June Things

Recommendations #2

Spring in Vancouver is long and lovely. Toronto (bless it) has winter followed by three weeks of slush, and then summer’s heavy heat descends on the city apparently overnight. But here, the world warms gently. The blossoms arrive early and last for months before they finally drop, sweet decaying smell rising from underfoot until the rain washes the pavement clean. Each week a new type of flower, course after course in a slowly unfolding feast for the senses. The trees get thick with new leaves that turn the sun above green. I wait patiently for its rays to sink deeper into the still ice-cold sea so I can swim again.

Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.

Neruda wrote that, presumably of June in Chile. I like knowing that this is a trembling time there too, even though our seasons are opposite.

Here are five things, from my spring to yours <3

1. Post-hike bus ride

When I was a kid, there was perhaps no purer bliss than collapsing into the backseat after a summer hike with my family. I’d wrench off my shoes, peel the muddy, burr-covered socks from my swollen feet, and relish the cool rubber of flip flop straps between my newly liberated toes. I’d fall into a stupor that wasn’t quite sleep and wasn’t quite waking, the daydreams coming and going like the passing scenery, completely safe in the knowledge that my dad would navigate us home every time. Even better if it started to rain so I could lose myself in the sound of drumming on the metal roof, watching transfixed as the drops chased each other down the window pane. If I was lucky—and I really was lucky—there would be ice cream or juicy wedges of watermelon waiting for me after the drive. Contrast makes that which we normally take for granted precious: resting after exertion, getting clean after being dirty, the indoors after the outdoors, sleep after a draining day. I generally hated car rides when I was little, but the post-hike exhaustion made me savour them.

You would think being jostled around on a public bus, shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of strangers who don’t believe in headphones and with your fate resting entirely on your own questionable sense of direction is worse than being chauffeured around by your parents in a private car, with all your needs taken care of and only your brother there to invade your personal space. But you would be wrong! I love taking public transit home from the mountains. There’s a lovely sense of fraternity with fellow travellers on the bus, and I think it’s exciting to make the commute part of the trek. Being all dirty and haggard, especially surrounded by businesspeople on their way home from work, makes me feel adventurous and countercultural—or it probably would if I didn’t live in a city where everyone hikes all the time and literally no one even owns a tie. In any case, it’s important to dramatize these things in your head.

Why I will never be able to afford a house in Vancouver

2. The kindness of strangers

While we’re listing reasons public transit rocks, the bus is also a great place to appreciate the kindness of strangers! For example: a few weeks ago, I had a bit of a sad sitcom moment. The infection in my right ear came back (why!), and soon after, I dropped my wireless earbud—just the left one, of course—on an especially crowded bus.¹ I couldn’t find it between all those pairs of feet, but the driver was so kind to me and promised to look for it once he finished his route. I wasn’t optimistic, but a few days later the transit lost and found office gave me a call.

3. Melt

Melt is an indie/soul band from NYC that I listened to in my last year of high school but had mostly forgotten about. They came to Van in April, and I went with a friend to their show and was so impressed! I know, I’m cheating again because this isn’t a June thing, but I really wanted to recommend their music. It’s funky and upbeat but also has a lot of depth, musically and lyrically, and I think Veronica’s voice is fantastic. It’s the kind of music where you can tell the band just had a blast making it—and probably also didn’t sleep for days and got way too up in each other’s business—which I love. They released their first album last year, and you should listen! The first and last tracks are my favourites. It’s not often that lyrics stop me in my tracks as completely as these did:

Doomed to all the same mistakes
Birth my soul anew
Fall in love with other people
To remember love with you

There are weeks when those words run through my head practically every day.

When I listened to Melt for the first time, I was also falling in love for the first time. The older I get, the more I see that everything in life happens in the wake of your first times.

4. Bugs

Bugs are so weird and beautiful. Staring at them reminds me of creation’s mind-boggling complexity and utter strangeness. They’re like tiny aliens, or elaborately dressed guests at a masquerade ball, putting on a hypnotizing display of sound, texture, colour, and movement. It’s disorienting to remember that there’s this whole miniature world of activity that permeates every part of our own, but that we almost never notice. I genuinely believe that if I look closely enough, all the secrets of the universe will be revealed to me. (Stay tuned for more updates as I approach enlightenment by looking at garden slugs!) I also find it interesting to observe my gut reactions while watching bugs—disgust and fear, mostly—and try to just sit with those feelings. I recommend bug-watching as a way to tap into your sense of childlike wonder and your ability to be present in the moment, as an exercise in humility, and as a gateway into what I think is a healthy kind of dissociation. You’ll also be delighted to know that bug-watching is a very affordable and egalitarian hobby! I personally practice it everywhere. Yesterday, there was a snow-white moth with a cape of feathers perched above the mirror in the dingy fourth-floor staff washroom of the political science building. The flowering bushes are full of fuzzy buzzing bees, who dance within inches of your face if you stay very still. Most sidewalks feature a highway of ants. And so on.

In the spirit of sincerity without taking yourself seriously (always the goal!), here’s a notes app poem about I wrote a couple of nights ago about bugs.² A few of you have had the privilege of seeing this already. I’m sure one day posterity will treasure and exalt it.

slug

the doorway,
slim artificial border
between outside and inside

the busy nocturnal ecosystem
interrupted
by two bare feet
small violence

ant:
tiny soldier tiny snowman
head, thorax, abdomen
i learned in grade school

potato bug:
hard armadillo armour over soft body
when i was small, i called him
roll-y poll-y

whiteblue pool of streetlamp light
lighting the night’s work,
revealing to me

a giant

smooth glistening
with a leopard’s stripes and
a sucking mouth

reaching, recoiling
at the threshold

5. Googling people

I still feel like a creepy stalker when I type people’s names into the Google search bar—it somehow seems more stalkerish than scrolling deep into their social media accounts—but I’m getting over that. I’m so curious to see how people from my past lives have turned out, although I find I’m rarely surprised, which is itself surprising. Some people seem to leave no trace online, and even when traces are easy to find, I know there must be a wide gap between these and reality; this spices the whole exercise up, adding challenge and mystery. Recently, my brother and I googled all our elementary school friends together, and I’m not sure if having a partner in crime made me feel more or less weird about it. He seemed to have zero reservations.

This is also (always) a recommendation to go listen to John Green, master of googling strangers.

Bonus fun fact: Like many languages, German sometimes imports new made-up verbs from English, and doesn’t translate them but conjugates them normally. The past participle of the verb “to google” in German is “gegoogelt.” Cracks me up in spite of it all.

1. I did silence for a while. Three months of silence was too much, so I wore one earbud like a bodyguard from a movie.

2. The poet at work