the hidden place and the other time

Pictures from my Iowa trip are now up at Flickr!

A preview:




For those of you who have read Black Angel Crossroads...this is the titular Black Angel.

So, Vancouver.

Zip up north on a Friday afternoon, miss the downtown traffic, hit traffic in Everett. Coffee south of the border; into Canada, find the hotel, easy peasy. Priceline is my friend, oh yes.

Go find some dinner that night, write, collapse. The next morning, up early with me and out to breakfast, then off to the Trout Lake Farmer's Market and to see very briefly breklor and karlajean. I bought jam, listened to music, saw a long long line for the first tender red tomatoes of the season. Then caught a bus and then another bus to the VanDusen Botanical Gardens; was ambushed by an antique car show. Wander around and take pictures of flowers, vistas, look at how the curve of shaore is echoes by the carefully tended shrubs.

Then off once more for downtown, where I meet up with porphyre and her main squeeze and his mom. We went to Krazy!, a very cool exhibition at the Vancouver Art Museum. The piece I liked the most and understood the least was called No Ghost Just a Shell, the sto0ry of a character bought from a catalog, redesigned, experimented with, and ultimately killed and set free in one legal action.

Jhayne is a primal spirit of something, I'm convinced. We retired to her apartment, where I met her very nice housemate and her adorable cats, and we rested for a little bit in the soupy heat of the afternoon. My Celcius to Farenheit mental conversion failed me; nevertheless, it was hot. Then we walked out to a hall down the road a bit, where a show called The Valley of Ashes. Theater, shadow-show, movie, puppetry, revelers, masks, all centered aorund the story of a boy and...his plant.

I loved it.

Afterwards, we went to dinner, and then I made my way back to the hotel on the bus, about 1 am. Fell into bed, slept a few hours, got up and drove over to UBC, to the Nitobe Garden and the Museum of Anthropology. More pictures, of course; my feet were hurting, which was not lending itself to the serene contemplation of nature, but give me something to focus on and I can survive just about anything. The Muserum of Anthropology was well worth it, as well.

Drove home by way of Sumas, which confused the border guard; but Highway 9 was fun as it always is, and next time I'll make up a better excuse to take that border crossing.

Home again, home again; and here I am, a week later and only saying this now.

(Thank you, those of you who I saw! It was lovely to see your shining faces.)

I have always been good at traveling alone.

Don't get me wrong, I do like traveling with people. Especially if I'm going somewhere I've never really been before, and *especially* if it's somewhere that's going to be miles outside of my comfort zone. It really helps, when one has a combination of no direction sense and an inability to understand language in stressful situations, to have someone along with both those things.

However, if I'm going somewhere that's very likely to be within my comfort zone, I really enjoy traveling alone.

I'm a high-energy traveler, as a general rule. I'm not big on lying around on beaches or at swimming pools, though evenings spent writing are always appreciated. I'll eat just about anything strange I can find, I go on random hikes, I walk everywhere I can. (I walk, and I walk, and I walk. If I can walk there, I generally won't take a car.) I ignore the weather; temperatures that would send me scurrying for the shade at home are somehow more tolerable on vacation. I don't sleep very well in new places, so I’m usually up at the crack of dawn, ready to shower and take off for the day.

(A big exception to this is the writing retreats I do; but those are a vacation of a different sort.)

It's interesting to talk to Laura and Bryan about this; for them, a big part of the appeal of travel is having someone to talk to about it, to say, "Did you see that?" and "Wasn't that so cool?" That's something I never even thought of as part of the appeal of travel. I go, I stuff my head full with new things, and then I take some silence to process everything.

It turns out that I am very likely (as in, about 90% sure) going to Hawaii by myself this fall. I've been there once, when I was in high school, and I loved it and have wanted to go back ever since. When the opportunity came open, I decided I was going to be self-indulgent and return to the islands.

I really want to do some hikes while I'm there, but hiking by myself in a state far from home is a different prospect than doing a hike near home; one of the first rules of hiking is to always tell someone where you're going, the route you'll be taking, and when you are going to be arriving back. Not exactly possible when I'm by myself. So I'll bite the bullet and go out with a group or two, I think, which provides a safety net and also means that I don't have to pore over topo maps and plot routes.

But I will go, and there will be plants to commune with, an egregiously twisty road to navigate, good food to eat and utterly wringing-wet air to breathe. My skin will probably love me, a lot. (Right now, it hates me; it is in a nasty dry post-winter funk right now, and no amount of Aveda Hand Relief will stop its sulking. I have promised it a salt scrub in a couple of weeks.)

And it will be good.

*****

My dad turned 60 on the 9th. I meant to call him but I didn't manage to get to it on the day itself, and so last night he called me. I happened to be in Party City shopping for silver paper plates when he called, and for whatever reason (temporary insanity?) decided to actually take the call and get it over with.

So we chat for a few minutes, and I say happy birthday, and then he starts telling me about the cat that lives with him and my mom, Patches. Evidently, he's ill. He was lovingly describing exactly what was coming out of both ends of the cat when I managed to head him off with a well-timed, "Dad, the cell phone battery is dying, I'll talk to you later."

It was even true. Never was the chirp of a battery going flat so welcome.

*****

By the way, behind the cut is my playlist I use when I'm writing Tiamat's Kittens, slightly annotated.

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