*laugh*

So apparently one of the top searches that somehow links to this blog is “tiny sexy girls”.

!!!….

how…

how do they know?

So on that note, a picture.

Robin took this in 2004 or so

Denman St, upstairs, after dad moved out.   I’ll miss that apartment ’till the day I die.   My front door opened up into the middle of a crowded summer beach-street.    The house I grew up in.  Love.

Concrete Heart

Gah/Hooray/Jesus Fucking Hell.

A million things.   Or, well, really just a few.  It started two weeks ago…  Portland was lovely, being all Portland-y and autumn with big fat orange leaves in a thick carpet on the ground and laughing brooks of rainwater pouring through the streets.    I wasn’t working much – but you know I don’t hate THAT…

and then…   wham.

It was the day after Brent and Carol visited…    that was lovely.  They are lovely.   They’re some of our family’s oldest friends – i think my dad’s twin brother Bob was good friends with Brent in school, I think that’s how it went…   Bob and Bernie were in different grades, despite being twins.  I think that had something to do with my dad being a Rascal, but I don’t really know.      Anyway, I’ve known Brent and Carol for EVER, and have known their sons for ever, and they’re all essentially family.    And lovely, like I said.    Well, they came down for a night – just a night – two weeks ago.   It was rad.  They took me for lunch at this chic little place down the street from the shop where Carol and I spent a lot of our time craning our necks and watching the boy behind us eat this ammmaaazing looking desert.  It was a thick chocolate cube filled with chocolate mousse and topped with a big sphere of vanilla ice cream.  Tres Chic.     *laugh*.    And yeah, maybe we were staring a little…     but what else are you gonna do?  I think when anybody orders deserts that cool/inexplicable, (it took him a while to figure out how to get into the cube) , well, your table -neighbors are just bound to watch.

Later we went out for burgers at a converted funeral home that feels like a church, which is a grand place to drink beer.   Great microbrews, good hamburgers, deep-fried tater tots in ranch…  mmmmm.      No chocolate cubes though.    Haha… and got into this hilarious debate about this time in eight grade where dad just reached out and grabbed a girl’s tit, and was defending this as the “natural negotiation of our sexualities” that happens at that age.  Hahaha.    Everybody else disagreed, figured it was, well, technically assault, Bernie, sorry!   haha.   We won the day, I’m sure.   Dad may argue that, but – pffft!    And then of course we all came back to the house and had a lovely time drinking beer and listening to music and hanging out.   Always, always, always a good time.

eExcept maybe I can blame the tootsie-rolls for what happened afterward.   The leftover halloween Tootsie Rolls.  I haven’t had one since that night, they may be ruined for me forever…   tragedy, really.    ‘cuz by the next evening I had the most painful toothache I’ve ever had.   Like, agony.  Like, can’t-sleep, tossing and turning, my entire brain becomes entwined with Pain and no escape.    Like, I-Need-To-See-The-Dentist-This-Fucking-Instant bad.   So i did.   Wednesday, Brent and Carol.   Thursday night, Toothache.   Friday morning, Dentist.    And they tell me I need a root canal, and that it’s going to cost me 2 grand.

GAH.

And at that point i was in constant, undiminished pain…   so that two thou sounds like it wants to be spent Pronto, y’know?  Except…    except, for fuck’s sakes I don’t have two grand!     And then… and then a thousand other things.   They prescribed me antibiotics that i’m allergic to, (my fault) but then i couldn’t get them to change the prescription.  I spent four or five hours on the phone between my doctor in Canada (who I wasn’t allowed to speak to due to Swine Flu overload, and had no power to prescribe me anything from another country anyway) and the pharmacy and the dentist, trying to get myself prescribed an antibiotic I can take without risking death.    Avoiding anphlaxys was the order of the day, no doubt.   hah.    By the end of the day – which had found me in tears on probably ten separate occasions – the swelling had started.   Roping down under my jaw, pushing my cheek out like i had a mouthful of water, so sore and stiff it pulled my lower lip down and I started talking funny.     And i cannot get myself a prescription for antibiotics, anywhere. Saturday morning, by then.  And it got bad.   Emergency room visits here in portland cost THREE TO FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS MINIMUM.      Are you SERIOUS?      We found a clinic, it would have been a hundred-dollar visit, but whatever…    and then, thank god, thank fucking god, a doctor friend of Jane’s came through.   Thank goodness Jane has doctor friends.   Jesus.   I gulped down those green-and-white pills and nearly melted with relief.

Still, it took six days for the swelling to go down.   Six days I spent in bed, gulping down fistfuls of painkillers and antibiotics, unable to smile or speak without pain.   And solid food?  hah!   Chewing on the right side of my mouth?  Hah.  Right.     Six days, i lay in bed staring at my laptop screen without expression.   Eating a few bites of dinner and going back to bed ‘cuz it hurt to talk to anybody or respond facially to what they were saying.   Back to bed.  Back to seasons and seasons and seasons of old tv…     Thank god for Ninjavideo, i seriously wouldn’t have survived without it.  I went through 1st season Tudors, all the latest Greys’ Anatomy, Top Model, Project Runway, 30 Rock,  BBC Life…   hours.  And hours.  And hours.     and miserable for every single second of it.

Awful.   I cannot begin to stress how awful.

Well, by the following Thursday I was a Human again, and had acquired  an appointment for a dental half-measure that would clock in at $850 and get me through at least the next year, on Tuesday.    So this weekend was only a half-bummer.    Just all the Sad had built up in my limbs like lactic acid.   The no-friends and the no-boyfriend and the swollen-face had all congealed into one of those localized storm clouds poised just over my head.    And it rained.

Thank goodness time passes…  ‘cuz i went in Tuesday morning, and had the root canal.   Thank god.  Never have I been happier to have a dentist sticking needles into my gumline.    (ow).

so thank christ, that’s over.   And i got letters – lovely lovely letters from both Don and Robin, and that made my day…  i fucking adore those two, and will for pretty much ever.    Few people on the planet make me as happy as they do.  When i finished Don’s letter I flung myself backwards on the bed with one of those glorious rushing happy sighs…   they’re those kinds of letters.

I’m lonely, but it’s temporary.   And now that my tooth is fixed i’m about a country mile more optimistic about everything than i was beforehand.

And then,  just to pull me out of my Funk with both arms, Jeremy came by.

Jeremy.  Darling, darling Jer.    He’s uncle Bob’s son, my closest cousin-friend, and essentially my big brother.  He’s also the boy who taught me what a rad girl looked like, and is himself a fair chunk of what I judge Rad Boys against.   He came over last night, left early this morning…   and my whole everything is happier for it.   He’s another one of these people that i see far too infrequently… but so it goes.    And yeah.  it was rad.  We talked a ton and cooked this absurd dinner that took forever and turned into six kinds of adventure even though it was just steak, baked potatos, and asparagus.    There was fire, even.    Indoor fire.     No burns though, and the smoke alarm didn’t go off, so I think we did pretty well.      And beer, and yes.   Lovely.    So, so lovely.

So bookended by fabulous, Wednesday-night family visits, the last two weeks are…   fucking hell, they’re over.

and THAT

is enough for me.

We, the Youthfull Sinewy Races

Pioneers , O Pioneers…

This has GOT to be one of the best ads I’ve ever seen.

The entire campaign is rather compelling, but none of it is as good as this particular ad.   That, of course, has a great deal to do with Walt Whitman…   I mean, you’re getting off the ground at a pretty good clip when you start out with literary genius in your pocket.

But seriously, doesn’t it make you want to join the Levi’s Revolution?   I want to be these denim-clad Western Youths,  I want them as my friends, I want to eat their passion and take it as my own.       Hah.  This is advertising at its finest.

full poem here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneers!_O_Pioneers! It’s really long.

Update:  I guess pissy altruists feel violated by our precious Whitman being used to hawk jeans.      Personally, I don’t care a tit.

These people ought to know who we are, and tell that we are here

Portland, Oregon

I could be wearing diamonds right now if I wanted.    Or rubies.   I think I like rubies better, actually.  The word is so delightful and juicy and round, and it conjures images for me of something  the Seven Dwarfs have dug  up out of their big Disney mine.    Hah.     Yeah, I’m at Dad and Jane’s latest boutique, on the second floor of an old house tucked into the middle of a delightful, arty little shopping district of tree-lined streets and lovely shops, called Nob Hill.  Four stores down is a Goorin Bros Hat Store – floor to ceiling Goorin!  All the Goorin ever!   Ball caps and beanies and berets, oh my!   (if you aren’t a Hat Maniac like me, you may not know this company – but they’re essentially making the coolest, hippest hats on the market these days.   It’s younger stuff though mostly, tattoo-inspired graphic prints and the like.  It all kills me.)

So this new store of dad and Jane’s is a rainbow-hued cornucopia of jewelry, scarves, and handbags, with earrings dripping from chains in the windows and persian rugs on the floor…  it’s  gorgeous and sparkly and chic and I love it.   I want to own everything.  Well, except for the handbags.  I only need one of those, and I got it already.  My magpie-like acquisitiveness and fascination with shiny things will NOT serve my pocketbook well in this environment.    Lucky that I get to wear the stuff while I work… hopefully that will diffuse my need to purchase.  It did at Edie’s in Vancouver…  barely…

but no, I have to make sure I have enough money for other things.  Like the mid-january “free” cruise my two summers at the Hotel will hopefully provide, and maybe some new ink, and, oh, maybe a pair of shoes or two…

I love Dawson, and I miss it like crazy, and I seem to have Dawson dreams every other night lately.    That being said, god almighty is it nice to wear high heels and some eyeshadow and a hundred dollars worth of jewelry and not feel like I’m some pretentious whoor.  And Portland is lovely and arty and liberal and green…   it’s like fresh-squeezed Vancouver cordial with a twist of SoCal.    And that kills me too – my proximity to Southern California.   Just the next state down, just past the reach of my fingertips.   It means that the “Free cruise”  (if it works out) will be something based in San Diego, featuring Robin, and an on-the-way-down DonVisit just to, y’know, make it all Fucking Perfect.

I’m not working much yet…    when Christmas starts to ramp up I’ll start to get busy, and likely get a second job just to pay for the fun I want to have in French Polynesia.   That’s fine – even in this economy stores will be thrilled to have experienced hirees who want you to lay them off as soon as the Christmas rush ends.     But for now I don’t mind this.

I have a great room – it’s dad’s old office -  and the big giant soft bed that used to be upstairs.   The first week I was here he and I had to take apart his desk and bring it upstaris, and take apart the bed and bring it downstairs.   The desk was easy enough, except for the glass table-top, which was so fucking heavy it made me feel weak and girlish and seriously taxed my out-of-shape biceps and lack of finger strength.    The bed was hilarious though – it may break at any second, even as I sleep.   The box spring frame is broken in about fifteen places, and the slats are screwed in at half the ends and broken off at the other half (of course all on different sides)…  so we had to carry this absurd huge wooden frame down the three-point-turn staircase with the curtain of one-by-fours swinging crazily and shedding slats and jamming up against walls and in between chair legs.   And then of course jury-rig the hell out of it to get it to support the mattress.  I won’t let the cats into the room, I’m terrified that one of them will somehow be under the bed when it inevitably plummets through the jury-rigging and onto the floor.      And yet, it’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on, so…

Another autumn, another temporary home.    I guess maybe I’m supposed to “settle down”, “grow up” or do something “reasonable” with my life, sometime…      But to hell with Supposed To.    There’s just so much world out there, and nowhere near enough time.

Ummmm…. Huh?

Vancouver.

I guess.

I’m confused.   Flying in last night, skimming down low  over the city, it seemed as alien as Asia did when I first landed there.   Were there this many lights when I left?  And the seasons – It was winter yesterday.   Like fully, far below freezing and snowing regularly.   I sure got out in the nick of time, as far as that goes.  Another week or so and the whole place will be locked in white ’till May.      Whole lotta winter up there.

But now I’m in Vancouver, and it seems like summer hasn’t even let go yet.  Which, of course, is glorious…   I was getting really, really tired of being cold.  But it’s throwing me for this crazy loop.  In the cab on the way home from the airport I saw this tree that looked like a cherry tree in full bloom (i think it was just the way it was lit up by a streetlight) and i actually had to think for a  second – “wait – it couldn’t be Spring here yet, could it?”

hah.

It’s nice, don’t get me wrong.    But i’m…    Discombobulated.   I’m confused.  I feel slightly anxious.   Leaving Dawson i could feel snapping from underfoot as my roots dislodged and broke beneath me.

i was really really happy there.

That being said, I’m glad I came back, ‘cuz realisticaly if i’d stayed there I would have just spent the winter getting terribly fat and being unforgivably lazy.    At least, this is what i’m telling myself to forget the Northern Lights/snowshoeing/snowmobiling/off-roading/lovely winter cuddles I’m missing by having left.  But no, it’s true.   The last month has been completely induldgent and delicious.   It was a month, pretty much solid, of sleeping in and kissing and movie-watching and nacho-eating and Everything You Want, Whenever You Want It.     Yummm, with three M’s.    We forgot how coffee tastes without Bailey’s in it.     Indulgence. A month of fluffy pyjama pants and no bedtime and ice cream for breakfast.  And it’s never ever a school day.

I left that….    voluntarily?

But no, i had to, and I wanted to, and it’s good.  I’m thrilled to see everyone in Vancouver, and am very excited to go live in Portland – it’s been a while since i’ve lived in a new city, and Portland is gorgeous and amazing and inspiring and lovely, and I can’t wait to know it like I know all the other cities I’ve loved.

But it’s going to take me a few days to switch gears.   My brain is still processing Dawson, and the Vancouver input does not compute.

Adam came with me to Whitehorse for those last few days… which was lovely of him, considering he didn’t have a ride home.   Yeah – there’s no public transport between Whitehorse and Dawson other than flights…. no Greyhound, nuthin’.    So Adam – the dear – came with me for the drive with Johnny, and is currently hitchhiking back. Right Now.     Oh man do I ever hope it’s going o.k.    He had his camping gear and plenty of warm clothes and food whatnot… but I haven’t heard from him yet, which means he probably camped overnight.  In the snow.

I may owe him for this.   He certainly gets an All-Time Gold Star for it.  But it was just so lovely and worth it and important to have him there with me those last few days.    I mean, I’m pretty crazy about the guy by this point, and, well, i’m gone now.

God was it ever a great summer.   And the house, and that last month, and the northern lights, and all that Bailey’s…   And Dawson.  Lovely, tiny little Dawson that you can hold in the palm of your hand.   It’s just….  it’s going to take me a while to clear my head, y’know?

Those Dancing Days

September, Dawson City

good grief.    So i’m still here.  Clearly.   And in fact, i’m going to stay through to the beginning of October… i keep delaying my return due to excessive happiness.   And god, i’m SO glad i’m not leaving yet… everybody else is, or has already gone, maybe even weeks ago.  The hotel is closed and as we speak Doug is boarding up the windows… pretty soon the whole place will be locked down and frozen solid.  (Can you imagine how badly I want to slip through the walls of the hotel, sometime in January maybe, and walk the long dark hallways, and all the rooms, still full of all the furniture, just frozen?   Deep frozen.  Fifty Below frozen.  So frozen that outdoor freezers have to have Space Heaters in them.  Because it’s too cold outside.   But how creepy and awesome would that be? ) 

So it’s done, the summer is gone, and Dawson has plunged into Autumn head-first.  It’s gorgeous.  The hills are all on fire with crazy Yukon fall colors, yellow-gold birches and wicked reds covering entire mountainsides and veining through the pine forests on the mountains that bracket the town.  The days are sunny and cold and clear, and the air is the finest I think I’ve ever breathed.

Can you blame me for not leaving?  and that’s not even the half of it.  The rest of it is nearly enough to keep me here all winter long. 

there’s a boy – of course.    I know, I know.   I’m falling in love all over the place.   It’s silly and indulgent and completely delicous.    His name is Adam, and he’s completely wrong for me.   *laugh*   Well, ok, not completely.    But, well, close.   He’s a 23 year old metal-fabricator handyman punk kid from Toronto.  We hate eachother’s taste in music (Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions being a seriously important exception), he considers me a hipster elitist snob, and if my friends from Vancouver met his friends from Toronto there’d probably be a rumble.      That being said, we’re having the BEST time.   He’s a sweet, goofy Jew with a huge grin and he’s crazy about me.   So to hell with it.  You can think your way into all kinds of trouble when it comes to Love…   but if it Works, it Works, and i’m not going to give myself a hard time for how much fun we’re having.   

I’ve moved in with him for the month of September, paid my first real rent in this town…  (a serious milestone)…    into this amazing log house with hardwood floors and a wraparound porch.   We live with a Pirate and an Argentinian stunner named Maria, who has long shiny hair and big brown eyes and fabulous taste in music.   The first time i met her we were off-roading in Johnny’s enormous jeep, and she just knocked my socks off with her playlisting.   (This is a rare and serious thing).

 I’ve gotten to go off-roading with these guys a few times this summer, and holy hell has that ever been fun.  Unbeliveable, really.  His vehicle is very impressive.  the tires are waist-high on me.  And way out here in the yukon there’s no short supply of rarely-driven barely-roads that end in calendar worthy vistas or ghost towns or abandoned mines…   in fact, that’s pretty much all there IS around here.  Ghost town, vistas, and abandoned mines.  Yup.    The first day out, we drove 4 kilometers up Bonanza Creek, (NOT an approved driving site in any way…)  crashing through clear water and careening over gravel embankments and bouncing up and down until the safety catches on our seatbelts were completely freaked out and finally could do nothing more than lock us tighter and tighter against the backs of the seats with no hope for escape.  (bruises resulted.  Also exhaustion.  We got back to town feeling like we’d been beaten up.) 

and i can’t even really get across how… well, i mean, this place is an Antiquer’s heaven.  It takes soooo much work to get anything here, or get anything back, that things just… stay.    Old soda bottles and salt shakers and Model T Fords and rusty valve wheels and…  well, everything.   It all just STAYS.   And there are ghost towns and abandoned buildings and ruins everywhere.  Everywhere.   The street I now live on also contains the ruins of an old house, a small woodland cemetary with weathered wooden tombstones, and a large witchy house with a turret, barely visible through the trees.

So these expeditions out into the outlying territory are studded with the cooooolest little discoveries.   Finaly going back down Bonanza creek, miles away from roads or civilisation, i’m leaning out over the edge looking down into the water, clear and greenish all the way to the white pebble riverbed- and there just to the side, underneath a dark overhang of saplings and grasses, is a submerged, rusted Dredge Bucket.   (Hundred year old Mining equipment. You see them around town, in people’s gardens mostly.  they look like a large bucket-sized tractor scoop, except they’re incredibly thick and old-looking. )     And houses – abandoned houses with all the furniture still in them and old glass bottles on the windowsills and creaky screen doors, overlooking empty mines.   Entire towns left nearly intact, with washers and driers and detergent still in the laundry room, untouched since the ’60s. 

magic.

Y’know?   Just…  magic.   My mind has been blown any number of times this summer.   And all the ghost towns and stuff – ohman – it’s been the stuff of dreams for me since childhood.   Probably this has something to do with the resolutely urban upbrining in a place with a booming real-estate market.   Not a lot of hundred-year-old abandoned houses in the greater Vancouver area – certainly not Unpillaged ones. 

So i’m here now, for now, for awhile…   tempted to stay.  Very tempted to stay.    I won’t though.    Even though i’ve just gotten a free winter coat – Dawson Worthy, it’s knee length, down, with a fur-lined hood that zips all the way up over your nose.   Even though I could spend the winter living in lazy, delicious bliss with All-Wrong Adam and Johnny and the huge screen t.v, the PS3, the blu-ray collection, and all kinds of Snowmobile adventures just outside in the frozen north.    

But no.   Gotta go see what it’s like to live in Portland for awhile.  That’s the next task.   A new city to find out.   Christmas with the Lathams again at long fucking last.    Maybe a cruise after that (i get a free one after 2 seasons with the hotel, i should seriously cash that in…)   and a trip somewhere, depending on how Portland goes and how hard i feel like working.     I have a lot of options.  I might even end up coming back here in March, just for kicks, and because Dawson is becoming Home Base for me, weird as it is. 

I’m really getting to love it here, y’know?

Blueberry Jams

Step one -  Pull the band-aid off the first finger of my left hand…  Can’t type with a bandaid on.   It’s only there because i have this random habit of taping up the tip of that finger while i’m at work ( i’m pretty sure we just went through an extra half-roll of scotch tape at work because i do this so often.  Sometimes as much as four times a shift.  It just feels cool – i flatten the tip of the tape finger and then it’s like this tapey-peg-finger thing and i tap it on stuff.   Sometimes my shifts are very, very slow.  I also tape smiley-faces to a lot of things and send postcards to the kind of people i should be sending post-cards to anyway, except i never do)  Anyway, it gave me a split cuticle that started hurting.  So a band-aid replaced the tape peg finger.   Not as much fun.

The work is probably too easy.  I’m pretty sure i’ve got the easiest job in the entire hotel.  I even get to wear my own clothes and listen to my own music… and i swear to god, those are my two favorite prerequisites to being Happy At My Job.   they make SUCH  a difference.   And now that i’ve given Daisy two of my half-days, i’m working an insane ammount of lovely overtime, and plan to roll around in the money i’m making, and giggle.  Actualy, i’m probably going to spend it all on custom-made corsets and Egg McDawsons.

mmm, Egg McDawsons.  I just have to make sure that my now-frequent consumption of them doesn’t make corsets an aesthetic necessity for my waistline.    they have double slices of cheese and about an inch of lovely ham. Tomatoes, S&P, fried egg, (natch), all on a big fresh buttery Kaiser bun.   They even get the May0-butter ratio right.  It’s like if you had all the best supplies and made yourself the best fried-egg sandwich you could come up with.  mmm.   Adam, the new maitenence kid, showed me about Egg McDawsons a week ago on a particularly hungover morning, and i’ve never looked back. I’ve had three more since then – and this is a seven-dollar breakfast sandwich, people.

(*note – this just went into italics and i can’t get it to stop. It fixes later, but i still can’t figure this out. I think it has something to do with my super-sketchy internet. sorry.)

that’s the thing about this place.   I got paid about a grand for my first paycheque, about a week and a half ago.  And do i have bills? rent? internet fees? no.    And that’s all of us.  So here we are with a carefree seventeen-year-old’s kind of Disposable Income, except with waaay better wages and the Right to Buy Beer.    I’m increasingly convinced that the only thing that keeps most of our Vancouver-based contemporaries from behaving as consitently ridiculous as we all behave up here is simply Brokeness.  ‘cuz what the hell else is it that results in such a free-for-all?   Half the staff goes out drinking – heavily – between three and six times a week. And then we buy chinese food, and sandwiches, and off-sales, and shoes, and every other goddamn thing whenever the fuck we want.  There’s no such thing as “i can’t afford it” here.  Unless you’re talking about something that’s over $300… and then it’s just the last, lingering modicum of decency and prudence that our sad and failing consiences can muster.

so the corset will be about 300, but i don’ t care in the slightest.  I don’t even know the deal – i don’t know what kind of fabrics she has, or what the limitations are, or what…   all i know is that i see her work at Gerties whenever i’m there – she makes corsets for all the server-girls for their uniforms, it’s lovely – and i’m sold.  And fuck it.   I’ve been watching too much Deadwood and seeing too many of them in front of me, all satin and cinched and sexy as hell…   I’m doing it.  And i’ll never regeret it.

also, another product of the armfulls of freedom here…

i want more.

Day by day, i feel farther and farther away from my old plans.   For one, i might kinda need to go to Portland and help dad and jane out with a jewelry store they’ve aquired.  Having about six solid years of serious retail experience under my belt at this point, and now getting to the point where i could quite comfortably Run A Store… gah…. what a thought.   But i can’t get around it – the only things that i have no experience with are things like Hiring and Payroll.    Inventories, ordering, pricing, recieving, overages, shortages, invoicing, merchandising, training…   i’ve done it – and CAN do it all.   And they -sweet family though they are – are complete newbies.    And me, i know I could swoop in around mid-september and take over the shop and spend a few months setting it up so it would run propperly without me.

so there’s THAT.   And then there’s Argentina.

Sigh.  Argentina.  And, y’know, all this freedom.   And the erosion of my commitment to go to school.    Oh, i still WANT to go back, for sure…. but since i’m not heading towards any Employable Diploma of any kind, do i want to go back more than i want to go work in Jane’s boutique in Portland for a few months (making a little bit of money to suppliment, and not dipping into my Dawson savings too much) and then split for South America like i should have done a year ago?   I Just Don’t Know.

but i know what i’m starting to think.    You probably do, too.   You all know me.   The funny thing is that the people i’ve mentioned this to – dad and Shandi, to name the two biggies – have been far less dissapointed/surprised than i expected.  Hell, they’ve been less dissapointed/surprised than I was, myself.   In fact, dad pretty much chortled and said “yeah, I didn’t see that coming at all” in a happily sarcastic voice… and Shandi was pretty much flat-out encouraging.    So is Randi, and even Dieter – though he’s a little exasperated, understandably.  Haha.

(oooh, leftover wine gums in the bed.  Haha – not just in the bed – but in a bag next to me in bed.  I have a double-room and i pushed the two beds together to make a Giganto-Bed.  One bed functions in a table-ish manner.  Currently it holds my external disk drive, new movies from mum, extra pillow, red shirt, nearly-empty wine gum bag.)

So.

Life is pretty fabulous, all in all.  The work is fine, even on my four days of double-shifts a week…  and the weather has been California-gorgeous almost without fail…   and Randi is fabulous, and so is Miles, and yeah.  Things are great.  And last night i took myself out on a date.  To Crocus Bluffs… this cliffside just on the edge of town with the most incredible view.  It’s like, a five-minute hike, and the payoff is All-Time.   A nearly 360 degree view of thousands – literaly, thousands – of miles of epic Yukon scenery.  Rivers carving and winding through impossibly old mountian valleys and incomprehensibly empty wilderness.    Point in nearly any direction and there aren’t any people.  You can bet on it.    So i took myself up there with my Ipod and a bottle of cheap champagne, and the rad green glass old-man’s pipe i bought in Whitehorse on my way up, and i danced my ass off on the 8-by10 viewing platform.   For hours.   I missed the immediate precipice of the Vancouver balcony… but really, the view is pretty unbeatable.   And of course, it never gets dark, so it’s a 24-hour view.   I got up there just as the sun was setting – 11:30, by the way…   and i took rad pictures just long enough to catch my breath from the near-vertical hike.   If i can, i’ll post some soon.

And the thing i came to, after all that…    in my NY Fuckin City T-shirt and red plaid button-up that’s been my Campin’ Shirt when i was twelve, my Service shirt when i was thirteen,  my I Am Canadian shirt when i was seventeen in California…    balet shoes, and perched on the edge of the railing with a half-drunk bottle of champagne and the cliffside shearing out underneath me…

well, i’m not really sure.   Is it too much to ask that i get to do whatever I want?

between here and the rest of the world, why not?

Cold, Clear Water; Scorching Blue Skies

dawson days.

Ok, this is just too good.

My job is awesome – so, so awesome, so easy, such lovely hours – the weather is perfect…      day after day of perfect,  honeyed sun….  spring swept in thick and green in a matter of days.     And Dawson is…  darling.  Sweet and small and silly.

And i’m serious about Spring here, it’s insane.   When we got here – what, two weeks ago?   There was snow on the ground and ice in the mornings and none of the trees had leaves yet.   And within a week…  really, a week – the entire place exploded Green.   The seasons change so fast here. Because each spring day is many minutes longer than the day before it, the plants go into Springtime Overdrive.  Everything is accelerated.    A month ago was Deep Winter, next week will be Summertime, and by August 12th it’ll be frosty and Novemberish.

Anyway, since springtime is always this adrenal, flushed, surging thing anyway… Well, the accelerated pace it hits here in Dawson, and the vast difference between one end of the season and the other…  Well, it’s like some kind of high.   The leaves grow by the day. Without exageration.   We spent this one long, hot, hammock-y day on Dieter’s patio, and the leaves Grew.   Visibly.   It makes you feel all race-y and thumping, it’s wild.

And so we plunged into Summertime with both hands, up to the elbows, in about four days.   I’m tanned. After asia, and then Cali, and now this…  i’m brown and freckled and staying that way.   And the sun here is hot but not cruel… so i just get more freckly and more brown without burning to a cinder.   Lovely.

There’s all these things about this town that strike these very funny, very specific Good Life cues, i think.  The water, for example.   The water comes out of the taps here ice-cold and crystal clear.  It’s better than the best Vancouver water, better than evian.   I drink large, frosty glasses of it allllll the time.   It’s so good it becomes better that what we’re used to thinking of as Water… it’s the elixer of life, delicious, crisp, sustaining, pure.   More delicious than juice, or soda, or anything. (it’s the fact that all the piping here is either in, or next to, the permafrost.  The entire ground is a refrigerator just below the surface.  And it’s probably untouched glaciers supplying our drinking water directly, anyway.)

And the town itself is probably a very typical size of normal human pre-urban communities, as well.   It feels somehow subconsiously comfortable, because of that.  I can walk from one end to the other in ten minutes, and it makes you feel like somehow the place you’re in isn’t beyond you.  You’re not some lost speck in a crush of millions, here.  Ok, i do miss that to some degree.  And i wouldn’t want to spend all my time in such small communities.  But at least with Dawson it’s a Summer Town, and a Young Person’s Town, so even if it’s impossibly remote and rural… well, the city comes up here in small, individual doses with every urban twentysomething resolutely bringing their skinny jeans and attitude with ‘em.  Still, i couldn’t be here year-round.   I love the city, i miss the city.  But as far as small towns go, this one is distinctly pluralist, hippie-filled, and cool.

So i think a lot of these things hit deep-seated cues about the viability of life here, y’know?   Good water, rich growing season, small happy village that’s also large enough to find mates outside our genetic pool.   Small wonder we feel safe and happy and alive here.

and…   best of all…

there’s a new girl here, and she’s Kindred.

it was the one thing that i didn’t have sorted, as to this summer.   No good friends, no kindred spirits.   Lots of people i like… but nobody that i’d Keep, For Real, in the Outside World regardless of Dawson.

and on the way up here, when i got my housing assignment, and i was stuck in with the two oddest ducks in the whole hotel, a server who i didn’t really know, and two new Mystery Guests…  well, it was only the promise of having my own room that made me sure i wouldn’t go Nutsy.    And then a small, tickling wonder about who the new couple would be…  what if they’re great?  They could suck.  Who knows.  If they suck, i’ll curl up in my room and never come out.  But what if they’re great?

well – they’re great.

Randi and Miles.   They’re urban, and smart, and educated, and hilarious.  Miles is darling, handsome, tiny, gay.  The girls are alllll fawning over him constantly.  We needed a little queer up here, i have to say.   And Randi, the new bartender, is FANTASTIC.    We’ve already agreed that we’d be super-good friends no mater where in the world we met.  I’m so glad she’s here, it’s awesome.  And Ally, who is sweet and lovely and has the raddest tattoos i’ve seen in ages, is getting pretty close to Miles…  (tattoo example – she has “So It Goes” in old-style typeface tattooed over her heart.  Swoon.)   and with a few of the other adjacent people sort of circling in, well, it looks like this summer is going to be socialy rewarding, instead of just Allright.

so…

life is good.  I can do this.     Sure, by August i’m sure i’ll be ready to go, i’ll be clawing my eyes out in search of Darkness, i’ll be straining down the One Road Out of Town and daydreaming about the outside world.  Sure.    But no way around that, right?

another diamond day

Dawson City

again.

hehe.  In fact, i’m really quite pleased to be back here… it’s pretty hilarious.  I pretty much feel like I never left, is the funny thing.   The whole place is just so familiar and…   homey. How weird is THAT?    Well, it’s weird.   I’ll tell you.  It’s very, very weird.   I guess, though, when i really look at it, Dawson was my last Home.   I mean, i left here and then ricocheted around for about eight months, staying in Vancouver on Shandi’s couch for just three of those.

anyways, it’s strange, but lovely.

Dad drove me up from San Diego in One Long Day, and by the time we got to Portland we were both so wrecked that we spent my only other full day in town pretty much just napping and recuperating.   I made them watch Wristcutters and we drank a few beers and watched some YouTube and pretty much didn’t do anything else.  It was great to be back there though, and those two weeks in Cali were so fucking delicious… Well, it was all just happystuff.

We got into Whitehorse at 1am, (me, Kyle, Meg and Kevin were all on the same flight)…   and turned out that the Only Road to Dawson was washed out at some point in the last 24 hours, and the entire contingent of staff that was supposed to ship up the next day were stranded… indefinitely.    One of the serious perks of working for a Hotel, of course, is that we were all just put up there for free… me with my Very Own Room.  Well, i wasn’t bummed at all. Laura and Ryan, my fave roomies from last year were there in town – they’d driven up, but of course were just as stuck as the rest of us and our bus.    So… it was perfect.   They’re lovely, and i missed them, and… i mean, the people you live with always become particularly close and special and stuff, y’know?  Especially when it’s in this kind of bizzarre, half-real scenario.

It was great to see them.  Laura squashed me in a fantastic hug, and they brought a friend, Pat, who’s this goodlooking, muscular redhead from P.E.I with all sorts of random quotes tattooed on his biceps.   Laugh.  I like him.   And of course, in honor of all the Old Times we got rreeaaaallly high and went for Brunch at Doc’s Diner…   It snowed.   We sat around our eggplates and giggled and shook our heads and i got to watch the three of them demonstrate the insane closeness they’d developed on the 12 day road trip from Prince Edward Island.  That’s corner to corner, people… Canada ain’t no bigger in any direction than in that one.   They were practically brushing each other’s teeth.  And then of course we were all reeling from the strangeness of Being Back…   surrounded by like, a zillion returning staff members and about to…  to do this again??

Well, we got word the road was open the next morning, so we all piled into the bus and drove the long, empty road all the way back up to  Dawson.    Seriously…  Long, and Empty.    The Yukon is so fucking huge, and so hugely uninhabited.  If you’ve never been up north like this, you essentially have no idea.  Sorry.    It’s… it’s unmistakable.  It’s the great, big broad land way up yonder, it’s the rivers that run god knows where… I can’t get around it, it’s all in Service.  He said it all, a long time ago.    It’s vast and empty and wild and fucking incredible.   The trees get scrawnier and shorter the farther north you go, the undgergrowth more sparse, the mountains soar, empty and silent, all around you.

and then Dawson.  A town so small you can hold it in the palm of your hand.   And…   it feels…  so…  good.   It feels like a sweet place i know very well, a safe, darling, silly place that’s not a lot like the modern world.    And my feet are digging back into the earth here, quite happily.    I’m sort of thrilling to the comforting familiarity of it this year, and the family ties the staff ends up with…   and really, i don’t feel like i left.    Was there really such a thing as Asia?   I begin to feel unsure.

Cali, though.  I was there just a few seconds ago, it’s true.   That happened.   And it was as perfect as a girl could wish for.  I always seem to be traveling when i’m freshly in love with Don, it’s funny.   I see him and love him and then I leave for somewhere odd, and then suddenly i’m on a train, flying past villages and forests and reaching backwards, grasping at the still-tangible sensations of my fingers in his hair and his hands on my skin.

But today is only day three, and already the Outside (as they call the rest of the world here) had faded several shades paler.  Sigh.

Hah – and then – i mean, just to nail that coffin tight…     my first night in town i went out drinking with Dieter, Kyle and J.S…  ie, What I Did All Last Summer.   And we had a lovely time, and dodged the rest of the staff, and swore at each other in the dark, tilty dampness of the Pit, and bought each other pitchers and shots and ended up – of course – three sheets to the wind under a barely dusky two a.m. sky.

Dawson City.

Again.

the mother tongue

Krakatoa Coffee Shop

San Diego, CA.  

This place is lovely, the entire balcony is under this huge shady tree with happy looking birds in it, and our coffee came in huge cartoon-sized mugs that i need to hoist with two hands, and we have lovely sandwiches full of California’s Avocado Bounty on the way.    Lovely.  

Which is good, because last night was….  

hard.       Yeesh.     Yeah.     Wow.  

San Diego has been fantastic, and sunny, and delicious… and nearly all of Robin’s friends are awesome.  Gorgeous, tattooed, darling girls with sweet faces and bright eyes, and Scotty, her handsome boyfriend whose smile lights up his entire face…   They’re all really cool.     A complete polar opposite from my week with Don, with his Uber-Nerd PhD student roomies playing games all night long…   Which was completely fantastic, as well.   No doubt about that, I adored those boys, and that kind of boy in general.     But the morning I left stretched as far away from the evening as a day can possibly contain.  

Our first night hangout sesh was crashed by one of their neighbors, this hysterical, seriously gangster-black guy and his utterly hammered bodyguard he calls his “Cutthroat”.  The neighbor has got “Thug Mentality” tattooed in huge letters across his abdomen, has done prison time, and also happens to be a goofy, good-natured seeming (if slightly terrifying) guy.    It was soooooooo  weird…    between drunken conversations about Cheers (of all things!)  and how to stab a guy (no joke) a near-tussle broke out between them, and shirts started coming off, and pecs started flexing, and Robin and I cuddled in the corner, on the bed, eyes wide, chuckling nervously…    Oh, it wasn’t really scary, because the neighbor is a cool guy, and Scotty handled them both reeeallly well, and it was just a few moments of posturing, of superiority-demonstration…     but still.        From the mornings pre-Ihop Magic games to this?      Absurd.    Fucking absurd.  

Anyway, the week has continued…    Robin is moving, but not working, so we’ve been taking runs of boxes back and forth between her old place and new place, a few at a time, at a nice, lazy, yet productive speed…    Robin is a darling, but lacks certain Just Get It Done tendencies that i know some might claim I can often be bereft of.     Confidential to those few:   you ain’t seen nothin’.     But then again, i guess i’ve moved a few times in the past few years, and have gotten an sort of rhythm and determination and methods for shoving all your shit in ill-packed boxes and hauling them off somewhere to collect dust.     Robin is so much like me, it’s absurd.   Her car is this crazy mass of random shirts and laptop cords and battered cd’s, and she has photos of Bruce Springsteen and adorable, faded polaroids stuck in around the dash board, curling up in the sun.    I love it, I love her.   And i’d way rather move her stuff from one house to another than have to kill time while she works all day, wishing she didn’t have to work all day.     So we hang out with her rad friends, and go out every now and then, but mostly we spend our evenings watching movies and gushing, and talking, and cuddling, and being happy. 

And then there was last night. 

heh.   

Scotty has this friend in town.   Now, I like scotty.  He’s sweet, and gorgeous, and fun, and considerate.  He’s lovely.   But I was warned about the friend.     Smart, i hear, but with a serious drinking problem and a penchant for mean-spirited debate styles.   Oy.   It’s the kind of thing that can be a little bit exciting and inspiring, if the mean-ness properly leavened with intellect and some consideration. anyway, Robin and I had this night planned, we had movies rented (Wristcutters and DVD Star Trek) and microwaveable dinners and beers in the fridge,  and our pyjamas on by eight o’clock.    And Scotty and Friend were supposed to go to the bar. 

Except they didn’t. 

They came over about a half hour into Wristcutters, which i was already in love with.  And grinning, and geeking out with robin, and nudging her arm when all the best stuff was happening.   So perfect.  Except that they didn’t go to the bar, they came home, and they both Hate This Movie.  Ok, scotty didn’t hate it, he liked it O.K…. but Buddy Here?    Hates it… and we know there’s no point in trying to soldier through it with them around.     And so we stop the movie and socialize a little, letting them know that we really want to keep watching this, tonight…    y’know, we don’t want to kick them out or anything…  except…. well, except that we kinda do.    But they’ve invited a few people over now, and we can see our Pyjama-Movie-Sherry-Robin night slipping like sand through our fingers.    Sigh.    It would have been mildly annoying, but understandable from the standpoint of Shared Space, right?  

but then there’s Buddy Here.     He’s hammered.    He’s…     not just drunk – he’s A Drunk.    And it’s clear within minutes. And that’s hard for me, because there’s a practised, unashamed perma-slur attatched, and a sad sort of wilting of the person that someone who just goes out, has a few drinks, and has a good time, never attains.   Thank god, since my dead grandmother it’s not a thing i’ve been exposed to much…    but jesus, it was so impossible not to identify.     Sigh.      And… well, maybe he was trying to impress me, but spent the first twenty minutes there in conversation with robin (who was sitting right next to me) without once glancing in my direction to even token-ly include me in the discussion.     Strike.     Sigh.  And then the conversation turns to movies.  And…   holy jesus.    I mean, my god!    He launches into this tirade, this bitter, vehement, obnoxious rage against All That I Find Holy in Film.    Eternal Sunshine.  What a crock of shit.   What a stupid movie, it didn’t make sense, the characters are shit, Jim Carrey shouldn’t be allowed to play dramatic roles, he’s a comedian, it’s stupid.   Wes Anderson – what a crock of shit.   Hasn’t made a good movie since Bottle Rocket.  The characters are shit, with no emotional depth or inherent reality.    And in this manner – this horrible, mean, drunken You’re Stupid If You Disagree way that…  gah.      Choke.      I could tell this was a losing battle, i didn’t even engage… it was seriously, terribly painful for me to listen to…  but where are you going to get with this guy?  Nowhere, that’s where.    He’s clearly not going to listen to me about anything, if he’s not going to do anything except mock Robin, who he knows, and supposedly loves.    

and then

Then he started ripping into Amelie. 

I have never – in my entire life – had someone play such a terrible hand with me in such a short space of time.  I don’t think he could have played a worse one.   It had been maybe – maybe forty five minutes, and at that point…   well…     It happened.    One of the great inherited legacies of my mother and her family, is the temper.   There are very specific physical things that happen when it rises up, and i know them, and she knows them, and a very few other people in my life now know them…  but it’s few.   God, it doesn’t happen often, thank christ, because i hate it, it feels terrible, and then i say things that i don’t remember afterwards, vicious, snarling things, and my heart races and my vision gets weird…      So he’d been ranting on for a while now, cutting down all my most favorite films with his bitter, slurred words clipped between crooked, whistling teeth, talking about how stupid everyone who ever disagreed with him was….    By then my heart was hammering in my chest, and I couldn’t help it, I looked straight at him and the words bubbled up, icy cold and stony;   “Wow.  I don’t like you at all.”      And I turned my back on him.  

Sigh.  I wanted to tear his face off.   (that’s where it goes, this temper, when it rises up. Mum and I have had this conversation.  The heart races and the eyes cloud and you literally want to rip their face off.  If you’ve never seen us like this, consider yourself lucky.) Also luckily, i guess, I knew that engaging with this shitface was a losing proposition, and so i allowed myself only to disconnect completely from the conversation, aside from a few, snarled responses to stupid things i couldn’t help but hear.      Sigh.  

Neverever have i hated someone so much, so soon.    And i feel bad because apparently he can be lovely and sweet when he’s not shitfaced drunk and full of belligerence.   And he’s robin’s friend, and i never – NEVER react to people like this!   God!  It just doesn’t happen.    Scotty, the love, took the friends to the garage to hang out and they left Robin and I in peace, thank fucking christ…   And Robin and i adjourned to the kitchen to microwave our pastas…  and ended up doubled-up over various appliances, laughing so hard we ran out of sound.    Because i never, never, never react to people like this, so I feel bad, and she loves me, and i’m only here for a week, and here she is bringing the WORST PERSON I’VE EVER MET to her house and making me hate him.   It was awful, and hysterical, and we laughed fit to kill.    Also when we figured out that he was probably trying to impress me, as Scotty loves me and will have talked to Buddy Here in advance about how cool I am.        And then i’m all like “I fucking hate you”  within ten minutes.     hahaha.     Jesus hell.  

but  - thank you scotty – they left us alone for the rest of the night…  and i’m assured that when sober, Buddy Here is far, far more tollerable (though nobody can yet assure me that i’ll see him sober, ever….)  And so we watched the rest of the movie – So good! So rad!   Gah.   Loved it.  Sweet and surprising and melancholy and bright and…  and Tom Waits is in it!  And he’s amazing.  awesome.  Yes.     Then we fell asleep watching the episode of TNG where Barclay becomes the Computer and gets all brilliant all of a sudden.    Yes.   

and now we have today… the last bits of moving, and then another movie night, this time with Heather, who is round and beautiful and has the coolest apartment ever.   Hardwood floors and vines and twinkly lights and photos of Paris all over.   I’d live there in about an instant.  And we’re going to watch Now and Then, this silly teen movie I haven’t seen since i was about fourteen, but loved soooo much at the time, back when i had no friends and thought Christina Ricci would make a really good one.  

And then there’s tomorrow, and then i’m gone. 

Dad is driving all the way down here to pick me up – the love.   He loves driving, and me, and so…   why not?   And man, that’s sure going to beat another 27 hour greyhound ride!!   Instead i get to hang out with dad in his absurd BMW and make him listen to all my favorite tunes. 

Oh, and – brilliant – i’ve made both Don and Robin watch my Springsteen Seeger Sessions live DVD and they’ve both gone nuts for it.   Which is like, the most satisfying feeling in the world…  to be sitting next to them when the points that Kill Me happen and have them kill them, too.  God, i love these two.    Halfway through Don and I watching it, one of his roomies came out of his bedroom and asked “what the Hell is all this Blazing Ragtime going on in here?”     Hah.   Blazing Ragtime.   I love it.  

Anyways.