The one where the flatmates have a field trip

Dear Felix,

It has been far too long since a previous update on here. Somehow Montreal has been more distant in recent years, but no more! inchAllah, inchAllah.

I missed your naana by a measly 90 minutes or so. I got in around 6:30 am. Attempts to sleep/nap were both elusive and unnecessary. I was reading in the living room awaiting a refresh of my real-time visual of you. Five-years-old!

Since you are a little older (and I have grown a little more wary), I’ve dropped my favourite photos of you in a folder that people can request access to, rather than posting them on the intertubes.

It was such joy to see you in action again. To see how your room has changed, your drawing abilities, even the fart stories, and how politely you say “pause, please” so that your smaller limbs can cross the finish line before me. Pippin ji asked if I was in town for Expozine and I was in town for you(!) but the book art fair was also happening so we went and it was a good time even if we excluded the croissants and samosas. The samosas were more expensive than Mississauga but cheaper than Whitehorse. That checks out.

I don’t know how many more years we have of you willingly wanting to enjoy the views from my shoulders but I will gladly be there for it.

I am slowly savouring Pippin’s book which (was being worked on when the majority of these web logs were written) opens with,

For Felix, who can turn an IKEA sealing clip into a truck, a boot, and an alligator in the space of a minute.

Love you kid, here’s looking at you (still kid-ly, tres much so, but less so) kid.

Here is a photo of your co-founders and your older sibling.

Sincerely,

Maama doola, no we are not on a first-name basis child

ps. I am devastatingly sincerely already joking with your parents about the Felix film compilation when you turn 18 years old. pps. It would be remiss of me to not include a poem, this time by Yusuf Saadi:

We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious
text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill
through our skulls. Every cm2 of oxygen overflowing
with bank PINS, girls in yoga pants, the frequencies
of whale cries. Digital clouds brim with selfies and rain
videos on how to cook coconut shrimp. Sepia-filtered
photographs prowl for leaks in blood-brain barriers. Outside
our windows tree roots evolve into wires and birds trilling
sing the world electric. Every night we Facetime-kiss perfect
glass lips before bed and utter our sincerest prayers to our daily
blogs. We travel the world from screen to screen (breast
to breast incognito). The shortest distance between
home and work is a TV episode. Each hour is twenty songs.
We have lived a hundred lives in a breath and court ten lonely
women with a click. Emails trundle on invisible tracks of sky,
racing sexting winks and viral videos for our attention. Air
is composed of pixels and a radio bleeds white static. The world's
digital heartbeat only slows when I face the empty stare of a dead
battery. A boy on the subway scans my image without blinking.
Women download my face in a glance. A minute is tortured.
Lifetimes breed under each fingernail and wait to explode.

ppps. It was tough to leave, as usual, for more than one reason. Including this fkb-weighted legislation, get it, leg-is-late …