*and friendship, and stupidity.
Yes. My passport is expired.
It didn’t seem to matter last weekend, when Sara and i drove down to Seattle with Roy in the back seat. He waved gleefully out the window at the border guard, toddler-shouting: “Hi! … Hi!”
She smiled, waved back, and sent us on our merry way.
Not so yesterday, when i arrived at the train station, without a car, without a female companion, and without a smiling child to distract from my otherwise obvious malevolent criminality. My mom was babysitting Roy. Sara was already in Seattle; she’d had the day off and went shopping. Her own expired passport had (again) presented no obstacle when she crossed the border in a rented vehicle after breakfast. But i was just one lowly soul in the long line waiting to board a sold-out southbound evening train.
A thick-necked man’s body filled the blue uniform that sat in front of me. It delivered an error message with affectless automaticity:
[ … EXPIRED … ].
Me: “Yes, but we were allowed to cross just last weekend…”
(A refreshed error message displays on the face-like screen of the man-like interface.)
Me: “But… it’s our anniversary.”
Of course, Americans might be forgiven for fixating mechanically on their own unromantic anniversary this weekend. Forgiving them, however, does not imply ignoring or excusing the folly of their fear-based policies.
Two hours earlier, i had exchanged goodbyes with my new co-workers, each of whom, in their loveliness, offered thoughtful acknowledgments of the reason for my planned weekend retreat. (“Eight years! Congratulations. That takes a lot of work.”) We know friendship is a species of love, because it sees the world in those terms.
Tomorrow marks the earth’s eighth orbit since a day that changed my life irrevocably… when i sat down next to a very pretty girl on the bus.
~~~
When i met Sara, i was immediately disarmed and enchanted. Our conversation began on the long commute up to Burnaby Mountain, and continued through the morning into the afternoon. It became an email exchange late that night, and a phone call the following evening — a call that lasted until morning.
Two days later, we met after sunset at the east end of False Creek, to walk and talk. And to stop in a symmetrical spot along the seawall, to share a long, luxurious embrace that became an unprecedented, soft, delicious kiss that turned the air around us into curtains of private twilight. The autumn evening felt like spring, and we slow-danced under the Granville bridge.
I fell, like a cartoon anvil, in love.
Today, eight years later — after innumerable arguments; unfathomable fights; accumulated silences that seemed like they might never end; disagreements that may remain unresolved eternally; misunderstandings mistaken for evidence of hopelessly opposed perspectives; after entering into the covenant of parenthood, braving storms of joy and horror in that responsibility; drowning together in love for our son; rediscovering time in his generous hugs; suffering the damage of subconscious conflicts; healing from hurtful outbursts; comforting each other after nightmares; continuing to excavate ever-greater vulnerabilities; clinging to shared hopes for the security of co-created lives; through euphoric sex and torturous monogamy, maintaining the danger that fuels passion; through gifts and rifts, impasses and apologies — i’m still falling.
Falling in love, banging my head on every protrusion on the endless way down.
If i wasn’t still falling in love, or following love’s spiral path, how could i ever tolerate the ubiquitous, outrageous, infuriating absurdity of human beings? How could i endure the indignities of life in a kafkaesque labyrinth of congealed stupidity and laziness? Without love, how else could someone as arrogant and eccentric, as sensitive and confused as me, ever survive?
If i wasn’t in love yesterday, how could i have persevered in the face of that chorus of uniformed morons impassively reciting an incoherent script of indifferent bureaucratese, conveying an empty and cynical lie about consistent principles and processes, and the hallmarks of a good, orderly society?
What else besides love can insulate our hearts from the incessant bombardment of hollow, pernicious pieties meant to persuade us that love matters less than polite deference to the arbitrary caprices of authority?
~~~
In an hour or two, i will meet Sara somewhere near the border.
Somehow, we will salvage this celebration, and renew our belief in a romantic ideal. We will do what we can to rekindle the furnace of an unreasonable dream that demands everything from us — impossible patience; superhuman reserves of sheer blind, stubborn will; and an endless acceptance of daily, sometimes deep, disappointments — all in exchange for just one (rare) reward: a fleeting experience of infinite truth, beauty, certainty, splendour and peace.
Each drop of such relief offsets at least eight weeks of the cruel, stupid, drudgery that constitutes most moments of our otherwise intolerable and (almost) worthless lives.
~~~
Postscript:
