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?