Ah, September. I love how it ushers in transition like nobody's business. Out with the old. I'm back in the masters program now, which means commuting in the city a couple days a week, reconnecting with writer friends and constantly reading and writing. It was a bit of a challenging month because extra responsibilities at the kiosk fell to me right when I needed them the least, and when everyone (myself definitely included) was burnt out from an intense and adrenaline-heavy summer. I've spent the month training staff to take over some of my jobs and just letting go of the uncontrollable.
School so far has been really inspiring and stimulating. I'm studying with Annabel Lyon and Andreas Schrodder this year, two writers who I respect and admire a lot. There's momentum for sure. I've started my thesis book and feel like I'm writing endless pieces on top of that. It feels good to be immersed in it again. I think the intensity of the summer has taught me a lot about how to charge into the work I need to do, and to conserve energy where need be. Whoever thinks non-creative work doesn't overlap into the arts is foolish. It all lends to each other if you let it. I was given a decent sum of money from the university and the BC Arts Council to keep on with it, which was much appreciated, and how a masters  degree should be I think.
The only bad thing I can say about September is that I had a bad fall the other night. I fell down our hardwood stairs with water glasses in my hand, and I bashed my back up and the glasses broke in my hand. I went into shock and was hysterical for too long until my parents had to help us at midnight. We're still cleaning blood from the furniture and finding shards of glass throughout the house, and I'm pretty bruised and sore.
Otherwise the month has been mostly home-bodied. We've had some good dinners on the beach with a fire and friends, a big surprise birthday party for a good friend, house guests, lots of good meals and time outside. Losing daylight rapidly has such an effect in this house, beachside with big bright windows. We haven't quite figured out how to function properly when the sun goes down. We don't even have enough lamps to function in the huge open room on the main floor, so we often find ourselves upstairs in bed, reading or talking way too early. When the moon is bright, we know it. When it's dark we know it. There haven't been clouds in the sky, such a strange phenomenon here, and I feel like we've been at the mercy of nature a little. But we have three cords of wood under the deck ready for the change in the season and a winter garden underway in the yard.

tobacco in bloom

We're heading to Ottawa and Montreal in a few days, which is mighty exciting. We haven't been back since we left for good. It feels like it's been a long time. more than a year and a half. I've written a lot about Montreal, especially Saint Henri. throughout the last year. I didn't write much at all in Montreal which was really hard, so I'm glad to make something of it in retrospect. Somedays when I really think about Montreal, the mundane details like going grocery shopping, taking the metro and walking along the canal, I'm overwhelmed with nostalgia. Sometimes the time out East seems like a strange dream that I'm not necessarily eager to return to but that captivates me nonetheless. So I'm excited to go back and walk around the city for a couple of days, and to be able to show the old sights to a cognizant Sebastian Henri. We're also definitely looking forward to relaxing in Ottawa, taking advantage of eager grandparents for some time together, spending some time in a city, watching Sebastian connect with his part of the family he doesn't often see. I think he's getting excited too. 

 Rain just won't come. How strange to look out the window and see dry grass, wilting garden. It's uncommon here, to say the least, to see no rain for as long as we have. But without thinking of the rainless forecast for days to come, it's been a lovely month of more sunshine than I can ever remember on the West Coast. The crops that we grew as experiment, ones which normally would never flourish here, have been filling our shirt tails and baskets: watermelon, cucumbers, tobacco, peppers and more tomatoes than we've ever seen. The brassicas and blackberries struggle. A strange season for sure. We've been living off the garden more than we anticipated for our first year here, and enjoying the bounty of the farmers market, especially the goat cheese and winter squash now coming in.