Homage To Summer- Part 3

It seems that all of my summer stories have come to an end, all its sagas and all its stories are now a memory, all in the past, safe as can be.
An homage— a small smoky shrine is the best way I can think of to pay my respects to it. I want to share it with all of you, so that you can in some way be a part of its loveliness and steal a bit of its magical glitter for yourselves. It’s now time to live currently, to give up the memories, to move forward in this new place that I am calling my home.

I just moved into a cool apartment with three other people, who are all doing the same thing as me— trying to carve a little spot for ourselves in the city of Vancouver. One is my best friend, one is the rideshare she found through Craigslist—an awesome Australian dude with whom she shared a one-month long roadtrip to the west coast to eventually meet me. The other is an Irish guy, Mark, who I met on the bus over here, and things are sorting themselves out slowly but surely. I’ve adopted rolling cigarettes from him, and also using the term “ya mad ting”. How wild is it that this guy was living in the very town in which I grew up? Huntsville, Ontario, and we’d never met until halfway through the trip, at an airport pub in Winnipeg. We had the same landlord! We lived on the same street in this small town, at different times mind you, but also haunted the same pubs this summer! I almost blew a gasket when they (him and the guy he was travelling with in Canada) told me, and I knew we would be friends. My best friend is in all-out adoration of him as well, so it’s worked out for everyone, really. I would prefer if they got married so he could become a Canadian citizen and I could wear a stupid eighties cocktail dress to the wedding, but that’s just me.
It’s pretty amazing what we’ve done with only a few weeks time and with a determination to make things work for us. We’re now ‘Drive Kids’ as the saying seems to be, just walking distance from the trendy Commercial Drive.

Anyway, so where the story was left, I was not here.
I was still living in that cabin in Dwight, Ontario, just on the edge of Algonquin Park.
I had no idea I would be where I am right now.
Get your snuggie, and a cheese sandwich or something, because the next part of the story is just as whack as the first two parts.

So I wasn’t sure if I’d never see “You Rock” shirt dude ever again.

And it’s not because I didn’t want to, because he totally sparked my interest. It was mostly because I didn’t want to even think about it. He was in Toronto. I wasn’t.
He said he would come and see me, sure, but he was also ridiculously drunk when he’d said that. Who the hell was this guy anyway? All I knew was that he was incredibly sweet to me for absolutely no reason, and that he had a snoring problem and a really cool t-shirt. Not enough, right?

All the while, some friends from Toronto had been bugging me to come down for a visit. I did live there all last winter, and the last time I left Toronto had been under hasty circumstances. When I left the clinic that strange day early in the summer, my friend had waited for me in the parking lot to whisk me away to the safety of Muskoka to heal—heart and body. I didn’t want to leave that wretched memory of Toronto in my head.
So, for the next week or so after the Fortress party, “You Rock” t-shirt dude and I spoke a lot over Facebook, and he said he’d take me out when I got there. A bit over the phone, too. Cool. He was incredibly charming. Not surprisingly, since he was funny, witty, and seemed to have an answer for everything I said. We could banter back and forth, and not so strangely, I like that a lot. We’d talk about funny stuff, and I’d read him captions from the Encyclopedia of Monster and Other Mysterious Creatures.
I booked a bus ticket to visit Toronto for a few days, hopped it, and went straight to visit one of my oldest friends who was living on Bathurst after having split with her boyfriend. We all hung out, I met a few people, made instant buddy-pals with the man-of-the-house Brando, and then we decided we wanted to go out dancing. So I called upon “You Rock” dude to come and meet up with us. He agreed, as I knew he would. See part 2; dancing is how we met, it only made sense.
By the time we got to the Dance Cave, Brittney Rand was already a few beer into it.
I was busy stomping my feet to Veruca Salt or something equally hipster and nostalgic, when “You Rock” dude tapped me on the shoulder. He gave me a huge hug, and obviously got involved with our dance party. Eventually we were forehead-to-forehead and I asked him to come home with me. And by home, I mean Brando’s carefully constructed “camping room” in his house on Bathurst.
“You Rock” dude and I ended up eventually back at his place after hanging out with my friends for a while. Turns out everyone was fucked on MDMA, me excluded.
So snuggling commenced. We stayed up all night.
I really, really liked him.

Funny thing: I liked him so much that every night after that first starry-eyed one I spent with him in his little room, I spent back there. Of course I visited with friends too during the day, but every night we spent together in his little room. Night time is the strangest time, and I think it’s made exactly for lovers. Days are filled with too many other things to think about, too many other tasks, too many sounds and sights, too many carhorns and subway rides. Nights are still, even in the city, and when you are wrapped in a lover’s sheets there really is no other concern. Those hot summer nights were sweet, filled with whispers and entwined fingers. We connected instantly. It was fun and lovely and understanding, and I was sad when I had to leave it, though I didn’t say so to him, because it was much too soon to be getting attached to such a homely little monster.
I hopped the bus back up north, and hoped it wouldn’t be too long before we would be able to sit together again, for me to scratch his beard, for kisses behind the ear to come back to me.

We tried a couple times to get together after that, and after some frustration with the distance, he eventually, happily, took the train to see me for a few days. We hadn’t seen each other for about 3 weeks to a month at this point. We had spoken most nights on the telephone at late hours, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night if I got a phone call from him, just for chatsies sake. It was nice to have someone who understood my humor; who wasn’t demanding of me, who was honest and uncensored with me. I learned many of his secrets and revealed many of mine to him, and we cooed over that telephone just building up to the moment when he stepped off the train. It was quite crazy—we had really only spent those few nights together and we had it pretty bad for one another. We were getting ourselves into something sticky.
I wanted to see him in my stomping grounds, to see how he would react and interact with it. He was a city kid, and though we were much the same, I figured I could surely teach him something about where I came from and it could be fun.
I picked him up from the train station in the white pickup truck that I borrowed from my work.
I couldn’t wait to touch him, though we couldn’t on the drive, because I’m a new driver, and I might have killed someone in my state of elated excitement. We got out to the cabin in the woods, and immediately fell into the bed kissing one another. So many nights on the telephone we’d said how we planned to not leave that very bed for the entirety of his stay.
We did, however, only for latenight dance mix ’95 dance fests, walks down the dirt road, him writing at the beach, food, Nintendo, WWF 1997 (I love you Stone Cold Steve Austin and Brett the Hitman Heart) vhs viewings and to use the washroom.

It was just the loveliest.
The end of the summer was strange, because I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I didn’t know if I was going to Toronto, which was a circumstance that “You Rock” dude and I could possibly work with, or if I was going to British Columbia. I went back and forth on the subject. All the while, I was consorting with the most wonderful of creatures, having a great time in Ontario. I could be happy anywhere, really. The options were difficult, because Toronto was safe and B.C. wasn’t—I had no plans beyond the bus ticket out here. But I was drawn more to what wasn’t safe. I was drawn more to the unknown, what I didn’t know, and even though I was falling in love with “You Rock” dude, it simply wasn’t enough for me to stay. We knew this on that last visit of ours. We knew that though our chapter was insanely delicious, and we were eating up every bit of it, that I was bound to leave. It was a dangerous decision for us to have made, to fall into things with such a force of openness, knowing that it would commence. I felt guilt to be the one to leave. I didn’t really know why I was leaving either, but I guess when there is a mystery strong enough that’s biting at my ankles I have to explore it. And it was at the expense of that precious love, which is now a figment of my imagination.

After I dropped “You Rock” shirt dude off at the bus stop, after the loveliest dream ever, I didn’t know how to feel. Our nature was to be fun. We were having so much fun, we waved and hugged goodbye like we would see each other again soon. We could have, since my summer work contract was coming to an end. Except that I had bought a one-way ticket to the West coast for the following Friday and he hadn’t.

Hopeless romantic that I am, I wasn’t satisfied with our goodbye, and I had to see him again.
On the Tuesday before I left (on the Friday…) I took the bus down to see him again for one last night.

This visit was just as joyous and spectacular, but for me, was laced with a bit more sadness. I honestly didn’t know when I was going to see him again. This man, the one whom I couldn’t get out of my mind since the night I met him, was about to be a part of my old life. I resisted that. It drained me, and I couldn’t make sense of the immense feelings I was giving to him. It was even more confusing because I wasn’t sure, even if I’d stayed, if he’d have me. Our whole relationship was based on a total of 10 or 11 nights/days spent in the same city or town. The rest was over the phone. I knew that he was confused about other times he’d been broken-hearted in the past, hurt by them, but all I wanted to do was make everything better for him—to sort it out for him, and bake him cookies, and kiss his forehead and take care of him, and download muchdance mix ’93 for him (his favorite).
Our last night together we spent dancing, again, forehead-to-forehead at our special Reggae bar in the Kensington Market in Toronto. The same place where, earlier on in the summer, we’d hid away and kissed on the escape-route stairs on the back patio. One of our ‘things’ together was our love of Reggae and Dancehall music. We spent the night in his bed again, in his little apartment, in our little fantasy world.
We sat at the bus station the next day not really sure what to feel, but the feelings were a little more intense than the last time we parted, since we really realized that this would be the last we’d see each other for an undisclosed period of time. He kissed me goodbye at the station, and shortly after I caught my bus away from him. Again. A woman on the run—not really sure of anything, but riding on the wings of free birds, exploring, and hoping that the decision she’d made was best for her heart.

We left one another, yes, but continued to talk on the phone for a while. I’d call him at almost every bus stop across the country, until I got to the West Coast. When I first got here, a short time ago to me now, I was homeless. I hadn’t arranged anywhere to live, I wasn’t sure if I was going to try and work in Kelowna or stay in Vancouver. I was living out of all of the following: a) my aunts apartment in port moody outside the city, b) my best friend’s car, c) anyone’s couch that’d take me (I have so many numbers on my phone from meeting lovely people who wanted to take me in for the night) and d) the SameSun Hostel in downtown Vancouver where the Irish guys were staying that I met on the bus. Of course we didn’t pay for the rooms. We’d stay anywhere for free.

In this time of the complete, unrelenting chaos that was my life, I grew very weary. Since we’d decided to stay in Vancouver, we were apartment searching constantly. My mind and heart were so tired from the stress and the heartbreak of losing a lover. I hadn’t had a chance to think about the situation with “You Rock” dude and I at all, and the first thing I thought to do was drink. Have fun. Dance.
Which is totally acceptable if your heart isn’t hurting too bad, and if you aren’t too too lonely.
However, what happened was that I got loser drunk.
I got loser drunk, loser sad, and loser lonely.

I had a one-night stand with somebody who wasn’t “You Rock” dude.
Fuck sakes.
For me, it really did nothing but make me feel even worse than I already had felt, which was hard to imagine. This other guy wasn’t doing anything right. He wasn’t playing the role for me. He didn’t know where to kiss me, and it was frustrating. All I could hear, see, smell, what that somebody else wanted me more than ever on the other side of the country. And I was allowed to have that feeling. Things were basically over between “You Rock” dude and I. Yes, we were talking, but what else were we going to do? How long could it go on for without tearing us up, so that we could allow ourselves enough dignity and pride to walk away from it? Neither of us wanted to let go, it seemed.
The day after this happened, I woke up and wanted to dig a hole and live in it for 56,000 years.
Naturally, the person I wanted to comfort me was “You Rock” dude.
I was honest with him, told him how I felt, and evidently it didn’t go over well, which I understand now.

Needless to say, after texting back and forth about it, some squabbling and some drunken, pathetic texts to him from me, it ended. It ended not only because of the one-night stand, but because there simply was no other way. But I wasn’t done there. No way.
No, I had to call him at 4am after a bottle of wine and say that “this call would be the last one I ever dial” and all sorts of other dumb shit about resolving our issues and tying things up properly. I said if he never returned my call that I wouldn’t try reaching him again.
And guess what?
He never did call me back.

And so, after much sobbing to my best friend—bless her patience— attacking this crazy life from all possible angles, I kind of thank him for sparing me. For sparing us. Because I know I wouldn’t have walked away from him if he hadn’t me. One foot had been left in Ontario, one string untied, and I guess he tied it for me. At this point, I don’t have much to keep on my mind from back home. I am completely and fully in the present, and taking life’s punches as they are swung at me.
I’m liking my little neighbourhood. I have everything here that I need and want, and once I get working I will have some structure back into my life. I have a little, cute park in my backyard with swings and benches for sipping tea on. I really, and wholeheartedly, am excited about the adventure I am embarking on for at least the next six months. I plan on producing lots of artwork, building a ceramic cat collection, many shrines, and collecting crop tops to wear on my back porch with a rolled smoke in hand. And it’s not say that I don’t think fondly of “You Rock” dude anymore, because that’d be a flat-out lie, but I think things just work out as they should. As I said, night time is especially for lovers, and its night time when I think of him the most. We both always knew we’d meet again, somehow, somewhere, someday, but now wasn’t our time.

So I guess since my Homage to Summer is finished and written, that I should continue onward into the rest of fall, and shortly into winter. I’ll be making new memories, new mishaps, new art, new dance parties (www.decentralizeddanceparty.com – this is how I spent my Halloween….wa wa wee woo…). As I always do, I’ll tip my cap to the moments I’m fondest of from my past, and hope only that more will keep coming to me.
Farewell Spain.
Farewell Villafranca.
Farewell to the faces I remember from the clinic waiting room.
Farewell heaviness!
Farewell to my dusty cabin in all its stress, Jack Daniels nights and new friendships.
Farewell to my home, for a while, until I get worrysome that you don’t exist anymore and come back to see you.
Farewell to all the nights skinny dipping in the river in Bracebridge.
Farewell to ‘no pants dance parties’ at the Griffin, after hours, singing Against Me! covers on the house guitar.
Farewell to the country’s endless starry skies, and last but not least….
Farewell to lovers who come swiftly on the most magical and auspicious of nights, for whom I’ve offered slices of my heart and do not expect a thing in return.

It was just the best, and I’ll keep it safe, on the highest shelf in my mind.

Onward and outward,
Signing off,
Brittney Rand.

A Touch Of This Gravity (New Poem)

So, in between the Homage posts, I thought I would post my newest piece of writing. Again, it's meant to be spoken, but I think it's still worth reading. It's romancey. I dunno what's gotten into me.
I was on a bus ride home from Toronto. I'd just said goodbye to a wonderful lover. People all around me on the bus were touching, snuggling, and coo-cooing all around me. Touches are magical things.
Anyway....


Im fascinated how the simple brushing of bodies
morphs into a tool of love—
an adze, a sketch of skin, a flimsy
momental friction laced with everything
lovers need not say to one another.

A touch becomes his touch, her touch
your loveliest of touches.
We become kittens for it.
We stay up all night pining for it, we adore it—
we store it in our chests and it becomes the
very language of this adoration.
We save our most special finger dances
for the brows of our most exhalted—
kiss the napes of bodies so salted by
short breaths, and in each small sweat
our two bodies become
valted in one another.

These moments are simple magic,
extracting miniature lightning strikes
that light us up like matches.
A touch of this gravity can cast bluish shadows upon my heart.
It follows me through every single part
of my journey.
It stays within the brightest banks of me and
I am a fiend for the deepest forest of it.

And so
a touch like this can be a dangerous city
for a heart like mine to visit—
for when the touch is gone like a ghost
the touch becomes
1000 times more exquisite.

When it passes, each time,
I bind my hands
for
just
a
minute.

And pay respect for lovers lost enough
just to give it.

Homage To Summer- Part 2

My last blog about my crazy 2010 summer ended with recovery, insight, and me being at peace with my mistakes. The ego was just recooping from mayhem, and I was back in the business of rocking in the free world. It puts me at about July or so, when I first started living and working in Dwight. It was, like I said, really lovely to have a safe little secure spot for a while. It was good to be making money and saving it. I was painting, I was swimming, bikinis and cutoffs were all I was wearing. I stood on the porch every night and watched the fireflies with a little smile. Life was real sweet. Things were looking up for this little monster.

I had done a lot of early-summer-thinking in Spain about love and romance.
I had way too much time to try and get to know this thing I’ve had such a strange relationship with throughout my life.
It was only last summer, of 2009, that Brittney Rand had officially experienced her first heartbreak. After living with this man for nearly 3 years and chasing him all over the globe, after giving up what I felt was everything and not receiving what I felt was owed back to me in a committed relationship, I needed a break from any serious feelings for men. I told him not to bother picking me up from Algonquin Park, where I was working, that I was going to stay and do things independently. And I decided at that moment that I was capable of getting on with this life on my own. Needless to say, it was, and has been, very difficult for a transient lady such as myself to pull up my trousers. Love toyed with me!

It was supposed to be this easy, lovely thing, that when you possessed it in your life you became mythical rather than a mere mortal. All the movies said so.

According to what I thought love was, I was doing everything exactly right: yes, you should sacrifice everything for it, you should hopelessly chase it through deep dark forests and dark caverns and believe that it would guide you back out. I think this is still true for some people; teenage, naïve love has its merits and most everyone experiences it. It helps us understand ourselves. We are our freest and purest lovers in this time, and it prepares us for an even deeper facet of love. I call it “mature love”, where the base of it comes from a place of respect and deep adoration rather than lust and hopeless idealism. When you are in mature love (and I’m speaking hypothetically here, because I’m not super positive I’ve experienced this yet), one would anticipate that each lover guides the others light and actively helps protect it for them. Whats more magical and lovely and respectable than that?

Wow.

Okay, so I really have thought a lot about love.

Anyway, so it took some time to morph out of the barbed wire mindset of teenage love. The jealousy, the drama, the throwing stones at your lovers windows, the whole dang schdick. It took a long time to be interested in any of it again, even to be interested in holding the same hand twice. Upon entering the realm of singledom again, though, I had a lot of offers from suitors. Many were very wonderful young men, with little rhinestone shimmers in their eyes, who would pick me flowers and write me letters and all the rest. I was enjoying the attention, obviously, but still not really into it. So as the year had passed and my heart had settled, it surprised me how I had changed once I had met the aforementioned lover. The one with whom all the crazy dramatics happened. With him and I there was potential, but until I returned from Spain, I still don’t think I was completely convinced of the feat. I was warming myself up to it, but to keep the story short, we were unlucky in love (see Part 1).

Even that I had considered it all was a big change! I was ready to be a good lady to somebody again, to share my experiences with somebody, whether or not it meant sharing a title with someone.
This summer I began to feel a real connection to myself. I had finally made peace with the past and was willing to accept it’s lessons rather than restrict me from living in the present. The most important lesson I think I learned was to be the truest to myself that I know how to be. To protect my own light at all costs, and that as long as I am sound I am capable of experiencing lifes grand gifts, such as love. This meant I was going to follow my heart, and hope it wouldn’t lead me astray.

Back to the story.

So, I’d been invited to a magical ramshackle of a place called The Fortress. I was starting to explore photography, and with the borrowed equipment of a friend I decided I wanted to build a portfolio. I was taking photos of everything I could and got really into events photography. The Fortress is quite the event: it’s held at least once per year, in the far reaches of Muskoka, Ontario. The Fortress is essentially a huge treefort, with riddles and all kinds of weird paraphenelia tacked up all over the walls. It has two levels, and the top level has a stage for bands. On this particular Fortress night there were something like 6 musical acts, and the place was packed from top to bottom. The entire grounds had turned into a little camp-city, and the trail from the road was lit, poorly, with little solar lights. I, and many of my friends, tripped on our asses and/or got lost but it was worth it, every little bit. The people there were lovely and there was no fighting, no stupid behaviour, just stupid costume hats and lots of hugs. I was loving being all over the place taking photos of the funny t-shirts and headdresses and people drinking homemade liquor. To my delight, I looked up on the way down the rickkedy stairs, saw a handsome bearded man with funny glasses and a shirt that said “You Rock” on it. I said “nice shirt”. He said “Thanks” and smiled at me.
Uh oh.

So I got a lot of amazing pictures, and the fun was swelling all around me. I coudn’t take it. I had to stand in the back and protect the camera and try not to drink beer the entire set of a Grateful Dead cover band, which is just wrong in general. The beer was unlimited with the cover fee (a bottle of booze, 20 bucks or a bottle of liquor), and I had my best friend by my side and knew way too many people to not be participating. So I found a suitable hiding spot for my equipment and commenced to the sport of drink and dance. Eventually, quite late, a hip-hop act came on. It wasn’t too late where I was anywhere near ready to go to bed, and I was rocking out playing the bongos while the act was on. I had way too many beer at that point to notice who was where, but eventually looked up and the dude with the ridiculous glasses and “You Rock” t-shirt was rocking it on the treefort stage.
I am a woman who finds it impossible not to dance when a good song is on, so I got down to my business with my trusted dance partner/best friend and broke it the eff down.
I kept looking at “You Rock” dude until Julia suggested I go and make him dance with me. Not “ask him to dance”, but “give him no choice”. At a break in his set when the DJ took over, I got super confident from the beer and jumped up and started dancing with him. He was into it. I liked his beard. He asked me my name. He made me laugh. I put on his glasses. He kissed me.

The “You Rock” boy and I danced until no one else was dancing. We stayed up until sunrise talking and being mushy on a ratty old couch in the Fortress, and watched everybody vacate the place. My shoes slaughtered my feet that night, and he offered to rub them for me. He kissed my nose. He said I was pretty. He was way too cool for school. We navigated our way, hand-in-hand back to his tent just before dawn and snuggled for a total of 15 minutes before he passed out snoring like a Grizzly Bear, and sweating like a motherfucker from the sport of dance.
I woke up early to locate my best friend amongst the bodies littered on the lawn, to find my camera equipment.
I kissed “You Rock” dude on the cheek, and wasn’t sure if I’d ever see him again.
Little did I know that it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him, and it also woudn’t be the last time I felt that uncertainty.

Sooooo,
that’s it for today.
I’ve spent far too many hours on here, and I’ve got moving into an apartment-type-stuff to deal with now!
Part 3 will come soon enough, but it’s kind of still happening.
Give it some time shall we?

Homage To Summer Pt. 1

The past few weeks have been pretty crazy for me.
I guess not any crazier than things always are for me, especially with all the wildness of the summer, but that wildness seems to get thicker as my summer memories approach the fall ones.

It was only last Monday that I packed up my things from the cabin in Muskoka where I've been living and working all summer! I thought I was nostalgiac then: saying goodbye to some wonderful people I met, knowing it would be a while before I go back up there. Finally completing a hectic summer work contract at a Muskoka resort. All of this can be very overwhelming when you are an open chasm of emotions like me: yeah I know, who'da thought? I'm a pretty stoic lady.

But digesting all the craziness that's occured since I returned to Canada in the spring from Spain has been a bit tough. I've sifted through much of it on the long bus ride to the West coast of Canada over the weekend. Although there's been lots of heaviness, the universe has been kind enough to toss in some sweetness, too. As I sit here with a tea in Port Moody, British Columbia (which will be my new haunt for a while), I realize I've got some stories worth telling.

I guess this blog is an homage to my crazy summer. It's that time of year again, when the leaves back home are falling, and though I'm not there I'm still feeling the changes of autumn in me. So buckle in, because I'm taking you on the derby-car ride of my summer. I've decided to be as honest and as open about everything that's happened as I am comfortable to be, so if you're not into reading personal things about peoples lives that you know, you should probably stop reading here and pick up that OK! magazine instead.

After hoofing it across Spain for over a month on a 1000+ year-old pilgrimage, I was obviously tired as fuck. And not only the obvious physical tiredness: having slept in random bunks at makeshift hostels, under bar awnings, in fields, alongside ditches, walking with only chuck taylors and a backpack through mountain passes and in the hot summer sun. It was also a very emotional trek for me. I left Canada to embark on this journey with very little money, leaving behind a kind lover who was nothing but good to me. And at first this wasn't even the least bit bothersome-- I was on a crazy adventure in Europe and I wasn't thinking about anything else. However, when the rain started to fall in Spain, and didn't cease for a couple weeks, things started getting strange in my brain. We, my childhood friend Caitlin and I, were walking alone for quite some time. We started climbing in elevation without knowing it. There was snow. There was icy mud. To say the least we were pissed and unprepared. But we were also really open out there, and things that were long packed down in the files of memories and emotions were suddenly popping up for the party. I got a lot of thinking done in those days we spent alone. I think it was necessary to clean out all the junk I had built up inside before having met the 7 other lovely travellers in Leon. From then on, we were a team, a strong organism, and I finally had other people to blabber about my life to.

Anyway, so unbeknownst to me at that time, things were only about to start getting heavier. Once my friend and I reached Leon, near halfway through the trip, I needed some rest. My choice of footwear turned from a joke into a bloody nightmare. Everytime I walked my tendants felt like they were tearing, stress fractures cracking in my bones, my feet felt so big inside my shoes that it was more comfortable to walk on the ground with nothing. I needed some rest, after having walked for nearly 20km a day, every day straight at that point. Something just generally was not right in my body. I felt weird; fatigued at random times, weary, just unexplainably weird.

We rested at an albergue (the term used for hostel-type municipality run refuges for pilgrims along the 'el camino'), and because of our arrival time we had to share a room with 4 bunk beds. We just so happened to be blessed with the top bunks with snoring seniors below us. I awoke at 4 o'clock in the morning, scrambling to climb out of the top bunk without waking everybody and not throw up in the hallway to the bathroom. I was sick for a few hours, repeating the same process constantly, all the while thinking I was dying. These two old dutch ladies (whom we called our "camino mamas") told me the next morning that I was suffering from exhaustion, and that my body was retaliating from the overexertion.

So just after Leon we met these really cool people who had all found one another along the way too. There was 2 girls from Quebec, a guy from British Columbia, 2 guys from Slovenia, a young American guy from Florida and one from Germany. They became our friends quickly, and my wine-sharing cigarette-smoking 'bad pilgrim' friends. Not so strangely we all became very close, as we would spend days walking together and nights staying at the same albergues. Because of the size of our group, often the albergues would reserve entire rooms and spaces for us to share so our group could stay together. We always had a guitar, we were always singing songs and magnetizing other young pilgrims. So much so, that on our last night in Santiago we had a farewell dinner with all the great people we met-- the table had about 23 people at it from all over the world. I could go on forever about the dynamic of our strange little group, but I'll just sum it up with the word 'awesome'. I do, partiularly, remember one moment where everything changed. My entire existence shifted.
We had found a beach in Villfranca, and we were all sharing wine together and hanging out. It was a lovely day, but again, I wasn't feeling right. I looked up at my friend Caitlin, we locked eyes, she looked at my belly and I instantaneously knew I was pregnant.

I can't really explain how I knew this, but I knew it. It had been something I had told Caitlin could be a possibility, but it was more of a joke, in which we would resite Baby Mama lines and things were funny because they were Amy Poehler we were talking about and not Brittney Rand. I needed to know for sure, so I asked the most fluent speaker of Spanish to go to the Farmacia with me and get a test.
When we arrived back at the albergue, I dropped my stuff and went to discover my fate. My fate took less than 6 seconds to reveal itself to me, and Brittney Rand was, in fact, pregnant.
So what did I do?

Well, that was the very moment I started smoking again.
I'd quit, and had been on a detox. It was a strange concept to find out I was pregnant and go straight to shoving a ronnie in my face, but of course it helped me at that very moment.
I took a cigarette, leaned up against the wall of a castle, took about 3 puffs
and then proceeded to sing every curse word I knew and sob uncontrollably until I couldn't breathe. That lasted for a whole of about 20 minutes, while Caitlin rubbed my back and said nothing.
Then I remember a moment of complete clarity, where the crying turned off, I was sound and silent and unafraid, and I began to plan. It's crazy when your world completely changes, and you are scared as hell and even more confused than ever, and your mind takes control of the situation like that. Of course, I was still fucked up about it, especially because I had left that other person behind in Canada and hadn't anticipated such a complex situation on my hands.
I was totally alone in this one.

So, the rest of the El Camino de Santiago, Brittney Rand was making one of the biggest decisions of her life. Was I capable of hard things? Of course I was, I was walking across the country of Spain. Was it selfish to not want this? Could I do this alone? I honestly don't know how I managed all of it, overwhelming as it was, but the only way it became real and something I could deal with was to be open an honest about it with my friends. I began referring to it as Villafranca, because that's what I would call the baby if I would have it.
The strange thing about all of this is that a card-reader had told me before I left that I would be carrying a child in the near future, but obviously I took that metaphorically-- right! Carrying a child of knowledge! That makes sense! Yeah, no.

The rest of the trip was lovely, and this new knowledge didn't slow me down, but humbled me and made me more aware of who I was. It added a strange twist to my life, because I had to deal with being in limbo, where I couldn't do a damned thing about the state of things even if I'd wanted to. It was a good environment to think about my life and what I was going to do, because my world had become very small, and to me at that time there was no other world outside my little body, on that big trail.

The camino is something that would take ions to describe in all it's glory and wonder, but it should be left to another blog, really. After reaching the holy city of Santiago with my new found friends, and my oldest friend in the world, Caitlin and I went back to Madrid. We stayed in one of her family members' homes, with his artist wifes wild sculptures everywhere, and flounced around the city for a week.
By this time, after much ado; after deciding and undeciding I was going to carry Villafranca and give him/her to gay dads (first thought), after thinking I was a powerful amazonian, independent woman who could do this one on her own, after toying with the idea of allowing the decision to be made by the ex-lover, I decided I was tired. I decided I was not an ideal parent, not a beacon of light and hope, and that I could be capable but it wasn't fitting right. I decided I would allow myself the freedom to be selfish, and that in my selfishness I was, in fact, being quite selfless. I wasn't, and am still not capable of providing for a child in the way I feel a child should be provided for. And by knowing and accpeting that reality I feel like I did the most loving thing I could do. I remembered the way I grew up, the environment I lived in as a child, and my children would be different. I wanted to be overjoyed at this kind of news. So I made my decision, despite some key disappointed people, and made arrangements to end my short time of confusiona and wonder and lovelieness with Villafranca upon arrival in Canada.

I won't go through what happened in the first two weeks I arrived back to Canada, because to me it is a blurry place. It's a dark, unsturdy place that I don't much like to revisit. But, I did get a lot of writing done in that time, as I did go a little bit crazy in the head, and rightly so. I think thats fair. I spent long days in bed in the most pain I've ever felt in both my body and my heart, apologizing to the wind for my horrible mistakes. I consoled myself with the idea that Villafranca would come back to me one day; that he or she was just waiting on a nearby branch, and would return in another form when I was ready for it. I hadn't completely recovered yet and started my new job at Billie Bear Resort in Dwight, Ontario. I moved in to my cabin, the place I'd be living for the next few months, and met the women who would help pull me out of my post-Spain blues.

I was happy to be back, to say the least. I needed familiar faces, I needed the joy they brought and I needed to laugh. All of my best friends were right at my fingertips again, as they always are in the summertime, as everyone lovely I know flocks back to Muskoka or nearby. At this point, my heart was severely broken because of my own doing, and a complicated situation with said ex-lover (who at that point had vacated Ontario with another woman). My ego was damaged and all I needed was to be close to my friends, and to swear off men (almost...) entirely. I began writing and painting again, and once my body was back to normal it became possible to go out again. So, not that it was the best thing to do of course, I danced and partied and skinny-dipped and camped and scared off all my blues with so much fun even I could barely handle it. Fortunately, my friends are so fucking cool that they would pick me up whenever I had time off, to spend it with me and make me feel better again. In the first month I was back I went on an impromptu roadtrip to the far reaches of Delaware to see Tournament of Death 9. Look it up on YouTube, but only if you dare. I actually saw a person eating glass, and I bet that's more than you can say for yourself.

I went Canoeing to Betty's Island, snuck out with the girls to smoke joints under the moonlight in the woods after hours at work, sang my favorite songs with my favorite people in my favorite pub after hours, went skinny-dipping with loads of awesome people at 3 o'clock in the morning, went to a campout hawaiian-themed party at a native reserve, spent mornings with my best friends over tea, and began to love my life and myself more than ever before. My friends taught me that it was okay to make mistakes and fail, and reminded me that I was a lovely person no matter what I'd done. I am the only person who has ever taken the very path I'm on, and so it's expected that I should be uncertain sometimes. All-in-all, my friends healed me and for that I am very grateful.

Alright, well that is basically the first half of my summer right there. The second half starts getting romancey, adventuruous and bizarre. Its full of latenights and exciting debauchery!
Who doesn't love all that grimey goods?
Until next time, dear grasshoppers....

grow roots (?)

sure
the prodigal daughter has returned:


broke
and unbroken
with aches in her back, a soul worn in shoes
a heart full of light and a head full of losing stories
(that make so little sense in fractured conversation).


i have these diffused excitements that
still glisten like snow-globe glitter on skin,
kindred road-spirits mixed with healthy bits of playful sin
and i sit sit sit with them.


visions of mountains my feet have climbed, dewey
and so up high, you could just roll down the side-
shrines to God's who could not survive (no, not this time).
i've lived lives with so much beauty that cannot be described.


and so now
i've been home a little while.
from this dusty cottage room
i can only pay homage to my last life with lost photos
and crooked smiles.


i could go on for decades justifying why i keep running into the wild.
but how does one begin to grow roots that don't go on for miles?

Spoken Word Birds

I've been recording some of my recent poetry, because I figured it's better listened to the way it flows through my brain. Becomes more fluid and understandable! Forgive me, the sound quality is pretty bad. Turn up your speakers and read and listen and think and listen and listen. Will be adding as I finish them!

Click To Listen: "I'm No Adder"
http://www.zshare.net/audio/79488934cd1c1a3c/

--------------------------------------------------------------

I never did the math: I am no "adder".

Numbers float past my peripheral, get lost in my outer space. I get confused and lose the meaning of them-- "Can you add the tax to that??"-- No, I never did the math.

Unfortunately, that means I may have been tricked more than a few, strayed askew in the exchanging of currencies.... but I'm none the wiser, and I didn't lose a wink of sleep, more involved in my harems of dreams to notice. Too involved with the color of the sea in them, and that magic chair I keep riding above the clouds, over tiny houses lit up like sequins....above the town in which i grew up.

I am a citizen of that world, I live and am alive there.

Three years ago, when we met, I started to ponder more about the meaning of numbers-- our love was Pi r2. Two halves of a pear were more than just mere fruit, and math became a town, a new route on which we could meet. At first we were two, our lives overlapping like exquisite geometrical patterns-- we were one, and much later less than half of me was standing.

But

that's an equation to leave on the hem of a future night, over an undrunk bottle of wine, when I can better laugh about it all. Long division retold and re-entwined over the long nights that I have passed. A quarter here and there, and there, and there is a whole lot farther from the place I wanted to be.

And, such is love for us dreamfolk.

2 teaspoons of sugar in my tea, 1 cold night, and 20 lines of poetry equals but one fraction of the metaphors I will give to your body in my lifetime. Who enjoys infinity, really?

This morning I awoke with the webs of dreamworld stuck to my eyes, an entire microcosm concocted in this calculator of tissue and muscle matter. And I realized that a love of numbers just does not add up. There is no ratio or guage that can-- or cannot-- reingage regrets, or control. There is no scale for a world that works in mauves.
No tools to disect the inertia of falling in, or out of love.

In a world of letters and words, I try to take comfort. I give postcard reflections and descriptions of the places I've been, though I'd be lying if I said that it was easy. I don't always love poetry.

And thus, I don't do the math.
I never have.

I don't add up the things you've subtracted from my heart, or density you vaccumed from bones in my body. But I do remember those dreams.

And

though half of this bed remains at zero, dispersing it's negative space, and though the palms are now detached, leaving only my own five fingers,

At least I can dream my way out.
I can dream my own way out.

-----------------------------------------------

Click To Listen: "Old Winds"
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7948981624d7406a/

------------------------------------------------

yes

i enjoy the power struggle
when i'm half-undressed
twilit stress
and tiny entwined leaves of our flesh

tattoos all stripped off
and washed away inside sheets
i've kissed cheeks
in vast canola fields and back seats--

so many lovers i've seen pass.
a stones throw from streets to glass, passed
adult-sized notes in highschool geography
class

i find the dance so fascinating--
all germs and mouths and dreams just ossilating
in
canyons of nickel-loves
(we are convinced should be degrading)

but inside i feel the steps are slowly changing.
the dance of lip-bit love all rearranging.

not so strangely i guard my moon when
i see it fading.
frayed 'round edges from summer frictions reckless staining.


lovers; wear your hearts like children.
the thrill bargains between soul-building and quiet clinic killings.
yes,
bodies are made finely for fulfilling.
but used like water glasses
incessantly spilling.

o, milky-eyed dears beware:
like you, i've played unfair
i don't care's swapping seats like musical chairs
except,
i lost a fairy.

for days, these insides were swearing
wearing but guilty gowns and a hot
summer despairing.

my body is a museum of these breif loves
gut-filled gifts to strangers
inviting surgical gloves
so

lovers feed your love like your children.
for each each fancied fuck
fucked up enough to pull
gold fillings

it is the season for drilling.
and now it's hard to find these old winds fulfilling.
----------------------------------------------

Click To Listen: "Stay, Stay"
http://www.zshare.net/audio/79490069b7f5e0d8/

How many times in our lives have we heard the word "stay":

When our friends or family members are slipping on into death, we say "stay with me",
When we are making an exit, a crystal opportunity shines and beacons "stay, stay".
We are halfway out the door of a lovers house, and they beg us with oceans in their eyes
and they say
"please, stay, stay".

But in these moments we are always staying-- our touches and words stay in peoples minds, our pictures stay, our experiences always staying in some place
that we are not.

A bit of us stays everywhere, like little ghosts.
We can wear the coats of our forefathers on the shores of the ocean.

So
It is easier to not stay.
To turn to that lover and simply say "no, I will not"
once we become the everywhere.
We can let death take away our mothers on sparrows wings
We can leave behind the things we know, building birdhouses for the words "stay" and "go".

I will stay with you
I am staying here
I am going there, too.

Spirits wander, holding hands with the objects we see and those we can see no more.
We migrate over seas and land masses on a vast pilgrimage to the future
and pay homage to the past.

I
stay
with everything.
I
will carry pounds of you
around with me on this earth, until I am no more--

When I become bits of people who have not yet arrived,
and my ideas become seedlings in the minds of artists
a thousand years in the future.
---------------------------------------

Click To Listen: "Honey in the Hives"
http://www.zshare.net/audio/79490409fa651d61/

------------------------------------------

I am a compass:

Ever-stretching, a complex network of circles, like cities on the map—though the kind that cannot be seen in dreams, slid onto delicate fingers, nor visited. I left my heart hibernating in the north, behind that big tree where I’ve not brought a soul. In the rings of the birch, I wrote symphonies for that set of hands I seek—not yet alive, but near. Flowers, freckles, toes— the way hair grows on beards. I no longer fear it.

My tune is humble and unrequited, a silent bidding that explodes into the night like sirens from this tiny room; big city, wide map, black cats and magic hats.

Hidden deep as honey in the hive, my surrender survives on the labor of my patient buzzing.


And so:

I cannot give this jeweled thing away like baked goods, this bead of golden sap we drink in tea without a passing thought about from whence it came, and without these thoughts as justice to its light
It’s a shame.

So, not tonight, that thing does not roll in the hay. I’ll stay, but not sleep here.

My love is like that ship, slipping through the currents, sliding narrowly through chasms of storms that unleash banquets of rainsongs and refused advances. It is as simple as the taste of apple on the lips, the way light licks glass—it’s the joyful crass songs of my neighbor's children.


I’ll ride in the front seat, but I won’t take the keys.

No, I cannot yet give this jeweled thing away.

Deflating Thoughts On Roadtrips' Past

Many of the images of my spontaneous roadtrip in the spring have faded into the chasm of lost memories. I wanted to pay them justice, however, and exersise my recollecting and relocating skills, create a small shrine to it's short life. I've been wanting to do some writing about that tiny trip before I dust off my big gun, my recent trip to Spain. It all started in a laundromat on Bloor Street in Toronto.

I have known Danielle since my crazy teenage years (I know I know, I am still pretty crazy, but those were somehow crazier days), when we would drink entire magnums of wine, tequila, whatever, and shave designs into each others heads. My loudmouthed, attractively unladylike, firecracker Danielle. We were a tightly crocheted pair back in those days, feeding off each others spontaneity and wildness, and then somehow I lost her. It was when she went West, and I became domesticized with a boyfriend, floating Southward to the Dominican for two years. So answering my telephone to Danielles voice was certainly a surprise. "Wanna go for a drive?", she says to me with a recognizable tone of mischeif and obviously I'm in. "I'll be in Toronto in a few hours."
I get my stuff together, not really knowing where we're going, but knowing we aren't coming back for at least a week and that we weren't going to be anywhere close to home.

Danielle arrives at my shared apartment on St. Clarens, and we throw our arms around each other for the first time in God knows how many moons. I shake hands with the scruffy British friend she's brought along, James, and we sit for a moment in the car and discuss excitedly where we are going to go. For whatever reason, we decide we are going to go to Myrtle Beach, but we don't even know which state in America to find Myrtle Beach. We punch it into the GPS, we go.


On the way I find out that James, a photographer working in Muskoka for a while, has suspiciously missed his flight back to England that morning. There are talks of the party the night before, the hangover, but it's obvious that it's not just Canada that he's in love with and I quietly admire him for his rebellious act. Suddenly this journey is getting more and more interesting as we pass along. From the back seat I am trying to get an idea of what Danielle is doing now: what happened to her house with her longtime boyfriend? Does she work? Obviously not. Thats okay, neither do I.
Danielle doesn't want to talk about it too much and I leave it alone.

The closer we get to the border of the states the more we worry that James may not be able to get in. Of course, we worry that they will have too many questions we won't be able to answer at border control, such as "what do you do for a living?" and "who is funding this excursion?", etc. etc. We make a breif stop in Niagra Falls, let the mist from the giant water-monsters touch our faces, we see the commercial madness of the place, the ferris wheel and neon lights and we leave. Bigger fish to fry.

We get to the border and immediately we are grilled by sarcastic, crew-cutted border officials about everything from how much allowance we have on our credit cards, to where we work, to where our parents work and get told about how strange our spontaneous excursion is-- it's obvious they do not have the same sense of humor that we do about life. They also aren't liking this British guy we have driving the car. They send us to immigration and we sit in a strange flourescent-lit government waiting room for 2 hours. Funny thing: James' visa is up in...............10 minutes. Needless to say we are not welcome to roam in America. We get sent back. Now we have to visit Canadian immigration because James has no visa to get back into our country either. We have an extensive conversation with a brute, bald, proffesional wrestler-looking man from immigration and he gives James an extended visa for 6 months, so long as he doesn't try to go to school or get a job. "And if you do, I will personally find you and remove all of your organs." He stamps his visa with a smile and says have fun.


We reset the GPS deciding we'd like to stay in our own country thank-you-very-much, and make a visit to the ocean. We are going to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on the East coast.
The first night we pulled onto a backroad somewhere in Eastern Ontario to rest. All I remember of it was that it was freezing on that Spring night. I arose at around 3 or 4 am with Danielle, James asleep in the back, a rusty-wooded barn sleeping at the side of the road. Cows in the field. We were back on the road again, and watched the most beautiful sunrise as we entered the province of Quebec.



My memory fades in and out of what I think happened next and some specific memories I will never forget, taking place somewhere along the stretch through Quebec. The long open TransCanada Highway was amazingly beautiful as the snow was just shrinking across the landscape, stubby mountains curled up in the distance. We stopped at a natural spring to wash ourselves along the road, Danielles hair freezing instantly in the cold.



We drove through Montreal and onward and onward and eventually hit Moncton, New Brunswick. We had made reservations at the cheapest hotel we could find, with help from some friends back home near the internet, seeing as we hadn't planned anything. When we arrived, they offered us a cheaper room and ensured us it was clean though it was "a little burnt". We took it. All three of us shared the room, piled our change on the bed for "food money", cut a pop can in half and had our first celebratory drinkoff. Desperately tired, we slept well there.



After making a random detour to Nova Scotia by accident, stopping in the 'blueberry capital of Canada', we turned around to get on the scenic Acadian Coastal Drive. We stopped in mall bathrooms to wash our hair and faces, brush our teeth. We stopped occasionally to take photos of cape cod homes and dilapitaded farm houses, gift shop gas stations. Eventually we find the Confederation Bridge and pass over it excitedly! I'd never been!



Once over the bridge the first thing we want to do is go to the coast, the blood redness that is Prince Edward Island coasts. Our scouting for the closest beach brings us to an eerie, vacant subdivision-esque place: there are no people living in it, just commercialized cape cod homes waiting to be sold at insanely high prices to boring yuppies, no doubt. So we pull into one of the seafoam colored homes, like we lived there, and go and spend time at the water. Somehow it wasn't very satisfying. We left, Charlottetown in the GPS.





The island seems as though it's from another world, though only a few provinces over. We were delighted by the new scenery, and played around in it like little kids. Finally we entered the teenie-tiny capital of PEI, population 28,000. We found a hotel room we could afford and set up camp. We start freaking out about money. None of us anticipated we would be doing all of this really, and we hadn't made any solid plans. We tried to go to a pawn shop and try to get rid of some of our things, but the pawnshops wouldn't take anything too expensive because they knew there weren't too many people wanting to buy what we had, for the price it was worth. We tried not to panic, we pulled some strings, got just enough to skim by as we were in Charlottetown and for the way home. Not after spending frustrating hours trying to barter with the bank to let us cash out-of-province personal cheques. Thanks Deborah, if you're reading this.



Sitting in the hotel, stealing wireless internet on James' laptop, I get a message pop up on the screen from a friend-of-a-friend. Nadien, who just so happened to spend some time travelling and hitchhiking around with my moon sister, one of my best friends in the world, Julia. She says she's in Charlottetown and wants to meet up. I've only met her once before but feel like I already know so much about her, after hearing about her from Julia. They share triple-goddess tattoos, both love astrology, she likes to write and so I don't see why not seeing as she knows so many of my friends. We plan to meet up at a pub for some beer.



When she arrives I'm on the telephone to Ontario with one of our mutual friends, Damien. She doesn't seem to be intimdated by our meeting, and our conversation at the pub opens up around lovers, past loves, relationships on the rocks, our yearning for the open road, breaking free breaking free gotta get out gotta get free. More and more it seems like we are all meant to be here, and I am enthralled and amazed by our interconnected web of experiences. We all seem to be going through the same things and having the same feelings about life, though we've only met up breifly in this moment. Nadien invites us back to her apartment, though things are rocky with her living situation, relationship. We go over and keep drinking, get out the guitar, sing songs together until the wee hours of the night. James drives back to the hotel and Danielle and I decide to find our way on foot there. Nadien asks us to come back the next day to stay the night, and we gladly accept her kind offer.



The next day we wake up and decide to go to the Anne of Green Gables site, though it isn't supposed to be open for another few motnhs. As was the motif of the trip, things worked out to our favor and it was the first day the house opened to the public, and we were the only ones there. Just as I remembered it from the books! Cliche, I know. We spent more time walking through the fairy woods, playing like children, walking hand-in-hand down lovers lane. We decide to leave, and blindly meander down the highway in search of the ocean again. We turn the corner slowly on an open, dusty, grey highway, and a lonesome fox walks onto the road in front of us. We stop. It turns its head toward us, and we unroll the windows. It blinks its inky eyes at us, unafraid and sits an arms distance away from us outside the car. It looks up at us and sits perfectly facing us, glances back at the road from which we came.

We are so amazed by the conversation we say nothing. It turns and walks away. As we slowly pick up speed and turn the next corner the sky opens up and there is the Atlantic ocean. Sitting quietly like a secret, waiting for us, are the most beautiful red cliffs I've ever seen. The fox confessed the message! We are so amazed by the vast blueness that we park the car and jump down the rocks to it. Danielle and I sit, she cries on my shoulder as I hug her, and now I know everything that has happened to her since we've last seen each other without having to say a word. We spend all day there cleaning out our souls. A couple hours later we take all of our blankets out of the car, lie them on the freezing cold ground and huddle together to take a nap, as close to the view as possible. I call all of the people in this world that I love the most and tell them how I feel about them. I suddenly feel alive again.



That night we meet Nadien and Devon, her boyfriend. We have drinks at her house and somehow we all are still reeling on the feelings of connectedness. We talk about the moon, how we've been following it's patterns on the trip, and how tonight is supposed to be the full moon. We should celebrate! Nadien wants to take us to her favorite spot in Charlottetown, the ship yard. She tells me of how she goes there when she misses home, sits in the captains seat of her favorite ship. She tells me how once, her and Devon, had dreams of sailing a boat together. I get the feeling from her tone that it will not happen for them. We all drink wine together and muck about tra-la-la-ing over the thickness of the full moon on the ocean, on us, ont he world. I think I will always remember the feeling of that night, how the earth seemed to gravel at our feet, surrendering. How we all, for those breif moments, felt real and connected and we understood each other. The inexplainably positivity within myself and the people we met inspired me. On the journey home I made up my mind that I was going to Spain in one month.



And I kept on riding the wave of that Spring synchrodestiny, sliding down it's wide paths not reaching for any passing branches to stop me. I decided I would walk across the country of Spain with my childhood friend at the end of April on the El Camino de Santiago, a 1000 year old pilgrimage. And I did.




(But I'll leave that story for another storytelling night....)

Stay, Stay. (written on the road)

How many times in our lives have we heard the word "stay":

When our friends or family members are slipping on into death, we say "stay with me",
When we are making an exit, a crystal opportunity shines and beacons "stay, stay".
We are halfway out the door of a lovers house, and they beg us with oceans in their eyes
and they say
"please, stay, stay".

But in these moments we are always staying-- our touches and words stay in peoples minds, our pictures stay, our experiences always staying in some place
that we are not.

A bit of us stays everywhere, like little ghosts.
We can wear the coats of our forefathers on the shores of the ocean.

So
It is easier to not stay.
To turn to that lover and simply say "no, I will not"
once we become the everywhere.
We can let death take away our mothers on sparrows wings
We can leave behind the things we know, building birdhouses for the words "stay" and "go".

I will stay with you
I am staying here
I am going there, too.

Spirits wander, holding hands with the objects we see and those we can see no more.
We migrate over seas and land masses on a vast pilgrimage to the future
and pay homage to the past.

I
stay
with everything.
I
will carry pounds of you
around with me on this earth, until I am no more--

When I become bits of people who have not yet arrived,
and my ideas become seedlings in the minds of artists
a thousand years in the future.

Old Winds

yes

i enjoy the power struggle
when i'm half-undressed
twilit stress
and tiny entwined leaves of our flesh

tattoos all stripped off
and washed away inside sheets
i've kissed cheeks
in vast canola fields and back seats--

so many lovers i've seen pass.
a stones throw from streets to glass, passed
adult-sized notes in highschool geography
class

i find the dance so fascinating--
all germs and mouths and dreams just ossilating
in
canyons of nickel-loves
(we are convinced should be degrading)

but inside i feel the steps are slowly changing.
the dance of lip-bit love all rearranging.

not so strangely i guard my moon when
i see it fading.
frayed 'round edges from summer frictions reckless staining.


lovers; wear your hearts like children.
the thrill bargains between soul-building and quiet clinic killings.
yes,
bodies are made finely for fulfilling.
but used like water glasses
incessantly spilling.

o, milky-eyed dears beware:
like you, i've played unfair
i don't care's swapping seats like musical chairs
except,
i lost a fairy.

for days, these insides were swearing
wearing but guilty gowns and a hot
summer despairing.

my body is a museum of these breif loves
gut-filled gifts to strangers
inviting surgical gloves
so

lovers feed your love like your children.
for each each fancied fuck
fucked up enough to pull
gold fillings

it is the season for drilling.
and now it's hard to find these old winds fulfilling.

Synchrodestiny in Spring!

Well isn't spring a time for surprises.

I had made up my mind-- I was going back up north, back from where I came, leaving Toronto. It was a great idea: save rent money, and all the other ridiculous expenses of this place, and conjure up funds to meet an old friend in Spain. It's still my plan, of course, to spend the end of April till the beginning of June at a work exchange in Europe. But, serendipity calls! My landlord offers me a free place to stay, and extra money to paint a mural of my choosing, in the comfort of my own home. So last minute, I've decided to stay for a bit more of April to make some cash and paint something lovely, leave my mark behind.

Secondly, I'm sitting in the laundromat with Damien, chatting about how great the small surprises are, when an old friend calls me up. Haven't talked to her in months on the phone, so the call is a nice surprise. Turns out, she's coming to Toronto from Muskoka, and was thinking about taking a road trip south. Where? Who knows, somewhere warm I'm thinking. She asks me if I want to go, no plans, sleep-in-the-car kind of deal. Why not, right?

So I'm gathering up my passport and scrounging together some clothes to skip off to America, somewhere, for an unknown amount of time. Synchrodestiny! I was just thinking I needed a change of scenery. Farewell to you, Canada, for a short while. Upon my return I will start up this blog right, as I had intended to.

Anyway, I'm Brittney Rand. Nice to meet you. If this isn't exactly my style of an introduction to my life, I don't know what is.