I can see a million tiny spots of beet juice dappling my tired face in the reflection of the mirror. I am sitting tall in an orange pulp splattered work shirt at my desk, balancing a bowl of instant noodles on a bare knee. Winter--along with all the mentalities that match the season--has settled in with a vengeance and thankfully, depression has not (save for those first three weeks where I barely left my apartment or had a decent meal). I have almost been a home a month and life is back on track. Thankfully, the Fresh birds have taken me back into the juicing coop and I am finally aboard the train out of poverty. Not working for ten weeks ALMOST killed me but in retrospect, it had to be this way. A lot of people would have killed to be in my European shoes-- even if I was dancing hand in hand with the devil of destitution for longer than necessary.
Not much has changed around town, save for a couple of new storefronts that have reared their ugly heads in the Village and the empty lot where my Little School used to lie back in the country. Come to think of it, I wish someone would have forewarned me that the petite school was set to be demolished; I would have liked to have one last look. (Or better yet, one last 13 year old summer evening spent with running around with Joeanne (Joel), Jenny, Kev and Patrick at dusk shooting barn swallows roosting in the Little School's ceiling with the aid of the BB guns slung around our backs). My childhood was a wild one, to say the least.
I am sorry all, I don't feel like writing anymore.
Here is what is different and what is not:
-Less than three months away and I forgot how to dance. On Boxing Day, I stood in the middle of the room like Helen Kellar: blind, deaf and mute to everything DANCE. I miss the natural ease of Thursday dance nights of yesteryears.
-I like to cook (still).
-Home IS where the heart is.
-Friendships can change overnight and it is okay to bow outgracefully and then get back in like a dirty shirt after a short hiatus.
-It is okay to have snobbishly high standards when it comes to men and coffee.
-If I was chosen for the television show Survivor (for some ungodly reason) and was guaranteed an electrical power source, I would choose to bring my record player and nothing less.
-Christmas was friendly on the Kroeker homestead, but I want to strangle innocent strangers every time Sarah McGlaughlan's "Wintersongs" CD comes on at work. Christmas is over, gems.
-The potential for love is on the rise; I have been channeling my inner Seventeen year old and faux European girl alias to the max and things are looking up.
-Last night in a room full of drunken underaged St. Mary's girls I remembered how to dance. God bless their wandering eyes filled with expectation. I am twenty one and already a Godfather of dance in these little babies eyes. Oh dear.
Fin. Out. Peace. Feliz. Gossip. Girl. Episode. Seven. To. Twelve. Book. Bed. Bath. Beyond.
Meg.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Fly Away Home; Anna Paquin style.
"I was born to lie here patiently, be dragged on by the black star; and you were told to blow majestically, and love until your hands bleed" -Page France, dream husband-to-be.
MEMO: The following scramble of words and idioms were throw together aggressively on the plane enroute to the motherland in a feverish attempt to race my brain while wielding a pen instead of the usual faster-than-the-thought-process European keyboard. Here it is, in translation: scrawly and undeniably wild with excitement for home and n open-armed mum.
The sky is in the eery inbetween stage of the light of day and the dark of night. I am feeling very reflective right now (I just dragged a hand across my T-zone/forhead and froze in horror at the sight of my grease caked fingers) especially since realizing the entire point to this said journey--NOT the destination(s)--that just presented itself when I looked out the two inch thick window in retrospect. While the time-change was only a mere seven hours, my brain is still flip-flopping desperately between the here and now and the thereafter that will materialize before my eyes in only six hours. All I asked to be greeted with at the airport was a frenzy of shrieking and flash photography. (Two words: She [mum] delivered).
Again, looking out the depressing emergency exit window (or lack thereof) the reminder that I am in charge of all of the lives in the entire back right hand side of the plane's belly should we crash (thanks to my seat beside the said door of doom and impending death) is overwhelmingly unavoidable. Flying is no small feat; talk about anxiety.
(Right now, in the comfort of my very home, I am sitting on an inherited ottoman in a tent dress drinking Grandma's cold beef borscht out of an old dill pickle jar in between spot checks from my Apple's screen and my giant lap journal and listening to Edith Piaf on vinyl. Suffice is to say, this is the exact definition of a Mennonite-carpenter-meets-Joyful-Notes-choirwhore-lovechild-who-escaped-the-clutches-of-the-town-post-graduation-but-still-craves-the-Grandmother-borscht-with-loyal-desperation. Awesome. You nailed the soup by the way Helen Helen Helen).
ANYWAY, back on the plane somewhere between Amsterdam and Minneapolis, the light is still trying desperately to become just that, light; and I am thinking about motives. It only dawned on me now, five minutes ago in this bum-numming seat; five hours ago in Amsterdam while starting at the boy (in the cream fedora with the broken feathers and the beard) and the potential father of my children; five days ago in the Roman bed with red cheeks staring at the single rose drying upside down above my head; five weeks ago in Berlin looking at my entire culture and self-defining character in the face on a plate of ham and potatoes; five months ago while still swallowing a relationship that was over before it began; I was SUPPOSED to do this. I was supposed to leap out of the proverbial box like a cake-covered cheerleader person, out of misery, out of the mundane and the predictable, out of a beehive network of friends accumulated over hundreds of lattes, bottles of wine, potlucks, dance floors and Scrabble boards. Away, away, away. I was supposed to go to Europe to be 'taken off guard'; to ride my own coattails instead of my big sister bird's for once; to become so vulnerable that the sight of a single pair of men's patent brogues could shatter my entire happy-to-be-single existence. I was supposed to come home with negative $21.98 dollars in my bank account up to my ears in overdrafts (and I did), the stories and endless rolls of processing-included pictures and sight of my COSTCO-sized muffin tops (thanks to daily over-eating in England, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium, France, ROME and Spain) weighing more in Golden Nostalgia than any sum of Manitoba Student Loan money could ever amount to.
I have not changed. I still have the same sneeze, the same lightening-paced gait, the same open-mouthed-squinted eye-skelletal shouldered laugh, the same gas (maybe even more), the same values and appreciation of family and heritage, and the same hair--just a foot and a half shorter; but my heart is different. I think the scariest thing of going home is facing the music of change among the people who you thought would be consistent until death do you part. C'est la vie; this is life.
Either way, there is no turning back now. Hello Christmas baking in the oven, Mariah Carey Merry Christmas dominating the airwaves of the country home, down-filled bedding sandwiches, a screaming mum, a silver fox Grandma, a lack of staple siblings, a plethora of staple friends, a patient second mom, an even more patient dad, an aunt who blows through more rolls of film than I do, a quiet uncle, another quiet honorary uncle, a beaming Grandpa, and the other uncle and aunt who would have stayed except that their babe 'halfer' shat his baby pants beyond repair on the airport slide. Damn.
Fly away home.
Best, all.
Frances, Her one-eyed Madgesty has returned at last.
"Thank you, thank you very much".
post script: You are all gems for reading this chaotic mess. I applaud you heartily for your continued effort and feedback. Pictures are 'acoming. In the meantime, go scope my gal Rabbi Boozedick69 (Rebecca Budyk aka 'Lil Audrey')'s blog for some digital picture delight... www.rags-and-feathers.blogspot.com (copy paste it, gems).
post post script: This photo was taken right, right now, this second. God bless tent dresses and winter for making it acceptable to "cover that shit up". Blessings to all, and to all a bon nuit.
MEMO: The following scramble of words and idioms were throw together aggressively on the plane enroute to the motherland in a feverish attempt to race my brain while wielding a pen instead of the usual faster-than-the-thought-process European keyboard. Here it is, in translation: scrawly and undeniably wild with excitement for home and n open-armed mum.
The sky is in the eery inbetween stage of the light of day and the dark of night. I am feeling very reflective right now (I just dragged a hand across my T-zone/forhead and froze in horror at the sight of my grease caked fingers) especially since realizing the entire point to this said journey--NOT the destination(s)--that just presented itself when I looked out the two inch thick window in retrospect. While the time-change was only a mere seven hours, my brain is still flip-flopping desperately between the here and now and the thereafter that will materialize before my eyes in only six hours. All I asked to be greeted with at the airport was a frenzy of shrieking and flash photography. (Two words: She [mum] delivered).
Again, looking out the depressing emergency exit window (or lack thereof) the reminder that I am in charge of all of the lives in the entire back right hand side of the plane's belly should we crash (thanks to my seat beside the said door of doom and impending death) is overwhelmingly unavoidable. Flying is no small feat; talk about anxiety.
(Right now, in the comfort of my very home, I am sitting on an inherited ottoman in a tent dress drinking Grandma's cold beef borscht out of an old dill pickle jar in between spot checks from my Apple's screen and my giant lap journal and listening to Edith Piaf on vinyl. Suffice is to say, this is the exact definition of a Mennonite-carpenter-meets-Joyful-Notes-choirwhore-lovechild-who-escaped-the-clutches-of-the-town-post-graduation-but-still-craves-the-Grandmother-borscht-with-loyal-desperation. Awesome. You nailed the soup by the way Helen Helen Helen).
ANYWAY, back on the plane somewhere between Amsterdam and Minneapolis, the light is still trying desperately to become just that, light; and I am thinking about motives. It only dawned on me now, five minutes ago in this bum-numming seat; five hours ago in Amsterdam while starting at the boy (in the cream fedora with the broken feathers and the beard) and the potential father of my children; five days ago in the Roman bed with red cheeks staring at the single rose drying upside down above my head; five weeks ago in Berlin looking at my entire culture and self-defining character in the face on a plate of ham and potatoes; five months ago while still swallowing a relationship that was over before it began; I was SUPPOSED to do this. I was supposed to leap out of the proverbial box like a cake-covered cheerleader person, out of misery, out of the mundane and the predictable, out of a beehive network of friends accumulated over hundreds of lattes, bottles of wine, potlucks, dance floors and Scrabble boards. Away, away, away. I was supposed to go to Europe to be 'taken off guard'; to ride my own coattails instead of my big sister bird's for once; to become so vulnerable that the sight of a single pair of men's patent brogues could shatter my entire happy-to-be-single existence. I was supposed to come home with negative $21.98 dollars in my bank account up to my ears in overdrafts (and I did), the stories and endless rolls of processing-included pictures and sight of my COSTCO-sized muffin tops (thanks to daily over-eating in England, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium, France, ROME and Spain) weighing more in Golden Nostalgia than any sum of Manitoba Student Loan money could ever amount to.
I have not changed. I still have the same sneeze, the same lightening-paced gait, the same open-mouthed-squinted eye-skelletal shouldered laugh, the same gas (maybe even more), the same values and appreciation of family and heritage, and the same hair--just a foot and a half shorter; but my heart is different. I think the scariest thing of going home is facing the music of change among the people who you thought would be consistent until death do you part. C'est la vie; this is life.
Either way, there is no turning back now. Hello Christmas baking in the oven, Mariah Carey Merry Christmas dominating the airwaves of the country home, down-filled bedding sandwiches, a screaming mum, a silver fox Grandma, a lack of staple siblings, a plethora of staple friends, a patient second mom, an even more patient dad, an aunt who blows through more rolls of film than I do, a quiet uncle, another quiet honorary uncle, a beaming Grandpa, and the other uncle and aunt who would have stayed except that their babe 'halfer' shat his baby pants beyond repair on the airport slide. Damn.
Fly away home.
Best, all.
Frances, Her one-eyed Madgesty has returned at last.
"Thank you, thank you very much".
post script: You are all gems for reading this chaotic mess. I applaud you heartily for your continued effort and feedback. Pictures are 'acoming. In the meantime, go scope my gal Rabbi Boozedick69 (Rebecca Budyk aka 'Lil Audrey')'s blog for some digital picture delight... www.rags-and-feathers.blogspot.com (copy paste it, gems).
post post script: This photo was taken right, right now, this second. God bless tent dresses and winter for making it acceptable to "cover that shit up". Blessings to all, and to all a bon nuit.
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