the purring

today, a day off, a lovely day.

waking up, doing my thing, uninterrupted even inadvertently. coffee, breakfast, then reading on the porch until my mother comes by.

she shows me the photo album she fished out, with pictures of my parents' honeymoon on the icefields, my baby pictures, pictures of my sister and relatives. mixed emotions surface, but mostly i am glad simply to be that much more informed of my past.

we set out, shopping for a spring coat, in this weird retrograded moment. maybe it reminds me of what shopping for back to school clothes could have been, if we had tuned into each other like we did today, graciously reaching out instead of cloaking ourselves in pain. it was entirely ... amenable.

after slogging it through the indie clothing boutiques, we finally found something that wasn't beige or grey in a secondhand shop with pink floyd playing (not the early stuff, which is actually really amazing; no, it was the dark side of the moon, i think. i actually tuned it out and am not sure, so it may have been the wall) and rainbow-coloured clerks. a three-quarter length chocolate brown leather and suede coat (secondhand, secondhand). gorgeous, i think.

we completed the consumer tour with a lunch stop at a local organic place (where they photocopied the gluten-free food guide i found at the back of this book) and then a visit to my favourite enviro-local-independent-culture store. i picked up some potting soil for the bookstore.

altogether, it was a lovely day - and i haven't even written about multiple gnomal activities, with dog and cats abounding. or the nearly-brewing thunderstorm as i read wilkie collins on the enclosed porch.

tomorrow i go back to work; today is about spring.

sitting here, middle of the night.
beautiful night with fresh snow on the trees,
hanging on surfaces, soft and clumpy.

let the spirit move you.

let the spontaneous response, informed freedom, reign.

from the royal bed; feline update

i have a slight cold, happily stuffing my sinuses, so this entry promises to be even more distracted and abstract than usual. i might even ramble.

i suddenly moved, and am now one third at my friend's house for whom i am house-sitting (but not til the end of march) and two-thirds at the gnome home. i am fully enjoying being in my neighbourhood again; the street of gnomes and cats. c-light's roommate was out playing guitar on her porch with her dog while the queen and i moved my boxes into the new place. the cats were wandering around - a large grey cat named magellan lives across the street and visits all the other cats (and their food bowls). he sits with his tongue hanging out just a touch, and while he isn't a snob, he maintains the indifference that all cats convey with their body language. molly, the cat i will be looking after, was all dirty from sleeping in bushes and rolling around on patches of sunny sidewalk.

olive has been totally seduced by the queen - she lets him rub her belly for long periods of time, purring and stretching her belly open to him, whereas i get to scratch her for maybe three strokes before she rolls away. scandalous. even my cat is in love. she doesn't tend to develop an affinity with anyone i date. i see it as a passing vote when she doesn't leave the room as they enter (that happened multiple times. she tolerated Special Friend the best, only sending him baleful looks. a friend of mine i dated two years ago still talks about how much olive hates him).

i think the queen has some kind of insider info on olive. he calls her olivia, and she likes it.

oh the perspective; thanks science, thanks music.

an interesting blurb about relationships here. there's a bit about online dating, but the part that really touched me, at the end, is about people who suffer from depressive episodes and how it affects their relationships. oh mister mcferrin, can you say it again?

it really is neat though, how simply it divides relational uncertainty. if you are in a relationship (and everyone is in one kind or another) ask yourself the three questions:

• how certain am i about how i view this relationship?
• how certain am i about where the other person wants this to go?
• how certain am i about the future of this relationship?

i am more certain of the last two than the first one. i think i still have trouble trusting myself on relationships. i only just realized they aren't about fixing. so i think i love this person for who he is but what if, in some subconscious way, i am still trying to cut a deal with the universe, with my fate, with my past?

oh well, i resolutely say to myself. we deal with strange bugs under rocks when we find them; no need to unearth the whole field right away.

lastly, if you are curious or concerned about your mental health, read this and check here.

delicious

listening to brian eno and harold budd. ambient textures for the ear. yum + sigh.

late at night. work tomorrow. still, up.

perhaps it was the epic nap i shared with the queen today.

so wonderful to see him again; all is extraordinarily well on that front. there has been eating, and sleeping, and other wonderful activities. a fire at the gnome home last night, beautiful espresso in the morning, a visit to one of the queen's many brothers and his adorable offspring. i certainly don't think all kids are cute (although the continuing ovulation thing really does seem to help them evolve from scary, amoral beasts to lovable, amoral could-be-peoples; it's crazy how much the mind belongs to the body, though we're sold on being these mythical selves with our own well-thought-out opinions) but it's pretty hard to refuse a "clark kent" with huge nerd glasses and a superman costume underneath who wanders over, grins affectionately at you without saying a word, pauses for a moment of eye contact and then flits off to torment his toddler sister.

i missed the dogs, which surprised me, since i still think a cat person shouldn't be attached to these dog-breath creatures who were madly excited to see me (which i really enjoyed). i think they're spoiling me for the meagre but refined affections of the feline. for two days i abandoned them to the chef, and only came back this evening (to a table full of sushi, including something battered in gram flour, so i could eat it. mmmm, battered things. i think it was chicken?). oh, and on the subject of tasty meat, for breakfast today we had bison saskatoon sausage from first nature farms. oh the glory. oh the farmers' market glory. oh.

seeing the queen again... wow. i know i've already mentioned, but it's amazing. nothing like six weeks of brewing love, and longing, to really make a reunion. i was trying to find an adjective for the reunion, but none suffice. wonderful doesn't cover the depth, epic doesn't express how soft it feels. memorable is the closest, but fails to convey the giddiness.

a wise friend of the gnomes was at the fire last night, and mentioned that when she looked at us, she kept seeing us as old. she congratulated us on being together.

changes, subtle and gross

the full moon has been good to me.

working on the "main drag" during the olympic hockey game proved amusing and slightly frightful. i have never seen so many men with silly grins on their faces. grown men weeping, men in tights, men wearing flags, sidewalk-beer-drinkers high-fiving the cars that were driving by honking. the whole avenue basically exploded for an hour as everyone toured drunkenly around, then returned to the bars for more serious celebrating. after my shift ended, i snuck out to the gnome home to wait out the storm. when i went back to the dog house three hours later, there were three red-&-white-clad guys on the bus worrying about what their lives would look like now, how they didn't want to watch regular television, and how long could they live off replays before they had to face their lives again? i wonder if this sort of predicament hits newly married couples. "no more presents to unwrap? shit, now we just live together..."

it looks like my housesitting continues: a friend who lives three doors down from the gnomes is finishing up her thesis and wants to jet off for a number of weeks, it's looking like six of them right now. so that will put me to the end of april. her place is great: witchy, unusual (as in, the stairs to the second floor rise up from the bathroom, and the tub is in the hallway. i love old houses), warm and inviting. i will sincerely love being in the gnomal regions again. walking to work, sleeping with my cat (her cat and my cat actually get along. i'm not sure why, since my cat gets along with no other cats, and her cat is a wild beast that sleeps in bushes), generally being in a neighbourhood where i know people, the graffiti is about art and the trees wear accessories.

i've been unraveling a bit more - in a good way. stretching, exhaling, coming out of the horrible grey shadow i was hiding in. the weather seems to be hovering around the freezing temperature (it's funny how warm it can be even though you can still see your breath and you still wear a scarf. ah, canadian spring). this is really good for my state of mind - i find it hard to love the world when it's painful to go outside. it makes the whole 'universe is a friendly place' theory a bit much to swallow. the queen is home in a couple of days. it will be fascinating to see how we behave toward each other. we've talked a lot in a long-distance capacity.

i've really started to enjoy me-time again. just wandering around, looking at the world, drinking cocoa, exploring possibilities. slowly, drinking in the experience.