Concerning apartments

When it rains the apartment here smells of cat urine but it's cozy. The place--our temporary flat-- feels like an old cabin in cottage country: the ones built in the 70s with leaks and stains on the ceiling. For a while we mistakenly believed that the place was rather run down. Quite the opposite, however; this 1970s cabin of ours is highly desirable. It boasts three bedrooms, one of which has been added to the back (we are on the ground floor so the room can run out into the
small backyard). At bedtime cats in heat wail on the roof directly above our bed. Am reminded of Eliot's Prufrock.

I asked a friend who has skylights in his room whether he can see the stars here at night. He believes he might would the clouds only oblige him and disperse. Most nights I can't see much of the moon, myself; when it shows, more often than not it's watery and diffuse. I recently saw a one-in-a-lifetime special exhibit of Van Gogh's night paintings; I think the skies of his homeland haunted him as they do haunt me. A singer friend of mine who lives on the fourth floor (the tallest level of most buildings here) tells me that nature bares itself to her through the skies here...there is little grass and forest...but the sky is a entity to be reckoned with, as it is in the prairies back home.

It's wet here and cold, and somehow eases what went before. I am grounded in this country. My body, too, loves it, as my body loved Glastonbury. My water-husband, of course, feels more at home here than anywhere. The Thiessen crest shows a Tree planted near water -- Pete thinks he's always been trying to get back and plant himself by these (or any?) waters. It helps that the crest/family originates in the Netherlands. Am a long way from the plains of Western Canada...

We've finally found our own flat and are told we're lucky to have found it in so short a period; we cannot, however, move in until May. The location, I am told, is nice too. It's a two bedroom, but the second bedroom is tight and narrow -- kind of like in the condos they keep building back in Toronto, each buyer apportioned out her own personal matchbox of living space (why? i ask, why?).