Up to Vancouver for the day, for the relief and the reward of finishing that big project. It got me through the week thinking about the car filled solo and throbbing with music too much for two ears. It would be light and I’d be dressed for night, and that much was all true.

The wait at the border was long and tiresome. I watched the same old ritual that people have of getting out of their cars and trotting across the lawn at the arch, or retreating to one of the restrooms, Canadian or American, take-your-pick. To the west, the ocean, no one’s claim, articulated in the faded but bright winter’s sun. I tried to take a picture, the wait was so long—the wait so long, I started to read Tolkien.

Finally, on down that road empty for awhile and then suddenly the fog filling the delta and then up over the bridge and down again toward the city, and once in the city, it was mostly clear but for traffic. I don’t know why I haven’t really noticed it before, but there are few protected lefts and the ones that do exist, exist for two seconds. And, wouldn’t you know, I was going left toward UBC and the Museum of Anthropology. I made it, after lots of waiting and a few lefts, and way too many rights, I’m afraid. But the totems aren’t going anywhere now. They’ve no other safe place and I also think that this place is not a harbor but a treasury of what has been pillaged. There were so many quotidian items, such as spoons and hammers, to which no one belongs any more.

The sun set while I was there, high on the bluff and standing alone before the reconstructed longhouse. I walked back through the thickening fog along a path beside the museum that led to my car and I started the car down the side of the bluff, and there, unexpectedly, was the most incredible cosmic juxtaposition. The last bronze light of the sun blushed the tops of skyscrapers, which were corseleted in fog. The nearly full moon cast a white sheen over everything else, exciting the fog’s opacity and causing a blaze in the placid gray bay at the bottom of the hill. It was a delicate scene, lasting only a second and uncapturable except by memory.

Nothing could be done but funnel into town, over the bridge, into a parking garage in the thick of the touristy street to park for cheap and get out and go to MAC for black around the eyes, like Blondie.

And then out onto the street among workers displaced for the evening and witnessing the city as a city with its (veggie) hot dog vendors and the asian women snuggled around them. I love the steam rising from the carts and the heat they share on winter’s nights. I miss that about Seoul.

Headed for Howe and Awear along mostly empty and dark streets except for a few nice old hotels that hosted small crowds of the well-dressed. In front of one, a woman dressed like all the others, wearing a long winter coat and a fur hat, leaned against a crutch. She was talking to a man in a suit as I approached and when he left and I came toward her she talked to me too. "Do you have change for the bus?" And I didn’t and it was weird that she asked me, so I kept on walking all the way to Awear only to find it closed. On the way back, I saw the woman again, receiving money from a passerby. When I got to her she called me a jerk.

Then a stroll at the slow pace of the evening throng down Robson and a languid browse in Betsey Johnson. I wanted to eat dinner at Shabusen but the hostess said it would be a one-hour wait for one person. I didn't have enough time left on my parking to wait out the Friday night dinner rush. I decided just to stop for coffee instead. So I sat in a Blenz drinking slowly and watching the activity on the street.

The guy working there asked me if I was American and said he’d been to Seattle once. He said it was dirtier than Vancouver. I replied that, yes, it’s got a little more grit.

On the way back to the car I stopped at Le Chateau just to see and found a long black velvet skirt. I always score at this cheap little chain, even though, from the outside, most of the styles don’t appeal to me.

I was late returning to my car. I asked the two guys leaning over the hood if they were going to give me a ticket. One of the guys asked if it was my car and I replied that it was and that I was leaving. He was relieved, saying that he was wondering about writing a ticket because he wasn’t sure an American would pay it. I told him I like Vancouver and visit often, and that I would have paid it because I wouldn't want to worry that a warrant for my arrest had been issued. He laughed and shook my hand and rode off on his bike.

I called Andrew from the road and asked him to eat dinner with me when I got back into town. So we did, at the 5-Spot. I was overdressed in the long black velvet skirt and the Blondie eyes.