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Pony: Shades of grey
7.2.2003
I was kind of dreading going to Montreal. First of all, Chris and I are living on the cheap these days and a trip to another city sounded 'spensive. We also did not have a ride back and Sarah was not going to be there and it was going to be a big wedding and would they even notice if we were not there?
But the ride up included a stop in Kingston to finally meet Chris' Dad. There is something that makes so much sense about meeting the parents of someone you love. In Montreal we got a huge apartment by the mountain to ourselves. One of those huge, high-ceilinged 4-bedroom Montreal apartments that make Torontonians groan with jealousy and New Yorkers consider dual citizenship. We hung out at the garage sale of the gorgeous duo, Ran and Delian (moving next month to Hong Kong), and finally attended Rich and Elana's wedding that was both big and intimate, bursting with obvious love.
We decided to stay an extra day to see the lovely Sarah and to play texas hold 'em with a bunch of old friends. Jonah arrived for an unexpected visit from NY (anyone need a fabulous roomate in NYC/Brooklyn etc.? He is looking to move).
We went for ice cream at Bilboquet and cruised the streets, had some wine with the Engles and prepared to leave.
We had a sleepy bus ride back to toronto last night and watched out the window as these enormous bluegrey clouds with fissures of sunlight followed us all the way to Belville.
There is something about going back to Montreal in the summer that makes me so wistful, remembering university all the writing I was doing (on stickies, on the backs of envelopes, in my notebook, on my computer) and the feeling of potential.
Things are different now. Sarah wrote me the other day: "It's weird because I feel I saw you transform from being a whimsical poetess to a whimsical computer nerd. When I met you you were working on a four year old computer that had a dot matrix printer and word perfect. So I don't feel it was the natural transition."
So now I have all these old friends doing marriage and baby and steady job things. And there are others still pursuing music or poetry or whatever their passion and finding joy and frustration in equal measure. And I am walking around these days questioning why I chose neither extreme. I was always so proud of being low-drama and of seeing shades of grey.
When I was a kid, I always thought that being smart meant that you would get rewards in life without too much obvious effort. Now I know, I have not consciously believed that for years. Du-uh, right? But after seeing several of my brilliant friends biting their arms off in the boredom of secretarial jobs, I have a lot of questions.
