I am having the afternoon off. My second and third clients have both cancelled today and this gives me the entire afternoon free. And I still get paid for the time. I have really done absolutely nothing productive. I bought some mature Swiss cheese at an Italian market in my former neighbourhood. This place is an Italian food store and delicatessen called the Bosa. I lived nearly across the street from this store in East Vancouver. in the nineties. I mentioned it in a recent post, "Kitty-Kitty-Kitty-Kitty!" about when I had to take that poor cat to the animal shelter as I was preparing for my own eviction.
It wasn't a bad place to live really. It was an L shaped bachelor unit in a building that must have been constructed in the sixties, the kind of rambling three story low rise that became the most frequent form of urban blight in its day. I was on the ground floor by the back door facing the parking lot. Upstairs and one suite over lived an aging hooker with her twenty-something son. She worked the neighbourhood and had a whole slough of regulars, sad and ordinary chaps slinking in and out of the building with her at all hours. I liked her and we often stopped to chat outside the building. She seemed to like my painting and we agreed that if she could persuade any of her regular johns to buy my art she would get ten per cent. For a while when I was busy at my canvas I would see her bringing one of her clients in with her while trying to schill my art for me, generously gesturing towards me while I was working at a canvas. There were no takers. During the time I lived there from February 1996 until June 1998 my little apartment became a bit of a social hub and I often had friends and their friends and family members over for meals. It was lots of fun. I also shopped at the Bosa which became my convenient source of cheese (especially Asiago, Swiss and Sardo) Nutella and good Italian bread. Kind Italian ladies of a certain age worked there and I knew them affectionately as the Bosa Ladies and knowing that I was struggling to get by they would often give me sweet deals on cheese or just undercharge me and insist the price was correct when I addressed them about it.
One of my clients phoned me today at the Bosa just when I had made my cheese purchase from a lady from Cadiz, Spain who always speaks to me in Spanish. I seem to know a lot of Spanish speaking people who work in or own stores and cafes, especially cafes, all across town and we always speak Spanish to each other. I was just about to put a five dollar bill in my wallet when he called, making the transaction a bit awkward. So he cancelled, making my day suddenly wide open. I was going to walk the three to four mile distance downtown then common sense got the better of me and I got on the bus. As we approached the Downtown Eastside some very dishevelled and poorly kept individuals, mostly men, were getting on the bus and I was reminded with the usual brutal frankness of real life of how little love and charity I really harbour towards those who are less fortunate. I myself have been homeless and have had to overcome mental health challenges yet how quickly I forget and yes it does matter even if I was never in the sad shape of some of my fellow passengers. A man got on with a woman who appeared to have a disability. He bluntly told an older Chinese passenger in a courtesy seat to move his bag so his girlfriend could sit down. He complied, then another street individual vacated his seat so he could sit next to his girlfriend.
I stopped at the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library for their book sale where I bought six books in Spanish all for $4.50. I must have bought thirty or more books in Spanish since I returned from my most recent trip to Mexico last spring where I bought probably a dozen. I owe my developing fluency in Spanish to having a wealth of literature in the language of Cervantes available on my own bookshelves. I have bought far more books than I can read and I want to be sure I have a good supply to last me for these remaining thirty or so years of my life (maybe forty?) I have lucked into some new local resources: the periodic book sales at the library, plus a couple of second hand bookstores I have recently become aware of for some decent selections of Spanish language literture.
On my way home I saw a sign on a Yaletown restaurant advertising "the taste of Yaletown". So, let's try to imagine what Yaletown would taste like. I think the principal ingredients would be dog shit and alcohol. Throw in generous amounts of asphalt, concrete, car exhaust, glass, brick, concrete and preciously overpriced food and gourmet coffee, add a little urine and vomit and some cigarette butts and I think that would approximate perhaps Marmite, or Vegemite, or just as likely, the taste of Yaletown, Vancouver's most pretentious neighbourhood.
(I see the sun is out and I'm going for a walk. I'll write more later)
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