heads or tails

The coin toss circumvented any aspect of chance by miraculously directing us into non-random random territory. This was no miracle but the will to self lubricate while taking in both the filth swirling in the stairwells and the unavoidable skyline. The city in a dualist nutshell: Scruffy/ yuppie, scrappy/ clueless, heartless/ caring. From every angle, almost every vista, stump town Vancouver is riddled with speculative cranes- their steel beaks feeding off re- bar and concrete. A wild condo hype bubble all aglow in buyer impulse and owner dissatisfaction. The current downturn perpetrated by Wall street thieves on our Stateside friends avoided here by water refugees, foreign buyers, mobsters, kid-less professionals, granite countertop and stainless steel seduced suckers. And behind and underneath all this a strip logged restless rain forest with ghosts of giant trees and creosote pools oozing up into flower beds topped with pet manure. Being a resident but still a visitor not rooted in nostalgia for what was, it would only be fair to supplant the entire evolving urban matrix of our fair city with an un- direction template not urged on by the inane froth of a coming Olympics but a population boom of Aboriginals reclaiming the leaky towers in a near future world in environmental crisis. Or just in plain words, the rain will knock down these buildings with constancy and devotion, water being the ultimate solvent. The memory canvas psyche map was painted by eggs in a greasy spoon, coffee in a known evangelical's bistro, pub fare in an Irish pub reeking of sailor's brawls, while outside impoverished angels flapped their broken wings. (gs)