wildcat

A weekend away! After many, many moons upon the island (and dust, creaking, crusting, upon my brow), we got a little over twenty-four hours on the mainland, driving off the ferry last night quite late in rain and darkness to zoom on through to Vancouver. We got there safe, as well, after negotiating the usual rigamorale (very nearly accidentally went to the United States, perish the thought, cross yourself, oh honey no / oh to have proper directions to deal with in the dark). It was Saturday night but let's just say our bones were ragged, incised, desperate to stretch out so we made way for the hotel and left it at that (well, well, with all the casual indiscretions that hotel rooms birth), with tragic body lotion and soap that smelled of amaretto.

Next time, we won't be fighting off colds, the pair of us. We'll actually go out somewhere.

On the ferry, I started reading Dracula. John Harker obsesses over Carpathian cuisine, especially paprika chicken - an unbearable thirst overwhelms him, not enough water, weird travelogue foreshadowing the Count's influence on his life.

Morning came, dreary grey light in between curtains (soft & downy white), checkout time, consultation with the spirits via text message and plans to meet Jeremy in Kits to brunch at some place called Sophie's, which was all right as brunch goes, but nothing much to write home about, to use a cliche. Stood in a long lineup for brunching goods that filled the belly but neither excited the senses nor delighted the brain.

Went to the Art Gallery! Stood in lines, checked bags. It was Kids Day, we need to make sure we don't go on Kids Day again. Photography as Performance, first floor - I got to see a Cindy Sherman photograph at the right size and accompanied by a shot done by a good friend of hers, whose name escapes me but, the second shot is an almost exact reproduction of Sherman's, as a weird cover version. There was a set of rooms full of photographs done specifically to emulate famous paintings, with varying degrees of success. A Last Supper rendition with Israeli soldiers (or possibly male models dressed as same), which I felt could have been improved by cropping everything above the table top so you're only left with all these legs & feet; the positioning seemed quite evovcative and more interesting than a straight-on copy. Some old Twenties prints of debutante and celebrity women dressed up as mythological women (Medusa, Niobe, and Europa).

Third floor was Fred Herzog's photography of Vancouver from between 1960 to the Nineties, and it was probably the best exhibit. The vast majority seemed to be Sixties-centric, and the smaller room with recent work seemed odd. Jeremy said he thought it seemed too nostalgic for the times shown in the earlier work. I thought it lacked energy. Some of the earlier photos were gorgeous, and I thought of Joy and Matt in certain cases (a woman in gloves trying on a feathered pillbox hat, old men walking along the street, et cetera) and my dad's photography in other cases (an old man and a kid looking up at plywood circus posters of coochie dancers in the show).

Fourt floor was some terrible sketch work thing by "B.C. Binning," whoever that is. Well, not terrible. Not my thing.

Went to a couple comic shops with the boys, finding in among my purchases of old Legion comics, this:

(Cover image by Duncan Fegredo)

Tasty treat. One of the missing eleven issues of Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man. It's one of the last issues and certainly not one of the better individual chapters in the story but it has its moments and the idea is quite serene, alligator people, some meta-fiction (an old character, the writer Miles Laimling, is mentioned and pivotal to the plot - he writes under a pseudonym, Peter Milligan, last names being anagrams). I'm one step closer to having the entire story to read. A real treasure, certainly, having long ago plundered the absolute depths of Legends Comics's Shade collection.

There were puppies in a shop in Kits, and Michael was happy to look at them, if only through glass. There was also a candy shop with hundreds of Pez dispensers in the window.

So! Michael put up with me waltzing through comics and book shops - there's a sprawling one over by Davie Street, two floors with a ridiculous basement full to the brim with old comics and books (bin after bin of gentlemen's magazines, as well), I found a Harlan Ellison paperback of short stories there and snapped it up; it's called The Beast Who Shouted LOVE at the Heart of the World and adheres to the 1969 standards of paperback design work, the back covered in short story blurbs:

A terrifying paranoid delusion of a man whose vampirish friends feed on his slow charisma leak

A James Bond Santa Claus who shoots it out with Ronald Reagan in the men's room of a mental hospital

The dizzying notion of a Jesus who has a strange, obsessive relationship with Prometheus

Ferry food for dinner was. Food. It was food, nutrients were probably in there, but taste is a foreign concept, I'm telling you.

But coming back to Victoria is serene and refreshing. It feels good to ease into the soothing darkness and sit down in my apartment, back in my life again.