The best time of the year to make the dri­ve to Darren’s house is in the Autumn. It’s about five hours door-to-door — bar­ring any traf­fic or con­struc­tion — so there’s a good chance I’ll catch a sun­rise or sun­set no mat­ter when I leave. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly beau­ti­ful when the leaves are chang­ing and the colours are at their rich­est along the stretch­es of the 401.

Sometimes I’ll turn on a stand-up com­e­dy sta­tion instead of music, and it helps take my mind off the drea­ri­ness of the less scenic parts¹. It’s like hav­ing anoth­er per­son to talk to, except the con­ver­sa­tion goes one way, and they tend to be fun­ny when not over­ly polit­i­cal² or Andrew Dice Clay.

Zhaliang and clas­sic Cantonese noo­dles. #thingsIcouldeateveryday

I still think of mov­ing back to Toronto, where there’s every­thing that isn’t avail­able to me in Ottawa. But I hate all the things that come with such an unwieldy and poor­ly amal­ga­mat­ed city. At my age, I val­ue com­fort over excite­ment, and Toronto has become a city that’s bet­ter to vis­it than to stay.

After meet­ing Mike in London, I knew that’s where I was meant to live, with Bloc Party and Monty Python and The Underground and rainy weath­er and Portishead and a bil­lion accents and Only Fools and Horses and that sto­ic British men­tal­i­ty and Paris just a train ride away. But that was­n’t my fate, and the dirty streets of Toronto are the clos­est I’ll ever get to that.

This week­end Darren host­ed a heads-up tour­ney, and I walked away with the first pick in the rare draft, six boost­ers, and an extra $50 prize pool for win­ner-takes-all³. We stayed up till 3:30 play­ing casu­al and I was­n’t even tired, until the next three days when try­ing to recov­er from stay­ing up well past my bed­time for a sin­gle night.

Nowadays, Magic is the only thing to take my mind off the thoughts I can’t han­dle. There’s enough cre­ativ­i­ty in deck build­ing to hold my inter­est, and I’m lucky enough that it’s also some­thing I share with many of my friends. But it still isn’t enough, and I’m left try­ing to find oth­er out­lets to inspire me.

Finger tap­ping on side of nose.

Some days, it feels like I’m judg­ing the dis­tance from the ground and pray­ing. Other days, I find out my favourite song in high school was just an Isaac Hayes sam­ple, not an orig­i­nal trip-hop cre­ation writ­ten for our roman­tic, ado­les­cent fum­blings in the ner­vous dark.

It’s like the whole world is upside-down, and I can’t tell if I’m falling.

1. Usually the small towns with no charm or per­son­al­i­ty. [↩]
2. Cause I nev­er get it. [↩]
3. Enough to cov­er my gas mon­ey in one direc­tion. [↩]