If I put together all the spare minutes that flicked past this weekend, I might have enough time to chronicle all the events in their gloriousness; the park and the screaming and the turkey dinners and the smiles and Kensington market and the glow that Ford lights with her presence, but right now --
I'm focused on the warmth.
I was sitting outside this morning, my usual watching of the dawn before climbing upstairs and setting my mind in motion to deal with today and I realized
I needed the crowd this weekend. Not the frightening crowd of raves, not the terrifying faceless crowd of streets and enclosed malls filled with bad energy, but the crowd filling this house, the garden, my days.
I'm afraid of houses. Not deathly afraid, not forever afraid, but the house I spent my terror years in, all marble and cold and empty and untouchable -- there are still shadows from it.
And this weekend, this house was filled with noise and things to do, this weekend I was needed and constantly moving to do appreciated things, except when I wasn't --
when I was half-naked in the back yard, sunburning, when I was exhausted on the couch, and we all smiled with whatever energy left in us.
Maybe I have urges I hadn't quite realized in my blind stupidity, but I'm not ready to carry their weight yet.
Right now I am still working with the smoothing of old haunts, the small fear of the size of this house, and how lonely it is compared to an appartment overlooking a cour where all the neighbours laugh at each other in their underwear.
But that is only a half-truth. Inside part of me is still a hermit, a creature begging to be entirely alone.
And in this new life, in this not-so-new anymore city, I am fighting for a balance between the loner that still wants to run away and throw myself into fierce things
and the creature craving warmth that I am slowly becoming accustomed to.
I am afraid some days, of those quiet urges that tell me that the living room is too small for comfort, that one day I might wish for a larger space.
I am afraid of some of these changes in my spirit, and yet when I look at the back yard and the work begging for my fingers and strength, when I look at the mess of the kitchen, when I watch the dawn from outside in my pyjamas, I realize
I am exactly where I need to be right now. All my wishes are here, now, and I don't want anything else until I have mastered them.
Not for a while. Right now, I realize just how far I've come.
I realize just how different my life is right now, from when I sat in my cold corner and wished for it.
I have had the fortune of having my wishes granted.
And I have had the greater fortune of realizing -- that I must live up to them.
Slowly.
(whatever anyone says I want right now)