it's not you, it's me, edmonton.

my sense of timing is awful. yesterday the presentation flew by. right now i'm writing this because i'm avoiding confronting writing a late and major paper. i started elementary school a year later than most students. i took a year off university. and now i'm taking a year longer than the usual amount of four years. i've passed by collisions that must have happened only seconds ahead of me.

so here's my belated letter to edmonton. coming a little too late maybe. i should have done this ages ago.

it's not you, it's me, edmonton. it's time we both came to terms with the way this relationship is going. we've just become comfortable with each other. you're not afraid to fart around me and i stopped wearing make up around you. we've let each other go. you're comfortable. i'm comfortable. we no longer challenge each other. 

i know all your secrets and dirty bits, all your shames and loves. i know all about that weird tick you get during the spring when suddenly a lot of snow falls. some of your lovable flaws have grown on me, others have started to infuriate me. for example, can we please stop talking about the weather? i know, i know, it's your thing. but spare at least this one person from the relentless and FASCINATING observations that yes, it's warms, and yes, it's cold, and yes, that sure was one heck of a downpour. but i do still love your summer nighttime blush when you show your true colors and the way you don't judge me when i do stupid things, like get trashed and sleep around. but that's part of that "comfortable" thing i mentioned before. sometimes i want you to question me and hold me responsible.

sometimes, when i get away from you and i'm alone or with some other city, i wonder if maybe i just like these things about you because i've gotten used to them and it's nice to have someplace to return to. i sometimes really crave the risk of that chicago guy, or the unabashed flirting of that rome guy, or that exotic phnom penh guy. i know, it must make you jealous to hear this and i bet you wonder why i would bother with some of them. but i'm still young. and excited. but in some ways i think i'm more mature than you.

i don't want us to part on bad terms but these are my honest thoughts (i figured you would ask). you're still such a boy. you have potential and a bright future and i love your energy but i need someone who's a little more mature if i'm going to get into a serious relationship.

we've had a lot of fun and i'll never forget the good times we had. even the bad ones. and especially the ones we thought were bad until we realized they were the best.

but i have to move on because i've changed. or maybe i stayed the same. i'm not sure, but i know it's time.

i'm going to move in with my ex-boyfriend for a bit until i decide what to do next and where i should establish myself. don't worry, we're not resuming our relationship. his sandy hair and blue eyes are not enough to woo me back, he was pretty violent and unpredictable. don't get jealous. it's only for a bit and only for convenience. i know you'll worry and i know you'll miss me. we'll stay in touch because, well, my parents really like you and so do my friends (even though i know you think they say mean things behind your back). maybe we'll even get back together but i don't want to give you false hope or lead you on anymore.

i really wish you all the best, edmonton. 

everything is different but nothing has changed

much like the eerie feeling of coming back into your home after a long trip everything looks different. once, coming back in the middle of the night after two weeks when i was not expected, i walked into my room and made a mental note to tell my mom not to clean it again. but my room was untouched. the lines in the hardwood seemed exaggerated and every object looked like it was oriented by a right angle. right angles are civilized human inventions.

i guess it's the things you think you know best that reveal themselves as the least recognized.

the five elements that i have recognized even though i was already aware of them, without wanting to sound too kitschy, are the four uncivilized elements: water, fire, earth, and air. stick around til the end to see if i make any fifth element allusions by saying the fifth is love.

water. edmonton's water. we have so much water. the river, the snow, the ice, the moody rains, the many aquifers deep underground the periphery of the city.

earth. sand and clay and gravel that we'll never be rid of no matter how much we clean and brush and sweep.

fire. the sun, whose depressions haunts our half-years.

and the air. the big sky. the open sky. the pregnant sky. the blue, the grey, the white, the pink, the orange sky. sky sky sky sky sky. our magpie dominated sky, relics of our dinosaur past. our menopausal sky. the sky whose small changes we watch like the attentive, slightly neurotic, husband of a critical yet silent wife.

this is clearly different from the elements we've been discussing in terms of mythic power. the power of these objects to convey and remind us of our experience is what makes them important, but they're only emblems, totems, rooted in their physicality. all of it is passing and transient and no object travels with you once you die. or, more specifically, we're transient. much more so than the books i scar with barcodes at work. 1875. 1852. 1829 was the oldest so far.

memory. is the fifth element. ok, so it's close to love. love is rooted in memory. i know, i know, this is about as dangerously cheesy as cheetos, but run with it for a second.

memory is important to every city. why do rome and paris have to have the monopoly on this idea? without our memory, without our experiences, the city would be empty concrete and plywood shells without the memories we've given them. why do so many people come back? and why do so many find it hard to leave? because the memories we have of edmonton are personal. they haven't had time to become globally collective. we have a vested interest in the privacy of these memories. they're not about revolutions or bloodbaths or kings or celebrities, they're about the time my friend fell and dragged her boyfriend down who in turn brought down someone else with him on the ice in front of the garneau pub. they're about the many times me and my best friend drove around in the "love wagon" blasting our friend's recording of disturbed gibberish and pretend picking up pedestrians. they're about the time i got high sitting in a car seat on top of a mud hill with something like a boyfriend. watching the silent thunder of an approaching storm. they're about the time we got so angry about the rain on the ferris wheel at k-days that we reached a moment of exhilaration, said "fuck this!", and started jumping in the puddles once we got off--marking one of our fondest memories. one carny shouted at us, with a smile, "ARE YOU CRAZY?!" "YES!" we shouted back. they're about the first snow fall that you watch under the morbid glow of the orange lights.

trevor anderson said that he and his friend promised to never show edmonton in the summer. even if he did, no one would ever believe him. our summers, our memories, our loves, they're too personal for the rest of the world to fully understand. we share chuckles and glances, a secret code, that the world outside our winter gates won't fully comprehend.

what else is there to say about edmonton? it's already been said by another edmontonian. 

potty mouth

i have to apologize for cussing, cursing, swearing (whatever your preference is) in class and on here. i'm not quite so boorish, i think, or angry. maybe i'm angry.

however, i think it's because i feel comfortable in this class that my crass street talk comes out. "did she just say 'crass street talk'?" yes, she did.

my most humble and sincere apologies.

the tourist

my best friend is 99.99% sure she is moving to new york in a couple of months. the king of cities. the quintessential city. the city we all imagine when we think anything is city-like.

sometimes i think the way she walks through the city is different than the way i walk through the city. we don't see each other very often but when we do i feel like i step out of the act i put on with almost everyone else i know (with the exception of a handful of high school friends). her day looks nothing like my day. on our daily commutes we may cross the same roads, even visit the same locations, board the same train or bus, sit in the same seat, and never know it. her tour of the city is patterned, so is mine. if we were to exchange, we would be tourists.

when i told my sister about my friend moving away she said, "good. edmonton's too small for them." i felt about the same. as all of my friends slowly become adults (because i don't know what that is still) and move away (go home, explore, or visit) i realize that we all walk through the city differently because we're all tourists. perhaps it is idyllic, but they have these beautiful dreams with big settings. whether we achieve them or not edmonton IS too small for us.

edmonton is the cafe at the airport. it's a waiting city for those who dream big. can edmonton be personified with something more iconic or human? sure. but i think personifying edmonton as the 20-something dreamer seems just about right. for a long wait you find a table or a seat that is comfortable. you accessorize it with things that mean something to you, like the familiar worn-in coat you put over your chair. you eventually start to talk to people who are in the same position as you, waiting for their next flight. you start to enjoy their company and really start to listen to them. soon, too soon, your flight is called. though you've come to enjoy your stay more than you thought you would and you look back at the people you shared it with, promising to stay in touch, you board the plane with the returning excitement of your final destination.

sometime in the future as you enter the corporate cafe on the block of your new home city, a faint sensation of nostalgia creeps over you. you vaguely remember the people you spent your waiting time with and realize, with satisfaction, that you made the right choice. those people were bound by their own tours, not the cities or destinations to which their path brought them. intersecting settings are coincidental and you can try a bit to alter these paths but you cannot alter the path life's tourists are fastened to.

OR, as radiohead would say:
sometimes i get overcharged
that's when you see sparks
you ask me where the hell i'm going
at a thousand feet per second
hey man, slow down, slow down
idiot, slow down, slow down

nature?! in the city?! whaaaaaaaaaat?!

this city's nature is huge and overwhelming. over the winter it blankets everything and over the summer it opens up the sky to reveal blues and pinks and peach and purple. this city is bipolar. man, it's biwinning. this is where the rabbits come in.

i have a special place in my heart for rabbits. i hear rabbit stew is delicious. 

don't worry. jokes.

i do honestly love rabbits. they're so plentiful and resilient. we feed one (them?) during the winter. there is a window underneath the highly raised deck. my mom plucks out the window net and sometimes leaves cabbage or old hard bread outside the window (rabbits love bread). s/he(s) (because we don't know if there's several or just the one) munches away while we watch underneath the relatively snowless ground. sometimes we leave peanuts on the fence between us and the neighbors for the local squirrels. my dad's favorite birds are sparrows so he stuck a huge four by four in the ground and we put up two birdhouses, more to come. we're frequented by sparrows year round, finches in the summer, and the occasional erratic jumping of the warbler. throughout the summer we are ever vigilant for humming birds that are attracted to my mom's virus-like plants that don't stop growing and don't die until she believes it's time. then they wilt as if by command. in the fall i will hear a coyote start howling until he's joined in with the rest of his pack. or are they foxes? or are they wolves? we watch for tornadoes in the heart of summer and measure the height of the sun based on the height of the trees around the neighborhood. on calm still days i sometimes stare up at the cerulean sky and wonder if the things i see are just eye wiggles.

there's something kind of magical about the lives that make up what you think is a quiet suburban neighborhood. 

and the rabbits. well. who hasn't slowed down to let a rabbit cross the road with the eerie, perhaps even uncanny, attitude of a human pedestrian. only to find out that it's a garbage bag. 

coffee talk simulation

it's been a while since i've spent some time with my sis. we often get coffee together (or used to until school  started this year) and as the caffeine enters the blood stream we become philosophers and poets and rebels bouncing ideas off of each other about art, about ideas, about life, about the future. then we go home and continue doing the things we said we had to change to be more complete individuals. this city just isn't good enough for us to be amazing.

last night i called home so someone would pick me up from the bus station. she told me she was going shopping and if i wanted to come. hungry and tired and wired, of course i said yes because we would have to have coffee. i didn't know how long we'd be but who cared, i was down for whatever.

she's going to buenos aries tomorrow where fruit is just ripening in the fall. am i jealous? certainly. but i realized as we were talking about living elsewhere (common topic) and travelling that we're tethered here. we're tethered because we haven't fully accepted edmonton. like after any tragedy where you have to come to peace with the situation to be able to move on. regarded as a necessary difficult time that developed you as a person.

ok.

done.

because of this class i've started to like edmonton. the winter especially. why fight against something which is fact, why endlessly struggle, why not adapt? "be like the water," says bruce lee. frozen water maybe. be like the snow. fall gently on the whitest of the highest of the city's towers. enter the crevices of the alleys, each back lawn, and graze the balconies of apartments. be carried along the lrt and bus routes by the exchange of students and businessmen. then melt into rivulets, into streams, into the rapids gushing into the river. then pelt the city with spasms of rain and hail in the summer. in the fall, cry. "autumn's here / it's time to cry now" sings hawksley workman.

i think i have learned how to walk and see a city. starting in edmonton of course. my perspective is changing and as i've still decided to go elsewhere after graduating i think that i will only be ready to leave if i feel like i've understood edmonton and seen it from its many monochromatic grey angles.

*

pretty hard (or easier?) to continue writing warm fuzzy things about edmonton after watching an hour of reports about the earthquake and tsunami in japan. edmonton, rejoice, for you are situated on a 668m elevated plateau!

openlessness

i kind of see living in edmonton as a commuter sleeping on the bus. i thought about this while crossing the river on my daily commute to the university. the girl sitting next to me was lulling in and out of sleep and i was convinced i would have to wake her up by the time we got to campus. however, she had raised her head before we approached with enough time to put on her gloves, hood, and mentally prepare for the cold.

we edmontonians constantly hope to find something uniquely characteristic about the city--something to be proud of other than our festivals and secret hot summers. we travel through the city attempting to slip into a blissfully complete experience of being within the city like within a dream. we want to have a complete story, a certain narrative without any confusion. we are so afraid, so very afraid, of recognizing the city as it is, accepting it as imperfect, and accepting our own confusion about it. perhaps it is that confusion we should embrace. maybe our inability to define it characterizes edmonton. we don't fully engage with the city because we can keep it at a distance in hopes of fixing it or leaving it. embracing it would mean we would be giving into it as it is. (maybe it's more of a broken and imperfect marriage rather than a bus drive.)

just the way the sleepy commuter never truly falls asleep, snoozing with some part of them resisting the dream, we never embrace edmonton because we are not strong enough to be vulnerable to the sentimentality of imperfection. our search to define it is fruitless, it just is.

*

a bit of a different vibe than usual. i also wanted to discuss how all those stories about edmonton seem like they have something about the dead, ghosts, haunts, etc. i am one of those superstitious atheistic weirdos who thinks you can feel ghosts of the dead in cities the same way you breathe polluted air. i noticed this in dieppe, france and vukovar, croatia. i visited these cities with very little background knowledge about them and before my parents told me about their histories i noticed some kind of hesitation, timelessness, paranoia in the cities. physical memories. invisible landmarks. a jelly-like silence--a silence so thick you can feel it. i attribute this to the restless dead which will eventually dissolve with people's forgotten memories. sure there are memorials or shelled out buildings but it radiates out so that you feel it before you see it. maybe off-topic though?