I haven't written in a while

That's not true, I just haven't written for myself in a while, but I have been writing a lot. And here I am tonight, with a need to write, drinking red wine from these pink glasses I found at the thrift store. They're called coupe glasses. Do you know the kind I'm talking about, supposedly they were modelled after Marie Antoinette's breasts. I don't know if that helps your mental picture of it, I for one, have never seen Marie Antoinette's breasts.

I wasn't going to buy them, but I was calling my friend Sarah. My best friend Sarah, all the way in Vancouver now. She was stealing raspberries from her neighbours garden at the time, while eyeing some unripe persimmons, and as she did this, she told me Cindy you have to buy them, and not only that but you have to buy the whole set. And so I did, and she was 100% right. They looked much more beautiful in my kitchen lightning, and after some quick googling, it turns out they're vintage from the 1980s. Which I guess isn't that long ago. Today I was thinking to myself, when you think of 1960, how long ago does it feel like? My instinct is 40 years, but can you believe it's actually 60. Is this what getting old feels like.

Yesterday night we had thunderstorm. They used to frighten me as a child, and to be honest, even yesterday, the fleeting possibility of having our building struck by lightning flashed through my mind, and quickly passed. I felt quite cozy and decided to read, and this lead to me finishing a book that I had no intention of staying up to finish. At this point it was 2:30 AM and I found myself leaning over my windowsill and counting the number of windows that were still lit up. It was 2. I wondered what it was that kept them up.

I feel much happier these days, even though I was still mildly stressed a few hours ago. I find that I am able to forget it much easier. I'm running. I'm baking fresh bread. And eating it, all of it, so it cancels out the running. I'm getting better at it, today I made a loaf and cut through it and it was crispy and steaming. I live slow enough to notice these things now.

As I was reading last night, I was listening to a Spotify playlist that someone had made to listen to specifically during a rainstorm. A song played. A very familiar one. It's the only song I skip, or otherwise only allow myself to indulge in for about 10 seconds before I need to pause and go to the next one. Don't get me wrong, I love the song. But let me explain. Maybe with an example. In 2013, I did an exchange in Quebec City. I lived in my own room with my own washroom, and so I bought my own bottle of soap. The smell was called Kitchen Apple and it smelled like crisp sour Granny Smith apples. I used it all summer, and it had been, up to that point, the best summer of my life; leaving it was difficult. Until I discovered back home that somehow, the smell of the soap reminded of that summer. It was the most vivid form of memory that I had unintentionally brought back, simply because I could not finish that bottle of soap. I still have the bottle, but never use it. I will smell it maybe once a year, but not too often as I worry that doing so would replace the memory that still remains trapped in the soap bottle. This song was the equivalent of that soap. I heard it when I first got to Lyon in 2017, I remember sitting in a friends dorm, I remember the way the sun spilled in, I remember sitting on the floor because they had no furniture, eating the food we each brought. The three of us had all just arrived from Canada a few short days ago, and none of us knew the city yet, and there was a little bit of unease, unfamiliarity that had settled in us in these past few days, and it was the first time we were able to get together and share in this lingering unfamiliarity. I remember this moment, because the unfamiliarity felt oddly familiar. When I first came to Canada, the first place I slept in was my mom's dorm room. She was a PHD student at the time, and that feeling of impermanence was a palpable presence, one that you could not ignore in a dorm room barely big enough for one person. I remember that day so clearly actually, my first day in Canada. I hadn't seen my mom in months, and when I arrived she bought me hair clips and a plastic tea set and fed me peach yoghurt. But I digress. Back to the song, I heard it again last night and had to skip as I usually do. To my relief, in those first 10 seconds, I was reminded that the memory still remained sharp. In that memory, I realized something new, that my longing for that summer was for a different reason than I had always thought, it was for something much bigger, it was for those moments spent sitting in sunlit rooms, empty of furniture, and what I discovered in myself in those moments, scattered throughout that summer.

I feel calm now. I write, and the problems of everyday life feel much smaller. How can they matter when feelings as big as this exist in the world, and somehow allow themselves to be captured and pinned down by simple words.