Chapter Three: Looking for Space

Detour

Once in a while, I'm planning on putting some poetry, or thoughts, or a drawing that seems timely and appropriate in these posts. Last night I was thinking...what does one do with love that's unwanted-given but not received? It seems a waste somehow. I think I'll keep it, and try to give it out in some other way eventually.

The love he didn’t want is like a warm puddle on the asphalt at the public pool. 

I wallow in it-face down-the smell of it-like summer, like memories and expectation, tinged faintly with the odour of urine.

Hot, black crumbs of asphalt are embedded in my cheek and I like it. My whole world seems a warm puddle, and love lies all around me, unclaimed. Leaking out of me or leaking in? The borders are unclear.

The length of my skinny girl soul lies still and in perfect awareness of the love that is is for me-not him.

Okay-Detour Over

What I longed for, what I craved, was open space. I saw myself stepping forwards into vastness-something far bigger than my world had become. Motherhood, wifeliness, domestic balance...none of these things was needed of me anymore, but I was stuck in it. Sometimes I could hear myself from some other corner of my being, and I sounded like someone noone was listening to-even I wasn't listening. If elevator music had a face, that would've been me!

So...vastness, emptiness, wide open spaces-what could be batter than the canadian west? I wanted the weight of the great lakes, and the simplicity of an endless, flat horizon line. I wanted to be swallowed up by the sky, and to remember how amazing and miraculous the world was. I wanted to open a door in me that allowed the world in, and me out. 

First stop, after meeting my good friend Anne for lunch in Ottawa, was Deep River. I was nervous, my first night in the Blue Whale, and felt strange in amongst all the trailers and motor homes. On the other hand, I felt surrounded by big brothers and sisters, and everyone knows, only decent middle class people live in motor homes-right? Most of my trip, when provincial parks and campgrounds were curiously empty, I would seek out a big, friendly trailer to snuggle my whale up to.