When it's raining torrentially, it's good to listen to Marianne Faithfull, very loudly.I've been organizing and culling stuff. It's time. Because of transitions that are happening psychologically, it's long overdue, actually. Rebirth expressed tangibly. Okay, enough with the rhyming...habit forming for me. :-)
It just so happens that I have all these prints and a variety of artwork around that I really don't love. And, if you don't love it, let it go. A philosophy that can be applied to so much more than just stuff.
So, I gather this artwork and trot it over to the vacant lot on the corner. It just so happens that two other people are there and have set up their stuff flea-market style.
Unlike today, it was hot yesterday. I start talking to the man sitting on a footstool in front of massive suitcases. He's friendly. I like him instantly. I sense that he's different. He's interesting.
I find out that he's an East Vancouverite and when he was a young man in the 70's he escaped to Texada island and lived hermit-like and self-sufficiently, in a self-made shack where occasionally he feasted on oysters from the sea.
Then, he went to South East Asia and taught English where he eventually opened an ESL school, married, and the rest, as they say is history. He still has the businesses and come November will flea, back to a place he describes as "a nice place to live but I wouldn't want to visit." Jakarta, I think is where he means.
He has two grown daughters, in their 20s, who live with him in a Penthouse across the street.
Eventually, I meet one of his daughters. She is gorgeous. Model-like in the way Caucasian and Asian genetics mixes seem to consistently be. In addition to that she's very nice and conversation is easy. She shows me a hip hop magazine.
And, if any of you still need any convincing about the six degrees of separation reality. I begin talking to her and discover she is a recent SFU Communications grad who has been working part-time for the Business in Vancouver group. Now, it just so happens that I just wrote a profile for the BIV newspaper. So, in the course of writing three stories for them I have been e-mailing back and forth with the editor. And, through the tone of his e-mails I can tell that he is a very nice guy. Respectful and polite. I'm curious about him.
So I ask her if she has had any interactions with him. She says not really. But, she notices that he always eats his lunch alone, after everyone else.
She says he has the most amazing lunches. "Really?," I say. "Well, maybe he eats alone because he doesn't want anyone coveting his lunch." "And muffins," she says. "He has the best looking muffins." No euphemisms here.
I tell her that it's too bad she didn't know him because she could then go to work on Monday and jokingly tell him the story of running into me and how I'm so desperate that I have to sell off my stuff while I wait to get paid for freelancing.
All and all it was a fun afternoon. I didn't sell a thing but they gave me these beautiful batiks - gratis.