my other newest friend

this week has been filled with nice things. the piano came and i began lessons and practicing everyday. work has begun to pick up. and i made a new friend. and it's so nice. there is something very enjoyable about the companionship of someone new. you're not used to their words and it is nice falling in step with someone. it's nice to check the weather forecast at 5:30 in the morning to plan a day to go to the dogpark together. it's nice to drive back from a family dinner which you attend solo (all the while feeling solo though you don't normally) to sit on the porch with your new friend. to sit on the piano bench with your new friend and be at ease the way you couldn't be with some of your old friends, though you know he is talented. and to laugh in delight at the sound of the doogie howser theme song coming from the piano in an informal lesson.

maybe i will erase this post but i just wanted to say that it's nice. i don't mean i want to date him.

i just want him to be my date for everything maybe.

but it is late.. i should sleep.

my newest friend..

i have recently welcomed a piano into my life and i am filled with excitement and slight trepidation at the task of learning it. i look forward to having something to practice daily. it may sound strange, but i need to practice practicing. so that i might learn to practice other things that are more subtle than an instrument but just as lovely.

i will enjoy today, looking at the beautiful beast in my home as a world of possibilities. tomorrow my lessons begin and the world of possibilities will crash down around me as i struggle to learn the most simple of things. thus the beginning of the frustration that normally stops me because my mind is grasping at the possibilities in my head that my hands cannot produce. this time i won't stop. i've written down now.

today the piano is beautiful to me. tomorrow it will be uncomfortable to me. and the more time i spend uncomfortable with it, the closer i will be to the possibilities in my mind. for the first time in a long time, i look forward to feeling uncomfortable. the piano came to me at a perfect time. thank you amy.

today summer fell away and the air got cold again. it was nice wearing socks and putting the heat on in the car after the dog park. a box in my basement revealed itself to me, in honour of the change of seasons, a photograph i thought i'd lost.

it was a photograph of john taken when i first met him six years ago. it has been in the precious things i've lost category for years. it was taken from afar and in my mind he was croutched down cooking us dinner over a fire. my mind froze that frame on its own. the photograph is of him croutched down petting one of sonya's dogs. we were beside the yukon river and one of the dogs had pups. i can still remember how to get there through the campground and then the forest and along that path. i can remember how one of the dogs got away once and we did not recognise it so free until it followed us home and we made dinner over the fire. i can remember missing him when he went away.


i can't write very much more about it for now. it's hard seeing that picture. no one has ever had such a profound effect on me and it's hard to see an image of him when it first started. before he chose a path. when we still could have walked it together. but we didn't and now we'll never go back because we can't.

and as much as it hurts, i don't even want the hurt to go away. it hurts when i can feel myself learning from him and i don't want that to stop. he took time everyday to teach me and he came to my city to live beside me for a bit. if it stops hurting i'm afraid i will forget to keep learning from him..

i have been realising lately i fear the dissapearance of poetry in my life. i somehow thought that it has to go away one day, like peter pan. it just occurred to me that it doesn't have to. you just have to work hard to keep it. you have to never stop going places you've never been, never stop doing things you've never done, never stop inviting great people into your life whether for a day or a lifetime. you have to not let your career or your partner or your "roles" in life define you away from yourself. you have to bring all of those people/things into who you are rather than evolving away from yourself. do things a different way than you think you're expected to if you have to. everyone will survive.

and it is a relief to realise it. by acknowledging that it is possible to keep that alive, it gives weight to its existance in the first place. someone suggested to me once that i "need" this stuff in my life with a slight negative undertone, the way you would say someone needs drama in their life. and i have thought about it on and off for awhile now, pondering the possibility that they are right and that i am setting myself up for dissapointment when "real life" takes over. but i have come to the conclusion that i do "need" this stuff in my life because it is real life. life can be whatever we make it. i hope to always choose poetry.

the challenge lies in not losing sight. forgetting. getting caught up in day to day and not even knowing that you are starting to believe a new definition of life or of yourself that is really just a coping mechanism. i realised on orcas that i had begun to do it to an extent and though it is frightening that we can do this and not know it, it is also comforting to know again that we can do whatever we want to do if we don't let others set our parameters. it's just not always easy, but that's the difference between never growing up and growing up without ever losing the child in you.

zackarya

travolta and his truck

from the plane after leaving the island


i made it to orcas. there's not much i can say but to say it was nice. zack met me at the ferry at nite and he was wearing a cordoroy vest. there was a nap by the ocean and a small child put her hand in mine and then our hands in his and kissed both lightly. they do both enchant me and as suspected, going away made me sad.

so that is all i will say for now. my nicest memories of zack in his cordoroy and our nap at obstruction pass.

i left by a small 6 seater plane which is probably best. i sat shotgun and joked with the pilot and laughed to myself that i'd been there at all..