Monday's child is fair of face
Tuesday's child is full of grace
Wednesday's child is full of woe
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
-English folk poem, first collected in Traditions of Devonshire, 1838
I was born on a Thursday, fittingly. I’m a true agnostic about fate - both in lighter moments and in despair, I can go either way about predestination. Sometimes I feel singularly lucky - at others, as if I have been condemned to discover wonderful possibilities in the moments of their untimely destruction. I always seem to find myself at the death of goodness and the beginning of decay, and have often wondered if I carry doom within me like a parasite, infecting social spaces with the mere fact of my presence. Venues close as soon as I discover them. The Mondragon Collective went out of business as soon as I began dating a member. Punkhouses I’ve lived in have burned down, been shuttered by police, or collapsed into hopeless infighting within weeks of my arrival. Often enough, I can dismiss these unlovely thoughts as mere idiocentric solipsism. The world is random and meaningless; there are patterns in chaos. Nothing means anything, and that’s why it means so much. (Nihilism has never truly agreed with my inherent mysticism)
So what is a Thursday’s Child to do, stuck indoors for several months? It’s not a unique situation, I’m well aware. I’m lucky in that I have a place to go, and good health, and savings enough to fall back on while I wait for government support to come through. Most are not so fortunate as me, and I don’t wish to place my petty griefs above those who are experiencing real tragedy. Most everyone I know will survive this, probably. I have only the hardships of loneliness and cancelled plans.
It’s been a strange kind of comfort actually, to see my idiosyncratic sadness reflected in the world writ large. I have long been away from the people who love me best, isolated and alone, longing for connection and company that until recently was rarely found, even mediated by screens. I’ve had more consistent contact with my friends lately - they, too, are now stuck inside, connected only digitally and aching for the world they knew as home. I have never felt myself to have a home, except in brief painful snatches of possibility. Now everyone is as lonely as I have been. It’s a bitter medicine, but I’ll take it, if only for the relief of a burden shared. Validating, too, to see that I am not as weak and needy as I have frequently thought myself to be. There’s a wide consensus that this is hard, actually. Damaging, difficult, injurious to one’s very identity. We are social creatures! the media proclaims. Yes, yes, that’s what I’ve been saying all along. A person alone is no person at all. I have not existed for some time, if ever.
I have been re-reading my PNT diaries, as you know. An observation struck me suddenly, on a fire tower lookout near Eureka and again more recently - I go on these long walkabouts in part to experience aloneness as a choice. It is hard to be lonely when you are truly alone. It is hard to feel cast out when you have chosen to leave. How much of my wandering is in reaction to a life defined by emotional isolation? I wonder. But that choice is closed to me now. Constantine is far away, shut out by the closure of the US/Canada border. Almost certainly the correct action given the severity of the situation, but it’s a reality that feels intolerable to me. We were not set to reunite until the middle of May anyhow, which might still be in the cards, but the impossibility and the uncertainty have turned an arduous countdown into a true test of fortitude. My other friends in the area, such as they are, are shut up in their own houses in nearby towns. They are as far from me as my queerfam in Montreal, or my hometown family in Winnipeg. I cannot even meet them to wave from a 6ft distance. Nobody is leaving the house for anything but groceries; a twenty minute drive might as well be twenty thousand leagues. The PCT is cancelled for the year. The GDT looks to be cancelled as well, with Parks Canada closing all trailhead parking. I was planning to drive along the trail and cache supplies outside of towns, so I could hike it thru without contact of any kind. With hiking cancelled and my medium-term future uncertain, I have no idea what I will do with myself during a stationary summer, nevermind one spent completely alone. I am the only person I know who’s holed up without a partner or roommates - once again, an isolato in a sea of tight knit connection. Once again, I fear nobody has time for me, that I will be forgotten and left adrift. I fear being too needy, too desperate, too unlovely, too… unmemorable. A home anywhere is a home nowhere. This is a choice that I have made.
What I’m Listening To:
The opportunity to listen to a lot of favourite albums straight through is one of the only small blessings I’ve found in this dire situation. I’ve found myself struggling to maintain focus on any of the many projects I’ve got on the go, which is perhaps understandable given the mental load of anxiety and dread I’ve been labouring under. Eventually, we will get to the good parts of the PNT diaries, and my long-promised hiking videos will come to fruition. In the meantime, please enjoy Fiona Apple (and listen to the whole album if you care to - it’s rightly heralded as a masterpiece).
Talk soon, and take care
-Dana