send for you now to tend to me now...

I don't usually write a lot of personal information in my blog...well, in some ways. I write a lot of really deeply personal ideas and thoughts and plans that run through my mind, but I don't divulge very many specifics about my day-to-day personal life. Caylie (click on her name to the right to check out her blog because I'm too lazy right now to attach the link right here in my post). Anyway, my friend Caylie tends to have the opposite approach and I am often quite entertained by her writing so I thought maybe I'd take a page from her book today. This is also a post for Karen who told me earlier this week she checks my blog everyday and I do not write nearly enough for that kind of dedication. Plus, I feel kind of disconnected from her at the moment in terms of day to day life...for the past 2.5 years karen and i have gone in cycles of 4 or 5 months of seeing and working and socializing with each other every day and then 7-8 months of visiting here and there or being altogether in separate countries. This marks month 7 of catching up when we can. That being said, I'm writing this day-to-day personal life post for many reasons.

I went to Luke Doucet last night with Beth and Joel and Tash on a last minute ticket invite from Beth. It was fantastic. I like Luke. I'd only ever seen him at Folk Fest before and though, I'd have to say I do prefer listening to him with the August sun on my face, laying in the grass with a cold beer in my hands, I really enjoyed myself last night.
After that, I went home and organized my laundry...sorted through a good portion of my wardrobe which of course was laying in piles on my floor and signed the photos I am donating to Jordyn's art auction for one of CRWRC's AIDS relief projects - all while watching my latest addiction: Prison Break.
Then I iChat video chatted with Patrick who was still up at 1:30 in the morning working on ... well, if I really understood what it is he does, I could be able to tell you but I think it has something to do with a website for the up and coming rapper, "Cloud". I have a cold so I've been taking neocitron before bed and it has knocked me out pretty good the past few nights so I don't really remember falling asleep, but when I woke up the world had been transformed by a crazy amount of snow.... (oh, I'm feeling the urge to deviate from this structure...)

These past two winters I've spent out of school have been strange. Last winter I was unemployed, spending all my savings on a photo show at Remedy and living most of my days at home drinking tea and watching the snow fall in my back yard. Though it was a beautiful time of life...to be able to have that time to think and write and read and photograph and walk and wander, I often felt like I was sort of just paused. I want to say it felt like I was in transition, but it really didn't. It felt like I was in limbo. And even though I spent the summer busy with work, it still felt like I was on hold.

Iceland felt like the moment before everything lets go. Like the meniscus on a full glass catching drips from a leaky faucet. You know, where it just reaches the top and holds that tiny little curve above the lip before that next drop makes it slide down the edges. There was so much beauty and awe and so many insane, incredibly unique experiences going on, but it was still on pause...holding out for that next moment, for that next thing that would change that delicate balance that was keeping everything as it was. And though I felt it coming, I never let myself imagine what shape it would take or when or how my life would look when it happened. I think we live a lot of these events in our lifetime...some more significant than others, but each still irreversibly disrupting the careful balance of our lives to that point. I've lived some myself and watched my friends and family live them as well: moving away from home, career decisions, university, marriage, children, travel, death...etc. Actually, I want to change that list. Those are all events...but I don't think it's the events themselves that create the change as much as the emotions and experience that go along with them....fear, independence, responsibility, love, knowledge, wisdom, grief, joy, etc. All these things, when experienced deeply, can transform a worldview, change a person, alter the course of a life. They're the kind of things that you can never go back from, you can never forget and you can never return to being the person you were before.

For me, that last drop fell the night I flew in from Reykjavik, stepped off that plane in Toronto and found Patrick waiting at the gate.