Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Surviving a Post-Show, Pre-Apocalyptic August

My show closes on Sunday the 5th. 
Two-show-day: AC fail so sweating buckets; cast member sick; everyone sad but ready(ish) to move on; sing-act-bow-sing-act-bow-partyparty-sleep.
My beautiful show closes on Sunday night.

Monday morning, I buy a new bicycle. A beautiful blue bike and I ride it everywhere. I'm goal-oriented, so I make a list of all the places I want to get to, on the bike or on foot, and I GO. 

Deep Cove. 
Arbutus Greenway.
Port Moody.
Burnaby Heights Trail.

Those are the ones I've crossed off the list and there are more to come:
Bowen Island, Richmond Dyke Trail, Fort Langley, The River District, Vancouver Island. My satisfaction grows with every red line I use to cross off the names of places I've been. 


I have coffee with a dear friend I haven't connected with in a long while. I get free tickets (a perk of my job) and I see Mamma Mia with a new friend. 

I record two new songs with my band. It's some of the best work we've done. 

My love and I bike to the Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival, where The Rural Alberta Advantage sings keening songs about Canada, and the Suffers charm us with their funk, and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats simply blow us away. During their headlining set, the heavens open and sweet rain pours down, which is wonderful, until we have to bike home again and it's still raining. Hard. But we make it, and it's even kind of fun. 



For a few days it's cooler, and grey. Then the heat comes back and the air is sting-your-eyes thick with forest fire smoke. The world is burning up. 

I eat dim sum with a friend and go on a 25km bike ride, even though I am sick with a summer cold. I am knocked on my ass with fatigue that night, but the next day I start to feel better. 

I watch a concert in somebody's front yard, everybody sitting on steps or on the lip of the sunken patio to catch every note of the sweetest voice you ever heard.  Even in this grungy block between Broadway and 10th, in this nondescript front yard, there is so much beauty that it will make your eyes sting- with real tears this time, not just smoke. 

I catch the bus to a lake- A real lake! That you can catch a city bus to!- and I walk its small circumference, just like I did this time last year. Just like last year, it's hazy with smoke; just like last year I am filled with equal amounts joy and dread at the world. 



Just like last year I jump in and let the lake wrap her cool arms around me and I pretend things are normal and it's just another hot sunny day and maybe the world isn't ending, not just yet, please not just yet.  And then I dry off and wait for the bus to take my out of the forest and back to my home. 



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Beautiful - keep it coming!