[...I was on the fence, and I never wanted your two cents...]

Been somebody else for so long. I can barely recall what it's like to be me. 

Will anything I've accomplished be kept, having been somebody else for so long?

Who was I in that year-long dream?

Does she differ?

I remember climbing on rooftops.

I remember drinking the evenings away happily, as wonderful, electric emotions played with my body.

I remember running about in the city of trees.

I remember boys and their sweaters.

I'm neither who I was before nor who I was during.

All I know is that I like a song that was introduced to me today.

I have no clue who I am.

Seeking the parents of our lives, like benevolent trees. 

My mind plays three games with me, often: Logic, poetry and play. Like rolling down a hill, I often get carried away by a chaotic madness, fitting piece after piece together, of the substances that make up life. There is great satisfaction in the world of rational construction, especially when exploring the human being. We are constructed by such fascinating materials, all existing only because of their relation to each other, and within their relations there are infinite mysterious variables that lead to more and more paths of inquiry. 

But we can get lost in the world of reason. In our tumbling, we must pause and remember poetry. We must blink our eyes and take in the purity of the air, of the red twigs against the green grass speckled with white. We must do this and forget to break vision down into cones and rods, we must breath and forget the functions of oxygen. We must feel our beating hearts and remember what, and whom, increases their intensity.

But play, who can forget play in the scope of being. Without play, poetry would feel empty, reason would feel hopeless. Here, we celebrate relation in its purest benevolence. We celebrate joys, passions both large and small. We celebrate smiles, we celebrate noses, we celebrate toeses. Play is when we both forget and remember. Play is when we stop caring and care the most. 

[...So gather twilight to your breast...]

As winter solstice draws near, I hover excitedly on the brink of my newly revived life. Seasons do accompany us through our journeys. That is why we celebrate new light on the darkest days. We celebrate birth, we celebrate hope and excitement, we celebrate the year behind us and we celebrate the year to come. 

Winter solstice is one of my favourite points on this earthly calendar. Even though today the day will be longer than the first day after solstice, the first day after solstice feels brighter because of what is to come. Solstice is the last night of six months' worth of growing nights, and the first day of six months' worth of growing days. Who would not look forward to that first morning?

Easter mimics much of the same mentality. Through the darkest, coldest, deadest days of winter, Easter marks the coming of Spring. Forgetting all we know about our conceptions of Christianity, at the heart of its essence, it is a death and a rebirth. At King's, we have an Easter service in which the dark chapel is interrupted by a single candle that is lit at midnight. Everyone already holds a small candle, and the single flame is passed from neighbour to neighbour, until the entire chapel is illuminated and warmed by the flames of a hundred candles. Regardless of belief, the aesthetic impression of the single flame multiplying into hundreds within minutes is breathtaking. The meaning of it is wholly present and yet unspoken - unspeakable - in everyone witness to it.

Thus it is with me. Our transformations do not come instantaneously. We are not struck by a bullet, thrust into darkness and to soon again rise in the fullness of day. Rather, we shrink away into darkness like the waxing and waning of the winter days... But, from within the darkness, a candle is lit, the green of a seedling sprouts from underneath the melting snow, and the darkness slowly diminishes as light takes its place.

To begin life again at the dawn of winter is beautiful. The colour white, my favourite of all colours, encompasses all and wipes away the grime of old illusions. Against it, the richness of evergreens and the duskiness of bark calm me, as if they are drowsy, smiling animals, so content that their eyes take them to sleep. The shock of the cold is like the clarity of ice-water. The welcoming warmth of indoor fire is like the warm drink that puts us to sleep.

The world to come excites me so much I am almost afraid I won't be able to contain myself. Colours, tones and materials put me into a state of frenzy. Learning makes my heart sing. Reading is unbearable because my desire moves faster than my eyes. I must be drinking the herbs and evergreens because I am drunk from them and wanting more. It breaks my heart to see the dogs running in the park, because against my desire, I could never bind them to me infinitely, inseparable from their roving spirits, sharing our insatiable hunger and excitement for life.

To be reborn into the darkness of winter. To set my beeswax to flame and walk alongside the growing days. I am grateful to the seasons for this blessing. 

[...The sorting of seeds and grain...]

I didn't know where to put what, so I put it all in you.

[ The sorting of seeds and grain ]

Division is present. Necessary. In uniting the whole.

Which are seeds that need growing? In what soil do I plant them? 

Which is wheat, ready to be ground and baked into bread?

Which are oats, steel-cut and ready to boil?

Which seeds and grains are these?

How do I tell them apart?

What are they, and

What do they need?

Where do they go?

...

I delved them all into your soil, whether seed or grain, desperate to unload them from my carrying. Desperate to see something grow so I could feast from the table of our union...

But the myths already tell us otherwise. From barley does not grow bread. 

So Vasilissa sorted grain. As did Psyche.

As have I.

Patient, yes.

I was once in some woods (literally). I didn't know who I was. I felt like I'd been wandering down the wrong path (metaphorically). I didn't know who I was.

I wandered to my heart's desire (literally). Though he was chopping wood, he wasn't being what I wanted him to be. I wandered away (metaphorically). I wandered away (literally). I didn't know who I was.

I wasn't being what he wanted me to be. And he wandered away (metaphorically). And I wandered away (literally). Because he wasn't being what I wanted him to be.

He wasn't being what I wanted him to be, because he wasn't being me. 

And.

He wasn't being what I wanted him to be, because he wasn't being what I wanted me to be. I didn't know who I was, so I imagined who I should like to be. So I thought, I better leave, so I can be me. Rather, I better leave, so I can find that thing, that I should be. (Because it isn't in he).

I wasn't being what he wanted me to be. I didn't believe he'd love me if I was anybody. Or rather, if I was not anybody. If I wasn't being what he wanted me to be, he'd stop loving me. So if I wasn't going to know who I was, I would have to wander away.

But I loved him. So I tried to be, what he wanted me to be, and be me, and be who I thought I should be, unsuccessfully, anyway. But he wandered away, anyway.

Because he didn't know who he was.

Do we build upon what things should be? Or do we build upon what things are? What things should be are just ideals, they are just ideas. But then, how do we know what is? Aren't they just ideas too?

Perhaps I should stop drawing comparisons between things like city planning and my mental state. Even my relationship to my stove somehow becomes a metaphor for my psyche. There is wisdom everywhere it seems. "Hrmm, soup or pizza?... OhIcan'tdecideI'mconfused,fuckit... Ah! Suddenly! I understand your soul!"

Architecture paired with psychology is perhaps valid both in poetry and in life. Both in my metaphors and in my reality. But can a regional tax reform really be telling of my fragile personality? Should I base my psychological development on a document outlining by-laws put in place to curb urban growth? 

So... I touched. I became. Am I crumbling?

[...'Till clay-cauld death shall blind my e'e, I shall be thy dearie...]

[Cheeks radiate with love]

There is beauty in everything, especially the cold, still winter. The windows here have never told me anything I didn't want to hear. When all is encompassed in white, be it snow, sky, or the hidden essence of all colour in view, to me it breathes holy. 

We crawl into our holes like them beautiful animals. The squirrels and the birds they do know our dwellings too. Skins and hides hold our bodies sustained, while the fire, the fire does keep us. 

Dogs wail. The dogs they do cry for us; laughing when we arrive from the labour of wood and stone. We, in our cabins to bathe. Tea for the coldness of skin. 

Why is it that my feet always run out from underneath me?

I sing on to the cold glass,

Looking higher

and higher

into the winter's night

to see beyond the haze.

But as soon as I lift my gaze

My singing

and my breathing

Fog.

[...The phantom of love moves among us at will...]

On thinking upon my thinking:

Things, in their need to become, become what it is they need to be. 

The spirit of the world only allows for certain shapes, and it directs its growing cells into the shape of their appropriate forms. A tree is what happens when tree cells pile upon each other. A circulatory system the same. 

But these things, they must allow themselves to grow how their innermost beings desire them to grow. The natural world, which consumes so much (but seems to neglect a portion of the human spirit) grows naturally, and adheres to its given journeys of form*. 

(Note*: It does not know the shape it will be, until it has already become it. The future is thus undefined, and time cannot hold in secret that which does not exist.

There is no fate, only form. Form is desire. Desire is the movement of life. Life is the movement through dissonance to harmony.  Love is the journey through death to find life.)

What is this strange and mysterious portion of the human spirit that inspires so much deformity?

The delightful city of Halifax, the home my heart seems to have chosen for me, is becoming what it needs to be. It has it in its plans. Truth, it seems, is striking a chord in this little city, and the will of the people is protecting its spirit.

And myself?

[...And the little white dove made with love, made with love, made with glue and a glove and some pliers...]

Build me a house.

Build me; a house.

Build. Me; a house.

[ The newness of me ]

My loss was like the digging of a hole. A grave, dug from the soil that sustained me. Though somehow, from the loss of soil and the killing of trees, trampling over underbush and burrowing deeper, deeper and deeper... Though I've drowned in dirt and been buried in fog, I awake in the clearness of dawn and see: a foundation has been built. 

Find the posts. Build the walls, the windows and the doors. Build the roofs and the bannisters, boards and billowing beams, undulating through rooms of wood, plaster and stone. The panes of glass bordered in black, facing the east, feeling the first of mornings to come.

Build it: Build me. Newly born, barely formed, though deeper than before. Stronger than the gripping onto soil, onto leaves, breakable branches, facing night skies naked, pinned by bodies, pinned by nothing.

Weave me tapestries, set to walls, hiding secrets, telling stories. Bring me my fire, harvest me my ashes (to wash me down in soap). 

To be. To be me. Built of me, upon my loss.

The doors. They will be yours.

The interior of me, open to you...

 Always.

Has every artist a muse? Every Orpheus a Eurydice?

"Bury me in fire. And I'm gonna phoenix. I'm gonna phoenix."

Every phoenix has its fire.

...

To my gift from God - my sun - my fire,

When my house is fully formed - will you walk through my doors?

No longer inchoate nor inordinately infirm - will you feel free enough to roam my halls?

You saw me debilitated, decrepit and disabled. Ailing, feeble and weak. Groping through sand dunes, salt flats ("picking through your pocket linings"). I shot you with such insult. Injured you with such blindness. Begged you with such reckless indigence. 

How can I - could I - ever forgive myself?

I can't.

I don't. 

All I can do is build my house (upon the ashes of that crude and embryonic me).

And hope.

(What has happened cannot be undone. But new memories can be built. New battles can be won. With time, the newness of me can repair us, until soon we'll barely remember we ever were broken. Soon. [Not yet, though ready to wait patiently as I build, as you wander and unfurl] And hope will be my impetus.)

Love.

I am my love. It may be you, but it is mine, and it is me.

That is all I know.

[...'Solus' - ipse...]

Blinking at the new; unknown. Vacant and still. Silent and unsure.

I am afraid to do anything, lest I become what I touch.

cut from letters:

My mind is no where near overdrive... simply feeling a little unsettled and unresolved. Like I'm waiting for a kettle to boil with the heat on low... or some other unsatisfactory activity.

Little questions are falling down a ladder and going "plonk, plunk, plop," trickling down and falling into a puddle as I look on with blankness.

...