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Pony: Things I saw on my summer vacation
7.3.2012
I had 10 whole days without going to an office, and after this sweet taste, every fibre of my being struggled with clipping on my security badge and walking in my cloppy heels into the office.
I want to stay outside from sunrise to bed time. I want to feel my skin smooth from sand, I want my hair to smell like lake, my skin to feel browned. I want to get tired from being outside. I want to bask under thick stars and massive moon. Summer, I love you.
We went camping at Sharbot Lake with the lovely Dave, Abi and Iris. You can see some pics of it here. I want G to be able to be naked all summer long and learn to swim underwater. I want him to catch more fireflies.
I went to yoga class in the daytime. Apparently there is a whole world of people who can go to yoga class in the daytime. Who knew? The class was packed. If I were rich and unemployed, I would go to yoga every day and eat big salads at concept restaurants.
Chris and I biked to the Toronto islands one day. The ferry, the slower pace, the fresh air. The urban horizon on one side, the utterly serene great lake vista from Gibraltar point from the other. Take a day off work. Lie in the sand. Bike from Ward's to Hanlan's Point and back again. Stop in the middle to ride a ferris wheel.
I went to a memorial for an old friend who died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in his sleep. There were people from high school who knew him way back when. There were his new friends from his anarchist communal household who were part of his day-to-day life. It was so good to hear how much he was loved. He was wonderfully odd, I always worried the world wouldn't have a place from someone wired like him, but it did.
I read - I picked up A Visit From the Goon Squad and sat myself down for lunch in an oasis-like patio in the middle of the market.
I swam in 2 public pools. Oh, the humanity. Why do change rooms smell like feet? Why do large bald tattooed men need to spit in pools?
I talked to G about all the flags on Canada day, which was also the Eurocup final and Gay Pride. So many flags! I found myself trying to explain LGBT rights to my 5-year old and wondering how much he could grasp. I wrote this of the Facebook, but as a parent you don't want to preach your beliefs, you want your kid to use intellect and compassion to arrive at their own truths. So our first stab at it was "People should be able to love who they love, and be who they want to be without other people making laws about it" and he blew us away with this response: "You don't know how other people feel, cuz you're not in their bodies".
Also, that day was my mom's yartzeit. I am, according to tradition, no longer officially a mourner. I am not religious, but I went to synagogue for the 11th of Tammuz, her date of death last year according to the Hebrew calendar. And to borrow from Mourner's Kaddish, that speaks of healing, redemption and forgiveness: "May there be abundant peace from heaven, and good life".
