Family

Blood is a strange thing. Family bonds aren't like the ones of friendship or lovers. They can't be shattered by drama, or anger, or distance, or time, or even years silence. They're unbreakable, and they stretch over quarrels and oceans and generations. Maybe this explains why, being here in a place I've never lived with people I've never really known, I somehow still feel at home. I've never come face to face with my heritage in any significant way before, and the names of the people who made it up had always seemed distant and superfluous to me. Maybe that's why it's a remote concept to my mind that I'm being accepted here not because of who I am or where I'm going, but because of where I come from.

When I was a child and my parents would speak to me vaguely of the past, I always thought of the people they mentioned as I thought of the characters they invented in their bed-time stories. They were as real to me back then as the people in the books I read. It occurs to me now that that notion of thinking followed me right into my teens. Over the past week I've been compelled to change that outlook. My relatives are no longer these intangible leaves on some distant branch of a metaphorical family tree. They're real people who are right in front of me playing a harmonica, cooking up fish cakes, reminiscing with each other in loud voices about swimming spots and long gone pets, and complaining about gas prices. People who's faces I look into and see my mother's nose, my sisters grin and the color of my eyes. I am part of a thousand stories I didn't know existed.

My dad told me once that one of the most important things in the world is knowing where you come from. I think I'm closer to that now than I ever have been.

St. John's, Newfoundland

There's an honest ruggedness to Newfoundland that I've never seen anywhere else. The air of delightful pretention and cultural grandeur of Victoria have not followed me here. This island was settled by some of the first people to ever leave the comfort of Europe. Breaking free of the roots of their lineage that had grown into the soil of that continent for thousands of years, they came to North America to capture a land that was as tough and unconquerable as they were.


The whole place retains that atmosphere from so long ago, that kind of innovative, chaotic, disorderly "do with what we have" philosophy from the people who made it what it was. Rows of houses of all different colors built side by side up hills steep enough to fall down. The city's roads are paved conveniently from the horse carriage trails of 200 years ago; seven way intersections and streets that wind away into nothing. The close-knit, friendly, small town, lay down your life for your neighbor ideal is prominent throughout the province, even in a big city like St. John's. As a Calgarian, I'm not at all accustomed the idea of smiling and waving at the people you pass on the streets, but it's sure something I could get used to.


The landscape itself is spectacular. There's beauty everywhere you look. Windswept forests and wave-pounded cliffs, craggy hills and rocky shores; no such thing as prairies here. The thing I found most enchanting was standing on a grassy drop off overlooking the ocean, watching the sailboats and the humpback whales mingle with the horizon. Looking down at the rock face rizing with a heart stopping abruptness out from under a navy ocean blanket that sets its foamy curl crashing against it as if trying to suck it back in, it's not hard to imagine why the locals call this island simply "The Rock." It's a strange feeling you get when you follow the shoreline with your gaze and watch it curve backwards through the mist to eventually enclose itself against the sea. It's a refuge, a sanctuary in a flowing, heaving, chaotic mass. Substance surrounded by an irregular nothing. It makes you feel like this is the only place in the world, and the only place there needs to be.


I guess this is the quintessence of an island.

Plane Trip

Here I am again at this familiar thirty thousand feet, staring at an empty azure blue abyss and a shuddering plane wing. The guy in front of me has decided to take full advantage of the fact that yes, these airplane chairs can move back pretty far and you're crushing my flimsy food tray into my ribs thanks. Everyone seems to feel it necessary to make their bathroom trips last as long as humanly possible. Any kind of actual food they sell is frighteningly overpriced. Ham sandwich? No thanks, I would rather eat my fingers, the medical bills will probably cost less. And there's a baby crying. Why is there always a baby crying?

It's an interesting location, a plane. A hundred people smushed together in an enclosed space, suspended unnaturally in a giant metal box with wings, at a place in the globe's atmosphere a human body was never meant to experience, sharing no common connection or interest except for an ultimate geographical destination.

I like plane rides. I like the fact that most everybody here knows exactly what they're in for. I like knowing that for the next six hours, expensive sandwiches and crying babies are the worst problems I'll have to face in my life. I like the calm obscurity of knowing that in this place, "Cookies or pretzals, miss?" is the most important question I'll have to answer.

The only thing to do is sit here and stare out the vaccuum sealed window, looking down at the sun bouncing off the clouds and imagine they really are as soft and fluffy as you used to think they were when you were a kid.

Soon the plane will start to descend into the clouds, slicing through them like butter, and on the other side I'll be in a whole new world.

These cookies taste like soap.

that dance

What was it that flitted between us
like some disoriented humming bird
transferring pollen and tragedies and comedies
through a breathless swirl of late nights,
dark bedrooms and perplexing glances.
That winter night had a bite to it that
turned our flesh and doubts to ice and you
explained to me how in this cold there was no need
to stand apart and would I like to dance?

Now summer's swallowed winter whole and washed it down
with an antacid and some heartache, leaving
nothing but a whistful blur of bus-stop goodbyes,
placements of fingertips and destinationless conversations.
Tonight we sit on the dock dangling our feet and hearts
above the harbour water, which in the dark
looks very much like molasses and we watch
the shimmering reflections upon it of lights from
buildings and ships a thousand worlds away.

My arm is brushing yours and somehow all
that comes to mind with any clarity
is how you keep a step ahead of me when we walk down the streets
and of the way you always get angry when
I try to open the curtains to the morning,
and an image of a hummingbird, burried,
frozen
beneath a mountain of yesterdays, because,
you know, we never did dance.

The Ocean

When I was a kid, back in Newfoundland on some nameless rocky shore, my Uncle told me to look into the sea and count the waves as they washed up onto the beach. He said that no matter what, the seventh wave I counted would always be the largest. When I asked in disbelief how this could be possible, he mumbled something about moons and hemispheres and turned to walk away. I followed him, gazing behind me, and noting silently that as far as I could see, all the waves looked exactly the same.

I found myself standing today on the same rocky shore, staring at those same waves, on the opposite side of the continent, the mountains of the mainland miles in the distance rising like gigantic sapphire gaurdians above the shimmering ocean. Taking a seat on a pile of driftwood I watch the water heave and rise and fall in an uncanny pattern that wasn't quite monotony and wasn't quite chaos; as if it was a living thing waiting for the right moment to break free of some mysterious bondage.

As I listelessly prod the dried up sea urchins I contemplated the crumbling cement staircases that once led to a pathway on the cliffs above my head, wondering how many more times the sea would have to rise up in high tide before they were beat into oblivion. The emptiness of it all has a way of making you feel like you're the only person on earth. I started to feel the kind of self-pity that comes from being lonely before I noticed the sun beating down on my skin and smelled the salt air breeze and came to a small revelation that the times where I've been lonely are where I've felt most content.

The rushing noise as the waves swarm over the stones and makes a hypnotizing sound as the ocean draws them back in - a hush - like a mother whispering to her child to go to sleep. I begin to count the waves. One... two... three... I've noticed that it kind of has this pull on people, the idea of the sea. They gather around it and they broad upon it and paint it and write about it and sing about it, all of them trying to capture and portray some sort of essence that they can all feel but no one can really completely understand. Four... five... six... It's the concept that there's something vaster than ourselves, absolute in it's own existence, completely independent of human conceivability. I stepped back down onto the beach and watched quizzically as the seventh wave, braver than it's fellows, washed over the dry stones and onto my sneakers.

Leaving a trail of wet footprints on the rocks I went to make my way back up the cliff before the tide came in. I'd be back.

The Harbour

In the spring of 1778 Captain James Cook became the first person to set foot in what's now British Columbia, and selected the site for Fort Victoria, named after his Queen. Two hundred years later, this is what it's become.



On the Inner Harbour the sidewalk is lined with venders and street preformers, people selling their handcrafted items, musicians and artists and jewellers. Children run through the crowds with over priced hot dogs and ice creams dripping down their hands and stare in awe at the never ending array of magicians and fire jugglers. People mill about aimlessly taking in the sun and the sights: the myriad of museums, the ferry boats that sail people away across the harbour every few minutes and the totem poles on every street corner (the native influence of this place, mingling respectfully with the sometimes overbearing British one, is nevertheless inescapable and beautiful). Even the lofty rich folk venture down from their million dollar yachts to take it in. Old couples sit hand in hand under the trees, perhaps having grown up here and seeing it turn into what it is now, watching tourists from everywhere in the world point their cameras and snap at everything from the Parliament Building to the potted flowers hanging from the street lamps. Flowers, everywhere. Can't throw a rock without uprooting one.

When dusk starts to fall, and Country Joe packs up his coin filled guitar case, he's replaced by a man in dreadlocks with congo drums and wooden instruments. He sings songs with such melodies such that I can't quite place their origin, but it seems as though they've travelled across the ocean from some distant time and place and have somehow found their way here. A rythmic hush falls over the harbour as the sun sets behind the masts of the sleeping ships.



It's impossible to be sad here amongst this. It's impossible to be lonely. Even the bums have a look of contentment on their faces that says at this moment they wouldn't rather be anywhere else.

How can one not love it here.

Victoria, B.C.

A fancy hotel room smack in the middle of downtown, historical richness around every corner, a big fat wallet and sixteen days with no inhibitions and no responsibilities. There's no one relying on your presence, no one asking when you'll be back, and an entire beautiful island to explore. This is what freedom feels like.

The roads and pathways are as alive at night as they are in the afternoon. The street lights here in the early morning hours shine like a second sunlight. People here live in the shadow of the once great Victorian era. Shops and buildings and monuments all secrete a taste of the overwhemling extravagence of the British high class that came to this place so long ago, seeking to convert these wild forests and mountains into an extension of the empire they took such pride in.

This city run on a time scheme seperate from the rest of the world. They seem to have this air about them as they saunter down the streets, in sundresses or shirtless in sandles, that says there is no rush, there is no hurry, the sun is shining and the water surrounds us and there's beauty on all sides. There is nothing so important that we must hasten destinations. This is island time.

The people you meet here have a tendancy to look into your eyes instead of at your composition. Everything is layed back, everything is grand, and when things get a little antsy, hey, just smoke another joint.

This might just be the way we were meant to live.

Here it Goes

The idea of jumping in a boat or on a plane or in a car and leaving everything behind to explore a new world is something everybody fantasizes about, behind school desks and in front of data-filled computer screens. Putting as much distance as we can between ourself and our every-day problems. Filling up the spaces between ourselves and our boring realities with new experience and oppurtunity. A new place, different people and customs and sights, the excitement of contributing to an atmosphere that's different from our own. If we're lucky, many of us get to experience this a few times in our lives.

This is what I'm doing right now. I'm ditching everything and pretty much going. Blowing smoke in the face of my previous half hearted habits and going to see something different then what I've been seeing for the past 18 years. This is what life is about, isn't it? Having the courage to shake things up when they get too stale?

Travelling is the only thing I've always known I wanted to do. In a world where society is slowly and insistently beginning to try to shove me into my destiny and duct tape me there, I think that's something to hold onto. I just hope it will be everything I've imagined it to be.

To blowing the popsicle stand!