HUnter4086 : An open notebook.

writers in the kitchen, dancers in administrative, DJs in receiving, etc etc

HUnter4086 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:22:13 +0000

My “pen name” is now generally known at work, where I came out of the closet as a writer by sharing some stories and zines. A few of my co-workers – not surprisingly as this is life, after all – are also involved in the arts in various capacities. Writing, or music, or what have you.We were receptive to each other’s extracurricular activities and traded notes.

I got sweaty-palmed anyway and for one day I took this site offline, intending to purge it of all work-related content. It’s one thing to know that your co-worker is a poet, or an underground radio host, or a stripper on the side. But on this site I reveal a lot more that can be used against me, I think.

Then I looked at the scope of what I’ve written and work talk is everywhere. I got really lazy, basically. I’ve left everything as-is. Hopefully I can trust my colleagues, should they stumble across this hot mess. And hopefully I will become less divisive when it comes to my arbitrary and delusional “this is real life (writing)” VS “this is FAKE life (working)” dichotomy.

Plus, all names and locations have been changed, edited, or otherwise half-arsedly disguised. To protect the innocent!

HUnter4086 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:09:47 +0000

Hunter4086 will be offline for a few days! It will appear to be “private” but this is not the case.

morning

HUnter4086 — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:57:24 +0000

Sometimes in the mornings I wake up for work very early, and R is still too much asleep to manage a goodbye when I leave. On many days our schedules line up so we can manage coffee together, the percolator fizzing on the stove and releasing a succulent caffeinated scent that props the eyes open. Our semi-coherent morning conversations are about dreams just ended or the books we fell asleep reading. Such mornings mean a lot to me because I easily feel isolated and disoriented with no one to talk to, which is most mornings and days. Having a boyfriend helps me stay rooted in the present, even though sometimes it is also a burden, this having-someone.

On alone-mornings I climb into the cycling gear needed to keep me dry/illuminated/warm, eat a half-assed breakfast, dash on some lipstick to feel dressed-up although it will be licked off by the time I navigate traffic and arrive at work. I dream my way through the faked urban wilderness of the Greenway, swerve around slow-moving buses on Commercial Drive and envy the few people I see populating the JJ Bean at 6 in the morning, absorbed in books or papers and warmly getting caffeinated behind windows dripping with condensation. I hang counter-intuitive rights that go contrary to the bike lane and so earn me some honks – but the buttonhooks conveniently lead me into the heart of Vancouver’s shit district, the downtowneastside – all one breathless word of paranoid projection and cliche. Where I do have to dodge minivans, SUVs, a gamut of family vehicles driven by furtive men with their hoods pulled up, suburban family men with a need/taste for winter a.m. prostitutes in clonky Payless boots, crack acne, thin jeans caked around thin thighs and a harsh, begging glow in their eyes.

And I arrive on time, with 15 or 10 minutes to spare but no one notices or says hello. I just take up my post: 4th floor, a quarter-acre of hallway and bathrooms and a smoking room and 1 weak library conisting of Danielle Steels and cowboy westerns that smell like mould. As a housekeeper I am not one of the ‘looked-at’ woman of society, I am the ‘back-drop’ person, someone who is invisible until something isn’t done. Someone who doesn’t take it personally when residents piss with the door open, piss on the floor, spill their coffees as they race up the stores in a jacked-up delirium; they ash their endless cigarettes all over the floor with a demented-offended “Fuck YOU” if you say anything.

And I ride through the dark streets with the city neon providing more illumination than any threat of dawn. It’s still dark and I am going to work at a ‘casual’ job. that is, a position that belongs to someone else and I’m just making ends meet while they go on holiday or call in real- or fake-sick. And my own impulse to write-off the day is very strong. I would like to call in sick and be drunk by 8 am on mimosas, or some other acceptable morning beverage at a breakfast dive, as I write in my notebook. I’d like to read my book for an uninteruppted 3 hour span with my coffee getting cold beside me. Wouldn’t we all?

There is something threatening about the touch of dawn on the massed-but-not-yet-bleeding rainclouds. In the morning I am always reminded of a loneliness that I’ve always felt haunted by, a feeling that threatens to shout gangway and trample my head. A creeping, sneaking loneliness, and it’s nothing so eloquent as ‘solitude.’

in the neighborhood

HUnter4086 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:45:59 +0000

Usually I bring lunch from home but lately I’ve been eating vietnamese sandwiches at a nearby dive run by a friendly mother-dad-and-kid team. Tofu, daikon, cilantro and hot peppers on a crusty Parisienne bun, a nod to imperialism, but so tasty. Eaten at the window, looking out at pigeons squabbling over some dropped crusts or, one day, a whole apple pie. The things you find on the ground in this neighborhood are strange.

One of the best florists I know of turns out to be in a shop I thought was abandoned. The lady inside wears a scarf and gloves against the cold, weaving exotic flowers into large bouquets for $10. She also sells limp silk plants and wreaths for funerals or restaurant openings.

If I didn’t see them in the daytime when things are bustling, I’d assume half the storefronts in the DTES are abandoned. At night the grocery stores roll all their displays off the sidewalks and park them in the aisles. The noodle houses, clothing stores, Chinese bakeries and take-away joints pull down the shutters, which have been tagged with graffitti and rusted by rain. Many are out of business, but dirty windows and litter piling up outside don’t necessarily indicate this state.