During the month of August, I met up with Babs for the first time in a year in order to celebrate our birthdays, which are a few days apart, together. We spent the early afternoon in a museum, the early evening at a café, met up with another close friend for supper at a Japanese restaurant, and then the three of us hid away in a new bar for most of the rest of the night.
The Canadian Museum of Nature had a live owl exhibit set up on their back terrace, so that influenced our decision to visit quite heavily — that, and we both really love dinosaurs, and animals in general. This particular museum (which not that long ago underwent extensive renovations) has been a favourite of mine since I was a kid; I even slept in the museum overnight once when I was in Girl Guides!
We slept in the room with the rocks, stones, and minerals, in case you were wondering… it’s been a longtime tradition for groups of kids to sleep in the dinosaur room, but at the time, it was undergoing renovations, so we hadn’t been able to.
Anyway. The dinosaur room was predictably busy, so we set about seeing all of the other exhibits first, in the hopes that things would quiet down later on in the afternoon. Meeting all of the owls was a delightful experience; most of them were sleepy, or glared at us balefully from over one shoulder, but a few of them were very alert and interested. I got pictures of two in particular. Khaleesi was as regal as her name suggests and didn’t do much more than stare at us disapprovingly; she is the owl in the photo on the left. Rucker the barn owl, meanwhile, is in the photo on the right, and was incredibly quirky. He kept swinging his head from side to side so I swung my head in the same way, hoping to catch his attention… and I did! He flew closer to the bars and did some more curious staring and head-swinging and tilting (which I mimicked again).
Afterwards we did a tour of all of the permanent exhibits that we are well used to but still enjoy every time nonetheless. One of the new short stories I was working on for TSBA at the time had to do with seasons and animal transformations so I got a lot of inspiration from seeing specimens of some of the animals I’d been researching for the story. I’ve always liked how their arctic fox is partially hidden behind blocks of ice (that’s the photo on the left below). The birds’ permanent exhibit is utterly fascinating; the picture below on the right contains one of the sea birds I’d already done a bit of research about for the story so I was very excited to take a look at its powerful-looking wings through the glass with my own eyes.
One thing I find particularly cool about birds, is that some species have such huge differences in their plumage depending on their sex. There aren’t all that many species in Canada with such differences, but I see a lot of Red-winged Blackbirds in my neck of the woods, so I decided to take a photo of their specimens — the female has brown and tan feathers while the male is almost entirely clad in black with some bright shoulder pads for a little extra flair. Love it.
The insect exhibit is filled with just as many fascinating specimens (both taxidermized and live). On the left are spiders, scorpions, stick bugs, and dragonflies, while on the right are iridescent butterflies and beetles. I’m not saying I’d want these insects crawling all over me, but I do enjoy looking at their interesting forms.
Finally, we got to wander around the dinosaur exhibit and imagine what it might have been like to live among those enormous creatures. I took a photo of my own feet reflected in the glass in front of a triceratops’ hoof. I just love how the way that the bones curve makes them look almost dainty but that they would have supported an incredible amount of weight. My two feet put together are about the size of a single toe. Just fantastic.
After we’d finished at the museum, we headed to the Byward Market and made ourselves comfortable at a café in order to wait for our friend to join our party.
I mean that in both the woohoo sense and the questing sense.
Just to be clear.
Once our friend had indicated she was in the area, we made our way to the restaurant we’d picked to have supper at: Gyubee, a Japanese barbeque joint. After a good bit of wandering through a museum (a full day of work for our friend) and some walking through the Market, the huge all-you-can-eat meal really hit the spot. All three of us have known one another since high school (and earlier), and run missions together in Warframe with audio chat once in a while to catch up. Our friend hadn’t been able to join us for a birthday dinner the year before, so it was nice to sit down together this time!
Afterwards, we got a booth at a new bar in the Market called Apothecary. I am not joking when I say I made an unintelligible sound of excitement when we sat down because the decor and the vibe was so good. The outdoor lounge area is really cool, but the real bar is down in the basement, the stairway to which is tucked around a corner when you first walk in the door. Exposed brick, mirror windows, dried decor? Loved it.
My friends both tried out their cocktails (and they seemed pleased with the ones they tried), but those didn’t interest me all that much. I asked the server to ask the bartender to recommend a good scotch to go with the dessert that I’d ordered, and the bartender came over to ask whether I liked peaty flavours or not (the answer to that is yes: yes to smokiness). The dessert, meanwhile, was a very savory sort of strawberry shortcake (aptly named Strawberry ‘Shortcake’ — yes, with the quotation marks included). It was utterly unusual and delicious. I will definitely be ordering that again when I go back. The scotch I got was a Laphroaig Select, which I sipped with great enjoyment.
This dessert included herbs, sour cream, and delicate little edible flowers… dusted in silver sugar.
Just… so pretty.
On the sidewalk outside my apartment on the way home, I stared up at the sky, which was surprisingly clear, and managed to see one little shooting star. I didn’t make a wish — I just felt grateful that the sky was so clear and that the street was dark enough to let me see so many stars from where I was standing.
Also, being that I am a huge アリス九號. fan, the sight of the shooting star immediately made me think of several of their songs, chief among these being shooting star… hopefully the reason is obvious! But their discography is peppered with songs that make you think of space so there are plenty to choose from. Another favourite, lesser known astral-body track of mine is 天体アンブレラ (tentai UMBRELLA – ‘Celestial Umbrella’), which Saga apparently composed after watching a nature documentary featuring northern lights, the lyrics to which match that motif. Recently, they released the very gentle track 星降る夜には君を想う (hoshifuru yoru ni wa kimi wo omou – ‘I think of you on starry nights’).
And then there’s Stargazer:, which is part of their album GEMINI, which they’re going to be playing in full, in concert at the end of this month for their big 17th anniversary. I love that album. It is a little universe, it has inspired a lot of art out of me, and this concert in its honor is going to be incredible and inspire me even more.
One of its influences is the band LUNA SEA, of course, a song from whom Saga recently did an epic cover of:
I’m getting delightfully off-track.
All of the above made for a nice, low-key birthday. Which is fitting, because I don’t really celebrate mine anymore. I kind of prefer to pretend that the day-of is any other day and then find reasons to celebrate it secretly in other ways on other days. See: the above concert.
See also: this cake that I made back at the end of June for Saga’s LUNA SEA themed birthday. It’s lavender chocolate sponge with a dark chocolate glaze, and a blueberry jam astral body… garnished with lavender flowers, rose petals, and silver sugar globes. It was inspired by certain themes in GEMINI, as well as the fact that there was a drum and bass “jam” in the concert I watched the day before I made it (Saga plays the bass). Obviously I couldn’t actually give the cake to Saga, so effectively it was a birthday cake for myself before my actual birthday. It was delicious, in case you’re wondering. I decided not to make a cake this week… though I may make some of my classic mint chocolate chip cookies instead!
All of that being said, I do share the same birthday as 圭 from BAROQUE, who played a concert that day, an excerpt from which is in the following video:
Finally, given that I am now in my dirty thirties and am supposed to be doing whatever the hell I want, I decided that for the first time in my adult life, I would don a knee-length dress and go out of the house with unshaven legs. Did I nearly run back inside after having taken two steps outside the apartment building? Yes. But I took a moment to psych myself up, put my keys resolutely in my purse, and started walking to the bus stop. I’d like to say I felt extremely empowered and liberated, but the reality is that I felt somewhat free while also feeling rather awkward. No one really paid much attention (as expected) except for two women who gave me dirty looks, and the sensation of the wind blowing the hairs made me feel ticklish, which I thought was pretty funny.
I felt awkward simply because I’m not sure I particularly like how I looked and felt in the dress with my legs exposed that way, but it could just be something I’d need to get used to. I might like the sight and the feeling better wearing shorts, for instance. But it was good to try it anyway. Now that I’ve done that, it feels like I truly have a choice. I can go out with hairy legs whenever the hell I want to. Or I can choose to make them smooth. The choice is freeing.
The last time I had hairy legs in public, I was a twelve year old in gym class. One of the so-called popular girls in my class pointed at me one day and yelled “EW!! You don’t shave?!”
I was mortified. Up until that point, I’d barely noticed the hair on my legs. It was like background noise. Just an inseparable part of the skin on my legs. Her disgust changed it into something I became hyper-aware of to the point where, for many years, I couldn’t bear to bare my legs in public even after shaving them.
So I’d like to go back in time to that fateful moment, right before the gym teacher walked in (good dude — he also taught music class… tried and failed to teach me guitar), lock him in his office, show up as the supply teacher, go up to my younger self, and be like “WHOA! You don’t shave?! That’s awesome! High five! Time to play ballon-chasseur ya little hooligans!”
I used to feel like my body hair was an inalienable weapon being implemented against me by biology and society at large. I deflected it by anxiously covering up or getting rid of it; even one visible hair on my legs was too much. My god, the shadow of shaved hair follicles under the surface of my skin was too much. I would shave myself to the point of bleeding, I would wax or epilate, and it was never enough. I could see it. I could see it.
I used to have nightmares about going outside unshaven.
But the reality of the experience was perfectly anticlimactic.
The fear is gone.
I’ve handed that decades-old anxiety back to society, and freed up emotional space for other things.
