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Grain of sand

I am feeling grainier and sandier by the day. I am making a lot of art but I haven’t shared it on the internet anywhere because why. Also I don’t have a scanner anymore.

I am trying to save money. I quit drinking for a few months. I am training rigorously at the pool for nothing in particular. I spend a lot of my time walking around the city, gazing up into people’s lives, evaluating their comfort spaces, comparing them to my own. I took some French lessons but they were too expensive. My progress has stagnated. All around me, people chat, laugh, yell into the phone, scream in the streets, and make business deals. I pick out words and phrases (”I think....” “the pool....” “he wants to.....” “I forgot.....”) and wonder how they are woven into sense with strings of mostly opaque dialogue. 

Current fascinations include butchery (maybe kind of seasonally appropriate) and also other people’s lives (how do I non-creepily say “light voyeurism?”)

August 22, 2024

I moved.

The last four months have slid by and I haven’t provided an update for my very large and dedicated fan base.

I just moved to Montreal, because it felt like time was up in Vancouver for every reason but also no specific reason. I found an apartment, I frenetically gathered objects from facebook marketplace, and now I’m sitting here, under the light of a Structube lamp I have coveted for at least two years, deleting account balance update emails from my bank. I think it was the right choice. 


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I drove across the whole country last month.

I even had my mom with me for the whole stretch of Calgary to Montreal, which was more fun than I thought it would be (despite the fact that it had been my idea to bring her). It was also a huge maturity moment for me; I was humbled several times as we would disagree on a course of action, and she would turn out to be absolutely right, and myself, absolutely completely wrong (”No, mom, there is nothing wrong with my car*, can you stop being hysterical?”)

*there was something wrong with my car. huge shout out to my mother for insisting that we go to a mechanic, and also for paying for the repair.

I walked out of my house on Clark Drive on July 6 for the last time. I miss my friends. I miss watching this blackberry bush slowly devour a pickup truck; the first photo I ever took of it was on my last opportunity to look at it.

I was utterly unemotional about leaving Vancouver itself. As I passed through the city limits I felt sure that I would never come back.

People keep saying to me, “BC will always be there! Live your life! Go somewhere new!”

Through my exit, it felt excruciatingly clear to me that the landscape I hold so dear will not always be there. I know it isn’t better or worse for my presence, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was abandoning a loved one in hospice to die on their own. 

I know the topic of tree planting and forestry has been beaten to death through the lore of so many 20-somethings, a few too many Vice articles, and my own tangents, so I’ll just say that I am unbelievably lucky to have spent so much of my life living in this depressingly temporary ecosystem. My heart breaks even at the thought of it. 

Like an insane person, I left for a gigantic east coast road trip two weeks after moving to Montreal. It was longer than it was supposed to be because I had the date wrong for my cousin’s wedding.

I spent a few days camping on my way out. I brought my fancy camera but I didn’t use it at all. 

The first day, I went camping in Maine and the whole time I felt like I was in a Spielberg movie.  The interaction I had with border guard was inscrutably ominous*, and I drove off into flag-lined highways feeling like something bad was about to happen. The towns looked exactly like the one in JAWS, if you could ignore the omnipresent TRUMP 2024 or I STAND WITH ISRAEL signage all over the place.

Nothing bad happened to me in Maine, but I did get caught in a torrential thunderstorm. 

* I’d told him that I was going camping on the coast. He raised his eyebrows, paused for five seconds as if in minor disbelief, and said, “Well, good luck.” He was also very good looking, which made him seem like an actor, which made me feel even more like something otherworldly was about to happen.

It is terrible but all I think about is housing right now.



This is approximately 2/3 of the living space I am currently occupying.

Not pictured - 2 other people in their own bedrooms, small galley kitchen, statement staircase.

Time is almost up in here!

Other options in Vancouver are kind of questionable.

Landlords seem preoccupied with warding off parties, pets, and overnight guests. They love taking all of your money and not using any of it for utilities.

The other most irritating thing in the world about home hunting in Vancouver is that ad taglines that sound reasonable ($1500, 2 bedroom apartment) are invariably posted either by a desperate roommate trying to get some stranger to move in with them or a landlord trying to separately rent out eight bedrooms in the same house.

The latter is increasingly common as the rules for short term rentals have changed in BC, so many former AirBnbs are no longer legal or viable. They are now marketed toward students and sad adults as “large rooming houses.” These are always bizarrely expensive, come with really, really ugly furniture, and you have to live with several people also chosen by the landlord. 

I did some research based on a budget of $1500/mo.

Fifteen hundred dollars goes further elsewhere.

Someone I dated a while ago lived in this basement suite near UBC (hi keegan hope you’re doing awesome ︎ ) and it was $1000 and I remember thinking that he was being ripped off because the kitchen was a hot plate and a microwave and the floor was completely linoleum and the whole thing was ugly as hell. The landlady also was extremely nosy and told him that he would have to pay an additional $600 per month that I was present on more than six days. 

I was listening to an episode of the Today, Explained! podcast about some panic that’s sweeping america about squatters. I guess this is something that’s only being talked about in right wing media.  I’m trying to imagine a position where I would be generally more sympathetic to landlords. I’m left with the impression from the podcast that it’s more of a panic than a widespread pervasive issue, but I can’t say I wasn’t inspired.

March 21, 2024

I need to read more fiction.

One of the things that kept me sane during tree planting was the lack of internet or cell service.

Sometimes, in the forest, you think of a word or a concept and have this intense craving to know all about it and look it up and implement it in your own life, but you can’t, so you just invent a definition for it.

Someone used the word “bucolic” yesterday. I’m trying to exercise self-control and just allow myself to wonder what it means, even though I’m on the internet, right here, right now.

Possible meanings of the word “bucolic:”

•  a type of disease that a baby would come down with that would force you to isolate them in a bubble, and they would have a lot of mucous coming out of their nose. 
• A way of describing a person who is large and round.
• A way of describing a friendship that has become sour
• A quality of foods that are slightly salty and soft to bite into
• A vague musty smell that is ultimately a little gross but reminds you of some time and place you haven’t thought about in a while
• Firm pliability
• Slipperiness due to being covered in soap
• Something sad but poignant that will become a cherished memory
• Shyness
• Warm brown