Writer of fiction, poetry, etc - based in Vancouver BC
Writing on the SkyTrain after work again—that seems to be a good time for me. The end of a day, I’m slightly exhausted, I can review things and I’m too spent to get distracted by much. I put in earbuds and here I go.
Of course, I’m also too spent to do much more than a stream-of-consciousness ramble. Pros and cons.
I am drained. Retail work at a busy and chaotic store is a miserable way to spend a life, even with good benefits. People get sucked into it, often enough become what are called lifers. I am afraid enough of that happening to me in some form or another. I’m working to become a product consultant (PC), which is a nicer job within the same context: work with the high end products, run the tasting bar, talk to customers, I’d get to go to tastings, no more extremely early mornings or extremely late nights—but, especially if I stay at Brighouse, it’s another form of the same. Lifer. Something drains out, slowly, that’s already happening, until one day I retire and I looked back and see life already happened without me. That’s the human condition for most of us, I realize, and I don’t think I’m entitled to get out of it anymore than anyone else. And I do have good benefits: dental and paid vacation, so what am I complaining about?
But still. Not the best way to spend a life. It takes over, and there’s no content to it.
I write, and that is my way of tearing a hole in it and slipping out for a bit. As often as I can.
That’s what it’s become. It’s better than most things I could be using to accomplish that end—although I do drink a bit, I admit, an occupational hazard.
Both occupations.
Met a friend for brunch this morning, walked down to Aphrodite’s Cafe on 4th through the dying rain. I was worried the rain would be harder, but this is Vancouver and here a morning’s rain often enough done before the day has time to get going. So I wasn’t too worried. I don’t mind walks after a rain: the air feels so fresh. Good way to start a day. None of that pressure of all of that that I was kvetching about above with me, just the fresh air and the neighbourhood and twenty minutes of my feet on the pavement.
See, this is why I should write these earlier in the day—they’d be a lot more of that and a lot less misery. That would be a touch pleasanter to read.
There are two Aphrodite’s, kitty-corner from one another. One’s a pie shop, one’s a full restaurant with brunch and everything, and we went into the wrong one first—I’d only ever been in the pie shop. And for Ken (should I be using fake names for this? I’ll change some), it was just that the pie shop was what was on the side of the street he exited the bus on. So, we went over to the other side. Brunch Aphrodite’s was cozy. We sat down, ordered egg dishes and caffeinated drinks (as one does), talked about quantum physics and Carl Jung. Projects we’re working on. It was good. Ken’s a guy I know a little, through another friend, that I’d like to see more of. Good company.
Notably, he’s the first person to understand a project I’m working on, one of many incomplete jumbles I’ve got. He articulated it better than I ever have. What was it? “Lola is a symbol. Whereas a semiotic sign signifies something, a symbol signifies itself. Its meaning is ineffable.” Roughly that. Jungian language. Lola is is the abstract locus of human fanaticism. I would explain more, but it’s late. Another time. Anyway, I was pleased we found a way to put it.
This sounds an awful lot like a diary entry. That’s about all I can muster after a shift like this, typing on my phone for the thirteen minutes I’m on the train. Hopefully I’ve jazzed it up in editing a bit. (Because here I am, two hours later finishing a tequila and soda, attempting to jazz it up.)
There’s a new PC (product consultant) being trained at our store starting today. He’s not staying at our store—he works in North Burnaby, usually. I got to interact with him a little as we passed each other in the store. He was full of energy, as a parent would say. Got to do a wine tasting near the end of the shift, because our on-duty product consultant was giving him one and I happened to be standing nearby. I hadn’t had any of what was there and, because I work as a PC now and then, I need to know how wines taste. It’s also one of the better parts of the job—and, yes, I do spit it out.
The Burnabian was quite slow. He took notes as he went. He would never keep up at a formal tasting—but he’s new. We're all new sometimes. I got along with him, the little that I interacted with him.
The train is nearly at my stop, and I’ll stop writing then.
I passed by the SPCA thrift store on Broadway after brunch, to pick up gloves and a warm hat for my trip to Montreal. The air there gets so cold that it hurts my hands—so it wouldn’t do to pick something up after I arrive. Found out after the fact that I didn’t need to buy new anything—there’s a drawer full—but that’s fine. Something refreshing about having gone to do it, picked them out. Part of why this was, really, a good day. Despite everything.