I am taking one last look at this seaside city. I am leaving a well-lived dream behind.
They say that in life there are two kinds of sufferers, those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of it. It is certainly the latter that I find myself living here. This city is painful, so ephemeral, so ghostly as if everything lies always just beyond your grasp. The skycrapers and condos downtown are an illusion, a mirage of fulfilment and wealth, when really they are but skeletons. I went once to an apartment of a friend's friend in prestigious yaletown (the luxury living of downtown Vancouver) and what I found inside was a life of terrible mediocracy hidden behind a mask of culture and style. Another time I went to a so-called gallery showing in which a photographer I worked for participated in, again in Yaletown. What I saw was wannabe artists who would never find the true calling of their hearts. This is not the life I want to live, so I am coming back home, to a place where reality and dreams collide. Then, perhaps, my head will not always be in the clouds.
A certain shallowness permeates my being whenever I am in Vancouver. I don't know what it is exactly, or why it surfaces, but I think it is partially due to my insecurities, and partially because of the culture of the city. There is something very modern about Vancouver in that it lives by the law of new world capitalistic values having left behind it's true orgins. People are always striving forward to revolutionize, but how can they do that when they have forgotten, or are perhaps embarassed by where they came from? Our pasts are essential to us in creating a better self.
I also often feel fragmented here and I attribute that to the fragmented landscape of the city. Commuting from my home on Commercial Drive to downtown is like punching through various worlds. North Commercial is inherently different from South Commercial while the ride on the skytrain will take me through various neighborhoods and industrial areas and Chinatown before I finally hit the core. And within the core itself is a myriad of streets each distinct in its own right, existing in near proximity but somehow always segregated. Then there are the ethnic enclaves of Richmond and Surrey, the white collar glamour of North Vancouver and West Vancouver, and the suburbias of Burnaby, Delta, White Rock, Coquitlam and Abbotsford. I cannot wrap my head around all these places, I cannot even explore the city of Vancouver itself. To be here you must have a solid idea of where to go, or else you will get lost. The truth is I cannot choose in which world to live, I want to experience and live in all of them, but to do that is to fragment myself too much. It is time for me to stop experiencing so much, and time to choose what one life i want to live.
And these choices have been made, the ball is rolling, and the moon is waxing towards it's final full-bloom glory where certains things will end and others will begin.
They say that in life there are two kinds of sufferers, those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of it. It is certainly the latter that I find myself living here. This city is painful, so ephemeral, so ghostly as if everything lies always just beyond your grasp. The skycrapers and condos downtown are an illusion, a mirage of fulfilment and wealth, when really they are but skeletons. I went once to an apartment of a friend's friend in prestigious yaletown (the luxury living of downtown Vancouver) and what I found inside was a life of terrible mediocracy hidden behind a mask of culture and style. Another time I went to a so-called gallery showing in which a photographer I worked for participated in, again in Yaletown. What I saw was wannabe artists who would never find the true calling of their hearts. This is not the life I want to live, so I am coming back home, to a place where reality and dreams collide. Then, perhaps, my head will not always be in the clouds.
A certain shallowness permeates my being whenever I am in Vancouver. I don't know what it is exactly, or why it surfaces, but I think it is partially due to my insecurities, and partially because of the culture of the city. There is something very modern about Vancouver in that it lives by the law of new world capitalistic values having left behind it's true orgins. People are always striving forward to revolutionize, but how can they do that when they have forgotten, or are perhaps embarassed by where they came from? Our pasts are essential to us in creating a better self.
I also often feel fragmented here and I attribute that to the fragmented landscape of the city. Commuting from my home on Commercial Drive to downtown is like punching through various worlds. North Commercial is inherently different from South Commercial while the ride on the skytrain will take me through various neighborhoods and industrial areas and Chinatown before I finally hit the core. And within the core itself is a myriad of streets each distinct in its own right, existing in near proximity but somehow always segregated. Then there are the ethnic enclaves of Richmond and Surrey, the white collar glamour of North Vancouver and West Vancouver, and the suburbias of Burnaby, Delta, White Rock, Coquitlam and Abbotsford. I cannot wrap my head around all these places, I cannot even explore the city of Vancouver itself. To be here you must have a solid idea of where to go, or else you will get lost. The truth is I cannot choose in which world to live, I want to experience and live in all of them, but to do that is to fragment myself too much. It is time for me to stop experiencing so much, and time to choose what one life i want to live.
And these choices have been made, the ball is rolling, and the moon is waxing towards it's final full-bloom glory where certains things will end and others will begin.
posted by QC at 8:51 PM
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