Just another Day on Salt Spring

It was kind of an interesting day after a long, rather uneventful week.

My co-worker wasn`t around so I spent it working alone and had to work the full five days. I really missed her company. Now, that wouldn`t have been so bad if it hadn`t been totally dead in the office but it was. Not many people were coming in looking for work.

Then, today, Friday, a couple of things happened. Someone came in whom I`d met before. He`s been in a few times. I could tell he was feeling kind of desperate or depressed. When I get depressed all you have to do is listen to my voice and you`ll hear it. So, I can recognize that in other people when it manifests the same way. So, I didn`t say anything until he actually brought it up. And,I was able to talk to him openly about it because we were alone in the office. And, then we worked on his resume together and when he left he said he was feeling better, more hopeful, and that just made me feel so good that I could help him in that way.

Then, I go for lunch and I end up sharing my table with this guy whom I`d seen previously when I went to Yoga last Sunday. He joined me while I finished my lunch. Turns out he`s a divorce lawyer from Malibu who retired last year and who`s looking at property on Salt Spring and on Vancouver Island. Do you know how surreal it is to sit across from someone who is speaking about property and when they mention the price and refer to 2 they actually mean 2 million It`s just so bizarre.

I find it sad when men use their wealth as a means to impress as if that`s the only way they are valuable. And, I suppose if you live in Malibu, that`s really what matters most. Then, he invited me to have a drink after work so I decided to celebrate with a lime margarita.

I wasn`t even going to go but then I thought, Gayle, smarten up. You have been bored this week. Just go and have a conversation. When are you ever going to get to talk to a divorce lawyer from Malibu in this lifetime. Never! Well, that`s not true. Today actually! So, I went and it was actually kind of interesting. I enjoyed it. He was putting Salt Spring down which I thought was particularly American of him even though technically he is a Canadian with dual citizenship. He was referring to all the, for lack of a better word, dead beats. It`s all about context I said to him. We are going to meet up again on Sunday (barring a snowstorm).

Tonight I went and saw Sean Penn in Milk at our local cinema, The Fritz. I love The Fritz. Except for the chairs which are old, you never see trailers at The Fritz. You only ever see beautiful photos of the Gulf Islands or of Kayak trips until the main feature is set to run.

Obviously in the 1970s when I was a teenager, I wasn`t thinking about gay rights and to see this movie and to see what Harvey Milk did and how hard he fought for Gay rights and rallied so many others is just a reminder of how far things have come in comparison.

Tomorrow morning, I`m going to see Madama Butterfly at ArtSpring. It gets beamed in or whatever you call it from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I hope I enjoy the experience. I find it absolutely amazing that you can be living on a little island of 10,000 people in Canada and get to see what people in New York are paying big bucks for all thanks to technology.

Chocolates for the President

I have a wonderful, crazy, cultured friend who shall remain anonymous but who works for the Americans. That's right. She's a Canadian who works for an American Consulate. She's the Communications Director (I just made that up, I have no idea what her title is but it has something to do with Communications I expect since that's what she normally does).

Now, she was finally able to set foot in her new office about 5 months after the initial news that she'd been hired because it took her that long to make clearance on security. The only person they didn't interview was her Grade 1 teacher and her former Japanese playboyfriend Matsumi. (Which, if you ask me was quite an oversight!)

She's a real bon vivant and has to meet diplomats and others and schmooze and know ridiculously obscure details about all sorts of countries in the world that I didn't even know existed and in general just ensure America's understanding of Alberta is on track. Afterall, there's oil in them there rocks. Would there be any other reason that Americans would give a flying cow patch about Alberta? In short, she has to handle whatever comes her way, professionally, diplomatically (no international incidents please) and efficiently.

For a while, she thought she might totally luck out and get to go to Ottawa when President Obama made his first visit. But, that didn't pan out (money's a bit tight south of the border have you heard?). So, she had to stay back in Calgary and handle the really BIG issues.

One of the most time-consuming issues that she had her finger on the pulse on was what to do with a 40 pound box of chocolates that the CEO of a well-known, BC-based Chocolate company (that shall also remain nameless) was insisting be given as a gift to the President. Give me a break. Why would he want THOSE chocolates when he could have Bernard Callebaut chocolate located right in Calgary.

Anyway, the CEO (as CEO's tend to be) was very persuasive and wouldn't take no for an answer on how to go about bestowing these chocolates on Obama. The only thing is, I(like Duh) you can't just send a 40 pound box of chocolates to the President of the United States. Why do you think he drives around in something called The Beast?

You don't go running up to Barack with chocolates. You have to send the chocolates to his attention at the White House and once the bloodhounds and the Secret Agents are done with the chocolates, all he gets is the empty box, brown wrappers falling out the sides with a note on the top that says, This was a 40 pound box of chocolates from the CEO of a Canadian company that makes chocolates at which point some underling will write a tasteful, appreciative, Thank you. (And, I digress but that brings me to another Blog post about why movie stars and the rich, the people who want for nothing materialistically, are always being thrown free stuff like evening gowns, Nike clothing, trips, hookers, etc.) Does that make any sense?

So, anyway, in having to go back and forth between the Chief of Protocal at the White House and the president of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, my friend started to get really amused by it all. Giddy. A bit delerious. A little pissed off with the President, of the chocolate company that is. She began to wonder whether there was an Office of Perishable Gifts in the White House and about the kind of things that might actually end up there. Cheese. Smoked Salmon. Chcolate. Pickled Herring from Finland. Caviar. (the list is ....well, just take a look inside your own fridge).

I have no idea if such an office exists I said, laughing, but I could imagine that if they're smart, and staying true to Al Gore's intentions, just behind the Office of Perishable Gifts there's a door that opens onto even a bigger office and that one is full of nothing but compost bins. No shit!

Bitter Sweet Transitions

Now these people must have a few tricks when it comes to staying in touch. Starting from left to right, she's from Costa Rica but has been residing in Vancouver for the past two years doing a Post Doc at Childrens' Hospital. He's her boyfriend from Spain debating whether to move to Costa Rica to be with her. The other two are from Argentina, both baby doctors too, now residents in Vancouver.
Yesterday I was listening to CBC Radio in the afternoon and they were talking to the writers/poets who had won the 2008 CBC Literary Awards. When Eleanor Wachtel finished interviewing the new winners, she then went back to a former winner, Gail Anderson Dargatz wrote The Girl with the Bell Necklace and that was the beginning of her "real" life as a successful writer which really took off when she wrote The Cure for Death by Lightening.

So, the show ended with a segment where a man was interviewing Gail, asking her questions. One of the questions was "What do you look for in a friend?" Now, most of us might think she'd respond loyalty, kindness, adventure, support, humour, intelligence, but in fact her answer was proximity.

Now, she didn't mean, whoever is close by will do. She did mean that in a world where people are very transient, what she looks for is being able to not be transient and maintain friendships with people who live close-by because that's better than friendships that are pieced together on Twitter, on Facebook, in snippets of time when one or the other happens to be in the same place for a few days or a month.

Why am I telling you this? Because, when I moved to Salt Spring, one of the things I really didn't think much about prior to moving was the fact that I might miss my friends. It seems a bit crazy that I wouldn't have thought of that in more detail because I'd built up a really good circle of friends in Vancouver in the years between 1995 and 2008. They are really important to me. I have a really good time with all of them. I genuinely looked forward to spending time with them and we always have fun, or a laugh, or good conversation and made each other feel better when that mattered. I was just in denial I suppose about how changing places geographically and not being there to continue to do things, in person with them, can't help but affect the friendship. It lessens it no matter how much you don't want that to happen.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately and tonight, I had a conversation with Lisa, one of my bestest friends, someone who has brought me a lot of joy (and vice versa) in the past 6 years and somehow no matter how much we (I) know that life is change and if it isn't, then you're not really living, it's not always easy to go with the transitions away from people that make you really happy. Maybe it's especially more significant when you're single because your friends are your "peeps". You don't come home to one person for support and that's both not a great thing and a great thing if you know what I mean.

Anyway, Lisa and I were talking tonight and it's clear that we're all in transition. I started it by moving. And, even though it's only a few hours from Vancouver, it's a long way when you're not able to consistently hang out with someone to create new memories.

Lisa's having a baby. Her life is about to undergo the biggest transition (next to our own births and deaths) there is. Once the baby comes, it will be very hard for us to maintain a friendship because her life will be consumed by the baby out of necessity and she will then join up with other mothers and that commonality will bond her to them. She was feeling wistful talking about how another good friend of hers was talking about going on a kayak trip to the Queen Charlottes this summer and how in different ways she's feeling kind of wistful, anxious about that separation in possibilities. Because, normally Lisa would go kayaking but not with a baby. Although I guess, technically, it's not impossible. The indians did it. Where's the papoose?

So, there you go. That's what I'm thinking tonight. Life is change. And, it's when you have to let go of the really fun parts to do what you have to do, even when you want to do it, that you can't help but reflect back on the great times you had with those people you were so close to and just hope you can find a way to get back to that place with others in new ways over time and manage to somehow keep a connection with the ones you have had to physically leave.

I'm sure this is nothing new for most people, especially the kind that move around the world, but I've never moved countries or even places within the country hardly at all so it's a revelation.