Happy Valentine's Day

Almost exactly one year ago I was staying at a squatted social centre, residence and community garden on the outskirts of Barcelona. Can Masdeu, the autonomous self-sufficient commune I alluded to in my last big post, changed the way I see the world. I'm only now, a year later, beginning to understand how deep an impact my time there had on who I am as a person and the way I want to live my life. And I was barely there for a week.

It's a magical place where work means sitting outside in the garden picking carrots to eat for dinner that night. Sitting outside in the sun. Wearing a t-shirt. In the middle of February. A place where the washing machine is powered by a bicycle, and where everyone does the dishes. While I was there I noticed that the community had a group meeting scheduled, the sole purpose of which was to plan the next meeting. But I'd rather live in a world where I get to help plan the meetings, than in this world where I don't know when and where the meetings are, as if I'd be allowed to take part even if I found them.


My experience at Can Masdeu was one of innovative sustainability. A vision of the future I want to see. A concrete example I can now relay to skeptics who label me a crazy hippie with my head in the clouds. But that's only half the story. Only part of why the experience has made such an impact on who I am. The story begins with why I was even there in the first place - a loss of innocence story my high school English teacher Mrs. Douziech would be proud of.

In a fairy tale romance I had followed my Dutch Anarchist lover there. I had met him the week before in a squat in Amsterdam, and he was twelve years my senior. I couldn't make this shit up even if I tried. By all accounts it was the craziest thing I'd ever done. The most impulsive. The most liberating. Probably the stupidest. But it was exactly what I needed to do.


I was reminiscing about all of this at the beginning of this week. Remembering how it had felt to surrender to life, to follow my heart. To experience an intense connection with someone I barely new and to not question it. To not worry about who he was or why it was happening or what it all meant. But to just trust the chemistry and to follow it to wherever it would take me.

While our romance was short lived, and although he plays no significant part in my life anymore other than the odd update email, that relationship will always stand out as one of the most important experiences of my life. For what he taught me about life and about love, and for the places, people, and ideas he introduced me to.

And after all this reminiscing, I got to thinking about the relationship I had been in for the last couple months. It was nice. I was comfortable. He was a good friend. But I had never intended it to become what it did. I never intended to be his girlfriend. There was never anything passionate and exciting about it. I was never swept off my feet. But I enjoyed his company and was happy to have someone to curl up with and to watch Battlestar Galactica with late into the night. Before I met him I had been desperately lonely, pining for the friends and life I had left behind in Scotland. Something about the normative monogamous relationship sucked me in. But that night of reminiscing made me realize that something was missing. That I had been settling for something nice but not wonderful. And I wrote this in my Journal:

"I need more space. I need my sandwich back. There's too much dependence, too many assumptions. I'm bored. I'm feeling stifled. Labeled. Boxed in."

Twenty four hours later he dumped me. So I guess we were both about ready to move on.


The night we broke up I went over to my best friend's house for celebratory gin and tonics, and of course to cry a bit. I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't sad. But it was a nice letting go sadness. I missed him, but it felt right to let him go.

I woke up at five the next morning with a tinge of a hangover and couldn't get back to sleep, so I lay in bed for two hours thinking. What I realized was that what I was most upset about was not about losing this guy, but that now that my distraction was gone, I would have to deal with the fact that I'm actually really unhappy living in Edmonton. I've tried to make it my home, I've tried to put down roots, I've tried to skate on it's surface, and nothing I do makes my existence here pleasurable or meaningful. My relationship with Edmonton is very much like my relationship that just ended. It's comfortable and easy. Edmonton is like a good friend that will always be here for me when I need it, but there's nothing passionate or exciting about it. I want to fall in love with a place. I want a city to sweep me off my feet and show me a way of life I can't turn down.

I have a one way ticket booked to London for the beginning of June. I don't think I'm coming back again.