Friday : Eric and Leseen visited and we had a great dinner. They taught me to play Chinese Checkers. We drank way too much tea-we were all floating on it but hey, c’est la vie. They are definitely decent company.

…Then we decided, since it was late already, why bother sleeping, I mean, we had to be up at 530am anyway, to catch the bus to get the early ferry to the mainland.

We caught a few zzz’s on the ferry, and saturday,

…was spent moving through Vancouver with Dev’s family. Finally met his sister. Everyone was so loud and bright and cheerful, it was great fun to wander everywhere with them.

We saw the Olympic Torch (Extinguished, but still…) and took the sky train everywhere. Vancouver is VAST and so jam packed with people and buildings and industry. They have a beautiful and enormous harbour, with mountains fringing it. We took the seabus to North Vancouver, where they have this really intriguing hidden market on the quay. I think it would be a good place for my dad to sell his pots.

Caught the last ferry back to the island, caught the last bus home, totally crashed.

It was so great to get out and spend a day on the mainland, with everyone. I really enjoyed myself.  Really had a lot of fun.

Sunday: chillaxing. Slept in. Took it easy. One of the Tim Horton’s we frequent also now has a creamery. So we indulged in hot java and cold ice cream. The Cold Stone Creamery section had just opened-we were among the first customers. Dev had a cheesecake fantasy and I had choc cake batter and oreo ice cream. We were offered lids if we wanted it “to go”.

Sunday we watched some of the Olympics, mostly the skating competitions, and some of the skiing ones too. I was glad I wasn’t working on Valentine’s Day, for once. We got to relax and just enjoy the day, which was a wonderful treat. We went for coffee and ice cream later, and had a nice little walk.I thought it was just perfect.

I think working retail On Valentine’s Day has made me bitter towards the day. People get so greedy and fussy and they’re SO unbelievably rude I feel like being bitchy back, but of course you can’t. You just have to suck it up while they get in your face about the things you haven’t got because they came too late, and gee, we sold out, big surprise. They always think you’re holding out on them, that you’ve got a lot more product hiding under the counter and they think you’re secretly laughing at them. People think Valentine’s Day is a test they have to pass, and everyone fusses that “he doesn’t love me enough because he didn’t give me a big enough gesture,” or ” is it too soon to say I love you?” I can’t stand the crap people buy for each other; in a desperate attempt to “prove their love” they fling cheap ugly toys and uncomfortable lingerie, too much chocolate and expensive wilting flowers at their loved ones. It isn’t thoughtful, it isn’t romantic; and the gestures are meaningless when you start sticking a price tag onto the things you buy to show how much your love is worth. Sometimes I wonder if my customers ever asked their lovers what kind of flowers they really like, what colour is their favourite, what would be romantic to them? Valentine’s Day heaps on the stress, and I have seen so many people the day after St Valentine’s Day in tears or bitterly disappointed because “he just didn’t get it RIGHT, you know” and “how could he not know meeeeeeee?” I think, is that all you are doing? Holding up a metre stick to measure how successful your relationship is? Do you guys actually talk to each other? Do you know your lover at all or are you just thinking this is where you SHOULD be, and if you’re not there, why not? Do you reserve all your romance and sense of fun for one day only in the year and ignore your lover for the rest of the time? And you wonder why you’re breaking down and getting frustrated. Get real.

My Valentine’s Day was great: I didn’t have to deal with egomaniacs or fat greedy women or thin belligerent women or angry venomous men or any of the other myriad of people who hate everything and take it out on the girl behind the counter. I spent the day with my lover and it was a lot of fun, and very stress-free.

Victoria did not put on any fireworks to celebrate the new year. It’s the capital of BC, and is a strong tourist spot, and you would think these things alone would prompt the city to put on a fireworks show for first night. The city said there was dwindling enthusiasm for fireworks on new years eve, but I don’t buy it. What about the families with young children and tourists from the states who come up here to visit their families over the winter holidays? Last year, in Edmonton, it was something like -40C, and yet there were people in Churchill Square, and hot chocolate vendors and people selling 2009 flashing glasses, and they still had a fireworks display and music. It is much much warmer than Edmonton here, so I find it a stretch to believe people don’t want to “stand around in the cold” to watch a fireworks show to ring in the new year. I think the city was just too apathetic. I think it was a bad decision to treat new year’s eve like just any other ordinary day, because it isn’t. It should be celebrated, people should make some effort and dress up and put on a fireworks display that everyone can enjoy. And if they feel there’s dwindling interest they should step up and promote it, put some fliers around like they did for Christmas. (The downtown core was offering free horse-drawn trolley rides and free street-car rides, and several pre-Christmas events, and they put out a brochure to advertise it.)

Dev and I dressed up anyway, and went down to the beach for a quiet wander. There was a group on the beach that had bought some fireworks, and they shot them over the water, so we did get to see some little festivities after all. Mostly they were the coloured single ball kind, but one they set off was a crackling zinging sparkling rain.

We also saw Seattle’s fireworks display too, across the water. (Pretty good display actually, in miniature above their city.)

Dev had his first smoke of the new year, and we came home and toasted it in with wine.

Not a bad start to bring in the new year, despite the city’s lack of joy and illuminations. I still get to say I was on a beach for New Year’s, not in freezing snowy minus forty.

First day of the new year started out clear and fresh and mild, a balmy 10 degrees. Went for a wander downtown, taking pictures, and it started to rain heavily, but that was ok. I saw some Morris Dancing at Bastion Square. It was colourful and musical and as well as the dancers there was a man dressed as a horse with flashing mirror eyes, and a man who looked like a holly bush slash mossy stone. It was a fun way to start the new year off, tho I hear they are supposed to wear clogs instead of normal shoes, and bells on their toes too.

I dunno what to say here, though I feel I should say something. I’m listening to hokey music-fake celtic stuff. I’ve just changed what I’m listening to and now it’s vibrant Vanessa Mae, the punky-rockstar electric violinist. I feel the steady building of what I call the “Christmas Awareness”, which is when people go “oh shite, I’ve a million million things to do and no time to plan it/think it through/work it properly.” And they run around like stressed out headless chickens, gabbling at every little detail.

They’ve put some cheery lights on the lampposts in the Inner Harbour, and it feels festive even though there is no snow, only massive amounts of rain like what pours down in movies. Big fat wet hair-plastering drops, very moody and romantic. We tried to use the cheesy lines the other day but we just like wandering in the rain too much to make it corny. I’ve discovered a hole in the sole of my shoe, but I have lots of socks, so I’m staving off the wet feet  that way, plus I have a nice new pink umbrella, so I’ve mostly been keeping dry.

Moving next week, I think it will be a good area to move to, and there’s not really so much to move, so it will be easy.

…I still feel at a loose end, and I have things to do so I’m not sure why. I think I need to get back into the arts and theatre somehow. I find it very so sustaining. It slakes my thirsty soul.

Trying to quit is hitting me harder than I thought it would. I know I am not good conversation. I know I am irritable. I don’t know how to push through either. And this is only day one.

To add to it I feel constantly hungry and bored.

I am not sure how much I want to quit. I am not sure if this is worth the aggravation. I guess that is the nature of addiction though.

The music here is easier-going than in Alberta. The radio stations play more of a mix of styles; In Alberta, there was one station for hard rock, one for death metal, one for elevator music, one for country and so on. They were so specific, and they disdained to play something not in their genre. Here, everything is more relaxed, and they seem to feature more local bands, they don’t segregate the styles of the bands so much. Or maybe I just like the pace here, and it overflows into all the day to day minutiae.

Rolled around by my dreams last night, can’t shake the feeling these dreams will be with me all day, watching me from the shadows. My dreams always linger, sometimes for days. It’s like some unwritten fantasy novel plays itself out in my head, complete with elaborate costumes, magic, and lots of people and families, all connected in ways I can’t precisely define. It would make a good book, if I could remember more than the vague outlines…

I keep expecting a bit of magic from my dreams to find me in this waking world, just behind a corner, just under a leaf curl, in an unexpected person’s startled face as I run unthinkingly into them. These feelings are always stronger after a series of colourful crazy expansive dreams; last night’s had a huge cast and many crazy adventures. They are not lucid dreams-I can’t control the action, but they sweep me completely away anyway, and what a ride it usually is.

Barely woken up today. It’s quiet and hot in the doldrums of late summer. A wind whispers through trees in the backyard, making the leaves talk to each other quietly. Perhaps they are unwinding the skein of my dreams and taking away all the disturbances of the night, turning them into raucous birds to set loose on unsuspecting hungry tourists.

And then the music starts up, and surreality fades into the industry of earning a living.

I plunge into

frigid icy water

salty

bright with captured sun.

seaweed curls lasciviously

around my ankles as I wade

in the shallows.

I grasp a

handful of pirate treasure

culled from the bottom of the sea.

the sand onshore

is hot

and holds buried burning stones

lazy petrified driftwood logs

expired sea kelp.

The Pirate King and I

are dancing

between the water and the waves.

Rolling around in the doldrums of summer here, a lazy unwinding late July day. The heat is so very different here than on the prairies; it carries water and salt from the sea. My thirsty skin craves moisture, so I find this type of heat a balm. I don’t need to slather on so much hand cream here, as I did in the prairies, where a dry cracked wind always seemed to find me in any morsel of shade.

Of course, riding my bike a thin layer of sweat coats my skin, and I get to work sticky and red and hot, and I long to plunge into the icy sea in the inner harbour, rather than work. I can hear the American ferries boom when they trawl into the docks, and it makes me shiver with travel lust.

That sound always makes me remember taking the ferries from the mainland to the island, when I was a child, and usually I’d have a new book to read, or a comic, or sticky hard candy to glut my sweet tooth on. The outer deck used to be too cold for me, but I’d sit by the window and watch the sea and the sky and the thickly clotted islands pass. The decks where the cars were kept were always so quiet, and I never realized until recently that they are not closed in. The windows have no glass, and the railings are crusted and sticky with salt, and cold from the sea spray. Eventually, I would try to brave the icy windy outer decks, because one parent or the other would be leaning over the railings, hair blowing madly, watching some minuscule speck on the horizon with a pair of huge black binoculars. They’d go “Look! There, do you see?” and hand me the binos, and I’d look dutifully, but I was never sure what I was meant to be seeing, so I’d just make some appropriate murmur and hand them back.

The part that I hated and loved the most was when they would announce we were close to our destination and would we make our way back to the vehicles, and we’d all sit in the still warm air and wait until the ferry nudged into port. The anticipation of driving off into a new place, full of summer and sun and swimming and sand was so desired I could never really sit still. I remember a huge grin splitting my face and I was bouncing on the seat one time, as we rumbled from the belly of the ferry into a welcoming sunshine.

I
Melt
onto the parched
patio
I fan fan fan
Me
Wishing to waft away
away
These unbearable
Lazy sighing
Lagging-tongue
Dog Days

There is something in the dusk hours, that makes me long to go riding. The colours become so vibrant in the setting of the sun. Fire reds and deep velvet blues fill the sky. The electric colours of the flowers, and forest greens of the leaves start to gain this heavy saturation, bringing the colours out to play. As the world lies down to sleep, the flora, and heavens start to scream out with vigor and life. The peonies and holly, The roses and poppies start to glow, little splashes of colour rising from the growing darkness.

As the sun goes lower and lower into the horizon,  gets lined in the glow of the fire, causing the brilliant reds and oranges to mesh into the velvet blue sky as it becomes speckled with glowing jewels, some brilliant, some letting you see just enough so that you know they exist. This foreshadows the over saturation that begins to occur, as slowly the purples, pinks, yellows and reds of the flowers snap to near black.

This is in near direct contrast to dawn, Where everything seems to be covered in a haze of grey and dusty pink. Colour is leached from the world and slowly added back again. There is no where near the intensity that happens in the night before. The world is greeted to a world with promise, but still seems a little ashen. It is as if Mother Nature herself is not quite ready for the new day.