Home, and away
Hi there.
I’m home.
But my bag is packed and I’m leaving again in, oh, two minutes. I’ve got readings tonight and tomorrow with my fellow fiction finalists for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award.
But I wanted to say hello. Hello! I’ll be home for Halloween to carve pumpkins and take a small secret agent and a slightly larger vampire girl trick-or-treating. (The two eldest are declining to collect their quotas of candy this year, which saddens me slightly. Oh, how they grow. And mama wants those Coffee Crisps!)
Well, there go my two minutes. Time’s up. I’m off. More to come, soon.
xo, Carrie
In Vancouver, last day
In less than 24 hours, I will be home.
Meanwhile ….
eating a potato scone in my hotel room
after a run in the rain out past Kitsilano beach
& prepping for my last event here at the Vancouver Writers Fest, a panel at 5PM
thinking that the return to reality is going to be steep, rocky & uncompromising
knowing too that this shall pass
wondering what I’ll keep from what I’ve found on this adventure
wondering what I’ve found
In Vancouver, afloat
Seen, on walk to Granville market this morning.
Hi there.
I’m still in Vancouver.
Today is it 14 degrees, feels like 13, and there was sun, briefly, though it looks overcast again. That’s okay. I brought red rain boots, which are squashable and therefore transportable across the country in a very small carry-on bag. I wore them to a party on Wednesday night, because my other red shoes, the ones I’d worn to a fundraising event hosted by Joseph Boyden earlier in the evening, the fancy retro heels, had rendered my toes completely numb. Plus, they’re a bit big and I had to stuff them with tissues in order not to fall over whilst walking in them. (Sounds glamorous, I know. Busted.)
The rain boots felt so good. It was like wearing slippers to a party.
Party, party, party. It’s not all I’m doing. What am I doing? I’m living in another world, a parallel universe, one which feels like a rather long performance piece being written on the fly, with a wheeling cast of characters, and the utter absence of a working interior clock. The moderator on my panel this morning, Timothy Taylor, kept saying “tonight,” in his introductions, as in “Tonight, we welcome Carrie Snyder, Russell Wangersky, Ian Weir, and Herman Koch ….” And while I could have sworn it was mid-morning when we left the hotel to walk to the theatre, I almost started to believe that it had somehow, during our passage there, become tonight.
But it is not tonight, not yet. It is late afternoon in Vancouver and I haven’t gone for a walk, as intended, let alone a run. I have eaten a giant honey crisp apple bought at the Granville market this morning. That may be the single most healthy choice I’ve made all day.
I skyped with my children yesterday afternoon, but it only made me feel further away.
I’m living in a bubble. It’s a brief span of time, and I will look back on it fondly, but it’s a bubble nevertheless, an unreality, a fantasy, even, of hotel rooms and little shampoos and hospitality suites and rain boots paired with Little Black Dresses. There’s a haggard glamour to it all. I’ve got more grey hairs today than I did a week ago, I’m quite certain. I myself am a bubble, I think, too. Afloat. Not adrift, but afloat.
Home on Sunday.
xo, Carrie
In Vancouver, day of surreal
Hi there.
I’m in Vancouver.
The Weather Network tells me it’s 14 degrees, feels like 13, with 20-30 mm of rain expected to begin at 5:50PM, which coincidentally is around the time I’ll be taxiing to tonight’s event, a fundraiser at Vancouver House with Joseph Boyden.
Today may go down in my memory as one of the more surreal; if, that is, I can remember any of it. I’ve been having trouble sleeping on this trip. It was well after 1AM when my body finally shut down, and my alarm went off at 4:15AM. I roused myself, finished stuffing things into my bag (didn’t think it was all going to fit for a moment there), and caught a shuttle from the Banff Centre to the Calgary airport. It was too dark to say a proper goodbye to the mountains.
I slept on the shuttle, like someone who had been drugged rather than like a normal dozing human being. Off the shuttle, I felt delusional from exhaustion, wandering the airport, trying to behave like a responsible adult who understood self-check-in machines and how to attach luggage stickers and where to stand in line. I was randomly selected for the full-body pat-down, which, frankly, bothered me not at all. On the plane I slept that drugged sleep again, surfacing to see on the TV screen in the seat-back next to mine, live footage from Ottawa, where shots had been fired inside the Parliament buildings. A reservist killed at the war memorial for the unknown soldier. A gunman killed too. Baffled Canadians taking cellphone footage. Streets shut down.
There is nothing to be said about this that I feel qualified to say.
I can’t really connect with my emotions on the subject. It sounds trite to express sadness. But I am sad.
When we landed in Vancouver, I realized it was only 9AM here. The hotel generously found me a room. I slept the drugged sleep, roused myself, ate a burger for lunch and watched soccer in a sports bar. I texted with my family while eating, which made me feel less lonely. And then I went for a run on the seawall. Running is hard, it’s always hard, but it works. I feel better.
Kevin is sending me texts and photos from home: right now, my kids are playing music together in our living-room. My brother Karl is recording them. CJ is singing into a mic. The girls are playing ukuleles. And Albus is tapping out chords on the piano. It’s like my dream family come to life. Only I wish I were there to see it.
But I have seen Karl Ove Knausgaard–twice. First when checking in, and then when getting off the elevator in my running gear. Neither time did I fangirl him. It took some restraint.
I feel like I’ve been awake for days.
I need a short nap before putting my Little Black Dress and heading out to a party. Nothing about this day feels concrete, feels like I can dig my fingers into it and find the pulse. I’m oddly removed. I was running on the seawall an hour ago. I flew over the mountains this morning. I’m here now. I’m here, now.
xo, Carrie
PS This is the photo Kevin sent me of the kids, playing music together. Sorry. It’s very very tiny. It seems fitting: this is as close as I can get. Home feels far away, right now.
In Banff, with mountains
Hi there.
I’m in Banff.
The Weather Networks says it’s 17, feels like 16, which could also be described as “perfect.” I’ve been here since Saturday, late afternoon. I probably should have mentioned it sooner. But I’ve been stunned into silence by the mountains. There are mountains everywhere. It would be no exaggeration to claim that the first evening I was here, I was pulling out my phone to take photos of mountains every few steps.
It was like, hey, wow, holy crap that’s an awesome mountain right there!
Awesome mountain! Right there!
Take photo. Text to husband.
Turn head an inch and begin walking. Stop. Holy crap, another freaking mountain! Like, right there!
I mean, seriously! Look at that mountain!
Take photo. Text to husband.
When it seemed my husband had received enough mountain photos, I widened my range of recipients. If you haven’t gotten one yet, don’t worry, it’s on its way.
Morning mountain outside bedroom window.
For example, I texted the mountain that’s out my bedroom window to my 13-year-old. Let me rephrase that. I texted a mere photo of said mountain, not mountain itself.
“You should climb that, Mom,” he texts back.
It’s steeper than you think, I reply.
I mean, it’s sheer bloody rock, so far as I can tell. And I have a wobbly kneed fear of heights issue. I also read, with over-much attention and avidity, the section in my Banff Centre guide, provided for me in my room, on local wildlife. It’s a long section with many useful details that set my imagination into overdrive. Walking between buildings after dark, I find myself on the lookout for cougars. I know it’s irrational. But cougars. Mountain lions. What’s not to fear? I’ve noted, too, the signs posted around campus reminding us to keep “three bus lengths” between ourselves and any elk we might see. “Do not approach.” “Was not planning to, thanks.” Apparently there was a grizzly on the other side of Tunnel Mountain, blocking the path today. A grizzly. Tunnel Mountain? The one recommended as a nice stroll with a great view at the top? I might have to pass. Who knew I was such a wimp? Well, now we all do.
The thing is, I don’t need to trespass on Grizzly land to get a great view. Let me text you a photo of the great view I get just by turning my head.
In fact, it’s a bit unnerving, all the great views. I ate lunch with the writer Kim Thuy today, and she was saying there’s such as thing as suffering from too much beauty, and your head explodes; metaphorically, I presume. I tried looking up the syndrome back in my room. The search led me to a Tumblr site called “Too Much Beauty,” which mainly featured young male actors I didn’t recognize because I’m not a young female teenager. So that seems a dead end.
I wonder, could there be such a thing? Could one suffer from too much beauty, staggered by the immensity, the vast non-human scale of these complex rock creations towering over us, former seabeds embedded with ancient tropical coral reefs? How to write anything of consequence while looking at something so old, so immense, so austerely implacably beautiful?
I am therefore typing this in my room, facing a blank wall. It’s peaceful. I’m working well in here. I’m sipping a healthful beet/carrot/ginger concoction that I pray will dislodge my nasty cough so I can sleep through the night, once again. Truth be told, the free drinks, which seem to abound wherever writers crop up, have not been helping, either with the cough or the sleep.
But the beauty. It’s out there, waiting for me, whenever I’m ready to face it.
xo, Carrie
P.S. Never take a selfie with a mountain. There is no point. Mountain wins.
