2003-10-23 - 2:03 p.m.
in honor of my visit to ottawa (taken from a letter to a friend)
i'm sitting in the setting ottawa sun at the end of the canal, listening to john mayer sing about some girl and her body. being back here is incredible; it's like being in love - all the nostalgia, the excited nervousness, the desire to continually take in the entire reality of the other, the smells, colours, sounds, the whole thing. amazing. the capacity to feel that i thought i had lost comes back with an urgency that surprises me. i am not so old as i had supposed. how nice.
my excellent good friend, it was so good to see you, to talk with you, to be reminded of how much i miss you. we should live closer. we should live here, for there is something in the air that exists nowhere else i've been. it makes me think we could recover all that we misplaced in these long years... but that may very well be the tequila speaking.
my final day in our city i spent wandering alone, which was very good. if i could not share it with people who understand, it is much more enjoyable to take it in alone. i walked around the glebe, found this card in the papery, and spent the rest of the day in the national gallery avoiding anything that looked as if it could fall under the catagory of 'contemporary'. and now, i will meet my mother and david's sister, jill for dinner at dow's lake and finish off this lovely day. the only thing that could make it better would be to turn around and see you walking down the canal with one or two of the old dynasty in tow.
