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Monday September 30
Chapters Metrotown. The Self Cleaning Detergent Appliance directly above the urinals reads "Drip Master".
Earlier, exiting the train at Granville, a street person convulsing violently, clutching his abdomen. He has collapsed, his backpack straps wrapped around his throat as he howls while passers-by either stride on or flutter helpless and idle. Cell phone 911 and I clip off terse descriptions to the dispatcher. Caucasian male early 40s conscious breathing severe abdominal pain are-you-on-any-medications? When I hear the sirens I ask him his name (Stephan), where he is from (Quebec), and I try to comfort him in French, move his backpack, try to keep him comfortable, lay his head on his belongings.
I am afraid to touch him, afraid of his blood, his vomit, any contagion which may suddenly reach out from his body through mine to Z's or the baby. My fear is like burning plastic on the back of my tongue, and I reach across it, lay my hand firmly on his shoulder.
I am deeply ashamed of this fear.
When the paramedics arrive, they note his clothes, the cardboard sign begging for change and they stand above him, hands on hips. "He's probably just looking for a free lunch". The scent of his contempt acrid as smouldering leaves. We are at once ill from it.
Zandra in Starbucks crying. I wash my hands, my face, grip the sink as I stare in the mirror and breathe in shudders.
Thursday September 19
Ultrasounds. The baby is extremely active, kicking and swimming and, well, raving.
Monday September 16
Portland is "Lumber Baron Steakhouse Gothic". Black mullions, big cedar beams,
exposed bolts and steel cables, old brick, heavy stone, saturated jewel tone
stained glass colours, cherry woods.
Saturday night, Jake's on 11th in Portland, sidewalk table. A million dollar night, perfect late summer evening. Portland is Vancouver without graffitti or heroin. Victoria with its act together. All of downtown Portland is the size of Yaletown, with Kitsilano wrapped around it like cake frosting. We would move there in a minute.
Friday September 13
Wednesday was 9/11 - the top story on CNN was "Man Shaves Back in Airliner Washroom
- Authorities Notified - Terrorism Not Suspected".
Yesterday we stopped in Aurora for road food, just north of Seattle. The am/pm minimart has a bubblejet printed sign taped in the window; "no caps, hoods, or masks allowed in store." Masks? MASKS!? Jesus freakin' Christ. Like most american Quick-E-Marts, the place was stacked floor to ceiling with nastily cheap American psuedobeer, and I was uncharacteristically restrained when I did not, in fact, ask the clerk if they had any 9mm ammo.
We buy Halloween toys from the Maximum Security Jack in the Box across the street. The manager is first annoyed, then puzzled, and later helpful as we comb through the ratty cardboard box for the entire Halloween toy collection - she throws in "The Phantom of the Opera" for free.
Thursday August 29
What matters is her suddenness.
She touches me miraculously, unexpected. Is it sane to ache for a lover one
has kept for three years?
I am on the ferry, again. I have "my table" here - on either ship, they are exactly the same, and therefor somehow one. I take this table because of the proximity to the power outlet, which lets me save my battery time for Starbucks or the bus. Even though for writing I get about 4 or 5 hours, which I must admit is pretty good.
Part of me is kicking another part of me for heading to Victoria, to meet with prospective client. I'm extremely hesitant to deal with Victorians in business. It's like they're from some other planet, where decisions can take months (except the decision to meet RIGHT NOW! TODAY! TIME'S A WASTIN'!) and budgets are 10 percent of what they are on Earth.
It's only the Goth in me that loves Victoria. Nothing smells as sweet as decay. It is an ornate tomb - I love its stonework and climbing roses, its quiet and stillness and reflection. It is an otherworldly novel - well, novella, really, as there's not enough happening to sustain more than seventy pages or so. Romantic and gorgeous and rich and quite, quite dead. A museum piece, a mummified corpse in velvet brocade. But, like a vampire to New Orleans, here I go again.
I have in me, I fear, too much of the brooding necrophile. I have spent years reflecting on single spikes of beauty. I'm the hopeless romantic, the incurable idealist. I was also blessed / cursed to see in every woman (and rarely in men) the one shining spark of real beauty or intelligence or *interest*. Team this up with a dose of obsessive-compulsive disorder and it explains why I spent a third of my life in that bloodless mausoleum.
But enough of maudlin confessions! Time to once again, like Johnny Carson in his later years, to pony out my too-hip-for-the-crowd show and play to an audience of the dessicated. Although, if can stop being a bitch for a moment, there is the chance that this particular audience is the rare type of monied Victorians who enjoy the town as a place from which to snipe, without falling prey to it's anaesthetic fog. Here's hoping.
Oh, the observant will note that I'm not, in fact, in London. The day the tickets arrived was the same day the doctor grounded Z from travelling, and I'm not such a cad as to abandon my pregnant lover and fly half way 'round the world. London will still be there after the baby's born, and I suspect that this little person will be racking up the frequent flyer points before she's out of diapers. Hear that? She. Not a point of fact, but a point of "putting the vibe out there".
Friday August 23
I love pirates. Not real pirates, of course - bloodthirsty buggers. No, I love
pirate movie pirates, playmobil pirates. So for Liam's sixth birthday, a plastic
pirate tablecloth, eyepatches and stick-on moustaches in the goodybags. A treasure
hunt for gold foil chocolate coins in the pirate ship at Gyro Park in Victoria.
It's the freedom, I think. A pirate ship is a treehouse for lost boys. The freedom is mystical too - there were freemasonic pirate fraternities, the skull and crossbones are Scottish Masonic symbols. In the seventeenth century there was a Pirate Republic off Madagascar called Libertalia which gave women the vote and banned slavery. It was really Errol Flynn that romanticised the sword enough for me to pick it up and learn to fence.
This weekend (Familython '02 continues) a drunken Irish-Mexican wedding. Somebody offerred me beer and a microphone, and I fear "Danny Boy" was possibly offerred.
This is the first few days in forever to work, write, think, sleep in. I'm thinking about the baby all the time - she has toes and taste buds, and is swimming around in an entire world the size of a chicken egg.
Monday August 5
I'm sore and sleepless after camping in a gorgeous Penticton orchard for Dallas and December's wedding, which was touching and quite wonderful on the stormy lakeside beach. DC's parents' spread, in Naramata in the hills above Penticton and the lake, is breathtaking. It was a painless, even enjoyable, roadtrip - but as I often find with the Interior, the landscape is awe-inspiring, but the incessant Stripmalldom and crass motellery, in short, every example of the work of British Columbian humankind, leaves me horrified.
The wedding reception was tremendous fun, I was fortunate to be at the Beautiful People table, where the cover charge was a quick and acerbic wit. We were chastized for wincing through a root-canal performance of not one but three maudlin "aqua pella" (sic) songs by a woman who later mangled the bride's name as "Heather" (!?), but the evening was characterized by a high speed irony and jam-session humour.
Then everybody got wasted and fell in the pool.
Last night we came home in the rain, lit the fire, had a glass of wine, and a hot bath. The one-eyed raccoon and her three babies (not Binky's babies, as we had originally thought - the four of them scared the bejebus out of Z when she surprised them rooting through the catfood bin in the kitchen last week) came to the back door, looking for food. I went out to greet them, and I could hear them softly purring.
Oh, and I'm still in joyous shock about Wednesday's news. We have an ultrasound on Friday. We are going to have a baby with skin of Aztec gold, its mother's now-crimson-now-raven hair, and eyes of wet cinammon. And a really, really big nose.
Wednesday, July 31
What I did on my summer holiday
Well, what the boys did on their summer holiday anyway. I have to take them back to their mum in Victoria today, and I'm overflowing with the mixed emotions of anxiety guilt relief whoo-hoo-grown-up-time that every separated parent feels. Anyway, in the last 30 days, the boys have seen Canada Day fireworks, gone hiking, camping, swimming, sailing, shopping, picnicking, waterparking, geocaching, Science World, the SeaBus, half-a-dozen up-late barbeques, and the Molson Indy.
This just in.
Wow. Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow.
The most beautiful woman in the history of all beautiful women is carrying my child. We're going to have a baby.
The boys are extremely excited about the baby. After the initial blast of enthusiasm, Liam looked distant, then worried. "But Daddy", he said, "I don't know how the baby comes out."
On the ferry, returning home, a pod of orcas to the north, the young calves breaching and spyhopping alongside, in the shimmering sun. I take the sight of the baby whales as a good omen.
Monday July 29
Where When?
This is an exercise I use in the middle of the night to stave off panic attacks. Not that I suffer from chronic panic attacks, but as an independent designer, I often find that calendars and cheques rarely align in any meaningful or useful way.
This exercise comes from Tim Leary's early experiments with convicts ("Where are you in spacetime?"). The idea is to ask you exactly where you are, and why you are there in that room in that city at that exact moment in time? For example, if you're on your living room couch at 9:30 PM on a Tuesday night, it's a very different story from being in exactly the same place at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning.
So Where Are You?
At my desk, in my studio, in my backyard, in Stratchona, in Chinatown, in Vancouver, in Canada. More specifically
N49.16.559'
W123.05.442'
thanks to the GPS unit on my desk. Also on my desk is my Powerbook Ti, a Wacom
Stylus, a gothic squeaky toy ("Spooky, the thing what squeaks" - which is the
little beastie that adorns the frame to this blog), a green wind-up toy robot,
a rubber Starbucks coaster, a Nortel office phone, a Canon scanner, a stack
of data CDs, and an acrylic plaque with my name in Helvetica transfer letters
I use for art shows.
When?
3 years ago today I was living in Victoria, in a destructive relationship with a violent bi-polar woman who... let's not dwell. I was teaching night school at the University, and working 10 hours a day at my design practice on the waterfront. I only came home briefly to put the children to bed. I was exhausted, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The only things that kept me going were the time with my children and the days I got to spend with Z, who was my best friend at the time. This time was characterized by a pre-explosive tension and hunger, both creative and sexual.
2 years ago today I was recently back from Brasil, living in a gorgeous loft in Victoria's Chinatown, trying to rebuild my practice (by now a partnership with Z, my lover and muse and partner in crime) in Canada. So many of our clients had been recently dot-commed, and our unpaid invoices turned into unpaid bills. Our life was old brick, and incense, and tremendous parties, financial stress and time with the children. But I woke up loved, and inspired.
1 year ago today we had placed everything in storage in Victoria in preparation for moving. The ongoing custody battle was a compound fracture. We were housesitting, first for my parents who were in Mexico, later for Z's parents, also in Mexico. We were spending most of our time staying with various friends, sleeping on floors, and setting up meetings with clients. After the stifling fog of Victoria, Vancouver's clean, frosted-glass and small-city buzz was the elixir of life.
And today, tonight, in my studio, I'm doing class prep for a Community College Course I'm teaching on the History of Design. My children are in the house playing, and I'm on the cusp of something I can't quite touch, but it's beautiful and electric and emerging. Less than a month from now we'll be in London, to cement a deal that's been circling the runway for some time. The trajectory of the last few years, in hindsight, makes a certain, beautiful *sense*.
Liam, who's almost six, took this picture of me today when I wasn't looking. He's quite the little photographer. When I see myself like this, I think, is this man capable of writing a novel? In 30 days? Well I'm going to find out, thanks to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, in November. 1300 words, every day - about 3 times my average output. Like most writers, I've had "the novel" haunting me for some time, and the chance to get it out in one go, in an unedited purge, is exciting and terrifying.
Tuesday,
July 23 Friday we sailed out of
Sidney shortly after 2, purportedly for Bedwell Harbour on Pender Island. The
wind behind us through Haro Strait, we doubled back to Portland
Island to camp there in the orchard above the cliffs.
Saturday morning we broke
camp and sailed The Delft Blue (my parents' Lancer
28) north of Moresby to Poet's Cove in Bedwell Harbour, had dinner in the
Marina and camped just north in Beaumont Park above the beach. The near full
moon on the water, the barking of otters. Abundant eagles. I startle an otter
on the darkened beach, or I should say we startle one another.
Four days aboard (and a-tent)
and I'm lazy, still swaying with the water. I'm sunburnt and relaxed and inspired.
Just to have time with Z, my children, my parents - in the midst of this breathtaking
coastal paradise is a tremendous blessing. About a hundred times this weekend
I fell more deeply in love with Z. Her inventiveness and humour with bored and
hungry children, the glow of her skin against the salt water, her raven hair
burning red in the sun.
Two things upon returning:
A bus stop kiss witnessed across the street, slow and languid and deep and hungry,
the kind of public display of real passion far too rare here.
Two: a visit from Binky's
baby raccoons, we've named the three of them Inky,
Pinky, and Sue after the ghosts in Ms. Pac Man. When we left for sailing
we put a few days of cat food inside the narrow cage in the back yard, too small
for the big raccoons. On our return we noticed raccoon handprints in the empty
dishes - surprised at first but within hours the three of them poked beneath
the fence and headed straight for the cage - mystery solved.
