This Restless Heart

I've been listening to Metric and reading Chuck Klosterman again. I've discovered that this is a bad combination as I'm finding myself restless and yearning for the open road. 

I'm possibly at another crossroads, and I feel that the next year is going to involve a lot of changes, as old friends move away and new friends are made (hopefully).

I find myself randomly entering addresses into Google Maps and (which has replaced my beloved, if tattered road map of Ontario). I find myself wanting to write and write and write, and converse with strangers in strange places and sleep in my car and swim in lakes off the side of the road.

I think of my favourite book The Watch That Ends the Night and Montreal calls to me for reasons unknown, although I'm sure Montreal of 2006 differs greatly from the Depression era montreal that MacLennan wrote of. But the idea of being in a place where I will only be able to communicate coherently with a certain portion of the population appeals to me. 

I want to document my trip and decide what to do with the finished product. Sell the rights? Destroy it? Lock it up in a safe deposit box, to be opened on the event of my eventual death?

My mother suggests I take my grandmother with me. My grandma is super fun, but I'm not sure how enthusiastic she would be with the neo-bohemian approach that I am considering. That's the problem with being a normally play-it-safe kind of girl... When I want to be spontaneous, I kind of go all out. 

Up until this week I was in a great place for hitting hotels and casinos and playing cards and shopping (which is the kind of vacation I would like to do with my grandma) but this roaming instinct has hit me with all the force of a Mac Truck, and I am feeling the need for isolation and being one with the road and all that rot... meeting interesting characters... having Hunter S Thompson type misadventures (minus the drugs though, but thats just me).

I want to visit places I have heard about in songs by Stompin' Tom or the Tragically hip.

I think I want to write a book.

But that is something for another time, as my children are hungry, and I am soon to find myself awash in dirty dishes and hot dogs and Kraft Dinner.

My domestic reality beckons. As my friend just put it... I should get back to doing the 'Mom' thing.