Red, orange, yellow and green.

It's our National Day for Truth and Reconciliation statutory holiday today (it's a date, not a day here. It would be nice to make it the first Monday in October every year but it's going to be September 30th every year instead so happy Tuesday! Sleep in!). We went and got a box of Orange-sprinkle Donuts with proceeds going to charities as expected and are going to do some outdoor-related big chores, but only a few, and then clean and prep the fireplaces (gas and wood) and the woodstoves for fall and winter. I'm ready for it. I bought hot chocolate and drug out all the heavy blankets. All the quilts have been washed, line-dried and put away. The curtains have been washed and rehung. The crock pots are lined up at the front of the cupboard and the picnic stuff is in the back. I have put  my birkenstocks away upstairs in the walk-in closet and brought my clogs out for fall. 

So ready. 

I took my ass to Knit City last weekend and the tattoo show too. It was busy busy. I got some handspun yarn. I saw the coolest artwork. I'm knitting for everyone now. I'm full up with projects until the spring. I'm dusting off the skeletons to perch in various locations around the property and I'm enjoying the leaves beginning to turn. I'm doing a sauna and a cold swim every single morning now too and taking melatonin and magnesium at night and sometimes when I sleep I sleep so well it's like winning an award.

Real Estate in Vancouver, volume 45638227452346910.

Indulge me, as I love to play the advocate of the Devil (not the literal, in this case. Too close to home). 

I once and still have a storied reputation as someone who can be sent a real-estate listing and send back a list of why it's perfect and also a list of why it's not, and Vancouver and surrounding areas are rife with material for me to peruse. 

I invite you to visit The Sanctuary. 

Probable the fifteenth or eightieth house/church/restaurant or cottage lot called this. Let's be honest. If it ain't a Haven, it'll be a Sanctuary. 

Carly and Eric built it. I don't know who they are but this article told me a little. Here's a quarter-acre impossible builders lot for half a million dollars (a steal!). Let's blast a house into the granite (we all know officials in the Sea to Sky are famous for allowing construction that ends in landslide fatalities, just ask Lions Bay) and it can 'nestle'. Ten feet from the houses on either side. But it's okay, because it will be natury and coming from grimy, noisy Gastown that means an awful lot. 

It will be PERFECT for our future tiny babies. The natural light. The crunchy Unesco vibes. The steep cliffs. The unfenced pools and outdoor saltwater bathtubs. Steep interior staircases and art-installation/stangulation hazard light fixtures notwithstanding. The poison mushrooms in the steep, deep and bear-filled woods outside.

Eric likes to open the windows up all the way across to be extra-super-nature-y. Who is running after the small babies while he's doing this? Where are we corralling these kids? In the sharp-edged bathtubs? In the pizza oven on the backyard uh..steppe that could fit a human? 

Maybe up by the singular raised garden bed where they grow all their own food (LOL) and supplement with those foraged mushrooms from around the hood? Maybe they keep them working to scrub endlessly the unsealed (because TOXIC but GAS FIREPLACES) porcelain tiles on every floor. To keep dirt at bay. 

Um. What?

So that article was published this year, in March and here it is the middle of September and it's already for sale! Maybe it's the 12k in property taxes that sealed the deal. Maybe this is the single most unlogical family home ever built and they tried to make it work but holy hell, there's only so many times you can yank a poison mushroom out of a hungry child's hand or soothe their little forehead bruises from hitting the side of those bathtubs. And a cloth (cloth?? Which one??!) designer sofa with children involved? Come on. 

Also if you look reallllly closely under the coffee table in the one photo there is something underneath, under the rug. Probably the architect they murdered for giving their family so much hope only to discover they've been living in a death trap all along. Now it can be yours for around seven million, give or take if you want them to include the ten-thousand-dollar 'board table' (I would, it matches the nature!).

Not a single photograph of the storied 'Moonlit Oculus'.  If there's magic, for God's sake show it to me.

I think I'll make an appointment to go see it because all of the pictures are from the article and not from the listing agents which is either a corner cut or a red flag or both and I want to know which. Who wants to come with me? 

The Hunter/d.

I woke up at four in the morning, opened the curtains and the constellation of Orion was directly in front of me. I gasped out loud and Ben woke up so fast he may have gotten whiplash. 

 Slumber-bee. Come back. 

He couldn't see it from the bed but I couldn't take my eyes off it. It's never been so close. It's never been right there but what do I know? Sometimes I have slept through it. Maybe there are more stars I can touch. I make a note to drink coffee at nine tonight so I can stay up. So I don't miss a thing. 

Lochlan stirs and I put my finger to my lips. Ben nods and lies back down, probably asleep before his head hit the pillow. He leaves room for me but I probably won't be back. Not with this rock show going on in front of me. 

I head downstairs and straight out the back door to where the sky will be mirrored by the sea. It's calm enough for reflection of the sort I am looking for and that's what's important. The chime will wake up the house, however and so I will enjoy it while it lasts because if I know one thing it's that Bridget is not allowed outside without supervision ever. It's so loud too. Sometimes I don't want to give the barometer, sometimes I just want to talk to ghosts, or to be alone. Sometimes even if it's dark. 

There are too many risks here at home. The ghosts, mainly. The cliffs. The bears. The tortured inner monologue. The lack of personal responsibility. The drugs. 

The history of me. 

I may be the star in their skies but in reality I'm a little black cloud. There's nothing shining here, a tarnished crown of life interrupted or rather a life I sleptwalked through.

Neamhchiontach. 

But the voice doesn't match the word and I turn and it's Lochlan, standing in the doorway, lit from within and without, my whole universe in all of its red-headed glory. A fiery planet too big in the universe to be a simple star. 

Come back to bed. 

But Orion-

Now, Bridge. 

 

 

Am I Damaged? Yes.

After a sleepless night folded in the arms of the Devil (shhhh, Halloween is coming), I checked my phone around five-something, actually seeking the rate change from Bank of Canada (I'm a day early, and thought it was Wednesday) only to discover that Robert Redford has died. 

He was 89. A magnificently prolific life, a study in perfect direction (I discovered to my delight as a teenager that he was not only an incredible actor but turned out to be an Academy-award winning Director as well. On his first try, no less. Ordinary People ruined me in a way I can't describe. It's like it was a harbinger of a life I didn't know I was about to confront firsthand.), a huge hand up for the environment and for culture in general.

And he and Jake shared that ridiculously-handsome tousled blonde goodness. I compared them relentlessly, though Jacob was over thirty years younger, he matched Redford for some sort of uncanny comparison no one could get past, once they put their finger on what it was that made Jake look so familiar. 

I watched every movie Redford was in. I walked around quoting lines from Three Days of the Condor and Barefoot in the Park. I ate up every second of Brubaker (weirdly, my absolute favourite movie that he starred in) and Indecent Proposal which is pretty much what Caleb patterned his whole existence on and I fell for it because I was curious and because I have issues and because they broke me young and they broke me early. 

I didn't really love Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid but the boys did so there's that. It was fun and different. Ditto The Sting but that's okay too. All the President's Men is a masterpiece and so was The Last Castle. So many films and I've seen them all. Such a huge loss for the entertainment world and for my little world as well. It gets smaller all the time but I do know I'm in awe of someone who can leave a scar on history in such a way as Redford has managed to. That's phenomenal and the world is a little dimmer today for such a bright star that has gone out. 

***

Did I need to address being with Caleb? I don't think so. Sometimes I wander the halls in the dark. Hell, sometimes I end up PJ in his wing. Sometimes Duncan. Jesus, not like any of this is new. Just because I don't write every day lately doesn't mean anything has ever actually changed.

I'm aware of your disappointment. I just don't care.