Category: Certainties

Trans Mountain Building

Nice looking building.  Been admiring it for years now as it’s in the neighbourhood and have a clear view of it’s upper exteriors from the upper deck.

Polished pink granite, stainless steel and glass.  And that fine old red and white flag of our fine, fearless nation always on that top pinnacle pole against the sky.  In all kinds of weather it always looks good.

For years I’ve been admiring the building.  And the name.  Trans Mountain.  Trans Mountain.  What a cool name for a building.  Sounds like business and going places.  And they’ve got that big, grassy amenity like a park on the north side with the water feature and the steel gazebo thingy at the northwest corner.  I’m going to have to look that up.

It can be a bit mysterious when something goes right.  I mean in architecture.  Design.  Or in anything.  You see a lot of things and you wonder.  How did it happen?  It’s a disgrace.  But this outcome is good.  I hate that word.  Why don’t people just say this is what happened?

There’s not much info on this building.  It’s triple A.  The only AAA building in the area, whatever that means.  You tell me.  The building is fully leased, but no tenant, or should that be leasee, listed for the eighth floor.  Eight of thirteen floors.

There just isn’t a lot of info about this building, including what’s happening on the eighth floor.  And then you start to think.

Trans Mountain.  Trans Mountain.  Where have I heard that name before?  It’s like it can take years to put something together.  It’s like when you’re climbing and you’re stuck on a ledge at 14,000 feet.  You can be four feet from the tent but if you can’t make it, you can’t make it.

And then you make it.  Trans Mountain.  Trans Mountain building.  Trans Mountain pipeline.  Great Caesar’s ghost, Holmes!  There must be a connection!  Kinder Morgan!

It’s a complicated subject.  Très complicated, all right.  And getting more complicated every day.  Beauty and the Beast.  There’s got to be a line in the sand.  Let’s find it.

Very Complicated
Very Complicated

Photo courtesy CSN

On a completely unrelated subject I’d like to alert viewers to an event scant weeks away that I’ll be involved in at the Vancouver Public Library, Main Branch, downstairs in the spacious Alice McKay Room.  I’ll be reading poems by Philip Larkin for the Dead Poet’s Reading Series http://www.deadpoetslive.com/ Sunday, January 11, 2015.  3 pm. 

Details on the reading should be up on the site soon.  Great series.  Great readers.  The event is usually four or five readers reading poets of their choice.  Bringing it to the people.  I had the privilege last year of reading poems by Malcolm Lowry for the series.

 

Do You Still Have the Place On Saturn?

Struck as a good question. Une bonne question.  Somebody asked States at work.  You get wrapped up in it.  We do, and we’re hanging on to that place on Saturn despite the cost.  Despite the long ferry ride.  Takes most of a decade to get there, but no matter.

We like Saturn.  It’s super quiet and there’s nobody around to bother you if that’s what you want.  There’s a lot of rain in the winter but that’s no surprise.  It’s helium rain which makes your voice go kind of funny so that’ s different.  Singing in the helium rain.

There’s a store on Saturn, a couple actually, but it takes years to get there so we don’t bother much.  Some people find it a bit inconvenient.  We pack for a long vacation because there’s no choice.  It can be tough to get the time off but we work it out.

We wouldn’t dream of selling Saturn.  Even if we wanted to buyers can be hard to find.  A lot of people don’t like the commute and it’s true, ferry rates have gone way up the last few years.  Some people talk about building a bridge but that’ll never happen.  It’d be too expensive.

Saturn courtesy NASA
Saturn courtesy NASA

I think this shot was taken on a Tuesday night.  We were finally getting back to our Saturn home.

Always a lot of dusting and cobwebbing to do first getting in.  That’s okay because once you’re there time kind of stretches out.  No big rush to get on with your projects if you don’t especially feel like it.  A year’s nearly 30 years long.  You can waste time like anything and still have plenty left.  People on Saturn tend to be in for the long haul.

Yrs in the rain.

World Class Vinyl

How do I get onto the world stage?  This was on my mind.  I opened the envelope and saw it’s just another cancellation notice.  Dead air.  I thought maybe this one might be different.  I had expectations.  I remained optimistic.

What does it take to send someone over the edge?  I don’t know.  Let’s try it.  Let’s see if this dog can fly.  We do this even though we already know the answer.  Of course not.  It’s not a real dog.  It’s Pluto, the pajama bag dog.  I wish my pajama bag dog was still around.

I sure could use a hundred grand. You’ve got A and lots of B but you can’t quite find the rest of C.  Therefore, in this world, there’s no hope of getting to the big prize.  And you do. You wonder.  Nobody wonders why anymore.  The answer’s in the question.

Why anything?  Why?  Easy.  You didn’t win.  You weren’t even in the running.  You shake your head and what are you doing?  Shake shake.  That something positive might come of such pain and suffering.  The cost.  Thing’s going up.  It’s tragic.  And it doesn’t matter now.  But that isn’t really true.

There’s something you don’t understand.  Of course there is.  “Records” are making a comeback.  Reborn hard you might even say.  I couldn’t believe the crowd.  I couldn’t get near the platters.  There are a heck of a lot of fine humans of all ages really, really interested in the possibilities of 33 and a 3rd.

I was, or I mean, or I should expect to say, awesome.  But I’m not going to do that.  The incredibly surprising thing is I find the vinyl album I’ve been looking for.  And that search had gone on.

So it was a lesson.  Something goes right for a change.  Don’t give up.  Keep going.  It can still happen.  Especially true.  I was on my way out with a worthy substitute but saw this side table and a couple of old milk crates, bless them, full of albums.

I flick the first one back, as in the time-honoured custom, so much in evidence this fine afternoon, flicking through the albums, and here she is.  $10 by donation.  CITR.  Exultant.

https://www.facebook.com/Vinylrecordfair

 

Copyright States