was

Months without writing. Without thinking about words, considering how they should go together.

I almost forgot that I was a writer.

Was I, even? Am I?

adrienne pierce, black chocolate stout

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. I think three posts down is a blog from Clint and Tara's wedding, which was long ago.

I'm listening to Adrienne Pierce. She is good. I first heard her sing at Second Cup. We got a temporary liquor liscense, served Baileys and wine (not together). She was awesome. I got kind of drunk while cashing out (weird combination of activities). Couldn't hear anything through the drive-thru, made eighty million lattes. It was a good night. I bought her signed CD for six bucks. Now it's made its way to my iTunes and I'm reliving the moment.

Now I work at Transcend coffee, which is better than Second Cup. Cliff would like it. I kind of wish he worked there; I think he would be good at it. I think he and Poul, the owner, would get along. But Cliff's in Stettler, now, doing something to do with land reclamation to make enough money to permanently leave Alberta, Canada. Kind of sad. I spent several days a week with him for three years. He was the one refilling my little plastic goblet with wine while I cashed out with Adrienne Pierce singing in the cafe.

I also work at a law firm doing menial tasks like sending faxes and stuffing envelopes. I miss writing. I miss feeling creative and sensitive to art and having ideas. I haven't had any ideas in a long time.

I felt a little tipsy from the black chocolate stout I drank at Transcend before walking home. It's the first stout I've ever actually finished. Yay me.

holiday inn

I love Christmas movies starring Bing Crosby. So delightful. I'm sitting in my living room with candles lit, watching "Holiday Inn." I brought the budgie into the room for a change of scenery. He's watching it too. Seems quite enthralled.

making merry

I'm going to the ballet tonight. I was excited about it, until I cracked the tail light on my mom's car, and now I'm just stressed out. I have $400 in my bank account. Take out $120 for insurance. $300 for board. $100 for gas this month. $60 in Christmas presents I haven't bought yet. So, -$180? Before paying to fix my mom's car? That's not going to work out.

I need another job. I need to be paid more frequently than once a month. It's too long of a stretch; I can't make it.

Must go straighten my hair, now. Put on the cheap lipstick I bought for one dollar. Go out into -40 C weather. Make merry.

not tomorrow

One of these days, I will go to work everyday and (possibly) enjoy it.

Not tomorrow, though.

on being okay

Umm, so. Do people write about actual things that happen in their lives when they blog, or is just abstract thoughts, like mine usually are?

I don't know.

Yesterday I went to a friend's wedding. There was weeping. It wasn't weeping out of pure joy for their love (although I am very happy for their love), it was the other kind of weeping: the sad kind of weeping. I didn't weep from start to finish, though. For the most part, I enjoyed myself. I thought the ceremony was beautiful and tasteful. The reception hall was gorgeous. The food was amazing and way too plentiful. The wine was one of my favourites. The speeches were touching, appropriate, and heartfelt.

It's just hard to see. Hard to experience. The second wedding of this friend. Remembering everything that happened at his first wedding. While he and his groomsmen sang to his new bride, I thought of how he sang to her, then, while his goofy best man played the guitar. Just things like that.

And then there's always Trinity, and her incredible physical likeness to Tanya. Her sweetness. Her innocence. And the promises made by Tara to take care of her.

I knew I would feel weird about the wedding, at least a little. I did feel weird about it, a little. But I am so, so, so happy for him and I was so honoured to be there to celebrate his happiness--their happiness--so that the weirdness was just sort of a background thing that didn't consume my mind (hardly ever), and it was okay.

It will be okay.

He'll be okay.

granted

I can't believe I'm going to work at Birch Bay Ranch. Again. There is no end to what I will do for them. I've already given them the best years of my youth. Now the best years of my young twenty-something career life as well?!

This position sounds like it will be two or three months of grant writing. I don't mind that. I feel really passionate about the Ranch and I feel very strongly that they require new facilities, as the whole joint's pretty much on its last legs. It's over forty years old. Their primary capital project is an indoor riding arena, which is so important for them to have because that means they can offer themselves as a year-round facility, which means, plainly... more capital. Darryl also wants to build a ropes course component that is specifically for handicapped individuals, which is a great thing to do in general, and, as with the riding arena will bring more capital. In the future, they would like to build better staff accomodations, as they can't expect people to live in Atco trailers forever. There are a lot of funds out there to be accessed, and apparently they need someone who can access them!

I'm still nervous about it, though, even though everything is falling into place so perfectly. Even the girl who's currently occupying the room I want to live in in Girls Dorms is moving out. Everything is pretty much a-go!

untitled personal narrative

I wrote this for my narrative class. We were supposed to write a "personal narrative." Vague, I know. This is what I came up with. I really need to go to another event so that I can stop writing about this same one over and over and over.

What's a good title? Other than the obvious "this is for you" thing.

***

It is exactly mid-day, the July sun is high in the sky and it is hot. I’ve already started sweating under my tee-shirt and protective vest. My horse, Sebastian, is sweating a little as well, although he hasn’t done more than canter a few laps of the warm-up ring and pop over a few low fences. He is supercharged with energy. He arches his copper-coloured neck, jigging on the spot. Foamy white saliva drips from his mouth as he gnaws on his bit; it sprays onto his chest when he impatiently tosses his head.

We are standing at the gate between the warm-up ring and cross-country field. I watch as a woman on a dappled grey horse tears out of the start box. The horse holds his head high in the air in defiance, so much that he can’t even see the first fence and is surprised by it when it presents itself in front of him. He comes scrambling to a halt, all four legs sliding across the grass. The obstacle is a palisades jump: sturdy, side-by-side vertical poles permanently affixed to the heavy base, a neat row of colourful flowers in front of it. She hollers, “GET!” in the growly voice that is so common on cross-country courses. The horse is athletic, if not a little crazy, and jumps the moderate-sized obstacle from a standstill.

I am surprisingly not nervous. I always used to be, never sleeping the night before a horse show, never being able to eat. I would walk around all morning with my stomach in knots, and I’d trot into the show ring with the tight clench of anxiety around my lungs. I’d always finish the ride dizzy from adrenaline and hunger. But today I’m calm, chatting with the tack-check girl about Sebastian and where I got him, watching the rider who is set to go on course before me pace the start box with her near-black horse. Sebastian, his chin practically on his chest and his feet in constant motion, seems more nervous than I am.

When the girl with the black horse takes off, the start box attendant waves us over. Sebastian breaks into a jog as we head over. We enter the start box, a small area fenced on three sides with an open front facing the first obstacle of the course. I turn him in a circle inside the small area, his clean, smooth summer coat gleaming. His four white stockings are spotless to match the bright white blaze that runs down the centre of his face. His forelock hangs neatly on his forehead. He has the thickest mane and tail of any horse I’ve ever known—just this morning I’d spent twenty minutes picking straw out of his long, dark brown tail. This horse habitually seeks out mud, manure and anything else sure to stain his white legs or become tangled in that luxurious tail.

Despite his pig-pen tendencies, Sebastian generally turns heads. First, because he is enormous. At least four inches taller at the shoulder than the average horse, he has feet the size of dinner plates and big, heavy-looking bones in his legs. He is wide in the chest, deep through the heartgirth and big-barrelled. Most who meet him tend to exclaim, “look at the size of that head!” But he has a large, kind, soft eye and a thick, fluffy forelock to offset his bulk. The other reason he is striking is because of his unusual colouring. He is mostly a solid chestnut—brighter red in the winter and the colour of a burnished penny in the summertime—but he has splashes of white here and there: one that paints a small section of his mane and continues briefly down his shoulder. A dollar-sized spot high up on either side of his neck, near his head. And his hind end looks like it has been drizzled with white paint that runs down into the stockings that cover his entire back legs. A woman I once rode with told me he reminded her of a caramel sundae. One friend loving calls him The Creamsicle.

As we shuffle around the start box, I am mentally reviewing the course in my head. First over the palisades, then down the slope to the log stack, sharp right turn to the coupe, then through the trees—better just trot through here—then over the v-shaped trakhener fence and out into the second field, which I can’t see from the start box. I visualize it instead, although I’m not too worried. So far Sebastian had been well-behaved. He hadn’t batted a lash at any of the stadium fences. Not even the one that had giant six-foot ladybugs looming on either side of it. Our dressage test lacked the finesse we once had, years ago, but I was mostly proud of just staying in the ring and not coming in last. I am proud that I’m even here at all.

It’s been over two years since she died. I haven’t competed with Sebastian since Tanya, my close friend, mentor and riding coach, passed away from cancer. This is a part of my life that haunts me daily: Tanya, what she meant to me, what my life means now that she’s gone and how I will ever move forward.

It took me a long time to be able to ride without a deep, socked-in sadness that seeped out of my heart through my entire body. In the first months I would try, but most often I would end each ride in frustrated tears, throwing Sebastian out in his pen without even a backward glance. I was bitter about having to do it without her. I felt sorry for myself. Mostly, I felt sad. It was an all-encompassing sadness that suffocated the enjoyment of everyday life. It kept me awake at night, silent tears rolling down my cheeks while I stared up at the ceiling in the dark trying to identify that physical sense of loss. As if a part of my own body was missing. If I managed to sleep, I would dream of her. I dreamt I was running: I ran all the way from where I lived out in the country to the hospital in the heart of the city, but I wasn’t tired, I just ran, frantically, desperately. When I got there, I ran up a long, dark stairwell, the sounds of my footsteps reverberating off the walls in a deafening racket. And when I finally reached her room, I found her sitting up in a bed in the very centre, looking at me like she’d been waiting for me. But she never said anything, and neither did I, because that’s where it always ended. My eyes would flutter open in the darkness, and I would put a hand over my mouth to stifle the sobs that made their way up my throat and past my lips. After those first few impossible months, I stopped trying to ride altogether.

Nine months later, I tried again. One day, I just felt ready, so I drove out to the barn and got on my horse bareback. It still took another year after that to be able to push aside the constant ache of missing her for the duration of each ride. I often cried while I drove home from the barn, but I didn’t let it stop me from coming out the next day. Then, one day while daydreaming at my office job, the thought that I should try to compete entered my mind. At first, I dismissed it, thinking that I wasn’t ready, or that I’d never be ready, but the idea eventually hooked into my brain. It had been so long since I’d even worn my show jacket, a beautiful charcoal grey Ariat coat that cost me a fortune and fit me just right. It had been so long since I’d taken Sebastian off the property. So long since I’d been anywhere with him without her. One day at the office, I printed off the entry form and mailed it along with my entrance fees.

I started to train harder, despite frightening thoughts like can I really do this without her? and what if it isn’t the same? I rode anyway. I took Sebastian on long, meandering hacks through the Albertan countryside to build fitness and stamina. I took dressage lessons from another instructor. I spent my evenings jumping courses in the outdoor arena until I lost daylight. I bathed and clipped my horse, loaded him onto a trailer and stepped foot on the ground of a show facility for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. I suppose it was a different life, now.

The start box attendant announces, “thirty seconds!” and I point Sebastian towards the opening. I steel my gaze on an imaginary point somewhere past the first obstacle. I jiggle my legs on Sebastian’s sides to perk him up and get his attention, an old start box trick Tanya had taught me. Sebastian quivers with pent-up energy; he is ready. When the attendant begins to count down from ten, I think about what were always Tanya’s final words of advice before we entered a show ring: “stay on, have fun!” When the attendant counts down from three to one, I think: this is for you.

We leap from the start box and the ground disappears beneath us. Sebastian seems to have fixed his gaze on some imaginary point beyond the palisades as well, because he jumps it without unhesitatingly. We gallop forward across the bright summer grass towards the next fence, and as I stare between Sebastian’s ears and feel the wind whipping past my own, I can feel my heart healing, if only a little.

Approaching the second obstacle, I smile. This is for you.

pure moments

The view from my office window is of a dirty west-end alleyway, an unimpressive brick wall the colour of cold oatmeal, and the swirling early-February snow that I've been culminating a gentle hatred for since adolescence, when I stopped revelling in the joys of outdoor play. If I crane my neck, I can see cars in the parking lot next door.

Last night during yoga, as I lay flat on my back and tried to focus on relaxing the root of my tongue, the wings of my nose and the channels of my inner ears, I tried also to go to my happy place. At first I was thinking of a calm blue ocean, the gentle rolling of waves on a warm, white beach. Then I was thinking of the vast, bottomless blue Alberta skies and what they look like from that very same yoga position: savasana, lying relaxed on your back with your feet flopped outwards and your arms loose at your sides. And then, while the instructor told us to live wholly in this one moment, to allow the past and future to stretch behind and in front of us out of sight, I thought of the only other time in my life that I can truly just be exactly where I am without a thought of any other time in my life.

I thought about riding across open fields with friends, the exhilarating whistle of the wind past my ears. Warm sun that freckles my shoulders and darkens my cheekbones. And I wasn't in the room in the yoga studio, like I was supposed to be, I wasn't in that moment, but in another pure time in my life that has happened and can happen again.

I just wish it could happen today.

tiny dump of a studio apartment

So long. Solongsolongsolong.

I am pretending to be a real, live, writer, now. There is little time for any writing, when you're pretending to be a reallivewriter. You just have time to read other people's things and write web advertisements and proofread letters for other people. Just have time to pay your dues. Pay your everythings.

But seriously, I can't even believe the sheer volume of reading and writing I have to do for school this semester. Also, just when I'd thought my freelance clients forgot about me, I got four emails in one day. I'm sending off a web ad late; I told her it would be Friday morning. That never happened. Now, at 10:04 PM on Sunday night, I feel that it's the best time to actually write it.

I wrote lots of things, this weekend. Two poems. One short narrative. No, two short narratives. Started, failed, started, failed on a postcard story set in Hope, Alaska (because I just like the name -- needless to say, the metaphor was way too obvious and the whole thing collapsed every time I tried to spin it). I wrote award applications for meagre sums, swearing up and down that I'm a good student and also a good person and pleasejustgivememoneybeforeiwasteawayinsqualor. Yes. All in one word. I hope they choose me!

I read lots of things, this weekend, as well. Three essays on poetic theory, one of which I truly enjoyed, one that I didn't understand, and one that I understood, but was bored with. I read two chapters in Betsy Lerner's "The Forest for the Trees" but I retained hardly anything. I read an essay called "Growing Up Naked" about a girl's first attempt at stripping -- she had to wrestle herself out of her bra and she could barely walk in the high heels foisted upon her virgin feet by an older, more gristled, French stripper named Yvette. I read the first several chapters of Olivia Goldstein's roman a clef novel, "The Bestseller." I'm supposed intuitively know which real-life publishers, editors and writers she is referring to in the novel. I have no clue whatsoever. It's quite dreary so far. It could be titled, "Don't Try Being a Writer, Because You'll Never Catch a Break, And Even if You Do, You Will Still Hate Your Life and Wind Up a Miserable Old Hack--That Is, if You Don't First Commit Suicide in Your Tiny Dump of a Studio Apartment." Naturally, it's quite uplifting. I still have to finish my book club book (they're all waiting, I know, I'm sorry) and some more school-related reading to do before Tuesday, but first:

I have to write this job ad. This SIX-PAGE-DESCRIPTION job ad. Tiny Dump of a Studio Apartment, here I come. Miserable Old Hack, et cetera.

But I'm working on it; working on something.

Best News of the Weekend: I found (or rather my mom found, in a discman that none of us have touched in the last three years) my lost (and deeply mourned) Tegan & Sara "So Jealous." Now I will listen to it while I fold laundry (AFTER I WRITE THE JOB AD) and remember the good times I had with that album. And then: sleep.

"out" -- creative nonfiction

It’s sometime in the spring I turned eighteen, and I’ve been out all night.

When you’re young, the last place you want to be is home—home is where your mother asks you where you’ve been and your sister is always stealing your hair products and your father insists that Star Trek is the family’s show of choice, regardless of its unpopular standing in a house full of women. Home represents people that you have to answer to, and an accountability that you will appreciate and long for when you’re older. An accountability that being out does not entail. When you’re young, and you’re out, your only responsibilities are meeting friends at a bar in the city, wanting to kiss a boy that you like outside in the dark while your friends erupt from the double doors, laughing, telling you to break it up. Then driving back into town to hang out in a neighbourhood pub, playing a game of pool for a dollar, eating greasy breakfasts at three a.m. and driving eight people home in your car while the sun comes up over the suburbs.

Dawn in Sherwood Park in the springtime is light grey, cold. It is five a.m. and I’m turning my key in the lock that always sticks, jiggling the doorknob, making a racket. When I enter the house, it is a quiet Friday morning. It won’t be long before the rest of the household begins to stir. My parents will wake up, first my father who will shower blind without his glasses on in the bathroom next to my bedroom, then my mother who will make coffee, eat breakfast and put on her makeup. Then the sister that remains at home will come upstairs, use my hairbands and bobbypins to hold back her thick black hair, use my hairspray to set it all in place. Borrow my necklace and pair of my shoes, all while I’m still in the first hours of my night’s sleep—my lopsided schedule works well for her “borrowing” habits.
Once in my bedroom, I change into pyjamas and get into bed without washing my face. My mascara will leave little black smudge marks on my pillows and I have to sleep with my hair back in a ponytail because of the smell of cigarettes it has accumulated at the pub, but I’m young and I think that I’ll have this amazing complexion forever, so I close my eyes against the grey light that comes in through the window. As my mind slides towards sleep, I listen to birds singing outside and the first chirping alerts of my father’s alarm clock down the hall.

Home: a bungalow on Meadowbrook Road, a long driveway that I had to shovel the winter my father broke his leg slipping on a patch of ice while out for a smoke, a fort out behind the garage that my sister built with a hammer and nails and stolen plywood, my messy bedroom with yellow walls, green living room couches, one shower, a red kettle, and most importantly, the family that lived inside of it. Five women. My father, my mother, and their four daughters. We all lived there together, once, before marriages and babies, school and careers.
The room that was once the nursery, with its baby-bunny wallpaper and thick orange curtains is now a charming office. The room that belonged to my teenaged self, its yellow walls scarred by tape from posters I once adorned them with, is now a guest room with flowing white curtains that fall to the floor and a duvet to match. Five women no longer vie for the use of the house’s single shower—one could probably shower whenever they pleased, now. When everyone lived there, it was not uncommon to find someone sleeping in the hallway in the earliest hours of the morning, staking out the bathroom door, ready to wake up and jump inside the moment anyone in the house stirred. Of course, my sisters had their permed eighties hair-dos to worry about; these shower stakeouts were necessary steps taken towards maintaining their public images.
The bedroom where I fall asleep in the early morning to the sounds of birds chirping and water running in the adjacent bathroom: this is what I think of when I think of home. I painted the walls yellow with the help of my mother and eldest sister, Sherry. Sherry painted green ivy along the ceiling with a stencil to match the ivy-patterned curtains my mother had sewn for me. We tore down flowered wallpaper, painted yellow over blue, replaced the stained brown carpet, made the bedroom mine instead of that of the sister that lived in it before me.
The screen is torn from when I used to crawl in through the window after stacking up all of the patio chairs and using the gas meter on the side of the house as a foothold. If asked why the screen had never been fixed, my mother would probably roll her eyes and mention the fact that all of the basement windows are now single-paned—evidence of the sneakings-out of my two eldest sisters. Or she’d tell you about the time that Melanie, her second child, had thrown a wooden kitchen chair out of her bedroom window, thinking that it would land upright and that she could use it to climb down. The chair broke, she got caught, and for the next several years she would sit on that very chair at the desk in her bedroom, studying to become an engineer. The leg of the chair was repaired with several layers of packing tape. She graduated and became quite successful.
Home, where my mother reads books, crochets blankets for her grandchildren, makes tea, works on cross-stitch projects, continually loses her glasses in the couch (she must have twenty pairs, half of which are broken from being sat on). Home, where my father eats dinner, drinks a diet pepsi (sometimes two), smokes cigarettes on the front porch (one after work, one after dinner, one before bed), reads the newspaper (section by section, throwing them on the floor when he’s done) and watches TV (if not a sci-fi show, then it’s Law & Order or CSI or other such crime dramas) on the same schedule every day. Home, where my sisters and I have told each other secrets, said spiteful things in moments of anger, laughed until we cried at jokes that only we would find funny, created memories that contribute so wholly to my sense of self, belonging and heritage.

Coming home at five a.m., I am still in that in-between stage in my life. I am still free to stay out all night on a Thursday and to sleep all day on a Friday. I have a mistaken sense of responsibility, it seems. Being home represents a responsibility that I’d rather shirk by committing all of the usual teenaged acts of revelry. I am only hazily aware of the water running in the bathroom next door and the birds chirping outside of my window with its torn screen as I slip towards sleep, but I am not at all aware of the way I will later feel about home. About the escape from responsibility that I will find in it once I’ve grown up beyond the novelty of being out.

lost

I have so much to write and nothing to say. Or maybe the other way around. Either way, the work is just not getting done. I'm so bogged down in the practical things: magazines for woodlot owners, job ads for recruiting clients, research papers, analyses, blah blah blah.

I can't find you, creativity; where did you go?

A: enter, working trot.

Dressage goals:
1. So far we've achieved a lovely, soft, forward, sane, awesome trot prior to cantering. I'd like that same trot POST-cantering (specifically to the right).
2. Better lateral work. I have not seriously worked on any kind of difficult lateral work since Tanya was my coach and as a result, Sebastian has some straightness-issues and sometimes he bends from the neck, not from the poll/body. I'd like to start getting the following things nailed down: leg yield (which he's already pretty decent at, but he needs to keep his body a little straighter), travers and renvers (also somewhat good at -- his haunches are easier to move on and off the track than his shoulders) and of course, shoulder-in (not so good at -- he overflexes, gets frustrated, snorts and tail-swishes belligerently).
3. Collections. Better collected trot (right now his collected trot is really just more of a stuck trot) and canter (his collected canter is actually not that bad -- he is quite balanced at the canter and surprisingly light -- it's easier for him to lift his withers and use his ass at the canter than at other gaits, but it's still not perfect).
4. Extensions. I feel like if I could just teach him how to really give 'er and then COME BACK AFTER, our canter-trot transitions would improve. Plus he has a lot of potential for a great extended trot. I've seen it when he's at liberty and I've ridden it now and then, but never consistently.
5. The ability to do a dressage test in a 20x40 arena.

Jumping goals:
1. I need him to respect the smaller stuff. The problem with trying to event in the lower levels is that the wee little jumps are just "in his way." He canters around, pausing briefly to pop over them, but he doesn't rock back and actually TRY, because he doesn't HAVE to. As a result, we take rails.
2. As always, working on him not submarine-diving between fences. He has improved leaps and bounds at this, but he needs to learn that just because he's tired, doesn't mean he can just lean and lean and lean and lean on me until my arms finally give out.
3. He could stand to be a little less strong in the bridle. I do like that he takes me to the fences, really goes for it, has a lot of power and is really bold and brave. But sometimes, it's like, okay... WHOA, for crying out loud.

And notes to self:
1. Umm, put your shoulders back, you big collapsing potato-sack.
2. You have nice, long, dressagey legs. USE THEM.
3. Don't be grabby when trying to pick him up while jumping. It looks bad.

All of that being said, I want to mention that I am enjoying my horse more every day. I always thought that the problem was that without Tanya, I was a shitty rider and he was a sucky horse. That's not true. What IS true is that I just need to take lessons every once in a while. I need goals. I need someone to tell me every three seconds what I'm doing wrong. It's not that I'm shitty or he sucks. It's that we've got each other's tickets and we need someone else to keep us accountable.

Everything has been improving so much. He is learning to calm the eff down, and I guess, so am I. Plus he's just so cute.

hearing the horizons endure

The Horses
by Ted Hughes

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird - A world cast in frost.
I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,

with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments

Of a grey silent world.

I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew’s tear turned its edge on the silence.

Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted

Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,

And the big planets hanging -
I turned

Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,

And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,

Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them

The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,

Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays -

In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

"diverging paths" -- creative nonfiction

Diverging Paths

The Saskatchewan horizon is a golden line that cuts starkly against the blue sky; you can see storms coming from miles away; you can see deer picking their way delicately through ditches in the spring dusk; you can see birds diminish into tiny specks before they disappear into the thick blue.

We are travelling across this flat expanse of gold in a rented van. It’s the eighth hour of this cross-prairie trip, and we’ve already played every car game we can think of, and asked every “would you rather...?” question conceivable.

Two are sleeping in the back. Two are staring out windows in the middle. One, in the front, is fiddling with the radio dial, working her way through the white noise, past oldies stations and western hits. One drives the van, both hands on the wheel, sunglasses still on despite the fact that the sun has already slipped past the sharp line of the horizon.

This moment: six of us inside of a rented van somewhere in southeast Saskatchewan – this moment lives inside of me; our togetherness lives inside of me. And our destination: later; we are sitting at a formica table in the farmhouse kitchen, cradling cups of coffee. Smiling, answering questions about ourselves, asking questions like
how many horses?
how many foals?
how do you do it?

And the first time I see him: a tall, large-boned chestnut gelding splashed here and there with white. A wide, white blaze down his face. Four white stockings. He is trotting around the arena, he is not the first one we’d looked at that day. He stops, walks over to us, examines us with his neck stretched out towards us, sniffing carefully. Blowing puffs of foggy breath on my hands. Cautious and curious. Outside, an unseasonably late snowfall blankets everything, coats the rented van.

The first day of years together, he and I. The first greeting. The first time he rested his soft muzzle in my hands and breathed the scent of sweet hay onto my skin.

Still, what my mind picks out of that whole trip is the six of us for hours and hours inside a rented van, cutting a path across Saskatchewan’s long, straight highways. Being together and living completely unaware of the way things would change in the future.

Even near the end, I still stubbornly refused to believe that my life would take any other course than the one I was on. It was a lost cause; I know that now. I was running headlong through a life that I enjoyed – I had goals to accomplish. It would all change, every last part of it, but I still thought that I had one path in life: to ride horses and be a writer. Nothing else mattered. Then, one day in early summer, though the sun felt strong and hopeful, my single-minded path suddenly disappeared from beneath my feet and before I knew it, I was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t take any more steps forward, because it hurt, I was scared and everything around me was unfamiliar. I was stumbling over my new landscape. How did I get there?

The best summers of my life were spent at the barn on her parents’ acreage just outside of town. We spent so many long summer days there: riding, doing barn chores, sitting in her living room eating freezies and chatting until the sun slipped below the horizon behind the back pasture. We rode six days a week, never missing a riding lesson, traveling to horse shows every weekend, driving rented vans across two provinces to look at horses for sale. More important than our combined passion for the sport was our friendship. And she was the glue that connected us all. Tanya was not just our riding coach; she was a best friend, mentor and confidante. She was the driver of that van, all those years ago – sunglasses on, miles ahead of care. We talked about our lives from the backs of horses, or inside her beat-up truck, or sitting on her kitchen floor for hours. We were all so dedicated to riding, then. We were a part of a team. We were determined, on a path to accomplish our goals. We were all on that path together.

When she finally succumbed to cancer’s menacing pulls, that path disappeared and we found ourselves groping around in the dark for some direction. The last time I saw her, she was emaciated from chemotherapy, her body abused by her disease. She was just a ghost of her former self, lying thin beneath hospital sheets. When she opened her eyes and looked at me, unable to speak, I wanted to say everything she needed to hear. I didn’t know what she was trying to say. I just held her hand and fought back the burgeoning tears. I thanked her for being my friend and I told her that everything would be okay. I promised her that I would continue riding. That I would continue down the path we had been on together. This was an impossible promise to keep, but I was stubbornly grasping onto the hopes that nothing would change – that she would be there forever.

Tanya was the cornerstone of our goals. She was the common denominator for something that had previously consumed our lives – riding and showing horses was all we did. Without her, this huge part of our lives meant something different. Riding was no longer easy and was barely enjoyable. Our shared love began to fray at the edges: some quit showing, some quit riding altogether, some sold their horses. I just struggled along, trying to make things the same as they once were, but I could never find my way back onto that same path. It was like watching her disappear through the trees in front of me and suddenly realizing that I was lost. I wondered where this path suddenly branched off towards. Could I ever go back? Did the destination change without my consent?

I am not the same person that I was before she passed away; anyone can tell. I am not the same, as a person, a friend, a rider or a writer. All of these things are a part of who I am, and that was drastically changed the day one of my best friends passed away from a short and gruesome battle with cervical cancer. For a long time, I tried to pretend that my trajectory was the same as it had always been. I tried to pretend that the unfamiliar path that I traveled was the same as the path I’d been for all of those years. I ignored the tears forming behind my eyes while I swung up into the saddle, gave my horse a confident pat on the neck and rode into a future without her guidance, but it didn’t quite work. It was like riding in the dark. I tried hard to make myself fit within my new landscape, but this was an unachievable task.

Two-and-a-half years later, I still wish we were back in that rented van, oblivious to the ways in which we would change, but I can look around at the path that I’m on and start to recognize myself. This used to be impossible. I constantly wonder how far I have been flung from the original trajectory of my life, and I still grapple with the fact that I had no choice in the matter. That I would become whoever I am becoming regardless of whether or not I actually wanted to. I wonder what my life would be like if she had never been sick at all. I wonder how different I would be from the person that I am now. I wonder if I was ever—if any of us are ever—really on a particular path at all.

He and I are still together; he still puts his soft muzzle into my hands and lets me pretend for a while that we are heading somewhere planned, even though the future is a wild and terrifying place. He is willing to trot boldly onto new paths, encouraging me to come with him. It’s what she would have wanted. We have to get out of that rented van eventually.

endless cycles

Why is it 1:21 AM? Why can't it just be tomorrow? Or better, why can't it be December 24th?

I am so tired, and I can never sleep. This cycle is endless.

Tomorrow, I will go to school and work. Today, at work, I stood in front of a fax machine for two and a half hours, faxing an invitation to a luncheon. That's right. If it weren't for my irreplaceable administrative skills, the joint would be in a shambles. If not me, then what other chimpanzee could they hire to press telephone numbers into a machine? They don't even need him to press start; they could just get one of those weighted birds to peck the start button every so often. Tomorrow, I fear might be much the same.

I want to go ride my horse, tomorrow, instead of work. But the whole point of work is to pay to keep to the horse. This is another endless cycle.

I feel like writing, lately. I really, really feel like writing. Like being a Writer (capital W!). And when I open up Word and stare at the blinking cursor, I feel like I'm staring blankly at myself, asking, "...well?" And nothing comes. Endless cycle.

1:27 AM. How awful.

"some people"

Here is the thing about some people:

They are losing their grip on the reality that they have constructed for themselves. They are living their lives based on the facades that they've created; the punch-drunk personas that they've built for themselves. The labels that they have willingly, forcefully given themselves. They are making excuses.

This reality is slipping past them, spiralling around them just out of reach. Their fingertips graze what they've made themselves become, what they've told themselves is fun and acceptable, but it's falling away too fast. It is leading them down paths that they best not go; it is offering a lifestyle that will not make them better people.

At the end of the spiral, they will not know where they are. Who they are. And since they are the only ones that have the closest idea of who they really are, once that's gone -- it's all gone. We will not be able to put the pieces of their puzzle back together again, because we don't have the cover for reference. For all we know, the cover is something completely different: some obscure picture that we've been trying for years to understand, and now the only thing we understand is that it's not accurate. The pieces won't ever make that picture; they aren't supposed to.

And we will wish that these people would become accountable for their actions. That they would live the lives that manifest all of the wonderful things that they could be if they dropped the facade, if they stopped making excuses for their behaviour, if they let us in -- for real, this time. We wish nothing but the best. Nothing but happiness.

But sometimes, with some people, it's hard to see how that will all work out.

saskatchewan

The Saskatchewan horizon is a golden line that cuts starkly against the blue sky; you can see storms coming from miles away; you can see deer picking their way delicately through ditches in the spring dusk; you can see birds diminish into tiny specks before they disappear into the thick blue.

We are travelling across this flat expanse of gold in a rented van. It’s the eighth hour of this cross-prairie trip, and we’ve already played every car game we can think of, and asked every “would you rather...?” question conceivable.

Two are sleeping in the back. Two are staring out windows in the middle. One, in the front, is fiddling with the radio dial, working her way through the white noise, past oldies stations and western hits. One drives the van, both hands on the wheel, sunglasses still on despite the fact that the sun has already slipped past the sharp line of the horizon.

This moment: six of us inside of a rented van somewhere in southeast Saskatchewan – this moment lives inside of me; our togetherness lives inside of me.

And our destination: later, we are sitting at a formica table in the farmhouse kitchen, cradling cups of coffee. Smiling, answering questions about ourselves, asking questions like
how many horses?
how many foals?
how do you do it?

And the first time I see him: a tall, large-boned chestnut gelding splashed here and there with white. A wide blaze down his face. Four white stockings. He is trotting around the arena, he is not the first one we’d looked at that day. He stops, walks over to us, examines us with his neck stretched out towards us, sniffing carefully. Blowing puffs of foggy breath on my hands. Cautious and curious. Outside an unseasonably late snowfall blankets everything, coats the rented van.

The first day of years together, he and I. The first greeting. The first time he rested his soft muzzle in my hands and breathed the scent of sweet hay onto my skin.

Still, what my mind picks out of that whole trip is the six of us for hours and hours inside a rented van, cutting across Saskatchewan’s long, straight highways. Being together and living completely unaware of the way things would change in the future.

"remembering" poem

remembering.

this is my daily task, my life’s work, my magnum opus:
remembering you.
every day I think about you, wonder where you went,
wonder where I went once you were gone.

we try to take the steps you’d take, we do.
we try to push forward
forward
forward
every day like you would have, we do.

but at the end of the day, when it’s quiet,
I sit very still and think about whether I’m doing a good enough job;
this job of remembering you.
this heavy work of not forgetting you.

what’s left?
after the urn is in the ground
after I put sunflowers on your grave
after I cried for you, for the loss of you
after everything was sold and given away and packed up in boxes
after nothing was the same
after our lost ambition
after the absence of your encouragement
after everything –
what’s left?

remembering.

writer

Last night the tow-truck driver came to cart away my dead car, and he asked me what I did for a living. I never really know what to say when people ask me this. "Uhh, I'm in between things... uhh, I'm a student... uhh, I enter data..." But I thought about it and replied:

"I'm a writer."

This is the first time I've ever introduced myself as such out loud.

I liked it.