Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 @ 9:22 am
City Living
In the morning, I walk from my building to the bus stop on Main Street. The sun is rising now, and pinks and magentas reflect from the glassy Vancouver skyline. Here I stand, gazing at the city. And in the city is where I am - the skyline is unmistakeable: BC Place, Harbour Tower, Yaletown, Science World, the viaducts, the Granville Street bridge. Gulls screaming above and the whirr of the trolley bus pulling up to the stop.
I ride through Chinatown, shabby and fragrant, where vagrants lurch shadily in through the back door of the bus, ride two stops, and stumble forth into the damp dawn.
The low rise shops, awnings blackened with moss and mould, gradually give way to concrete towers, some new and light and delicate, others heavy and concrete and serious.
I always thought that I'd feel trapped here, in the midst of so much concrete, so much y-axis. I always was afraid of the grit of Gastown, of the East Side. And then I find myself wandering after work, through the heart of it all, past soup kitchens and pidgeons and jetsam piled up in the gutters. Riding an elevator to my apartment, riding an elevator to my office. Feet never touching natural earth.
I guess that I adapt. Whether to the groomed, moonlit cross country ski trails of the North or to the manufactured landscape of the city. To see the good in different places, to immerse myself in the culture, to live in the moment. To adapt is to be human.
Home is a tricky thing these days.
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