sticks, and high on a gravel beach a man spreading nets, his single boat perched on a spruce pole ramp and I want to talk to him, follow into his words, find him alone at dawn launching himself off the earth's edge, I could do it, stop here, let this be the spot it starts, rock, sea opening to whatever they really hold, but I don't, he's gone and I'm still zooming on, the car packed with bedding boots maps and the camera ready for use, I take the hills and valleys in a swoop as though the force it took to tear me away from home has not yet spent itself, and I just grip the wheel and go.

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The brutal mechanics of having a wish come true.

(John Steffler, The Grey Islands)

Sometimes life is hard. This is not the same as saying that it is bad. In fact, sometimes the hardest things in life turn out to be the best for us. The past month has been hard. Really hard. There have been adjustments, and setbacks, and rejections. There have been failures, and sickness, and sadness. There have been heartwrenching situations with friends, the kind where there is nothing I can do, but I want so badly to be able to do something. I think pretty much every day I say (usually out loud), "I don't want to be a grown up." I have, at times, wondered why I didn't just move back to Edmonton.

Don't get the wrong idea. It's not like my life has become some kind of catastrophe. There have been moments of exquisite happiness, and love, and wonder. There has been satisfaction, and contentment, and the feeling of being in the right place. There have been some excellent times with friends. And when all else has failed, there has been a dog to make me feel incredibly loved. Every time I drive the highway between Halifax and Wolfville, or take a walk near the ocean, I say (usually out loud), "I love living here." I have, at times, wanted to stay here forever.

It's been a while. And honestly, this blog might become much more sporadic. And it might become something entirely different than it is right now. I've been mulling some things over in regard to it, so we will see what shape it takes as time goes on. My life is shifting a lot right now, so it seems only appropriate that the blog shifts right along with it.

Plan-less

A few days ago, Audrey sent me a text message: "What did you want to be when you grew up when you were a kid?" The question stymied me, not simply because it was out of the blue but because I actually didn't know. Not, I don't remember, but as a kid I really didn't know. So I told her this and related an assignment I distinctly remember from some point in elementary. We had to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up and do some kind of report on it. I had no idea. I think I drew myself being a teacher.

"I never knew either...I'm wondering if that contributes to my lack of career direction now."

I don't think I have ever had someone else tell me they didn't know what they wanted to be as a kid either. (Evidence that we were meant to be best friends? I think so.) And I think her connection is fair. It's hard to pick a direction when you never really had one.

We ended up talking about how odd it seems to still not know what we want to be when we grow up. In stark contrast to ourselves, we both grew up with a lot of friends who knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. They wanted to be teachers and doctors and nurses. And, guess what, now they are teachers and doctors and nurses, or at least in school to be these things. For Audrey, this was causing some panic and concern about her lack of direction, things that I am very familiar with. But my reaction when I consider the disparity between these people with a life plan and myself is quite a bit different now. I've come to love my plan-less state. 

I wish it was easier to explain this to other people, those plan-loving people I'm related to and friends with and meet at the bar. I suppose though, that they can just be concerned and panicked and stressed for me about my apparent lack of direction. It means there is no reason for me to be.

Leap and Shuffle

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.

Bragging Rights

When I decided to move out east I was frequently asked "Why would you want to move there?" (Most notably I was asked this by someone who was considering moving to Saskatchewan for a retail job...I asked him the same thing.) Well, this post is for all of you Albertan folks who couldn't fathom why I would want to come out here. 
Consider today's weather in the afternoon: 
Wolfville: 3C
Edmonton: -26C with -43C windchill
Friends, this may not be why I moved out here, but I sure am enjoying it.


(PS - We do now have some snow. Not a lot, but more than this photo.)