if i'd only thought of the right words

when was the last time you sat down and wrote something with a pen and paper? was it a list, or a short note to let someone know how to feed the cat? i wrote my brother a letter last week and writing the 4 pages made my hand numb. i hadn't written a letter for more than a year i'm sure. it made me feel sad to realize it. it feels like i blinked and the world changed.

i was walking on campus the other day and i took a peak in a chemistry class. every student, and there were a hundred or more in the lecture hall, was on a laptop typing. what does that feel like? all that clicking and the sea of facebook pages open while someone talks in vein at the front. you have the whole world right in front of you with the click of a mouse, there is no need to even look at the guy beside you.

it isn't that i have a problem with technology, well not entirely anyway, but more about how it has changed the way we communicate. now a days when you write you can revise, and then revise some more. you can create the character you want to be. it used to be that if you were young and you liked someone you would give them a hastily composed note, or debate calling them for several nights in a row. it wasn’t instant. if you finally did get up the courage to phone, or pass the note, your hand would be shaking, your words coming out would be awkward and forced. you would be embarrassed. you would know by the inflection of their voice whether they liked you or didn’t. you grew a little every time you did it, by finding the courage and living with the consequences. if you like someone now you are more likely to send them a carefully crafted text message, delightful and witty. the perfect you. if you are lucky they will text back and pretend to be their perfect them, but you get no tone or context. no emotion. no connection. no truth. you are left to interpret the story yourself. if they don't share you affection it doesn't matter. the whole experience is empty and easily forgotten. there is no tangible moment to hang on to for later, no experience, it is just a few words on a screen. 

it seems like it should be disappointing, but then again what do i know, i can barely even use my phone.

i need to start writing letters again.

day one

10:49 on a sunday night, i should probably be sleeping. at the very least i should probably go put the clean sheets on the bed instead of writing here. there is always something else that i should be doing. that i should have done. i slept in this morning until after 10, i can live on the edge and stay up a little tonight. now if only i had something interesting to say*. i take that back, i think i have a lot of interesting things to say, i am just not certain how one goes about saying them. practice and perfect they say.

i got ambitious tonight. it happens every now and again. usually it involves me coming up with some kind of creative project, completing a quarter of it before opting for a long hot bath and wine instead. sometimes i go back to the project, usually i don't though, which is why i recently purchased a bookshelf that houses, almost exclusively, my unfinished projects. i guess you could say that the shelf itself is a finished project though, i mean it got put up and has stuff on it, can't ask for more from a shelf. my ambition tonight though was of a culinary nature.

i periodically get together with a couple of friends and have a cook off. we drink booze, chop vegetables, and eat chocolate covered bon bons. in the end we have 12 meals to take home for our freezer. we each bring the ingredients for six of each of two meals. we wear aprons and talk about mad men. i think it is just as much about connecting with a past that doesn't exist anymore as it is about the food. it has been awhile since we got together though, and my freezer was empty, so i decided to have a party of one, well one and a lot of food. i didn't talk about mad men (although i might have had a moment where i thought about don draper) and there were no bon bons, but i had the booze and there was plenty of chopping.

when i first started working at ubc i was a clerk b in the admissions office. there was no clerk a, so b was as low as it got. my tasks were primarily made up of opening mail and filing dockets. it took zero skill and almost no mental effort on my part. i think it might still be the best job i have ever had. the filing was my favourite. hundreds of envelopes coloured coded and numerical waiting to find their home, the perfect spot just for them. there is a rhythm to filing that i never appreciated before, a meditation to it. my thoughts seemed to flow easily through the act. i am sure that if i had to do it for the rest of my life the story would read different, but i knew it wasn't forever, just a term position of 5 months, and i loved it.

chopping is not unlike filing. when chopping is combined with watching jon hughes' movies, it can be downright spiritual. so i chopped my way through some kind of wonderful, and sauteed for most of pretty in pink, and now my freezer is full. time to oneself to simply get lost in thought is a rare thing when you are in possession of two toddlers, but then maybe i don't have to tell you that? it is why i love my commute everyday, and also why i love cooking.

the end result was (and i include this list here as i have tried all of these recipes and they are great, so maybe you would like them too):

3 chicken enchiladas**
3 spinach cannelloni
4 jars of chorizo spaghetti sauce
2 chicken pot pies
4 mexican lasagna***

now take a moment to imagine what my kitchen looked like after this. the stovetop alone was enough to make me want to run for the hills. so tell me, do you have any good recipes for the freezer? (and if this seemed to end abruptly it is because i am feeling guilty about the sheets!)

*although incredibly riveting, this post is not the most interesting thing i have to say (i swear)
**this is all cream and no veg so i add corn, red pepper and peas
***if you make this please note that her recipe makes enough to serve and entire congregation at her church, i am not kidding, well ok, i am kidding a little, but it is a LOT

everything that happens is from now on

i am home alone on a saturday afternoon. being alone at the house is probably the rarest of time, something almost never seen, and yet, here i am. my computer is in a little sunroom that was added on after this house was built, the floor is tile and the walls are yellow (or buttercup if you prefer). through the windows i can see north to the mountains and west to the ocean (i only know it's there in memory though, i can't actually see it). this means the sunset is my entire view at the end of the day, the birds migrating by the dozens to their overnight perch, silhouetted by the brilliant hues. i only get to see this two days a week, most days it is dark already before i get here. i love to just sit and watch the crows, i think this is partly why i am so fond of this. the starlings do this here too, circle around and around. i think one day i will have to make my own video.

the other day someone said that they were going to have a look at my blog to get to know me better. it made sense in context, i mean it was someone who i first got to know through their's, so it only seemed fair, but i couldn't help wonder, what exactly does this place tell someone about me? i don't ever read the archives around here, sometimes i will remember a specific entry and search it out, but mostly history is history, which is probably how it should be. never the less i was inspired to go in and search around the other night. i was amazed to see the things i wrote before i had kids, it was a completely different place. no one knew it existed so i didn't worry too much about how it was perceived. i remember feeling different about it later though, after the kids were born.  i have often struggled with this space. i was tired of writing about my stay at home mom life, not because that life isn't worthy, but because my heart wasn't in it and really, i had nothing new to say. i tried just photos for awhile, but this isn't the best venue for that either, so then i just stopped (with the occasional putter along the way), which brings us to last wednesday night and me reading my archives. it was such a great exercise, to put it all out there and see the line from there to here, it made me feel like i had accomplished something.

the earlier entries made me want to do it again, to make the quiet time to write fiction, or semi-fiction anyway. to be creative with words (and photos) again. this blog used to be called the way people run, which is probably what it should still be called, so i thought i would do a retrospective of the 10 posts i think represented each person i have been along the way and how i have run. the title of the links here were inspired by the 6 word memoir movement.

4.25.2005: i'm the best part of lonely
5.11.2005: tomorrow i'll be something altogether different
9.01.2005: forever looking back i ignore tomorrow
9.12.2005: a minute's enough to change everything
9.22.2005: i came from there, here's better
2.09.2006: into the light we start again
6.23.2006: it wasn't the same before you
11.22.2006: the trees loss was my gain
6.22.2007: that first year changed everything after
12.21.2008: there is no end in sight

i just realized that there wasn't anything about ada in those ten. mostly it is because after she came my life was a blur, a whirling cloud of chaos for so long. she holds this special place inside me, the way she reflects back on myself in so many ways. the post about that is yet to come though, so to be true to the story i should include this one.

so that's where i have been. i still don't know what it says about me though: that i have an unusually strong affection for the past? that as a person i could work harder at being less sad? that i am hopeful about what's ahead? all of them true and of course just part of the story.