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.

•  

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.

Our hearts torn between places

Walking was not fast enough, so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew.

Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.

-- Margaret Atwood (Found courtesy of a dear friend.)

I write to Gabby about how I wish I could just take everyone I love with me wherever I go, and how it feels like my heart is scattered across the country. She writes back with words of understanding and wisdom: "I know the feelings that are torn between place and people though...if I could pile up all the ones I love and cart them away to my farm in Ontario, I'd be in Heaven on earth. The very idea of it almost hurts it would be so fantastic. But I will stay here, you will stay in Nova Scotia (for the time being, at least!), and my family will stay in Ontario, and we will continue to feel our hearts torn between places. Because that is the path that we have chosen, and one of the burdens we must bear."

I find myself missing Montreal. I find myself missing Wolfville when I'm not here. I find myself missing Alberta. I find myself missing Toronto, and Paris, and Dublin, and London. Sometimes I find myself missing places I have never been.

I constantly want to be somewhere else. Yet, I constantly want to be exactly where I am. I constantly miss people. Yet, I wouldn't want to leave the people I have here in order to be back with the people I have left.

I wonder what all this torn-ness is doing to my heart, to my soul.

What the Camera Sees

from "Fontanelles"
Anne Michaels

The chemistry of looking;
to look until the river
swallows us, until the redness
of the stone fills our veins.
To look until we're
seen. But this is only longing.
We leave our heat shadows
in moss shocked with frost.
Even your camera
sees more; the detail you crave.
We strain to see even
what the camera sees,
what the eye can't; and this is as good
as a philosophy. An embrace
of failure, as if
just once, impossibly,
we'll catch the visible reflection
of what's invisible.
Our white breath in the dark.

How to photograph this,
the dark when one has said
too much. The dark of 
sudden feeling. Love's
darkness.


Here's where the new blog name comes from. It's no secret that I seriously love Anne Michaels' work. She's one of the authors I am dealing with in my thesis. If I take a PhD, she will be one of the authors I deal with in my dissertation. So, it seems appropriate to select a phrase from one of her poems to define this blog. The ache, the longing, contained in this passage are the perfect description of how I feel about photography.

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.)

Can't Go Back Now

Can't Go Back Now
The Weepies

Yesterday when you were young
Everything you needed done was done for you
Now you do it on your own
But you find you're all alone, what can you do?

You, and me, walk on, walk on, walk on
'Cause you can't go back now

You know there will be days
When you're so tired that you can't take another step
The night will have no stars
And you will think you've gone as far as you will ever get

You, and me, walk on, walk on, walk on
'Cause you can't go back now

Yeah, yeah
Go where you want to go
Yeah, yeah
Be what you want to be
If you ever turn around
You'll see me

I can't really say
Why everybody wishes they were somewhere else
But in the end the only steps that matter
Are the ones you take all by yourself

And you, and me, walk on, walk on, walk on
Yeah, you, and me, walk on, walk on, walk on
'Cause you can't go back now

Walk on, walk on, walk on
You can' go back now


I think if I had to pick a theme song for 2012, it would probably be this one.

The way to fairyland

There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth, they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland. -- L.M. Montgomery

I love this idea. If you read this blog on a regular basis you've probably figured out that I'm rather fond of the idea of fairies and magic. After all, one of my all-time favourite books is J.M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy, and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens is also way up there, so you can't really expect anything else. This is one of those little things that helps make me who I am, but that I avoid talking about with most people. It tends to make you sound like you're six if you start talking about how cool fairies are. So I would like to thank L.M. Montgomery for validating my affection for all things magical. And for reminding me that I'm not a totally bitter curmudgeon just yet.

Hold me fast 'cause I'm a hopeless wanderer

Hopeless Wanderer
Mumford and Sons

Hear my voice
I came out of the woods by choice
The shelter also gave us shade
And in the dark I have no name

So leave that click in my head
And I will remember the words that you said
Left a clouded mind and a heavy heart
But I am sure we will see a new start

So when your hope's on fire
But you know your desire
Don't hold a glass over the flame
Don't let your heart grow cold
I will call you by name
I will share your road

Wrestle long with my youth
We try so hard to live in the truth
But do not sell me your respite
When I lose my head I lose my spine

So leave that click in my head
And I must remember the words that you said
You brought me out from the cold
Now how I long, how I long to grow old

So when your hope's on fire
But you know your desire
Don't hold a glass over the flame
Don't let your heart grow cold
I will call you by name
I will share your road

Hold me fast
Hold me fast
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer

Hold me fast
Hold me fast
'Cause I'm a hopeless wanderer

And I will learn
I will learn
To love the the skies I wander

I will learn
I will learn
To love the skies I wander
The skies I wander


Thanks to Alaina over at Live Creating Yourself I have discovered that Mumford and Sons has been playing some of the new stuff off of their next album at their live shows. I am now totally obsessed with this song. I love Mumford and Sons and am super stoked for their next album to come out. This song has captivated me. I've probably listened to it a good 20 times in the last 24 hours. And that's with a full workday, time at the gym and a coffee date with a friend in there. This is everything that I love about Mumford and Sons. The instruments, the vocals (oh the vocals! I am literally temporarily paralyzed whenever they break into harmony.), the incredible lyrics. It is so so so good. Seriously. Take a listen. You won't regret it.