My Crazy Cat Lady

This is my gorgeous and dear girlfriend Aalya:



Although I didn't take the following picture, I'm posting it so that you may see her beautiful eyes:



Aalya and I have been a part of one another's lives for a little over a decade. We met while she tended bar in my office, Mike's Place. (I used to receive phone calls there from my MA Supervisor.) Mike's Place remains the graduate pub at Carleton University and if you go in today, you will find on the wall a huge collage of photographs reflecting our 'generation', several of which are of your blogMistress and Aalya. Mike's Place has the best chicken curry, Jamaican patties and cheese/sun dried tomato nan bread. All staff were either MA or PhD students and conversations usually centered around Foucault, Habermas, Gramsci and Althusser while the occasional philosophy student would scream out "I LOVE Derrida!". Neither the science students nor the undergraduate students were allowed in. More importantly, if you didn't believe in existentialism, wrote poetry, belonged to the union, enjoyed Ben Harper, watched only foreign films, you weren't allowed in. Good God, we were so obviously twitty grad students; I'm laughing at how smart we thought we were when - and here I only write of myself and use the grander 'We' because if the Queen of England can do it, then so can I - in reality, we knew nothing . Honestly.

Over the years, Aalya and I have had some exceptionally long nights with never a dull moment. There was that one particular weekend in Montreal when we stayed at Bibi's place and I dragged Aalya all over St-Laurent. The weekend was filled with hilarious moments, the most important being Aalya and I seated at Globe's bar eating shrimp and listening to Bob Marley, surrounded by complete and total whack-jobs and a whole lotta cleavage. Every time a man would try to approach us, Aalya would bury her face into her plate and actually groan. It was awesome. (As an aside, even she will admit that it was a pretty fun weekend if for no other reason than because we just walked into all of the clubs without hesitation or a moment in line.)

I fall off the radar for short blips of time and in these moments Aalya compares me to "a wounded animal that needs to be left alone to work everything out and make a decision. I know that when I see you, you've made your choice and you're ready to talk about what's been going on". I resurfaced on Monday evening and went to visit her in her beautiful new home, the history of which is described by Aalya as follows: "According to the City, the house was built in 1920 and the record we have on our deed is that it was given in 1925 by a woman named Angelina Robinson to what must have been her sister in law, a lady named Lucinda Fournier, "en propre par amour et affection". Lucinda then lived in it until her death, at which point it was willed to family members, then the property, which originally comprised the house next door too, was divided up and sold in 1981 to two different families. The house changed hands again in November, 2003, and was then sold to us in 2007! So that makes it a venerable 87 years old. We hope we'll still be living in it to celebrate its centenary in 2020, without having to tack on any more additions!"

When I pulled in, it was by this smiling face that I was met:



I've never known Aalya to not have the most welcoming home. She is of Fey descent and wherever she lands magically and instantaneously comes to life with vivid yellow, green and orange walls, a suspicious ottoman, several cats who reign supreme, and a violin. Proof of this can be found in the following photographs of her new home with the lucky Dietrich:

The door to her office


Her "dressing room" (an actual dressing room!)


The music area


The kitchen (check out the servant's staircase and the crazy lighting)


A corner of the bedroom


The living room



Warmth and love swallow you whole when you walk in and tea is always at the ready as is a good (or bad, which makes it better) horror movie, classical music and conversations that begin with:
"I was once exoticised."
"But we already understand that marriage is more often than not driven by the economic manipulations of our society."
"So there was this 'feminist' who just last year discovered the concept of the Other and SO every email I get is filled with 'WE speak for so-and-so' and 'WE speak for so-and-so' and I feel like responding with 'YOUR WE does not represent ME, because I AM so-and-so'."
"I'm really angry about this and I shouldn't but I am and so here's what I'm angry about...what do you think?"
"Do you like my shoes?"
"I was reading from some of my journals that I kept in my early twenties and I'd written: "Don't they get it? I don't have an agency!" God, can you believe how sad that little girl was? I just wanted to cry for who I was when I read that."
"We really should write an article together."
"Let me tell you what the problem with our society is..."
& of course:
"What I'm about to share with you, I've not told to anyone else."

No matter how much time may lapse between visits with Aalya, there never seems to be space between us. Although we live in the same city, we have in the past gone close to a year without seeing one another, but came back together without feeling as though anything had shifted or any time lost. Her insightfulness, loyalty and straightforwardness are treasures I kiss and pet every time I see her and hear her "cackle" (her word, not mine) of a laugh. She will always be my Crazy Cat Lady and I only have room for one such individual in my heart. (No others need apply. But thank you, anyway.)

All photos can be found here.