Yesterday I attended the Occupy Vancouver protests twice, inbetween I occupied the library and read a novel that held descriptions that perfectly matched what I had experienced an hour earlier in front of the art gallery.
On Friday it had occurred to me how sometimes one’s mental weather can be very at odds with the physical weather outside the window. A mis-match. I was pondering this …
Yesterday, Saturday, in contrast I found the literary weather of 1952 (well an occasional paragraph) was the perfect match for the spirit of the streets. A strange, yet uplifting co-incidence. More evidence of the need to pay attention to the continuum and not be so focused only on what’s coming off the production line.
A reoccurring question I have as I read BC/Vancouver fiction is who were these novelists writing to? I’m with Ethel Wilson en ce moment and I do have the sense the novel (Swamp Angel) is written to a reader who is “elsewhere”.
Has this changed? Does it matter? Is there a degree of apologizing in advance? The introductory swathe to “where we are” is curious, the need to situate.
I begin to see musical genres within this fiction ….
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On the other side of the road non-fiction, the range of what’s been written is so extensive, I wonder if there’s anything left that hasn’t been considered in relation to the local. (cows, bridges, CFL are all covered)
Hmmm. The longer term forecast suggests the delivery of several large parcels of arctic air.
It’s bizarre to see the graphics show a warmer orange colour for the Maritimes and a bold blue for BC! On va voir….
The leaves are on the turn. I noticed the start of it the other evening. Mustard-yellowing and a bit of saffron red appearing. Sun too. It’s funny to see people wearing bright red wellies at 5pm having set out in a rainy morning to work and left to home to discover A. N. Other on the way home.
Weather exile, nay exhilaration
Fog (Sun eve) my first official note of fog amid bewilderment as to whether in actual fact I merely need new glasses.
Fog – rain – rain – wind (bit) – immense over cast grey bulge — rain – rain – rain.
This morning it’s confirmed a La Nina Winter Forecast for us this winter. What this means will become apparent as I continue “past-casting”.
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In Murakami weather moments I can report a degree of exhilaration running with water dripping off my sleeves and nose and eyelashes. I passed a completely bereft park and laughed out loud at how ridiculous running in pouring rain is.
But I admired the 8 people out strolling under umbrellas yesterday.
Last night I had the worst nightmare. It was very lengthy. It was about Zizek and my mother. I will never forgive that man for destroying my sleep. Not even childhood memories of Slovenia in the 1980’s can compensate because I have never howled so much in a dream. I cried so much in that dream I expected to see my appendix splatted above on the ceiling when I woke up.
I have already a bumpy enough relationship with sleeping without Mr. Zizek occupying it. Be off! Be gone! Stick to Wall Street! I am in the one percentile for slumber. Go and bother the 99 percent who sleep well.
Yesterday’s question was swiftly confirmed today when I learnt that a body had been discovered in a house close by that caught fire this weekend.
It had been presumed and hoped there was no one in the house. The fire brigade had been unable to enter the house because it was an enclave of hoarding, which made it very tough to enter and they were concerned the “joints would collapse” according to one neighbour I spoke to.
An excavator had been at the house, combing seems too mild a term, crunching through the facade and rubble and finally today a man’s body was discovered. The man was the son of the woman who owns the house. (who lives in a care home.) Allegedly the hoarding problem belonged to the mother, the son was unemployed and staying there long term.
A bed and bathtub were visible in the charred ruins and mass of debris. In the basement sat all the boxes I used to see covering up the windows, still intact. On the pavement beside the house, half a plastic doll lay burnt with one arm raised in the air.
It was desperately sad, just an awful death for this largely invisible man. I stood in the pouring rain and paid my respects with the Catholic gestures I’ve been taught. It was just so sad to think of the fearful end he must have faced and that no one could reach him.
I felt gutted as I read Joyce Vincent’s story. Maybe because these places and this woman are somehow familiar to me. I lived for a time in one of those Housing Association flats, I also lived in Wood Green and I often had the thought you could die in London and absolutely nobody would notice. Somehow Joyce Vincent’s story confirms this.
Is it any different anywhere else? I’d love to confidently say it is, but cannot. I think there are likely hundreds of thousands of people like Joyce living amongst us, beside us. Tennessee Williams used to say loneliness was a bigger killer than heart disease (or perhaps I wrongly attribute him, but he certainly had things to say about loneliness).