I don't want to write right now. Sorry.

I don’t feel like writing anything.

This isn’t writer’s block. It isn’t laziness. It isn’t even exhaustion. I just don’t feel like writing.

Ever get that? When you just don’t feel like doing the one thing that gives you the most satisfaction in life? If you said no, you’re lying. Or you’re young. Or you haven’t really found that one thing yet.

And it’s not that I don’t feel like doing anything thing, either. I feel like watching these candles flicker. I feel like eating six gigantic bags of Cheetos. I feel like watching the remaining two seasons of Breaking Bad I have yet to watch on Netflix, and then possibly starting another series  - Game of Thrones - that everyone tells me I’d better watch or my existence on this planet will be meaningless.

Not that it already isn’t. I mean, if I did feel meaningful, I’d write, right?

That’s the problem. I don’t feel like being meaningful. Or symbolic. Or narrative. Or even talking about what’s going on in my head or putting it out there or anything.

I’ve felt this way before. Where all I wanted to do was nothing. Not work. Not write. Not listen to music. Nothing. Just watch television and let it go in the eyes and out the ears. 

It was ten years ago. Right now. This moment was when it started.

No response to treatment. Waiting it out. Spending all day in a room playing cards and trying to eat and carry on like everything was normal. Just another day. Like it was just a broken leg or something.

Then they send you home because, well, you’re just sitting around, and really, to sit around all day and wait for something requires an incredible amount of strength. Try it. It does. And for that, you need rest.

But you can’t sleep. And you can’t do anything productive, constructive, creative, or, well, anything at all, really. Just watch television. Reading requires brain power. Gaming requires temperament that you don’t really want to have at that moment. So it’s couch, flake, TV.

You kinda fall asleep but you don’t really. And it was at that moment that, in some weird aligning of the  universe, the channel I had it on started to show The Crow.

You can call it a coincidence. You can call it clever programming. You can call it scheduled by the powers that be in the longform license. But for a channel to show The Crow on a cold, February night at 1AM is a little more than serendipity or a well-timed goth cliche. 

For you see, The Crow was the first movie I saw by myself just before I met my husband, which was about ten years prior to that February. There’s a voiceover at the beginning of The Crow that goes like this: 

People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.

Right after I watched that voiceover, the phone rang. They called us back to the hospital. So we could say goodbye.

So no, I don’t feel much like writing tonight. Because in about two hours from now, it will be exactly ten years since I answered the phone. In these past ten years, I haven't thought as much about that night and that phone call as I have this past week. But it's that time. It's past the break even point. The letting go is done and gone. But tonight, this night, and this day tomorrow, my heart will be a little belaboured. So it's just not a good time for me to write. 

The Silver Linings of Friday the 13th

I had originally started this as a Facebook status post, but then realised, it was way too long. So hello again, blog. 

In the every cloud has a silver lining file for Friday 13 February 2015:

1. My car, after starting on the first try this morning after being out in -30C weather overnight, did not start again on the second try. After walking to Canadian Tire in the cold (a 2km walk) to buy a portable charger, I brought it home only to find the charger was defective. Luckily my neighbour was coming home from his night shift and had jumper cables, and got my car started so I could drive back to Canadian Tire and exchange the $50 portable charger for $20 booster cables;

2. Because I now had a boost, I was able to drive over an hour to get to the cemetery to visit my late husband's grave and spend a bit of this weekend with him, which was the objective of the day. I left the car running, and didn't spend as long as I would have liked but long enough to not linger;

3. I had booked the car in for an oil change with the dealership because they had a wicked coupon offer. At the dealership, the car battery lost its charge (probably from the amount of times they need to turn a car over during an oil change), and boosted the car. Luckily my real mechanic is only a 3 min drive away from the dealership. I pull in the car, he says he can change the battery for me with only a $20 surcharge above the battery cost.

4. I have a 2007 Saturn Vue V6 with a Honda engine. Because of this, everything is not where nor what it should be when people look at my GM-built car. Because it's a Honda engine inside of a GM vehicle, the battery is a custom size, and he didn't have any in stock. He is making his dude rush a battery to him tomorrow, still charging me the same price, and coming in on the weekend (he doesn't normally work Saturdays, and it's a long weekend) to set me up.

5. My son's favourite teacher at daycare is leaving. Today was his last day. My son woke up crying this morning because he was so sad. Then I made him walk in the cold to daycare. I was expecting full meltdowns all day but instead, he was as good as gold, and the last thing he said to his teacher was "The daycare will never be the same without you."

6. After we get home, the garage door decides to malfunction. We unplugged the opener and have manually closed the door.

So, what are these silver linings, because really, this sounds like a miserable day. And yes, it was. Everything that could go wrong, did. I have no cash left until I get paid again. I didn’t eat breakfast until we took my son to dinner at McDonald’s.

Here are the silver linings:

•  My car stalled out at home and at the dealership. Had I just driven off this morning when it first started, it probably would have stalled at the cemetery, which, if you don’t know, is in the middle of nowhere in Vaughan and 90 minutes from anyone I know with booster cables;
• I got $30 back from Canadian Tire; 
• It was sunny and cold; not blistery, wintry, and treacherous;
• My mechanic could have totally hosed me for a new battery; instead, he checked with 5 suppliers, and even tried to fit a generic battery inside the car so I could be up and moving. He could have also rushed the order and it would have cost me an extra $100 plus taxes (because I’m using debit); instead, he has the guy delivering on a Saturday, which is a normal business day for the supplier and thus no extra charges. And even if the battery doesn’t come in tomorrow, it’s the weekend, and Valentine's Day, and as a single person, I’m not going anywhere I don’t have to go;
• My son had every right to be angry and upset with the world. Instead, he chose to leave his teacher and himself with good memories. And at the end of the day spoke his heart, which he does on occasion, and always during a grand and/or special one;
• My garage door works better off the stupid opener than it ever did using that thing. Sure, the wind is going to blow it open now, but hey, didn’t we all live with that in the 70s before they made these stupid electric openers? Plus, electricity savings. Just like when I stopped using my dishwasher;
• I got to do the one thing I had to do today, no matter what factors there were that seemed to want to prevent me from going, and that one thing took place without grand incident; and
• I am able to sit in my house on a day like today and vent about all of this knowing that my son is well-fed, warm, and safe.

-       So yeah, there are fucked up days where the world is neither Yin nor Yang. The choices are: let the mess bury you and bring you down, trample you and take your life away; or while the mess continues to fall, keep digging up towards the light, even with bloody, scraped fingers losing their nails and specks of metal flying into your eyes. Because if you look for the light, you will see it. And no situation, good, bad, happy, sad, despondent or euphoric, is ever permanent.

Remembering Valentine's Day

We treat memories like treasures. We hold onto them so we can share them, but the really special ones or the really painful ones we share with very few. As if keeping them a secret make them worth more overall than the ones we readily share.

I am as guilty of that as anyone, and probably even more so. I may blather on about things, but there are very few precious memories that I share with the world. Part of it has to do with me being a very public private person. I can talk about anything and everything that has happened to me, up to a point. There are things that I keep in my recesses (as I suppose we all do) for various personal reasons. 

Things I have shared with few people, if any at all.

Today it hit me that these memories are going to be lost. Memories that I haven’t shared with anyone. But given that my grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and both my father and my mother have suffered strokes, every year I grow older is a year I grow closer to possibly losing these little treasures I hold so dear.

So indulge me for a bit if I write them down here, and share them with you. Humour me if I go off track. But I want to be able to go back one day, when I’m in The Home and believing that John Taylor from Duran Duran is my husband and his dad is David Bowie and we all have dinner together twice a week, three times on Sunday, and read about this young lady whose heart seems heavy yet familiar.

Februarys are tough months for me. They weren’t always. I used to be a big proponent of Valentine’s Day. I bought little cards for my friends, then co-workers, and baked goods and ate cinnamon hearts until my tongue felt like it was falling off. I went all mushball when I was partnered up and adored being catered to on February 14^th. When I was married, my husband, the chef, would always make sure I had some of his special chicken liver pate on that day (because it was  my favourite thing on earth that he made, chocolate commitment cake be damned), even if he was called into work. I never wanted him  to buy flowers on that day, never wanted chocolates that he didn’t make on that day, and we never went to dinner on that day. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, they say. A lot of knowledge made us more creative about how we approached each other on Valentine’s Day.

Except on Valentine’s Day 2005.

It was a Sunday. I hung out with my husband inside for most of the day, because that’s what you do when the person you love is in the hospital on February 14. I had to work the next day, and I had to go home and look after our dog. Paul had worked hard to get better, and was going to be released from the hospital that week so he could continue his recovery at home. We were trying to figure out all of the supports and equipment he would need at our apartment to be able to cope and manage. I remember being at home and trying to figure out what kind of food I should be buying for the week, as well as trying to sort out what I should be having for dinner, when I got a delivery at my door.

It was a bouquet of flowers.

I wondered who in their right mind would spend that kind of cash on February 14, and I started to get upset. I thought they were from my mother, until I opened the card. Inside had my husband’s handwriting, shaky because of the strength it took him to hold a pen and write, with his pet name for me, and a simple “Love, …” salutation.

I knew his mother had helped to arrange for the flowers. I knew that she had probably thought of putting the entire package together for me. But I also knew the effort it took him to write that message in the card. And my heart sank.

It was the last gift he ever gave me while he was here. Six days later he would leave us.

So if you were wondering why I don’t like Valentine’s Day, why I deflect this day with cynical humour, faux pining away about not having a date or flowers or candy, now you know. After reading this, you can probably guess why I never want any gifts on this day ever again, regardless of my relationship status. (My ex, who, like most of my family, also suffers from a brain disorder, tended to forget that he shouldn’t bring me flowers on February 14. On those occasions where he did buy flowers, it was when he handed them to me, he would realise what he had done.)

This Valentine’s Day starts a countdown of sorts. This year will be ten years since Paul passed away. It’s also a demarcation point. Once this year is over, I will have gone past the break-even point; this year evenly splits the years that he was in my life versus the time after he left my life.

Moving on doesn’t mean throwing away the pain of memory or experience. Some things never leave.

But it’s what you do to get through those times that helps you for when the next time the pain comes around. Holding onto these memories, keeping my silence about Valentine’s Day to the majority of the world, and still trying to be polite, all of that just made me tighten the grip around my grief. And that is not what he nor anyone else would have wanted. Most importantly, it’s not what I want to do. Anymore.

“How can a cooking date with a chef go wrong?”

Tonight I was watching Masterchef Junior with my son, because it’s his favourite show, and there was a part where Gordon Ramsay was trying to match his daughter Matilda up with one of the contestants. She turned to him and said, “I’m not going to marry a chef!” His response to his daughter, “What’s wrong with marrying a chef?” Her reply, “You’re a nutter.”

A few days ago on Twitter, during a mini conversation with some friends, one of whom used to manage a restaurant (coincidentally she’s also Scottish like Gordon Ramsay), I told her that, not only was I in awe of the fact that she had handled a professional kitchen, but I had been married to a chef and would tell her about the cooking date we had that almost ended us before we began. During that conversation, someone asked, “How can a cooking date with a chef go wrong?”

If you’ve known me for longer than a decade, you probably know this story already. It’s an easy one for me to recount in person. It’s easy to show my expressions on my face and inflect my voice. I think that’s a key part of the story that I’ve never been able to write down. I’m going to try once again to do it here.

In 1994, I met this young chef who was getting ready to go to the Stratford Chefs School (long before it would be a staple of Food Network Canada). I was a vegetarian at the time, fending for myself, so I knew how to do more than boil water. In fact, I enjoyed cooking, which was something he appreciated.

He had been asked to cater a five-course dinner for friends of friends of the family, and it was going to be a fairly large crowd, so he asked if I would help him. He wouldn’t pay me, because I wasn’t a professional, but he thought it would be fun, because we’d be working together, cooking together, and he wouldn’t be completely on his own during the lulls in service. I thought it would be fun too – I would be learning new things, getting to know someone that I really liked, and afterwards, meeting his parents because the gig was close to his house so I would be crashing in the guest room.

We met at the house, and I went in through the back. He gave me chef whites to put on, along with a hat. Apparently, I looked cute. Let me just say I’m glad nobody took photos of that evening, and I’m even more thankful that this happened long before Instagram.

Like Matilda Ramsay said so accurately and succinctly above, chefs are nutters. In all meanings of that word. They are creative, they are smart, they think on a dime. However, they are in one of those creative areas where their work is never permanent, and judged instantaneously. Painters, writers, musicians – we take a while to create something, we get a chance to hone it, and if it doesn’t work, we get to scrap it and start again, and take our time until we get it right.

Not so with a chef who has to serve dinner. They may have time to practice, but every service is like a final exam. It tends to make them a little (read a LOT) friggin uptight. And my chef was a Virgo, the most uptight of all the uptight signs, with a precise need for perfection that is enough to make any other sign, including Virgo’s fellow earth signs of Capricorn and Taurus (me) throw up our hands in despair and crack our skulls against brick walls.

The first thing you need to know about a chef, especially a young chef, is that they think everyone is a mind reader. Sure, they give you a basic sketch of how something is supposed to look on a plate. And then they expect you to execute it. Well that’s fine if it’s a competition. That makes for great television. But in the real world, especially if you’re not a professional, it’s a fucking nightmare.

Before that night, I had no idea how important plating was to the overall aesthetic of a dish. And when I say plating, I don’t mean just making the food look appetizing. I mean the scientific precision of where each item is placed in relation to the others, to the motif on the plates, to the place settings, to the other plates on the table. And of course I was getting them all wrong. Because my idea of 90 degrees was not the same as his.

So how can a cooking date with a chef go wrong? When it’s a professional dinner, when the chef assumes you know professional terms because you can handle a knife better than most other people he’s met, and when the chef expects you to be able to read his tiny handwriting and understand his sketches and read his mind to know that the poultry leg is to be precisely 85 degrees to the veg on top of the puree.

Never mind I was a vegetarian and I was handling wild game that had been shot by the owner within a couple weeks of the dinner itself. The game still had buckshot in it, and part of my duties was cleaning the buckshot out of the raw carcasses.

By the third course, I was in tears. I mean, I worked through the hurt, the hot eyes, the bitten tongue, the crying, because no matter what I do, in a professional forum, I remain businesslike, in spite of the fact that I was being berated, yelled and screamed at, and expected to have a knowledge base that I don’t even think I have today, some twenty years long after that date took place.

At the end of the meal, just after dessert was served, the hosts came in and raved about how wonderful everything had been, and thought we did a great job working together. I could see the pride on my date’s face. I was happy for him, and put on an industry smile for the host and hostess. (Just an aside, I had taken acting lessons by this point, though I never thought I would use them.)

But the minute we walked out of the house into the warm, Indian summer night, I lost it. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not someone who generally keeps things inside, unless it’s necessary, such as among strangers whom I may possibly meet again, or in a professional setting, or when there may be legal consequences involved.

None of those things were in play during that walk home. So, in a very twenty-four-year-old way, I told my date exactly what I thought of his kitchen manner and his people management skills. I was hysterical because, well, I really liked this guy, and I didn’t want him to be as much of an asshole as the guy from my previous relationship. I told him that if he wanted to ever manage people in a kitchen, he shouldn’t treat people as if they could read his mind. And that making someone feel inadequate and humiliated for their lack of knowledge wasn’t exactly an ideal date.

He stopped on the sidewalk. He was completely taken aback. He had no idea he had been like that. He was truly remorseful. He said that hadn’t been his intention. He honestly thought it would be fun, and admitted that it had been a mistake to assume that I had the level of culinary knowledge that he expected and demanded from a sous chef. And he apologized, and said he would never treat anyone like that inside a professional kitchen again.

There was something quite sincere about his words. He had softened right down from how he had been back in the kitchen. We arrived at his house, and I said to myself that I would give him another chance.

Turns out the guest room was in the basement of his parents’ place. He led me downstairs, showed me where everything was, and we hung out until he had to head back upstairs. I settled in under the covers, and he headed towards the door.

“Oh one more thing,” he said, standing in the doorway, “There are lots of centipedes in the basement, so watch out for that. Good night!” He turned off the light, closed the door, and headed upstairs.

Yes, that’s the man I ended up marrying. I still purse my lips and shake my head when I think about that moment. I even just looked around the room to make sure there were no centipedes (in the middle of February) headed towards my laptop.

I learned a lot from him, in all senses, over the ten years in total we were together. Things I carry with me right now, whether it’s when I pick up a knife to chop an onion, throw a couple juniper berries in a stock, or think about doing a fancy plating with a chicken leg and celery root puree with steamed veg on my black octagonal plates.

I lost him ten years ago this February 20^th, and over this past decade, I’ve learned even more about food and cooking from him than he had time to show me while he was here. Finding recipes, finding his school notes, hearing little voices in my ear when I try something new. Understanding his need for perfection, and learning to decide if the dish I’m making would warrant such precision or could benefit from a little lackadaisicalness. I’m losing that omnipresent fear of the kitchen because, in a way, I’m doing it for him now.

So was it a horrible date? It was one of the worst dates I’ve ever been on. But I would do it again, replicating every second? In a heartbeat.

You’re always in my heart, Bobo. I just hope I’m doing you proud in the kitchen, even on those days when I still cry.

Paul J. Mesbur September 16, 1970 – February 20, 2005.

Bell Let's Talk Day - Your brain is an organ, you know.

Today is Bell Let’s Talk day – a day where mental health issues are brought to the forefront of the Canadian media, traditional and social.

It’s also Mercury Retrograde, a time where Murphy’s Law reigns supreme, but also a time when the creative and the unconventional also take charge. Most people are afraid of change, of seeing what happened previously, and stall before they can move forward.

Other people think it’s a load of horse shit, this Mercury Retrograde. After all, things just go wrong. At the same time. For everyone.

That’s fine. Believe what you will. But where we usually go wrong is when we start to believe that we know best for everyone else.

If you know me, you know I go in for the whole astrology thing. The occult stuff. I always have. I have grandmothers and great aunts who are obiers. I have family who have guardian angels and talk with spirits. I’ve gone through a bunch of stuff myself that I’m not ready to talk about but may make a good story one day. But I believe.

I have friends and acquaintances who do not. We still get along, even if we broach the subject. I know what I know from first-hand experience; they know what they know from their own first-hand experience.

I have broken off communications with (now former) friends, both believers and non, who have tried to force their experiences down my throat to the point that they deny me mine.  They tell me that what I experienced is “wrong”, “unbelievable”, “inaccurate”, or something along those lines. Because they didn’t experience things the way I did, they believe they are more correct than I am.

Good for them. That’s why they’re ex-friends.

What does this all have to do with mental health issues?

Because we treat mental health the way we treat anything we can’t see. Like it doesn’t exist. It’s not real. It’s nothing to concern ourselves about.

The brain is an organ, like the heart, the lungs, the kidneys… organs get sick. We can physically see the results of what happens when our kidneys get sick, when our lungs collapse, when our hearts struggle to function.

People believe they cannot see what happens when our brains get sick. But we do.

That really nice person you know who works 3 cubicles over stops talking to you. Or gets bitchy day after day. Obviously she must be on her period, she’s not getting laid…whatever comical excuse you make.

There’s a kid in your child’s class that can’t stop screaming. Well his parents must spoil him. He needs a good spanking or something to straighten him out.

Your bubbly friend on social media who loves to chatter and debate with everyone stops returning messages, stops posting witty sayings. You figure they got a real world life so you ignore them and move along.

Your other friend on social media won’t stop complaining about her life. It must be awful to be her in a big house with her beautiful children and her gorgeous purebred dogs. Some people just won’t be happy with what they have. Why doesn’t she just cheer up?

Because you can’t see what’s wrong with them – they’re not bleeding, they’re not pale, they’re not collapsed in a heap on the ground – then they must be fully healthy. Because nothing ever goes wrong with the brain. It’s the only organ that is impervious to disease and degeneration, right?

We would be well to remember that we are not like anyone else we know. We don’t know what people experience, and what they go through, even if we have been through it ourselves. We don’t know anyone’s family history unless they tell you.

For example, my mother had an aneurysm within a week after I was born. At the time, in 1970, she was one of three people on the planet who survived a ruptured brain aneurysm without surgery. They don’t know how. She was comatose for over six weeks, and when she came back, she had to learn how to walk, talk, eat, read, dress herself…everything again. Along with having a new baby. She always had remembering issues, but she would always talk about why. If you met my mother back then, you’d think she was just a little slower than most, but a very kind lady nonetheless.

My son was diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum at the age of 3. People often asked me how did I know. A mother knows when something isn’t right with her child. Good parents use every resource available to them until a solution can be found for their child/ren. Even when people tell you that it’s just a “discipline problem”.

His father’s family has a history of brain disorders, as we came to learn quickly. His father was diagnosed with epilepsy three months after our son was born. Because it was a physical disorder, his family opened up a little more to discuss some of the “issues” that had arisen throughout their history. But before that, nothing had been discussed. My son has cousins who have brain disorders as well, ones that are much more severe than his.

I have never been formally diagnosed, but I know when my brain isn’t feeling well. I know when sadness is just more than the blues, and when euphoria is more than a rally cry. I know how it affects me. I used to hide in corners and say nothing. Now I use social media to vent. I write so I’m not clutching at pain, in a false belief that things will never be better. I found tools to help me, but I also know that when I can’t handle it, there are people to see and places to go where I can get the help I need.

Today is about coming together to see things differently. To let people know it’s okay to be sick. To let them know you believe them, even if you don’t agree with them. As it should be with everything, whether it’s the occult or whether it’s an ailment. Accept the people who come into your life for who they are; offer to help them always. That’s the essence of humanity.

Give mental health the respect it deserves, today and every day. Just like you should do the people in your life. 

All good things, and even not so good things...

I’m not sure how I finagled this invite. I think it was around 2000. I am usually pretty good about remembering dates and years, but you’ll have to forgive me if I’d had a bit to drink that night.

You see, I got an invite to the reopening of the Guvernment Entertainment Complex. It was funny because I knew they had the two clubs, The Guvernment (which I still called RPM at that time) and The Warehouse, which was the part next to it but still called The Guvernment. I had seen many cool concerts at The Warehouse in my day by this point. I’d seen Ministry, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, and even David Bowie in the intimate venue of 3000. I had been there so often, I’d even had my favourite standing spot – no small feat when you’re 4’11” and going to industrial concerts where the average height of fans was 6’.

So when I got my invite to go, from a family friend who worked in PR, I had to see what had changed. Because it was history. Toronto history, sure. But my history. I’d matured as a concert goer there. I learned how to work the mosh pit and how to minimize bathroom time, and which bar was the fastest.

We walked in to what had been renamed “Kool Haus”. I remember saying “well, this is just the Warehouse with black curtains. Why rename it?”

And then we followed the path.

I’m sure if you’ve gone to the Guvernment recently, like in the past five years or so, you’re probably wondering what the fuck I’m talking about. You see, before Chroma and before Skybar and before Deadmau5 played his first gigs there, the Guvernment used to be connected to Kool Haus through an inside path system, located near where the washrooms are in Kool Haus now, and would exit where the Chillout Lounge in Guv is now.  

That path was majestic and magical and full of class and big lights. Just from those early days, you could see the new owners had real plans. And we hoped that it would work, because, well, this was RPM. It was the club of our childhood. We would be listening to CFNY from the burbs and hearing about Chris Sheppard and all of these cool alternative bands (I won tickets to Jesus and Mary Chain at RPM but was grounded that night, so I gave my tickets to my friends who were witness to the mic stand assault), and we would be dying to go. Those who went to any of the nights, whether they snuck in with fake ID (a notorious problem for RPM and the Guv that lasted through to the very end) or whether you went for your legit 19^th birthday, it was the place to go, to be seen.

The renovations to the Guvernment would bring that back and more. You could see it. And even though that path structure didn’t last (probably mostly to do with the deadly shooting than anything else), the multiple rooms remained. The size of the Guvernment and of Kool Haus remained the same. And the cool factor definitely remained the same.

Over my musical life, I can tell you I’ve seen Ministry three times, the comeback Nine Inch Nails 

club tour, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the last Sisters of Mercy gig in Toronto, Skinny Puppy four times, KMFDM, Bauhaus, and of course David Bowie. It’s the worst place to get to by TTC. It’s the worst place to be in the winter because the lineup goes down Queen's Quay where you get splashed by taxis zooming over melting snow. 

And then there was this whole EDM thing. Or, as we called it back when it started, dance music. People just wanted to dance. They wanted to party. The Guvernment gave people a place to party that was away from the death of the downtown core – no traffic  by the lake until the cabs all show up at 3am to take people home. That led me to a whole new set of music – Deadmau5, Kaskade, Calvin Harris, Mat Zo, Ferry Corsten, and the master, Eric Prydz.

The Guvernment complex has been hands down my favourite venue to see music in the city. Oh it’s an awful place. The people are terrible, the bouncers are mean, but the memories of who I’ve seen and when I’ve seen them and why I’ve seen them there are precious and irreplaceable.

I still go looking for that path between The Guvernment and Kool Haus. I know it’s behind the wall of Chroma. I know it’s past the washroom in Kool Haus. I know if you give me a hammer and chisel, I’ll chip away at that back wall Indiana Jones-style and find that hidden passage and the summer room with the bright pastel lights and the palm trees.

Goodbye, Guv. Goodbye, Kool Haus. There will never be another complex like you. And that truly is a shame. Lost shoes and all. 

Rediscovery

Purging.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen the pictures of all of the stuff I have.

Let me be more specific – you’ve been subjected to seeing all of the crap I’ve carried around with me since I moved out of my parents’ house in 1992. I wasn’t given it all at once – my parents moved to British Columbia shortly after I graduated university, and before they moved, they made me take all of the stuff that meant something to me so they wouldn’t have to ship it across the country.

My mother came back to Toronto to live in 1995. In the separation, she took everything from the 

house that had moved across the country with them. Including more boxes of stuff that had belonged to me. When she found her own place here, she asked me to come and get more of my stuff because she did not have room for it. I was moving into a luxury apartment with a giant storage locker, so it wasn’t a problem at the time.

Ten years later, when my husband died, I had to  move from the apartment, if only to get away from the memories there. I had just gone through all of his stuff, and was in no position to sort through anything else. I just wanted to go, so I found a place and brought all of those boxes of mine with me.

The next year, I had to find a new place, because the place I did have was too small for me and my new partner and our baby. It was a matter of time being of the essence, and we found a gigantic three-bedroom luxury apartment. So I moved everything with me, boxes and all.

From the apartment, I bought my house, and with house closings being what they are, I had to get someone to take over my lease while packing and getting ready to move 40 km away, and trying to find daycare and school for my son, so I just dumped everything out into bags and boxes, and then carried that along with the already-packed-often-moved-always-unopened boxes with me.

I have a Harry Potter-style cupboard under my stairs, but instead of making it into a bedroom, I put all of my boxes in there, along with my partner’s boxes and our intermingled stuff. Because we were going to be together for a long time, living here for a long while, right?

When we broke up in 2013, the easiest thing for us to divide were our CDs, simply because we had duplicates of the music we had in common, and everything else was either his or mine. So the CDs have been in separate milk cartons and boxes since the end of 2013. There was no rush to do anything else, because he has stayed on here as my roommate for the past year and a bit.

But now, he’s found his own place, and is moving out in the spring. And this year it will have been ten years since my husband died. And I will be turning 45. And frankly, it was time. I mean, I always knew I had a bunch of 80s artefacts, but I always wondered what had happened to them.

So a couple of weeks ago, I started going through my Harry Potter space. I expected to untangle myself from one man. 

By the third box, I realised I wasn't untangling myself from one - I was untangling myself from at least five, and all of the other failings of the past. I  found about 10 printed drafts of my first novel, tax returns from the 90s, critiques of works that were written by other people, bills from 2000 that were hastily thrown into boxes for a move, pictures and writings of exes that I hope are burning in hell or will be shortly, and all of the crap that I chose to post to Instagram. 

In other words, crap that had to be purged. It’s a new year. It’s a new day. It’s a new life. Get rid of the old and not let it burden me.

However…in among the knotted ropes of the web of memories stashed in my Harry Potter space, I found things that made me happy at one point. Things that reminded me of the person that I lost along the way over the past 30 years or so. The person who went to Toronto by herself on the bus on weekends to just walk around and buy imported records and flowing goth clothes. The person who always enjoyed her little nook where she would write a poem dedicated to her amour du jour and pine over why it was never meant to be. The person who used to stay for hours upstairs at Toby’s on Bloor or Toby’s on Yonge in a corner table, smoking, drinking coffee, and writing to try to figure out how to make life work and what I saw around me.  The person who was an entertainment journalist for four years and attended the 1989 Festival of Festivals on a press pass, interviewing well-known French producers and directors in French. The person who went to the opera and fell in love with the medium more than any of the people I ever went with.

I have gone through about 90% of the boxes that have travelled with me for the past 20 years. Some things I have thrown away – I don’t want to see tax returns after I file them, never mind from 1991 – but some things I have kept – the paraphernalia, the newspapers with headlines like “MASSACRE” (about the Montreal shootings December 6, 1989), the magazines with the “Top 100 albums of the 80s”, the scrapbooks with clippings about up and coming bands called Ministry and Skinny Puppy.

I’m coming back to discover those things that are at the core of me. Those things that people rarely understand about me – how I can like music for music’s sake and not confine myself to one or two genres, how I can keep writing without freaking out about not being published,  and why I need so much alone space and time, even from those people who mean the most to me. It’s neat to be able to follow your own journey of development through boxes and boxes of material.

Now those myriad of boxes have been pared down to two so far. I still have the books to go through. As a mom who was an only child who has only one child, there’s a legacy I have to leave to my son; an obligation where I have to explain to him and him alone why I am the way I am. I think and hope that all of the stuff I’ve been able to find will do that. If anything, when I do finally shuffle off this mortal coil, the stuff I have might remind him that this was who his mother was – an uber-passionate fangirl, a writer of feelings in whatever form struck her at the moment, an appreciator of music in all forms, and most of all, everything she gathered, everything she performed, every step and every thing she ever did came from a place of deep love.