Lacking all spell-checkery

It's 4:00 am. That means I have an hour before my alarm clock goes off so I can catch the early ferry back to the city. This happens to me sometimes (often) where the slight tension of knowing I have to wake up at some point and do something is just enough to keep me from sleeping. I'll be exhausted on the trip home, I know, but maybe I'll be able to sleep in the van.

I flew over with Happy so I could drive the island van back to Vancouver. I guess it needs a check-up or something. Maintenance. What they call it when they fiddle with cars.

It's been an odd weekend. Nice and all, but a weird bit of time to myself. Plus dog, of course. The dog loves it. As soon as she leapt (actually leapt, despite all efforts to carry her) from the seaplane to the dock, she became her island self, which is much more independent and, well, kind of burly? I got the impression, as I walked up the hill from the dock (the van is always parked midway up a hill, for some bewildering reason) that her feet were hitting the road in a particularly symbolic way. My high-roofed house, my native land at last, kind of thing.

I, on the other hand, took some adjusting. It always happens when I haven't been here in ages (all late-fall and winter), and then I get here alone, when it's still raining a bit, and play hermit. I'm just not all that good at it, right off. I mean I got off the plane and I was a little shakey. Not plane-shakey (the little planes, perversely, don't do that to me), but just frenetic. I don't know. Like there's a time change when you come to the island. Not a change from one time to another, but a change in the way time moves. So I show up and I'm caffeinated and buzzed with travel, even that little bit of travel, and I'm coming from home where everything is phone calls and the internet and friends, people, everywhere, and I show up and it all stops and the quiet here, at first, feels like I'm drowning in glue.

If you were to start drowning in glue, but in a way that somehow wasn't unpleasant, just... you know, a transition from not drowning in glue? That's sort of what it feels like. The transition.

It's quite a transition, is what I'm getting at.

But of course it's also familiar. More familiar than life in the city, in some ways, because my daily life here never changes much. Not when I'm by myself, anyway. There's a trip to the general store once a day, and a couple of walks to the lighthouse. I watch for freighters (just now one went by in the darkness and it drove me crazy that I couldn't run out and binocular the name - I'm still doing that) and I watch whatever's in the ocean. Like yesterday the view from the deck was like a Ravensburger puzzle, 1000 piece, you know what I mean? Those puzzle paintings where there are about three dozen animals all stuffed into one little area to make it easier on the person who puts the pieces together. I mean there were porpoises (the porpoises haven't left once, this trip, they just stay in the same general patch of ocean, fishing or something, and I can hear them breathe when they rise) and the usual two or three seals, and a sea lion was passing (sea lion noise: BLEEEEEEEESH), and meanwhile the otters were out. All I needed, really, was an orca in the background, breaching like crazy. And maybe an eagle catching a salmon. And the head of a bear sort of hanging in the rising moon, all transparent and judging.

There used to be bears on the island but people killed them. Dumb people.

The otters though, they haven't been around for a while. It's been nice to have them back. They play on the lower rocks (whatever they do, it looks like playing), and me and Happy surprised them once by coming around a corner almost on top of them. They just gave us a look, though, and gamboled into the ocean before Happy could even rush them. They gambol all the time. That's how they get around.

Last night I watched Ben-Hur on channel 12, the only channel you pick up just by plugging the television into the wall, and it took forever to get through. At first I had high hopes for it being at least slightly gay, what with Judah and Messala being all backslapping with each other in a way that seemed a little strained, if you know what I mean, but they failed me. And themselves, I mean. Plus, the whole movie turns out to be about Jesus. Who knew? But they never show his face, just the back of his head, so it had the feel of an Extreme Makeover episode. I kept expecting Jesus to turn around and have brand new sparkling teeth or something.

Speaking of teeth, I can't watch Charlton Heston in anything and remain calm. He makes me very unhappy. He's like the previous generation's Tom Cruise, or I don't know what. Plus: least convincing Jewish prince EVER.

You know I'm having trouble adjusting to life at the cabin when I have to watch channel 12, really.

So I'm glad I'm going back. Because I'm just not in the hermit frame of mind, these days. I mean if I'd been up here with someone, that would have been different. Or if the weather was slightly better, and if I'd packed more appropriately, like brought a DVD player and the playstation 2, for example.

I can't wait to come back though, when it's really the summer FOR REAL, and do it right. All night. Because then it's paradise here, you have to admit it. It's all hot and tanny, (tawny), and my friends are around, and fun is happening...

It just occurred to me, and I know it's one of those 4:51 am observations that aren't really new or very meaningful, but the cabin wouldn't be great, see, if I lived here all the time, because the cabin needs the city to be, you know, the cabin.

Did I just blow your mind?

Seriously though. If I lived here all the time, I'd go insane. It's because I live in a city that makes all the wonderful stuff about the island really pop. Like Charlton Heston's eyes in technicolour, man, just popping blue all over the place. But better than that, obviously. Just... with the popping.

In summation: I wuvs my cabin, but I needs my peeps. And I could really do with one of those milky bubble teas from the place out in Burnaby. I'm telling you.