words to capture a day

making lists, inking small names and places on the backside of a slightly wrinkled piece of scrap paper, running my fingers through my beard, tracing an invisible line down the side of a tired photograph of old friends, slipping on thoughtlessly comfortable shoes, smoothing the front of my synthetic black jersey, crunch of salty peanut butter dipped carrot with dirt specks, crusty helmet sets on and clicks under my chin, leg over bicycle and I'm off
over the short steep street
blast past the cathedral
dodge potholes and freeze cracks
suck in sunlight through my open mouth smile
past former farmland now homogeneous dreams
gray vinyl siding and silent lives melt in the spring sunshine like a stuffy unwanted wax of talking heads left in the bonfire of revolutionary carefree youth

Now sun on my back warms me up and flows, pushes the Coriolis effect of my thoughts as my mind tilts towards exuberant solstice, these rolling hills are all I want right now, gravel and dust on the shoulders and sweet moist earth with last year's cornstalks all blend sweet and fine into a backdrop of rural possibilities, if I just pedal a little harder I know I can get ahead of the sun before it creeps down to the west, just one more hill to be conquered and then infinite journeys with only the click of my freewheel and the thoughts of coming home to you to rest...

Just the facts

So, a few bits and pieces of information that resemble the objective reality we all supposedly share. (These are in contrast to my usual blog posts where I muse cyclically about the cyclical nature of the universe.)

I arrived in Canada about 10 days ago, traveling first to Quebec. I stayed with Emily and friends in a town named North Hatley, which is a little over an hour east of Montreal. Emily's family has a vacation cottage there which overlooks the valley including a large lake and the town of North Hatley proper. This is the view on a clear day in late winter, i.e. my first day there.

It is quite beautiful - lots of rolling, big hills and snow spread all over the place. The white patch in the bottom of the valley is the snow-covered lake which Emily took me walking on after I got all excited about the possibility of it. I was a little late this year to go skating on it - that is an activity more suited to the deep freeze in the middle of winter when there is no layer of slush on the top.

After recovering from the bus lag of my trip up from NY state (caused mostly by the painful Vin Diesel comedy The Pacifier, which I had to watch because the sound was broadcast over the PA system on the bus), we went out snowshoeing. My first time! Loved it! The snow was a bit wet but still fun.

Then I felt tired so I took a rest.

We explored the area, cooked good food, got lots of rest, and generally lived it up bourgeois style in the winter wonderland of francophone Canada. Can't beat it with un stick if you tried...

After we were sufficiently vacationed, and the snow began to melt with a warm spell, we headed west by southwest, into Ontario, past Toronto, and eventually reached Guelph, the town where Emily and her tribe live. It is a beautiful, old town surrounded by farmland, with only a bit of homogenized subdivisions so far (but don't worry, they're on the drawing boards.) Back in Guelph, Emily has been returning to work as a therapist/teacher/front line social worker with teens overcoming addictions. I have been settling in to this lovely town and begun to plan parties, cook dinners, think about my income to expenses ratio, and try to get in touch with the gestalt of this place. Just yesterday Emily, Simon, and I went for a ski, which was only the second in my life (the first being two days earlier with just Simon. Again, loved it!

So, perhaps this is a summary of diversions rather than real grist for the mill of, "But how is Chris really doing?". I'm doing the best I know how, for better or for worse. It's all just beginning to unfold, like a delicate amaranth flower that looks good now but yields an even better tasty, tiny grain that you can cook like couscous. If you're eager for a quotable tombstone by-line, then perhaps I'm in it for the ladies, and that sweet, unbearable lightness of being...

never in vain

This is a road less traveled by, up over hills and through valleys with bare, patient birch trees so white they stand out against the thick snow. This pavement flows as smooth as the tired yellow lines dividing the non-existent traffic, through a town of broad houses on the lake, boarded up for winter with rough plywood against the clean, colored window trim. Gray snow piles yield to puddles in the first melt of March, cold and harmless in the soft gravel shoulder where my boots leave gritty traces in the mud. To town is where this current heads, to the main street on the frozen lakeshore with a handful of solid tea houses, restaurants, and wooden planked general stores. For me it is all a postcard - gazebo in the lawn by the lake with blue string lights at dusk, lingering French from the wrinkled couples blending like cream into the settled coffee aroma, fog sliding off the hills from the warm wet air meeting this year's snowpack. It's a curled up bear rolling over once more to hit snooze before hibernation ends, it's a beaver rolling in the snow who has momentarily forgotten his unending urge to fix the dam, it's the tinkle of laughter from children narrowly evading an icicle finally melted free of the eaves. It's all these and pure silence, flowing down creeks and gulches in this Appalachian basin, water seeking a joyride to the lowest level with less than a nod for the structures that the primates have built. Fine slate roofs and leaded stained-glass keep out the elements another winter, the accomplishments of lumberjacks and capitalists. These towns and the moments of childhood spent swimming in summer and skiing in winter are origami cranes floating down wide rivers, no less beautiful because of their inevitable sinking below the ripples. Let us make more beauty with our hands and set if free to the world - what I have seen wash down stream in spring has inspired many a summertime project of whittling and sanding, shared smiles with friends over the endless possibilities that lie outside our small towns.