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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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News from the thrift shop, that a former clerk, beautiful young woman of 36, was shot in the head by her boyfriend.
I'd read about it in the paper, no names so didn't guess who it was, nobody knew but eventually the truth percolated out. That's the thing out here, you're only ever one degree of separation from the news.
Apparently, still in the hospital, 'recovering', although what recovery is like from a gunshot to the head remains to be seen. Perhaps lucky it wasn't fatal, but only perhaps.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Another one I've been running into a bit lately, writing in his journal at the coffee shop and laundromat. All these people writing in their journals and I'm just dying to snag a look. Last week he was at the laundromat looking for the Earth Day Celebrations, then trying to plan transport down to Taghum so he could partake. My age, roughly, loose fitting T shirt, tights, shorts, he's a bit on the short side, muscular or fit, shoulder length curly blonde hair, preposterous facial hair, curled up bushy moustache, goatee, he looks like an old time carny or circus performer, he'd be perfectly set in a deck of Tarot Cards, or performing on stage as a Victorian magician...
It's a great look. And his eyes, there's that rare glimpse of intelligence, he gets it, there's a twinkle of mischievousness (I suspect), and perhaps just a hint of utter lunacy.
Anyways yet another character on the periphery of acquaintance. I've got to start introducing myself.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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She's familiar, in that way people who meet daily in restaurants and cafe's and yet want formal introduction. Forever on the peripheries of acquaintance, a mere 1 degree of separation, and then she'd disappeared.
I put it down to a change of schedule, quite possibly mine, and forgot about her. There's a whole host of people whom I should know by now, literally everyone, and that I haven't been introduced is a matter of timing and inclination.
Anyways, apparently it wasn't my schedule, it was hers, she's been away, Lower Mainland, the big city, and she's shown up again in the café a wet hot mess, blue pantsuit, expensive handbag, a ridiculous wheely-luggage thing that possesses the tiniest bag on the bottom, big enough for a pair of knickers and nothing else...
It's a prop to start the conversation; she's been away, on the coast...
She sees me, the glance of mutual recognition and the perplexity as to why we haven't been introduced...
Her dress, I've noted, always fashionable-sexy in a Vogue or magazine sort of way. Not in the Kootenays sort of way. A "Professional", but in what capacity?
The skit begins.
She begins by explains herself to the Barista's in terms loud enough for me to overhear. I need no introduction, I, and everyone else in the café, are going to be caught up to speed on her latest adventures.
She's been away, Lower Mainland, going on lots of dates, her problem, she's been told, is that she's "too nice", but that's part of her charm, her small-town values, and she doesn't want to lose these...
A proper coquette.
And she's a little whirlwind of Chaos, everyone stopping by to catch up with her, tribute paid to youth and beauty, and she's regaling them with her dating adventures, breaking to tell the Baristas that they still make the best cappuccino she's ever tasted, she's missed this town, it's home for her, really, even if she is now living on the lower mainland, and OMG, she needs change, she forgot how to feed these small town meters, hahahah...
She's completely oblivious and the sole actress and star of her own show, after Marilyn Munroe, and you can just sit and enjoy it until you can't take any more...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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On a break, from working at Sun Peaks to going treeplanting in Williams Lake, 4 days in the paradise of Nelson.
Only, of course, the weather was no paradise.
So, time spent hopping from cafe to restaurant to cafe to restaurant to bookstore to bars...
We pick her up a copy of Elizabeth Smart's "By the Stairs of Grand Central Station I sat down and Wept", The Epic of Gilgamesh, "Don Quixote", Cervantes, there are many many more, Heroditus, Lolita, Pale Fire, Spekes, The Conquest of New Spain, I make my recommendations but we can't find them all, recommend podcasts, to audit university lectures, download, masterclasses, free, listen to when in the bush, keep the mind going.
I realize the lack of touchstones, her years abroad didn't broaden her education in any sort of direction I'd recognize. In conversation, "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Albatross, she doesn't get it, she's unable to recognize a Monet, Klimt, Klee, Mondrian, Cezanne, Degas, in short she's never learned what is what, there is still time, university and all, we go up to the hotsprings, soak, and then that is that and she is off on the summer's adventures.
I'm stuck spooning her snowboard until I can get to the locker...
She chastises me about not having the hospitality to offer her a sofa, and I'm starting to feel it, this homeless schtick is getting old, has been old for a while already...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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One of the thrift shop volunteers, an older widow, 70's (I think....daren't ask). We've a lot of these widows volunteering.
She gets it. I only point that out because so few do. I can find an ashtray with a painting of Don Quixote by Picasso on it and she recognizes both subject and artist.
TO me this is a common thing, but - test a few people and you'll find it incredibly rare. A pair of badly painted statues, Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" and "Pink Lady" - she knows.
I like this, and she has the sniffles and so I rib her about sitting up with B* - her volunteer friend - and doing lines of Blow all night (an image I find curiously humorous) - and she laughs and says "It's been a while...eight ball". Books, she's read a few, art, and so - bored with Michael as you must get bored with anyone you work in close quarters with I find myself querying her - certainly one of the more "lived" people I've met.
I note this only because it's so rare to find people with shared touchstones, the "pre-internet" people who absorbed the common culture before the internet so thoroughly divided it.