What a Beautiful Place to be with Friends
SJ
This week I googled “lip injections Toronto” with a level of seriousness I wish to forget. I spent more time than I care to admit on this pursuit before ultimately closing my laptop — disappointed and despondent.
In the past several months, I have thought seriously about altering nearly every minute particle of my appearance — finding solace only in getting three tattoos in as many weeks. Control and release.
Restaurants are opening. Sinewy, masked blondes serve pitchers to middle-aged men with pinky rings. The regular rotation of “neighbours smoking on their balconies” has expanded to include more members of their respective circles. Sometimes the occasional child plays with coloured blocks a building away from me.
I am no longer trapped in my “tiny cube in the sky,” and yet, I can’t fully shake the negative habits I unwillingly nourished — plunging into various models’ Instagram posts from 2017 after scrolling endlessly on Instagram Explore.
I google, “workout for smaller waist”
I look up, remember — briefly — who and where I am, and delete the app from my phone. I read my book. I cook dinner. I set my oven timer. I grow impatient. I re-download.
The cycle continues.
I caught up with my friend Josh recently — a forever friend that is also notoriously and perpetually unreachable. I text him, remembering something I forgot to mention on the phone —
“If you haven’t watched ‘I think you should leave’ on Netflix, you really need to”
The response,
“sorry new phone this is Jack bb”
With that, his number had changed — the portal closed itself.
He hasn’t read a messenger message in two years. He posts on social media occasionally — a grainy nighttime scene matched with unrelated rap lyrics. When you least expect it, an email from him materializes. Once it was an unsolicited cover of my song “Thaw” expertly recorded on his laptop somewhere in rural Manitoba. I will cherish it forever.
Yes, in order to contact Josh, you need his mailing address, his work schedule, and the co-operation of the cafés he frequents, but one thing is certain — he is happy.
He works side-by-side with his partner in the depths of a Niagara kitchen, immersed in flavour and thought. He drives home, lights a smoke in his backyard and listens to a Stephen King audiobook.
He has accessed the balanced simplicity so many of us have lost.
His time is his own.
Perhaps the pre-occupation with this “lost” simplicity is the root of the problem — control over one’s life is, ultimately, within reach.
Yes, it is barricaded by tiers upon tiers of capitalist ideals. It is smothered by DMs, and “to do” lists, and diets, and depression, and plants that you overwatered that have since died, and emerging forehead creases, and the need for an incredibly overdue global uprising, and shame, and moving past shame, and more shame, and Seinfeld re-runs, and self-loathing, and the need to be in constant contact with loved ones —
but, it is there.
We are running on a track with a treat hanging in front of our hats.
We need to redefine what treats are,
and run with purpose
elsewhere
Sydney threw me a genderless pre-wedding celebration we opted to call, “A Small Batch.” She typed up little cards — notably accompanying a “chip bar.” She put flowers in beautiful bottles, and she gathered a few of my most cherished friends. I saw them for the first time since early March. I am ferociously introverted, but God, did I need that day.
I bathed in long needed, wine shuffling life chats
I didn’t look at my phone once.
It is complicated, the need for, and the range of, human contact. I am lucky to live with my partner — to stir my tea listening to him sing and play guitar, to fall asleep with my head on his chest. These moments are sustaining, a constant source of joy.
But I also find joy in the phone calls with Sydney and Ciarán — Ciar bringing a douse of toilet humour to our search for a wedding hashtag. I cry laughing and forget that I had previously jotted my mood down as “3.” I also find joy in watching Amanda’s cats, in seeing my family dog from afar, in following @blackgirlsgardening, in the live meditations from a cherished member of my, now-former, faculty. In seeing Wilder grow and explore. In discussing Infinite Jest with Megan, in her beautiful cozy apartment in Madison, Wisconsin. In hearing the ways that Pat has persevered through the year. In hearing Jon talk about vintage lenses. In hearing Natalie work from her balcony. In seeing Mary’s business thrive. In reading Ethan’s growing knowledge of herbs and their functions.
Is it so inconceivable, things being complex enough to encompass good and bad? Do I need to denounce social media — even, technology — entirely in order to control the access loved ones and strangers collectively have to my time? Do I lack the capacity to Not Click On Things That I Know Will Feel Very Shitty?
I do not hold the answer, but perhaps,
setting boundaries does.
Perhaps there is not only Denouncing or Obsessing
Perhaps, there is setting my phone aside, paying my bills, feeding my cat, and stepping outside
headphones on
listening to Dubliners on audiobook
alone and
constructively
out of reach
SJ Hamilton Heise is a song-writer and librarian currently functioning as country boy in a big city. They hold a master’s degree in information science from the University of Toronto, know nothing about musical theory, but know their way around a bag of chips.
~
Labour Day
Sydney
I spent my weekend doing manual labour. I crammed myself and my dog and a basket of a few clothes and just enough food into my parents’ car and watched the highway become country roads become the lake where I grew up. I took only what I needed.
I’ve done this drive many times this year, but always with Ciarán and always with dumb jokes and loud laughter. When it’s just me and my parents there is a great deal of silence. I romanticize the shapes of the trees and the glow of the sunlight hitting the mossy stones. Count the cows. Imagine what Ciar is doing at work. Listen to my mum read the weather forecast from the passenger seat.
When we arrived I was immediately put to work. Lugging lumber onto a borrowed barge. I had to take a video of the Grinchy grin on my dad’s face. This task took many trips across two days, but it wasn’t so bad. It reminded me of being a kid and how he used to put us to work in the summer, moving branches and raking leaves. Tiny hands and scraped knees. I used to be athletic, something I often forget. Not that I had any interest in sports, but I could run fast. It feels like another lifetime. I guess it was.
This tricky and lonely year has changed my body. Staying home has slowed me down. Ciar and I have started watching old seasons of Survivor and we debate the difficulty of the challenges and wonder out loud if we could win. I think about how the contestants bring so few possessions and live off the land. Moving the awkward, heavy planks of wood feels like returning to my body. Bringing so little with me serves as a reminder for how little I truly need.
I have been thinking a lot about things. Material things. The Earth has too much stuff. In the same way you might watch a sad movie when you’re already feeling down, I will read statistics about waste and recycling. About 86 percent of Canada’s plastic waste ends up in a landfill. More than 25 percent of waste that is put in recycling bins is deemed non-recyclable due to contamination. I grimace at the plastic bags our groceries came in when we were at our most fearful of the pandemic. I hate thinking that even at my least wasteful, my efforts barely make a difference.
But it counts. I recently sorted through my clothes, mercilessly tossing items I still love but seldom wear into the “donate” pile. I have been watching videos on how to lead a more minimalist lifestyle, how to create a capsule wardrobe, how to say no to things you do not need. It’s too easy to reward ourselves for our hard work with new things. Instead, this weekend after unloading the last of the lumber onto our property, I took the dogs for a hike on the Crown land. My parents’ anxious and reactive dog is a good leader. I followed him along the trail until we got lost. I used the compass on my phone to turn us back toward the way we came.
Having too many things crowds my mind. I get distracted working from home when the apartment feels cluttered. Things are a distraction from what’s really important. Like laughing with the people I love. Connecting with nature. Being around friends at a backyard gathering that I decorated with things I already had: I offered up my unnecessary collection of Mason jars; I filled bottles I kept from my favourite cidery with wildflowers.
I haven’t been put to work since my brother got strong. Matt and his girlfriend joined us on Day 2 and helped carry the lumber. He could carry five planks at a time when my dad and I were doing one at a time. I remind myself I may not be strong but I’m scrappy.
A week into September, I get my first sunburn of the summer. Rosy and achey, we play Hearts before bed. It’s cold enough at night for a fire. I’m grateful to be away from work and away from technology, but count watching Survivor reruns with my other half as one of the important things in my life, and something I look forward to coming home to.
There’s a thunderstorm at night and my dog tears apart the room, scratches at the door. Ciarán calls me in the middle of the night to tell me about his day. I have to keep my laughter quiet. I vow to myself to live simply. Never get caught up in ambition or money or material things. Wherever I go, to always take only what I need with me. Buy less, use what I have, make more from scratch. I take this promise home with me. Load it into the back seat of my parents’ car once more. Romanticize the scenery that might be gone in the coming decades, when our wasteful habits one day catch up to us. When this all feels like another lifetime.
Sydney Hamilton reads for a living and writes to feel alive. She is a fact checker, a poet, a musician and a dog mom. She studied journalism at Ryerson University and used to write bad puns that the Toronto Star actually printed.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdc4ad5d7-b020-4025-9f63-ecf9c72de0a8_1796x1233.jpeg)
Vancouver, B.C. Film. 2019
“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.”
-Rumi