Thank YOU Anderson

"The world has many edges,
and all of us dangle from them by a very delicate thread.
The key is not to let go"

once again

So I got home this morning. Back in Calgary. Snow, and lots of it. I walked around the house for awhile commenting on the new lamp my mom bought or the new mirror or whatever else was different. My dad had to go back to work. I sat down on the couch in the family room and stared out the window, watching the snow fall in the backyard. The weird thing about being away at school for most of the year is your clock gets all out of joint. You leave in august and it's hot, come back in December and there's a foot of snow. The leaves are gone and it doesn't look the same. What happened in between? Everything, I think. Absolutely everything.
The door closed behind my dad. With that, I just started to sob. It was the weirdest thing, cause I was glad to be back, with no tests or anything to worry about. But I wasn't relaxed. So I walked around the house and made my way to my room, still crying, for God knows what reason. My mom had made some piles for me like she always does when I'm away. These piles were of course substantially larger than I've had before since I'd been gone for 2 months.
I finally got my act together and stopped crying. It was the weirdest thing though, cause it felt like someone had died or something, as crazy as that sounds. It felt as if something was missing. Maybe the thing is that I just missed this place, a lot more than I thought I did. So I'm back once again. And it's a good thing.

The city

The downtown campus of University of Toronto is called St. George. It's broken into seven colleges -and the tens of thousands of students that attend U of T St. George have memberships with one of these colleges whether they live in residence or not. I'm at University College, which is the founding college of U of T, back in 1850's. Victoria College is another one, with the same old architecture that UC, Trinity, and St. Michael's share. I walk through Queen's Park every Monday and Tuesday for my HIS103 class, which is held in a theatre in the Vic College complex. At the very centre of this area is a huge old building known as Old Vic -it's kind of like a mini castle (which is actually common among buildings at U of T as I have gathered). On the south facing entrance of the building, right across the archway of the door, carved into the stone is the saying, "The truth shall set you free."
It's always seemed kind of poignant to me, and I think it always will. Sure it's just a saying, etched into some old rock on an old building covered in vines and the shadow of a late class, but it's one of those great things that just stop and make you think. I'm always running up those stairs to get to history in a timely fashion, we're all flying through our days lately. So I'm stopping now (briefly as I still have more studying to do) and I'm thinking.
It's been three and a half months. And somehow, it feel likes it was yesterday that I got here. I remember walking into this room, my dorm room, for the first time. I sat down on the bed and wondered what it would feel like after I'd lived in it for awhile. Would it start to feel comfortable? Would it have any semblance of home? And I have found just that; that in a city that I've been absent from for almost 8 years, without my family and my friends and my creature comforts of Calgary, I've been able to make a home for myself here, once again.
When Scaachi and I talk about going back to Calgary, she is usually quick to remind me that "we are going BACK to Calgary, we are not going HOME." She has chosen to believe this, as is her prerogative and I fully understand. But I'm not ready to shun Calgary my books just yet. I HAD to make it my home, and I have a damn good one there. Things change, people change, places change, and homes change. But no one ever said you could only have one.
The most bizarre thing about going back to Calgary in less than 35 hours is the feeling of how time has flown here. Regardless, it's been an amazing three months. I'm glad I've been here, with the distance, the new experiences, the people; the city.

"Time changes everything, except something within us that is always surprised by change"
-Thomas Hardy

Ummera, ummera-sha

Plans. I always have plans. I've had plans for university since the end of the ninth grade. I knew what I wanted to take and I knew where I wanted to go. I knew what job I wanted and when asked, where do you see yourself in ten years, I had an answer. I had an answer. It's just amazing how three months can change your plans. And not necessarily with what career I want to have, but I've been exposed to a lot more things here in Toronto than I ever was in Calgary, a lot more options and opinions and perspectives and choices. So this whole thing about having my plan thrown for a crook in the road, that's okay. Plan A is hardly ever a guarantee, and sometimes we have to move onto Plan B, or maybe even C.
The important is to not get wound up I think in the fact that plans change. I learned awhile ago that things never work out they way you think they will. Life is just not that predictable, not that perfect. When are plans go awry, we freak out. Because now, there is no more flat set of rules to follow. I think it takes a lot to stand back and look at your life and say, "yah, I need to make a change." Even if that change never seemed plausible a month ago, or a year ago. Even if that change was never in the plans. That can be hard. But what's even more hard I think, would be looking back on your life years from now and agonizing over the choices you didn't make and changes you were to afraid to make. What I believe it all comes down to is this: How badly do you want it? How important is it? To be successful in my life I need more motivation than a hefty salary and great dental benefits. I need happiness and satisfaction. I need to do the right thing. I need to do something. I think that's scary, because there's a lot weighing on that. But it's times like these we all need to be brave and keep your head up. Because being swept along is NOT enough, and your choices reflect so much.
So I'm going to make my changes and allow room for more. In the end though, I'm staying on course. I'm remembering why I'm here in the first place. To get somewhere I desperately want to be. How I get there will change over time and plans will change. I'll occasionally be hit with the unexpected. But sometimes the unexpected things in life are the most exhilarating, because they are the things you don't plan for, the things you don't see coming. So I'll just take what I know and go forward knowing I'm doing the best I can with what I've got.

Ummera, ummera-sha is a Rwandan saying meaning "Courage, courage my friend -find your courage and let it live"

Things my mother told me...that I never understood

My mom is the type to clip things out of magazines and newspapers that have a particular meaning or interest to her. I'm sure somewhere down the line this will escalate to cutting out Christmas recipes and the obituaries of people she went to the elementary with it. Essentially, this is where my grandmother is at these days. Man, that's something to look forward to. Anyways, she takes these things -usually excerpts from stories, poems, and pictures- and puts them on her bulletin board in the office of our house. This happens to be where our the computer is, and God knows I've spent ample amounts of time there just wasting my life away. I would always look at this one poem that she had cut out of her Vic College U of T alumni magazine. It could have been gibberish to me, because for some reason it just meant nothing. And I would read it over and over again and -nothing.
Fastforward a couple months and it's the first week of school here in Toronto. I'm lonely, homesick, sad, etc etc. My dad comes to visit because of a business meeting, and he gives me a card that my mom had wrote me. Inside, was this one poem that I could never understand. After he left, I sat on my bed and I read it. And all at once, it just made resounding, encompassing sense to me. It's was originally written in German, so the translation sounds a little odd, but I thought I'd throw it on here. And if it doesn't make sense, just give a few years or something...

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the patterns grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For the god
wants to know himself in you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

This was probably a bad idea

should we take bets on how irregular my postings will become?
OH BOY. This is going to be fun.