11.24.2005

"with a face that would topple tidal waves"

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i sewed a red felt heart on the sleeve of a hoodie a friend gave me. b/c that's what i do. i wear my heart on my sleeve. and harbour crushes. like grudges. but crushes. for example: when i was in my first year, first semester at SFU i was still living and loving (to me this was the best time with my partner. i mean, i felt that i loved him so much that i was confident to go out into the world and meet people, amazing people, and not cheat. im not saying im a cheater. but it's an important fact and impression of where i was at that time) my partner. that semester i was taking some great classes, and one of those was a special topics archaeology class on northwest coast aboriginal art. and it was lectured by one of my favourite profs in the world, alan mcmillan. so in this class was this cute, non descript guy, who was thirty. wore "regular" clothes. jeans, t-shirts, v-neck sweaters with stripes in the middle. had scruffy short light brown hair. these intense green eyes. wore a canucks cap all the time. and sneakers. he was super skinny. but looked clean. like a "good guy". anyway, not the point. the point is that i was attracted to him with blind abandon. here he was this older, darker, scruffy, already possessing a degree in anthropology from carleton, and back at sfu to get into the museum studies program, which was, and is, now defunct. loved hockey. beer. being outside. his family was from kitwanga and we would talk about living in the north. first nations self determination. aboriginal art. cedar. weaving. he would drive me home after class and we would talk about freida diesing, or about metaphors regarding getting older and not knowing where you were going (his best example, courtesy of his father was, "you're just holding onto the stick a little too tight and it's messing up your game. just loosen up a bit and focus on the whole game, not how you handle the stick." or we'd talk about shows we had seen. wanted to go to. and he lived in new west by the hospital. and i lived on eight, by the skytrain station. and he'd drive past his house, weekly, at 10pm at night, to take me home.

okay, now this is where i think i went wrong. i felt so in love with my partner and so content with my life that the humungous crush i had on this lovely fellow was wasted because i didnt have 1. the confidence to think anything would come of it, or 2. the thought that he was actually worth dumping my boyfriend for when i had worked so hard to keep it going. then today i was mulling. like i always do. about this wonderful man i met who on our last day of archaeology together gave me a book. cedar . all about cedar. and basket weaving. and traditional ways of gathering it. i remember everything about that moment in my life. the squeaking of that rubber flooring in SFU's south aq. the echoing off of the ceiling. that horrible lighting. and him pulling the book out of his oh so sensible black messenger bag and handing it to me saying that he was in a used book shop and he saw this book that i had been talking about and that i had wanted it because i really like cedar and weaving. and i graciously accepted. being too innocent. naive. inexperienced to realize what was actually going on. and the book. it was mint. it didnt have the price pencilled in the front of the book. no nicks. no scratches. new. so nice.

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