Necessary evil.

Sunday morning I ate something so appropriately titled on a breakfast menu at the Don it was uncanny. 'Crack and hash' turned out to be the best damn food I have put inside my body in a while. I left wishing on another ten plates. Potatoes and eggs, always an upper. Hash topped with crackles and friend onions, two eggs basted medium, hands around coffee mugs, my older brother and my older sister laughing at me from across the table. This is us in our truest forms, three siblings around a breakfast table. Three like voices cooing enthusiastically. I bet we even banged our hands on the table in exclamation without even noticing, because we all do it. Having long left the nest (almost five years ago now) we tend to call each other all at once on Sunday mornings like these and without saying it, we say we miss home and each other and then we go to the Don to eat. My bangs were sticking up funny and Mike was in a funny haha mood and Erin had funny justifications and lists for everything (which is an art, as I have learned from her).

Sunday day, ran errands with my brother. Lazed, ignored the piles of things that need to be folded, tidied and tucked out of sight, out of mind. Eventually I got bored and rode my bike around town until I couldn't feel the inside linings of my lungs anymore. Cold hands? Who cares. It is the lungs that are important. I rode back home, frozen to the core, drew a bath and read the day away under my Grandma's quilt. My hands stopped short when I found an old shirt at the back of my wardrobe while rifling for something soft to clothe myself with. The last shirt. The last article of clothing still containing a smell. Every girl has one of these shirts stolen from a boyfriend's cache, usually the type of lover who hangs his t-shirts on hangers. So I stood there, with hair getting long and dripping rain down my bare shoulders and I let myself hunch over into this familiar smell and inhale. For a long time. Long enough that I became aware of what I was doing and eventually I had enough of that smell and I walked over the the garbage can and threw it in. Good bye last everything. I missed that smell so much but today after standing there long enough I realized it wasn't him I was missing anymore, or his smell, or anything, it was the idea of love. I miss it. The t-shirt, now long in the dumpster will surely be found tomorrow by my trusty neighborhood garbage bag prowler dynamic duo that swing by my dumpster in high hopes of finding something quality and not too, too smelly. They can have it. Sniff him, not gasolina.

Today I had this very strong desire to haul and drag everything I own outside to the same dumpster and just wish it away. I am going away for the summer and the reality of moving my shit and boxing things up and giving everything away is becoming a stark reality. The more I think about it, the less scary it becomes. To be the kind of person attached to things is never something I have wanted to become. I respected James so much when we doled out all of his favorite things, music, clothes etc, to his favorite people because he knew they would love it and appreciate it as much as he did. Whenever I put on any of the twenty or so cd's he gave me, my mind goes to him with so much warmth. This is how I would like to be thought of when I move. To whomever is the lucky recipient of my plants, promise to look at my Jade plant that I received from Loco when she moved to MTL, the plant I have babied so carefully in her name, misted daily, talked to softly; look at it and think of us.

No one changes their mind as much as you do, not even the wind.

I didn't know what to do with that sentence when my mother gifted it to me over the phone. I couldn't tell if there was disappointment or pride laced in between the words. I am young, and chances are I will not understand the meaning behind her observation until I have my own children. Then I will wrap the cord around my finger aimlessly and say the same thing to my daughter Frances (maybe), and understand. I am whittling away at all of the things I do not want, need, desire. Big dreams carved smaller and smaller into more ornate and tangible ones. To be able to give my things up first and then away with trust and love or to tape boxes shut; these are steps towards something. To weep standing upright in the kitchen that I have slow danced in, cooked in, felt hands slide around my waist in, sang in, made art in, had tea in, sobbed on the rug in, opened hundreds of bottles of wine in, laughed in, will be impossible. But I will do it and walk away from it and not look back at the yellow walls because they will no longer be mine. On the day that I have to take apart my beloved bicycle in order for it to fly with me to somewhere new, to stand in as an old friend until I find new ones again will be impossible too, but all of these things are manageable and part of the necessary evil. The necessary evil of change and challenging oneself and growing.

Sunday night I spent alone listening to Strauss and drinking tea, holding court in my bed, reading. Lost in a fictional world, which was much needed. Everyone is leaving for warmer places, which is nice for them. I have been surviving happily up until today when I just wanted to fly away away away and live in a thatched roof hut built into a sand foundation listening to the bugs flare up as the light slips into dark. I want to swing contentedly in a hammock reading Anna Karenina with one hand and drinking Chang beer with the other. But, that will not happen and tomorrow I will forget I ever felt discontent because I will be too busy finishing my latest print at Martha. And that will be nice.

My bangs are still sticking up funny.