Certified Copy

This evening we watched "Certified Copy".  A good movie, surely, but maybe not the best for the frame of mind we are in currently.
One of the themes of the movie hinged around replicas of pieces of art and how, if the viewer experiencing the "fraud" still enjoys what he or she sees to be an original, where is the problem?  One of the main characters went so far as to say the Mona Lisa was a rip off, in that it was a reproduction of the real woman, and not the real woman herself.
Michael and I have often discussed that nothing is original anymore.  All movies, books, music, architecture are variations on a theme.  It's the small nuances, now, that make something stand out.  It's increasingly fragmented and niche markets.
It's like when you turn on the news today like we did and we heard about the shooting at Eaton Centre and even that was a bit of a repeat of the Jane Creba Boxing Day shooting years ago.  The same shock and sadness and outrage.
Every few months on the news some disenfranchised person gets ripped off in the most heinous manner and the community rallies together to replace the stolen bike/wheelchair/guitar.  Every few months someone you know loses someone they know.  A different European country totters on the verge of bankruptcy every few months. 
Variations on a theme.
But when that variation happens to you it's like someone is shining a spotlight directly on you.  Now you have to act, react, perform and deal with it.
And it's two things: it's that what is happening to you has happened to millions of people before you.  And it's that you are sitting there thinking "Why me?  I can't do this".  And it happens to echelons of people every day and it's a variation on a theme.
Nothing that we experience in our lives is something that someone else has experienced, suffered through or enjoyed before.  And in ten years, or fifty years, or five hundred years, no one will remember us our what we went through our how we felt helpless and alone.  In five hundred years it will be another variation on a theme.
I guess it's just funny how inconsequential everything that we do is, in the long view.
And I guess, further, that focusing on the long view isn't the best way to navigate through life because we're but a dust mote on that particular linear highway.  And to add to that thought is the thought that I am thinking thoughts that billions of people before have already thought and so basically this whole post is just me not wanting to go to bed like I used to experience back in the day when I abruptly discovered that I wasn't, in fact, in control of the most important facets of my life.

On Having One's Head Up One's Ass

I like to think I'm open minded.  I like to think that I'm not self-centred or egotistical.  That I'm compassionate, helpful and a good listener.
It's kind of incongruous in keeping with the fact that I have a blog which is totally self-centred and egotistical.
I like to think that I don't split hairs, nor delve into semantics.
Additionally, I really try not to use "I" so much.
Hilarious, isn't it?
But what is this then, other than an online journal chronicling my journey which sometimes is forwards, sometimes sideways and - more often than I'd like - goes backwards.
A lot of things have happened lately that have added much more gravitas to our lives. 
Significant things.
Things that compel you to go back and kiss your loved one a second time before you leave for work in the morning.
As I was driving up Keith Road this evening I was just struck by how small and inconsequential and helpless we all are.
Me.  Driving up a steep hill after getting groceries and taking my car through the car wash when a trillion other things are happening.  When everything can change in a heartbeat.  When I'm just one little person, a speck, accomplishing minuscule things.
Something that a greater power might see as a crumb on a table and flick it off.

I'm like a peacock, you gotta let me fly!

Whirlwind trip over to see Skyhammer and Squishy this weekend with R.  We caught the ferry from West Van to Nanaimo and stopped at the Willow Street Cafe in Chemainus for lunch.  Stellar weather for our trip to the Island.
It was so great to hang out with our friends in Victoria for the weekend.  We toodled along the waterfront, Squishy strapped herself into a plastic ball and rolled down a bouncy castle ramp, saw some David Foster event replete with paparazzi at the Fairmont, ate gelato, checked out Beacon Hill park, ate lentils, drank (awesome) Valpolicella, went to Goldstream park, had lunch in Sidney and then headed home.
I love Squishy and Skyhammer.
It was funny.  We got to their place (which Microsoft was paying for while they are waiting to move into their own supercool place in Chinatown) and I just had this funny thought about how "adult" we were.  Sharing meals.  Having conversations about therapy and the state of the environment.  Talking about shit we'd been through and our hopes and dreams and our perspectives.  It was so nice - I just can't underscore this enough - so nice to be able to chat with great friends and good wine until past midnight and feel like I wasn't alone, on more than one level.
We had a smoothie and teff for breakfast.  I like teff.  I am going to buy some teff and lentils like the goddamn hippy I am.
This morning when we were at Goldstream park there was an "event" (namely helping to clean up an estuary) but this "event" had Salt Spring Island coffee and so I grabbed a cup and wandered around the Nature Centre and met a bunch of very nice people concerned about the park and the wildlife, and who just genuinely cared about things and it's just the random things like that that make me happy.
Came home a bit earlier than we thought which worked out well as Michael and I just watched "The Other Guys".  I highly recommend it.  We were laughing out loud which isn't something that I normally do (during movies or otherwise) and, if you do watch it, definitely keep on watching when the credits roll.  It will make your blood boil if - like me - the TARP payments and the whole Wall Street bailout makes you want to assassinate the people at Goldman Sachs and AIG (and more importantly: the people that let it happen, and continue to let it happen).
On the ferry home, like a loser, I picked up the follow up book to "The Wealthy Barber" and read maybe a quarter of it.  The first part touches on many things, one of which is the pleasure centre and how when we buy something shiny and new it loses its lustre and how to be truly rich you must be grateful for what you have.
And man, am I ever grateful for what I have.
I have so very, very much.

Fairies

Heading over to the Island with a friend tomorrow, to visit yet more friends in Victoria.  Friends are friendly.
I feel a bit scattered and pulled in different directions lately.  There doesn't ever seem to be a day when I just come home, pour a glass of wine and sit out on the deck and read.
I'm not complaining.  It just sounds like I am.
I will miss Michael a lot.
That is all.

"The Avengers" wasn't that great

For a weekend where I had deliberately planned nothing except for dinner with a friend on Friday night, it was a busy one.
Let's start with dinner.  I met up with R at Browns at 6pm.  "Dinner" went until past midnight and I think I rolled in around 12:45am after having texted Michael around 10pm that I'd be home shortly.
Whoops.
Saturday was a nice day so we went for a really hilly six mile run and I was despondent about our overall pace.  Even though I don't have another race for almost a year, and shouldn't really be running to begin with.
Road runners are stupid.
Anyways, then we went out with some friends for dinner and watched "Win Win" on Netflix which was pretty good.
Sunday we started the whole paring down process as we're going to move into my place for July 1st.  Holy crap.  Things got a little tense.  I counted like six pairs of Michael's running shoes in the closet and then I discovered he had another box of them hidden away.  I said "You have more running shoes than I have shoe shoes".
His comeback was that who am I to determine what is the appropriate amount of something that someone should have.
And, granted, I'm on a minimalistic, anti-materialism, anti-consumerism kick.  Partially this is because things are things and I just don't covet the vast majority of things that much, but I'd be a fool to not acknowledge that if I had a three bedroom house I might be a little more receptive to having more of these aforementioned things. 
It's like those certain girls who profess not to want to get married and are going to strike out in life as the fiery individualists that they are, when in fact really, it's just that their boyfriends don't want to get married.  Changing the story to fit the narrative, as Michael calls it.
Partially, too, this is because my father managed to fill a four car garage and a barn full of things.  Things that my mother and he had to wade through when they sold their house and were going to move into a condo in Kits.  Things that my mother, then, had to deal with when my father died.
After taking a bit of a breather Michael did select no small amount of antiquated electronics, jackets he no longer wears, and random furniture that I had been utterly unaware was ferreted away in the apartment, and we dropped it off at the Salvation Army before meeting a friend to go see "The Avengers".
Meh.
Today we made two trips down to the Sally Anne.  I got rid of so much crap.  My goal today was to clean out my storage locker and holy jesus, I couldn't believe what I got rid of.  Accounting and marketing and communications books that I paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars for back when I was in college which are now utterly obsolete.  Yearbooks. Yes: I turfed my yearbooks.  Knick knack shit.  I hate knick knacks.  Mirrors.  I just absolutely burned and slashed.
I swear I halved the crap in my storage space.  Now it's home to: four snow tires: a guitar I will seriously one day learn to play; a tennis racket that I will use again; a coffee table my father made; and some Christmas/childhood trinkets (Rainbow Brite!  She-Ra!).
I just can't get over how much one accumulates as they move through life.  I donated a box and a half of books today and it pained me to give some of them up.  A cappuccino machine.  A hand held blender.  And still I look around my slightly barren apartment and think there is more that can go but we hold on for such weird reasons.  Sentimentality.  The pleasure it gives us to know that we have things.  Things that we don't currently use but might some day.  Things that at one time brought us pleasure but now we only take them out and touch them once or twice a year.  Things that we thought we would have spent more time with.  Things that we bought because they made us feel like we could be someone else at the time.
I used to walk into my father's garage, smell the cool, musty concrete, the old and aged tools and look up at the pictures of women in thong bikinis with feathered hair astride motorcycles wearing brightly colored thongs.  Stephanie Seymour was up there.  So was Rachel Hunter.  There were innumerable drawers of pliers and bolts and nails and screws of every size.  Tires, toilets, hedge trimmers, an old hot water heater, winches.  He had so much stuff. 
With all that stuff he built an entire house up at Lasqueti - by himself - which he rented out.
Who does that?
I look at all the paltry, useless things I've dragged along with me over the years.  For what?
When we went to Lasqueti the last time there wasn't a lot of sentimentality there.  He had small, elementary school photos of me and my brother up on the fridge.  He had some photos of me and Jay as little kids that I had nicely framed up on the wall.  The rest of it?  Saw horses and kayaks and pike poles and banks of batteries and log splitters.
Though he did manage to open up the large dial that showed the temperature and somehow manage to slot a picture of a Bo-Derek look a like inside of it.

Best. Creme brulee. Ever.

Corny.  I think Michael and I missed each other a lot in the two nights we were apart.  There was a lot of random kissing this evening.  I like it.
I had a little bonding moment with Felix this morning. I think he knows when I am leaving and so stays under the bed.  I crawled down on the ground to talk to him and stroke his paw before I left.  Every time I withdrew my hand he extended his little paw towards me.  Poor, weird Felix.  I will miss him when he is no longer around.  He's got some issues, surely, but so does everyone else in my family, and also he's a very affectionate cat when not hissing or throwing up.
Lots of fun stuff on the docket for the next few months.  It's what gets me out of the bed in the interim. 

Go go go go go! Stop!

So.  Sunday turned out to be pretty restful.  Such a stellar day.  Michael and I had so much fun tooling around the neighbourhood on our bikes.  We re-discovered this cool coffee shop up in Edgemont and had a coffee and a treat in the sun and then we found this absolutely unbelievable sliver of a park, high on a ridge, nestled between two houses, with an absolutely exceptional view of the water and downtown Vancouver.  It was so stunning we decided we wanted to pack a lunch and return one afternoon and just hang out there.  I love finding random stuff like that.  We biked over to West Van and then headed over to another coffee shop that we had discovered a weekend or two ago in the hopes of procuring a sandwich, but they were closed so we went to the other coffee shop, secured a sandwich each, took them to the park and then fought ants and watched angry squirrels before finally heading home.  It was so much fun.  I think an ideal thing to do would be to go from town to town across our country and just explore with our bikes, stopping when we're hungry, flaking out in parks.  Yeah.

Yesterday I picked up R and we met Squishy for lunch.  She and Skyhammer have moved to Victoria which, though not ideal (for me, ahem), is a nice destination and R and I are actually going to make a road trip to see them there for a couple of nights at the end of the month.  Road trip!  We wandered down to Granville Island in the sun and then I left them so I could meet C to go for the trail run that we'd been discussing (and I had been bailing on) for some time.  It was great.  Everyone's been pushing us to get on the trails: time goes by faster; it's easier on the joints; it's more dynamic, and lo, that is true.  The hour flew by and we exited onto Spanish Banks and walked into the water to soothe various aching spots.

Came back to my mom's place and called Michael as I looked out at the seawall and the runners, cyclist and walkers enjoying the sun and scenery.  At the dragon boat crews rowing by.  The sailboats in the harbour, the North Shore mountains in the horizon, the downtown skyline.  Sitting there in this luxe apartment after spending a day enjoying all that Vancouver has to offer with my friends I felt guilty at the amount of privilege afforded to me. 

I am so lucky on so many different levels.

I have a 32 hour work week.  I just came back from visiting two incredible cities and BC's wine country.  I'm spending time with an insane, furry animal suffering from dementia in an amazing condo right in the heart of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  I was able to hook up with four of my friends over the last two days (dinner with Big D tonight: Happy Birthday week, man!), have great meals and have the ability to run 10k and finish up on a beach?  Come on.

I sent this article to Michael this week.

Appreciation.  Crazy thought.  I appreciate what I have.  I have a lifestyle and opportunities that have got to be in the upper percentile.  I don't forget it.  I appreciate every lunch, every dinner, email, phone call, trail run, view, coffee, bike ride, coincidence, trip, visit with my family, surprise birthday party, yoga session that comes my way.

This past month has been crazy with goodness.

I don't take any of it for granted.

I love it.

I even love you.