Edmontonian

Nothing here will show itself until May. Not one leaf, one petal, one stem. After a long winter and the cautious arrival of a stop/start spring, things take their time here, and they dress in layers.

...

Last time I was in Edmonton I found myself ducking behind poster poles and sliding round street corners with crowds of strangers as decoys - avoiding familiar faces in a place that had memories running thick through every gutter and drain.

Last time I was in Edmonton, it was a dry run of previous years in which I'd almost drowned. No ghosts as such - just old smells and the remembrance of waterlogged ears. Faces that distorted as light passed through layers of silt.

That was before. Three months before I took off for the desert and somehow managed to find a way through a place with no paths - my own southern Alberta badlands. That was before - and now, this visiting time, I find myself walking slow, watching the places I spent my time with roll past me as 3D postcards...or fully rendered film that shows the shells and approximate locations of all the comedy, drama and farce of those six years:

the foyer staircase I stood in, wearing an ill-fitting dress from my mum's hippy past, singing way out of my range and calling it experimental (instead of just bad)

the tree at the bus stop where the man with the awful wig would hide, every day, apologising with his eyes, too young and insecure for Patrick Stewart baldness

the grey stretch of concrete and glass through which many of my friendships and reheated rice meals passed

and the kids park where I lost my grip

there's the most uninspiring building for miles, still crouching, its head beneath its shoulders, heavy eyes open just a crack

and further down the way, a cafe tucked into a sidestreet, name changed, food rearranged and its outfit completely refitted...but still talking the same way to my tongue

the studenty bar hanging on every word that falls from the lips of Whyte Avenue and its little shops...

...of nouveau rockabilly dresses and tailored trilbys, 200-run CDs and a junk shop that's still so good at marketing that it's been convincing antiques and collectable crap into arty houses for well over a decade now

Scottish Imports sports a suggestive mannequin man in kilt and spread legs, beside can of weather worn warm Irn Bru

and next door the only vegatarian restaurant for a whole province knows that it is small and perfect

...


I can romanticise this place because I left, with no intention of ever coming back.

I knew that then, and so now I take my tourist eyes, my rose-coloured bittersweet eyes that see the bits they want to, and I glide through these old postcards with only a few companions. The ones that stuck. The ones who let me stick. The ones who've seen me at my worst and still make time for me.

Three people in this whole city. Who make me laugh and think and cry and wonder and feel that quiet, wide stretch of calm that opens up in the company of those who know me and love me well - three.

In a place that used to be full of my chaos, three is a perfect number.