Transitway Six

Thumbnail: Transitway

On days like this, it’s bet­ter to wear light cloth­ing, and throw on a hood­ed wind­break­er. The rain out­side is just a driz­zle, so it’s com­fort­ably cool. Pay no atten­tion to the hydraulic hiss of the wind­shield wipers, or you won’t be able to help hear­ing them through the qui­et parts of every song. Window seats are prime. There are few­er dis­trac­tions from peo­ple walk­ing down the aisle.

The 95 goes from one end of the city to the oth­er, straight through the heart of Ottawa. Every stop is a mem­o­ry. Old haunts. Past lives.

Here was your first apart­ment. Sometimes you’d find Christie wait­ing for you here on the bench­es between class­es. How long ago those days seem, how imma­ture and rel­a­tive­ly inno­cent. The next two stops are on the edge of the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, four years of scat­tered tru­an­cy. Two stops lat­er is where you use to buy a medi­um caramel cor­ret­to every morn­ing after an exhaust­ing night with Louise. Your old gov­ern­ment office is anoth­er two on. The con­crete build­ing looks so for­eign now, and you won­der if the same peo­ple are still inside. Another few stops is your last apart­ment, before buy­ing the house, the end of bus rides home every day.

Music nev­er meant so much.

You pass by con­struc­tion sites, fin­ished build­ings, see the evo­lu­tion of the city.

Every stop can be traced to a dif­fer­ent point, a dif­fer­ent girl­friend, a dif­fer­ent path in your life.

Six years of expe­ri­ence, six years of shift­ing, ever-chang­ing ani­ma.

Six years passed.

Six years lived.

Six years grown.

9 comments

  1. Hi Jeff. I stum­bled onto your blog dur­ing a state of extreme bore­dom. Your beau­ti­ful skill with words has engaged me com­plete­ly, although my old eyes are hurt­ing from try­ing to read the small print. I am so intrigued that, after read­ing your cur­rent entries, I clicked on Sept 02 and have just met Dolly. I need to attend to my real life right now but I hope to return to read more if that is ok? When I said old, I meant it. I have a few decades on you so if my read­ing your jour­nal cripes you out just let me know and I’ll respect your deci­sion.
    Anni (from Alberta)

  2. Wow, Jeff. That was pow­er­ful. It kind of knocked the wind out of me for a minute.. quite a thought pro­vok­ing post. Now I want to dig around these archives and read about your old flames!
    Because lord knows I’m not get­ting any. My col­lege years are not the con­ven­tion­al way. It’s like a big black cloud hang­ing over me and I feel unen­ti­tled to nur­ture a rela­tion­ship while the aca­d­e­m­ic part of my life is still hang­ing in the bal­ance.
    Thanks for drop­ping by my lit­tle cor­ner.

  3. Anni: I don’t mind any­one read­ing my blog. The only excep­tion is any per­son whom I’ve specif­i­cal­ly told nev­er to talk to me again. I’ve been con­sid­er­ing a sec­ond CSS skin with a larg­er type, along with a few oth­er projects, but unfor­tu­nate­ly it’ll be a while before I have time to work on them.

    momof2: Sometimes, I still occa­sion­al­ly talk about my old flames. It makes me won­der if any­one read­ing still thinks I’m not over them. Almost all mem­o­ries are good, even if the expe­ri­ences did­n’t end well. There’s always some­thing to be gained.

    Renegade Blogger: Thanks.

  4. nice pic­ture.. sigh, i miss ottawa. and yeah, youre absoluet­ly right about every stop hav­ing dif­fer­ent mem­o­ries

  5. Sikander, I guess I should have fig­ured from all the pic­tures on your blog, but I did­n’t real­ize that you weren’t in Ottawa any­more. Where are you now? Just trav­el­ling?

  6. I know, I won­der if my old flames read my stuff and make assump­tions that I’m still hang­ing on. It feels good to hash it all out through writ­ing, though. So I don’t care what they think.

    I share your atti­tude in believ­ing that there is always some­thing to be gained from past rela­tion­ships. Even through sit­u­a­tions that were wrong for you, you learn.

    I watched Cocktail last night. I know, it’s total corn­ball. But once again I held my breath when Tom Cruise said the line…
    “Everything ends bad­ly, oth­er­wise it would­n’t end.”

  7. i moved to toron­to august of last year after fin­ish­ing at Carleton. my friends say i’m crazy but i would love to move back to ottawa. maybe next year. depends on work of course.. if i find some­thing worth­while in ottawa ill quit here and move

  8. by toron­to i meant mis­sis­sauga (which is so res­i­den­tial and bor­ing). liv­ing in down­town toron­to would’ve been fun

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