Goodbye, my love.

Submitted entry: Today marked what may be the last battle between two distinct and contradictory parts of my self image. What happened today? The Canadian election? Well yes, but that’s not it. Seeing Fahrenheit 9/11? Nope, though more on that later.

Nope, today we actually completed the giveaway of our one car. Some of you may be able to understand the significance of this (Arlene, for example) while others might need a bit of clarification. To clarify: As Arlene pointed out the other day, I am a person who has love affairs with cars. Sometimes they’re fickle, one night stands, sometimes they’re cut short (I still mourn the loss of my 1984 Toyota 4WD station wagon) and other times they last for years. If I behaved the same way with my two legged partners as I do with my four wheeled friends my face would be permanently red from the slaps of jilted loves. In the seventeen years I have been able to drive I have had at least fourteen cars not including long term rentals.

Today, though, I gave away what may be the last car I own. And here is where the distinct and contradictory part comes in. Everyone who reads this journal knows me as a person who is fairly environmental conscious - or at least concerned. I have the best of intents, anwyay. I also like to think of myself as fairly non-classist. This is why, though, many people we know were rather shocked and surprised to see me drive back from New Mexico in a 1991 Mercedes Benz 420 SEL - a car that guzzles gas like a fiend (15-20 mpg of premium only at best) and veritably screams classist.

So what did I see in it then? Well, to be brutally honest even with myself, I saw me in it. Yes, to paraphrase from the first Shrek movie - I was compensating for something (no, not that something. The car was fun to be seen in. Not that it wasn’t fun to drive and very comfortable on long trips.

Anyway, the idea to give the car away came to us in January. And while I’d like to say it was a beurocratic nightmare to get it out of the country taking months of paperwork to send away, this is far from true. If I had worked at it it could have been gone by mid-February. But I couldn’t part with it that easily. I always found something better to do than send out the title or get the notarized letter authorizing the people to go back through customs with it.

Finally, though, I packaged up all the paperwork, told Sage to mail it out as I might be blind to the bright red mailboxes while I carried it, and waited for the call. And finally it did, and so I headed downstairs to make sure the car still started after sitting for almost six months. I sat down and had every simultaneous car emotion all at once both reminding me why I hated to part with it, and why I was better off without it.

Sitting down, I turned the key and it reluctantly started and ran a little roughly bringing back the anxiety I often felt whenever the slightest thing started to go wrong with it (you think I’m a hypochondriac about myself, you should see me with a car), but then once it started, I sat and listened to the radio and remembered why I liked driving.

Since I was old enough to drive, being in a car was my refuge where I could be fully alone with my thoughts. If I was angry or sad, driving around with good music never failed to perk me up. And if I was happy, all the better. It was my place to get my head together on the way to work, and my place to decompress on the way home. As a kid it was where my best friend and I would drive about talking through our troubles. It was the place I’d go to drive when the walls of my room were too thin to shut out the sound of my drunken parents arguing.

And so leaving that behind was hard. The bus and the subway are a great way to travel, and I’ve made some strides in making my own personal space, but I’m still trying to figure out a personal space as good as a car.

At the same time, though, it isn’t practical. It would be hugely hypocritical of me to keep driving when I feel that cars cause environmental devastation and the quest for oil causes the devastation of human lives. It is especially hypocritical when presented with a perfectly viable alternative. I also can’t very well talk about simple living in entries three years ago and then hop in what was a $70,000 car not so long ago. It just isn’t consistent.

But then I’m full of anachronisms. The me I am and the me I intend to be or the me I think of myself as are often miles apart. And I’m okay with that - as long as I continue generally moving forward.

It’s now two days later and I am back at home. Laundry is happily laundering downstairs and we are in the process of planning our Canada day activities. There are a number of things happening around town - the challenge will be to decide which ones we’ll choose. One way or another we’ll likely end up back at Dufferin Park before the day is over. In many ways, that place is something of a bridge - one between our Ozarks lifestyle and our urban one. This could be illustrated better than a moment I experienced there last weekend. Phrased properly, it could easily have been an entry from four years ago.

“Sage and Paul were inside the yurt listening to a story while I sat outside by the fire and read my book.”

Of course I left a bit out of the picture. We were at the Cooking Fire Thearte Festival and after the second to last show at well after 10:00 I went to use the washroom. Sage was originally planning on waiting out the next show and seeing them repeat it for a smaller crowd. While I was in the washroom, though, Sage and Paul had decided to go in the yurt to see the performance after all.

So, I wandered for a bit until I found myself next to what was once the cooking fire but was now just a small fire with one other person sitting by it occasionally tossing a piece of scrap wood on it. I sat on a bench next to the fire and read my book.

After about five minutes the other performers started carting their props past our fire on their way inside. The woman (whom I had assumed until she had spoken was a man) looked up and remarked “Isn’t this wonderful!? It’s like there isn’t even a city around us!” And I had to agree. Because for an evening anyway, the park had been transformed from a small space in a large city to a dinner gathering in the Ozarks where after the food is done and the dishes are washed, some people leave while the remaining gather in small groups to chat or enjoy the fire and the evening.

I read there for another ten minutes before the spell was broken by my cell phone’s ringing - Sage and Paul were done with the play and we got on the bus for the 2 block ride to the subway home.