the valentine project, part 4.

February 14, 2010, Kingston, Ontario (and points north).

This Valentine's Day actually began on February 13th. It was a Saturday, and my brother's band played a show at the Grad Club that night. Tom drove down from the woods for the occasion--it was no small feat getting him out of the wilderness, especially once the snow had started falling, and I was pretty damned happy that he trekked out. We'd gotten back from Mexico about a month earlier, and ever since our return we'd been closer than ever--more comfortable, quietly and easily moving in and out of one another's lives, finding our patterns. I'd been in love with him for two years already, but that winter, I fell for him all over again--this time openly instead of secretly, this time in a way that was reciprocated, reflected back, absorbed. It was the most normal we'd ever been.

So that Saturday night we slid down snowy streets to the Grad Club. My best friends Harold and Danielle came with us. We drank a lot of Guinness. After my brother's set, I was talking with him at the back of the bar. He was going through a rough time, and told me as much. All I could really do was hug him hard and fierce, and it hurt so much not to be able to do anything else.

Tom and I stumbled home, and on the way he told me that his cat, Puff, hadn't come home yet. The thing about Puff is that he was, categorically, the greatest cat you will ever have: funny and stand-offish and cuddly and the best hunter imaginable. Puff had somehow survived four winters in the wilderness, killing mice and frogs and snakes, taking off for days at a time and coming back like a conquering hero. The thing you need to know about Tom is that he was, in many ways, closer to his animals than to his people. He loved that cat so much--not as much as he loved his dog, but a close second. He always talked about how Puff was going to meet an untimely end in the woods at some point, but it was always an abstract, half-joking hypothesis. He never fully believed it would come to pass. So when it did, when a week had gone by without so much as a paw print in the snow, we knew that it was probably the end of Puff the Magic Kitten's reign over the Canoe Lake homestead. And as Tom finally admitted this to me in the early hours of February 14th, as he cried so hard his shoulders shook and his legs gave way, I put my arms around him. For the second time that night I felt like I couldn't really solve a damned thing, so I did the only thing I knew how to do, which was hold on. The only way out is through, as they say.

The next morning we slept late and woke up feeling fuzzy-headed.

"I'm taking you out," Tom announced. "We're going out for breakfast."

"Do you know what day this is?" I asked him, fairly certain he did not. "Do you know how many other idiots are taking their girlfriends out for breakfast as we speak?"

His face clouded over momentarily, and then cleared. "I don't give a shit," he declared. "We're going."

It was the closest to romance he got.

It took two tours around town, one unsuccessful attempt to find a parking spot at Denny's, and finally a trip out to the Township before we finally settled on a restaurant that seemed to be somewhat empty. It was an All You Can Eat Sushi place, and it was fantastic. We gorged ourselves on MSG-laden tuna rolls and then made our way back out to the country for the rest of the weekend; thirty-six hours of urban living was about Tom's threshold.

That winter, Tom still had the place on Canoe Lake. It was one of the best winters for skating I'd ever seen: the lake froze in December and stayed that way till March. Canoe Lake was originally part of a longer river, until a causeway constructed around 1910 dammed it up, but it still had a long, estuarial shape. It was also a deep lake, so deep that even when the ice was thick and firm, it was blue-black and ominous instead of white. It was like gliding over a prehistoric black hole. That afternoon, we laced up our skates and shot up and down the lake over and over, to the tiny island we'd swim to every summer and back, throwing balls for the dog and letting the wind numb our cheeks. There was not a soul around for miles. That waterway was our wide world.

That night, we warmed our bones by the woodstove, drank red wine, and watched Tootsie on the television, passing out partway through. I remember waking up to him dragging me off the couch, up the stairs, into bed, where I fell asleep again to the sound of the wind whipping at the windows.

The next day was a holiday Monday. Tom drove me into town just in time for the arrival of an army of librarians on my doorstep--we were celebrating Pancake Tuesday a day early, since we all had the day off. We spent the afternoon drinking champagne and gorging ourselves on white flour and syrup, and when everyone left, I had a nap.

This is the Valentine's Day that breaks my heart the most. It was a weekend in which the world handed me all the things I love: music, family, food, friends, boys who need me, towns that feel like home, and long, clear paths to skate away on. In some ways I do not think I will ever know this perfect confluence again. In other ways, I know it was not perfect at all, not by a long shot. But at the time, I just couldn't stop falling in love, with everything, with everyone, over and over.

Last things.

Everything's boxed up and ready for the movers tomorrow. I am currently conducting business from my Mobile Command Unit, which is essentially a stack of milk crates and a couple of yoga blocks. My fridge is home to one clementine and half a jar of salsa, and I am on my fourth coffee of the day. It's Zero Hour, friends: that delightful point in the relocation process where you've taken the curtains off the windows so the neighbours can watch you weep openly as you stuff another loose screwdriver into the box marked "miscellaneous fragile" and wonder what the hell you are doing.

I hate moving. It makes me antsy and weird. I'm a Cancer, which means I am an antisocial homebody. Living out of boxes is bad for my spiritual complexion. Every time I move, I wonder why I don't just run back home to my parents' house and hide away forever. Happily, this is exactly what I'm doing this round, so maybe, just maybe, this will be the last time I ship out of anywhere. I sure hope so.

On the other hand, I love moving. Leaving someplace behind gives you free license to nostalgise the hell out of it, and given that I've fallen harder for this little town than for any other place I've ever lived, I have a lot to think back on with fond wistfulness. Here's a rundown.

Best freelance gig: Kingstonist, the Limestone City's finest blog. Rarely does an editor give you complete support and editorial control, not to mention free wine. Come to think of it, I really should've taken more advantage of the opportunity to promote my Marxist-Leninist pro-labour agenda.

Best poutine: Pita Grill on Princess. Discovered lamentably in the twilight of my tenure.

Best place for an all-encompassing epiphany: Yoga Samatva.

Best place to see a show: The Grad Club. Thanks, Virginia,
for making sure I got to see all my favourite bands here.

Best road out of town: A few months ago, Highway 38 toward Holleford Road would've had my vote. I still urge you all to drive it sometime, because it's really pretty gorgeous. But times change and now I'm solidly in the Highway 10 camp, because it leads to Westport, sausage rolls, and eventually, my best buddy in the world. I'll always love driving north out of Kingston, regardless of which route I take. I love going from city to country so damned fast, disappearing into those rolling hills.

Best Plot To Take Over the Library Universe Breakfast Meeting Place: Star Diner. If you like your revolutions with a side of the world's best hash browns, this is the place for you.

Best friends: Aw, you know who you are. Thanks for the memories, my dear pals. You haven't seen the last of this lone wolf.

Frankie Say Relax.

So, it was a pretty gorgeous today, and I ate an insanely delicious dinner at Casa Domenico, and now I am full of rare tuna and I can't sleep. My houseguest has suggested I go through my online photo albums and give him laser eyes, so he can be incognito, as he is someone who is archaically wonderful and not interested in being on The Facebook, but I'm not really much of a photoshopper. So I figured I should just relax, with this great video of Young Rival. I know I'm basically tooting my family's horn, but seriously, Young Rival has the best YouTube channel of anyone life (except maybe the random dude who posts the whole run of Freaks and Geeks in ten minute segments--sorry, I can't find him right now in my tuna addled state). enjoy.

Ghost in the Park


Aw, I can't embed it. Seriously though, click it. It's worth it.

Incidentally, does anyone remember the Frankie Say Relax reference on Friends? I really feel like that show deserves more credit.



Goodnight, children, everywhere.

but wait! there's more!

Best Of lists are fun! Especially when you write one and then you are plagued by insomnia and spend the loneliest hours of the night coming up with things you should have included in the first place!

Best audiobook that made a completely unreadable book totally amazing: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson; read by Peter Francis James. This is a historical epic about slavery and the American Revolution. There is no good reason why I should enjoy this book, and yet, I absolutely did. The reader is frigging unbelievable and the story is so twisted and weird. It's one of those audiobooks that make you drive around the block an extra time or two so you can keep listening.

Best celebrity memoir: Moon River and Me by Andy Williams. Laugh if you want, but this book is fascinating. Therapeutic LSD experiences, Christmas specials, and criminal exes.

Best Flight of the Conchords song: Hurt Feelings.



Best film set decoration/confirmation that suburbs=beautiful death: Revolutionary Road.

Best meal: The tuna platter at Casa Domenico.

Most dangerous drinks menu: Atomica. (bottles of prosecco, you are the key to my spiritual depantsing.)

Best breakfast: Star Diner. Although the waitress dressed as Michael Jackson on Halloween was somewhat off-putting.

Best essayist: Zadie Smith. My fondest wish is to be half as smart and sassy. She gives intellectualism a good name and makes me feel so much better about watching bad movies. And I'm pretty sure that distillation of her writing is completely insulting, but whatever. I'm high on advent calendar chocolate and regret.

Best movie trailer: Where the Wild Things Are. I probably watched this five times the first day it surfaced online. It gave me goosebumps. It made me teary and anxious and nostalgic. Jen pointed out that this is also the best use of a pop song (Wake Up, by the Arcade Fire) in a movie trailer this year, and I'd go one further and wager that it might just be the best trailer of ALL TIME. It was so good that it made me nervous about whether the movie would live up to it. I never did see the movie.



Happy New Year.

You've Got a Friend. (Of the Library.)

Never doubt the amazing serendipity of your local Friends of the Library book sale. I've worked in a couple of suburban, Stepfordesque neighbourhoods, and I'm constantly bowled over by the random awesomeness of the books that patrons and neighbours donate to us. Mostly we sell them and the money goes back to the library. I always expect to find nothing but worn out Danielle Steele but I'm always proven wrong. Today I scored three total gems.

Amphigorey: Fifteen Books by Edward Gorey

Amphigorey Too by Edward Gorey

...and I'm pretty sure these are first editions. Not that I care, but, you know.

The Letters of E.B. White

...and not a cracked spine among them. How people have let these books languish in their basements, hardly even breaking them in, boggles my mind. But am I ever glad they fall into my hands. Six dollars well spent, folks. I urge you to check out your local Friends shop soon. Sometimes they even sell coffee, and, if you're in South Ottawa, cheddar flavoured Combos. It's a little like visiting your grandmother and helping her clean out the basement, while also making a donation to that noblest of public institutions.

And finally, how excited am I to have googled Combos and stumbled on that last link to taquitos.net? From now on, no snack will be bought until I've checked the reviews there.

Having the internet in my house again is the greatest.

All this town needs is a ten-minute nail place.

Because brevity truly is the soul of wit, and because I wasted most of my lunch hour walking around looking for a place to get an express pedicure (seriously Kingston, what the hell?), a brief and undoubtedly witty list.

Favourite items my new library has that my old library didn't.

My New York Diary by Julie Doucet. Something about the way she draws can make a roach-infested Harlem squat look cozy and appealing. And her slightly-off quebecois english diction is adorable.

A scrapbook of uncollected sketches and stories by Adrian Tomine, my favourite comic artist to read when you kind of feel like you might kill yourself and need someone to push you off the ledge, or at least feel pretty miserable about the state of humanity. I love comics, partly because there's something inherently lonely about the artists I read. I don't know what it is about the medium that's so navel-gazey and personally nostalgic for the writers, but I love it. If you haven't read anything by Tomine, start with Summer Blonde.

Veronica Mars. Okay, in truth I borrowed this from a fellow librarian, but we have it at the library too! This! Show! Is! Amazing! It has elements of so many things I love, from My So-Called Life to Nancy Drew to noir-ish detective fiction. And cute boys. SWOON.

Dawson's Creek on DVD. Secret shame alert. I have not borrowed this yet but when I saw it on the shelf I had a flash in my head of a weekend in February when I will unplug the phone, plug in the DVD player, and not leave my house for days.

I cannot put enough emphasis on how exciting it is to have a whole new library collection to explore. It is Nerd Christmas, friends.