Things I love. (28)

I love being gay.

And I love being more than gay.

I love how being gay has granted me an opportunity to discover parts about me that I wouldn't have otherwise done. The coming-out process of tackling one's own self-hatred and winning means that you have confidence to try new things out. I no longer feel bound by the ideals of manliness or gayness, or by any ideals other than being myself.

But being gay has given me an opportunity to dance with people, to laugh with people, to cry and hold and nourish the soul. It has given me confidence, torn it down, given it back. It has made me a martyr and a saint and a golden child and a black sheep. It has allowed me to sing with passion, to teach with personal experience about pain and healing, and it has made me cherish those moments of loneliness that so rarely puncture our hectic lives.

And so I will dance, I will sing, I will teach, I will climb mountains, I will free fall, and I will get back up and try again. Because I am gay. And because I am more than gay.

This is how I wanted to spend my February. As a single man I had no hands to hold or eyes to stare into on the 14th, but I had 28 days to remember what it is that I love about the world that I live in - and, by proxy, what it is that makes me feel complete. And my list just kept on growing through the month, as I had moments that I loved and wanted to add to the list but couldn't because I already had 28 items. It was a month-long reminder that there are reasons to live - reasons other than being gay or straight (though these are also reasons in and of themselves). And these reasons abound so long as you will look at the world with eyes prepared to see, ears prepared to hear, hands prepared to touch.

Loving. Learning. Living. And never ceasing.

I love being gay.

And I love being more than gay.

Things I love. (27)

I love silence.

Or, more specifically, human silence.

While in Val Marie, I could sit outside of my house and hear nothing for hours of human existence. I could see it - the town, the bright lights of distant farms. But I could hear nothing. There were no cars running the distance, no air-conditioner motors whirling in somebody's backyard. The mechanical world of never-ending noise did not exist. And it was beautiful.

Coyotes would howl. You would hear them. Slowly the reeds of grass would bend and crackle as their veins snapped under the pressure of an animal stalking its prey. Bugs, bugs, bugs - buzzing and screeching their melodies of life and death. A badger would be digging up a hole in the darkness, its eyesight so much better than ours in the dark, and you knew to avoid them rather than to investigate. The wind, calmed with the coolness of night, whispering through the night.

It wasn't completely silent, but it was beautiful.

Because there was no noise - just sound. No motors or sounds of gravel being crushed under the weight of man. Everything was absorbed into creation - and creation was absorbed into the noiselessness of nature. Nearly silent, but alive with energy.

It is a thing I have missed in the city - where there is always a human doing something and intruding on that instant of focus of thought, of reading, of nothing. And yet we mostly sleep through it, never realizing what silence is - never appreciating it and how it can cleanse our mind as water does our body.

Things I love. (26)

I love backpacking. Not in the classics, hitch-hiking across Europe kind of 1960s hippie mumbo jumbo (though I have no opposition to an experience of that sort at all). But in the wandering mountain, backcountry, distant and forgotten land kind of approach. Where you saddle up 50 pounds on your back, including your food, shelter, clothing and a few luxuries for a week, descend into the barren prairie and to the heights of a mountain or the mysteries of a forest, with no intention of returning until you've achieved your goal. Which is both based on distant, renewal, and discovery.

This is an activity I love in Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall. With snowshoes or hiking boots, naked while wading through a river (to keep your clothes from getting wet) or fully clothed to keep the cold from stealing your soul. It doesn't matter the temperature, challenge or weather, so long as my back is strong enough and my friends are willing, I shall tackle nature and be tackled in return. I rarely come home winning in this battle of human and earth, but I never come home without a smile - and without feeling as though the city, the enormous swarm of people, is foreign in a new way. Cars are alien products that I cannot and do not know how to drive, phones are communicative tools that connect very little and reveal even less.

I love backpacking, because it connects me with nature, makes me more Canadian, human and animal, and unites me with my friends. It is an experience that I will love for as long as my body will let me.

(and I most sincerely hope that whoever it is that I end up loving completely and totally in this life will love it as well...)

Things I love. (25)

I love art galleries. I find them inspiring. When I travel abroad I make sure that I go to one, two, three local galleries displaying local work. Or National Galleries, displaying local work from a vast array of history. I love watching time change with the styles and techniques - the adoption of breezy paint-strokes in the impressionists and the precise darkness of baroque religious art. The use of computers in modern-day sculture, precision and anti-precision. The works of Michelangelo and Matisse.

Art galleries allow you to see the despair of man, mixed with the joy of humanity - the perfect place to gander, be inspired, and imagine what made the artist make what you see and how it is possibly making you feel what it is you are feeling.

I love art galleries because you never leave one thinking the same way as you did when you walk in. Instead you come out and start seeing the world in the lines and details of the artist that most impressed you - trying to view the world as they do, hoping that maybe you could make something so incredible in your mind as you saw inside those four walls.

Things I love. (24)

I love cinnamon buns. In a way that can only possibly be unhealthy. I can't describe my love of how soft the dough it, or how the filling ripples out of the coiled goodness in melted rivers of sweet. But I can tell you that I once had a rule - that, for several years, whenever I saw a cinnamon bun at a coffee shop or other diner of sorts, I was required to buy it. I had to have it and try it.

And then my metabolism shifted.

And then I realized how many places sell cinnamon buns just so that people fooled by their love for them would purchase them.

And then, momentarily, I felt like a fool in love.

But I can tell you that I was (and continue to be) so rarely disappointed by buns involving cinnamon. Because I love them. And always will.

And, just for clarification, baking is a fine, fine activity. I've not been able to make a truly phenomenal batch of cinnamon buns yet, but I'm gettin' there...

Things I love. (23)

I love senior citizens. Those one's who are just looking for somebody to brighten their day, so they will sit around and wait for somebody to talk to them on a park bench - not really doing anything but looking. Walking for a bit, maybe. I love how, even though their skin sags and the wrinkles remove every hint of emotion other than a presumed longing, the moment that they are wakened into joy (of any degree) every single pore of skin, including those hiding from the sun in the darkness of the wrinkles, is bright and dancing and beaming and joyful in an absolutely beautiful way. The laugh that accompanies this is either silent or so hearty that one cannot help but to smile - and you do. Because senior citizens, our sources of wisdom and love and curmudgeonry (on the off days), are things worth loving, appreciating.

And my grandma is one of the best.

Things I love. (22)

Stars. Glowing orbs in the sky, contorting into shapes that don't really resemble anything but our imaginations. And doing this with absolute and total beauty. The milky way racing across the sky as though being dragged by the great horses of Apollo, crashing into the terran absolute on both sides into the great invisible that is the other side. Galaxies, distant and hazy and almost impossible make out with the naked eye - worlds to discover and explore.

I love the night sky. Everything that it contains. The darkness - the brightness - the darkness. Orion's belt (in winter) and the wings of Cygnus (in summer).

It makes you feel small. And young. And child-like. So much to see and explore and see again because you aren't sure you've seen it before. And just as it all starts to make sense you get the sensation that you may be on a large ship in the middle of the ocean, star chart in hand, baffled - trying to make it line up to figure out where on this god-forsaken planet you are. And where you need to be.

It is as though the stars contain all the wonders and dangers of life while also being the metaphor for it.

Things I love. (21)

I love dancing. I have a theory that dancing is complete freedom, something that people always say when tearing up on "So You Think You Can Dance" about how dancing defines them. Oh! how I believe them. Ever since Leanne Womack's "I Hope You Dance" came out, I wanted to dance and dance and dance.

While dancing, I love the feeling of rhythm, the feeling of exhaustion, the refusal to leave the dance floor because the song being played is so fantastic. And then refusing with the next song because it is equally fantastic. I love the way your body collapses once you leave the dance-floor, tired beyond tired and wanting nothing more than rest - all the while knowing that in another 5 minutes you'll be back on the dance floor for more - where, just as before, you will mouth along to all the songs you know and dance to the one's you don't (mostly those from Europe) until you've figured out the words.

I hate how the morning after your ears are not quite right. They ringringringringring. But this is a case of when the means totally justify the ends.

Also, ballroom dancing is a total joy.

Things I love. (20)

I love soccer. Really, any team sport will do. But soccer is unique. Something about the experience of using one's feet to make magic happen - a game where you always have to use your team-mates and cannot manage on your own. It is a game where you have to perform at your peak at all times, using ever ounce of athleticism in your body to ensure you are not letting your team down.

And it is a game where goals are so rare that getting one, and winning as a result, feels like a real accomplishment.

Soccer truly is the beautiful game.

Things I love. (19)

I love nudity. Or, to be more specific, I love being naked. Even being nearly naked is wonderful - but being naked is a truly wonderful experience. Not because I claim to be a particularly beautiful person or because I like to look at other people being naked but because there is something about the feeling of being naked that is refreshing.

Things I love. (18)

Like all people who have been raised in the Canadian Prairies, I bear one love/hate sensation that returns every year for at least 5 months. Personally, this relationship is mostly defined by love.

I love snow.

I hate it when it first arrives, but it grows on me throughout the season - until it is, at this point, absolutely stunning. To the point that I forget what grass looks like until it finally breaks through its white prison cell in April or May. I love the way it sounds beneath your feet as you walk through a field of fresh sparkling crystals, and the way that it absorbs sound. The world becomes still, covered in a blanket, slumbering. Beautiful in its sleep.

I love the promise of snow-shoeing, and cross-country skiing, and skating, and sledding, and watching hockey, and walking around town the see the ice sculptures, and attending winter festivals, and drinking at an ice bar, and curling (and just watching curling with my grandmother), and making forts with my god children (please never let them age, for my sake). I love the memory of making piles of snowballs to throw that some unsuspecting victim - hiding the pile in my backyard for just the moment when I will unleash my terror on my neighbour or my mother.

When there is snow on the ground, there is a reason to be outside.

Things I love. (17)

Dogs. I love dogs. I always have - but my love grew exponentially when, at the age of eight, a new neighbour moved into a house down the street and brought with her a pack of Golden Retrievers and a recently born litter of pups. What absolutely stunning animals they were. For weeks I watched them through the chain-linked fence, and then she invited me in to play with them and handle the 3 week old scrunch-faced animals with care, and then (years later) she invited me to house and dog sit for her. And now her children are my godchildren (though this is really tangential to my love of dogs).

My own dog is blind and deaf, and aging rapidly (as is expected of animals you have loved for fourteen years), and I don't expect him to see another Christmas. But I love him too - there is nothing like sitting on the stairs of my house in the summer, with the light of the window beaming through the stained glass art that my father delicately constructed and dancing is shades of amber and gold on the hardwood floor below. I will sit there, read a book in one hand and pet him with the other. And he will lie - contented. For hours. I miss him more than anything else at home when I am away. He may actually be my best friend.

Things I love. (16)

I love road trips, the longer the better. It is an experience so rarely shared between friends and strangers these days - when you are forced into a small compartment and have no option but to find means of entertaining each other through conversation. Road trips are where relationships are made and friends discover new things about each other. And they are infinitely more entertaining than an airplane ride - you get to see so much, with the freedom to stop and gander at new and previously found beauties.

I think I would like train rides in Europe too.

Things I love. (15)

I really do love eyes. Big ones, small ones. Aggressive or docile. Eyes are not only the window to a soul, but they have the potential to shine somebodies personality. I have not yet found another part of the human body that can tell you so much about how somebody feels and, at the same time, be the vessel into which you release your own soul and feeling. Eyes are everything human, animal, animate and living.

Things I love. (14)

I love the human body. For all of the right reasons, and for all of the wrong reasons. First the right. It is intricate, it is detailed, it is an object of creativity. I am fascinated by the linkage of muscle to bone and bone to cartilage, and nerve ending to nerve ending. Second the wrong. The body responds - and oh how it responds. We are people - we are individuals. We are masters and victims of our daily temples, and it is for them and against them that we live. We can feel touch. But, most stupefying of all, we can feel love.

Things I love. (13)

I love the moment when the power goes out in the middle of something that is of immense importance. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it is like a scream from the world. In the immediate isolation comes the realization that whatever it was that you were doing was not really that important. Not so important to call the power company and get angry with your power supplier for something that is likely beyond their control. And then you can step outside. Relax. Walk.

Things I love. (12)

I love the flickering of a candle. The way that it dances, and the world sways with it in complete awe of its form. I love to imagine that there are people out there who are like candles, and I know that I have seen them around me because they are the kind of people that you can't stop watching. Candles are deserving of our love.

Things I love. (11)

I love Christmas with my family. Every year there is a puzzle that must be tackled and a new board game to learn how to play. I love when the puzzle isn't finished at the end of the holiday so my mother and I must sit down together, in silence for hours, studying and placing pieces diligently. It is an act of passion and perfection. And those hours in silence are those moments when I love my mother most - all thanks to Christmas.

Things I love. (10)

I love the vast prairie. It is not mountains, and in contrasting them it tells me so much more about my existence than I have yet discovered. It is subtle in its changes. It requires tender alertness and awareness of everything that is seen, felt and inhaled. I love that about the prairies - the fresh air and the freedom to inhale. And the storms, which, simply because they are so grand, can only possibly be limited to the prairies of the world.

Things I love. (9)

I love the theory of music. I study it on my own. I take the pieces I am playing or singing, limiting myself to masterworks of many eras, and study intently how music is possible in some places but not others. I read texts on music theory. Not often, but often enough to keep me aware of what is taking place when I listen to a new piece. And it makes me admire composers so much more. I love music theory.

Things I love. (8)

I love that moment of secret when, late at night, I start reading my magazines about fine-crafted carpentry. Not as a distraction but as a way of figuring out how things have been made, and then as a way of imagining how I can make things in the future. I'm almost getting ready to draw out a blanket chest for my father and I to make together. He'll have no idea that it is something that I want to do when I present it to him. He doesn't know that I love making things, and seeing them used, and knowing that I was a part of the production. I am an industrialist at heart.

A break in the theme....

"Dear Neal:

It is my sincere pleasure to inform you that the Graduate Program Committee is recommending to the Simon Fraser University Senate Graduate Studies Committee your admission to the Master's program for the Fall 2011 term... ... Professor Mark Leier [head of the History Department] has expressed an interest in acting as your supervisor."

- Mary-Ellen Kelm
Graduate Program Chair, Department of History, Simon Fraser University

I really, really did not want to break the theme. I like this series. And it is going somewhere important (in due time, like all of my series...). But when you've got something to celebrate, like getting into the graduate school and program that you so desperately wanted to get into, any series should be disturbed...

Things I love. (7)

I love discovery - finding things that have been found before but by different minds and hands and eyes and feet. That moment of first encounter, when your mind is racing to understand the implications of newness. I find it happens most when researching for history papers. Discovering that somebody had an addiction to alcohol, or that France in the 1790s was actually a collection of small states rather than an organized, functioning nation of one people. But it happens all the time.

Things I love. (6)

I love the village of Hoddevik, in Norway. It is the birthplace of my great-grandfather, and it is a place that I have had the honour of visiting. Beautiful is a word too small to explain that tiny town of 30 inhabitants. I can remember that moment when you just turn the corner, go over the ridge, and then descend the mountainside in your car, on the road built by Nazi slaves, and you see the unending ocean in the background. In the foreground you are bombarded by green, grasses and mosses and lichens that grow year round in the warm, salt-infused, moist air. You see yellow houses surrounded by trees imported from British Columbia because of their resilience to wind. And I also saw a Canadian flag on a flag-pole, waving to me and welcoming me to a land that felt like home even though it was nothing like home.

Things I love. (5)

I love to play my piano. To sing and play my piano. To sit and watch somebody else sing, or play their piano, or sing and play their piano. It is the most humbling thing I have ever encountered, the piano. Nothing has caused me more heartache and excitement in the past 5 years than discovering a piece, playing it for months to the point of perfection, then hearing a recording and realizing there is so much more to learn. And then doing what I can to learn it. I love the piano.

Things I love. (4)

I love mountains.

Things I love. (3)

I love watching parents in public in that moment when their children are having too much fun, making too much noise - and just on the brink of drawing more attention to the family than the parent wants. Because I love seeing the happiness in children, I love imagining the love of that mother or father for their child, I love seeing joy. I smile - and wish I could tell the parent to let their child continue because their joy is brightening my day.

Things I love. (2)

I love the feeling when you are just leaving the gym after doing an hour of cardio. Muscle work-outs make the body cry. Cardio makes the body surge with an energy that makes you feel like you are six inches taller just for that 5 minute walk to the car. It is so refreshing.

Things I love. (1)

I love a good book. A really good book. Just "acceptable" is not worth my time - and unfortunately I have spent time reading more than a couple "acceptable" books. There are so many worlds to traverse, authors and minds, philosophies and ideas locked in the intimate papers of the imagined for me to continue spending my time with the "acceptable". Stellar books are lovely.