Thursday, July 31 2003 Vancouver

(cont) Woke up at 9:20. Breakfast: cup of tea and a Chinese curry beef specialty bun. (88c T&T Bakery). Big day planned for today, but not really sure what I'm doing. All I know is I'm going to do it. Something. Realy. 11:30 - Kitsalano - Jericho Beach. Parked in front of McBain's old flat on W. fourth street, "The Mountainveiw Arms" and walked to the beach. I find a good log to lean my back against, and off go the shoes and socks. The sun is warm, though not as intense as previous days and there is a light wind blowing across the bay from the farthest reaches of the blue Pacific. Decided on long pants today and not shorts. Was this wise, I wonder? I could sit here forever, I think to myself as I lazily sketch the mountains, the buildings, the sky, the water, the boats, and the beach in my sketchbook. The fog of the sea begins to clear as the sun climbs ever higher into the almost cloudless Vancouver sky. No one can understand the calmness, the Zen - like qualities that the ocean shares with me. My eyes search across it's green to blue majesty and everything else fades into obscure unimportance. I reach down to the electric blue biner on my beltloop and pop the jangle of mis-matched keys into the pocket of my battered old pair of Tommy Hilfigers. From a ring that once held ten keys, now there only remains five, well six if you don't count the luggage key (which I don't). The mail key I left at the apartment, having no use for it out here, the keys to my desk at work and the key to the back door of the building were tossed carelessly somewhere after my final day at work came and went. The two paddlock keys that open the gates, and the garden shed at the parent's house were dropped uncerimoniously into a bowl on top of the fridge the Suday night before taking off on this grand road trip which finds itself at this moment nearly at it's end, yet curiously all I can think is that it is merely the beginning. Just down the beach from me a guy in a grey T shirt with "Staff" on the back has dug himself a BIG ASSED HOLE in the sand and directs the four kids with millitary percision that makes me sick! Everything he shouts at the children he shouts at them three times at least. "EVERYBODY GOT THEIR BUCKETS? YES? YES? YES? TWENTY MORE SCOOPS OF SAND FROM ALL OF YOU! NOW! NOW! NOW! NO, NO NO ANDREW! NO! NO! NO! WATCH WHERE YOU ARE FLINGING THAT SAND! WATCH OUT FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S EYES! EYES! EYES! NO! NO! NO! GET AWAY FROM THE HOLE! BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP!" Whew! Hey, I've got an idea! Shut the fuck up and let the kids have fun and play! I don't know, probably I'm wrong, I mean I don't even have kids. A pair of cute young Japanese backpacker girls wander by wearing capri pants and cute little hats that keep the deadly sun from their dark, shiny hair and smooth, silky necks. They stop, and the girl closest to me drops her black, chunky-heeled shoes she was carrying into the sand and slips them on, the sand too hot for her tiny, delicate feet. The beach is starting to fill up now, people with kids, groups,legions of kids - too many kids. I walk out across the sand toward the path, towards the parking lot. The sand scalds my feet, top and bottom, bottom and top. It's good, cleansing, then burning... burning too much now. The socks go back on, then the shoes but realy for all it's vulgar burning, it really is good. It's lunch time for me, sometine in the early afternoon, about 14:30 or so. Cheddar burger and fries at Jerimiah's Pub ($8.00). A jar of Keen's Mustard for the fries. I take too much at once and am struck with a pin and needle head rush. A woman in her sixities (although she looks to be about a hundred and three) grabs ten bucks woth of change and buys a load of Pull-Tab lottery tickets from the machine. She comes back to the bar and cashes in her one winning ticket with the bartender. He runs the ticket through a bar code scanner that chimes an inhuman electronic approximation of "We're in the Money." and her big win is: One free pull tab ticket. Huzzah! I chuckle as I eat and drink my cash away. Later I'm back at the boat sitting on the fore deck, scribbling. The weather is five or six degrees cooler today so it's almost bearable to sit out here in the shade of the dock piling. A shitload of boats have returned from who knows where today and the marina is just choked with them. There is a sixty foot cruiser two slips to my left with about 20 people on both levels of the aft deck, giggling, talking, screaming, blasting "Hotel California" from the stereo speakers. Out in False Creek's boating lanes, another in an almost uninterupted line of sea buses departs Science World's dock, heading towards Yaletown and all points beyond. I think back for a few moments to the beach today, grabbing hand fulls of sand and squeezing as hard as I can only to find that the harder I tried to hold on to the sand, the faster it found a way to escape my grip. Through my fingers, and out the sides, and back to the anonymous dunes at my side. The smell of the sea filling my nostrils and the powerful feeling of contentment and completeness that fills my gaping, black, wooden leg of a soul that seems never to be filled.