pretty human beings

All of our things will be coming with us when we travel back to Indianapolis for Thanksgiving at the end of the month. It is sad to think of missing a taste of the Christmas season here in this lovely apartment we have come to call home and in this city that is so full of festivity and expression, but the nature of our time on the road this year is hinged on the commitment of listening to whatever it is that calls us forward and pushes us away from where we are. Whether that thing is our own sense of adventure or a bathroom that is too small to share much longer or the voice of God or not enough money or new opportunities, it has influenced us to make the choice to move on.

It is ever cliché but always true that the passage of time is surprising and mysterious. The parking signs here in Toronto are more complex and elusive than anywhere else. One way they are so is that in our neighborhood, the cars are parked on one side of the street from the 1^st-15^th of the month and the other side from the 16^th-31^st. We will have witnessed five such switches before we leave Toronto. Another mark of time’s passing is that I can now put my hair into a tiny little ponytail. Aram’s beard is bushy, our sweaters are on top of our clothes piles, the tomatoes in the supermarket are no longer red and fleshy, but pink and crisp on their insides. The view of the water is more accessible now that the leaves are off the trees. It is endearing to watch a place move from one season to the next in the same way that to watch friends and families move through seasons and stages of life fosters connection and intimacy.

We went to our neighbor’s apartment last night to share some wine and old vinyl records. They asked us what sorts of things we’ve done in Toronto and as Aram and I listed the parts of the cities we’ve explored, the events we’ve attended, the trails we’ve hiked, the favorite spots we’ve claimed and the friendships we’ve shared, it is hard to conjure up any sort of regret at the time we’ve spent here.  We are also quite sure that Toronto will be a staple destination of ours as we travel throughout our lives.

Of course, the question that seems to be on many people’s minds is how we have lived with two other people in a tiny apartment above a karate dojo in the middle of a city. It is a good question, and one that cannot be fully answered in the context of a blog. But this experiment in communal living has been a learning experience for everyone. We’ve tested the limits of authentic friendship, personal boundaries, compromise and expression. We’ve experienced conflict resolution in organized and disorganized ways. We’ve experienced conflict non-resolution as well. But no matter the perils and dangers of living together, it has not left Aram and me with anything less than a strong desire to keep trying it, inviting people into our lives and allowing ourselves to be invited into others’ lives. It hasn’t ruined anything for us—neither our love for Chris and Angie, our commitment to community, our enjoyment of each other or our loyalty to ourselves. That said, we’re looking forward to some space to ourselves in the coming months!

For more details on where we’re heading next, check out Cross Island Farms. I’ll be teaching some yoga and Aram will help organize and market campsites. Both of us will harvest and plant and work and play, listening to Christmas music all the while and exploring the topography of the 1000 Islands region of upstate New York in bundles of wool sweaters and mittens. And we look forward to connecting with most of you face to face at regular intervals over the next few months.

Namaste.

My position as a writer on suite101 was an opportunistic beginning to becoming a published writer. When I earned my first cent on an article through adsense, I was ecstatic. Eighty-three cents later, morale is waning and so is inspiration for more articles.

That, along with increasingly cramped-feeling quarters and the more insistent challenges of communal living pushed me into a lone morning in the city and here I am, sitting at Tequila Bookworm with the hipsters of Toronto, sipping on my fourth-too-many cup of coffee, alternating between writing non-suite101 articles and re-reading “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” (Tom Robbins).

Maybe I felt like confessing mountain biking and urban farm scavenger hunts are not the entirety of our experience on the road. But don’t let my brooding mood dissuade you from believing that it is most of it.

Back to watching SEO videos…ay yi yi…

Early on in our days of togetherness Lauren and I kidnapped a couple of mountain bikes from my dad’s garage in Indianapolis and took them to the trails just off of 96th Street west of Allsonville Road.  Mountain biking has remained a staple in our constant efforts to live a life of adventure.  So today when we woke to what might as well have been a sunny summer morning our day’s activities were all too obvious.

We did expect to find some good leisure riding amidst the Don Valley network of trails.  We did not expect to find a mountain biker’s playground.  But there we were, tires gripping the yellow fallen leaves as we careened around corners and dared the most devastating of descents.  Boldly we navigated obstacles and ramped over logs.  We pumped and perspired our way up steep hills and squeezed and skidded our needling way along narrow single track hugging a harrowing ravine.  We returned unscathed, but not unaffected.  It was epic.  And we are our own heroes.

We never would have found the trails if it weren’t for our friend Reid (part time skateboarder, part time junior high school Casanova) who told us about them on our way to Riverdale Farm yesterday.  At Riverdale we enjoyed a less-than-friendly, no-holds-barred boys against girls scavenger hunt.  As an outside observer you would have seen two small groups scampering around frantically finding the answers to such questions as: “What do you call a young swan?” and “What is a male horse called who no longer has male parts?”  You may have been accosted as the groups interviewed fellow farm goers in order to discover just what it is that a group of geese is called.  The girls won.  And we were all inaugurated into the royal family of fun.

The night prior to our Riverdale escapades we took our kid friends to the movies, using their escort as an excuse to see Where the Wild Things Are. They enjoyed it.  We were transformed by it.  Left wordless and howling with delightful melancholy upon its conclusion.  Once we found our voices again we began peeling through the layers of what happened in Max’s story and really haven’t stopped talking about it since.

Punctuating this weekend was an elliptic picnic in a pile of leaves near the sleeping squirrels in St. James park…

Daylight Savings Time could not have granted us an extra hour on a more perfect day this past Sunday. We returned to Grapefruit Moon Café for brunch in celebration of our two months of living here in Toronto. We spent our wait for a table walking through the neighborhoods of charming houses and parks that literally glow with the golden maple leaves of fall. After discovering yet another village-neighborhood post-brunch we settled into a high-ceilinged coffee shop (Crema: a café that succeeds in adopting the IKEA’ish décor without the hospital’ish sterility) for a couple of hours of reading and internet. The evening ended with homemade apple pie and whipped cream and several happy people cuddled together on the couch, watching Madmen.

Since then DST has been less kind. The pink hue in the grey sky around 5:00pm is a crushing blow that the sun will not actually make an appearance for the day. We’re trying to wake up earlier and capture what’s left of mild chill and sunlight before winter sets in for good. This past Monday we traveled to Hamilton, an unappealing city an hour outside of Toronto, to visit McMaster University. Aram had an appointment with a professor in their Religious Studies Department. I met back at the building 30 minutes after his appointment and ended up waiting for another hour on a bench outside of the ivy laden stone building with the iron door, reading Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Picturesque.

The wait was a good sign. Aram had as helpful a meeting as could be hoped for. He was passed off to the department head and gathered up some language with which to speak of his hopes, some hints for filling out applications, and some confidence for going ahead with the bureaucratic nightmare of academia (not an easy thing to acquire when most of the application process is spent self-addressing envelopes and chasing down various U.S./Canada stamps for reference forms). It was nice to take a field trip away from home for an afternoon, especially to enjoy a jumbo veggie dog on a college campus. We’ll forgive Hamilton its lack of charm for now.

Toronto is finally becoming familiar enough a place that we are able to make more of our own discoveries, instead of being led or guided into them. It’s fun when you get to offer new findings to people who have lived here for a while. Our weeks are varied between days of mundane routine, indicating our settled life here, and days of adventure and discovery, because we can’t forget that we will not be here much longer.

Which reminds me, for those of you who do not know, it looks as though we will be crashing in Indy from Christmas through the end of February. There is a teacher training in Chicago I will be traveling to on the weekends, and we have a friend who needs his apartment babysat for a couple of months. We are eager to go back for a while, have our lives inundated by the birthday parties, family gatherings and unannounced social events that our lives have missed these past few months. Nuit Blanche is cool, First Fridays are cooler.

Five nights ago: asleep beneath the stars just shy of  Bush Head Canyon by the Paria River.

Four nights ago: aboard Dealta’s red-eye flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis.

Three nights ago: atop a couch in the Zigler basement.

The past two nights: back in Toronto, next to Lauren, cozily where I belong.

Dad and I had an incredible and relatively effortless trip through the desert canyon, passing our days in fine company with rich conversation.  After a fabulous afternoon and evening in Indy with my mom, nieces, and siblings (complete with Broad Ripple’s Taste, jewelry making, a chili cook off, and the traditional shared cup of Einstein’s coffee with mom) I podcasted my way back to Toronto just in time to intercept a bounding hug from Lauren as she was finishing her Saturday evening yoga class.

Yesterday was entirely devoted to celebrating the birthday that I had missed while in the canyon.  It was mesmerizing.  Think corner cafe brunch amidst the Sunday morning bustle.  A city stroll via vintage shop browsing (including a men’s heroically pastel, hand knit, zip-up sweater — oogled, but unpurchased).  An urban farm (horses, donkey’s, sheep, goats, pigs, roosters, and hens at home right next to the highway).   A quiet walk through a beautiful cemetery sprinkled with the yellow of autumn’s surrendered leaves.  Home made pizza.  Cuddles.

It feels very good to be back.

pastel sweater

Here is an article I wrote for suite101.com–a very cool website that collaborates with writers to produce massive amounts of articles while providing the resources of editorial feedback (and even a little money) for those writers. This article is a version of my previous post, but I thought you might want to check it out as an update on the latest evolution in my writing career

Healthy Food for the Homeless

Newest, coolest Torontonian experience [other than the best. birthday. ever. including brunch at Bonjur Brioche, yoga classes, downtown shopping, homemade sushi, drinks and dessert at the Beer Bistro and gallons of lovin from around the world]:

Volunteering at The Stop.

My first introduction to The Stop was when I met Scott at a Thanksgiving gathering last week. He is a chef for The Stop.  He spends most of his time in the Community Kitchen, making lunches and other meals for homeless people on the west side of Toronto. The Stop also has a drop in and a food bank. They are a part of the movement to introduce healthy, organic produce to the diets of lower class and homeless people. They have community gardens, they receive donations from local farms and then people like Scott create gorgeous, nutritious and creative meals.

I spent some time in the kitchen with Scott and a few other volunteers on Monday morning. We made pasta with roasted vegetables, homemade coleslaw and roasted mushrooms. We chopped and chatted, cleaned dishes and managed the ovens. As someone who is committed to my own sense of healthy eating, local consumerism and overall food-awareness, it was satisfying to be involved in something that not only helped another person out, but that helped them in a way that matched my own standards for myself.

I am interested in the way in which healthy living can become more accessible to under privileged people. I find myself right on the line of this divide. On the one hand I have all of my needs met and I have choices regarding how I want to meet those needs. I choose when, where, how and what I eat. Similarly I have the luxury of physical activity, sufficient sleep, taking vitamins etc. And yet there are things I wish I had easier access to. Organic and local food is much more expensive than the alternative, yoga classes are a steep expense. I would like to be committed, as I find ways to keep these things in my own life, to share the access with people who are more limited in their options.

That’s why I love places like The Stop, here in Toronto and Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard in Bloomington. They have a high priority for high quality. In using farmer’s markets, community gardens and people who care, they are matching the standards between what we offer ourselves and what we offer to others. Because high quality is not just a status symbol. It’s essential to a sustainable life.

Greg and Margaret Paul, along with Margaret’s three children and another out of town family, invited the four of us over for a Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner last night. The only particularly Canadian thing about it was the date. They prepared an enormous Turkey, yams, squash, cranberry sauce, stuffing and all sorts of autumn pie to finish it off. I contributed a roasted pumpkin salad and Chris created an apple pie that was bursting at its flaky seams with fresh McIntosh apples. It was Thanksgiving with all the trimmings:the kids table, the adult table, the mountain of dishes, the oven maneuvering, the political conversations around the table and a sleepy walk home.

Thanksgiving is not only a sentimental holiday based on gratitude and gathering, but it indicates the end of the harvest. This is perhaps my favorite time of the season to wander the stalls at the farmer’s market. We went to Evergreen Market at the Brickworks on Saturday. The purple carrots, warty gourds and hot cider represent what has passed and what is coming–the long time in the ground through the summer, storing nutrients for the dark and barren season ahead. There is something primal in walking around the produce booths. Your hands involuntarily reach for the plumpest potatoes. I long to be an adoptive parent to all the bulbous squash, long to tuck them into cans and jars and store them in a cellar along side dried herbs and vintage wine bottles.

Fall is notoriously nostalgic. Maybe it is because it’s my birthday season, but every scent, taste and cozy hug floods me with some unnameable memory or makes me long for a friend or family member. There’s a new song I’ve come to love. One of the lyrics says:

“Everybody says you’ve changed. Of course you’ve changed, you’ve changed, you’ve changed, your mind’s been rearranged. Leaves become most beautiful when they’re about to die, when they’re about to fall from trees, when they’re about to dry up.”

Brian and Chris, two fellow travelers, stayed with us in Toronto for a couple of nights last week.

We spent an evening talking about The Venus Project and what life might be like without money, without scarcity, and with a daily curbside space shuttle service.

The next night they clued us in to one of Toronto’s less publicized activities.   Manhunt, urban hide ‘n’ seek for (almost) grown ups.  It was… less than we had hoped it might be.  Don’t let our experience dissuade you though.  We cut loose about five minutes after the start time, which was, I’m sure, about five minutes before it really got fun.

Toronto was their first stop on a month long road trip.  With a 30-day Greyhound pass in their pocket and a handful of couchsufering contacts in their inbox, they’ve set out to capture life on the road.  Actually capture it.  With video camera and commentary, these aspiring filmmakers are onto something that might be big… we’ll keep you posted.

Manhunt’s failure left a gap in our schedule, which we gladly filled with a stroll on Yonge and a stop at the Tim Horton’s just around the corner from Dundas Square.  A few Timbits later (thanks Mom and Ed!) and our morale peaked yet again.

Which we typically take as a perfect segue for bedtime.

“Nuit Blanche: an all-night contemporary art thing” took over the city Saturday evening through Sunday morning. From the Distillary District to Queen West and City Centre there were venues, galleries, shows, live music, installations and thousands of people milling the streets. It was a pedestrian affair and our drive from home to the west side of the city took twice as long as usual even at midnight. The objective to make a less visually based 2009 event included a Monopoly game with real Canadian currency, dance performances on the brick streets of the Distillery District and a real time slide show of picture texts that people sent from all over the city (reminiscent of “Post Secret”) A few of our favorite installations from the evening included:

Koilos by Michael Christian ; Hamish Kippen photography ; and the giant LiteBrite in Trinity Park on Queen West

Needless to say it assuaged our remorse over missing Lotus Fest this year in Bloomington. Sad face.

Sunday we headed out of the city in search of apples. Campbell’s Apple Orchard in Prince Edward County provided an appropriately enchanted experience. 10 lb bag in hand, I rode on Aram’s shoulders, picking all of the highest apples on the trees, but not before indulging in my first caramel apple of the season (Hark! Childhood!). Onward from the orchard we stopped at a couple of wineries (Sandbanks Winery–think A Walk in the Clouds minus Keanu Reeves’ bad acting. Volunteers pick their grapes each harvest season complete with live music and complementary lunch. Unfortunately, there’s no foot stomping). By 6pm we had consumed only apples and wine. Much to our delight, George’s Fish and Chips, which operates out of an old bus, indulged whatever appetites we had yet to fill for the weekend, sending us on a quiet and satisfied drive home.

And so we head into another week, our appetites for romance and magic full to the brim and thus far undisturbed by the more mundane parts of life. All I know is that I have 10 lbs of apples in the kitchen…apple pie? apple cake? apple sauce?….