Couch surfing

Josiane and Eric should be arriving any moment at YVR airport. They are from Sherbrooke, Quebec. I haven't met them yet but I hopefully will before midnight. They will be staying with me for 3 nights. They are in Vancouver until Feb 9th for a story telling festival somewhere in town. Eric is a story teller.

They contacted me through couchsurfing.com, an organization of travelers and hosts that circles the globe. I joined in June 2007 and have hosted 32 people from 11 countries in the first 16 months. Some contact me because I am an artist, some because I am gay, some because I was a cyclist, some because of my central location and some because I have lots of references. The youngest has been 18 and the oldest around my own age. They stay for free. Sometimes we prepare meals together and sometimes we go out or we do our own activities, but so far I have not stayed in the homes of other couch surfers. I travel vicariously through my guests.

Several of my friends are amazed that I open my home to complete strangers, but I don't feel that way about them. I have not been too inconvenienced or taken advantage of and certainly not robbed or intentionally put out. Sometimes I have felt a bit overwhelmed, that that was the result of saying yes to too many people. Literally, I could have had double the number of guests if I had saved no time for myself and other visiting friends. It gives me a reason to keep my place clean and I have gained a few very strong friendships out of it.

I give couples my room and I sleep on the couch. That gives them their privacy and allows me to move around in the morning getting ready for work without disturbing them. I often do this for visiting friends too, so I am somewhat used to it. It is well worth it for the people I meet. I am hoping to take it a couple nights at the story telling festival too. :o)

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Cold

It was a sunny sunrise as I walked to work this morning. Very pretty as the sun hit Canada Place a the end of Howe St but it was COLD! Maybe it was -5 or -6C with a chilling breeze. Hopefully that's that last cold snap this year, but it is expected to snow some tonight and tomorrow. Eeek!!

PHOTO: View from my living room window along Hornby Street

Sunshine

After 11 days the fog lifted on Friday. A few days ago the forecast was for flurries from Friday through Sunday, but gratefully that didn't happen. I celebrated by shopping for new jeans yesterday. Most things were on sale so I bought 2 dress shirts, a T-shirt, a pair of fancy sexy underwear and a set of pillow cases too.

Today, I met Aunty Tinkerbell for coffee at Cafe a Go-Go after breakfast at Joe's Diner. I have spent the afternoon making the calla lily sun-catcher [photo] and writing. Tonight I will watch another DVD, a collection of shorts called "Mad About the Boy". The threat of snow remains this coming week but, for now, life is good.

:o)

Rich & Luis

After 11 days of foggy weather we have enjoyed a sunny but cold weekend. Yesterday I celebrated by shopping for new jeans. Sales were everywhere so I bought underwear, a T-shirt, 2 great shirts and two pairs of jeans.

Rich & Luis came over in the evening to watch a DVD I had rented and to show me their photos of Colombia. The pictures were great, mostly of Medellin and few of Bogota, Cartegena and some historic smaller towns. Lots of family pics too as Luis had been living illegally on Long Island for a few years before immigrating legally to Canada last summer, and that prevented him from going anywhere near an airport where the authorities would nab him. Fortunately for them, their trip caused them to miss 90% of our worst weather this winter. They brought me back a delicate clay replica of a rural bus, called a "chiva" (see the photo), painted in the Colombian national colours and decorated with bags, chickens, vegetables, baskets of fruit and a pig on the roof. There are even four clay figures the chiva. It is only 8cm long at best but the facial expressions, the painstakingly painted clothes, hair and other details are all clear. Such a little treasure!

The DVD we watched was part of my mail-order subscription to Videomatica, a local specialty DVD store. They has sent me "The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green". I had watched in Friday night and enjoyed it terrifically. I has smoked a joint though and was too stoned to follow the plot completely. It is just as funny sober and well worth a second viewing. I'd like to buy this one. Rich and Luis loved it too.

“Milk”

Tuesday night I went with my friend Michal to see the movie “Milk”. I must be the last of my friends to see it. I had held off because another friend had me promise not to see it without him. I keep my promises but after a month without any effort on his part it became obvious that he had forgotten the promise entirely. So I went with Michal.

I was happy to see the film with him. Definitely he’s one of my favourite friends. The sun is always out whenever he’s around and it seems to last a couple days after he’s gone. He lives in Kelowna and comes down a few times a year. Sometimes he stays with me but not the last few times as he has been attending seminars with work colleagues. We have often mused about doing road trips around the province to areas we have never seen, such as the 8 hr road from Williams Lake to Bella Coola through Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. I am always concerned that with my limited ability to deal with stairs and uneven terrain that I would be an impediment to travel with but he doesn’t see it that way. (Gawd bless his sweet soul!) Over dinner at an Italian restaurant before the movie he re-stated his commitment to do something with me this summer.

“Milk” has had a big impact with many of my gay friends, especially of my generation. I came out when Harvey Milk was still alive and visited San Francisco while he was still Supervisor. I was also in teacher training when he successfully fought Senator Briggs’ initiative to create a witch hunt against gay teachers. I thought the portrayal of those early years of gay liberation was brilliant. It really brought me back, though I was a bit young to be involved in activism in the late 70s as I was still trying to figure out who I was. My activism didn’t really start until February 1981 after the infamous Toronto bath raids.

Most of that pre-AIDS reality of the 70s has been lost but, unlike some friends, seeing these images again does not make me nostalgic. I never believed I was accepted by gay circles in those days, even though I felt a sense of loyalty to "the community". At least gay society was safer than straight society in most ways. I also see no point to nostalgia, just as I no longer fantasize about what I did before muscular dystrophy pinned me down. Some things it’s just not wise to think about too long.

PHOTO: Michal

OBAMA-RAMA

It was dead quiet on the phones at work today while the world was watching Obama’s inauguration. No one can get enough of the man, it seems. For example, Canada’s national news service, CBC, has on its website a lead article on his swearing in and his call for “remaking America”, the itinerary of the inauguration ceremonies, the full text of Obama’s address, a photo gallery of the day’s events and the days leading up to it, a D.C. diary of a CBC news correspondent who tells us her thoughts and observations at every step of her trip to Washington and every part of the ceremonies, an article by seasoned correspondent Henry Champ called “An Inauguration in a Cell Phone Age”, a synopsis of the Bush years and how Obama’s term in office might be different, another article by Heather Mallick titled “Don’t fool me please, Barack Obama” and an arts ariticle called “In his image” (a survey about Obama inspired art images). Besides these, there is another news article about his plans to visit Canada in the near future, his first anticipated foreign visit, and three video reports on the inaugural parade, happenings in his Kenyan village and people’s reactions around the world. This is even bigger than Princess Diana’s death, and a much happier event.

I am hopeful too, though I don’t have much interest in image or publicity events. I probably won’t be seeking out recordings of today’s happenings because I expect to see images of the day for months and years to come. And the images are inspiring. Only the most jaded veterans would scoff at the potential good Obama could do in his term. The worst I have heard is that he’ll be assassinated before he can enact any real change, but in this case that would be license for revolution. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, at least not a violent one.

Meig's Disease

All morning I seemed to be aware of where my sister must be in hospital at any particular moment. At 1:20 pm I called her friend who dropped her off at the hospital and she told me that the surgery had started late. I called again around 4:20, just before leaving work, and her friend told me the news. The tumour isn't cancer but Meig's Syndrome, which caused pleural effusion (water in the lining of the lungs) and a cyst on the ovaries. The symptoms disappear once the tumour is removed. She had been told that 1/80 off those with her symptoms turn out to have Meig's instead of cancer but the odds were so small that we assumed it must be cancer. She tells me the doctors were shocked it wasn't cancer and all the medical staff is so happy for her.

So this fairy tale ending comes the same week of Obama's inauguration and my union voting on the contract settlement that will give each of us a $4,000 signing bonus. Tomorrow the forecast is that the fog will lift and part and we will have a sunny mild weekend of above average temperatures. Two close friends have just returned from a month away and my friend Derko is coming down from Kelowna for a short visit next week. Does life get better than this? :oD
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Under the knife

Sis goes under the knife this hour at VGH. They will remove her ovaries, her uterus and many other parts as well as the grapefruit-sized tumour. I am not sure how to support her or what exactly I am even feeling at the moment. I am worried but not in a knot, I suppose because I have never had maltreatment in hospital. I will at least know how much they have removed by this afternoon or evening but I probably won't get to speak to her.

I have been having my own internal problems for the past month or so. Hardly anything has digested properly and I have lost a few hours of sleep each week from cramps. I am holding it together with anti-diarrhea pills (which sometimes cause the cramps) and by eating less. I have decided to cut out my beloved coffee and eat primarily bread and plain yogurt for a couple days to see if my situation improves. Yesterday, coming off coffee and still recovering from my head cold made the day a real chore.

Later today the sun is expected to return. I look forward to seeing it tomorrow morning as I walk to work. Without the cloud cover I will be able to appreciate that the days are getting longer and that will put me in a better mood.

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Stage 4

Sis came in from Langley for a visit after I finished my last post. The visit was arranged a few days in advance. Originally, she had wanted to come for breakfast though she couldn't really eat and didn't want to go out. I usually eat breakfasts out on weekend mornings, for the walk and the coffee as much as the food. It has become a ritual with me and I also remembered a friend and I had postponed a breakfast last weekend because bad weather, so I asked her to delay her arrival until 2pm. She had said she wanted to leave before dark so I knew that would limit the visit to 2 hours. I had a few other things I was set on doing that day, such as grocery shopping and getting a haircut.

The visit was much longer than expected -- 5 hours. It was pleasant and as wonderful as it ever has been between us, certainly much better than any visit we've shared in recent years, but she had come in part to tell me that she has stage four ovarian cancer. Stage four is the final stage, the "terminal" stage. The doctors aren't 100% sure but almost. She goes under the knife the day after tomorrow. The cyst isn't really as big as a grapefruit, she told me. It's diameter is only 13 cm. That's over five inches, I translated for her, but she just shrugged.

She was determinedly positive and chattered on like a bird in spring, battering me with one high-speed story after the other. Many of them were about our past, growing up together during our teenage years-- difficult and annoying memories. In between she shots me casually pleading questions such as "Will you promise to take care of Mouse (her cat) when I am gone?" or "Will you please be my executor?" They weren't questions I could say "no" to, but I was instantly transported to the logistical problems of caring for a cat that likes to disconnect computer cables and chew through telephone lines, or wondering how I could liquidate her estate when it takes two hours one way just to use transit to get to her place and I can't even climb the stairs of her multi-level home.

I hadn't even begun to digest the horrid news of her death sentence before these heavy responsibilities were handed to me. I began to feel claustrophobic, like I wanted to get out of my condo or somehow stop her from prattling on without pause. I began to think of my haircut and grocery shopping duties, but I had the sense not to act on these impulses. I knew she had to have reassurances before going under the knife, that she had to reconnect with me solidly because, she told me, I would be the only one in the family that she will tell, at least for now. She isn't even telling one of her best friends or her son (who isn't speaking to her at the moment). She has reasons for each and every secret. In some cases it might be part punishment, but mostly she wants to protect Mom and my brothers from the news. There is no such protection possible and I thought it best that we all should begin to deal with it to lessen the shock when we will likely lose her, but this was not the time to tamper with her delicate and urgent plans.

To say I was drained after she left would be a major understatement. I know I was in shock too, but I am generally good at holding it together. I should be an expert on holding it together by now. I took a walk up the street to do my grocery shopping before going to bed. I couldn't get to sleep for some time.

Monday morning I woke around 5 am with a mildly sore throat. I wasn't nearly as depressed as I had expected to be. In fact, I was in pretty good spirits but as the morning passed my head cold came on like a speeding train. My nose was running like a tap and I went into several sneezing fits. But I needed the distraction more than I needed to rest alone at home so I stayed to the end of the day. Last night I got 9 hours of sleep and all the nasty cold symptoms were in full retreat already.

As her surgery time grows nearer she is on my mind more and more. In spite of the fact we hadn't spoken for almost 5 years, I am suddenly her closest confidante. I think at times she is almost my twin. In the logging camps in the rain forests of Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) she was often my only playmate for years at a time. But the weight that I am the only family member who knows her true condition isn't resting easily with me.

Alone again

Last night Bill & Harry returned home to Winterpeg, birth place of Wintery, the frozen Pooh. Back to -20C. Apparently, due to a great rain fall in the Dakotas just before the big freeze, the Red River froze3 12ft (3.5m) higher than normal. All the predictions are for a major flood this year, perhaps bigger than the one in 1997. Meanwhile, heavy rains up the Fraser Valley are causing major floods and mudslides in Chilliwack. I think we all deserve a good summer after all of this.

Their stay here was relaxed and congenial. During the days I worked and Harry shopped, dragging poor Bill along to carry his bags. :o) At night we visited their favourite restaurants, the Luxy Cafe and Milestones, hung out with our mutual friend Bill Drake and played our favourite board game, Settlers of Catan. We each won a game but the first game was the best. Somehow we all got laughing so hard that we were all wiping tears away. Poor Harry almost dehydrated. It's funny that after a hard laugh I can never remember what we were laughing about.

Last night and this morning have been so quiet. There is always these mixed feelings of the relief of having my home and bed back but also the sadness of the sudden emptiness, void of conversation and laughter.

Bill & Harry

The rains have returned with mild temperatures to deal a deadly blow to Winter (Part I). 25 days after it first snowed the parks and fields are still mostly snow-covered in spite of 2 days of moderate to heavy rains. The sidewalks downtown are completely clear now. I have switched back to my running shoes and this morning I even walked to work. I didn't step in slush or snow the whole way. The rains will continue another few days with no minus temperatures in the forecast. I am even inclined to believe the forecasts this time.

The "normal" weather returned just in time for a 3-day visit from my friends Bill & Harry who live in Winnipeg. The above-freezing temperatures are quite a treat for them. In Winnipeg -10C is a warm spell at this time of year. They waited in the Fountainhead Pub from 3 until I got home at 5. They have toured up Davie St in the rain with me and had dinner in the Luxy Cafe, an Italian eatery that has always been one of their favourites. I regret its not sunny for them but they don't really mind. It makes them nostalgic for the wet winters they knew when they lived here a decade ago. I've given them my room so I can move around the condo without disturbing them tomorrow morning. I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight. I'm so tired I don't think it will matter.

Everything Emptying Into White

7:50: showered, shaved, dressed and polished, lunch made, breakfast eaten, bundled up and psyched for the day I head for the bus stop. I don't even make it to the sidewalk. Another forecast of +5C with rain all night turned into freezing temperatures and 8 cm of slippery slush. I won't risk it. The highs for today and tomorrow, once +8 and +9 respectively two days ago, are now +4 and +6 and falling no doubt. We are now a full four weeks with below normal temperatures though this was all supposed to have ended yesterday. Get me out of this place!

Weather or not

I am hoping I can go to work tomorrow. At the moment the sidewalks are treacherous with their coating of packed slush that no one has cleared. I have been housebound all weekend. According to the forecast it is supposed to rain tonight, but I've heard that before. In fact, the low today and tonight is supposed to be +4, but it is only +2 at present. Several nights the forecast has been for above freezing but the salty puddles have frozen solidly. Now they lurk beneath the melting slush waiting for their next prey. I've learned that a friend slipped on the fresh slush that fell yesterday and broke his wrist.

Although I have been housebound, it hasn't been as miserable as the period before Christmas. The cafe that normally hosts Faerie Coffee each Sunday was closed today, the second weekend in a row. Since I am only half a block away they descended on my place instead. ("Location is everything!" my realtor told me when I bought this place.) So I had Aunty Tinkerbell, Danzante, Gerry and our 3 friends visiting from Portland, Periwinkle, Otter and Wallowa. It gave me good reason to clean on short notice. We sent the visitors off on the long drive home at 1:30 with prayers to the Border Angels for safe and speedy passage. Danzante went off to work and Tinkerbell and Gerry hung around an extra hour and a half to play "Settlers of Catan", our favourite board game.

So now all is quiet again and I am resuming work on the draught of my novel. At present I am still revising chapters I have written before, tightening up the prose and adding details. Last night I got beyond Chapter 22 where I have been stuck for a while trying to decide what to do. It delights me that I lose all sense of time when I am working on it, where otherwise I would be feeling anxious and trapped when I cannot go outside.

My main goal this year is to finish the first draught. Presently I am at 340 pages and 208,150 words (thank you, MS Office word count). My story covers a period from the 1840s to shortly after the turn of the 20th century. I have written the first draught up to 1884.

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make when they go by." -Douglas Adams

Stayin' in

Dinner at Danzante and Gerry's again, this time it was with three friends from Portland, Otter, Periwinkle and Wallowa. I use their Faerie names because I can't remember their "Muggle" or "mundane" names. Anyway, it was fabulous food and company as always. Danzante picked me up and Gerry dropped me off. Gawd, the amount of snow on the sidewalks in the upper slopes of the city, even though they are only 100m higher, would keep me housebound another month. It is obvious that almost no one has made an effort to clear them. How do the disabled survive there?

I woke to our 6th snowfall of the season. It will be the smallest so far, perhaps 4 cm, and the expected to be the shortest lived, but it also the most dangerous. The sky was half clear last night and it was a few degrees below freezing. There will be many patches of ice under this new, melting layer of snow.

I was supposed to have breakfast with my friend Adriaan this morning to discuss his up-coming trip to Botswana, but that isn't happening. When I called him he was just about to call me to cancel. Even the fit and toned don't want to be out in this....

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New Year's Day

I am happy to see 2008 over, especially the second half of December. Although the snow falls have stopped for the time being the melting snow banks refreeze as black ice on the sidewalks and roads as soon as the sun leaves us. I fell last night coming home at 6:30pm from a pub less than a block from home where I stopped after shopping to watch the 2nd period of the US/Canada junior hockey game (it's terrible how we keep beating those 'mericns'). It had already left it too late and the sidewalk was treacherous. I crept as carefully as I could but I hit a patch of wet ice in the unsalted dark and down I went. Fortunately nothing was bruised or broken for me or my shopping. Two elderly men with their own health issues helped me up and I made it home without a second fall.

The fall shook me up and pissed me off. Why is no one responsible for salting that icy stretch beside the community garden? Why is it still unsafe after 3 weeks to venture outside after dark? But bad things happen no matter how hard one barricades himself indoors or does his best to avoid them otherwise, and sometimes the consequences aren't worth a small fraction of the worry and effort to avoid them.

I have nothing much that is profound to say on this New Year's Day, except that I plan to keep my focus on 5 guidelines in 2009:
1. Let go on my fears.
2. Forgive myself and others our shortcomings.
3. Be attentive of what is going on for others in my life.
4. Stay involved (doing new things and participating with friends), and
5. Sniff out joy.

It will be a busy but not hectic day, starting with laundry and house cleaning. Tyler (Stitch) is bringing his son Kevin over at 1 and we'll play the board game "Settlers of Catan" and at 4:30 Danzante will pick me up to take me to dinner at his place in New Westminster. Life is good.