edwards block

Three wooden slats make up the seat of the bench at Beaver Lake upon which I have been sitting, writing, thinking, dreaming and complaining for many years.

I chose the bench originally because of its position in relation to the lake and the trees. It faces more or less west, which means it gets the warm afternoon sun, and looks over a small patch of open water in which mallards and the odd pair of wood ducks dabble. A short distance from shore, a bank of reeds are used for nesting by red-winged blackbirds, who perch on the cattails and call to each other. From this spot, I can peer through my field glasses into the distant reaches of the lake when I see movement, or follow the path of an eagle gliding above.

This bench is the right-most of three benches that sit in a row, adjacent to each other, at the edge of a small section of forest between the lake and Pipeline Road. I actually prefer the view from the centre bench, but the seat is slightly too high to be comfortable. My bench is just the right height to sit comfortably with my legs crossed and notebook open on my lap without a limb falling asleep too quickly.

I say my bench, but it’s really Ralph’s Bench. That is, one of the many benches in Vancouver that the parks board has assigned to memorialise someone. In this case, a Dr. Ralph G. Miller.

Though I’m certain that I read the plate bearing Ralph’s name on my first visit, I’d probably used the bench on many occasions before I really became aware of Ralph’s presence. I sit on the bench lost in thought, contemplating some real life problem, or opportunity, until I return to my notebook to scribble down ideas – sometimes answers but more often, new questions. On one such occasion I looked down at the brass plate thoughtfully and said, aloud, “What do you think, Ralph?”

I wasn’t expecting an answer, nor did I get one, but I sat and stared at that brass plaque for a few moments, as though I were waiting for something, anything. And something did come, in the form of the simple comfort of having reached out to this stranger on whose bench I sat. I felt myself relax.

Before long, I was greeting Dr. Miller upon my arrival. “Morning, Ralph”, I would say ritualistically, nonchalantly. I was even conversing with Ralph. Asking for opinions. Relating anecdotes. Sharing discoveries. Frequently posing philosophical questions.

Though I only spoke to him aloud, I did not so address him if there were any other people passing, or sitting on the adjacent benches, for obvious reasons. Except occasionally, when someone particularly annoying was offending my sensibilities, such as allowing his dog to jump in the water to chase the ducks, I would whisper discreetly my disdainful thoughts about the offenders, certain that Ralph would share in my irritation.

Sometimes I would arrive to find someone else sitting on Ralph’s bench. Usually it was a group of tourists, so I would use the next bench over knowing that they’d soon be bored by the lack of beavers and move along.

Otherwise, I would go to my alternate bench on the other side of the lake, belonging to the memory of one Lisa van Reeuwyk. I don’t talk to Lisa the way I do Ralph, except to say hello. As with Ralph, I don’t know Lisa’s story. I do know, however, that she died at an unreasonably young age. I wonder, when I sit with her, if her life was difficult, what struggles she faced, whether
leaving was her own decision or one made for her. Perhaps, with Lisa, I remain silent, available to offer her the favour of an ear should she desire it.

Sitting with Lisa is a darker experience than sitting with Ralph, but that’s not a bad thing, just different. Though my understanding of both Ralph and Lisa are entirely my own projections and quite possibly wholly unrealistic, each nevertheless has something to offer me during my retreats, and I like to think that I have something to offer them, too, even if only the respect of my attention.

Last year, Ralph’s bench was hauled away and a new one has replaced it. Presumably, whoever funded the bench did not renew it. The new bench still has three wooden slats, but it’s not the same. The height of the seat is slightly different, and it has a new name : Mr. Page. I have no sense of Mr. Page. I can’t even remember his first name. Perhaps we’ll become friends. Perhaps
we won’t.

Originally published in Thursdays 3.0: These Words, at www.thursdayspoemsandprose.ca.

For much of my adult life, I have been living in apartments in what is sometimes referred to as the most densely populated square mile in North America, Vancouver’s West End. I’m somewhat sceptical of this claim, as it sounds a bit like chamber of commerce spin, not to mention that we northern North Americans tend to overlook Mexico as a part of our continent too, surely an area of population concentration of note. Nonetheless, the West End is an area of significant population density.

Density of this sort is an easy thing not to notice when you live in an economically privileged and relatively homogeneous form of it, however. Inside our boxes in the sky it is possible to feel a greater sense of privacy than in a house on a 33 foot lot in the suburbs. Despite having several hundred people within rock-throwing distance, you may never see or hear most of them. Even the other windows of other apartments, and the people behind them, are often distant enough to offer a sense of anonymity.

In my case, I also had the benefit of living right next door to one of Canada’s largest, and possibly wildest, urban parks, Stanley Park. It was like having a 1,000 acre backyard. Yes, I had to share it with others, but some sections, at some times of the day or week, you can have almost to yourself, especially when it’s not summer and the average Vancouverite won’t drag his ass away from the television or out of her car in case it rains. Have they never heard of raincoats?

Beaver Lake, in Stanley Park

I love the park, especially when it’s raining. When I lived beside it, I used to put on a raincoat, hiking boots and a Tilley hat, load my backpack with snacks, a thermos of tea, and head out at 7:00am with a pair of binoculars. The trails are beautifully peaceful during a misty rain, the park is loaded with life, and if you sit still for a bit, it will often reveal itself. I once saw a family of river otters cross the trail from the forest into Beaver Lake while I was sitting on my favourite bench.

Another favourite local escape is Wreck Beach, another park on the periphery of the city. Wreck is not the place to go for solitude if it’s sunny and warm, but it is still a great respite, nonetheless. Wreck has different sections, featuring slightly different demographics, though there is a certain amount of blending of and acceptance of “cultures” in all areas. Often on hot summer days I head for the main beach, the only place really suitable for swimming and, conveniently, where there exists an open market for every beach necessity imaginable, including empanadas and magic mushrooms, both of which I highly recommend.

Later in the day, however, I often head to the southern end of the beach, predominantly populated by queer men, where I can enjoy the sunset in relative peace. Sometimes it has the ambiance of an outdoor bathhouse, without the disco, but most of the crowd starts to disperse shortly after 4pm, which means it is pretty calm and quiet until the sun sets, which at this time of year isn’t until after 9pm.

Wreck Beach at dusk

Unfortunately, the presence of an offshore breakwater, behind which sit large booms of logs headed for the mills of the lower Fraser, means that there are only scattered small patches of sand, and swimming is neither practical nor recommended. However, it’s still pretty scenic (in its own, industrially polluted way) and any tugboats working – when the tide is high – are usually distant enough that their engines don’t drown out the buzz, chirp and rustle (and sometimes, moaning) of the plentiful wildlife.

Ever since I was quite young, I have both enjoyed and suffered the incongruity of wanting to be out of the city while wanting to be in it. When I was younger, I was generally satisfied with opportunities to escape the city for a weekend or a longer journey, despite the inconvenience of arranging transport and dealing with the traffic. And then there is always the trauma of having to come back again. This is a trauma I always experience while leaving the park or the beach. As I leave the density and dissolve into the forest, I feel my stress and urban agitation lift from me. The sensation of relaxing is physically tangible in a way that I get from no other experience. All too often, however, as soon as I begin to leave the park to return to “real life”, I start to feel some of that agitation settle once again upon my shoulders, and as I re-immerse myself back into the concrete, car alarms, yapping shih-tzus and gas-powered landscaping tools, I long once again to make a more permanent escape. If it weren’t for Stanley Park and Wreck Beach, I would surely have either fled this city, or fled my (albeit unique variety of) sanity, long ago. They provide me with the easily-accessible respite from urban hubbub that I require.

Lost Lagoon

I’ve had it in my mind for many years that it would make far more sense to spend most of my time living out of the city, visiting it when I am in the mood for a dose, than to be trapped in it most of the time, constantly craving an opportunity to escape. I’ve had many visions of a semi-rural home over the years, and have been scouting out real estate for years. In the late 90s, I contemplated the purchase of a property in the Horsefly area of the Cariboo region in central British Columbia. It was 80 acres, with a small A-frame house, well forested with some cleared areas for growing, and with a large pond in which beavers and muskrats were known to reside. At only $100,000, it was hardly unaffordable.

So why didn’t I buy it? I can list off any number of rationalisations. How will I make money? What will I do for sex? Will I feel socially isolated? Will my nearest neighbours be gun-totin’ Reform Party loonies? Will I miss the city after all?

All valid concerns. Of course, most of those are concerns living in the city too, but there are likely more opportunities to generate cash in the city (regardless of the quality of those opportunities). It all came down to fear of the untested, really. In hindsight, I regret not having acted while I had the chance, and the resources. There would have been challenges, yes. But, older now, and having faced a few self-initiated challenges, I suspect that I would have found a way, and discovered that the differences between “here”and “there” are not as wholly distinct as might be imagined. After all, as I discovered not too long ago, my own big-city Jewish (now former) physician turned out to be a gun-totin’ Reform Party loony.

While I would be inclined now to act, I don’t currently have the resources to follow that path, though it’s not entirely out of the question that it could happen. In order to do it, I’d either have to win a lottery, or re-join the rat race from which I ran screaming several years ago. I don’t buy lottery tickets, and I seem not to have the fortitude (or the masochism) necessary to make the rat race tolerable. So here I am, a city boy still.

Wreck Beach at sunset

In the meantime, I am trying to make things as earthy as possible under the circumstances. I have always had a very polarised view of city living. If I’m going to live in a city, I want to live in the middle of it. If I’m not going to live in a city, I want to be in the woods. I have no time for suburbs, where people seem to resent foliage and physical exertion. Virginia Woolf (apparently) once said “If the choices are Richmond or death, I choose death”. She did, of course, in the end choose death, and I don’t blame her.

I have no plans to solve my residential plight by loading my pockets with stones and taking a nice long swim (though I reserve the right to change my mind if I ever find myself forced through circumstance, or really bad luck, to take up residence on the noxious Mary Hill), but I have taken steps to make city living a little more tolerable and, occasionally, even sorta pleasant.

For the past seven months or so, I have been living in a rented house on the east side of the city. I had always been curious about living on “The Drive” as this neighbourhood is known, but giving up instant access to the park always stopped me from trying it out. As it turns out, I quite like it. It has more real cultural diversity than any other Vancouver neighbourhood, and that’s integrated diversity. Really, the area is probably on the decline, as character goes, since real estate is getting more and more expensive and the people with lots of money and no sense of community buy up land and gentrify things, but for now, I like it.

The food is great around here too. Though many of the historically-present Italians have dispersed to other parts of the city, there are still a number of merchants around that supply their tastes, which conveniently are also my tastes. Old style deli counters at Santa Barbara and Bosa markets are fattening me up on parmesan-crusted salami, prosciutto, fennel sausage, and a variety of cheeses, and the choices of vegetables, with both the Italian and Asian influences, is much more satisfying than those found in the big chain stores.

Another way that I am making the best of things is by having a garden as well, which is kind of like farming on a very small scale. In fact, I have two gardens, having also taken over the unused one at the house next door. The quantity of food that comes out of them is not astounding, particularly since the weather was so unusually hot and dry in the late spring and early summer that many of the more water-demanding greens shot stalks straight up and bolted before they could even produce many leaves. However, I am eating out of the garden daily, mainly lettuce, mustard greens, chard, and snow peas. The pole beans should be ready to eat in another week or two, I have a bit of rhubarb, and I have just done a second planting of a few quicker growing things, as well as some fall crops. If the winter isn’t too cold, I should be able to get a good supply of kale through the end of the year, too. My yard also has apple, pear, plum and fig trees, all of which seem to be producing a good supply of fruit.

The Main Garden

Of course, getting food out of the garden is nice, but I suspect a big part of the satisfaction comes from the opportunity to play in the dirt. I can sit out there for hours, digging, pruning, thinning, and weeding. Usually when I am finished, I have half of the garden on me, which I shower off before I return to the yard to sit in the shade and read, or watch the chickadees and bushtits.

As an added bonus to my need to satisfy my farming urges, city council recently passed a motion permitting citizens to keep chickens in backyards, something I have been demanding for years, since it seems absurd that you can have cats, dogs, birds, reptiles, rodents, and even children, but not a couple of hens. The city managers are taking their time actually writing the new law, so I don’t yet know what limit will be in place for the quantity of fowl, but I am making the plans for my new coop in the meantime. Now I just have to start warming my neighbours up to the idea of chicken-sitting for me when I need to escape to the woods for a weekend.

Last weekend in Vancouver, two events took place that sought to advance the idea of the car-free city. One I attended, the other I tried to avoid, with limited success.

Saturday was the World Naked Bike Ride, an event I favour for several reasons. Any opportunity to run around naked ought to be exploited enthusiastically, but especially when it’s being done to increase public consciousness about, as a friend once put it, the “offensive ubiquity of the horseless carriage”.

That same friend – who recently bought a car to replace his deceased one – had to drag his old bike out of storage and dust it off in order to participate, as it had not been used since the last World Naked Bike Ride. It would be easy for someone less charitable than I (!) to accuse him of hypocrisy, but on the contrary, I think he is being courageous and intelligent enough to recognise that he resents feeling the need to own something that he doesn’t really want, but that the forces of capital conspire to virtually (for lack of realistic alternatives, perceived or otherwise) require him to purchase and maintain. He feels powerless to live without the comfort and convenience of a car, and his participation is an act of symbolic defiance.

The point of the World Naked Bike Ride is not to promote nudity, or cycling, or civil disobedience (though those are all very worthy pursuits), but to remind us that “car culture” is not something that we are necessarily stuck with, that we, as a society, have the power to choose a different kind of city, one in which we are not all subservient to the private automobile and the special interests that have caused us to be enslaved to it. That a large majority are convinced otherwise suggests, in my opinion, lazy thinking rather than conscious commitment.

The other event lends some credence to this view, I think. Car Free Day was spawned on Commercial Drive by people not unlike those who participate in the Naked Bike Ride, citizens on feet and bikes and wheelchairs and crutches and elderly legs who took over the street by force of their collective mass as a reaction to the domination of the automobile. Since those early days, however, it has been largely hijacked by civic politicians and business interests, and become an object of curiousity by those who have either no opinion about car traffic, or one supportive of the status quo.

The result is that Car Free Day is quite the opposite: seemingly large numbers of people drive to a neighbourhood that is holding a Car Free Day event. Sure, six blocks of one street are “car free”, but sixteen blocks in all surrounding directions are jammed with cars whose drivers are either trying to park for the event, or are trying to bypass a formerly accessible artery. It’s not “car free”, it’s “car relocated”.

A major cause for difference between the two events is that the naked bike ride is unsanctioned by city hall (in other words, an “illegal protest”) and is largely unplanned. The route is spontaneously made up by those participating. Meanwhile, the city is involved in planning the so-called car free day, an official series of events that are car-free in name only.

Of course, those who enjoy taking over the street and playing hopscotch where cars normally roam will see it more positively. And good for them. They can enjoy their day of faux-rebellion, and I’ll take my opportunity to flash my scrotum at Floridian tourists. In the end, the cars are still going to get to dominate for the other 364.75 days of the year. It’s that that we need to come together to change.

(Main page photo credit: Hepcat Cabal – http://www.flickr.com/photos/19835686@N00)

While travelling in the eastern US and Canada this summer, I only had my point-and-shoot, and no mini-USB to transfer the images to my laptop. In Asia, I had the DSLR, but no laptop. Thus, I was unable to post any photos. Now that I am back in Vancouver, here are a few to catch up. Click thumbnails for larger image.

In Concord, Massachusetts, I went to see what Thoreau saw. The bath house is, of course, a new addition at Walden Pond:

Also in Concord, Thoreau’s grave. There’s a larger family stone with all the full names and dates, and this small marker on HDs actual pile:

The good burghers of Concord apparently saw fit to memorialise the road they paved over the weir of the indigenous fishers they vanquished, if not the fishers themselves:

On to the commune. Here’s the view of the middle pond, from the lodge house. If you squint you can see white-tailed deer in the water:

The lodge itself, centre. To the right is the temple; to the left, the guest house:

The desk in my cabin. It faced south, toward the pond and was very bright. I didn’t do a lot of writing in it, since there was no power, but it was a great place to wake up:

A side trip to Vermont:

One of the great things about the commune is the casual dress code. Here I am doing dishes:

By the time I got to New York City at the end of July, I was getting a little grizzly, though I fit right in while watching HAIR in Central Park the night before. This was taken on the Hudson, with Jersey in the background:

On to Asia…

Singapore was the first stop. This image appears on a map of Fort Canning Park, a lush historical site downtown. Chewing gum may be forbidden in Singapore, but apparently public sodomy is just fine:

The next stop was Ko Samui in Thailand, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. This photo is at Big Buddha Beach, where we stayed. The clouds look threatening, but it was actually sunny most of the time:

Here’s Larissa at Zazen, our favourite restaurant in Samui. Or at least, our favourite rich, white tourist restaurant. Food was good, but I especially liked the little cubbyholes built into the wall outside, looking onto the beach. Nice and quiet:

Here’s a restaurant we didn’t try, the Mr. Poo Barbecue (a rather unfortunate transliteration of Mr. Phu):

The ferry dock at Big Buddha Beach:

The beach was very nice, and great for swimming, but an unfortunate amount of trash marred it in areas, such as this Fanta can, which had become an intertidal condo:

I have yet to identify this somewhat common bird. This one was seen in Angthong Marine Park:

Angthong Marine Park is an archipelago at which we hiked, kayaked and snorkeled. Here are some of the many small islands:

Next stop was Bangkok, but just for one night. Our room at the Shanghai Inn looked a bit like the Hollywood version of a Chinese bordello. Despite being in the middle of a human and automotive jungle, it was remarkably quiet.

Bangkok is astoundingly crowded and noisy (at least, compared to Singapore), but I loved it, even if I did have to duck into a cafe occasionally to desensitize:

A sample of the electrical work:

Not all streets were a maddening crush. This passage in Chinatown was comparatively sedate, and check out those paving stones:

On the way home I stopped in Korea to see my cousin, Jennie for a few days. She toured me all over Seoul, despite being six months pregnant, and her husband Kevin filled me with meat and Soju. By the time I left, Jennie and I had similar waistlines:

Those Koreans love their signs. Most of the urban areas I saw were built very densely, with lots of apartment buildings instead of sprawling suburbs, and at night they glow with neon and other lighting:

I’d say more, but I’m jetlagged. Off to bed.

I arrived in Singapore on July 28 – my first trip across the date line, and my first journey to Asia – where I met up with Larissa, who was attending a symposium on electronic arts.

Singapore has a reputation for being a pretty rigid place, where gum chewing is against the law. From my brief visit, it didn’t seem so bad. I only saw one cop in the four days I was there and he wasn’t caning anyone for jaywalking. As I understand it, most of the dictatorial power of the state is applied to discouraging opposition to those in control of the government. This has apparently been quite successful, as the same party has been in charge since 1959.

Although we had done no planning ahead of time, we’d intended to take a vacation while in the region. After considering Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Laos, we settled on Thailand, and flew to the island of Koh Samui on August 1, where we checked into a small, middle-brow resort called The Secret Garden.

I was excited about visiting Asia for the first time, though now that I am here I am less excited about it. Samui, which once consisted of a bunch of fishing villages, is pretty much one big resort where the locals cater to the tourists in standard colonial fashion. Every town is comprised half of resorts, one quarter bars and restaurants, and one quarter tailors who make clothes cheap that bear labels of big designers, like BOSS and Armani. What sort of person would have so little self-esteem to buy an ‘Armani’ suit in Thailand and seriously add it to his closet, I don’t know. If you aren’t rich enough to buy the real thing, it just seems white trashy to try to fake it. Kind of like a labourer putting plaster lions on the fenceposts of his 33 foot lot in East Vancouver. Oh well, to each his own.

I am also disappointed by the amount of garbage on the beaches. I’m not sure it originates directly from tourists, or from poor disposal infrastructure. On the other hand, it seems generally safe here.

I did not bring my laptop on this trip, so I am using Larissa’s MacBook, which I am finding a challenge. Linux has spoiled me. I cannot even figure out how to resize an image or start an FTP client, so there will be no photos uploaded until after I get home.

On Monday, we’ll be flying to Bangkok for one night (where the world’s our oyster), and then returning to Singapore for another night. From there, Larissa will head for Toronto, via Vancouver, and I’m off to Korea, to visit my cousin Jennie for a couple of days in Seoul. Back to YVR on the 16th, the Aeroplan gods willing.