Friday, February 02, 2007
Phew.
That could have been bad. That could have ended with me stepping into traffic, or human-puddling into my couch, a slow disintegration of a soul fading away. I was not in a good headspace. I was unwell. It was the result of a perfect storm of elements: the apocalyptic weather; the sudden loss of my little man Lecky; the pipe; the car; the men; the flu; the creep-back of grief over other deaths; the lack of food, sleep and work which would usually function as brain distraction. At one point, I noticed a crack in the seams in my house and felt like the whole thing was sliding sideways. I had a meltdown on the phone with my father about how my world was falling down. As a writer, I was disappointed in my easy choice of metaphor. Yes, my house was me, and the cracks were showing. And though Leonard Cohen will say that's how the light comes in, at that time all I could see was that things were never going to be the same again. I booked a flight to my favourite city, a place I knew would kick my ass back into shape, then spent every day before my departure roiling with thoughts of cancelling that flight. I barely moved off the couch. I sought professional help. I slept only because of a cough syrup elixir that contained codeine. Then friends scooped me onto the flight which I'd thankfully not had the energy to cancel. The little television screen facing me for five hours declared "by the time you land, the world will be a different place." I was counting on that to be true. And it was.
What's the new-age phrase? If you don't like the way things look, change the way you look at things. The cracks still exist, but those are just a condition of an item settling into place.
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