clearbluecup

i'm in edmonton now, just settling into my brother's little flat and trying to orient myself.

i feel like i've got a million thoughts swirling around in my head right now, all misty and ethereal and insubstantial. i'm waiting for them to condense. i've been dreaming but not remembering the dreams. i'm waiting for the form to congeal enough to be remembered.

i feel different somehow. i can't put my finger on it, but it's good.

i've been finding it hard to get motivated to write entries here. i want to write, and i've been writing in my paper journal a lot, but when it comes to choosing things to share publicly, i've been feeling reticient.

when i first arrived in edmonton, i spent two days alone. the first day was enjoyable, and i wandered up and down whyte ave happily, enjoying the sunshine and the shops and the familiarity and novelty of it all. i cooked chili at my brother's flat and fell asleep easily. the second day was less enjoyable. i felt like i had already done the things i wanted to do alone, i couldn't really afford another whyte ave shopping spree and didn't really need more stuff anyway. i spent time reading and wandered up and down whyte just to check my email. i went for dinner with my mom, which was nice. but when i got home that night i felt aimless and a little empty. i tossed and turned. i listened to music. i drank a glass of milk. i got up and went back to bed again. i felt lonely.

when i am alone my internal voice goes into overdrive but my external voice becomes almost inaudibly quiet. people couldn't hear me when i was talking on the phone. cashiers had to ask me to repeat what i wanted. my voice was fading away from lack of use.

i was missing that feeling of belonging, and the positive social interaction that comes with it. the juxtaposition of being in such a familiar place without the familiar sense of social belonging was hard to get my head around. i feel better now, and have a few more social events penciled into my calendar, but the experience of feeling lonely really made me appreciate the good parts of living and travelling with someone - companionship, friendship, comfort. but it can be too easy to get into the habit of sitting back and relying on your partner to provide all the friendship and companionship, forgetting to seek out those things by developing and maintaining relationships with other people.

all these lessons - life presents them again and again until we really learn...

now that i've been in edmonton for a little over a week, i've settled into my own little routine. wake up, get ready and then head out to run a few little errands - shop for supplies for shambhala, souveniers or groceries, head over to the internet cafe and check my email, go back to my brother's little apartment and read or write for a little while, and then either meet up with friends for dinner and an evening out or cook dinner myself and read or wander over to the uni or whyte ave.

every day is filled up with things, whether important or banal, whether i have planned every movement or am just responding to needs and wishes like a dandelion fluff floating on the summer breeze. sometimes i plan important things and can't get them done because i've forgotten that important piece of paper at home, or because circumstances are just not going my way. sometimes i don't plan anything and simply stumble across something that makes my day, like the poster i saw taped to a pole the other day. when i upload my photos i'll show you, but for now a description will have to do - on one side of the pole was a copy of Leonard Cohen's poem S.O.S, bordered by american dollar bills and with a calvin and hobbes comic along the bottom. The other side had a manifesto of love, The World is Ours or something like that, typed out painstakingly on an ancient typewriter, with the mistakes carefully slashed out instead of using wite-out. I thought of a friend who has recently fallen in love with an old typewriter, and is bringing it along to a festival in order to write a renga. If this poster wasn't his doing, it was surely a kindred spirit.

the crazy whirlwind of thoughts in my head has calmed down considerably. now that i have spent so much time by myself my head has reached a stasis, my whole being settling into a comfortable balanced state. i've been to two ashtanga yoga classes, the art edmonton art gallery, to dinner on whyte, drunk in a thunderstorm, i've eaten dinner with a two-year old and caught up with old friends while watching sex in the city. the ashtanga was really difficult, and i was sore for two days afterwards. i haven't felt that incompetent in a yoga class in a really long time, but it was a good challenge and i think i would like to add ashtanga to my regular yoga routine. there's something about the fixed order, the classical poses, the strict pace and rhythm of execution.

i'm off to shambhala on thursday, so i'll be away from the internet until at least monday but probably tuesday. dancing under the stars with thousands of canadian hippies - i can't wait! i'm going to float down the river in the sunshine and look for the perseid meteor shower, dance in the sun and chill out with friends i haven't seen in ages.

I spent most of last night sitting at the kitchen table with a map of BC and Alberta open in front of me, checking distances between cities and looking for campsites and studying the city layouts trying to remember how I am going to navigate between point A and point B while driving.

Some moments I feel a surge of confidence and think that it's essentially just two main legs - drive 500 kilometers south, turn right and drive another 500 or so west. But when I look closer there's more to it - will I drive through Calgary or try to bypass it by going on the smaller highways? How will I find a motel in Lethbridge when I've never been there? How will I know which lane I need to be in at each interchange?

Like a fractal that becomes more and more detailed the closer you telescope in, this journey has an infinite level of detail that I could become obsessed with. At some point I am going to have to say, "I have prepared as much as I can, I will have someone sitting next to me who can help with the navigating, and if we get lost I will just stop and ask someone for directions."

Tomorrow I am going to drive about 6 hours to Lethbridge. I feel like a novice runner who has registered in her first marathon. I keep telling myself, "This is not a race. I am in no rush. I will stop and walk around whenever I need to. Just take it one kilometer at a time."

Running sounds very simple - just put one foot in front of the other over and over again at a certain pace. Driving can be boiled down to simple principles as well. The challenging part is the mental fortitude required. I am stepping up to the challenge.

dancing pretzel sticks, jolly ranchers, toast with ginger syrup, oatmeal cooked over a campstove, ichiban that i served to a friendly gay raver named mitchell on sunday afternoon, chicken vindaloo, wholewheat pasta with tomatoes and olive oil and lots of salt and pepper and parmesan cheese, strawberries in a giant mug with vanilla ice cream melting everywhere........

i've started fantasizing about food, and eating as much as i possibly can at every opportunity.

this means that either a) i seriously didn't eat enough at the festival, even though i ate good meals every day and small snacks every hour or two even throughout the night, or b) fall is coming.

bring it on, i say. i could stand to gain a bit of weight anyway.

shambhala was everything i expected it to be and then some, both good and bad. the music was top-notch, as were the decorations and performances. everyone dressed up in their best outfits, costumes and quirky hats, like the guy wearing a bike helmet with uv responsive pink tubing glued to the surface in a brain pattern. there were fuzzy friendly hippies everywhere decked out in tattoos and dreadlocks, some carrying babies and some carrying hula hoops. the tents extended the entire length of the ranch, nearly a half hour walk from one end of the camping to the other. i bought a hula hoop and tried to teach myself a few tricks. i danced until my body was weary, each foot a 400 pound weight that no groovy beat could budge.

while dancing i was letting the idea of time and progress swirl around in my head. i tend to get very impatient when things don't progress as quickly as i would like, and i end up getting frustrated at my apparent failure to learn quickly and lack of ability to control the world around me. on our way to shambhala we were delayed a few times by situations beyond our control, and it was good practice for me to learn to let go of the frustration. in the end, it worked out to our advantage that we were delayed. i'm trying to see the flip side of delays and obstacles as opportunities that allow me to clear up the clutter from the last project i was working on and make sure that everything is ready, or as alternate routes that may take me around the congestion and confusion of the rush hour road. sometimes you've gotta wait for the bread to rise before you can put it in the oven.

i'll be back in ireland a week from tuesday. i'm not in a hurry to find my "next big thing", i'm just going to take it one day at a time and put energy into things that feed positive energy back into my life. mitchell, the gay raver i fed dinner to on sunday afternoon, gave me a purple and white rock he said would bring me the gift of communication, wit and charm, and the ability to say clever things in conversation. "it only works if you believe in it," he told me. i was completely charmed by him, by his sweet personality and the way he still did things the way people used to when i started partying - giving gifts to new friends, offering his opinion and a snapshot of his existence instead of clamming up or intimidating strangers. like all the fuzzy day-glo funfur ideals we believed in 1999, it only works if you believe in it, otherwise it's a weight in your pocket or something to stub your toe on in the dark.

i'll upload all the rest of my photos when i get home, but here's the hippy bus to tide you over until then.

also, here's the link to Jason's shambhala photos. I met Jason at the bbq on saturday - we've got the exact same camera! same model, same year, same everything. he definitely put more effort into taking pictures at shambhala though, and they turned out great.

there must be some three-year-anniversary curse... dooce describes it quite well.

i'm glad to be leaving year three behind us.