Well, now, where to start?

Health: They say if you have your health, that's all you need. I was at Women's Unit yesterday for my six week check-up and they doubled my Provera dosage, to get things going and so on...I have no real side effects at 10mg, but 20mg? Not sure, but in a week or so I should find out. (The side effects listed & those I have read from testimonials online are both physical and emotional, though I have yet to see any that say "I feel more girly" so I'll say it here - I feel more girly.) Which means I miss Marcello more than ever, and while I'm not weepy, exactly, I am...open? Vulnerable? More than ever I feel there are no barriers between me and the world, which can be great or not so great, depending on where I am and what I am feeling. Thus...

...I was at the pillowfight at Nathan Phillips Square and it was fun. I was far from the only one taking pictures, but the joy and release of the whole thing was heartening, yet another free-for-all collective event that happens because it happens, with no real point besides itself. All was well and then I went to another area to take a picture and a guy intimidated me - I'm rarely intimidated - and I had to leave immediately, as I felt defenseless all of sudden, and I quickly retreated (the pillowfight still going a half hour after it began) to the Eaton Centre, and then on up to Sam's to get the original Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould. I also got Mary J. Blige's What's the 411? as I remembered that first day of 2005 as I danced to it and ate freshly-baked banana bread and knew that something good was going to happen. I then walked back down Yonge, passing the Mexican place I keep wanting to try, who have a speaker blasting music just like the punk/heavy metal/nurock t-shirt place next door; the song..."I Know There's An Answer" by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. I stop and smile and know he is with me. Then I walked into HMV and what was playing but "Philadelphia Freedom" and I wandered around the front and...

...there are only a few songs that make me cry, not with sadness but happiness, and that is one of them. It hits me in a particular spot that goes right back to when I first heard it (eight years old), when I was first finding out about the Revolutionary War, 1776 (and all that) - that rah-rah Bicentennial fervor that must have seemed rather quaint to the British, but was very real, even as we lived in Oakville. (I must go to youtube to see if there's any Bicentennial Moments around. Update: No, but there is this priceless appearance on Soul Train, which has so many layers it begs for deconstruction.) Anyway, that patriotism gets mixed up with the lyrics (which are also patriotic, agelessly so) and my own ancestors on my father's side, who left the Ukraine rather than serve in the military, who had relatives already in Kansas to help them out. And then I think back to 1975 and the Women's Liberation Movement and ERA and Billie Jean King and so on, and the song gets yet another spin, so to speak, as Elton singing about her tennis team - Philadelphia Freedom - well you get all these together with the sound of Philadelphia and its groovy anthemic music and you can see, it's a complex, tear-causing experience...

...anyway, I stood around looking at the bargain cds and smiled and it ended and I went upstairs, wandered around for a few minutes & left...going home in the cool spring air and sensing him in the very air around me, as the trees just begin to blossom or leaf, the tulips in bloom everywhere...