Thanks again for the commission. The money is already being well used. The first thing I did was treat myself to dinner. I finished early with my last client and went to the Naam which is Vancouver's premier vegetarian restaurant. Do you know the place? I think they first opened in 1967-8 and I began going there in 1973 when I was seventeen. I had a friend who was working there at the time so sometimes I would come by to visit. He was an interesting person himself, an artist who looked like the singer Cat Stevens long before he converted to Islam and lived on Wreck Beach.
I became a regular at the Naam (located at W. Fourth near Macdonald in Kitsilano) and spent a lot of time there throughout the seventies. I met a lot of interesting people there and some became lasting friends. It was so much a part of the hippy scene that used to define Kits that it has come to symbolize that legacy and in some ways could be considered the soul of Kitsilano.
It still has a beautiful serene atmosphere with lots of wood and farm house funk but, as I mentioned to my two servers, a boy and a girl both in their twenties and not having been born in those days, it has acquired a bit of an edge, though curiously they can't see this, and this doesn't surprise me because they are so much of the zeitgeist nowadays that they really can't see or appreciate the flavour of the times they live in, but isn't this the truth for all of us, no matter when we were young. Lovely people by the way and took quite an interest in the drawing I was working on there. One of them has also suggested I do an art show there and I think I might (I did show some paintings there ten years ago). I had one of my favourite dishes there, the avocado and cashew enchiladas.
At the time I couldn't help but think of the first time I had enchiladas. I was fifteen at the time and just finished grade nine. In those days I was hanging out with the Jesus Freaks in Vancouver and we had a coffee house in the Broadway and Granville area called the Shepherd's Call. It was Friday afternoon and I hitch hiked into Vancouver from Richmond where I lived (hitch hiking, though never safe, was done a lot in those days and yes, I had a lot of close calls which I will tell you about some time). When I arrived they were serving enchiladas for dinner (free) and they were so delicious I was hooked and you know something? Enchiladas remain my favourite Mexican dish.
I made my meal at the Naam go slow while reading a novel in Spanish. This is a library book so I have to read it and read it fast because of the due date so it has become a bit of a priority. Now that the commission is finished as well as the online university course I have some extra time. It is an interesting read, 621 pages by a Uruguayan writer, Isabel Pisano (she is also a journalist and actress and has also appeared in a Fellini film) and the book is about an ancient Egyptian/Atlantean manuscript a journalist comes into contact with that touches on the origins of the human race, gets the woman into a lot of trouble and jumps all over history, including episodes from Alexandria in Egypt when Christian hordes murdered Hytapia, the female mathematician and astrologer, as well as jumping around in Enlightenment Europe, the Iraqui War and the French Revolution. It's all in Spanish and a really great exercise for my language fluency. I'm reading it good and fast. I have it for three weeks, have read almost 450 pages and have nine days left.
After the dinner I took the bus to Pacific Spirit Park where I did a four and a half mile walk in the forest. It is particularly beautiful in the early summer evening and the light on the trees is just magical. Then I arrived at St. Anselm's, the Anglican parish I'm attending, for a concert put on by a fifty voice youth choir from Germany. They are professionally trained and just amazing. It was a benefit by donation for the church's homeless ministry and I was able to contribute twenty dollars. I also spent the concert working on the drawing which was kind of my way of coping with not sitting with anyone since almost everyone else came with friends or significant others. I don't know if it bothered anyone or not, if they even noticed and I'm hoping that it didn't and for me there was a beautiful synergy between the music and my art so I think it went very well.
Anyway, I'm sorry about the long and boring email, but there has just been such a beautiful poetic flow to my day today, largely thanks to your generosity through the art commission that I just had to thank you and share some of it with you.
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