Today, errands took me to Vancouver’s Granville Island. The sun was out and so were the tourists (checking out the food market, artisan shops, etc. and avoiding the cement trucks and other “working” elements of the island, which is not really an island). Here are some images from my visit:

And two images as I left the “island” and headed for the pedestrain tunnel under Granville Street:

About noon today I decided to take a break from writing and go out for a Starbucks hot chocolate. I just missed the bus, which was frustrating, and had to walk to the Skytrain. Half way there, I looked up to see a bald eagle circling low in the blue sky (yes, blue sky, not gray and rainy). The eagle continued to circle above me the whole rest of my walk. Eagle sightings always feel significant — like you’ve been honored by their presence or they’re markers of something important that’s happening or about to happen…. At the very least, they remind us to pay attention…. And if I hadn’t missed the bus, I would have missed this one.

Although I’ve confessed to liking birthdays, what I don’t like about getting old is the memory potholes. You know, you walk into a room and forget what it was you went in there to do, you forget the name of someone you work with, etc.

The other day, I went all the way to the downtown library to pick up a book I’d placed on hold. I got to the library, dropped off some books I’d finished with, found a chair to sit down and jot some notes about the next scene in my story, which I’d been thinking about on the way to the library, then I left. I got all the way home before realizing I hadn’t picked up the hold book. (Ironically, the book I forgot to pick up was “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” by Kim Edwards)

But I did take these photos by the Stadium Skytrain station. I liked the juxtaposition of the living trees against the built walls, but also the way the walls have a kind of organic look with their layers and colours, and the tree with the peeling bark has the look of a wall covered with peeling advertising posters.

Some graffiti is just plain ugly vandalism, with no display of creativity (the tag and run variety). But some adds a touch of colour and character to stretches of drab urban landscape. The graffiti in the header at the top of this blog, for example, lends a feeling of life to a strip of characterless industrial buildings along the Skytrain line. The wild blackberries that threaten to swallow the graffiti, add another dimension, insinuating nature’s presence back into the scene.

To get the  photo for the header, I had to jump a ditch, walk along an overgrown stretch of abandoned train tracks and push my way through some bushes. I’m not sure what the few people who noticed thought I was doing. I also took this dumpster and Skytrain photograph (one of my favourite graffiti photos) near that same spot. What do you think? Vandalism or art?

When I came across these pink hearts painted on a blue dumpster near my house, then discovered pink hearts painted on other blue surfaces, I couldn’t help smiling and wondering about the whimsical artist who was compelled to go out in the middle of the night and clandestinely paint hearts all over the neighbourhood. Intriguing things happen in the city at night (aside from drug dealings, etc.). There’s a whole other world layered over top of the day-time one — populated by roving raccoons, coyotes and graffiti artists……

It happens at the same time every night — just before dark. One by one, winged black silhouettes begin to move across the sky. All over the city, as if in response to some mysterious signal, they abandon their day-time haunts, rise up and join the exodus. By ones at first, then twos, tens, hundreds….. they head in the same direction — silent, purposeful.

I look out the window of the Skytrain as I head home and catch sight of them, scrawled like graffiti on the pink-streaked sky — a secret code of moving black marks. A message of crows. I feel a thrill, a tug at my edges. As if something in me wants to pass through the hard Skytrain metal and glass, fly out into the night and join them? Or maybe it’s just the satisfaction of knowing they’re out there — beyond the control of city-planning, a mystery, a wildness……