may 16, 2012

there are a lot of mendables emerging as i unpack boxes at my new place.

one of the many things in need of mending is this art stand, which somehow broke in the move. it's part of a set i bought at the dollar store a while back. mending it is a tad absurd, i know, given that the dollar store is basically the hub of cheap, disposable, badly-made throwaway items. but, because it's a surprisingly durable (and useful!) little thing, i decided i would attempt to mend it.

truth be told, the broken stand has been sitting on my coffee table for days, sprawled out much like the picture above. i would look at it and decide to work on it another time. later, always later. maybe tomorrow?

mostly, the avoidance was due to that fact that i had no idea what was wrong or how to go about fixing it. i didn't take a closer look, though, to settle the matter; instead, i avoided doing anything about it and would, every now and then, glance at the thing semi-guiltily and ponder: were there pieces missing? would i have to glue the two halves in place and render the hinges unusable, or was there a way to keep the hinges intact? maybe i should just throw it out?

wow is this mending project ever making some of my patterns abundantly clear. if i were to be thematically appropriate in describing these revelations, vis-a-vis tonight's post, i would say that it puts my patterns on display. (yes, i went there. sorry.)

anyway, when i sat down to fiddle with the thing, i found that i just needed to snap the two pieces back into place, and it was pretty much as good as new. just like that.

you know, some mending ends up being much easier than you first suspect. it's cool when that happens. i'm discovering that procrastination is, for the most part, hilariously unnecessary. case in point, my friends. all that worry wasted. i'm sitting here shaking my head and laughing at myself...

may 12-15, 2012

sorry for my absence, lovelies. i went into a little cave of solitude to prepare to contact my mom again for the first time in a year-and-a-half, and i'm just coming out of that.

why now? that's actually what she asked when i called. well, lately, i've been feeling like my life is on hold. stuck. like i'm in a purgatory of sorts. without roots there are no wings, as they say. the absence of blood family has been making my life feel somewhere between full and empty, and i wanted to change that. besides, i've been having an intense feeling of rootlessness lately...a lack of personal context. a tree with no forest, you know? i've been feeling like an orphan, which is weird because both of my parents are still living. it's just that, for a number of reasons, they've been out of reach.

i used to be really close to my mother, actually. but there were some things that happened in my childhood that i've been having trouble forgiving her for. i confronted her about them three years ago, and we had a very hard, very emotional conversation about it. it opened up so much for me. rage, actually. pure, white-hot rage. and i started to feel unsafe around her because of the nature of what had happened. it was like it all happened yesterday.

needless to say, things were really awkward afterward. she kept trying to get in touch with me by email, but i honestly had nothing to say. i would click "reply" and then stare at the blank window for an hour or more before hitting the "cancel" button. what to say? what could i possibly say?

we had a brief reunion a couple years back, just before my niece was born, and we saw each other a few times around then. it was actually pretty good between us for a while, but then the shit from the past started coming up again. i think it was in connection to my mom caring for my little niece. kids are so vulnerable, you know? brings up fierce protective, shielding feelings in me...along with whatever the opposite, experiential, childhood side of that is.

but, lately, i've really wanted to call her. i wanted to be the one to make the step and mend the distance. for the sake of family. i want a family.

what would i say, though? what would she say? would she want to talk to me? would we get frustrated or hurt in all the usual ways and give up on each other again? i wasn't sure what to expect, but i knew it was getting past the point where the distance between us could reasonably be bridged. i felt a looming expiration date on our relationship. because there does come a point of cooling (or irrelevance?), when a connection atrophies. it can happen no matter the former importance of the person. i don't talk to my dad, for example. i've fallen out of touch with my first love. i'm barely acquaintances with my former fiancee. (a la somebody i used to know.)

if these incredibly important connections can fade into the background, anything is possible. i *so* didn't want that to happen with my mom. despite our differences and the ways that we falter and fuck up, i do love her. i love her so much, and i didn't want the past to hold us hostage anymore. besides, the tension between giving up on the relationship and giving in to the urge to call was getting unbearable. i decided i would call and try to collapse the inertia. at least something would happen. we wouldn't be on hold anymore.

i held the phone in my hand for a good 30 minutes before dialing. i thought about how hard it had been to come out to her, and then laughed to remember how well it ended up going. all the same, my heart was pounding, and my stomach was in knots. i dialed the number, and then stared at the digits on the screen. it took me another 10 minutes for me to press the "call" button. why is this stuff so hard??

that was around 9pm on mother's day. i had hoped to call her on the saturday, the day before, because the high drama of making contact with her for the first time since 2010 on mother's day seemed a bit much. but saturday came and went, with me mostly ignoring the phone and my plan to talk to her and la-la-la-ing throughout the day with my fingers stuck in my ears. i organized my new place, napped, thought about calling, distracted myself from those thoughts with music and busy work and then spent an inordinate amount of time reading things on facebook. and, would you look at that? the day was over. it was definitely too late to call now.

i was all set to avoid calling her on mother's day, too, but then i went to my yoga centre for our weekly satsang, and the whole thing was about mothers: biological mothers, spiritual mothers, divine mother. all the songs were about mothers and mothering. by the end, i threw up my hands in the air, and i said, "okay, okay, universe! i'll call!"

i sang one of the songs from satsang all the way home, "mother carry me / your child i'll always be / mother carry me / down to the sea..." the light in the trees was beautiful as i walked past the park near my place. dogs were rolling around and playing together on the grass. all the park benches were full, and traffic was gentle. i was hopeful and excited about the possibility of a reunion with my mom. it felt ripe. like it was time. i felt ready for anything.

the trouble with this kind of poetic, triumphant state is that you eventually come crashing back down to earth. (i never remember that part. oops.) she answered the phone, and i said, "hi mom, it's me. it's luna." a stunned silence, and then, "oh. hello." not the epic, grateful reunion i had been hoping for, but at least she didn't hang up. in the long silence that followed, cello music started to play in my chest - you know the kind of hum when you're feeling everything all at once? i think that was the part i wasn't prepared for...for the full emotional summary of the past to flood into me before our conversation had even begun. i started to regret calling.

there were three or four moments in the first few minutes that i wanted to hang up. i really did. some of the things she said. ugh. and there were points when she was completely, compassionlessly silent. when she expressed her obvious surprise that i was still in a relationship after two-and-a-half years, i felt pretty done. (you know how parents can do those passive aggressive things that cut you deep deep deep? she's an expert at that.) but i breathed in and out and stayed on the phone. i kept deciding to stay. every mend happens one stitch at a time, and it sometimes seems as though the two sides are never going to come together again. but they do. and so, i measure my faith in this process with my experience of mending. imperfect or not, almost everything will mend.

eventually, we waded into safer territory, like discussing my grandmother's health and my adorable niece and our work lives. that part of the conversation was pretty good, actually. it reminded me of how we used to talk. loose, open, laughing. we agreed to talk weekly for a while, until things between us re-stabilized. we set a date for our next call, and said our goodbyes.

what i wasn't prepared for was the fallout after the call. my god...it was like one of those time lapse videos on repeat. the over-stim was intense. i wept and got angry and wept and called all my important people and ranted to them and then cleaned everything in sight. it's taken a couple days to re-emerge from all that.

am i glad i called? i'm not sure. but this relationship was tugging on my skirt like a needy kid, so i knew it was time to do something. i guess time will tell what's possible.

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may 11, 2012

crazy that we're almost halfway through may! so much good mending has been done so far this year, and i want to help facilitate even more mending in my community.

yesterday, my friend j.b. sent me a link to a story in the new york times about a group in amsterdam called the repair cafe foundation, which started these drop-in mending events called repair cafes. the idea behind a repair cafe is to create a space for community members to bring in items that need mending or repair and connect them with experts who can help them do the job: electricians, seamstresses, clock experts, etc. it was intended as a way of fighting back against the mindset of things being disposable rather than mendable.

i love this idea, and i'm going to organize a repair cafe for ottawa. i encourage you to do the same in your town!

may 10, 2012

guess what? within a week of living in my new place, i found not one, not two, but all three missing tassels from my happiness pillow.

i'm going to sew them back on for my mending task tonight and see it as symbolic and that i'm on the right track. i'm certainly feeling a lot of joy and contentment these days :)

may 9, 2012

i love this teapot so much.

amongst the piles and piles of abandoned junk left in the cupboards of my new kitchen, there was this beautiful teapot. a little beacon of awesome.



i think we're the same age, me and this teapot. in any case, it looks like my childhood.

when i take off the lid and look inside, i see it has the marks of time on its surface. like us, it bears the stretch marks of scalding and cooling: the thread-like roads that mark the lasting costs of change.

you know, at the time, all that heat seems worth the risk of breaking. and it sometimes is. there are experiences in which cooling is all the mending you need. when, after an ending, balance is restored with the gesture of distance.

but, no matter the details of a given story, there's always a price to be paid for the vessel. love and lust are like that, i think. we pay for the heat we hold. even if it's just for a brief moment. the risks of love and the enduring need for it cause the yearning for expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction. this cycle of dissolving and reforming bonds – seemingly at a cellular level.

we all warp and wear sometimes...feel askew or too heavy from the weight and heat inside us. when it comes down to it, a temperature difference is all it takes for cracks to form: tepid vs boiling, cool vs frozen.

like me, this teapot has learned the difference between worn, used and broken. they're nothing alike. each of the three is a separate reality to grasp. or maybe a decision to make at the meeting point of possibility?

i see worn as a state that results from an agreement to be an unflinching part of life, whatever the cost. scraping your knees as you tumble down, laughing. in this case, damage is incidental rather than inflicted. i.e.: to brew tea, you need a pot; teapots chip and crack and wear with use, but isn't the tea worth it?

i see used as a feeling that results from actions that are charged with a negative intent. actions that result in a feeling of betrayal after an expectation or set of expectations isn't fulfilled. it's the damage caused by (a) an actual betrayal or (b) a schism in reality that feels like one. i.e.: i thought you'd want to fill my teapot again tonight! don't you like my tea?

mind you, of use is different. i see that as an eyes-wide-open decision to give something of yourself, no matter the cost. i.e.: i have a great love of you, and you have a great love of tea. i will be the vessel to bring you said tea, even if it burns me. there's power and transparency behind it.

i see brokenness as resulting from a careless collision of borders. it happens when one thing or person is so hard as to break another. i.e.: using a hammer to drain the tea from the pot instead of attempting to pour it.

it seems like we take turns on these different roads throughout our lives. if we're lucky, they meet, and we get to remind ourselves of options.

i remember, years ago, learning the origin of the word trivia: it comes from tri, meaning three, and via, meaning road, referring to the place where three roads meet. this was the place where travelers used to gather and exchange knowledge.

to me, that's the essence of the whole thing: life, love, living, loving. we're these travelers on these different roads. on occasion, we stumble upon a meeting place where we have a moment to sit and breathe, listen and speak. and remember.

may 8, 2012

tonight, i'm going to mend something hot pink because (a) if my mood right now were expressed as a colour, it would be that one, and, (b) hot pink is aptly named. i love it so much.

this shirt reminds me of touring lady musicians and spontaneous fun. i bought it from the merch table of a vancouver-based band sometime in 2005. that was back when le cagibi was cafe esperanza, and i was organizing catcall with abigail lapell in montreal. (some of you will actually remember that!)

anyway, i still wear this shirt. i love it almost as much as hot pink. there was a hole under one arm that needed mending, so i took care of that...

...then, in tribute to hot pink, i added a little extra sequin love to the patch on the back of the shirt. while wearing a 100% hot pink outfit. yeeeeaaaaah, baby.

may 7, 2012

i found this clock all undone in one of my unpacked boxes tonight – the two parts had totally separated. i guess it was a result of the cold in the storage unit. anyway, i decided to have a go at it with some crazy glue.

one of the mistakes i often make is not holding a glued surface together for long enough before testing to see if it has set properly. which i guess is true of any bond being tested prematurely? it requires such patience to sit and wait and time it well.

happily, all is well with the mend. the crazy glue worked perfectly. now to find the charger for my rechargeable batteries so i can make this thing go...