I'm happy to report that my blood does clot

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.

Chinese dishes

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.

Magic draft

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.

Juicy Bluntarillo

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. []

4 comments

  1. Yes!! Move to Toronto :)

    • Don’t tempt me into going into more debt!

  2. I hate to say this, but my friend who designs web­sites (and not the nas­ti­est of e‑commerce engines, either) man­aged to pack up and go to France and plant her­self there, and she SUCCEEDED. She even ulti­mate­ly mar­ried there. I’m just here to say it can be done; since most of what you do is pret­ty portable. Actually your kit­ties are less portable — but even that could be done.

    Maybe you should actu­al­ly con­sid­er a dream like London?.

    • What part of France did she set­tle? I could see it being a much more viable option in a less met­ro­pol­i­tan area, even in the UK. London, though, is far too expen­sive and I’d like­ly end up owing too much mon­ey in my life­time.

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