Settling Dust

blog

[the-north-witch]

What if one day you woke up and you weren't angry anymore?

[the-north-witch]

For a while this blog was such an important part of my free time. I guess it still is.

But life’s been getting pretty hectic lately and I haven’t been great at slowing it down. I’m on the brink of some sort of snap and it leaves no more room for post-travel ramblings that mean nothing to anyone but me. A woman in control - and I want to lose it.

But things will adjust, I think, and I’ll be back here to keep posting. I’ll empty the folders of saved files, each with pictures to match, and make it look like life’s been just fucking swell. It’ll be like I never even left.

But for now, I’m just taking a little space to breathe. To clear my head by the open breeze and watch the swans glide. Maybe with a little time, I’ll be able to sort out my words again.

I haven’t left. I just can’t seem to think. I’ll be back when that starts to change. 

Thank you, friends.

[the-north-witch]

It’s not my usual post, but in the wake of everything happening in the world right now I feel this death is hitting too close to home. Originally I had a much longer, more detailed exploration of everything this man (a celebrity, i know - so not my usual style) has meant to me. Why his influence since my formative years is responsible for this blog, my writing, my traveling, and a good portion of my entire personality. Instead I’ll cut it down to this:

Bourdain was a lot of things - chef, writer, world traveler, critic, ultimate smartass - but he used each of those titles to explore, enjoy, enrich, and learn about other people. For decades he's been showing me that difference is never something to be afraid of. He proved that the greatest type of knowledge comes from cultural exchange and the creation of community. He showed me that this world is goddamn beautiful, even in its horrid ugliness - that finding it can sometimes be tough, painful, and messy, but if you're willing to go out of your comfort zone, that well of beauty runs so deep.

He dedicated his career(s) to starting dialogue, to learning about people through simply sharing a meal, and to turning heartache into stories of exploration. He taught us what it meant to actually encounter one another. He reassured us of the value in opening our eyes to something, anything, outside our own perspectives.

Thanks for the hard work, Bourdain. The person I've made myself is a part of your legacy - and I think you'd be happy about that, too. 

You were the icon of a generation hellbent on changing the way this world is experienced. We owe you.

[the-north-witch]

Even though I don’t sleep well with another body in my bed,

I will choose to do so ten times out of ten

Cause some things in this world are more important than sleep, and you -

you are all of them. 

[the-north-witch]

A young Bermudan local, maybe 13, stands behind the counter of an almost literal hole-in-the-wall. Flies buzz around our heads. An older fat man hums from behind a cutout in the back kitchen. “Shut up, you can’t even sing!” the girl jokes, throwing her smiling face backward with the roll of her eyes. She tells me about her favourite KPOP bands, dancing behind the counter. Its her turn to sing. With an upward inflection she tells me, “these stupid bands though just won’t ship their shirts and stuff to the Island! But they might ship to where YOU liiiiive...”. I can’t help but smile. I promise her if this sandwich is everything I’m hoping for, I’ll look up what kind of merchandise I can find back home. She writes her restaurant’s address and her favourite artist’s name down on my receipt, slips it across the table, and winks exaggeratedly at all four of us. I grab my food and go. 

We sit near where the scorching sunlight hits the pavement by our parked bikes, unwrap, and all bite down at once. 40 seconds of silence before our smiles crack. “Oh my goooooood” Tiv cries, amid a mouthful of deep fried fish. We can’t hold it in anymore, and we all burst out laughing. 

“FUCK it’s hot out here”. Beads of sweat drip down my back. “I don’t even fucking care... this sandwich, man.... yeah”, Martin can barely spit out the words.

I crawl across the street to lean up against the restaurant door. Locals inside smile as they watch us devour the thing this small town is known for. Under a shaded awning I pull out my camera, just as an old convertible blasting Soca trails past in front of me. Somewhere in the air the smell of frying oil drifts into palm leaves, and my head falls back against a cool pane of storefront glass. 

I definitely owe that girl her t-shirt. 

[the-north-witch]

We all seem to think that there’s some threshold of importance to our memory; that the events which shape us the most will stick in our minds the best. Its this ideal of crystal clear recollection for pivotal moments, like a few seconds of footage captured every time our life changes dramatically. As much as we want it to be, though, memory here in real life never ends up being that much like a movie.

I lived this moment unaware it’d be the one that stuck. I didnt think it’d be these pools of light, these footprints, these tides slowly pulling in the earth. I didnt think it’d be your back, turned after kisses, moving away against a setting sun. But here I am again, staring at the same photo I’ve seen a hundred times, just wondering how I got so lucky.

Things you learn when you’re with the right person: Jobsons Cove, Bermuda.

[the-north-witch]

I had things to write for this, but I’ve scrapped them in favour of silent reminiscing.

Besides, nothing I have to say could be as beautiful as these colours were (or these memories, either).

Drive-by shots, Bermuda. 

[the-north-witch]

Sometimes I convince myself that I know what the rest of my life will be like. The path just seems so well mapped out. And then, as it happens for everyone so foolish, all of the sudden there's a landslide and I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff.

This time I found freedom in a new face. I’m planted on this shoreline watching waves roll and I’m not even sure how I got here - not really. But I know its just a layby on a new adventure with no script, no rules, no ties. 

You place a canvas in front of me and just wait for me to paint it. 

Tonight its tinted pink and blue.  

Bright Pink Shores, Bermuda.

[the-north-witch]

Our apartment overlooks a road, which overlooks the sea - a small strip of blue water that empties like a river into the beaches enclosing this island. Across from where we are, and a little bit down the road, uplit buildings and tiny streetlights cast rays onto the water’s surface. Blurs and ripples of orange cast down upon a still black sheet. It’s all you can see for miles, and all the people are silent. From a small enshrouded patio we make noise and chain-smoke cigarettes. Reverberations from our voices and old smoke both blow out toward the ocean.  Fifth, sixth, or seventh drink - I don’t know, we’ve all lost count.  Tiv struggles to keep his eyes open. We move inside. 

Everyone’s asleep, but it doesn’t matter - we’ve locked the doors so they can’t get in. I think I’m still wearing a towel, loose hair wet from a shower I barely figured out how to work. Some soundtrack we’ve chosen hums to a few final sips of gin from almost-empty plastic cups. I silently place a bet on which one of us will stop smiling first. We both lose. I just can’t stop kissing you. Bare ass pushed up against communal countertops, we’re walking around bottomless in a kitchen with all the lights on, laughing like fucking idiots.

There’s no one around, so there’s no sound. The sun is gone, so there’s no light. All that’s left is us and the universe.

It’s 2 am, and we own the world.

What you realize between 12 and 4 am: St. what-fucking-ever, Bermuda. 

[the-north-witch]

You and I share something important in common. 

It’s still early in the afternoon and we finally manage to settle in. A long stretch of sunlit highway, two dozen open corn fields, and small towns with wooden homes all finally rest behind us. We wade through footprints along beaten gravel paths, jumping over holes where rain has collected into puddles. Trees break. Voices of yelling children blur into the buzz of motorboats.  We settle into hills of sand, steep inclines made by breezes of wind along the shores.

For hours I sit wiping sand from the creases of my elbows. Sweat pools in the lines on my face. A bunch of songs I don’t remember play to the sun gliding slowly over us. This time, I’m just listening to you speak. I try to make notes of what you love by watching where your eyes are when you smile. I listen to the way your voice trails or watch the way your shoulders shrug. I listen to you tell stories, searching for the quiver in your voice at the things that make you nervous. I spend the time just taking you in. You could have said anything, and I would have listened. 

The afternoon pushes forward. Our bags fill with empty beer cans and somehow, finally, our conversation turns to a familiar place. It changes with the timber of your voice. We’re right back where we’ve been before: you leaving. We delve back into your fantasy, the one where you pick up and leave, settle halfway across the world, and somehow its not a problem for anyone. The one where you finally get to live life how you want to without your guilt holding you back anymore. I don’t tell you how much I understand this feeling - but I do. 

Instead I sit asking you to reconsider. I list the reasons this is a bad idea. I tell you there are other options, that something exists between extremes, that happiness can be made where you are, if you just think hard enough about how to get it. But here’s something else I don’t tell you: I am fucking full of shit. I don’t really believe any of this. 

The truth is this: I have spent my life thinking of all the places I could go. I think of how many places I’ve already been that I have struggled to return home from.I think of the freedom to hop on a bus somewhere, I don’t even need to drive, an open road with millions of places I could settle into, or pass through, or just see. Somewhere out there, there’s one million morning hours I haven’t lived yet, brand new beds you’ve never kissed me in, or breakfasts over brand new views. There’s new lives in strange places. I think of jumping out of my place, of purposefully losing my footing and just seeing where I land. I think I could leave behind everything I’ve done here.  

I know people do this. Imagine themselves in one hundred different scenarios, occupy themselves in what-ifs. Scan all the hypotheticals. Fantasize about what life choices could lead them where. But millions of people also stayed in bed last Friday, deciding calling in sick and starting their weekend was a better idea then putting in just one more day. People everywhere are exploring the scenic routes, taking rights and instead of lefts. Sometimes we’re forced into change - a set of circumstances laid out for us and we’re just forced to adjust. But mostly we bring change upon ourselves, altering piece by piece with careful consideration. As for me, I have this funny feeling that one day the road signs will say the right words, trains will flash the right lights, a flight path will pivot in just the right direction, and all bets will be off. It’s some invisible pull of the highway. It won’t be long before I’m gone. 

I don’t know if it will ever really happen - dreams turning into decisions. You and I talk about how the world is just so big and how we could go anywhere. But right now, I’ve chosen to take up space with you on a small section of this beach. I leave fantasies for another day. Because from this vantage point, where your hands trace my spine and my head rests on your chest, reality finally seems okay. 

Rough drafts of rough musings: 2.5 hours east, Ontario. 

[the-north-witch]

I pushed submit on my last post, minimized my window, and opened a new browser to see a “memory” on Facebook commemorating one year since I got that tattoo. 

Maybe it’s a funny coincidence. Maybe it’s just where my heads at. 

Thanks, universe.

[the-north-witch]

I have a tattoo of this on my arm. Its just an outline in the forefront of forest - vague silhouettes stolen from a picture of a place my dad and I frequented when I was a kid. I can go anywhere, but it always reminds me of home. 

Here, these compasses brand sidewalks near the water. Embedded into a dark layer of brick and concrete, they serve as reminders of eastern Canada’s sea-faring pasts. An old man tells me, “a lot of wars went into protecting these coasts.” His speech is hard to follow, scattered and choppy like he’s drunk. “Vikings. Then the English people came. People don’t realize this about the Maritimes, you know. A lot of fights for this sea”. He has a thick, bouncing Canadian accent you can only find out east - the kind usually reserved for comedy shows on shitty daytime television. We share a laugh. He stumbles off. 

I guess there’s just something about this image. Etched into pieces of the earth, or pieces of your arm - a symbol of steady navigation. 

I’ve fought a lot of battles too, I think. It always carries me back home. 

[the-north-witch]

It’s a longer drive to reach the water than we expected. We arrive while it’s still daylight and venture deeper into the west. By the time we finally breach the coast, a cooler breeze is blowing up from the shore. I force my friends to stop walking, tighten my coat around my shoulders, and make a driftwood log my seat. We wait patiently, like a movie is about to start - anxious anticipation of what the east coast oceans will show us. “Okay, hurry up world, my jacket is too thin for this shit”, Jenn yells quietly to no one. I laugh cause I can’t help but agree. I don’t know what we were expecting - we thought we timed it right. But here we are shivering, waiting, watching while the sun takes its time.

The hour pushes forward and Kalen starts skipping stones. There’s a quiet slap as they echo against the surface, buried by the babel of tiny waves lapping against the rocks. “Is this what I think it is?” Jenn stands three feet in front of me, holding a polished grey stone in her palms. Kalen peers over, “a fossil, I think”. They bend to scour the shore for more rocks with tiny insect-like shapes pushed into the surface. They come up with dozens. Four hand-fulls of dark stones with white impressions left by creatures none of us even recognize. How many years have these been here? Millions? Untouched, they wash gradually to the surface, pulled back in again by the unfathomable range of ocean in front of us. I pick one up and tighten it in my fist. But my friends’ laughter pulls my head back up again, and I see it finally setting in. The sky has changed colours and the clouds have parted. Small waves turn a shade of violet I haven’t seen in years. We almost miss it. 

Jenn stands, catching balance on a tree, and I sit behind her with my camera out. She’s a dark silhouette I can barely identify, still against a backdrop of open landscape. Finally we are silent. 

Smiling, I unfold my hands and toss the rock back into the sea.  You can’t wrinkle time. These imprints have endured millions of these sunsets - and tonight, they last one more. 

[the-north-witch]

I've got a lot of loose ends, I've done some damage, I've cut the rope til it frayed. But I've got a lot of good friends, keeping me distracted, keeping my sanity safe. 

Somewhere North, Ontario.

[the-north-witch]

I gathered my things and road-tripped further north.

For two straight days I sat on this dock, just thinking about how much I’ll miss the way it looks under clouded skies. I tried to memorize the way the fog rolled in, cascading over fallen trees or lifting into thin air. I tried to remember the smell, the roughness of the old wood, the way the pines poked into my palms. I tried my best to live a while suspended in this moment, burning these things into memory. An indelible impression that I could take away, in case I ever need to recreate this place. 

It’s never easy when your sense of home is changing. 

Alone time with the love of my life. Ontario. 

[the-north-witch]

From a shallow crater of agrillite,  I watch mountains scrape the belly of the clouds. 

Final stops before home: Abraham Lake, Alberta.

[the-north-witch]

I climbed a lot of trees as a kid. In the summer of ‘96 my mother took up work at a small church in the suburbs, where I escaped the scorching heat of those few months by finding free ways to pass time. The church had a considerably large lot, stretches of parking lot that met with big patches of grass, chain-link fences skirting the parameters. An old maple sat at the very back, right where church property separated from neighboring homes. It wasn’t remarkable. Portions of its bark had been ripped off. Roots lifted out of the dirt. Dark-brown rot digested the branches where leaves would have grown. But the arms it had left hung low, twisting in and out of one another to make handles I could grab and pull.

From the ground my brother would point to where my feet would go, scouting for branches with sharp ends to look out for. Every day that summer I’d force myself a little higher. With knees covered in dirt and arms filled with scratches, I looked for new starting points or new angles to explore. Slowly, I worked my way outward until I had scaled every tree at the back of that lot. Each one held a new possibility, a new hiding place.  

In dust-stained clothes, I’d hang from treetops listening to the yells and laughs of other neighborhood kids. My brother’s voice would ring out: “I found you!” “you’re not as fast as me!” “hey, that’s cheating!”. The trees were my hiding place in a dumb game we made called “Monster”.  The person who was “it” would be the “monster”, prowling through the streets and uncovering our hiding spots, setting us loose upon discovery to run until someone was tagged. It was one of the few games I ever agreed to join in on.

A heatwave hit late in August that year. Summer’s blistering “goodbye” in the few last days before the school year started.  I remember it so clearly. “You’re not going to want to be outside, Amy. Don’t bother finding your sneakers. You can stay in the air conditioning today”, my mother advised. I listened. I put on slip-on shoes and a yellow sundress. I just tried not to sweat. But when the afternoon came and I was asked to play one last game of Monster, I had to refuse. The shoes I chose had no grip. I couldn’t climb. My brother whined to try to change my mind, asking our mother to go buy me something to run in. He told me I could just find someplace else, that running wouldn’t be so bad if I was just careful. I didn’t listen.  I didn’t have what I needed to hide, so he had to play without me. And when we came back the following summer a little older, I don’t think anyone even remembered that game anymore.

---

Now I’m peering through a clearing in the trees edged onto Abraham Lake, and I can’t stop reliving this memory. The sunlight is weak. Scorching heat is now a bitter cold. Jesse and Evan are down the road loading firewood into the back of the truck. I can hear them cursing as the bark scrapes their palms. Jesse yells something out into the air, looking for me in the dense brush of pine needles. But I’m just standing, staring, trying to tune him out. My foot presses onto a bottom branch and it cracks and shifts with my weight. I wrap my fingers around a thin bone of an evergreen, flick my wrist, and let the snap echo out into the frost.

As I’m taking this photo, I feel my phone vibrate. I take one last glance at the view, feel for the button to silence the call, and press down. From the other side of the country, I already know that phone call is him. The few moments of peace I enjoyed from my new vantage point float into the wind, and I’m snapped back into the misery of my mistakes. I wait for the ring to stop, and breathe deeply. I readjust my boots and turn down the road to where my new friends are still shouting. And I jog, carefully, back down the hillside toward them. I leave because my monsters uncovered my hiding spot. And I think I’m still young enough to believe that, with the right pair of shoes, I can outrun them.