A friend of mine gave me a book for Christmas with the enscription that she had found it to be beautiful, comforting and helpful and hoped that I would as well. With those words in mind, I read the book, looking for phrases and words and ideas that might have inspired her enscription. I've been carrying the book around with me ever since, underlining phrases and highlighting passages that I have found meaningful and writing out little notes to stimulate myself.
In particular, there is one page that deals with solitude:
"But if then you notice that it is great, rejoice because of this; for what (ask yourself) would solitude be that had no greatness; there is but one solitude and that is great and not easy to bear, and to almost everybody come hours when they would gladly exchange it for any sort of intercourse, however banal and cheap, for the semblance of some slight accord with the first comer, with the unworthiest....."
(Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet)
It goes on to propose the greatness of solitary moments and to suggest that we should embrace and learn from time spent by ourselves.
I have spent the past four years in a daze of movement, socialization and on a constant chase for any possible new high, only to realise that none of this really completes me. I have grown exhausted from all of the moving, the conversations dried up and grew meaningless with no time spent reflecting upon them and each high was followed by yet another low (and I am not solely referring to drugs here, just for clarification). It is a cycle that I only escaped by putting nearly a continent between myself and the situation. Fortunately for every low moment, I do have countless meaningful memories from this phase of my life and I have been growing into some semblance of the person that I want to become.
What my last four years, primarily the Toronto years, lacked was solitude. I had found a place in which I finally belonged, a place in which I could lose myself in the anonymity that a city of four million people affords and with that freedom, I felt like I had to take advantage of every situation that I was presented with. I entered Toronto this naive, painfully unsure, black-clad teenager who was desperately seeking the self that she had occasionally glimpsed but as of yet been unable to fully realise; I left Toronto a more confident, blond-haired self-confessed gypsy who was ready to embrace her dreams. I know this paragraph sounds sentimental, and hell, it is, but the city definitely brought out a side of me that was able to feel and express emotions that I had previously thought only happened to other people.
I began to explore other people's potential and creativity as I seeked out little underground haunts and scenes to make my own. I critiqued other people's thoughts and art and developed ideas about what I like and don't like. It was the start of my personal exploration.
What I hope to now acheive in my Vancouver years, is an exploration of my own creativity and potential. I've "settled" into a place where inspiration is all around me and the possibility of solitude is a real, viable option.
I so often regret leaving Toronto and I long to go back to the place that became, really, the closest to a home that I have ever experienced. I have 18 years of life in Spruce Grove, but it feels less of a home to me; I did not choose it as I chose Toronto. There are still days when I desperately miss all that I had in Toronto. My old house and the freedom that it represented for me and the rooms that my friends and I decorated and later hosted parties in, and the bedroom which was truly all mine, with the walls that I painted grey and that changed to a lilac in dusk's light. My lunchtime sushi meals with my coworkers-turned-friends and evening nachos with the best friend that I could finally tell everything to. I miss the familiarity of Queen Street, the community; The Drake Hotel, right next to my old apartment, where I spent a stolen night with a boy that I would never see again and years later, with another boy that I had fallen quickly and deeply in lust with; Further east on the street was the Bovine, the bar that I had a love/hate relationship with and yet, there is no single other place that holds more memories for me. So many of my lasting relationships were weaned on Jager and coke in the early hours of the morning in the back room of that bar. The Bovine with it's tiny black stage and trinket-and-steel-wire covered walls and private club-style entrance
IS my Toronto, it was the life that I was searching for and also the community that most embraced me. In the midst of all the monochrome and rebellion, my black and purple streaked hair and lip ring seemed to be the password to a new reality. Late nites soaked with alcohol and smeared lipstick and a revolving cast of characters that would make my mother cringe.
Yes, Toronto with all of it's rough edges was a time for me to grow up and grow into myself. Vancouver for me is going to be an exploration of who I am and what that really means, and what I am capable of, on my own. I realise now that this requires solitude and I am slowly learning to succumb to evenings by myself, with tea and a book or a pad of paper and a lot of developing ideas.
Strange ideas, in fact.
