a long look around
Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008
@ 12:41 p.m.
despite the sub-zero evening temperatures, i've been stargazing on every clear night. letting the wind blow through me. remembering that someone once said enduring the cold was something he did to test himself, and testing myself to see how far I can go away without ever leaving. with my eyes to the sky, as usual. the constellations are constant and familiar and as nomadic and homeless as i fear i've become, the sky reminds me of home. a glaring exception to this was last night -- i don't think anyone could watch what i saw and feel like the sky belonged to them. my neighbours knocked on our door the other day and asked me (and my now 4-person household) over for drinks. we've mostly finished our unpacking, so we didn't have anything else to do. i accepted. it turns out that it was a huge neighbourhood party. it raged into the night, my middle-aged cohorts growing increasingly loaded and racist in equal measures. bryan and i were about to excuse ourselves (we were edging toward the deck stairs) when suddenly everyone was hushing and all eyes turned to the sky. i didn't hear any conversation after that, although i'm sure there was talking. when my science teacher told me that aurora borealis were tiny electrons compelled by solar winds to collide with earth's magnetic field, i was mildly intrigued (scientifically) and mostly bored (intellectually). but that night, on the horizon and swelling upward across the sky toward the edge of the river valley was the most fantastically intriguing and un-boring natural spectacle i have ever witnessed. let me prefice my description: there is no such thing as light pollution in this part of the province. the sky at night is utterly dark on cloudy nights, and moonlight and starlight together are not enough to light the land on the clearest evenings. it is impossible to see anything at all in the world. it is terrifying and it is beautiful but most of all, it's just really (really) dark. the light that appeared on the horizon lit the sky like a searchlight. every twig on every branch in every tree, between where i was and where they were, suddenly became visible. a bright yellow fog lifted over the trees and solidified like a moving painting hung low on the periphery of earth's curve. massive and undulating ribbons of cloud shimmered as they slid, not north, but up, over and across the entire sky. they shifted constantly in shape and colour...not quickly, but in a seemless and almost deliberate motion. one moment seven wispy streaks of green reached like fingers into the stars; the next they merged and one turquoise string highlighted the sky before fading to blood-red in the upper-atmosphere. i realized that i'd stopped breathing, which was probably rude. we said goodbye and bryan took me home. the northern lights shone on. when everyone was in bed, i wrapped myself in a blanket and snuck into the yard alone, where i stood in awe for about another hour. standing on my lawn overlooking a leafy thousand mile wilderness lit dimly by the fading northern lights, i thought about all of the things i'd left behind. of the desperately alien experiences i've been enduring. trying to decide if i had been letting myself drift into isolation. northern alberta and ontario seemed to share more similarities than differences on the surface, but the opposite seems truer the longer i'm here and the closer i look. there's no language barrier, but i hardly understand what anyone's saying. my work involves the exact same elements that it always had, but i have to worry constantly about the way i'm perceived in order to retain staff. the landscape is reminiscient of the one i'm accustomed-to, but the trees are different: no hardwoods, only poplar and birch and conifer. they're not as high. it's odd to think that of everything, one thing i miss most is something as impossibly regular as foliage. the northern lights are incredible and i'd been expecting to see them eventually, but even they were strangely foreign. like a sighing secret that the evening sky didn't mean for me to see. i don't think i'll be here more than the five years of our contract. it's difficult to explain, but no matter how hard i try to belong...i just can't seem to. maybe my heart isn't in it. maybe the separated halves of my divided heart lie halfway between where i am and where i was. maybe just like aurora, none of this really belongs to me. or maybe in a general sense, nothing really ever belonged to me. maybe it does, and i'm not brave enough to claim it.