(I wrote this mostly two weeks ago and just finally got polishing it off and posting. Also hi and also thanks for reading xoxo)
Week 2! It’s been 2 weeks ?!
This week felt like settling in, in the way that the days slowed down, and Halifax expanded around me. Streets were forming on my mental map, the miniature paths being drawn, bird’s eye view, as my mini-me discovered more landmarks. Slowly, I had carved out a comfortable chunk from the foggy map of Halifax.
Rosie had read this article by Jeanette Winterson, “Why I adore the night,” which makes a case against night-resisting. Embrace the dark, it encourages, let it divide up a day and give the evening its own richness. Allow the night to set a tone—bring in some candles, speak softly. Stop resisting! Any attempt to pretend that night hasn’t fallen denies you the opportunities that are hidden in the dark. Prolonging the day with bright, artificial lights really flattens the richness that the night brings. And this week, I felt we embraced that richness.
Before I had even read the article on Monday, I found that we had begun to introduce some of its suggestions. My second Sunday in Halifax was slow, lethargic. The kitchen in this house has some sort of gravitation pull. Everyone finds themselves there—cooking, making tea, nobly sitting at the kitchen table to entertain or be entertained. I had found myself drawn in for most of the morning, feeling no inclination to gather the strength to go anywhere else. Eventually, though, the members of the house trudged away from the magnetic pole, impelled by external forces. At 3pm, we were called back as Rosie finished a project meeting and suggested we go somewhere, do something. The beach! It was overcast and foggy and -5, why not the beach? Ella was at work but Kasia was at the library, one easier to whisk away than the other. We picked up Kasia in Hilary’s car, and with Rihanna as our witness, travelled across the bridge, through Dartmouth, and into the fog that had descended. We listened exclusively to Rihanna, there and back, and yet we still didn’t get through all her bests. Woo, Where Have You Been, Man Down, Breakin’ Dishes, Run This Town, What Now. How can one woman have such range? We arrived, energized and frantic. The sand was cold and the fog was imposing. Everyone got barefoot and set off. Some running to the water, others down the stretch of the beach, making for the pier of rocks and seaweed. The air was so fresh. I had compulsively brought two cameras. The one I had gotten from my aunt and uncle years ago, the other was an old Polaroid camera I had just gotten from my dad that I hadn’t broken out yet. I took two pictures on the Polaroid that now live by the window in the kitchen. I took more than a couple on my DSLR. I’d show you but it seems the particular little cord required to get them has been left in my bedroom in Kingston. Looks like all three of us are trapped in our own little purgatories. I plan to make a pilgrimage to Best Buy to at least free me and the pictures. Just imagine in your head 5 girls running around on a foggy beach at 4pm; the images can be here in spirit.
The sand, the air, my clothes were all damp. Cartwheels turned to handstands turned to a wheelbarrow race. We examined what might have been a lonely tree trunk, but turned out to be a large piece of driftwood, craftily propped up. Looking closer we found a bit of ice that turned out to be a stranded little jelly blob. Discussions of returning the jelly to the water became discussions of us joining it. I had had a feeling when Rosie suggested the beach that I would be going into the ocean one way or another. The beach was fairly empty except for a family that could be faintly made out through the gloom, walking on the brink of the perceptible. My run-in turned into a graceless wade as I negotiated the slimy rocks and slow descent into the cold water, shocked and stumbling. I found my footing and some depth and went under—even colder, more shocked, sputtering. It was so cold! I am so glad I did it! Not only do I believe it brought our house closer together as they held out a sweater while I stripped out of my soaked salty clothes, shielding me from the prying eyes of the fog and ocean and sand, but I suppose I also got to check it off my unwritten bucket list. Born-again east-coaster.
My legs were vibrantly displaying red and white spots (one might imagine it looked similar to the print of a strawberry milk cow). I was shivering like it was my bones that were rattling. In that moment I would have believed that if you took a meat thermometer to the marrow in my bones it would have read below zero. One of my big toes has since lost all cold-resiliency, surrendering the second it gets a little chilly. Our corporeal meters all had reached their limits. We gingerly walked back to the car with numb, bare feet. Hilary drove us back, wrapped in clothes and blankets and fog and night’s darkness. From Atlantic waters to the Atlantic superstore we travelled, making a pit stop to gather the supplies for a house dinner that had been concocted on the drive back. I did my best to hide my arguably soaked clothing as we chatted and found our ingredients, but I was certain passing shoppers could smell the salt and fear on me, all stopping their grocery carts in their tracks and thinking so loudly I could hear it, “what the hell happened to her?” We paid and left, and I hoped my sweater was long enough to cover the soaked, mysteriously underwear-shaped outline on my jeans as we walked away.
Warming up was no issue, though, once we got home. The warm light, the warm faces, the warm conversations. We had a dinner that we’ve had so many times now that I have to reflect to pinpoint its sweetness. It was sweet and cozy and novel, and, drawn into each other—caught once again in the orbit of the kitchen—the stewing and brewing began. We moved about the softly-lit kitchen, sometimes too dark for the task at hand and a warning would be called out before lights were switched on for a minute or two. I had almost made chicken broth (so close!) from the carcass of a rotisserie chicken I had gotten because I thought it could be fun, but the final step of straining and containing the pot’s contents evaded me. Luckily, there was backup broth, and the soup persisted.
As we chopped and brewed and spoke into the candlelight, it felt as though the internal temperature of the home was rising, the stoking of our metaphorical hearth. It was dark and warm inside.
That was the first day. I seemed to have gotten a bit carried away but I don’t see why I shouldn’t’ve.
…And that was only the half of it! (I promise this is halfway)
This cozy, embracing atmosphere seeped into the rest of the week, half intentionally, half symptomatically. I can’t wait for the electricity bill to come in—like a Spotify wrapped or something, it would tell us that we had the hallway lights on for 30 minutes the whole week. There’s a charm to walking down a dark hallway to find your housemates doing work in the living room, or chatting on the couches. One night, after having gone to visit another gallery opening at the Anna, Rosie, Zoe and I ventured home to escape the cold and revel in a warm tea. The door opened onto a wholly dark house and I made a joke that that was a sign that no one had been home all day when Hilary’s voice called out from the kitchen, where she was sitting lit by a single candle. There was no glow from the Christmas lights that usually illuminate the bathroom, no twin green lights from the clocks on the microwave and oven. It was dark. Quiet and dark.This time we were engulfed in darkness not out of a desire to curate a vibe but due, instead, to our power going out. Looking at our neighbours was especially confusing seeing as their lights were on. This mystery was eventually solved once we put together that Tasha who was on a flight to Belgium dropped her account before Hilary who was in Halifax could pick it up. I suppose we were being tested on how much we reallyyyyy wanted to ‘embrace the night,’ who, as it turns out, was embracing us right back… in a tight tight squeeze. No one likes to feel suffocated, you know, so we put up a little resistance, and established a plan of action to bring back a little hint of electricity. Tasha called Halifax Hydro from the Belgian airport where she had just landed and we got our power back—balance was restored. Now we could turn the lights off ourselves and sit in candlelight on our own accord. Night=embraced.
We moved from the kitchen to the living room. It was host to hot tea and warm light and a viewing of The Anthropocene. The night morphed and time passed, and the living hosted vinyl records and a 12-hour YouTube video of the bouncing DVD loading screen—candles still burning, witness to it all. Even later still the active couches shrunk from 3 to 1 as we all squished together and watched Martha Stewart on Say Yes to the Dress.
Sometimes the dark seems too substantial. Friday night spontaneously fell upon us, Hilary got to leave work early and the spirit of TGIF was spurred into action. We met up with Sam and Sascha, and after spending hours inside, the prospect of venturing outside—of Sascha’s room, into the open air—felt like a task a little too great to take on. Maybe it was the formidability of a big city at night but maybe really what was troubling my (not fully reasonable) self was the blaring street lamps and car headlights and shop signs and a proximity to something trying so adamantly to pretend it wasn’t nighttime. Embracing it, especially easily done on the quieter blocks, brought a wonderful sense of comfort.
Non-night is scary in its own way—cities acting as if the working day is never done—and the weight of [a pitch black world] can seem like a lot to bear, but with some soft light and good company, the night ripens and opens up for [things the day can’t offer]. Walking with newfound friends down empty streets, busy streets, familiar streets seen in a different light, streets that haven’t been walked before, paths that aren’t streets at all.
Saturday was spent at Ampersand on the top floor of the Central Public Library, at an amalgamate of tables with a transient line-up of characters. People coming to visit my housemates, staying to work or hang out, leaving to work or hang out. Numbers dropped as the sun drooped, slumped against the horizon. The sea filled up half of the cafe’s windows, peeking, waiting, biding its time, until it was suggested that we leave to get a cupcake and walk down to the water to watch the sunset. Rosie, Kasia, Liam and I meandered from bakery to boardwalk. The sun was just slipping behind the cover of the water and the sky was blushing. It was cold for many reasons: no sun, waterfront, the wintertime. But that was all encouraged. The night was just beginning to offer up its richness. Kasia did a snow angel on the dock. We discussed our costume ideas for the Halloween party that night. The topic of nude beaches came up and people shared their thoughts and experiences (an attempt at vicarious warmth?). Eventually we found ourselves at the shipyard.
That place is an industrial playground. I felt like I was in some dystopia movie. We were climbing the scrap piles, maneuvering across the heaps of metal beams (teeter-totters) and jumping on the stacks of wire fences (trampolines).
Okay fine! Liam and Kasia and Rosie were doing that. I was too scared we would get in trouble. It was like I was the lookout—movie scene: complete.
It’s hard to capture how fun it felt to freely explore the scraps and containers and train tracks of the rail yard as the sky darkened into night. It was cold and late and all my phone could manage was a couple pictures before it embraced the night in its own way. We all walked along the train tracks, mindlessly teetering on and off of the train rails (balance beams). There were four parallel tracks, and we wandered down each of our little lanes until we realized we could have gone forever, then we turned around and headed home. Huddled together in the back row of the city bus, we warmed up under the blasting hot air.
Arriving home, the lights were turned off and dinner was made in the candlelight dancing to Eusexua. Friends slowly joined and were fed and danced with as we prepared for Halloween in January. Once everyone had donned their costume—lumberjack, cowboy, indie sleaze follower, farmer, sailor, Ella HB and Evan (as each other)—we ventured out into the night with arms open wide.
