Its funny that simply by going up and down in the elevator wearing a button down shirt and uncomfortable dress pants, people assume i belong here. A lady with big hair looked me up and down and asked if i was new, or she just hadn't seen me before. (Visisble dissapointment on discovering that i do not, in fact, work here.) Another asked me how things were going up there in human resources. "Same as ever!" Barely supressed smirk. Somebody just asked me for permission to go home early. Hey...knock yourself out.

Isaac

Yes, well.. Ignoring, for the moment, all subsequent events...

Since i find myself in a government office, and, like most people in such places have absurd amounts of time on my hands...let's catch up on this Buffalo thing, shall we?

Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo... lets see... besides eating wings, drinking coffee and sitting under trees, what did i go to Buffalo for? Ah, yes. A wedding. weddings, celebrations, visits, people. Isaac's wedding. Isaac. I don't suppose his wedding can be terribly significant unless one knows something about who he is.

About halfway through my time at "the mission" in Buffalo, Isaac's family arrived. Isaac and his siblings had spent the last fifteen years in Taiwan, and spent more of their lives speaking Chinese than English. It was their parents that were on staff, but living, as i was, alone in a building with seven women, the teenage brothers at least offered escape from the overwhelming female-ness, and i found myself frequently resorting to their company. At night we would escape across the tracks to the indelible Nickel City, the local truckstop diner, whose many virtues included 24 hour service, spectacularily hot wings, and, (possibly their economic undoing) unlimited coffee refills without the necessity of buying a meal. During our endless late-night, caffeine-fuelled rambles, i found a rare kindred spirit in Isaac, despite his youth. He was pleased to inform me, upon having persistently harrassed me into taking the test, that we shared the same psychological personality type. We both felt out of place in our worlds - though he had far more obvious reasons for this. We were both oddities to our families. We shared a preference for objectivity, detachment, calmness. Isaac was, in a word, mellow. He viewed life with the subdued wonder of an explorer, an outside observer to worlds, and lives. Studying. Just passing through.
And if that sounds a shade overdone, then I liked him because he had a car. And liked coffee.
Our relationship changed slightly when the kids joined our Korean/English Youth Group. I had to balance my appreciation for their friendship with the need to at least create the illusion of a responsible, teaching adult example. Though i was never very good at looking convincingly "together", and in the end, i think my transparency made the bigger impression.
For me, it was a relief of sorts when that period ended, and Isaac gained "official" adulthood. I could view him as what he'd always felt like - a sort of brother. Though, I never really lost the feeling of responsibility over him, his brother and sister, or any of those kids, really. I suppose i was closer to Isaac than any of the others. I was there for part of the tragedy that was his parents' marriage, for his doomed almost-romance with a Korean preacher's daughter. Through the miracle of email, when he was in Taiwan and i in China, i watched him get engaged, and watched him get dissapointed. I visited him in Taiwan and we talked as equals about hopes, disspointments, plans and futures, between knuckle-whitening motorcyle excursions through Taipei traffic. Eventually, we returned to our respective "homes" in North America, assumed something like normal lives, and lost touch.
And now he's getting married. Actually, he is married. I can't deny i felt a bit of parent-like pride.

Isaac picked me up early for the bachelor party. We drove familar streets by the old UB south campus.I waited in the mess of furniture and unopened boxes in what was to be the young couple's apartment, in old brick building above a luggage shop. I played peek-a-boo with someone's ill-behaved, tuxedo clad child while he tried on his gear. We had barely an hour of personal conversation before he would be swallowed again by the matrimonial whirlwind.

These are interesting sorts of conversations. With no time for small talk, jokes and rambling, one cuts straight to matters of greatest concern, the biggest questions, the sort of things that normally wait until late at night, after at least a few drinks and a thoughtful pause. So minutes after my getting in the car, seeing each other for the first time in four years, we were disscussing his doubts and certainties about marriage and/or his bride, and my near total loss of faith.

Isaac is a good kid.

I suppose, now that he's married, i should stop calling him "kid".

I'm probably not going to, though.

We both know its been along time since we more than barely believed. But we're praying again. Maybe because we really don't know what else to do. And that's something, isn't it?

So, yes. I was in Buffalo. Now i am not. There is much to be said about this. there is much to be said about a number of things. They might be said in no particular order. You will all have to deal with this. ( saying things like that helps me sustain the delusion that anybody else actually reads this.)

In happier news, i spent the whole afternoon sitting under that massive tree, plunking away on my lap-top, looking out over a big grassy field surrounded by other huge, marvelously old and wrinkled trees, watching kids, dogs and big, fat squirrels frolic. Incidentally, when i am disposed to think of heaven, i often picture something very much like that. That evening i found myself a nice little cafe, all wood panelling and antique lamps and nice, comfy chairs. They were even playing Damien Rice when i came in. Felt kind of familiar. And, rather impresively, the young kid behind the big, oak counter managed to make me a pretty decent latte. Not bad at all.

Westjet is amazing. If all airlines in the world were Westjet, the world would a happier place. Or they might, at least, take themselves less seriously.

This means I am now in scenic Buffalo, NY. Buffalo, not enjoying the “benefits” of Alberta’s economy, remains virtually unchanged in the nearly seven years since I lived here. Same old Buffalo. Same old cracked pavement, disappearing beneath a slow motion explosion of sun-baked weeds. Same old rusted metal bridges. Same old rusted brick factories with broken windows. Same old sleepy summer neighborhoods, with their sagging wooden houses and Irish pubs on every corner. People lounging on their porches. Children playing in the street.

I am staying in my friend Deb’s house, a typical south Buffalo home with all ancient hardwood floors, and gorgeous oak doorframes and banisters. Last night I slept, essentially, on a porch, under moonlight, to the tireless buzz of mysterious cricket-like creatures, never seen, but always heard. Even now, mid afternoon, as I sit in Cazenovia Park propped against a towering elm older than many generations of men, that buzz is everywhere, pulsing, rising and falling, but never stopping. The soundtrack of time in Buffalo, of my re-acquaintance with old haunts. Odd that I had forgotten it – but I suppose the locals no longer hear it either.

Not everything is the same. The Shamrock, an Irish Pub also older than many generations of men, is gone, replaced by a Starbucks. People change too, and while I was prepared for this, there are some disappointments. I had visions, I suppose, of the gang all being here, meeting at the airport, or at least, gathering at Deb’s house , catching up, laughing, and reminiscing about those odd, dreamlike days when we were all together, ordinary life turned to magic by shared memory. But many of “the gang” have proven difficult to contact. Besides Deb and her lovely adopted Indian kids, who picked me up from the airport, I have not so much as spoken to anyone else, though Deb and I spent most of yesterday afternoon calling and emailing to let people know I was here, and a few of them were already aware I was coming. I will see many at the wedding, I suspect, but as wonderful as it is to trade jabs with Deb again, and as gratifying as Andrew’s enthusiasm and Tammy’s complete, innocent adoration are, there are others that I miss, and if this trip comes and goes with a handshake and a “how are you” at a wedding…it will be a bit…sad. The inevitable sadness of life moving on. A sadness that feels at home in Buffalo, a town of crumbling relics from happier days- a sort of repository of things left behind.

The answer to THAT question, obviously, is that, somewhere in all that torment and unspeakable agony are hidden moments that almost compensate for the pain. Which brings us to a series of random observations.

To begin with, I'm not sure I've ever REALLY been in love. This is bollocks, of course, because i've clearly been in love at least a couple times, and if i wasn't, i'd have absolutely no excuse for a couple rather extended periods of ridiculous behavior. But a friend and I were disusssing TRUE LOVE, as in THE love of your life, the one you'll never get over, the BIG ONE. I did have at least one that was pretty difficult to get over, but really, from the qualifications given for TRUE LOVE by at least a couple people I've talked to lately, I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened to me yet. Which is good, i guess, because, seeing as i'm presently at least somewhat single, if i HAD been in the BIG ONE at some point, i'd likely still be haunted by the loss. Unless i just don't get as excited about these things as some people. Or unless that particular understanding of love is at least partially flawed. More on that later.

I don't remember what the other random observations were. That one was distracting. And i have a plane to catch. See you in Buffalo.