The maritimes have always been a place I've heard sing about, a place that other people visit, a place that is a part of my Canada, that holds magic, that breathes fairies.
For some reason, I'd never gotten around to checking it out. I've been to tiny towns in eastern Germany where the church has archives of pagan scripts, but never the maritimes.
Halifax reminded me that I'm a real blind idiot sometimes.
Halifax rang out at me from the cobblestones and the bitter beers, the celtic bands on every corner and the ruddy cheeks of every face. Fresh saltwater everything, make that fresh everything tout court.
On the plane ride out I sat betwixt two Daves, my beloved and The Chalkmaster, and we spoke of all the most wonderful things and then our ears were popping and I was disovering a new airport, a new place, I was hugging a beloved kindred soul and we were in a cab marvelling at the "Wrong Way" signs along a tree-choked highway.
We walked and drank and laughed and theorized, talked and dozed and marched to the brewery market while morning faces smiled at us from every corner of every stand. Salmon everything, fresh everything, the best ham in the world and the best coffee, Dragonsbreath blue cheese and pain brioche and tomatoes to rival ours.
We walked and breakfasted and walked some more, along the piers and harbour, from shop to grassy inlet to windy gull-infested corner.
The seagulls in Halifax are the size of geese, the admiral of the good ship somethingorother has four thick bars instead of three.
Dave or Dan dubbed him admiral god and we took a two hour tour through the fog, past the navy, past the inlets and islands and magic spaces.
It was cold but the huddle of arms was warm, the sun had beaten us to pieces and I'd run out of room for ice cream yet somehow managed to fit it in.
That night the chowder threw ghost images of the ocean on the barroom walls, and the gay disco-techno bar was filled with drag queens that taught me a lesson or two about grace.
We danced and laughed and by then the drinking had peterd out
and by morning the flight home was far from euphoric.
Budget cuts seem to have lowered the heating of airplane cabins to dangerous temperatures.
Yesterday afternoon we sat and lounged and sat, my brain filled with a seashore fog.
Last weekend I discovered the maritimes, and I can't wait to go back.
Last night my mother asked "you're not getting married, are you?"
and I told her to wait until this weekend when we'd talk about it.
All her friends' kids have been hitching themselves on by one, at three-hundred indoor stuck up jewish weddings.
She's not going to deal well with not being able to invite three hundred of her closest polish friends and relatives, let alone with the whole pagan-in-a-forest thing.
Assuming she accepts the idea at all.
Which is more likely than my father's reaction...
*sigh*
But I'm not losing sleep over that one UNTIL this weekend.
In the meantime I can still smell the ocean with an idealistic nose.