2 posts tagged “mess”

    I am, at this point, forever searching for a feeling of "home".  I have been in three (semi-) major Canadian cities over the past week-and-a-half.  All of them are to some extent, and in different ways, homes to me.  And I hope that is it is because of this LACK of feeling of displacement that I came back to Edmonton, and am having trouble remembering where I am, who is here, and what I need to do.  I saw so many people I love, laughed and ate, watched teevee, petted many cats, created things, overslept, underslept, traveled through the nights, and came back to the quiet of Edmonton.  Which is okay.

    I spent Christmas at my dad's house in the S'toon.  It was quiet, and sortof un-Christmas-y, but a pretty nice place to be.  My dad basically, and possibly unusually, is the one who decorated my childhood home (I now believe this anyway).  It was his style and his organization that made the living room, the kitchen.  I spent time looking around dreaming of what my picture of home is.  The man lives surrounded by piles of books of every sort, cuddly blankets on couches, and beautiful pottery.  SIGH.
    I did not take pictures, because I rather felt it would be either a stealth activity or an impossible-to-explain one. But when I came home I looked with new eyes at my apartment.  There is only one corner which reflects how I want my home to look, and it now seems to me to be a corner that reflects my dad's tastes as interpreted by his 24-year-old daughter.
    On Christmas night through to Boxing Day in the a.m., I flew out to Montreal to spend the lag week between Christmas and New Year's with some of my lovely and amazing friends at home, as it were.  I came back to Edmonton on the afternoon of the 31st, my bag laden with stuff: almost enough books to double my current edmonton collection, jams, drink mixes, cookies, presents from faraway, and resolutions (new year's and otherwise) forming in my brain. 
    I decide want to move back to Montreal.  Suddenly Edmonton friends threaten to climb out of the woodwork.  My best friend, I think, is here, Alberta.  My best friend may be the person least likely.  And I don't know if we're going to be able to stay best friends.  My best friend? Is, maybe, my very-recent first ex-boyfriend who broke my heart into a million pieces.  If you know the story, stop laughing, frowning, or sulking in the direction of these words.  I will never be able to explain it to your satisfaction.  I am still waiting to see if it's true.  But, but but, CRAP.
    I want so badly to be home, with the people I love, surrounded by books, with good music on the stereo and good food at the table.  I get this, I lose it, it comes back, it hides in corners. 
    And home is: waffle brunch with cats on the lap, being called 5 years old while drinking a black velvet in a suddenly smoke-free pub, sesame balls at dim sum on a thursday morning.  Long distance phone calls, punjabi-style pizza around the table in the work kitchen, Wednesday wings at a south Edmonton bar with a bunch of pirates, coffee and talk while we wait, heated-up homemade too-spicy leftovers, veggie burgers and too many oh-so-good desserts, green tea kitkats and fresh-baked-goods in the park, leaning over the counter learning about green onion pancakes, dirty jokes at the wrong time, surprise envelopes full of homemade love, an unexpected telephone.  It is an hour roasting tomatoes for soup that tastes just like Campbell's, a line of jars of cocoa mix, perogies and chai in a hockey arena surrounded by artisans and noise, digging through the storage unit to find an evil duck then giving him to a little girl in love.
It is, now, ARGH, THREE Canadian cities in three provinces, far away, always, from someone I just want to be close to.