I’ve been responding to your questions in your head. Here I am trying to get out of my head.
You asked: Do you feel a sense of connection in Vancouver through your alley walks?
What effect do they have on you?
How do they shape your sense of belonging?
No. I don’t think I’ve ever really felt connected to Vancouver. I moved here in 2009, after my sister’s husband, one of the most irritatingly optimistic people you could ever meet, killed himself. His death readjusted everything in my life. Everything seemed surreal after that for quite some time, and that ephemerality still seems to sit in Vancouver for me.
Walking is just for me, one of the only forms of exercise I can tolerate, but also a thing that can be done when smoking weed, which is something that used to accompany a lot of my walks, a lot of my late-night wanderings. Or bike rides. I used to ride my bike a lot at night, always through empty city residential streets.
Walking through spaces where I find discarded objects, or graffiti/street art makes me feel teeny tiny connections with the unknown, unseen strangers who have left their mark there.
You asked:
Carrie, when you walk the back alleys at night, do you feel safe? What decisions do you make when walking at night? Do you post your images as you take them, or do you wait until you’re in the safety of your own home?
During the first Covid summer, 2020, I would dress up to go outside on long meandering late night walks. As you know, Tom, often works out of town, for weeks/months at a time. During that strange summer, I would experiment with eyeliner and eyeshadow, often emphasizing dark under eye circles or attempting a Joan Jett-esque hard rocker chick look, put on some black lipstick or more often a black lipstick/icy blue lip gloss combo that a friend called my sexy alien corpse look, then go outside and walk around the neighbourhood. It was easy to avoid people because people were in the habit of crossing streets when they saw someone else coming.
But after a while, I thought about how stupid it was to wander around the neighbourhood alone late at night, especially after I started bringing my ID with me in case my murdered body was found: it was rare to see other women out, it was always men, and I was a defiant stoner middle-aged woman. I realized I was vulnerable. Even though I felt immune and invisible, I wasn’t. The past two summers, when Tom hasn’t been at home, I stay inside, or on well-lit streets. And now that it is winter and dark at such an early time, I always carry a flashlight with me.
I’ve never gone through alleys alone at night though. I walk through alleys at night only with Tom, he’s my off-screen bodyguard: he isn’t larger than me, he isn’t a brute, but he has fighting skills, and scary-accurate reflexes.
I don’t post the images as I take them. Sometimes they are posted days or weeks later, sometimes within a few minutes of getting home. When I’m walking alone, I don’t want the distraction, I don’t want to take away from listening and watching for things like skunks, raccoons, coyotes, strangers, random cats seeking affection. I’ve seen people walk into street poles and almost get hit by cars by being so focused on their phones. I prefer being, as Tom says, situationally aware.
You asked:
But, I wonder, does belonging always have to be tied up with people? Could belonging also be entrenched in a place (a neighbourhood), one’s home, the land, the non-human creatures, the spiritual world?
Different kinds of belonging. Not always tied up with people. I lived in Banff for a while, and I always felt a wave of relief at a certain point along the highway from Calgary to Banff, as I became more amongst the mountains than anticipating the mountains. Banff’s alleys were great for avoiding tourist throngs on the main streets - I don’t remember any graffiti back then - but I would spend a lot of time alone in the woods and random mountain paths and in the cemetery.
You asked:
Do you remember that woman I told you about at that walking/gathering project I led a few summers ago along the Fraser River in Vancouver? What she said struck me: I belong at home, in my own place, but I don’t belong when I step outside.
Yes, I do remember. It resonated. Reverberated.
We have a neighbour who complains that our TV is too loud. This has been perplexing for me, as I like to think of myself as a Good Neighbour, a Considerate Citizen. We share a wall and a balcony. A complaint arrived, via email, the day after I watched a horror movie called A Quiet Place Part II. It was a hot summer evening, and I started the movie sometime around 7:30 or 8pm. It is, like the title, a mostly quiet movie. One of the actors is deaf, and plays a deaf character, and a lot of communication happens with sign language. But when it was loud … it was loud. I was conscious of Next Door Neighbour, and thought it was at a reasonable level, but alas. Complaint.
The problem, as I saw it, was that we both probably had our windows open, and the sound from our TV was leaking out of the window and into his. I promised to watch the volume, while also thinking, sheesh, another complaint while watching TV at a totally normal time? Our neighbours above us like to hold what sounds like wrestling matches on the weekends, and once vacuumed at 12:20 am. I’ve closed my windows when someone in the building burns their shitty cheap incense in the early morning, I don’t really see the big deal about closing a window if someone’s TV is too loud.
Next door neighbour eventually complained again, due to a 5pm Monday viewing of Peaky Blinders - according to the email, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, since he claimed that my loud movie and TV watching was “constant” and had been going on for months. I was dumbfounded. I sometimes go days without turning on the TV when Tom is away for work. I wondered what it sounded like in his suite that he was so angered that it was constant, when it was both illogical and impossible to actually be constant. I had even been away a couple of times, leaving the apartment with no one in it for a week at a time.
We’ve also had our downstairs neighbours complain about the “rude construction noises” coming from our suite, and a terse reminder that “some of us work from home!” That complaint came on a day when neither Tom nor I were even at home.
Turns out, the construction noises were coming from directly below them: they live above a retail space that is being outfitted to become a dentist’s office.
Unfortunately, I’ve become completely paranoid about what sounds we are producing. I wince and flinch a lot now when watching TV. I am embarrassed each time I laugh out loud at something, and let me tell you, Laura, we watch a lot of comedy around here. I laugh a lot. Or I used to? I no longer sing along to music when I’m alone, because I never really feel alone. Tom and I have weird, annoyed-with-each-other battles for the remote control. When we’ve gone to see a movie in the theatre, we both reflexively reach for volume controls that aren’t there. We try to wear headphones while watching movies. At 8pm. In our home. (I had to buy an extra long cord for mine.) And sometimes the adapter needs to be jiggled so the sound doesn’t cut out altogether.
I don’t feel like myself in my own home anymore. I am worried that I am loud, that I watch too many horror movies and action movies and am being judged for it, and more flinching and wincing is involved when I accidentally drop something on the floor: not because I may have damaged whatever flew out of my hands, but that someone will bang on the wall or on their ceiling, or I’ll get an email to let me know what an asshole I am for watching a movie with explosives at 8pm or dropping my phone at 6am.
I feel relief now when I leave my home. I feel more like myself when I am away from the place where I used to feel most comfortable. It’s been a strange and unpleasant adjustment.
Dear Laura,
I’ve been responding to your questions in your head. Here I am trying to get out of my head.
You asked: Do you feel a sense of connection in Vancouver through your alley walks?
What effect do they have on you?
How do they shape your sense of belonging?
No. I don’t think I’ve ever really felt connected to Vancouver. I moved here in 2009, after my sister’s husband, one of the most irritatingly optimistic people you could ever meet, killed himself. His death readjusted everything in my life. Everything seemed surreal after that for quite some time, and that ephemerality still seems to sit in Vancouver for me.
Walking is just for me, one of the only forms of exercise I can tolerate, but also a thing that can be done when smoking weed, which is something that used to accompany a lot of my walks, a lot of my late-night wanderings. Or bike rides. I used to ride my bike a lot at night, always through empty city residential streets.
Walking through spaces where I find discarded objects, or graffiti/street art makes me feel teeny tiny connections with the unknown, unseen strangers who have left their mark there.
You asked:
Carrie, when you walk the back alleys at night, do you feel safe? What decisions do you make when walking at night? Do you post your images as you take them, or do you wait until you’re in the safety of your own home?
During the first Covid summer, 2020, I would dress up to go outside on long meandering late night walks. As you know, Tom, often works out of town, for weeks/months at a time. During that strange summer, I would experiment with eyeliner and eyeshadow, often emphasizing dark under eye circles or attempting a Joan Jett-esque hard rocker chick look, put on some black lipstick or more often a black lipstick/icy blue lip gloss combo that a friend called my sexy alien corpse look, then go outside and walk around the neighbourhood. It was easy to avoid people because people were in the habit of crossing streets when they saw someone else coming.
But after a while, I thought about how stupid it was to wander around the neighbourhood alone late at night, especially after I started bringing my ID with me in case my murdered body was found: it was rare to see other women out, it was always men, and I was a defiant stoner middle-aged woman. I realized I was vulnerable. Even though I felt immune and invisible, I wasn’t. The past two summers, when Tom hasn’t been at home, I stay inside, or on well-lit streets. And now that it is winter and dark at such an early time, I always carry a flashlight with me.
I’ve never gone through alleys alone at night though. I walk through alleys at night only with Tom, he’s my off-screen bodyguard: he isn’t larger than me, he isn’t a brute, but he has fighting skills, and scary-accurate reflexes.
I don’t post the images as I take them. Sometimes they are posted days or weeks later, sometimes within a few minutes of getting home. When I’m walking alone, I don’t want the distraction, I don’t want to take away from listening and watching for things like skunks, raccoons, coyotes, strangers, random cats seeking affection. I’ve seen people walk into street poles and almost get hit by cars by being so focused on their phones. I prefer being, as Tom says, situationally aware.
You asked:
But, I wonder, does belonging always have to be tied up with people? Could belonging also be entrenched in a place (a neighbourhood), one’s home, the land, the non-human creatures, the spiritual world?
Different kinds of belonging. Not always tied up with people. I lived in Banff for a while, and I always felt a wave of relief at a certain point along the highway from Calgary to Banff, as I became more amongst the mountains than anticipating the mountains. Banff’s alleys were great for avoiding tourist throngs on the main streets - I don’t remember any graffiti back then - but I would spend a lot of time alone in the woods and random mountain paths and in the cemetery.
You asked:
Do you remember that woman I told you about at that walking/gathering project I led a few summers ago along the Fraser River in Vancouver? What she said struck me: I belong at home, in my own place, but I don’t belong when I step outside.
Yes, I do remember. It resonated. Reverberated.
We have a neighbour who complains that our TV is too loud. This has been perplexing for me, as I like to think of myself as a Good Neighbour, a Considerate Citizen. We share a wall and a balcony. A complaint arrived, via email, the day after I watched a horror movie called A Quiet Place Part II. It was a hot summer evening, and I started the movie sometime around 7:30 or 8pm. It is, like the title, a mostly quiet movie. One of the actors is deaf, and plays a deaf character, and a lot of communication happens with sign language. But when it was loud … it was loud. I was conscious of Next Door Neighbour, and thought it was at a reasonable level, but alas. Complaint.
The problem, as I saw it, was that we both probably had our windows open, and the sound from our TV was leaking out of the window and into his. I promised to watch the volume, while also thinking, sheesh, another complaint while watching TV at a totally normal time? Our neighbours above us like to hold what sounds like wrestling matches on the weekends, and once vacuumed at 12:20 am. I’ve closed my windows when someone in the building burns their shitty cheap incense in the early morning, I don’t really see the big deal about closing a window if someone’s TV is too loud.
Next door neighbour eventually complained again, due to a 5pm Monday viewing of Peaky Blinders - according to the email, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, since he claimed that my loud movie and TV watching was “constant” and had been going on for months. I was dumbfounded. I sometimes go days without turning on the TV when Tom is away for work. I wondered what it sounded like in his suite that he was so angered that it was constant, when it was both illogical and impossible to actually be constant. I had even been away a couple of times, leaving the apartment with no one in it for a week at a time.
We’ve also had our downstairs neighbours complain about the “rude construction noises” coming from our suite, and a terse reminder that “some of us work from home!” That complaint came on a day when neither Tom nor I were even at home.
Turns out, the construction noises were coming from directly below them: they live above a retail space that is being outfitted to become a dentist’s office.
Unfortunately, I’ve become completely paranoid about what sounds we are producing. I wince and flinch a lot now when watching TV. I am embarrassed each time I laugh out loud at something, and let me tell you, Laura, we watch a lot of comedy around here. I laugh a lot. Or I used to? I no longer sing along to music when I’m alone, because I never really feel alone. Tom and I have weird, annoyed-with-each-other battles for the remote control. When we’ve gone to see a movie in the theatre, we both reflexively reach for volume controls that aren’t there. We try to wear headphones while watching movies. At 8pm. In our home. (I had to buy an extra long cord for mine.) And sometimes the adapter needs to be jiggled so the sound doesn’t cut out altogether.
I don’t feel like myself in my own home anymore. I am worried that I am loud, that I watch too many horror movies and action movies and am being judged for it, and more flinching and wincing is involved when I accidentally drop something on the floor: not because I may have damaged whatever flew out of my hands, but that someone will bang on the wall or on their ceiling, or I’ll get an email to let me know what an asshole I am for watching a movie with explosives at 8pm or dropping my phone at 6am.
I feel relief now when I leave my home. I feel more like myself when I am away from the place where I used to feel most comfortable. It’s been a strange and unpleasant adjustment.
As always,
Carrie