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.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
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?
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?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
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....
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....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
