big apples

my bags are packed, i'm ready to go. even though i just got here. the snow has barely melted from my shoes since arriving from regina and now i'm heading out again. funny how in my quest for my natural resting state, i stay restless. my swirling Emotions are keeping me IN motion, i guess. or maybe i'm a wide-eyed naive canuck for whom the lure of a glitzy new york party is too damn strong (clearly i've od-ed on too much sex and the city).

so claude and i are border hopping to crash an annual gathering of friends who convene in the new york area to auld lang syne one another. he'll likely make a love connection and I'll undoubtedly make an ass of myself at this event hosted by people i don't know featuring guests i don't know except for the ever-delicious adam and brian, the most recent gay boy bastard to make off with my heart. have i mentioned how glorious it was to finally catch up with adam and brian near the end of our cuba adventure? we spent 3 of our final 4 island days with them - had a terrific time swapping tales over cocktails, unpacking cuba, taunting aggressive atlantic waves. ask me sometime about the classy night that involved a bottle of this cuban smack, some cans of cola, a park bench, bonding, public peeing, police, an over-priced salsa club, and rebecca's mini-olympics in the playground with a gaggle of englishless children.

anways, adam's friend eric, the host of the party (mentioned part way down this screen), makes me proud to call myself anal: he's circulated to his ballooning guest list a six fucking page agenda featuring a day by day overview of projected activities, a useful heads-up - pardon the pun - about the water sports ("nudity in the hot tub is completely acceptable"), and critical what to bring suggestions.

so off we go to brooklyn to ring in the new year elsewhere, under the guise of being more spontaneous. it for sure has nothing to do with my recent penchant for procrastination and fiscal irresponsibility. aw fuck it, surely the root causes of my under-achieved adulthood will find their way into the new year's resolutions i'm sure to draft in the car tomorrow. and besides, big apples are healthy, no?

merry, quite contrary

only one day left in the cosmopolitan queen city which tourism propoganda usually depicts as this but in reality, at this time of year, the area looks more like this. i love the prairie. i love the big sky. i love being from here. i love telling people that i'm a prairie kid and not from here. and normally, i love being here. it didn't occur to me that there is a reason for my not having come back here in 2.5 years. but this week, as i've been laying low with a cough, i wonder if i've finally outgrown my hometown, but perhaps not outgrown the various pains of the past. how quickly we regress when thrown into the time machine. i'm bluer in my parents' house. and crabbier. i eat way more. and my glamorous habit of lip-picking has quietly revived itself.

i was a relatively smart kid who grew up in relatively warm home. our parents were strict but encouraged lots of activity. i sorta looked like this, though slightly less black. i spent my formative elementary school years at argyle and my wild high school years at sheldon. i studied dance here and was a serious music student (piano and voice) here at the conservatory. i was given my first cigarette by a counsellor at camp ta-wa-si at 13. i got good grades, got busy in lots of extra-curricular stuff, especially vocal jazz. i got to travel a fair bit, got to study french on exchange in paris for a summer. i got to work and earn my own dough starting at a young age. i got braces and a retainer at the end of elementary school, got my tonsils out at 15, and got to wear a shockingly unattractive silver and black getup to grade 12 grad. i got in a lot of shit, but got tons of love. i got pretty much anything i wanted.

so what's the fucking problem? well, when this question was tackled with with therapists years later, so began the unravelling of all the 'gots' to expose what i didn't get, and how all that will continue to bite me in the ass for the rest of my fucking life (um no, not in the fun way).

ok ok, so maybe i brought the sore throat back from my last 24 hours in cuba. and the angsty funk could be attributed to post-cuba blues. the serious heartache is from the missing of friends, ones from my real life and others who are brand new and already special. but these other symptoms, surreptitious, thanks to those environmental and emotional factors, are effectively evaded while living away. now that i'm back at the nest, things about me and my relationship to this place are raw, though hardly clear. triggers embedded in the physical and emotional surroundings are getting me in the ass.

i can't wait til tomorrow, when i fly away home to my own created family. and my evasion. i doubt i'll be back soon. and of course, i have the whole rest of my life to sort out that whole aching ass thing.

cuba si

internet access in cuba was expensive, if not scarce. i tried posting once, but wound up running out of time just as it was about to publish. it was tragic, really, bumming me out such that i needed to spend a full afternoon on the beach hurlying my wee insignificant body into monstrous sea waves alongside the delicious brian.

too tired to say much now. but for the moment, here's what i know:

• cuba is an amazing anomoly, time warped and perfect
• not a single person should miss the chance to visit before castro departs
• there is a disturbing cuban fascination with lycra
• beck sure can beat an inside joke to death, then kill it some more
• i really miss my new friends
• cuban rum is the work of the devil

our two weeks on the island sent us on an emotional roller coaster. it was edifying, provocative, inspiring. i am so deeply moved. the processing of it all will only begin now. there is so much to turn over... and to do that in regina, well that's just fucked up. but here i am. and there you are. so near. so far.

bye cruel world

tomorrow morning, i will fill my travel mug, gas up, and hit the 401 for the ever-safe city of toronto. i'll be picking up rebecca at pearson airport by noon, then we'll bum around the t-dot. our flight to cuba leaves at an ungodly hour on monday morning - the question is whether or not we will get any sleep before heading to the airport at like 4.45 fucking am.

of course i'm excited about the whole thing. duh. but anxiety washes over me before i leave for any extended period of time. i run around in a fussy panic, cursing to-do lists and those inevitable loose ends. in the meantime, there are other waves in which to bob, like the one that knocks me over just before a departure to a place with other languages and currencies and climates. it's not fear, more like exhileration and anticipation. i adore travelling to where i've never been: what's more intoxicating than adventure? and cuba has been beckoning me a long time.

and so off i go to put on shades and sunscreen, to put off the ongoing ambiguity about my life, to put out a request to the universe that she please, for fucksakes, share her wisdom. whether she sends word through the havana moon or at the bottom of a glass of mojito, my heart and mind sure need it.

maybe we'll run into fidel at the beach?