A half liter a day keeps the witches at bay.

Goodness me Beth, my apartment smells like fresh cut lilies. Maybe that is because there are fresh cut lilies sitting on my round coffee table.

Rabbi and I just arrived home to our separate abodes after a night spent drinking half liters in a dark cafe. We sat inappropriately and I complained about the music three times. The man with the shaved head working in the cardigan from the Bay tried to please us by changing the music three times from hip hop to elevator to euro groove and back to elevator and eventually I threw up my hands in despair and stopped complaining. Beth I check your post everyday and everyday I write you another letter. There are many letters, clippings, books, news items, feathers, leaves, photos, craft projects and magazine rippings gathering dust in the corners of my home. It is safe to say that you should be able to expect something in the next few days. I hate deadlines, but for you I am willing to set some boundaries for myself. Mail Beth's jazz, Madge. Just mail it. Just mail it, already. Thank you for your drawing. I am going to post it because I love it and because you nailed it. Lilies in the air, floating in front of my nose, hints of my favorite smell on my wine lips. Thank you is not enough, again.

Beth drew the picture at the very bottom of all this babble. I hope it makes her blush. Someone I do not like anymore took the photograph it is based upon, but her rendition made me fall in love with the image again. Thank you is not enough Beth. How do you know how to give of yourself so well? So beautifully? Giving and timing are your gifts. Your forte.

I need to learn giving and timing this year.

One year ago today I was at Anne Frank's house dragging my fingers along her wallpaper just trying to remember everything. Trying to soak in every floorboard and every magazine clipping she taped to the wall in loving desperation and in boredom. I was in Amsterdam wearing a stupid fur hat and a red jacket with a side braid, walking and touching the walls of Anne Frank's broom closet of a bedroom. I walked a lot. Rebecca to my right, Kit to my left, we were always walking. I ate a lot of cheese, drank one hundred espresso, read foreign magazines, smoked cigarettes beside canals, sat on benches for three hours and watched the boats go lazily past, drank two euro bottles of wine straight from brown paper bags and never felt better. I was snapping children in bus shelters with the whitest of white hair, singing without a parental guide in sight. I was at the Stay Okay hostel with the orange furniture that Erin would have loved if she would have seen it and was leaning my arms on the table with the candles and the mismatched cafe chairs and making eye contact with these two stand-in sisters at night.

So many times a day I go back to that cafe in my head, and daydream about the feel, the smell, the music playing, the handsome men pouring espresso with flicks of the wrist flashing, euros dropping into the tin change basins (our hands never touching European hands like they did and do in Canada). I almost forgot about that exchange (or lack thereof) until today when I caught myself daydreaming about Amsterdam while doling some lady's change directly into her palm. What a luxury that is as a shopper in Canada: coin exchange from palm to palm. Don't take it for granted. Doorknobs were a foot higher than we were accustomed to, not to mention the sparing eye contact and the men! The men were different too. It was easy to stand in a room and choose someone to fall in love with. They were all lovable and strange and new.

Slouching low, low, low in the red booth with Rebecca made me want to go back, but also made me want to move forward. Last year at this time I had no idea I would be where I am today. Art shows and new friends, crumpled letters being exchanged between stranger's hands in a dark hall, teacups arriving in the mail, and one very broken heart were all the things forcing me to fall in love with all the unknown parts that had been inside of me all along: making art, bantering with influential people, learning to build a wheel, tuning my own bicycle because I had no other options, meeting artists, doing laps in white-washed studios with my mouth agape in bewilderment, befriending authors, attending bourgeois book signings with my best friend, making a proper espresso, quitting a job I hate, singing in front of people, karaoking, printing photos with a new friend, wanting to go to art school for real, jamming in a great living room, playing soccer (even if it was a one time deal), learning to love my body, relaxing, speeding up, slowing down, appreciating nakedness, appreciating clothing, falling in love, falling out of love, traveling twice, hitting rock bottom on a 10 mile run in the Alps, taking a risk and applying for something I knew I would love, jumping into printmaking (blindly), cooking for bigger groups of people, making music, prioritizing, saying goodbye to best friends, maturing, blossoming.

All of these are examples of lessons learned, or lessons in the making. What a year it has been. I finally feel I am coming into my own and God only knows where I will be one year from today. All I know is thanksgiving. Today I am pleased, tomorrow I think I will be as well. Next year, who knows.