hey, that's no way to say goodbye
Sweaters stuffed in grocery bags, ramming in fall and winter coats. A reminder that the fall is here, almost as striking as the turn of the month.
I didn't make it round to Montreal this summer, as I usually do. That was gladly traded off for the people and places I did manage to visit between stints at the desk, but the increased presence of patron saint Leonard Cohen in my shuffle seems to be teasing me with that fact. Everyone is a little more finite as we go along, exchanges and different schools and different lives. We catch each other when we can.
The return to academia this year feels a little harsher, a little bit realer and less exciting as years before have been. There's grooves to figure out in every field, what clicks, what doesn't. I love this. I love to write, to document, and I'm just starting to figure out how to really mesh that with architecture, or some form of it. I've spent the summer largely detached from architecture, and just as returns to piano or writing go after time away, I'm sure it's going to be a little shaky at the start until it smooths out into something better than what I left off with. I find myself constantly inspired by home, and by some divine experiences this last little while touring a foreigner to my dear city around, my appreciation makes leaving much more sour.
Allan Gardens is almost as I remembered it, save for the grand atrium that has been renovated, read: gutted. It's full of exotic, vibrant plants. Pinks, purples, fuzz and spikes. The turtles, the koi. Humid enough to drip sweat down your temple. To me, this is the closest I can get to this kind of world without hopping on a plane cross-continent. To him, it's his backyard. Although that rendered the gardens not nearly as impressive as I had hoped they would be, he seemed to enjoy it all the same and I'll take the win.
I'm not here to annotate every little part of my tour guiding experience, rather an attempt to articulate this sort of complication I'm experiencing in what should be a linear path. There's no words yet, but bits and pieces that are guiding my mind one way or another.
- Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye by Leonard Cohen, True Love Leaves No Traces by Leonard Cohen.
- Veronique's most recent Moonbows. Very similar sentiments I'm feeling.
- Before Sunrise, watched for the third time with K in middle of nowhere, Hungary. Watching it with someone else for their first time is illuminating.
I'm folding up envelopes for my July issue of con moto, sending out beginning of September because of course it is (with plenty of copies to share, should anyone want to trade, let me know!). I've decided not to hold myself so strictly to it as I did at the start, because that's what drives resentment towards work and art, as someone so kindly gave me insight to through email after my previous post. I've heard recently of friends of mine, colleagues, switching their paths entirely, trying new things, and I'm very inspired. I'm bracing for a lot of change in the following months in these four month stints, and a little grace isn't such a bad thing.
