Unaware of the impending awesomeness that would explode later this very same day, I started my Friday with the meditative decimation of 3 chocolate chip pan-cakes. This lead me to some startling considerations regarding the food-chain. In terms of evolution, it would be interesting to chart the lowly pancakes journey from simple ingredients to the wonderful floofy being that currently occupy so convenient a link in the food chain. I have heard of cooperative evolution, like cats and dogs advancing alongside humankind. So also do the items in the pan evolve from our species unique propensity for mixing. In the last 6000 years there has been a Cambrian explosion of deliciousness.
In considering such frivolities I missed the ferry to Quadra Island, and very nearly missed the second while frantically wheeling around Campbell River in search of the “one true” official BC Ferries parking lot. Instead I parked it on the surplus concrete that the downtown grows like an abundance of zurg-creep. The delay left me with just enough time for a good cardio as I went from the ticket-concession to the boat-ramp. If I caught a ferry every day, I could do marathons.
The water of the Strait is full of tides, currents, and counter currents that make it sufficiently dangerous to want to kayak. I love to watch the tides pulling against the currents, and the current pushing back against the fetch, and all swirling around one point like an explosion in a blender. The sky is dragged spiraling downwards through the whirlpools that descend to the seafloor like the finger of God. These pools so hypnotic it is dangerous even to gaze into them. Like the eyes of a succubus, they will pull you in from afar. The pull of a whirlpool between two currents is a lot like a meteor, cutting through an imagined border between the atmosphere and space. It runs along the fabric of gravity like a crack caught between two halves of a window, a spiral of fire reaching out for earth. How terrifying a tornado would look from the surface, where it would first be seen from a few meters away, when it was too late. I heard of cars and cattle being ripped apart by the forces of tornadoes. Surely combined with the weight of water a whirlpool would easily crush a person.
I hope to improve on my experience with tornadoes, but I don’t share Baum’s natural perception of them as gateways into other worlds. However, from above its marine counterpart looks fully equipped for inter-planal transport, and staring through the snarled and foamy teeth of a whirlpool brings to mind all the lungless, marine aliens that ever terrified us from that other world. The entire hoard of the celestial monsters would number 1 to 10 to their cousins in the sea, whose imagined depths incubated horrors more massive than the whole assembly of dragons. Inky masses writhing with hankering tentacles thick as anchor-cables, leaching the blood like the goodness of dreams from the valiant countenance of our ships, gurgling in trivial suffocation as they descended to the surface of another world, whose foreboding pillows disgorged a thousand worms every sizes, and congested the deck with the cracked bones of faceless beasts, half-dead, whose mouths protrude from sockets intended for eyes. Drowned sailors were tossed mercilessly through restless dreams or rummaged delusionally through the filed faces of toothy-toungued sea-swine for the likenesses of their loved ones.
Anyways.
My dear friend A and her boy S picked me up at the ferry. I’m their first guest, and they showed me an awesome time! The whole family lives on Quadra, and they’re establishing a kind of empire there made up of small conjoining properties. We toured around in the truck then settled in for some Irish coffees. Later we resolved to visit the beach. We colleted A’s sister, D and went to the bay to build a fire against a rock, which began crackling loudly. We imagine the rock to be a giant, unincubated ogopogo egg, and I hoped it would emerge like a sandworm from the surface of Dune. Alas it was a mere rock with no such sinister contents. S did try sitting on it, though, to the devilish injury of his nethers.
Later we went to the pub for a cultural experience. Quadra Islanders seem pretty rad. We all dressed in togas and flailed around on the dance floor with the locals. I danced with the server, who looked eager to bust a move, and with S, and A, and D and everyone really. I met an old-timer named Rod who, with little encouragement, told me the most fascinating near-death experiences involving fish-hooks wrenching him by the hand into processing machines and logging blocks blasting past his nose like bullets from Hellboy’s revolver. Out in the smoke-pit the local anti-hipsters sprouted ironies like alfalfa pastures from the corners of their cheeks, and sighed passive insults that billowed up in the air and settled among them, beckoning a fist fight none were ballsy enough to pick. Later we went to a house-party, where they charged us all a 5-dollar entrance fee, which we imagine went to the local dealer for some kind of dabbling we didn’t care to share in. I was happy chattering away, but we left early as the general disposition of the rabble disagreed with S, who only wanted his money back.
I love Quadra Island.
The Peak Reminded me of this today:
Love the “Shout” video. What an awesome song!
Quadra is super-cool. Fires on the beach are the bomb.