Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why

"To whom it may concern: It is springtime. It is late afternoon."

I just found out that Kurt Vonnegut died. I've been out of the loop for two days, fully oblivious to this ENORMOUS fact, which seems entirely insignificant to the people to whom I've mentioned the news, hoping for a gasp to match the one I let out while skimming over the Globe's obituary section on the ferry, but getting nothing more than, "Who's that?" Maybe it's not the earth-shattering event I am making it out to be. But why does it feel like it's earth shattering to me?

I seriously thought he was going to live forever, as I did about Mother Teresa and my wily great grandma. And then these people die, at a zillion years old, and it makes sense, but it doesn't, because you're used to them being there, you're accustomed to and even comforted by their presence in the world - even if you don't know them. Because you've been influenced or affected by them, and want to (and expect to) continue to be influenced and affected by them.

The death of one old man isn't a tragedy in the grand scheme of things. But at the same time it is a tragedy to the esoteric community that makes up his cult following, to generations of book nerds who grew up on his writing, like two generations of the Thompson clan who grew up on my grandpa's famous spaghetti and meat balls. And I realize it's an obscure connection to make, but they're both familiar, and and that familiarity is comforting, and now there will be no more new Vonnegut stories, just as there are no more Grandpa T's spaghetti and meat ball dinners. He will never again write anything else. Ever. The world will have no more new Vonnegut. He's a thing of the past, now, like all those other famous dead writers. He's a dead writer! It's crazy. It's ... crazy.

All said and done, it was a weird day. I woke up this morning practically falling off the ledge of the bed. You could have fit a small family between Erin and me again. When I rolled over and made this observation Erin exclaimed, "No TOUCHING!!" like the prison guards to in Arrested Development, and I erupted. I can't think of any greater way to start the day than being laughed awake.

The maid cleaning the room beside ours wished me good morning as I was leaving, and called me ma'am. She was probably in her late 40s, and the elevator couldn't have come soon enough. There's something really embarassing about a woman, who could be your mother, whom you've never met and who is about to go wash your towels and make your bed and empty the garbage you threw in the waste basket, call you ma'am. I felt like I did at St. Anne's spa with my mom, while people massaged my scalp and rubbed essential oils into my feet. I didn't want to be associated with the pampered women traipsing about in their bathrobes (like hedonistic caesars), their faces shiny and glowing from $200 facials. Anyway, I felt bad. Maybe I don't want to be a kept woman, afterall.

So my guilt and I went for a long swim, and then had breakfast in a cafe, where I read all about new discoveries in the dinosaur world - seriously, dinosaurs are so rad!! Then went off to find the Victoria Art Gallery, tucked away in a little corner of town near Craigdarroch Castle.

I spent an hour in the practically empty gallery, alone with an amazing collection of Rodin sculptures (and I fully admit that I checked out the naked ones. Anyone who says they don't is a liar). There's nothing like being alone in a gallery, where you can take your time and go back and forth between pieces again and again. And what's amazing about Rodins is that they seem to have been designed with the purpose of being seen from every angle, as if each view is the main view. It boggles me how he could create forms that are at one time so muscular and commanding and strong, yet at the same time fluid and graceful and sensual. The busts were so incredibly life-like that I fully expected them to blink. But they never did, and so I moved on.

To close (abruptly, I admit, but I have to rush off to UBC), a Vonnegut quote, one of many that I love, and will probably love even more, now...

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center

More Vonnegut

Epilogue: Catching life by the throat

Erin woke up at 6:00 this morning to go to the pool, and came back an hour later wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, trying to engage in conversation, a futile endeavor given my starfish, commatose state (I actually attempted to stay up to see how the hockey game ended - although, admitedly, the only reason I know the Canucks won was because the uproarious commotion from the commentators when Sedin scored jarred me from my sleep).

At 11:30 I finally tore myself away from the comforts of the hotel room to venture out into the grey, windy, oh-so-chilly (yet pleasantly picturesque) streets.

I can't count how many pictures I inadvertently walked through. It was, in my defense, unavoidable. Countless people are going to return from their trip with me in the background of their pictures. (What a crazy thought) And they choose to pose in front of the most random things. Some I get: the Empress hotel - makes sense; the harbour - I get that; even giant stuffed grizzlies - I'll give it to them. If I were walking down the street in Japan and saw a giant stuffed Sumo wrestler, or piece of sushi, I'd pose with it, too. But others... I just want to go up to people with a pen as a microphone and say, "Why THIS backdrop?"

Everywhere I go in downtown Victoria seems to implore me to "re-connect" with my "Irish roots," to buy a wool sweater or anything tartan. A block later and it's English tea time in a tudor-style cafe sitting kitty-corner to a shop of First Nations bric-a-brac, its windows full of signs in Japanese. Down the road people are asking me if I've found Jesus and handing me salvation cards (which I politely decline) outside the gates to China town, and I feel on the verge of an identity crisis. Harmonica-playing mimes on unicycles deke out Japanese tourists plodding along like schools of fish, taking pictures of lethargic-looking horses strapped to carriages, and dred-lock-sporting peudo-homeless youth squat in doorways selling hacky sacs (I turn the symbol of my Starbucks mug away from them when I walk by - for some reason I care what they think). This, I suppose, is the appeal of Victoria, or Canada, for that matter: a kind of schizophrenic diversity we call multiculturalism.

I got blissfully lost in Beacon Hill Park - a.k.a. the world bird poo capital - and sat on a bench in memory of Georgina somebody-or-other, suspiciously eyeing crows who suspiciously eyed me back (as if I was competition for the garbage they were pecking at on the lawn).

And if you ever go wandering along Government Street - where Emily Carr's house is - along roads lined with colonial-era cottages-turned-B & Bs, with rose bushes in every yard and lazy cats in every sun-drenched bay window, listen to Jose Gonzales' Heartbeats. In fact, put it on repeat. You won't get sick of it - I promise.

Then sit at the park that looks over the water at the end of the road (I only discovered it because I was lured by an enticing little gravel path). To the left a windswept, craggly, cliffy vista that conjures up images of some Thomas Hardy novel, and to the right a Pacific Northwest landscape, with layers of low-lying mountains in varying gradients of slate blue. Pair this with a little Iron and Wine and you won't be sorry.

This place, with its fresh, breezy lightness and expanse of glimmering ocean, somehow balances out Larkin's heavy existentialism, which sits on my lap in the form of a dog-eared book, its pages flapping in the wind.

"I see life more as an affair of solitude diversified by company than an affair of company diversified by solitude," he writes. The sentences jumps off the page at me as I sit alone on a park bench watching people amble by. I've never been so glad to be in nobody's company than my own.

Yet ironically (paradoxically?) he says at another point, "What will survive us is love," which I read as the little voices in my little white earphones sing, "There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon, summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon," just as the sun finally comes out for the first time today. And the combination of those three experiences at once: reading that Larkin line, hearing that Iron and Wine lyric, and the sun warming me, makes my heart skip a beat for a minute.

I look up and the birds above and the boats below go sailing past while the grass waves in the breeze, and the song plays on: "There are things that drift away like our endless numbered days, autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made... There are sailing ships that pass on our bodies in the grass, sprintime calls her children til she lets them go at last... a baby sleeps in all our bones so scared to be alone," while Larkin continues to write about solitude and the significance of small events, like a visit to an empty church, that "gives weight to the ordinary dreams and fears of our daily lives, lived out as they are in the shadow of eternity."

It's almost too much for me to process. Yes, yes, yes.

Hotels - observations and assessments

What I love about hotels:

- TVs in armoires
- endless supply of white towels
- bathrobes
- the glorious crispness of all fabrics
- you show up: the room is spotless. You leave your crap all over the place then go to get a Starbucks (I mean... Blenz). You come back: all your crap is cleaned up. It's like magic!! Or like clandestine, invisible gnomes infiltrate the room the moment you leave. I must lure and capture one and transport it home in my bag
- teeny toiletteries to bogart
- complimentary tea
- informative pamphlets in the hotel lobby

What I hate about hotels:

- the messed up channels -- Bravo is on channel 37?!!
- the temperature control gizmo having menopausal hot and cold flashes throughout the night
- when your key card refuses to instigate the green "unlock" light on the door handle, even though you KNOW you're at the right room and really need to pee
- never being quite sure if you managed to program the alarm properly
- ineffective dollar store hair dryers
- pastels and floral print
- the lure of the mini bar

Fetch me my smelling salts!

It's 9:36 a.m. and I have no idea what to do with myself. I've been a kept woman, living in the lap of luxury for exactly 15.5 hours now, and, you know, it can be a bit boring! Not that I'm complaining! Lest God should sweep down and remove me from this luxurious 5-star hotel room, swipe the delicious (albeit instant and flavoured with whitening powder) coffee from the desk beside me, replace this view of Victoria harbour with, well, anything else and... well... that's about all He can do to me right now.

Yes, this is quite an upgrade from my Vancouver abode - with the alley bums and the upstairs neighbours and their midnight sumo fights, and the perpetual smell of pot and bus exhaust wafting in through the various cracks in windows and floorboards, which keep the place freezing cold in the winter and slightly bug-infested in the summer. QUITE an upgrade, indeed.

I've just finished Monday's workology story (THIS, people, is why I decided to become a writer. Am I poor? Heck yes. But am I working from a laptop many miles away from home gazing at the ocean and Washington mountains out the window? HECK YES! Did I traverse great distances via ferry to get here, watching for whales and seals? You KNOW it!), what was I saying? Oh yes. I just finished Monday's workology story after awaking from a long and glorious post-Vancouver-nearly-5-overtimes-sudden-death-win-over-Dallas sleep in a MAGNIFICENT king-sized bed, which allowed my lover for the next two days, Erin Shannon, and me to sprawl at our leisure and never come within three metres of (soft) touching each other (which is a shame, because we both anticipated copious amounts of spooning ... maybe tonight).

Hang on, I've got to shut the patio door or else the biggest seagull I've ever seen in my life, which is perched on the railing, might venture inside to steal some of Erin's Glosette peanuts which I've been eating for breakfast (and which she informed me in no uncertain terms last night were off-limits).

Door closed. I didn't even have to get UP to close it, but merely reached over and with a single swipe crisis was averted! Now what to do? Stalk people on Facebook? I can do that at home. Lounge about in a terry cloth bath robe on the gigantic bed, reading my complimentary Globe and Mail? It's a distinct possibility, although the cover story is Belinda Stronauch, so... gak, snooore. Or maybe go down to the pool and do some laps? Order room service? Jump on the bed? Try on all of Erin's clothes? Press every button in the elevator? Ride it up and down marvelling at the view? (the elevator has a view!) Make more coffee? (I don't even like coffee!) Watch crappy day-time TV? Read this Bible I found in a drawer? Make a fort? Drop things off the balcony? (eep... No. Seagull-patrolled) Eat more Glosettes? Have a bath? Finally put on some pants? (haha! just kidding. Ya RIGHT I'm putting on pants!). See how Marty McFly gets out of his current predicament in Back to the Future 2? Invite the seagull in for tea? The possibilities are endless!

I do love Victoria. It's like a... a.... it's like a more spacious and tackier York (English York, not Ontario York). And it seems to me that, unlike Vancouver's downtown core, which is set up to accomodate commerce, Victoria's downtown core exists purely for the tourists. And I love coming here because I am both a tourist and not a tourist. It's like Vancouver, but different enough that I'm not bored of it. It's different enough that every shop and cafe and view is worthy of checking out and appreciating, but not so different that I'm mesmerized and blocking sidewalk traffic at the sight of boats, or stalking squirrels on the lawn outside the Parliament buildings like a National Geographic photographer on safari.

I might, when the shops open in ten minutes, venture into all the horrible little tourist trap shops, which I love to peruse (yet never spend a dime in) because it's funny to try to see Victoria/B.C./Canada from the perspective of a tourist (is this how they interpret this place? A world of tiny Maple Syrup jars; Native feathers, windcatchers and mocassins; stylized grizzly bear, eagle and whale figurines; cheap stationery adorned with ubiquitous Canadian flags; fridge magnets bearing images of pristine glacier lakes and endless vistas of pine trees?) find some little cafe with an outdoor patio and have breakfast with my date: Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin, or maybe march along a cozy cherry blossom-lined suburban boulevard with my Ipod (that is, if it decides to cooperate today).

Or maybe I'll go back to bed.

Putting a spring in your step

You know it’s finally spring when you rip the weather stripping from around your draughty window and throw it wide open – to hell with worrying about masked criminals and crazed hobos crawling through it cuz you live on the ground floor. I tell you there’s nothing like sleeping in a bedroom with crisp fresh (fresh-ish) air circling your bed and filling your lungs, bringing with it smells of newly-cut grass and the sounds of the alley folk clanking their carts outside.

*sigh*

Nothing changes my mood and general outlook on life like a warm, sunny spring day after months of monotonous grey drizzle, being perpetually wet, drying your jeans over an electric heater and putting on shoes still damp four days after walking home from the grocery store through two feet-deep puddles (they’re unavoidable. I’d have to walk with the traffic to deke out those stupid puddles). The winter, with its heavy weather and heavier comfort food, 4 p.m. nightfalls that don’t inspire you to leave your apartment to get any sort of exercise, makes me physically, mentally and emotionally lethargic, my days spent grumpily going about my business, and my evenings hidden under piles of heavy blankets in my freezing cold apartment, sarcastically mocking TV and trudging about with utter disdain for life.

All it takes is a lift in the clouds for all that to change, for my apartment to go from a prison-like cave to a delightful abode, the pitiful state of my bank account from a horrible obsession to a laughable situation. From putting my head down and scuttling from one place to the next, cursing the cold, needle-like rain, to walking immense distances and delighting in every sight, sound and smell.

I drove home from UBC the other day along Marine Drive to dig the view, my windows rolled down, my Ben Harper/Shins mix blasting, and couldn’t believe the incredible beauty of Spanish Banks, the choppy water dotted with white sail boats and brave windsurfers, the snow-capped mountains against a crisp, blue backdrop of sky, the shimmering downtown skyline, the infinite kites and bike riders and joggers and loping dogs. It's as if I'd never seen that sight before. Clouds have never been whiter, the water never bluer, the trees never greener and more pine-fresh and fragrant. I drove behind a train of cars going 30 km/hr, which typically would have put me in an apoplectic road rage, but which suddenly made me… happy, because what’s the rush when you’re driving along Marine Drive on a sunny Friday afternoon with Ben Harper and the birds singing in unison for no one else but you?

And I started thinking: there’s REALLY nothing as glorious and LIFE CHANGING as having the rain clouds lift after six hideous months, to reveal this beautiful scenery previously hidden behind a curtain of grey and drizzle. To make me remember why I live where I live (my grandmother constantly asking me: “Why do you live in Vancouver?” and me never being able to articulate WHY. This is why!). And in a funny sort of way the rain serves a good purpose, in that it makes us appreciate the blooming tulips and bright blue sky even more when the nearly forgotten sun finally comes back from its winter vacation.

It hit home even more today, walking home from a downtown Workology interview over the Burrard Street bridge and through Kits. As I hit the woods on the south side of the bridge I was suddenly overwhelmed by the scent of this grass, or maybe it’s a tree or a plant. Every spring I smell it and every spring it whisks me immediately back to childhood Fort St. John summers. Nothing transports me back to that specific time so suddenly and so overwhelmingly like that smell (and the smell of deet) – to day trips to the lake where the bottom was so rocky I had to swim with my tennis shoes on, where I had perpetually skinned knees and sunburned cheeks, where I lived off hot dogs (in the days before I liked ketchup – so they were plain in a bun) and jiggly heart-shaped jello pieces and Allen’s apple juice in tetra paks.

A few blocks down the street and I was walking under whirling cherry blossom pedals which transported me 20 years down the road, to hanami parties in Japan, playing badminton under the cherry trees in full bloom (like balls of cotton candy) and drinking Asahi tall boys on blue tarps, getting home as the sun set for a frozen pizza dinner and hour-long nap, only to wake up again at 10 p.m. and head out to an izakaya or random house party or all-you-can-drink roof top gong show, riding my bike home at 3 a.m., swerving around drunken salary men while marveling at the enormousness of the full moon and thinking (as I only seemed to think when I was drunk or stoned or perhaps on a road trip to Kyoto or Tokyo): Holy CRAP – I live in JAPAN. And waking up the next morning with nothing else to do but watch Zoolander for the 200th time, laying around in pyjamas on a tatami floor with the patio doors swung open wide, shooing away pigeons and drinking tea.

In a single Vancouver walk home it’s possible to re-live an entire lifetime, lived all over the province, country and world, through all these triggers that link each event and life stage like a paper chain, so that 27 years are summed up in 60 minutes, 40 blocks, ten songs on your Ipod, the entirety of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. From the smells of fresh cut grass and memories of childhood soccer games, juice from orange slices(which I avoided) dripping down tanned arms and running away from June bugs, to smells of barbeques and memories of Canada Day bike rides through Thornhill’s meandering ravines. All these thoughts coming at once, overlapping and switching from one to the next in unannounced bursts, as if springtime shakes the cobwebs and woolen blankets and rain clouds from my winter-heavy, hibernating mind and brings it – and me – back to life.