Vancookin'

Vagina by Naomi Wolf

Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

Paradise Lost

1. Stay High by Tove Lo

2. Back to the Basics by Lana Del Rey

3. Stay Gold by First Aid Kit

4. Don’t Play That Song by Aretha Franklin

5. Be My Baby by The Ronettes

6. You Don’t Own Me by Lesley Gore

7. Wide Open Spaces by Dixie Chicks

8. Beggin’ For Thread by Banks

9. Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen

           Late last August: I lie awake all night in the clean sheets of my parents’ house. I sleep with the windows wide open. Early in the morning my parents drive me to an airport on the outskirts of London. I hold my friend’s hand as we sit together in the airport lounge. I drink an orange juice and fold down pages in guidebooks. I watch other people. I regret wearing jeans for such a long flight. I choose a salad. I twitch. I get on the plane.

This year I have had time to make all the teenage mistakes I forgot to make during adolescence. I have read many books. I have stayed up late and woken up early. I have gazed at beauty arranged only by nature. I have made friends with people who speak in languages different to those in which they think. I have become best friends with old acquaintances. I have gone on long runs in the dark and taken cold showers in the afternoons. I have allowed myself to sit, very still, alone.

I did my best, I have done my best, I do my best, I am my best. There have been nights when I have arrived home by myself late at night and wondered: is this what this is supposed to feel like? Yes. Probably. I have enjoyed self-doubt; I have savoured it, although it tastes better in the morning when I am with friends and sunlight.

Toronto, Seattle, Banff, Whistler, New Orleans, Salt Spring Island, Tofino, Montreal, Hawaii. I look and wonder. I photograph everything: sunsets, donuts, people I like, people I detest, times now that remind me of times before, colours, darkness, fullness, homes, strange cities, ambling walks, gaps in teeth, early mornings, late evenings. I print these moments off and stick them onto my wall and stare at them as I go to sleep. I write lists of things that make me happy – I stick these to the walls as well. My bedroom becomes a museum of my present.

I package my time into neat memories and write ordered narratives out of splintered streams of consciousness.