Wednesday, November 26, 2014

good.



When I was a kid, all sixes and sevens and just barely adding up to thirteen, my dad gave me a valuable lesson. He said, 'Look at the people in your life who are good, the people you look up to, and figure out what makes them good. Then, work on being that way yourself.' I must have looked somewhat stunned at the moment, so he offered an example.

"Who do you look up to in your life? Who is a good person that you want to be like?"

"Bob."

"Exactly."

My dad went on to espouse me of all the virtues of my grandfather, as if I did not already know them by heart. Bob is a people person. At any time, on any day, he could talk to anyone, and both parties would leave the conversation richer than at the start.

"What about hyacinths?"

"Hyacinths?"

"Yeah. The flowers."

"I don't know. He grows them in his basement. On the ping-pong table."

"That's right. All winter, they're there, doing nothing. Then, when it's springtime, they blossom. And they're beautiful to look at, and they smell wonderful, and you know what he does with them?"

"No."

"He gives them away."

My dad explained how Bob, without pretense or sinister intent or anything other than other-centeredness, would drive around in his massive grandpa car, and deliver the hyacinths to local friends. He would walk into a house full of boys and leftover plates of food and half pairs of socks mostly dirty from the fray, and he would stay for a chat, and he would always have a story, and then he would leave, the sparkling hyacinth still on the kitchen table.

And that's when the miracle would take shape.

You see, Bob was well up the road, likely negotiating some potholed turn or oncoming log truck, maybe enjoying the way snowbanks steam in spring sunlight while pine needles sink into their glistening crusty surfaces, when the hyacinth started to work. Of a sudden, the neighbor would be struck by its beauty. The fresh scent and the innocent pale petals would remind her of babies so many years ago. The soil would be perfectly damp and yet firm, and clean. Clean. She would start to clean.

It might be hours or days later, but the entire house, from cinder-blocked addition foundation to rough-hewn cathedral ceiling beam, would be clean. Every dish was polished and stacked neatly behind now-laundered cupboard curtains (the doors would be made next spring). Every sock had a mate and every tile, clean grout. The cracks between floorboards bore no witness to dusty new tenants, and served only to accentuate the character of carefully-laid planks. There was now a cloth on the table.

On top of the cloth, there were hyacinths.

"You see?"

"Yes."


"Find the good people; figure out what makes them good; be good like that."

Sunday, November 16, 2014

burn.



i wanted to wrap my tongue around words that didn't rhyme with my guilt.

i wanted to wrap my arms around a woman who didn't shy away, covered in other thoughts of other times that maybe were better but certainly won't happen again.

i wanted to wrap words around my tongue like her kisses used to fit, all tender and longing and satisfied, eventually.

i wanted to wrap my shoulders with something not quite as heavy as the weight of the world, but just as warm and burning.

these months are the cold.

_______________________

'i should burn these'

'why?'

'well…'

'why not just recycle them?'

pause.

'or do you want the ceremony of actually burning them?'

'yeah.'

i reached forward and took the very large pieces of wrinkled and creased newsprint, and slowly stuffed them together. the bodies, the torsos, rendered meticulously in hand-smeared charcoal to a recognizable likeness of our younger selves, pressed together in the haphazard way i still long for, and then filled the garish blue recycling bag. my hands got covered in charcoal. again, this was comforting. i smiled a grim smile then, holding my breath like i do when i empty the compost or scrub the toilet or wait for a reprimand, and held the bag full of drawings close to my chest.

'i shoulda burned them.'


_______________________


Friday, October 17, 2014

when grown men cry.



we are supposed to grow up good.

and in this world of all being fair or all being well, there's not enough love and there's too much war and not much really ends well. i miss grant. and as much as i didn't know jeni very well, and as much as i cried real hard at jake's funeral, and as much as i wanted to go to jim's but couldn't get my passport in time, i've not been as angry about death as i am now.

i'm fucking pissed.

when we grow up, we are supposed to look up to people, supposed to be fed myths and legends and things that will make us be good people when we're too old for band-aids and too tired to fall in love. when we grow up, we are supposed to be good, supposed to be exemplary, supposed to still believe in concrete and important things that are enormous and amazing and too profound to fit in an italicized hallmark card in the stuffy aisle at the drug store. when we grow up, we should know better than to think things are fair, than to believe in santa claus or tooth fairies, than to go on inspiration alone. and at the same time, we should turn right around and nurture this behavior in the youth; propagate myths and outrageous hope; believe that good will prevail.

well, it fucking won't.

because there will be cancer. and there will be bodies that can't overcome cancer. and there will be patients who'll 'lose' their 'battle with cancer'. and there will be doctors who can't fix people and nurses who can't walk up the fucking stairs to administer drugs that won't cure the people we love anyway.

conrad marched slowly toward me in the line and looked like a mountain undergoing immediate and devastating erosion. he was a landslide. as he towered over me and crumbled visibly, he dwarfed my hands firmly in his and strengthened his voice and uttered a few words about 'a good man'. then he said it was too bad 'we couldn't save him'. conrad is a fucking financial adviser and i'm a useless son-in-law and neither of us knows shit about oncology other than knowing that word means you know sadness and loss and how fucking stupidly unfair all this sham is. then he blinked into the distance and took small steps away before fading into the hallway all covered in taupe and tears. funeral homes are not fair.

and tonight my daughter is sad because she no longer has a grandpapa. she only ever had one, and she was the one who made him a grandpapa, and now that amazing wonderful man is gone. and he wasn't even done yet. some people get taken when they're done and ready. some people get taken before they've even gotten going. and her grandpapa got taken in the middle of it all, in the prime of his rich, rich life, practically right out of her chubby little arms.

my lady is too stubborn to let go in front of any of us. she insists on being strong and tough and independent. she insists on taking care of all of us. she insists that that's what her dad would have wanted. and she's probably right. but i'm pretty fucking sure he would have wanted me to take care of her too. and frankly, i don't know how.

i have spent many of my ottawa hours in the good man's garage, fetching tools for him when he was well, then looking for hidden items when he wasn't, and now trying to make sense of things i've never understood. like the MG-B. or the collections of tools and lubes and paints but nothing to clean them up when they spill, or cover our ears from the noise. i guess that's kinda how things are going right now; we were so caught up in getting it all done, we weren't ready to clean up yet.

my lady mentioned today in her eulogy that she needed her dad's cancer diagnosis to slow her down, help her focus on the time that we actually had left, focus on making memories while we could. i drove thousands of kilometers every month, up to ottawa and back, making sure we had memories. and the old man, bless his heart, always had a ready smile, no matter the pain, and a firm handshake, no matter the lost weight, and a fire in his hopeful eyes, no matter the sunken cheeks. we slowed down. he sped up. in the friction between both lifestyles we made sparks of memories to keep. tonight i'm grasping at them before they fade into the sky. it is not fair.

so i held little z tonight.

at just seven months, he has been a perfect little gentleman the whole of his little life, and he seems to embody all of the calm and patience the old man put forth into this world. i held him just now, for a few hours, watching him sleep and breathe and dream and flail in his slumber, then settle and breathe again. he is calm and strong. his smile is ready.

my lady just got back from cleaning out the old man's office. stuck to a sticky corkboard on faded yellow paper was a simple objective typed, on a typewriter, in courier font size 12: to provide for my family and somehow do something to make this world a better place. in all that is completely unfair and undone and left unfinished and unwell, at least he accomplished his objective. a million fucking times over.

salut, monsieur. dormez bien.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

noise.



the first five notes of the koln concert are the least important of the first twenty-six minutes and they are followed by a ringing silence that can open a soul.

i have listened to the koln concert throughout most of my overemotional existence, ever since i was almost a teenager, ever since i had a favorite uncle, ever since i could stay up too late and wish that i was having a deep conversation with my dad while the rest of the kids were supposedly asleep. my daughter was born to its notes six and a half years ago. and now, while the kids are supposedly asleep, i listen for the silence.

i had learned that music was organized sound and silence in time, and i had learned this from the greatest music teacher in the nation, way out in the country, spending his gift on the rough and tumble youth at the tail end of a golden era. the silence is as important as the sound. without it, we've just got noise.

these are noisy days.

the weeks between this and the last post are plenty and strong. dates and times and faces and rhymes have taken to the current and blurred right on by. jada had a baby. so did the nanny. the postman ran a slow half. i made the hole shot in a masters race. my father in law breathes his last days. my mother in law tries to remember. i haven't kissed in years.

if you want to remember what it was like the first time, try forgetting the last time. if it's something that gnaws at your consciousness, if you just want to figure it out so you can let it go, if you can't help but keep it on the tip of your raw, stinging tongue, spit or swallow and then move. it's in the silence. that has to be found first.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

giants.



my dad used to write us letters.

most of them were penned by hand, his distinctive all-caps block type interrupted here and there with 'm's that looked like the chinook coming down the foothills into the plains. most of them were stories.

although we could all read plenty fine, i distinctly remember being read these letters aloud. mostly my sister did it, sometimes my mother, and the entire experience lingers in the delicious category of my memory. somehow we weren't running around or doing chores or chasing bedtimes and baths. somehow the babysitter was done for the day. somehow we were all sitting still and quiet enough to hear the words. and they filled our imaginations, those words, they swelled our hearts and made us miss the man even more, though we were satisfied with being taken along on even a handful of his adventures. he wrote about water and canoes and rivers and heroes and giants and land and trees. before we left our home, he had built a dream for us to go to. those months–of leaving and packing and moving and driving and goodbye and let's go–could have been the most tumultuous of our lives; all i remember are the letters.

i heard once that george lucas, back when his storytelling was better, consulted joseph campbell prior to the writing of the original star wars trilogy. apparently, lucas knew that it was important to construct myth, and he wanted to get it right.

the letters from my father were constructed myth. though much of the stories was based in 'fact', the most important stuff, the stuff that sticks in my head and can be recited by all of my siblings word for word, that stuff was myth. it started off true and then went somewhere better, became bigger, made more sense and elevated our imaginations to greater possibilities. for kids growing up in the 80s with nikes on their feet and mcdonald's in their bellies, it was important, it was imperative, to construct myth, if for no other reason than to elevate.

throughout much of my life, i have had the luxury of long talks with my dad. early on, it was about anything and everything and most of it was just learning, and it wasn't hard, and it was my favorite time in the car or on the bike or before dinner was done. we would daydream together about going to italy some day, picking up a pair of brand new colnagos or pinarellos at the factory, and then riding and eating our way through the entire country. we would dream about having horses with hooves as big as my head, and a barn to keep them in, and the cool farm chores i could do. making any of those beautiful dreams come true was beside the point. the point was that we could and should dream, and we could do it together, each with his own honest smile, giddy in his heart.

it is important to construct myth.

it is important to have ideals, and embed those in good stories, and tell the stories to children and young people and old people you love. we must remember risk and adventure and challenge and triumph. we must recall comradery and the power of two hands holding together over rushing water. we must remember giants.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

broken.



into my left hand i squeeze two tablespoons of tea tree shampoo while my right hand reaches over all that wet brown hair and joins my left hand in smoothing the stuff into the thick of it all, right down to that perfect scalp, underneath which, the girl giggles. 

'i like when you wash my hair.'

'you have a mane like a horse.'

'i like horses.'

'they're fast and strong and beautiful. like you.'

giggle.

it's been years since i've bathed this child. she is in the last glowing months of absolute innocence, unformed by adolescence, game for anything except being a grown up. but now she has height that reaches her mamas, long quick legs, a sense of humor that grasps Irony, and a shattered right elbow. i haven't bathed this girl since she could do it herself, singing and playing in so much water, supervised and unhurried, a cherub with a cloth and bubbles. now she cradles a cast that weighs more than her head, now she steps gingerly, everywhere, now her neck gets pulled by the sling for her cast, now her freckles are fleeting reminders of her carefree days.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

up up up.



before i became much of a man, my grandfather was gone.

i used to write poetry. it was pretty terrible. and i would send it to my grandmother because she was a master of literature and teaching and she would read it to my grandfather, sitting by his side, at a very long table that used to feed so many hungry mouths, and he would get exasperated and exclaim, "there's just too much sex in it!"

i hadn't had any sex when i wrote any of that stuff.

later on, before i even graduated from high school, my grandfather was gone. he left before i became something more elegant and possessed of agency than a hormone-ridden accident of circumstance and micromanaging. he left before i could run. he left before i met the lady of my life. he left before that lady and i made and raised some sweet sweet children that he would have utterly enjoyed. cancer doesn't care about sweet cheeks.

this grandfather is one i think of often. he had many children. he had much bitterness. he had a hard time figuring out where he fit in a family he loved more than himself. he collected knives and grandchildren and sharpened both with care. he loved hunting. he loved the stories about it more. from this grandfather, i have my champagne taste, a quick temper, and an old seiko watch from the 80s. it may well be as old as i am, and it ticks by the kitchen sink, and blinks rapidly to let me know that its battery is nearly exhausted, and i left it there to do the dishes.

i have a grandfather that knows me now, and i wonder if there is much to be proud of. he knows my children, and welcomes them into his home and laughs at their hilariousness, and hugs them though he can no longer lift them. it seems now that he is the delicate one, that they are careful with him.

the lack of hair on my head, the blue in my eyes, the moles i get removed every few years from my freckled white skin, and my long fingers are from this grandfather. despite my champagne taste, i have joad family resolve, and my jalopy of dignity, however rickety, will make the trip. i got this from him.

there is no resolution here, no respite. onward and upward is the only way to go. struggle makes the most sense. there is no time to falter. the cheeks are still sweet.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

rain on brimley.



Rain slapped the pavement. Wind blew inland from the lake, whipping flags through soggy seizures, the spray into my eyes. There was no relief in going down. Puddles found fissures in the road to pool and arrest rivulets in no difference between my skin and shiny tarmac. We churned.

Reaching the parking lot at the first gate, stuttering to a slow stop over the chopped pavement and grieving patches of slick tar, turning left to go up again, hunched forward, leaning into the gear.

The machine leapt forward. Shiny black metal polished with embrocation and thigh stubble, it was a cat closing on prey. No need to get out of the saddle. No need to push harder than smoothly, to shift to a larger cog, to hunch or gasp. No need to do anything beyond a subtle wrapping of light grip around the tops of the bar, and a coaxing (more in myself than of the machine) toward the grade.

On the third shoulder the quiet flooded in. On all sides there was the absence of so many sounds of drops and gusts and cracks and holes. There was only perfectly tensioned spokes pulling on round rims pulling in pumped tires rolling over rough ground. There was one sound. It was the bike. 

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

red.



my favorite color is red.

the semi-sour smell of black leather seats preempted our stifled exit from the volvo that afternoon. i must have gotten out of the back seat on the righthand side, edging my faded nikes between the crackling silver panels of the car, and the chafed latticework of the fence.

a silent sunlight roared through the slats.

and everything was sticky, and gold.

i was the last one through the gate, carrying something plastic and annoying against my skin. i started toward the back door, always eager to rush past the concrete pad i had watched my father pour to serve as a storage area for now-greying trash cans wilting in the sun. and maybe someone said, 'shhhh!', or maybe i stopped hearing, but in a moment, everything went quiet, and i looked up.

between my dad peering over the chipped sill of the back porch window and the shadow in which i stood, there, shiny and proud in all its bmx, kickstand, butterfly tread glory, was my first bike.

and it was red.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

pull away.



some time around this time, 16 years ago, my grandfather died in his sleep.

he had had a long bout with diabetes, and cancer, and cancer again, and then a heart attack. my dad was there. they had moved my grandfather's bed to the living room on the ground floor, had waited on him and laughed with him and tried to resuscitate him when he stopped breathing, but he had stopped breathing, and they remembered that he wanted it that way, when it was time.

i remember coming back to school after time down south for the funeral. it was cold and it was march and i was generally in a daze. i hugged my buddy zack in the hall, no words spoken, because his grandfather had died a few months earlier. and probably none of us got it. but then i got it. and then i pulled away, he looked at me funny, and i realized not everyone has the grandfather that i just lost.

on a very cold night a couple months earlier, i was on an accidental date with a beautiful girl with brown eyes and a quick smile. we had gone to look at stars. i had brought a sleeping bag. there were no plans to do any kissing. it was in my dumber days when i thought i could get away without euphemism, get out and look at stars on a freezing cold night on a lookout near a highway in a blue ford sedan. apparently not. i got home that night and was in enormous trouble for having completely forgotten to pick up my brother and my dad's sound equipment from my brother's elementary school dance. i went to bed in massive trouble with my dad, a disappointment to my brother, and completely confused by this beautiful girl who had just spent the last couple of hours kissing her way into my heart.

in the middle of the night, my dad got a call from his dad. it was time for my grandfather to die. my dad had to leave now.

my dad had to leave in the car i had just borrowed to go on a date with a girl who didn't know or love me while i forgot to take care of my little brother and, instead, drove the girl home to leave the gas tank at less than a quarter. in the middle of the night, when your father calls to tell you that he has decided to die and he wants you to be with him while he confronts this, there are no gas stations open between your oldest son's stupidity and the part of the country where things are open past 6pm.

somehow, my dad made it to a gas station.

this is all very important because somewhere in there there is a story about the way things seem to go, and how i will always manage to fuck it all up because i am smitten with some girl who doesn't even know me and won't love me back. there will always be a story about how everything means so much more to me than to anyone else and on this interface with the world, there is no telling how many other stories i've missed or gotten wrong. there are details, devils and otherwise, and i'm missing them because i think no one 'gets' what it's like to be me, with my heart, in the face of all of them. how gross.

i was walking toward a ridable street the other day after having spent some time in line at the flower shop with every other man hoping to flower up his own bitter truth on one cold day in february. i go to this flower shop regularly. i never spend this much money in one shot, on one bouquet. i didn't think twice. i found the red roses, strategically priced at a premium above all other roses, and any flower in the shop the day before, and i got in line, and i complimented other men on their choice of arrangement. i paid for my bouquet, left, unlocked my bike, and started home.

on the sidewalk, a lady with golden hair glanced at my bouquet and, with an under-the-breath scoff and condescending smile, marched on while starting a new statement of complaint, 'this cracks me up…' i could just imagine the rest of her sermon. something about men and convention and one day a year that they should, commercially- and societally- and maybe even sexually-driven, 'be nice' to their (normalized, hetero-) lady, buy her flowers, and measure up to some kind of proper. (i had just left the store where a rough-looking local had tried to glean the 'meaning' of blue roses from the mandarin-speaking proprietor of the shop. she had politely asked him to ask someone else. he was demanding. they're flowers, fucknut, assign the meaning yourself and pay the cash and get on with it.) or maybe all these guys carrying bouquets cracked her up because no one even likes roses. or maybe because it brought us all together, this brother/partnerhood of folks, from all walks/locomotions of life, in our quest to be a good person to our significant person. my grandmother starts calling out people's birthdays as 'significant birthday' when they get to be too old to be happy ___th. maybe i'm too old to buy flowers on vday.

and then i got home and put the bouquet in water and got the girls and some groceries and set to work making an awesome tasty dinner. i wasn't expecting romance. i wasn't expecting sex or love or whatever else is supposed to happen on vday with a dozen long stem roses on the table. i was just expecting to not be in trouble for not meeting some unwritten and unspoken expectations. i was expecting to feed happy children and send them to bed with dreams of being winter olympians. i was expecting to be able to relax. and i guess i did.

when zack pulled out of my hug and when that blonde lady scoffed at my bouquet i figured it was all just the same old story of me: no one gets it. and that's fine and that's good and there's a lot of safety in that, but somewhere, some time, this solo effort will end. will there ever be enough gas or flowers to get us through?

Friday, February 7, 2014

the very sunlight that washes over everything in that impossibly-golden hue, the glow that spills in and sets alight anything that might possibly even be thinking about reflecting, the stuff that pours through window panes and hair against the wind, even this just feels like guilt when someone has cancer.

i stood in someone's shower, memorizing the droplets before they left my skin, each hitting the mat to trickle into the deep unknown, and i thought about what i had just done. it wasn't anything major; an easy pace, a long run, some time spent with the woman who fell in love with me a few lifetimes ago, and every step was away from, and then back to, someone with cancer.

the other night at running practice, the mailman and i churned around rykert crescent, trying to keep our double loops under four minutes, egging each other on and driving the pace to spit and cough through our ninety-second recovery. on the fourth double loop set of six, i started up the straight and thought about someone with cancer. i thought about how he might not ever be able to run. i thought about his granddaughters who love to run. i ran faster. i used to think i could run myself away from any kind of heredity. i thought i could run myself away from the diabetes that killed my grandfather. i thought i could run myself away from the heart disease that has taken all but one bitter sibling of my stoic grandmother. i thought i could run myself out of a hangover that is nothing compared to the alcoholic stain in both blood lines. if only i could run the cancer out of everyone.

an important notion in endurance sports is the arrogance of capability. this is important because we're capable of doing what most others are not. we identify ourselves by determining what we are not. and yet, confronted with the most basic human truth, that we are mortal, there is no capability to overcome or run beyond or just push through. cancer wins, and far too often. 


i reached toward my face to brush off a maddening drip. in the fury of movement dexterity became paw. i could only be described as animal.

the major evolution for people and prey was the separation between breathing and eating. all of a sudden, we could run. i ponder this to avoid choking on oversized bites of energy bar, chunks between chattering teeth, wrapper clamped between handlebar and wet, numb fingers. my hands look like those of a corpse, bloodlet and clean. my jaw grinds food. i go.

snippets.



in order to tell truths about things, especially ourselves, it is often easiest and least disturbing if we dress them up in blatant, shocking horrors, something better buried than whispered or wept over.

but if you've never pulled a child from rubble or watched bullets push life out of your best friend's chest, you might get hung up on those truths, whoever's they are, and skip over the most important part being told.

we lie fantastically so you don't hear what we whisper in our sleep.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

save.



it's going to be a tough new year.

a long time ago, i came to some ill-informed decision that spending, money or other perceived-to-be-valuable-to-someone-(likely)-else things, was bad. things of value are for saving. (in writing this, i am coming to the drastic conclusion that i was misperceiving what things were valuable, and to whom, but that's a whole other story…) so i carefully and haphazardly and completely unintentionally built up an odd list of things that should be saved. a random sample might have included:


  • powerbars and clif bars - for times when the ride or backpacking trip was so epic that such an expensive bit of 'nutrition' should actually be employed
  • carabiners - just in case
  • first kisses - for the right time and place and lighting and face and..trembling
  • dollars - for new gear or bike parts or things that kept me fascinated and motivated through the earning of the dollars
  • virginity - hm…
  • drawings, every single damn one - to show at my retrospective when i eventually became a famous artist
  • love letters - they meant a lot, and it's not often things that mean a lot are given to people who need them
  • frames on rolls of 36 exp. slide film - that stuff wasn't cheap
  • sheets of pearl finish ilford photo paper - also not cheap, let alone readily available for purchase in the ottawa valley
  • batteries in mini mag lites and portable cassette players - hm.
  • inner tubes - somehow i rode patched tubes for the entirety of my riding days until i made it through my third year of university
  • my dad's clothes - he's still around, and we still talk, but those threads meant a lot to me, frayed and faded and perfectly ill-fitting on me.


eventually, things got a little more figured out. i stayed sentimental and tried to adhere to a misinformed and misformed notion of my 'moral self'. i tried very hard to be a stand-up guy. i tried to see things through. i ended up doing a lot of things i didn't want to do at all. and i didn't do even more things that i was really, really dying to do.

she was not taller than average, but she held a poise and grace about her that belied some kind of regality. i thought her egyptian, a ruler, she was dark of hair and looked like someone whom should be obeyed, somewhere, somehow. i had asked her of her ethnic background, as my co-actor and i had been discussing her and how pretty she was. in the honest quest for the information, i completely missed the part where she assumed it was another pick-up line and rolled her eyes accordingly. dumb and unaware and just happy to be talking to two pretty girls at all, let alone at once, i smiled and waited for her answer: 'brazilian and lebanese'. i must have choked. there was goodness happening there. later on, her doctor would ask her why she didn't need a prescription. she didn't want to get into a long explanation regarding my misguided and grossly inflated sense of 'morals', so she responded that she just didn't. he persisted. he asked if she had a boyfriend. yes. didn't they have sex. no. why not. i don't know. does the boyfriend have something wrong with him. no…

yes.

lots of things wrong with him then and now, but one thing that has not changed is the sentimental self. one christmas i was dedicated to listing the things that made christmas christmas, and then i carried them out, with fervour, making sure that my family had christmas whether it was in a traditional way or not, whether my lady could leave the couch or not, whether i worried about the unborn baby we may never have or not, whether i was man enough to make it all happen or not. i needed christmas that year. i needed to get out my nostalgic and sentimental self and make some occasion, on my terms, with agency, on purpose. so many occasions in my life have just happened, more accidentally than epically, and more occasions must be made, and i have to see them coming first, so that i can get them right when they finally arrive, so that i can stop screwing it all up.

so this year, this new year, the first thing i did was get up before 8, put on a ton of clothes, and meet my buddy for a trail run in the frigid snow of the east don. we ran hard up and fast down. we cut new lines and i did my best not to bail while following his flying cleats over ice and snow and fallen brush everywhere. we got back to the parking lot, chests heaving and the sun peaking out for the first time in a long time, and i knew we had done something right. maybe that's where the occasion starts, without a ceremony, just doing the right thing at the right time, with everything we've got.

we are just five days into this brand new year, and there's someone else's baby that cries me awake every night, and my legs are just starting to come around to running and riding again, and there's a gleaming new torture machine in the living room, all set up and waiting, and i've already been through a whole other roller coaster of ceremony and saving. turns out, i'm no good at saving. so i was about two steps away from buying that full carbon TT bike in the west end yesterday after some craigslist flake failed to sell me a commuter mountain bike. i had shaken the sales guy's hand and given him my name, sized up the frameset, inquired about the specifics of warranty and service options, fondled the carbon a bit. i had made up my mind. only a phone call and a fitting away, that TT bike was mine. then i thought about it. i always overthink things, but i especially overthink the spending of money, especially when it's a big ticket purchase, especially when it's a purchase just for me. this time last year, i bought a wicked new camera body that i've only just now paid off. it was half as much as this bike, and it documented the adventures of my family all year, and will continue to allow me to make that special christmas calendar for others, and could make some other money if i ever got around to selling my portfolio better. that TT bike? that won't make me crap. it will really just be a series of holes in my savings, upgrading wheels, paying race fees, the list goes on. and it would only be for me. and the truth of it all: i don't really deserve it. i haven't put thousands of kilometers on the bike i already have. i haven't put thousands of hours on the trainer. i haven't gotten my big girl a bike that actually fits her. i haven't paid the goddam hydro bill. i've got dreams to pay for, and miles to go before i sleep.

there will always be another killer deal. (although, if anyone knows of an $80 mission workshop rambler bag in toronto that i sold two summers ago for quick cash, please send it my way…) but right now is the time to buckle down, to have something to show for myself, to put the time in, to earn things. it's going to be a long, hard year, but i'm pretty sure that's all i'm built for anyway. bring it.