City Of God 26

I was sitting in a café in my old neighbourhood, just the other day. It is called Continental Coffee on Commercial Drive. I used to source my beans there, long ago, when Reagan was in the White House, Thatcher in 10 Downing Street, Mulroney in 24 Sussex Drive, the Berlin Wall was still standing and everyone lived in terror of global nuclear annihilation. That was before Commercial Dr. became known as 'The Drive", or the Drivel as one guy from Alberta (where else?) tended to call it. But here I digress. I had a little extra time on my hands between client appointments and this gave me time to sit by the window with my sketchbook and Americano and simply enjoy the relaxed communitarian ambience of Vancouver's premier roots neighbourhood, despite the gentrification that has already made it unaffordable to someone like me. I saw someone walk by outside and wondered immediately if it could be a friend I knew twenty years ago, but no, this guy would be twenty years older now than the way this stranger looked. (Where does the time go?). I thought of how this individual helped me when I didn't have a stable place to live in 1998-99. He had a photo studio where he worked and lived in an exposed brick loft in a heritage building on Hastings Street. I showed my art in his studio and he allowed me to stay there on his futon sometimes when I was in need. A very kind individual. Then I pondered the whole chain of events and occurrences that made it possible for me to know this man, and that had none of those links been in place, he would not have been there to help me and my situation might well have ended up even worse. I was told about this person by another artist I knew. We had rather a brief friendship. I found her a very difficult person to be with, given her opinionated bossiness, and when I confronted her about it in a coffee shop she burst into tears then left. I never saw her again. She was well-intentioned, and kind, but hyper-critical and controlling. She was doing a show at this man's studio, spoke highly of him, told him about me, and on her recommendation I visited him and we became as they used to say in vintage British novels, fast friends. He liked my art. And me. The mutual friend who introduced us I had become acquainted with under the most fragile of circumstances. I met her at a special program to help get starving artists off of welfare. I lasted there but one day. The facilitator was an awful person, rude, mean-spirited, chronically angry and judgmental. I found her actually traumatizing, and realized by the end of the first day that I was already on my way to a major meltdown. This other artist and I did exchange contact information and hung out for a few months. She was the one who got me in touch with the kind photographer who befriended me and gave me shelter when I was homeless. It was another artist, a friend, who informed me about the program for starving artists. We had become friends after several years of seeing each other hanging out in the same café, a warmed-over hip joint named Café S'il Vous Plait on Robson and Richards Street (now a sushi joint). For the first couple of years we eyed each other with mutual distrust and suspicion, but also curiosity and intrigue. it seemed a very tenuous and fragile process forming a friendship with him, but good friends we became, and he also sheltered me in his home during my period of homelessness I had already been a regular at the S'il Vous Plait since they opened in 1986 or so, and had already met and befriended or been befriended by a number of people there, staff and customers. I felt a strong connection with the establishment and it somehow seemed that my destiny was somehow connected to that café. It turned out that my intuition served me well. Simply by being there and staying open and receptive to others opened doors for me, and also helped save my life in the end. I find it curious how our lives are often run and guided along such spontaneous and serendipitous threads and chains. We are all connected, if tenuously, and these fragile connections have to be recognized and celebrated. We are not alone, not in the world, nor in the universe.