Yearly Archives: 2013

Just Like a Cloudy Sunrise

Many a day this winter I have woken to find a cloudy morning outside the glass.
I’ll get up anyhow, resolved to walk the shore, and moments later I’m in pants, toque, and a jacket, out the door.
Living by the ocean is a gift most of us in this area cherish, but we have to live life too. Cloudy mornings seem like an invitation to linger under warm covers, dozing a little longer.
Those are the mornings my walk will be nearly deserted.

I’m learning a lot about life, in a metaphorical sense, from such walks. Those low, cloudy, oppressive mornings often have the most dramatic and violent sunrises, a surprising contrast to the darkness that abounds.
I jokingly call them “Mornings by Mordor,” like it’s some kind of exterior decor practiced by a theatrical god.
For others, being anywhere else in the city, they’re likely not seeing any sunrise. Maybe tinges of red and gold on the horizon, but the sunrise is happening so low on the horizon, it’s for those blessed few of us able to make our way to the water’s edge for the show.
This shot included here (by me) was yesterday’s sunrise from Victoria’s Dallas Road. There are cliffs behind me, and even on the clifftops you could easily miss noticing what a stunning sunrise was going on down below. The clouds are low marine cloud, and the diffused light is as a result of a very thin bank of fog sitting on the coastal areas.
With the fog and the low ceiling, there’s all of 15 minutes of exposed sunrise, then poof, the sun’s lost behind clouds for what turned out to be another 4 or 5 hours.
There’s something to learn from this.
Your belief that your horizon is nothing but darkness is probably more perception than it is reality. For those who know where to look, there’s always something to look forward to, and the choice to do this or not is something that’s up to you.
I may not be happy about adversity when it strikes my life, but at least I’ve learned how to look for lessons in those moments, and I’ve tried to take the positives where I can imagine them.
As far as Mornings by Mordor go, a small part of me dreads the perfect blue-sky sunrises of the summer. How dull.
When I go home after another dark-world-sunrise, a part of me feels smug and superior. I had faith. I got a show. Everyone else is at home, grumbling in their slippers about how it looks like another dreary day out there.
Regardless of what our personal futures contain, there’s always a sun, there’s always a horizon, and there’s always a rising and a setting. Life goes on. Our dramas are pretty inconsequential in the big picture of it all.
When’s the last time you watched the sun rise for the sake of watching a sunrise?
It’s the best time of year to catch one. You’re up, ready to go. Unlike June, when it’s at 4 or 5am. Just… stop. 20, 30 minutes. Be there. Enjoy it. Clear your mind. Smile. You’re a cog on the wheel of it all.
Go find yourself an unexpected cloudy sunrise. It does the heart a world of good.
(And sometimes it’ll just be cloudy. But that can be beautiful too. Perspective, grasshopper.)

Memories of the Peripheral Dead

A friend who keeps her Facebook locked down pretty tight shared about how a 31-year-old man was found dead of methadone overdose in his cell not too long ago, and how the man was once a boy whose file came across her desk when she worked in a law office. “He didn’t stand a chance,” she said.
I suddenly thought of a face I hadn’t pictured in a few years. For a few weeks, I taught ESL to an student staying with an Asian family in the mid-late ’90s on a cul-de-sac in Surrey. Some years later, I saw a photo of that family on the front page of the paper. The father killed himself and his four family members in a murder-suicide.
I’d never liked being in that home. There wasn’t anything evil going on, but sometimes unhappiness is so thick it’s like trying to walk into a windstorm. It slows you down and defeats your balance. The gloom in that home was omnipresent, but I never imagined it could have that kind of outcome.
I don’t know why I felt like writing, and the words aren’t coming now. I’m lost thinking about how some people seem to both live and die in vain, and their legacies ripple further in death than they might have in life, but those legacies are more of how wrong things can go, and how many of us on the outskirts sense the trainwreck to come, but are defeated before we can even get involved.
I know I pushed my student, who seemed as depressed as the family she lived with, to step outside the language bounds, get creative, and try to find some kind of passion to write about, but the futility of it was crushing, and I was, in the end, dismissed of my tutoring duties because I was focusing more on ideas and communication than I was on nitpicking grammar and teaching an endless list of rules.
In those fleeting moments when worlds collide, one person on an upward trajectory while the other’s on the down, there’s no telling how long which of those influence plays out. Maybe years later, like the dozen years I have lived past that family, a shadow of our connection will linger.
Somewhere inside, I guess, the idea of that family dying in vain, for a stupid moment of complete despair and rage in the father’s mind, has long struck a sad chord inside, and the fact that I’ve even thought of them, though I can’t remember their name or locate a news story about them, is something I feel obligated to record.
Even that sense of obligation makes me a little sad right now. How many people forget about this family altogether? Like they were just vapours floating through a limited life?
But there you have it. Some people live in vain, die in vain, and are a struggle to remember after the fact. I suppose there’s a part of me feeling like I’d like to be anything but a struggle to remember.
I like to think I’m succeeding.
I’m sorry I can’t remember more of her, the family, or that sense of omnipresent gloom in their home, the memory of which gives me chills as I type.
Do not doubt the range of pathos and trial that some people live with. Don’t delude yourself into thinking the awful stories are uncommon.
And don’t think that you’re likely to change their stories either. We can’t make people change. All we can do is jump out of the way when the existential shrapnel starts to spray.

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Thar Be Stalkers: Twitter

I got unfollowed by someone on Twitter yesterday and it was one of my [social media] week’s high-lights.
Every now and then, not too often thank God, someone comes along that crosses the boundaries of “social media chatty” and begins verging on “stalkerish.”
I’m lucky to have always had a pretty engaging audience. I usually have about 25 to 75 mentions or interactions a day, and have had way more periodically, which is quite flattering to me. A lot of folks will engage me regularly, several times a week, or even once/twice a day, and that’s awesome! I love to have those kinds of touching-base interactions.
Still, let’s face it. I’m definitely an acquired taste on The Twitter, and that’s fine by me and the folks who’ve acquired said taste. I get unfollowed daily by a lot of people, but the follows almost always outweigh the departed. Thank goodness! You LIKE me! Or someone does.
When, like me, you make a point of talking about your life’s minutiae and you put your foibles and foolishness out there for others to get a chuckle out of, it’s sort of natural to develop a friend-like bond with some of your followers.
People don’t turn to my feed for social media prowess, marketing tips, or news aggregating. They tune into my shit to see what I’m cooking, whose ass it is I’m tearing a strip off of, or where I’m cycling to, what I’m watching, and whatnot. They tune into the stupid, boring everyday things I do in my life. For some deluded reason, they think I’m interesting.
And it ain’t for everyone, thank god.
But for those whom it works for, it’s a fun two-way street when I get people reacting to things, sharing their take on my ridiculous happenings, and all that. It’s fun, and it’s probably the best part of Twitter.
Sometimes, though, it can be the worst part.
The fact is, unlike some real estate agent or marketing guru, I’m on Twitter for kicks. I’m there to record mini-me moments of my life, as much for my own sake as I do it for my followers.
And like I say, now and then a “stalkerish” type comes up. I’m sure they don’t perceive themselves as stalkers, but it can come off the wrong way when I’m getting 10 or 15 tweets from the same person on a daily basis. And I don’t mean in a conversational-type way. I mean, I tweet about eating spaghetti and the person will then tell me about their spaghetti, then in an hour I comment on a show, and the person then has a reaction to that too.
Whatever the marketing types are telling you about Twitter being an “ongoing conversation,” it’s ALL LIES, BITCH. It’s not a conversation! It’s zillions of one-liners flinging by in the night.
I’m not speaking to one person when I tweet, I’m throwing it out there into the cosmos for the world. I don’t want to have an ongoing everyday conversation with the same follower that I don’t even follow back.
It sounds cunty, but Twitter isn’t my JOB. Despite that, I’ve always prided myself on my level of engagement. I do try to reply to most people. I don’t answer stupid questions anymore, is one of the ways I’ve reduced the intrusion into “me time.” (Yes, Virginia, there are stupid questions. Google that shit!)
There are days, too, when I’m just too busy to be polite and responsive, and I never feel the need to apologize for it, because life happens and social media is just a thing we do in between moments of life. Or at least that’s how I do it, and if people have an issue with that, the unfollow button’s right there, man.
Imagine, though, if all 5,000 of my followers were to send me 15 tweets a day like Said Stalker was. That’d be 75,000 mentions a day. I like the 25-75 mentions better — from a variety of good souls. I like bantering with the odd folk who reply to my tweets with funny stories, interesting viewpoints, or even just to tell me I’m being a dork about something. Dialogue’s great.
What’s my point here?
Just remember that, for many of us, Twitter is a distraction, something fun we do for whatever demented reason we do it. When you expect things of us — or ask silly questions you could Google, or “demand” recipes, or do forced “Have a great week” tweets where you list 10 people you’re kissing ass of, including us — you’re taking the fun out of Twitter.
If you’re replying to the same people all the time and their interest or replies have waned, you may have crossed the line and become Twitter-clingy, something like the boyfriend or girlfriend who always texts you when you’re supposed to be playing with your other friends. This is a good time to look out in the world for OTHER people to follow AS WELL as that person you’ve found fascinating.
Fact is, there are zillions of amazing personalities with fantastic content on Twitter. Famous authors who actually have something to say, fascinating political minds, comics who put consistently funny material out there, and even just normal people with brilliant minds tweeting on all manner of topics.
Wanna have more fun with Twitter and be less of a stalker? Ditch your feeling of obligation when it comes to reading content. You don’t need to read EVERY tweet by someone in order to follow. Just add their stuff to your stream and skim it. Enjoy it when you have time.
But stop thinking that any one Twitter personality is there to be your friend. Stop believing that just because you like their content that you could be buddies in real life. Stop expecting more from the relationship.
Start realizing that it isn’t a “person” you’re getting attracted to or fascinated by — it’s their CONTENT. You have no right to their time. You simply have the privilege of enjoying their creations.
Enjoy the tweets, and comment now and then, and everyone will be happy.
NOTE: Pretty sure my “invasive stalker” count’s down around, oh, zero right now. That I know of. Which is preferred to actually knowing one is being stalked. Ignorance IS bliss!

Vancouver's Waldorf Hotel Is Closing

UPDATE: Apparently the new owners (condo developers by trade) don’t take the building over until September. The current owners have hiked leases. The folks managing the place are the ones taking off on the 20th. The present owners claim business as usual will continue after the 20th. Any changes to the building would likely entail rezoning requirements being met and approved by City Council. A grassroots save-the-Waldorf campaign has begun, and a lot of loud rallying cries are getting out there. So, in short, nothing is resolved, and no end is in sight, but the Waldorf may not be going anywhere yet.
 

***

 On January 20th, the Waldorf Hotel on Vancouver’s East Side will be closing.
Another one bites the dust.
When I left Vancouver, I fell in love with the fact that Victoria protects its heritage, maybe to a fault, because the 1960s saw the city changing too fast, and its Council moved to begin protecting heritage.
Because that’s what Councils do.
Not in Vancouver, though.
“A condo, you say? Oh, we LOVES the condos. Yes, please. Raze it all. Down it goes. Shiny. That’s what we want. Shiny new condos. EVERYWHERE!”
You know what’ll happen?
The Waldorf will get torn down. A condo development will go up. Something very art-deco-y. There’ll be a pineapples-and-palm trees motif throughout, I guaran-fucking-tee you. And then they will market the living shit out of the development as “Formerly The Waldorf.” You can live here, bust out your skinny jeans, and tell people you live in “Formerly the Waldorf.”
Vancouver’s now a city of places that were Formerly Something More Cool Than What You See Now.
It all blends away to some redundant post-modern city-of-glass design you’ve seen somewhere else down the same road, except they high-jacked this aspect of that era and try to sell it to you as something inspired by the past, when, in fact, the whole thing came tumbling the fuck down because, hey, who needs the past, anyhow? We’re just a vapid yoga-pants wearing town now, baby! Or, well, if we keep trying, we sure can be.
And now our good buddy Mr. Mayor’s out on The Twitter pretending he’s sad that the Waldorf is meeting its demise so some asshole designer can bust out his pineapple stencil on stamped concrete and sell it for $799,000  to yet another asshole hipster with too much dough and desperately needing post-modern-condo-owning street cred with his hipster-asshole friends.
The last time I was in The Waldorf, I saw one of the greatest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of saying was a friend play his goddamned heart out on a drum kit while dudes from The Odds jammed with him, because he (and they) knew he would be dead, literally dead, in a matter of weeks. And he was.
When I see the Waldorf, I see my friend Derek K. Miller banging the living hell out of his drums. I see everything he stood for. I see the reason I re-evaluated my life, said “I’m outta here,” and left town. I see one of the most impactful nights of my life.
The Waldorf isn’t a BAR. It’s not a HOTEL. It’s a cultural meeting point. A place where worlds collided, ideas were born, and generations got bridged.
The Waldorf MEANS something. It means A LOT.
That land, that didn’t have to become just another condo. It didn’t. It doesn’t. So many properties in that area mean nothing but have all the geographical cachet of The Waldorf, and are ripe for redevelopment. But are they slated?
No. Just a place that changed lives, created friendships, and rocked all fucking night long.
Vancouver City Council, you disgust me for allowing this cultural collapse of all the neat places just for the sake of condo sales. Don’t make it so easy. Hell, let’s go one further. Stop encouraging it.
Today is a sad, sad day for Vancouver’s cultural community.

And Then it Was 2013

I’m one of those “13’s my lucky number” people. Friday the 13th? I find my lucky socks and rock that shit out.
So you know I’m keen on the year. Bring it. Good fortune, good times. I’m readying myself for it all.
Right now, I’ve got Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs CD blasting as I take a breather from remedying all that is chaotic about my world. One cupboard after another, one weekend after another, I’m resolving to go through everything I own and ditch all the shit I shouldn’t have around me. Clutter, bitter memories, broken shit, redundant stuff. All of it, gone.

Girl checks out the sunset on Victoria’s Dallas Road. By me. Some rights reserved.


It’s not a new year’s resolution–
(Happy new year to you all!)
…But it’s well timed to coincide with a nice fresh start.
This is my year of new priorities. Last year, it was kind of all about just getting to a new place and hanging the fuck on until I was settled. I was unprepared for my year to unfold as it did. I didn’t need to ride into a parking sign or have any of the other events unfold that fucked up my back. This year, I’m starting with my back in a better place than I have since 2009, and ready to buy a new bike shortly that I believe will end my back pain.
I mean, man, I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in a long, long time. I’m ready.
So the natural next step for me is that of tidying and organizing my world around me. Nothing says “I’m in control of life” like a freshly-purged home.
Getting rid of stuff will make my next home that much easier to bring to life. I’ll move again this year but not until I can swing hiring movers, since it’s not worth it with my back. I’m at that point in life when I believe Close isn’t Close Enough. I want what I want, and I’m fucking taking it, so that means a new home in this ‘hood I love.
Howdy-do, 2013.
***
Writing? I’m doing that, but for work and such. I haven’t been wanting to write for myself, not for a long time. And there are those who somehow shun this, like I’m making a colossal life mistake.
Really, it’s a break. Everyone needs one. I’ve written more since 2004 than probably most people write in 20 years. I just haven’t put it in proper formats, I guess, for making dough, but I’m real damned proud of my productivity.
I’ll probably have only a handful of years in my life, from now until my death, in which I choose to walk away from writing. And, frankly, my back injury was exacerbated by sitting, so it’s been a good year to take off, and instead go walking and do photography, which is also something that speaks to my soul, especially when I’m in places I love, like on the ocean or on bike trails.
Deep down inside, I’m confident I’ll hit one of those “writing everyday” patches in down the road in 2013, but it’s not something I care about achieving for your benefit, or anyone else’s. I’ll write when I’m ready. I’ve had a lot to deal with in the last year, and I’m really glad I’ve given it the focus it deserved.
I like my headspace, I like what I’ve overcome, I like the issues and troubles I’ve resolved in my life. Whatever you think about my “not writing,” the end result has been a pretty good thing in my world.
In my soul, I don’t have any regrets about my choices over the last year.
***

Gull checks out the sunset on Victoria’s Dallas Road. By me. Some rights reserved.


Resolutions? Fuck resolutions.
My new year’s goal is to end the year Better and Happier than I began it. That didn’t work out in 2010, but I did it in both 2011 and 2012. The 2012 year-end State of Steff was a far better thing than the one who began 2011. That’s all we can do, right? Just improve with age? I’m digging it.
This year, I’m all about keeping my place less cluttered, less dusty. I’m about finding a better home but not a new neighbourhood. I want to fall in love with writing again, and life, and love itself. I want to be health-focused but not sweat it. I want my walking-cycling lifestyle to become more cycling-walking, and to continue with avoiding buses. I want to eat more vegetables and buy better quality meat.
I’m pretty practical. My life’s been on a steady upward trajectory for 2 years, but I started in a really fucking dark place, so getting to the point where I see the light has only really began in the last few months. Every time I hit a new roadbump, too, I’ve solved it better than I have in the past, so I’m optimistic that even with inevitable ups and downs, I’ll be more “up” than I’ve been.
All in all, I don’t need resolutions. I’m on the right road. I’m gonna keep on keepin’ on. I love the life balance I’ve begun to have, know I can improve upon it, and I’m confident I’ll get to that place where I really start owning my island lifestyle this year.
But why put pressure on myself? That’s exactly what I moved here to get away from.
Eat a little better? Exercise smarter? Learn from my mistakes? Slow down even more? Fall in love with creativity, space, time, myself, and love itself? Have more fun? Find ways to smile more? Have more naps?
I can do those things.
I will do those things.
I will enjoy those things.
And that’s kinda where my 2013’s going.
But first I gotta get my stomp on and listen to more thumpin’ Tom Waits while I reorganize my workstation and my life. Think of it as laying foundation for building an awesome year. Stompa-stompa-stomp.
Have a fucking great 2013, people.