steaz

Raindrops. More raindrops. Air so wet and humid you can practically drink it's muggy warmth. Trees, assorted in shape and size, dripping with moisture, the drops falling on grass, green and spongy, like, well, grass after days of intense summer rain. Traffic skating by, ripples in their wakes, one after another after another. Waiting tables a little higher than usual. Cupcakes, DVD cases, birthday discounts, red shirts, old people, soup samples in miniature folded paper cups, parking, decorations, chinese canadian cuisine, more parking, a gutted basement, exploding pop. Rain. More rain. And a jeep, rushing through it all. Heat on, windows off, leather wet. Lights blowing past in the dark. Reflections of movement off the pavement, and the doors, and the glass.

* * * *

I sit shirtless on the back deck, computer on my lap, and I experience summer relaxation. Sure it may be hard to see the screen, and there are wasps constantly investigating my legs, but it's not raining. It's not snowing. It's not cold, not too breezy, too dark, too hot, too loud, too quiet, too lonely, too busy. It's perfect. It's summer in the suburbs of the GVRD and I am content, surrounded by all the colours of the rainbow in impatiens and hydrangeas and petunias and fuchsias and all sorts of unnameables, dancing in the wind, coated by swimming shadows of the cedars up above. This is right now. I am here, and I wouldn't be anywhere else but here.

* * * *

memories: vaguely planned, delightfully made, easily lost.
..if not recorded.

* * * *

When the screen door opened, flapping back again on its weak hinges, the sweet satisfaction of new exploration was unbearable. We climbed the final ladder and made it to the top, whereupon we witnessed a new angle on the vancouver skyline in the evening. From Science world, what remains of the Plaza of Nations, past BC Place and the condos of Yaletown and False Creek, to One Wall Centre, reaching for the sky like a giant, glassy tube of lipstick long forgotten in the center of downtown by some nameless giant. The Cambie, Granville, and Burrard street bridges leading cars and pedestrians en masse into the core. Tonight is the opening night of the Celebration of Lights, a 4 night competition of music and fireworks, drawing a quarter of a million people nightly to the beaches surrounding English bay.

As we sat there on the roof, feeling the slight summer evening breeze, and watching the sky slowly gradient from blue to teal to violet to pink to orange, the first explosion peeked out from behind one of the many glass condo towers. We should have been working down below; we were paid to be working down below; but this was more than worth it. A simple 20 minutes spent perched atop a steel storage bin, 50ft above ground, watching the city watch lights and colours appear and fade into a dull brown fog. When it was over, we smiled, reminisced, and made the hot descent back into the bowels of the mechanical lair, dusty coffee grounds once again saturating our skin and senses.