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24.06.09
There's been a dead, headless pigeon on the roof of the skytrain station for weeks now. I wonder why nothing's scavenging it.
Busy.
21.06.09
I just made myself some instant espresso and put in way too much powder. I'm not used to caffeine, I think my hearing just switched from 'normal' to 'ultrasonic'.
The dark side to convocation from a post-secondary institution is the inevitable "So, what are you going to do with your life" question from almost everyone you talk to. I had the good fortune to have an undergraduate research grant that carried me through a few months of employment post-graduation, and thus providing me with an easy (if short-term) answer to the question, but not everyone is that lucky. My sister's sister-in-law was in this situation as the families got together a while ago.
And so, after the day of gowns, gifts, photos and good wishes, her Grandmother posed to her the inevitable question.
"I'm thinking of going into pornography," she said.
"I want my cheque back," said Grandma.
Somehow, I can't see the same conversation happening on our side of the family. Shame, really.
Transit People #14
Ciggy - a slim woman, who nonetheless wears those tight, low rise jeans which give you the little muffin tops in the back. I thought we all agreed that looked horrendous and banned those pants under an addendum the Geneva Convention, but soneone didn't get the memo. Anyway, she rides for about 20 minutes on the bus, and by the time she gets off she already has a cigarette between her lips and she's reaching for her lighter. Two seconds after disembarking she's happily off on her nicotine cloud.
Transit People #15
Mac - a thin, dark-skinned young man. He maintains his dark hair in a fauxhawk with bleached yellow-orange tips. I've never seen him without his oversize sunglasses and he accessorizes his ears with perpetually-attached earbuds and large shiny crystal studs in both ears. He wears a black printed hoodie, white dress shirt, black tie, black pants and black shoes with a regularity that is explained as he takes a seat and a square label with those telltale golden arches becomes visible on the back of his collar.
Transit People #16
Gray - I'd be remiss not to mention Gray among the bus regulars, but his distinction comes from the (dis)advantage of being my first cousin. I run into him in the morning if he's a little late and I'm really late. If I didn't know him, I'd summarize him thus: Twentysomething male Asian in colouring, but Caucasian in bone structure, reads a real newspaper some mornings (instead of the free rags flying about), otherwise attached to an iPod. He wears either silver wire-rimmed glasses or sunglasses and carries a professional-looking leather attaché case, dresses business casual. He lets people off the bus before him and makes his way through the world with apparent affability.
Sometimes he talks to a scrawny, geeky-looking guy he seems to know.
I've got tons to add here, tales from business trips to Toronto and Victoria, birding, the randomness of the universe, and a wedding...
Congratulations to Cherlyn and Rob. All the best, you two.
07.06.09
I walk east through an allé of cottonwoods in the morning. The understory is Indian Plums and other small trees, with the ground carpeted in invasives; Comfrey, Buttercup, Lamiastrum, English Ivy, Knotweed. Still, at certain times of the year, the sun lines up to perfectly backlight this natural cathedral of green stained glass just as the cottonwoods are releasing their seeds, filling the air with drifts of glowing white fluff, falling slower than snowflakes, indifferent to the heartbreaking beauty of the world.
I borrowed a copy of Mrs. Dalloway from the library. Someone went through and drew parentheses amid the text in black pen, then made completely obvious notes in the margins. Thankfully, after 150 pages they gave up. It wasn't horrendous as much as annoying, though in my dictatorship, the defacement of shared property such as library books would warrant… something. I don’t even know what. Community service of some kind appeals to my sense of restorative justice: perhaps correcting the grammar and punctuation of the graffiti by the railroad tracks. That’ll teach’em.
06.06.09
I went downtown after work last week, packed onto a bus with a random sweaty mass of humanity, the open windows allowing for blissful washes of fresh air to sweep through as we crawled through rush hour traffic while baking under the sun. We crossed the bridge and came across some kind of accident involving another bus and a car. For a while the driver had us double parked next to the other bus, blocking all but half a lane of traffic. Daring cars swooped by as passengers goosenecked to view the chaos. Eventually we moved, doing the start and stop dance of gridlock. Eventually we came to the site of the new community garden, enjoying its first growing season on the corner next to the hospital and across from the skyscrapers and stores. People tended their ornamentals (no fruits or vegetables on the former gas station soil, I've heard), and a number of onlookers had gathered, leaning on the wooden fence like neighbourly farmers inspecting the fields.
They replaced the pedestrian signal thing at the traffic light I use on my way home. It used to be a standard big round metal button. It was temperamental, you had to press and hold the thing for it to register. This wasn’t a problem, except when you got people who did little jabs on the button then stood directly in front of it so no one else could push it. One time an angry young man (no, not me) made a big show of kicking the button repeatedly, only to have it fail to give him the “walking man” go ahead.
That’s all in the past as there is suddenly a large yellow panel in its place that makes noise: “bip… bip… bip…”, there’s a small button you push, which then turns on a red light to acknowledge your input. When the light changes the noise goes to: “BEEPboop… BEEPboop… BEEPboop”, and a mechanical male voice tells you it’s safe to cross. He then counts down when there are ten seconds remaining on the flashing hand in such a detached though foreboding manner that you expect some self-destruct system to be engaged should you still have a foot on the crosswalk.
I’m reading Kurt Vonnegut's Cat’s Cradle and wondering why I never came across it earlier. And protein, it makes perfect sense.
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