5/21/14 - There may be no other contemporary venue more inviting of diversity than an airport. Within those confines as nowhere else, the 99% and the 1% make a whole. The low-cost carriers use gates adjacent to the legacy airlines. All strata mingle in the Starbucks line. Don’t believe me? Shop for plane tickets. Select the economy class option. Go back. Select the first class option. Wonder at the array of individuals—squalid to stupendous—who seek to take flight!
Need empirical evidence of its uniqueness? The spectrum of fashion on display—slovenly to sharp—is rarely congregated in our stratifying society. No one dresses up for a sporting event anymore. The masses hardly attend the symphony, so their denim can’t brush against the upper crust’s silk. Universities, though they boast of equal opportunity admission processes, are home to a homogenizing pressure to conform that fractures the populace into a paltry few groups with matching paltry few uniforms.
But here some people rolled out of bed. Here some people are going to be seen by very important people very soon. Here some people are looking to take the first step towards a fresh start. Here someone is destined to revisit someone or someplace they had no desire ever to revisit again. Whatever or whomever awaits them, they’ve dressed for the occasion. Some of these occasions are hours away, so they’ve dressed for comfort: ratty T-shirts and athletic shorts never worn for remotely athletic purposes. Others have immediate meetings with prospective clients who need to be wowed. Some are so ancient they recall the days when air travel was a privilege and the closest the riff-raff could get to an aircraft was to connect the hose to its voluminous fuel tanks. They dress in keeping with their memories of blazers steeping in cigarette smoke and cocktails ricocheting off patent leather spats.
This is what concentrated democracy looks like.
***
There is something old-fashioned about the traveler’s existence. Forget Williams’ red wheelbarrow. So much depends on the weather. With travelling, specifically air travelling, you still can (and do) cast your fate to the wind.
Our flight to Denver was delayed. (We circled for 45 minutes.) Our flight from Denver has been delayed. (The LED board at our terminal listed our plane as On Time until twenty minutes after it was slated to take off, then it was an hour and a half delay, then two hours, then three and a half hours.) Therefore, we are very delayed. If that weren’t enough to fray the old nerves, my pen suffered a ruptured aneurysm before we touched down. (I brought a backup just in case, don’t worry. It’s more to what the rupture portends because I didn’t pack a second backup, and I have to get through 11 more days.) This is all to say the start of our trip has been more fits than starts.
These are personally dark moments—or can be. You think of all your plans toppling like dominoes, the hasty arrangements you’ll have to make, the funk you’ll be whenever you do get to where you were going because you’ll have missed out on a day of fun, and the money and the time squandered, sitting idly by in the least desirable of all places. But then is it really the least desirable? Are there worse settings than this unnaturally bright cavern with its commercial carpeting, shabbily masked air ducts, Arrivals and Departures monitors with tiny print in flashing colors, children past their breaking points, soundtrack of scuttlebutt about which plane is substituting for which, gate changes and final boarding calls announced overhead, and other stranded passengers nattering on and on about where exactly they are and how long they’ve been stuck there?
What if ours was a bereavement flight instead of a pleasurable one? What if this were an ER instead of an airport? What if these lines were refugees for rations instead of vacationers demanding future flights for their inconvenience?
This is a distinctly American sentiment I’m feeling, equal parts fury and shame. First world problems, white people problems, an unacceptable inconvenience—call them what you will. The thorns of the privileged are downy to the disadvantaged. This is life. Sleep on a thousand threadcount sheets, and you’ll discover the grain of sand. Worse still, you’ll roll around on that grain all night long until you’re convinced the bedlinen is sandpaper.
***
There are approximately 30 electric outlets around Gates A24-32 at the Denver International Airport. There are approximately thousands of hungry devices, drained by the idling time baked into security lines and layovers, passing through the concourse at any given moment. Not surprisingly, at any given moment, the outlets are occupied.
Scores of users in need of their fix scan the banks for that one unoccupied port, those on their first attempt doing so eagerly and those on their fifth doing so drearily. They itch their necks, trembling from withdrawal. Some risk-tolerant technophiles have staked their claim, plugged in, and abandoned their devices, likely venturing to drown their sorrows in a Potemkin watering hole or to fill their bellies with the selfsame food they could be eating at their local Burger King by now had the jet stream pulled the cold front just ten miles to the north. Others, fettered to their electronics by painfully short cords, shift from one awkward position to another while feeding the three-headed beast of social media, telework, and Candy Crush.
***
A little human connection works wonders. Sustained, personable small-talk can ease the mind and tempers in the bleakest circumstances. When suspended in limbo for hours, unsure of your flight status and incredulous of all staff-member-soothsaying, yacking about the politics behind California’s water policies and the ramifications of natural gas exports off the coast of Israel for peace in the Middle East can take you away from your troubles...even when your plane can’t.
5/22/14 - Within the dingy quarters that pass as dining rooms for motel chains, during drowsy mornings across America, fumbling hands discover not all cereal types are conducive to cereal mill dispensing. Some will be ground instead of dispensed. The column of frosted shredded wheat becomes, in the final, bleary-eyed analysis, a cruel totem of verboten grain.
Cheerios it is.
***
Victoria being a port city on the southern tip of Vancouver Island and Seattle having a port of its own, Megan and I had the opportunity to utilize water in a way novel to most midwesterners. Our ride, a de Havilland DHC-3 Otter seaplane circa the early 1950s, bobbed on Lake Union. There would be no scrambled removal of shoes, no TSA screenings, no preferred boarding. Five minutes before we were due to take off, the passengers were called by a human voice and checked off using a pencil and paper. We marched down the dock and climbed aboard, one foot on the narrow pontoon at a time and up the three step ladder.
As the last of the nine passengers to board, I ducked down the cramped aisle and sat in the tenth and last available seat (the one reserved for a copilot were there such a position on this flight). I was surprised by how many mechanical components the cockpit had, mostly analogue dials, wheels to be cranked, foot pedals and the like. Directly in front of me—so that the pilot would have to invade my personal space should he need to consult it—was one of the few digital displays. Looking like an OEM tapedeck, the screen read in Gameboy green and black: SEAPLANES. Having watched more than my fair share of cartoons and Bond movies, I imagined toggling through the other options with the eraser-sized knob would transform our craft into different modes of transport: AIRPLANES, SEACARS, DIRIGIBLE.
Upon ignition, the cabin was astoundingly, perfectly loud. The exhaust’s guttural rumble and the air whistling through the broken seals crowded out any mid-range tones.
The flight on a clear, still day was as amazing as expected. We moved like the birds do: through the weather, not above it, with the wind, not despite of it. “As the crow flies” is shorthand for the most direct route possible—a straight line from point A to Point B, curvature of the earth not withstanding. But, should you be a crow, you’d know the the directest route involves wobbles. The wind bats you about like a cat does a mouse, toy, dead roach, etc. Without warning, we were tossed, torqued, and settled in short order.
All told, the greatest intrigue lied not with the elements but with the pilot. Boarding last and via his own door to the cockpit, he quickly established himself as a quiet type. He was short on safety spiels and non-existent on banter. (He wouldn’t smile at me, though I was positively beaming at him.) Formalities out of the way, he carried out his tasks with a practiced, casual demeanor of a veteran. He was in perpetual twitchy motion, constantly making jerky, obsessive, precise movements: twisting, pushing, turning, switching, tapping, and flipping. All these adjustments like a hummingbird's flapping, hardly visible in isolation yet in concert keeping us aloft. When not tinkering with instruments, he was adjusting his belt and blousing his shirt, unable to keep still, frenetic but never appearing facially distressed or even alert, flight being very old hat for him.
In the rare intermissions between crosswinds, he rested his right arm like so many long-distance drivers, slackly atop the yoke. His thumb jerked upwards reflexively indicating his heart rate.
My fascination with our captain did not end with the landing. While waiting for the pair of Canadian customs agents to arrive, we bobbed in the Inner Harbor. The pilot extracted a journal from his cooler/briefcase. What a professional! I thought, making notes about our trip to reflect upon his trade and hone his skills. But then, in schoolgirl fashion, he uncouthly shifted his journal onto his left leg, trying overtly to be discrete. This only whetted my appetite for espionage. Wearing mirrored sunglasses, I was able to spy on his notebook without detection after a little subtle craning of the neck. No aviation terms were clearly legible, no knots, no vectors, no trim, no sheer. What I could make out clearly above his pen and moving wrist was, “She even asked me if I wanted a BJ right there.”
Que?! Of all the sentences in the world to write...
Could this have been a titillating novel he was writing? Was he embarrassed to be such a devout erotica author that he jotted down notes with his lapbelt still on, the nine cylinder radial engine still blisteringly hot, and his feet still on the rudder pedals? No. He didn’t seem the type. Could it be nonfiction, the chronicles of this man in uniform’s sexual conquests? Was he keeping track of his whirlwind of one night stands? No. He didn’t look the part. More likely, the content was not braggadocios but affronted. Was this passage exemplary of the half-full notebook? Could this this be the latest in a string of grievances against a coworker? I revised my estimation of him. His tremulousness wasn’t symptomatic of an endearing quirk but of shell-shock. This man, who was so distant and ticky, was the victim of a hostile work environment.
I wanted to comfort him, but my speculation was the result of an invasion of his privacy. The most I could do without arousing his suspicions was thank him for the memorable ride, which he acknowledged as tersely as you’d expect. Up the gangway to Canadian soil, I mulled over the secrets we keep and how much more complexly, richly human the characters we meet are than the hasty characterizations we make of them.
***
Transcript
Young woman to young man: I’m not a racist. You know that about me...The guy looked like the fucking gorilla.
***
They’ll tell you in the tourist literature that Victoria is lush, and they’re right. It’s not called The Garden City for nothing. But the extent of its verdure is astounding and not to be hypothesized. It’s not that the grass is extra green, that the flowers ceaselessly bloom, or the trees are extra tall. (All are true.) It’s as though God jimmied with the contrast, saturated the setting using a supreme edition of Photoshop. Every lawn, big or little, private or public, whatever the sun exposure, is stunningly landscaped. Rhododendron, azaleas, hostas, ostrich ferns, irises (siberian and bearded), bleeding heart, primrose, rosemary bushes the size of labradors, smoke trees, buckeyes (red and white), horse chestnut, Douglas fir, red cedar, dawn redwoods, and myriad mosses abound absolutely everywhere. I’ve seen ivy growing out of the sewers, as though what overflows here isn’t water going in but life coming out. One gets the sense that not only do North Americans retire here, so do the plants. Trees, shrubs, perennial flowers (for there are no annuals in climes like these) and herbs come here to settle into an easy life. No frost, no drought, no scorching heatwaves, no tornadic winds or pummeling hailstones.
This spring of rejuvenation, the headwaters of the fountain of youth, isn’t tropical, isn’t balmy, isn’t showy. The ideals human desires conjure—sunny in the upper 70s (lower 20s C) with a few clouds mixed in to keep our skin from burning—couldn’t be further from the truth. No. What’s left of Eden is more drab than that: gray, drizzly in the lower 60s (mid teens C), a constant stiff breeze blowing the accumulating drops together in the tops of trees to knock them down to the branches below, to the ground below, to be drawn by the roots, to be taken up again, interiorly rather than exteriorly.
***
Curious: where Megan and I are from, as soon as a tree encroaches a powerline, it’s chainsawed back with abandon. Depending on the whim of the laborer and his schedule, the shapes vary. The conscientious ones will lop off only the offending hemisphere, leaving the crown to look like an apple with a sizable bite taken out of it. Others, needing to save more lines from the limbs of menacing maples, will take down the entire tree past a certain height, creating unholy freaks that next season will look like it’s trying out a flattop haircut.
In Victoria they let the trees grow however tall they’re inclined to grow, near whatever utility they happen to grow near. Powerlines run through 50 foot (15 m) trees as though the lines were woven by a crafty electrician. Stranger still, when you flick a switch in the city limits, the light comes on. Somehow the utility companies are able to manage/accommodate the interests of their animate and inanimate—but no less vital—shareholders.
And I know you’re thinking I’m a hippie at this point and that plants matter less than we do and the risks of losing service temporarily because of downed lines are too great—think of all the sweat that will be poured out and the meat that’ll spoil in the fridges of America!—let me just tell you the streets are beautiful here. It feels good to walk down them. You don’t even notice the electric poles unless you’re looking for them. Isn’t that simple, public pleasure worth something? Walk down a sidewalk where I’m from, past the butchered birches, maimed maple, and ghastly gum, hewn as though specifically to allow you to see every inch of thick black wire dividing our heavens, and you sense it. You feel different. Too much sky. Too many dilapidated roofs and cockeyed gutters. Too few leaves and branches. This affects you even if you don’t cognize it at all. Tell me that you wouldn’t risk a little inconvenience, lose a little productivity, to reclaim some natural peace.
5/23/14 - Transcript
Author to young male barista with fledgling ponytail and artsy round glasses: [pointing to small door at the top of a ladder behind the counter] What’s up there?
Barista: Supplies and stuff.
A: Do you ever go up there?
B: Yeah, like twice a day. [pause] There’s a yoga mat up there.
A: Oh? Do you use it for that purpose?
B: No. To take naps. [pause] Sometimes ya gotta nap.
***
Proving that anything and everything can be different from what you’re used to: Victoria’s sidewalks have a curious feature. Frequently, wherever two paths meet at a right angle, a separate path bisects the two, creating a little triangle. It appears this functions as a pedestrian turning lane.
***
Everything is friendlier here, even the geese and squirrels.
***
Every few hundred feet (30-50m) in downtown Victoria, at least one person is dressed in all black—not the hair salon all black, or the art museum all black, or the gothic clique in high school all black, but the Punk Is Not Dead all black. These shadowy souls will be lounging beside a building, jabbering with their fellow drifters. Without exception, all are under 35 years of age and would appreciate your spare change, but they aren’t about to ask nicely or explain why they need it. Most of the time they’re on the clock, they’re waiting for an unmarked styrofoam cup to fill with cash of its own accord.
These young, able bodied men and women are homeless by choice. Or, at least, apparent choice. There could be mental illness or addiction lurking inside them, but the outward signs are nil. Vagrancy presents as a way of life, and not an unpleasant one at that. I overheard one such pauper explain his plans to head north soon to visit his favorite part of island in a carefree tone befitting a well-heeled trust fund baby. Moreover, there’s not only safety but also camaraderie. Packs/gangs/groups of hobos loaf together. Many of these groups enjoy the company of a four-legged friend and mascot that wins them sympathy funds. (Note: A Vancouverite, later commenting on the homeless population, stated that Victoria was the end of the line for indigent migrating patterns. Most scrimp to pay the ferry fares and, once deposited, forever lack the funds to make it back off the island.)
While I admire their anti-materialism and openness to humble living, I do take issue with their horning in on the panhandling market. Shouldn’t the vessels fishing for change be reserved for those who have no other viable options? These people appear to be spry enough to spring into any dumpster to scrounge and of sound enough mind to be able to plot the most favorable (favourable) courses for said scrounging. Why not, then, undertake the most meager modicum of toil and leave the charity for those “in need” instead of those, who like us, are more properly “in want”?
***
While gawking out a window onto Victoria Public Library’s spacious arcade, Megan and I spied yet another young woman pushing a stroller unaccompanied by a companion. (This had been a trend we’d noticed.) What piqued my interest as she drew nearer to a bench and, incidentally, to our vantage point, was that the stroller appeared to be empty. She had no child in her arm or otherwise strapped to her. What was the meaning of this?
This quizzical display demanded extra scrutiny. A peacock feather protruded from a hidden back pocket. On the armrest/tray thingy, there was a round bowl with snacks in it. Who were these for? Why would the stroller by separated from the child? As if to answer me, the young woman popped the breaks and walked around the front. With her back to us, she reached in and extracted something. She placed it on the ground before the stroller. The food bowl followed. A darkly mottled cat circled his kibble.
That’s about right.
***
Proof that everyone is nicer here: we ventured to a grocery store to take care of business and buy bus passes. Since everyone here also likes to chat and takes an interest in strangers, we struck up a conversation with the cashier who sold lotto tickets and cigarettes behind a designated counter. I asked, now they we were paying customers, if there were any restrooms (washrooms) nearby since I incidentally needed to pee for the last two hours since there is nary a public restroom (washroom) in all the 156 acres (.63 km2) of Beacon Hill Park. So the woman says, “Oh yes, upstairs. I’ll have someone show you.” The offer of an escort came too quickly for me to react and insist there was no need to make a fuss. She picked up the wall phone and called a checker, who promptly shuddered her register, and abandoned her post to to be our restrooms (washrooms) chaperon.
As the checker made her way to us, I thought either there’s a Gordian maze of dry goods upstairs or these people are so gosh darned hospitable they can’t stand to let you just strike off all by your lonesome for fear you might miss the company.
We said our goodbyes to the cashier and greeted the checker. A new round of small talk began immediately. By the Great Wall of Soft Drinks, we had disclosed where we were from (Missouri, which does sound like Mississippi we granted but actually isn’t that close by) and how long we’ll be staying (till Monday morning). We passed through the Build Your Own Trail Mix aisle and headed for a gap in the bank of freezers between Entrees and Vegetables. Our sherpa pushed through one of the pair of industrial french doors. Megan and I obediently followed while mutually astonished by the pungency of the ambient seafood bouquet and the decidedly utilitarian aesthetic of what soon presented itself as a loading bay.
It was on this stretch, past the rows of still shrink-wrapped tomato sauce cans that we were enlightened as to the rationale for the escort. Our terminus was not public restrooms (washrooms) but staff restrooms (washrooms) that are yours for the using if only you’d ask nicely. The checker presented the facilities with a wave of her hand and stood at attention befitting a Swiss Guard. Ecstatic to be opening a door to find sweet relief, I thought of how, at home, when inquiring after facilities you’d be told “no” flatly by an inkjetted sign or, at best, “Sorry, no” by a sympathetic but boss-fearing employee even if you were teetering back and forth with your legs crossed in clear bladder-originating distress.
***
Exiting the grocer a half pound (.23 kg) lighter, the pleasant exchanges continued. Megan congratulating us on killing two birds with one stone by securing the bus passes and finding a restroom (washroom) in the same place. A fellow shopper, a woman with a downy blonde mustache, as though waiting for this particular setup, exclaimed without skipping a beat, “Two stoned birds!” and we all shared a hearty laugh in this misty, breezy paradise.
***
Hiking through the aforementioned Beacon Hill Park, we encountered a number of the nomadic bands of vagrants that migrate through Victoria. A loner, who was setting up camouflaged shop in a thicket of evergreen trees yelled to no one in particular, “Four! Ha, ha, ha!” as a certain Count on Sesame Street would do. Sure enough, as we walked passed, the same voice continued, “Five! Ha, ha, ha!” and it became hard to tell whether or not he was acting a fool or whether he was reveling in a hidden ceremonial stocktaking. Somewhere over our shoulders, walking through igneous glades and grasslands we heard, “Six! Ha, ha, ha!” in the same jovially monomaniacal voice.
***
Continuing on our odyssey, we encountered an otherworldly scream somewhere in the distance. The uniformity of its tone and its rhythmic repetition suggested the source was a bird rather than a person, although it did have a feline mewing quality. Figuring this was the cry of yet another perturbed seagull, we walked onward.
We meandered, marveling at the sequoias and crossing the pristine lawn bowling fields and relatively tame mountain biking trails. As we approached the centrally located playground and picnic area, we heard the same sound again. Although the exact exclamation was sui generis, it would best be described as distressed laughter. What was so striking now was its sheer volume, as though the animal was childishly trying to drown out an epithet or biting remark from the top of the lungs. We looked in the trees but could find no creature as the source.
Proceeding onto the chipped mulch of the playground still baffled by the uncanny soundtrack, we nearly tripped over a peacock decorously strutting about near a miniature yellow firetruck on a jumbo spring. Stunned, we surveyed the scene for confirmation that this was no hallucination from too much afternoon tea. Young mothers, cross-legged and chatting on a bench. A father holding his tottering toddler upright by the arms. A pair of children running around the swing set in the midground. No one paying any mind to the majestic, iridescent avian sticking out like an indigo thumb.
Befuddled, not wanting to leave the enchanting fowl yet not wanting to engage an on-edge animal, we did what spellbound tourists do and reached for our cameras. The bird gave us the stink eye celebrities cast upon paparazzi and strutted away towards a little girl. As I was groping for a rational comment to utter, it occurred to me that the locals were desensitized to this exotic visitor. Why? While I was oafishly telling Megan I didn’t believe peacocks were native to the northwest, the bird felt threatened by the kid. It raised its tail feathers (tectrices) and, staring at her with a hundred eyes, cried its unmistakable, earsplitting cry.
Finally, another person acknowledge the obvious when coming to his daughter’s aid. “A peacock, honey. Say, ‘Hello peacock!’” Unable to bear the mystery any longer, I shouted to the father, “What’s the deal with the peacock?” He looked surprised by my surprise and explained this specimen was one of a dozen or so in the park, the rest of the flock being more southerly, nearer to the petting zoo from which they escaped decades ago. The implied burden of corralling the pissy poultry being too great, the zookeepers must have thrown up their hands. And now Victoria has hordes of peacocks to mingle with their hordes of drifters.
5/24/14 - The utility boxes are wrapped in huge, glossy prints of greenery. This is an improvement over the existing alternative, as unconvincing as it is.
***
Transcript
Disgruntled overweight father to bowl-cutted pre-teen son in the middle of Butchart Gardens, one of the most picturesque locations in all of Canada: Thanks Travis, the only good picture was ruined because your hand was in it.
***
Stripmalls look the depressing same everywhere.
***
Megan shouldered an Asian woman in the head today. More accurately, an Asian woman headbutted Megan in the shoulder today. Most accurately, an unconscious Asian woman collapsed on Megan while sitting on the bus today.
Naturally, Megan apologized for being in the way, although she probably should’ve said, “You’re welcome,” since if Megan wasn’t obstructing her path, the sleepy woman would have smacked into the window.
***
Transcript
Scene 1
Elderly South Dakotan to a group of Japanese women on the bus returning from Butchart Gardens: Did you like the Japanese garden?
Scene 2
Elderly South Dakotan explaining where she’s from to a group of Japanese women: South Dakota.
Japanese women: [...]
ESD: SOUTH DA-KOE-TAH!
JW: [...]
ESD: It’s in the middle of the United States. Towards the top.
JW: [...]
ESD: Have you heard of Mount Rushmore?
JW: [...]
ESD: MOUNT RUSHMORE! RUSH-MORE!
JW: [...]
ESD: The presidents. Of America.
JW: [...]
ESD: That’s okay. I don’t know anything about anywhere else either.
***
Victoria, you’ve finally found a way to disappoint us. On a Saturday evening, Megan and I did as most humans do nowadays, and we ate dinner. Or rather, we tried to eat dinner. At 6:15p, we arrived at our destination, La Fogata, a Latin American sandwich shop. Strange. Peering inside, I noted a glaring absence of customers or staff. I gave the door a tug. Nothing. I read the hours on the door. La Fogata had closed at 6p. Cruelly enough, the sign on the entrance promised the eatery would be opening again at 10:30p, though why there would be more patrons at 11:00p than 7:00p, I’ll never understand.
Having learned in our travels to roll with the punches, we emotionally regrouped. Megan withdrew from her purse the list of approved eateries we had compiled prior to our journey and our customized map. We found our location on the map and assessed relative distances to the alternatives numerically demarcated in black ink (alphabetical symbols demarcating places of interest). We decided to walk the five blocks to Courtney Street to check on a food truck. Being hungry, we checked three other places that were along the way just in case. Ayo Eat: closed. Uchida Eatery: closed. WannaWaffle, what should have been a teeming tourist trap: closed.
We remained outwardly calm for each other’s sakes. People were still milling about the town on a beautiful evening, and none of them looked famished. It’s going to be okay. We’re just working up an appetite. We continued to our other backup certain that our fluky misfortune would end. We turned onto Courtney and stopped in our tracks. No trucks, food or otherwise, were in the parking lot.
Fair enough. We probably deserved that one. It is the evening, afterall. Most food trucks pack it in after the late lunch crowd disperses. We scratched our heads and vented about how unbelievable it was that all of the city’s best restaurants were shuddered on the freest night of the week. But let’s move on. The later it gets, the greater the odds of the few still operational establishments shutting down shop for the night.
We consulted our list once more. Five scratched off. Still plenty of candidates remained. Chinese sounds good. To Chinatown! We built up the place in our minds. They’ll definitely be open. They won’t miss an opportunity to capture revenue on a weekend night. And it’s going to be some authentic Cantonese cuisine. Yes, it would take twenty minutes to cross town and yes that was the sound of my tummy rumbling, but the sure thing is worth it. Still, our brave faces were starting to crack from the long walk down Government Street. We weren’t even bothering to try to point out pleasant architecture or cute items in shop windows. We were quite literally pounding the pavement.
Turning onto Fisgard, we were bolstered by the uptick of pedestrian traffic. A number of the restaurants along the way were open, their glowing neon tubes twisted into foreign characters. We weren’t deterred. Reaching the end of the line where Fisgard intersects with Douglas, just shy of the immense Harmonious Gate of Interest we couldn’t care less about now even though it was “N” on our map, we hadn’t found our pick. We doubled back, more closely examining a row of hole-in-the-wall shops for an indication of street numbers. It was easy to miss. I Kyu Noodle’s windows were dark.
We both thought something like You’ve got to be kidding me! Thought, rather than said, because at this point the dam holding back our mutual fury was liable to fail. No amount of talking would save our night. We needed to keep moving. It’s only 6:55p. Let’s go back to the Inner Harbor. That’s where all the tourists are. Surely, we’ll find something edible there. If nothing else, we can eat a beaver tail at the food cart we saw earlier today. (Note: beaver tail is neither beaver nor a tail. It is a plane of dough, deep fried, and coated in cinnamon and sugar.)
We consulted our map and list again and backtracked down Wharf Street. We encouraged each other and crafted an optimistic narrative together. A series of frustrations was really for the best because we’ll so appreciate our meals, we can go hog wild and lick our plates clean without guilt, and, when you think about it, this was God’s way of telling us to eat by the water. We could take a sunset stroll and watch the sun melt into the Strait of Juan De Fuca. Rounding the corner of a building, we could see our destination: Red Fish, Blue Fish—a little shack serving up fresh, ethically caught seafood. (Note: the ethical system was not identified, leaving the author/philosophy major to wonder what the difference would be between deontological, utilitarian, and virtue fishing.) Better still, we could see a line of customers eating along the peer’s repurposed railing. Best yet, we could see into the hut through an open window a duo fluttering about. Our feet fell lightly along the driveway as we nearly floated to their counter. I checked my watch. 7:15p. More than an hour after this gauntlet began, we made it. We turned to place our order.
The shutters were drawn closed, sealing us off from our would-be meals. The placard next to the shutters listed dinner hours terminating at 7:00p M-Sa. Once again, we were 15 minutes too late. So close and yet so far away. That there were staff swabbing the decks and steam was rising from the nearby patrons’ platters rendered the scene all the crueler.
As a last ditch effort, we walked another 2.5 km (1.6 mi) to Fisherman’s Wharf. Refusing to quit yet having no legitimate hope of being fed, we set our sights on the last of our eight options for the night: Barb’s Fish and Chips. What could be said at that juncture? “Hangry” didn’t do our feelings justice for we felt more than hungry and more than angry. We were exhausted, disheartened, and famished. We soldiered on in relative silence, fuming as we passed by luxury condos and seaside parks.
A little part of us tried not to let our sentiments get out of hand lest we be exposed to ridicule for being spoiled brats. We were, after all, in no real danger of starvation. The worst case scenario coming more clearly into focus with each passing minute was to resign ourselves to bland, decidedly mundane deli food at a grocery that we would take back to our bed and breakfast and eat on a shaded deck. Regardless of our troubles, we’d be comforted by a growler of blackberry cider chilling in our section of the fridge.
As we’d come to expect, the wharf was dead. None of the shabby floating shops looked open. We were on the wrong side of the 8 o’clock hour. We kept going, wanting to see with our own eyes the closed sign, wanting to slide the knife into our own chests. But lo! There was a couple walking up a ramp with ice cream cones. And what’s this? A child eating a french fry? And did you hear that? It sounded like an order being called out. Could it be?
Yes, yes it was. Barb’s was still cranking out freshly cooked deep sea treasures. We ordered whatever the cashier thought was best since we were too zapped to make decisions. We waited at a table, buzzer in hand, smiling at each other. We did it! We took our first bites of food some two hours after our adventure began.
That all sounds terrible, and it was, but the reader at this point may be wondering how self-inflicted these wounds were. After all, other eateries that we bypassed were clearly open for business. But that only makes our trial more trying because those were devious temptations, not viable options. For this story to achieve the height of dismaying tenor as Megan and I experienced it, I must make an autobiographical interlude.
We are planners. We think things through. We don’t like surprises because surprises tend to be upsetting ones. We each had independent tendencies to chart courses, and those tendencies have become all the more pronounced with our matrimony. Now, we either plan together or, as circumstances require, we plan apart, come together, and plan some more. Our married life has rewarded the virtues of foresight and strategy over instincts and spontaneity as most of our off-the-cuff escapades have been ill-fated. Moreover, rarely has our preparatory intelligence let us down. Thus, we plan.
One instance of spontaneity, in fact, sent such cataclysmic shockwaves through our cores that we nearly shiver when we speak of the event’s informal appellation: that Indian meal in Scotland. We were putting the finishing touches on an awesome day in Glasgow by treating ourselves to a leisurely supper. Wouldn’t you know, though, our first choice of restaurant was closed. Darn it all, but our second choice of restaurant was cash only, on which we were short. Irritated, we vowed to patronize the next place we passed that wasn’t fast food. As though sent from heaven, a guy on the corner of the following street thrust a coupon to an Indian restaurant up the way in our faces. Indian fare and a coupon?! Double whammy!
We would not be having the happy ending we gullibly imagined the promoter extended to us. Long story short, we were swindled. Everything that could be an upcharge, was. Our waiter neglected to communicate any of the fees with his indecipherable blend of Indian and Glaswegian accent (or maybe he did and we couldn’t translate it). Instead, he did as Scots have done to sheep for millennia and set us up to be fleeced. Rice: extra. Tap water: extra. Curry powder in your tandoori: probably extra. What about the coupon, did that take the edge off? Of course not. Through a devious loophole, the discount didn’t apply to our order. Weighing in at more than £60 ($102.82 USD), the meal broke our budget and scarred us for life.
Never again.
[Philosophically-laden aside within autobiographical interlude: I should add that if we went, say, $100 over budget, we weren’t going to be thrown into debtor’s prison. The worst that would come to us would be the knowledge that we had missed the mark. Such is the danger of setting goals: now, there’s an outcome that is suboptimal. Worse still, devoted planners have a sinking suspicion that if you fail, if things don’t go according to plan, then you had simply overlooked something. The die was cast when you neglected to verify the institution was open on Mondays, for instance.
But that’s also the allure of setting goals. Now, there are delineated parameters for success. This practice sets up incentives that more and more tightly tether you to the planning way of life because if you go about it correctly, foresee all contingencies and account for all variables, then you know there’s a pot a gold at the end of your planning rainbow.
The blame is on the planner, not the thing planned. (How could you blame a thing, anyway?) Such is the first principle of planning that a moment’s reflection will discover.
The planned way of life is one that admits of principles because it is a rational way of life. It believes in the superiority of order over chaos, in the mind’s ability to adjust means to ends, and in the dignity of humans as species who can temper their emotions and be deliberate. To its credit, it’s not capital R rationalistic, the school of thought that’s divorced from three-dimensional, everyday, dirty reality and that doesn’t let facts get in the way of theory. This is practical reason in action, rationality informed by empiricism, what you can see through photographs of menus, of meals, and of dining rooms. It’s informed by what has been perceived by actual people who have been where you may be going.
The pleasure involved in the process is not solely cold and intellectual. Well-made plans are beautiful. No less than the Doctor himself, St. Thomas Aquinas, attributed God’s splendor to the interplay of unity and diversity in his trinitarian being. God’s natural laws, which are so integral to the fruit His creative act, are awe inspiring. An analogous, albeit microcosmic, joy is aroused by contemplating plans. A traveler can revel in the elegance of “one trip, many cities” or “one course, many modes of transportation” as a child does his completed puzzle’s one picture out of many pieces.
Before I arise from my armchair, let me briefly commend the ethical aspect of planning. It is good to plan. An ethos of stewardship demands you plan. Planning makes the most of the limited resources you’ve been afforded. It mitigates squandering and maximizes responsibility. It allows you to be present and treasure your gifts such as vacation time rather than squandering precious time figuring out which of the brochures arrayed in hotel lobbies to trust.]
You can understand why popping into an unknown eatery that fateful Victorian night was unconscionable.
5/25/14 - A disconcerting scene #1: a man, staring intently into the urinal next to yours, calmly whispering a personal incantation.
***
We returned to Canada’s oldest Chinatown during the lunch hour. I Kyu Noodles was open and congested with customers. Once inside, there was a dearth of information to process. The dingy cafe had a putrid bouquet, but we told ourselves that was the smell of fresh food. A fish tank created one bank of the cash register’s nook. Nothing swam or crawled with the artificial confines. Bubbles rose and synthetic coral undulated in the green water. Stacked atop a shelf behind the cash register, a flatscreen television beamed atop a DVD player. Today’s feature (presumably also yesterday’s and tomorrow’s) was a nature documentary chronicling the life cycle of various creatures. The stars aligned such that my particular visual appetizer was the birth, life, and death of cicadas. Video of thousands of glorified roaches with traffic cone orange eyes, rising zombie-like out of the ground, marching lockstep down branches, bursting through exoskeletons, and ultimately being decapitated en masse and devoured by birds and raccoons in slow motion “entertained” me while my spicy shrimp noodle salad was being prepared. Neither wanting to see or not having the strength to pry myself away from the screen, I was relieved when an exotic snow leopard skulked into the frame. Next, a deer-like mammal looked alarmed at the camera. We all know what scene followed. Yes, a snow leopard tearing a deer-like mammal apart, red blood staining his white face.
Let’s eat!
***
General, unorganized observations about Victoria: (1) there are far more VW Westfalia’s per capita than anywhere else I’ve visited, likely because, aside from the running water, you could live mighty comfortably in a parking lot here. (2) It’s the only city I’ve been in where pedestrians truly do have the right of way over cars. Step a foot into the street on any of the thousands of crosswalks, and cars, buses, taxis, horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, bicycles pulling rickshaws, motorcycles, motorcycles with sidecars—in short, anything with wheels, will stop. If that wasn’t enough to establish foot traffic at the top of the food chain, crosswalks are painted onto every half-block of main thoroughfares so as not to inconvenience walkers who would otherwise have to hoof it to the nearest intersection. (3) The former priority may have more to do with the number of retirement communities than urban walkability enthusiasts so that it’s not that Victorians are dedicated to the dreamed of sustainable, human-scaled cities so much as they’re old (not that there’s anything wrong with that). What better way for an elected official to ingratiate him/herself to an aging population that to stop traffic for them? (4) I’ve been exposed to my fair share of second-hand marijuana smoke while out and about, the tokers being well cloaked in a crowd by the other plumes of licit tobaccos smoke. Still, I’ve never seen so many drug deals go down in the open. That may have something to do with never seeing so few police. I’ve not spotted one officer on patrol, but I’ve seen of pair of young males deal on a corner outside a McDonald’s all day long. How could I tell these were drug deals, you ask? Politicians notwithstanding, no one shakes hands that much.
***
You can learn a lot about a town’s climate by how people dress in response to the weather. If they wear shorts when it’s 50ºF (10º C), it doesn’t get hot. If they don’t use umbrellas to shield themselves from drizzle, precipitation is commonplace.
***
Speaking of fashion, Victoria is not fashionable. People tend to dress without fussing. This is in keeping with the region’s predilection for the outdoors. Clothes are not accessories for adorning but layers of materials to adapt our bodies to the environment. The only notable trend for those few attempting to make an impression is the popularity of chunky high heels on women’s footwear. Could anything else speak more persuasively to the lack of inborn taste?
***
At 1 o’clock this afternoon, exiting Christ Church Cathedral onto Quadra St., a Dodge Ram heading eastbound passed in front of us. The speed limit being 30 km/h (18.6 mi/h) and the city being sleepy, it was both easy and opportune to watch the male driver operate his vehicle. The green truck passed, windows open. The driver looked our way, a cigarette drooping from his mouth. His left hand on the top of the wheel, he reached underneath his arm with his right and extended a solitary finger—the middle one—our way. Baffled at having in no way offended the driver, it soon became clear the driver was giving the institution behind us the bird. There’s a story if ever there’s a story.
Take the next minute to imagine for yourself why that man would be so angry at the church, and why he would rebel so benignly.
5/26/14 - 9/11 conspiracy theorists are more numerous in this corner of the globe than in my own. We know this from Citizens Forum, a public access television program Megan and I stumbled upon while unwinding last night. Nearly 13 years after the Twin Towers fell, Victorians are still taking to the airwaves to set the record straight. The 9/11 Truthers’ bumper stickers still cling tightly to the back of No Parking signs, suggesting they’ve been freshly applied. Is it too late to impeach Bush?
(Note: the stickers referenced above were spotted on the way to a bus station where Megan and I caught a bus to a dock, where we would board a ferry, which would take us to a different dock, where we would catch a different bus that would take us to Vancouver.)
***
Transcript
Cool late-20s man to cool late-20s woman: I want to buy you the record player and all that.
***
Transcript
Teenage girl to two other teenage girls: One of the girls wasn’t good looking but whatever.
***
Transcript
Business woman into her wired microphone: When I saw that post, I was like, “Are you white?”
***
Transcript
Lolita inexplicably holding a white balloon to author on English Bay Beach: Do you blaze?
Author: Excuse me?
L: [giggle] Blaze, man. Do you blaze?
A: [determining blaze is Canadian for smoke pot] Oh, no. Sorry.
L: [giggle] Are you sure?
A: Positive, yes.
L: [giggle] Too bad. [skips away to inquire after a clique of Asians]
***
Vancouver is a dense city that, despite its density, is readily escapable. You can distance yourself down low on the many beaches. You can distance yourself up high on the three major bridges into/out of town or across the bay in North Vancouver. You can distance yourself at the same elevation by simply heading west since all roads lead to Stanley Park, Vancouver’s 1,001 acre (4.05 km2) natural refuge.
Another consequence of easy escapism is you develop an I and Thou relationship with the city as a whole. It’s so hard in other cities to get a sense of perspective without ascending to the top of a skyscraper because, if you back upon ground level, you’re inevitably still in the city, in some other neighborhood with it’s own buildings obstructing your view. But Vancouver is narcissistically bent to be reflected upon by its citizens and visitors.
***
In the BC Liquor Store on Davie St.—in the town where, after dinner, it’s harder to score a 6 pack than a dime bag—a young woman placed a 375 ml (12.6 oz) bottle of Absolut Vodka and a 375 ml (12.6 oz) bottle of Kahlua on the counter. I seethed with excitement, those being the ingredients one combines to form my favorite cocktail. Immediately, I wanted to make a little small talk with my drinking twin. I was weighing what I could say that would at once show I knew what she was doing but wouldn’t sound like a come on, something like, “Will you be buying cream on the way home?” But before I could say anything platonically clever, the woman’s friend said something to her. It wasn’t English, French, or German. It sounded slavic. They really do drink black russians in Russia! Imagine my excitement!
5/27/14 Transcript
Female cyclist to male cyclist: Are you fucking nuts?!
MC: Well, there you have it. Is he a climate change denier? I mean, it’s just the truth.
***
Deference must be a credo in the province of British Columbia, judging from the behavior in two of its biggest cities. Cars defer to bikes, bikes defer to pedestrians, pedestrians defer to each other. Cars don’t honk, bikers don’t yell, pedestrians say excuse me and apologize for being in your way.
***
It’s not often an accessory is a blatant trend, but a couple days in the City of Glass have shown me one thing: the Herschel Little America backpack is a Must Have this summer. Subtly designed for the Millennial on the go, this bag features resilient, machine stitched canvas, two authentic imitation leather straps, chrome buckles, and a logo just large and prominent enough to be recognized but not so large as to scream brand boosterism. Available in a rainbow of bold, but not bright, colors that hearken to its vintage inspiration, the Little America backpack tells the world you care, but not too much.
We have nice things. We, the generation who can’t afford cars and don’t want them anyway, who won’t be taking out a mortgage until the burden of student debt is paid down, and who will eventually have our collective hands forced by the boxes full of American Apparel Ts, Clark Shoes, and Ray-Bans sunglasses we’ve bought in lieu of houses that will no longer fit within the studios we can rent, are going to be just fine, thanks.
***
Maps show street names. They highlight landmarks: libraries, hospitals, museums, universities. They do not recommend neighborhoods or forewarn you of troublesome spots. They keep an objective distance that lets an explorer step into shangri las and bear traps of their own dumb volition.So, when you’re sweet tooth starts to tingle, you chart a course from Gastown to Chinatown. When you chart a course, you pick the shortest path down a major Vancouver artery. Nowhere along the way have you been warned of what’s to come.
A tourist unwittingly descends into a pit with hordes of craven individuals while maintaining a constant elevation. Gone is the subversive, counterculture edge homelessness had in Victoria and is in Vancouver what it traditionally has been: a depressing, terrible, ignoble, undesirable outcome. A span of West Hastings starting in the 100 block is a reminder that the source material for 1970s zombie lore was witnessing the effects of cocaine on segments of the urban population. On that block in particular, literally hundreds of destitute people milled about the streets before a long since abandoned mental health facility. At 3 in the afternoon, junkies were urinating in doorways, peeling off their ragged clothes, swapping various broken wares, swordfighting trees with wire hangers, and yelling at the sky. The soundtrack to this tragedy was punctuated by dealers calling out street names for drugs—prescription or otherwise—like stadium vendors call out cotton candy. With nary a police officer, social worker, or volunteer to be seen, the city is apparently content to keep a disease contained.
It becomes impossible to explore the rest of the city with the same bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Looky There! of the tourist once you know a place like that exists within walking distance, exists even now as you peruse the spines of an artsy, smart used book shop only two blocks away. There seems little you can do and much more likely something that can be done to you should you return to that forsaken stretch. And so you keep briskly striding away and attempting to put it out of your mind until finally that new development and modern architecture catches your eye and whisks you away, interiorly, faster than the resident ravens dive bomb.
5/28/14 Transcript
Male friend to group of male friends: Here’s my experience at the Moulin Rouge: a guy grabbing my arm and saying, “You like sex? You like sex?”
[Transcriber’s note: the speaker’s inflection made it difficult to determine whether the question marks above should be an exclamation point.]
***
Vancouver is the least historically conscious city I know. Hailing from St. Louis, a city that looks backwards because that’s where its proudest moments are, I feel like I’ve stepped off a time machine and into the 21st century. Not that there aren’t plaques on old buildings or memorials to events of note. Gastown notwithstanding, there’s just so few such sites.
The present is commemorated by the past’s annulment. What matters now is the sea, are the mountains, are the rows and rows of lofty steel and green tinged glass mimicking the old growth forests across the bay, is we who are pushing this city into tomorrow.
***
One of the consequences of being so pedestrian/biker/blader friendly is the traffic on the few major roads—and they are roads, not highways, thoroughfare, parkways, etc. but four or five total lane roads—is atrocious. Constantly, the streets leading into/out of the city are gridlocked. It would be best to get here and stay here or get out and stay out.
***
Back to Hastings Avenue depravity since it has been nagging at me: if we agree with Aristotle, contra Plato, that cities are not beings in themselves but aggregated associations of individuals, then there can be nothing found in the city that isn’t present, at least partially, in the citizens in which the city consists. Along these lines, it follows that just as no individuals have perfectly, ideally virtuous characters, that an amalgamation of individuals would contains its unique amalgamation of vices. As we should beg the pardon of our peers, pray for mercy, and ask for aid when necessary to alter our ways, so we conclude the body politic should beg—could it beg—our pardon as well, and that we, as its constituents, must grant the mercy and offer the aid we know that our portion in the larger association has contributed.
If I wonder how these citizens are able to go on with their lives knowing what come of their alleys contain, I should likewise wonder how I am able to go on with the knowledge of what I contain. Don’t I have pockets of poverty in me? What can I do about them?
***
Organic/non-GMO food here is what inorganic/GMO food is at home: the rule, not the exception. Every mass-produced food item sports a prominent label heralding its untainted pedigree. The insinuation behind these identifiers is that what is organic is a both a better ingredient and better for you. (How organic are we anymore? Even if we only consumed organic food, what of the drinks, the pills, smog, and particulate matter suspended inside our indoor air?)
If you weren’t told, though, would you notice? Is it more flavorful? Is it easier on your stomach? If not, is “organic” then just a brand like any other, the equivalent of saying Jack Daniels is in your bourbon barbeque sauce, that marshmallows are fat-free, and that Ding Dongs have 0g trans fat? Long-term scientific studies will clarify whether organic carrot cake can be considered a healthier alternative to standard carrot cake, but I’m dubious it’s worth the 20% premium.
Maybe it’s my unrefined palate or maybe its my cynicism, but I fear placebo effect’s psychological twin is in play here. My brain and its faculty of self-approbation gets more excited by the prospect than my tongue actually gets about the food. I think these corporate purveyors of organic goods are no less likely to manipulate me, to lure me into lazy eating habits that rely upon their products, than the ones who sell me inorganic granola bars in the US.
***
You don’t realize how words like “epidemic” can follow words like “obesity” until you step outside Mid America. An overweight person is exceedingly rare in this latitude. The few of those you see are usually wearing athletic garb and are in the act of trying to shed the pounds (kilos) that are literally/figuratively making said garb stick out.
On the other hand, the social pressure to stay trim here must be immense. A land rife with fit people is rife, too, with fat-shaming, thinspiration, and all the other buzzwords that reiterate the human spirit has a serious problem being moderate in any way.
5/29/14 - Megan and I took Bute St. south to Sunset Beach at the advice of our Airbnb host, Tristan. Crossing Davie St, we entered a shaded section of road that had been closed off to vehicular traffic. Just past a thick, chalky rainbow painted onto the pavement, colorful picnic tables were arrayed in rows. Most of the tables were empty, save one. A frumpy, middle aged man sat at a lime green one and read a paperback book.
If the decor wasn’t enough to establish the block’s eccentricity, to the man’s right was a living, breathing parrot. His blue and gold complimented the location’s exotic palate. The parrot stood still, looking as nonchalant as a tropical bird can in a cosmopolitan city. The two were positioned like a couple mid-dispute. Each faced slightly askance from the other so as to keep the lines of communication severed. The tension was palpable, each party minding his/its own business some four feet apart. I mused as to whether it was something the parrot said or didn’t say. Had the macaw begun to demand more than crackers? Had it begun to doubt the man still agreed it was a pretty bird?
Farther down Bute, we passed a tree with a laminated notice of a lost animal nailed to the trunk. The color photo in the center was a portrait of a blue and gold parrot named Ducky thats owner was offering a generous reward when found. Oh, the intrigue!
Was the reader not the bird’s owner, thus explaining their standoffishness? Was the lost parrot playing an avian game of hiding in plain sight? Was the poster outdated and now, even after the reunion, the man/bird relationship could never be the same? I nearly tumbled down the hill for lack of attention to my feet.
***
Either Vancouver bears a guilty conscience for razing so much forest to build their city or the fertile climate is too conducive not to, but there are more trees, shrubs, and vines on balconies and rooftops than I’ve ever seen. I’m not talking about a few tenants putting potted plants on their patio furniture. The property managers maintain seriously raised beds, as in planters on every floor up to the 40th. In some quarters, it looks like the forest is reclaiming the city.
***
Although there are people out and about on most every street well into the night, they saunter at a leisurely pace. Few ever jaywalk at intersections, most having the time and inclination to wait their lawful turn, even when there’s no traffic and no law enforcement to be seen.
A few factors could be at play: 1) Vancouver’s footprint. The downtown area can be trod from one side to the other in under an hour, so there’s no need to rush. 2) The numerous public restrooms (washrooms). A city ringed by seawalls and ribbons of parks, with ample squares and green space, has plenty of opportunities to let people do their tinkling at the first inkling. The city offers a healthy number of stand-alone 21st century looking restrooms (washrooms), commodes inside rectangular prisms of metal, crowned with solar panels and hiding self-contained water pumps behind silver paneling, maps of the city, advertisements, and plaques with street names. 3) An underdeveloped public transportation system. In most lively cities, if people aren’t sprinting to a public restroom (washroom) five blocks away, they’re sprinting for a bus or train. The cost of missing either is at least 15 minutes, a period worth running to avoid—even for those not otherwise given to hustling. Odds are, if you just missed your bus in Vancouver, you might as well just walk to where you need to go because it’ll only take 10 minutes anyway.
***
Down the corridor of every major road here is a picturesque tableau: a snowcapped mountain, a bay, a sky with towering, puffy clouds. It’s a wonder these views could ever become humdrum. Even when the road’s elevation rises, there’s a definitive end—the land drops off unseen and the firmament is set before you on a cement platter.
***
We ventured back to Gastown today, having unfinished business with that part of Vancity. Consulting the map posted on a realtor’s storefront, one can see that the Gastown neighborhood contains part of Hastings Street but has surgically removed the blighted potion of 100 W. Hastings in a fashion that would make the most partisan gerrymanderer blush. I shit you not, one block south of the swarm of drug-addled fiends are 870 sq. ft. (81 sq. m.) condos selling for $1,200,000 CAD ($1,115,449 USD). Two blocks southwest of that forsaken mass, lie stores to decorate such swanky pads and supply you with the plushest paper napkins money can buy, which I now know to be 12 sheets on a roll for $48 CAD ($44.62 USD).
This is the sort of madness only a hypnotist would aspire to, convincing people that bodies who are most definitely there and ambling circularly in your presence, cursing squirrels, don’t exist. The cognitive dissonance is off the charts.
The homeless’ saving grace, why the stoned and/or destitute are permitted to stay, is that the drugs they’re on are so powerfully debilitating that they couldn’t muster the energy or summon the motor coordination to rob anyone, especially the citizens who can afford to live in the surrounding parts of that gentrified town and their kilometer (.6 mile) deep pockets. You can almost hear the conversations with concerned, wealthy out of town guests as they sidestep a cadre of lolling-headed smackies: “Oh, them? No, no, no. They wouldn’t hurt anybody. As harmless as flies.”
(Sidenote: in the swanky store mentioned above, a track by Beck played overhead while Megan and I picked up saucers more carefully than we’d ever picked up anything before to check the price tag beneath (($35 CAD ($32.51) per saucer). My thought at the time was, “This isn’t what Beck would have wanted!”)
***
The apartment and condo complexes all have unique names stenciled on their glass front doors: the Oxford, the Pendleton, the St. George, the Berkeley, the Strathmore Lodge, the Eden, etc.
***
Prior to a free screening of Blackfish, a documentary about a deranged orca and the human actions that deranged him, a Vancouver Public librarian gave a few prefatory remarks. The usual What To Do In Case Of Emergency and the Upcoming Events flowed in their due course. In closing, with as little enthusiasm as possible, the librarian deadpanned, “We would like to acknowledge the traditional unceded territory of the Coast Salish people and thank them and all First Nations people for their hospitality for the privilege of being here tonight.”
I was a bit taken back. First, I didn’t see any First Nations representative in the room who could accept the thanks. This line functioned more like a prayer, something said to an unseen person—except that prayer is supposed to be heard by an entity who is present. Second, were a First Nations representative here, would he or she be compelled to say, “You’re welcome?” How can thanking a person for the land you wrested from them through force and fraud make amends for the wresting? Third, the utter lack of sentiment rendered the statement offensive to my ears. Isn’t insincerity symptomatic of disbelief such that a empty show of gratitude communicates a sense of entitlement to what was done/received?
5/30/14 - In my wallet on the last full day of our Canuckian adventure was a $10 CAD ($9.37 USD) bill. In my pocket was a loonie ($.94 USD). The exigencies of public transportation demanded I make change prior to climbing on a bus. I intended to ask the favor of a clerk at the friendly neighborhood grocery nearby, but it was inexplicably closed at 9:00a on a Friday. My next opportunity was Mac’s, Canada’s 7-11 equivalent. As I crossed in front of the store, I noted a haggard man with matted hair squatted by a newspaper dispenser. The Unibomber having ruined the long, scraggly beard for a generation, he appeared menacing as he stared straight ahead.
I went inside and became the third person in line. I reviewed the arrayed chewing gum options should I be required to make a purchase in order to have a bill broken. I had entirely too hard a time deciding among the brands and flavor options, my decision making apparatus being overheated from a week of travel. As the customer ahead of me departed and I stepped up, the haggard man entered the convenience store. The cashier eyed him as he circumvented the central checkout to head to the store’s rear. She knows him well, I thought. He probably uses the restroom (washroom). Maybe he tries to pilfer a candy bar.
I asked for change. She grudgingly obliged. While she dropped the money into my extended hand, the man retraced his steps. He was holding a steaming bag of microwave popcorn by the edge. When I left Mac’s with a pocket full of one and two dollar coins, the man was crouched in his spot. He was wiping a paper towel across his tongue, presumably extracting all the possible flavor from the product such as the artificial butter he had begun scraping off the bag’s interior surface.
The image stayed with me as I passed the neighborhood grocer where I had two nights earlier paid handsomely for a quart of organic vanilla greek yogurt—among other things—on a lark, it being the vacationer’s prerogative to splurge at every turn. There was something about the paper towel, how disagreeable that absorbent material must have felt on his tongue yet how intense the simple pleasure of saltiness must be for a person who rations his meager alms to eat more than once a day, that my mind circled back to.
***
More Canadian congeniality: Posted warnings apologize before stating No Skateboarding. The buses in Vancouver apologize before stating their out of service via their LCD displays.
***
In an effort to have the penultimate Vancouver experience, Megan and I allocated a full day to outdoor activities. Dozens of parks—as in conserved wilderness, not swing sets and rubber mulch—are within 15 miles (24 km) of downtown. One of my tasks in our trip’s planning stage was to maximize our hiking value and find the most highly rated parks within feasible reach of public transportation.
An early lead fizzled out. Our chiropractor told us we had to climb the Grouse Grind, one Vancouver’s most famous trails. After reading accounts of the 1.8 mi (2.9 km) trek up 2,830 stairs to the top of Grouse Mountain, I decided he was looking to capitalize on a pair of to-be-pained patients. The search continued.
I found Deep Cove, a small town nestled into the easternmost North Shore mountains, and was excited by the photos from an outcrop of igneous rock called Indian Arm. I found Lynn Canyon, a centrally located blot of forest in North Vancouver, and was excited by the prospect of crossing my first suspension bridge hung some 50 m (164 ft) above Lynn Creek. Neither park seemed ample enough to spend a whole day roaming, though. To complicate matters, taking the bus from one park to the other was a serious waste of time. What else were our options?
Sifting through the myriad outdoors and travel websites, I discovered a winding ribbon of trail that had been blazed by the Boy and Girl Scouts of Canada in 1971 connecting the two coast of North Vancouver. Imagine my exhilaration when seeing that Deep Cove and Lynn Canyon were stops along the trail. We could traverse the land between our two destinations the old fashioned way! What could be simpler? Moreover, since our goal was hiking, what could be better than hiking in order to hike? If that wasn’t enough, there was a beloved bakery in Deep Cove where we could procure the very sort of high calorie payload recovering explorers would not just deserve but require after such concentrated exercise. Add to the itinerary a logistical coup d’etat of public transit depositing us close to the start and picking us up close to the finish, and we had found our expedition.
In Phase 2 of planning, the planner researches in-depth to make ready for the 12 km (7.4 mi) journey. We had never been on a linear trail such as this nor had we been so relatively separated from our 21st century conveniences. The whole trek being my idea, I took the responsibility seriously. I spent hours charting what was uncharted territory for Megan and I. Should I be blamed for my fastidiousness? Doesn’t imagining yourself far from civilization cause your civilian heart to flutter? Perhaps I’m only speaking on behalf of the tacticians. Fear is the operative motivator for us deliberative types.
Overreaction or no, we embarked in a manner that I presumed would make the Boy and Girl Scouts proud, having done our level best to faithfully abide by their motto of, “Be prepared.”
***
I’ll spare you the details since words wouldn’t do the terrain justice. I’ll concern myself with the phenomenon of hiking generally, because, while it’s an activity at once so repetitive and natural (it is a type of walking, after all), the danger therein makes it unlike anything urban-or-suburban-ites encounter.
First, hiking and walking are related but not identical. You’re walking if you can divert your gaze from the ground for a minute and not fall on your face. Hiking trails are basically swaths of erosion. Without plant-life binding the soil together, most trails are patches of dirt trapped between rocks of various sizes and exposed tree roots—a veritable carpet of trip hazards. And if that weren’t bad enough, few surfaces on Earth are slipperier than wet stone. If you should hike within a couple days of rain, the shade from the canopy above will keep your footing nice and slick. Proceed with caution.
Second, just because you are on a path doesn’t mean you’re on the path you want to be. The Baden Powell Trail stitches together the loose threads of other, lesser trails, most of these being the breed of more approachable day hike loops. The way you can tell you’re on the Baden Powell as opposed to, say, Severed Dick Trail (an honest to God trail’s name) is the orange triangle with a BP at the vertex and a fleur de lis underneath it, nailed onto a tree trunk every 500 or so meters (1600 or so feet), “or so” because a tree could have toppled over, a heathen could have ripped the medallion off for a memento, or perhaps the Scouts clearing that section weren’t as invested in the process as Scouts should be.
You will learn to live for these triangles and their unrivalled power to reassure. Such is the primitive simplicity of hiking: you are on a path in the woods and the sum of your aspirations is to be is on the right path because all you aim to do is hike from Point A to Point B—and perhaps take in the virgin landscape around you should you be able to sneak a glance without tripping.
Third, hiking has a knack of bringing your own mortality into stark relief. Don’t think me too melodramatic when I tell you that this straightforward task of venturing from a defined start to a defined end is fraught with peril. It’s not the sort of peril that inhabits climatic extremes like the face of Mount Everest. What I’m describing here is the ever present and pervasive sort, a ubiquitous carbon monoxide-type danger that is being a non-self-sustaining creature. In the hinterland, it strikes you the only prerequisite to kicking the bucket is having a bucket to kick, which is to say being alive. If it weren’t for all our peers bumping into us back home, we could tumble down a flight of steps and after a couple days: game over. It’s easy to ignore that fact while swaddled within the artificial realms we’ve created for ourselves. Out in nature, though, you’re reminded of your own frailty.
Don’t get me wrong. If you veer off the BP onto a secondary path, and then onto something that could be a derelict service road, and then, in desperation, back onto what’s either a path or maybe a trampled remnant of a few hooligans’ evasion of the authorities, you won’t necessarily starve to death. In these parts and in this season, you’re more likely to mildly dehydrate before spotting a mountain biker and being rescued. Still, that’s too close for comfort.
Even when trying to not get ahead of yourself while being momentarily disoriented, rationality dictates you’re in nearer proximity to death than usual. So what? That depends on who you are. The subconscious awareness I’m claiming is heightened on the trail fuels the thrill-seeking impulse in some. In others, such as myself, it makes us want to assume the fetal position.
***
To reiterate a point made earlier in my chronicle: you can only prepare so much. You can consult online maps, read blog after blog, and message board after message board. You can watch user-generated content and shaky GoPro videos. You can download mobile friendly files to use offline. You can even print hard copies of first-hand accounts of the trail in the event that your devices fail and heavily annotate satellite images. Whatever you do, the wilderness is always going to differ from the intelligence you’ve gathered ahead of time. Creeks will rise. Boulders will tumble. Land will slide. Trees will fall. And trails will be detoured accordingly.
It should come as no surprise that the world humbled us. Our GPS did not update when our location was most in question. The first hand accounts we consulted were vague or silent on sections that seemed to us to demand clarification. We zigged when we should have zagged. We went straight when we should have climbed around a backhoe and rubble that functionally blocked the path. We missed a turn because we erroneously interpreted a sign stating the trail was closed for all traffic, not just cyclists. When the day was done, our swollen feet had trudged more like 14 km (8.7 mi). On the bus ride back to the apartment, we consumed our deep fried trophies. Relieved and fatigued, it remained an open question whether our bodies or our souls had been put through a more punishing ringer.
***
A disconcerting scene #2: colliding with the head of a household of tourists who are gripping the steel cables that act as a railing on a suspension bridge and sidestepping with their eyes closed while you are trying to prevent your reptilian brain stem from giving orders to evacuate your bowels as you peer over to snap a photo of the rocks that would dash your body to bits and the whitewater rapids that would whisk said bits downstream to the Burrard Inlet where they’ll become chum to sweet-faced otters and gnarly-jawed salmon.
5/31/14 - Disdaining waste in all its forms, a long standing goal of mine is to leave a foreign country with none of their legal tender on me. Megan and I had gotten close to zeroing out on our final morning in Vancouver, having bought an Americano and coffee we didn’t really need for the sake of winning this one of my many games I play solo.
Our somber moods penetrated the otherwise festive atmosphere. Although expertly crafted, it was the coldest, bitterest Americano I can remember. Megan tried to read and I tried to write, but my dejection interrupted us both.
I concluded that the end of good, long vacations should to be dejecting. They should put you in a state of mourning because a thing you knew and loved, even made, has passed away. It will not come back. It’s gone forever. The door is shut and, although doors are routinely shut in life, this portal took a while to pass through. Fairy tales teach the same lesson. The carriage turning back into a pumpkin prepares you for the irreversibility of time and the fixed finality of the past.
This happens as constantly as the present moment moves ahead. You’ll never be 28 again, either, but what’s a year? It’s full of so many highs and lows, and stuffed full of those ho-hum forgettable middles. What’s different about vacations—or at least vacations Megan and I take—is that those packing peanut fillers are absent. We’re constantly jumping from one happy lily pad to the next as quickly as we can. It follows, when you reach the other bank, you’d rather sink a little on that last pad than hop right onto dry land without delay.
***
The thrill of near victory not counterbalancing the agony of departure, we took our leave of Melriches Coffeehouse, gathered our bags at the apartment, and trudged the first of what would be countless blocks southward and eastward.
The starting line of our 15 hour marathon back to St. Louis began at a bus stop near the Mac’s on Davie St. My path crossed once again in front of the haggard man. As before, he was squatting by the newspaper dispenser. This time he was jangling change in his hand, clinking his life’s savings steadily together. From this side, I could see his gray sweatpants were torn in such a way as to expose a sizeable triangle of his upper thigh to the air. That region on most humans and nearly all males is heartbreaking, a dimpled, pale, coarsely hair surface, never supposed to be publicly visible, and all the more vulnerable when framed by tattered, soiled cotton.
I walked over to him and bent down. “What’s your name, sir?”
He looked up at me and squinted. “Boomer.”
“My name’s Matthew.”
He extended his empty hand and I shook it. With joy in starkest contrast to his appearance, he told me to “Have a super Saturday!”
I took out the $.40 CAD ($.38 USD) in my pocket and handed it to him. I said something like, “It’s all I have,” and he thanked me for that obscenely inadequate pittance.
I returned to Megan’s side, feeling ashamed for not having more to give, for having blown six times that amount on a luxury no one needs, the remainder combatively sloshing in my stomach. “It’s all I have.” In one way, the truth, and in many other ways, a lie. Yes, all of the Canadian currency I had. But I had $5 USD ($5.32 CAD) in my wallet. I had credit cards that gave me access to $25,000 USD ($26,619.50 CAD). I had a debit card that tapped into a few more thousand. Megan and I have a different money market account. We have home equity. We have his and hers 401ks. So, not really “It’s all I have.”
Minutes before, I had been whining in a cafe about having to return to our home. Just now, I had lied to a homeless stranger and insulted him by gifting him three coins that wouldn’t suffice to purchase a pack of gum. Que the guilt.
And don’t say, “Hey, cheer up, author. You didn’t do anything wrong. You could’ve not given him anything. You could’ve pretended he wasn’t there. If everyone gave a little something like you did, he’d be getting along just fine. You probably made his day just saying hello.” That’s sweet and all, but that’s exactly how 100 W. Hastings happens—tens of thousands of amalgamated, half-hearted, acts of charity thinly veiling greed.
***
Two parallel aisles separated by a cloth belt fed into the skybridge for boarding at Gate 21 in Salt Lake City International Airport, one for Delta’s SkyClub passengers and one for general passengers. The SkyClub sign was printed in color, a blend of luxurious navy and vibrant crimson with eggshell accents. The general passengers sign was printed in stark black and white.
When the time came, the SkyClub passengers boarded first from their aisle. Next came passengers riding in Zone 1. As humans are wont to do, we queued in the line behind the preferred customers who continued filling down the ramp. A Delta employee, sensing our corporal err, pulled on an as-yet hidden belt in the aisle post and stretched it across to a partition to block our passage. This hallowed carpet is not for you to trod, you untouchables.
The first ten or so plebs threw it into awkward reverse, wheeled bags bumping into each other, so that they would enter on their designated side to enter the one and only skybridge to board the one and only plane.
Segregation, whatever form it takes, is ridiculous.
***
I made my last new acquaintance on our voyage in the Vancouver International Airport. A barrel-chested middle-aged man wearing jeans, dirty boots, and a dark blue polo asked how long we’d been in town. This was the instigation of a conversation as interesting as you’d think a conversation with a man who completed this unassuming ensemble with a Rolex watch on his wrist would be. He said he had been hunting for grizzly bears in Quensel, BC. I said something like, “Do tell.” By the end of our chat, I’d heard his life story, from being flat broke at 30 to being the founding CEO of a company that cast the 150 meter (492 ft) swimming pools for Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore. (Don’t worry, he had to show me a picture, too. Run a Google image search. They’re the ones that are strung across the three tower’s 55 story rooftops. Impressive.)
He had the strained relationship with money that is indicative of the nouveau riche. He coveted it, self-reported that he lost his marriage for it, but once he got it, he didn’t know what to do with it. He certainly hadn’t a clue how to effortlessly exude it. His starched white collar chafed his red neck. (A not unfair moniker, the man hailing from Indiana.) He was poor for most of his life, took out a business loan to start his own company when he was laid off, lived modestly and reinvested profits religiously into his business, and now was in the uncomfortable position of being wealthy. It did not suit him. His tales of $20,000 USD ($21,296.60 CAD) hunting packages and $1,500 USD ($1,597.17) a night lodging in the hotel where they shot scenes from Casino had a phony hollowness to them.
Make no mistake. His good fortune did not soften him to the less fortunate. This self-made man, whose name I did not catch, was the first person I’d heard unironically use the term “riff-raff” in a sentence as in, “The place had security and gates and keycards all around the perimeter to… you know.. [hand gesture] keep the riff-raff out.” He also suggested the Obama administration paid people to sleep in, which is why he could find no young workers worth their salt to hire.
The author continues to search for the application to such a program.
***
Past a certain point in a the long, long day, even adults want to cry from exhaustion. By the time Megan and I were dropped off by my father at our house, we’d both reached that point. We stood around my father’s car, not so much shooting the breeze as being smothered by it. The 90% Missouri River Valley humidity was extra stifling since we’d spent the last 11 days de-acclimating ourselves.
As we were putting the finishing touches on our long goodbye with my dad, our neighbor stepped onto his front porch to light up. Having spotted us, he immediately trounced down the steps. Why, at just shy of midnight, would a person hurry to greet the couple next door? Two reasons come to mind. 1) Because he’s tenderhearted. 2) Because he’s drunk. Both applied in our case, as we’d soon find.
My first clue as to our neighbor’s meteoric BAC was his woefully poor attempt at a handshake. On our third take, we were able to connect and execute a pitiful one-armed hug. I introduced him to my father. He asked where we’d been, and I’d started to unpack that in our driveway instead of our bags in our air conditioned home. Even now, all systems flagging, Megan could not be impolite. She stood patiently at my side, carry-on in hand, and listened to our sweet, excited neighbor tell us of his ex-girlfriend and how she cleaned his house for cash earlier today. My father, who will not be out bullshitted, was ready, willing, and able to egg this happy drunk on. I did my best to bring the round-table to a close with a, “Well, it’s great you could bury the hatchet and employ her.” But our neighbor would not have it. He was so happy to see us, he told us for a second time.
I knew what I had to do. I fell on the metaphorical grenade. I instructed Megan to save herself, head inside, and get ready for bed. I’ll remain out here with my father and the inebriate. She consented and made her get away. I stayed behind, nodding my way through the slurs, yawns, and awkward pauses that no one else found awkward but me.
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