Yesterday, as I walked down the sunny autumn street, headphones on, I realized I was smiling. I also realized I am never so happy, so expansively filled with magnanimity as I am just before I leave for a trip. It seems at those moments that it is what I am meant to be doing all the time.
And so, I leave this quick missive to let you know there will be photos and experiences to share on my return.
Ciao, friends!
Gripped by a crippling ennui caused by heat, stiff muscles, restless sleep, stagnant work projects, and the knowledge that vacation is still a month away, I’ve been unable to write much of anything.
I’m heading to Nova Scotia for my vacation this summer. Airfare has been purchased, details are being cared for, now all there is to do is wait for the time to leave the city to arrive. I haven’t been back for almost 5 years, and I’ve never returned in the summer since I left home. The time is so filled with the promise of walking the beach, catching up on reading and writing, meals with old friends and family. The anticipation is so delicious that, in a strange way, I almost don’t want the vacation to actually come.
For me, going home is always a strange affair. Equal parts excitement and anxiety, so blended that it’s next to impossible to tell the two apart. The comfort of being in a place that knows you inside and out (and you, it) juxtaposed against resentment that comes from that very knowing. Peeling back the layers of nostalgia generated by distance in both space and time and not knowing whether what you’ll find underneath will be a soft, ripe fruit or a hard kernel. The place has a hold on me somehow. One that goes beyond just being where I grew up. It’s almost like a living being on its own, with a personality and emotions, the drunk at the party who’s boisterous and happy one moment, sullen and bitter the next. I’m hoping that when I peel everything back there’s a little of both.
A quiet evening spent sitting on the front step.
It rained today–a real, air-cleansing rain, one that soaks into the soil a good inch or so, leaving it spongy and clean-smelling. Now it’s stopped though, and the sky has cleared along the western horizon. But there are still places that threaten rain, where the clouds hang like wrinkled bedsheets put out on a line to dry on a still day.
I can hear the neighbors across the way unlocking their door, creaking it open; dogs and masters walk together, neither in a hurry, both smelling the air; a trolley hums by at the end of the street. Normally each of these things would steal my attention, but tonight I let them Doppler by as I sit.
I like the calm that settles in on a night like this. Though I’m in the city, I really could be anywhere. The delicate balance between content and resignation at another day’s passing has been struck. No need for deep thoughts tonight–best that they be allowed to slip in then fade like the evening sounds.
The after dusk cool sets in and the clouds start to move. Then so do I.
These days, even the sound of the word ‘Olympics’ elicits an automatic cringe from me. Between skyrocketing budgets, skewed political priorities (don’t get me started on funding these games in the first place with all the other worthy places for the money to go) and the long term ramifications of the whole shit show, now I read this: http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/02/05/OlympicPrivacy/ .
Let me see if I have this straight: I am going to pay almost six times the original amount that I didn’t agree to in the first place to be spied on and recorded not just for the few weeks of the Olympics, but likely for the rest of my days in Vancouver?
Awesome, just wanted to make sure.
I think there are way too many cameras in this city already, let alone setting up millions of dollars-worth more, and leaving them in place as a post-Olympic “security” network. Reading through the comments, a fairly consistent thread was that if you’re not doing anything wrong, then technically you shouldn’t mind the surveillance. Well frankly, I mind. There’s no evidence that they even work. I’m grateful that both the provincial and federal privacy commissioners are behind the removal of cameras post-Olympics, but there are still so many concerns about treading on people’s privacy during the games, that I must admit, I still have my reservations.
At the risk of sounding completely dorky, the Frankfurt Buchmesse is fun. Some people who’ve been going for ages will disagree, and I can see why. It’s the same people every year, doing the same thing at the end of the day. But this is also the time of year when all the people with clever glasses, quirky shoes, and outlandish stockings all gather to chat books. As much as it’s a boring trade show on one hand, on the other hand, it’s nerd heaven. Where else do you get to see books from 1470?