sugar crash

what a sweet time i've been having. as mentioned a few posts back, shortly after arriving back in vancouver i found a really great job. if you go to this website: katkam.ca, you can see where i spent the last days of summer. just past the beautiful Burrard Bridge, to the upper right of the photo, you'll see Vanier Park. in that vast, sweeping green glory, up til last wednesday, stood the tents of the Bard on the Beach festival.

what a beautiful place to spend my days! how many times did my breath catch as i beheld the bright blue of the ocean framed by lush green grass and majestic mountains? i got to spend the last weeks of summer working in a park where people go to fly kites and share picnics.

for three weeks, i worked as production assistant. it was great work! essentially the site's “caretaker,” i strolled the gorgeous grounds and even got the use a skill saw on several occasions. yea, power tools!!! and of course, what a thrill to be earning my keep in theatre. shakespeare may be a stretch from the indie theatre i tend to call home, but it's still theatre! wigs, costumes and props. stages and lights. and that sense of family. stalwart stage managers, wise-quipping actors and techies who can talk for hours about the finer points of control boards. and ghosts, of course.

AND I WON AT POKER, outwitting and outbidding a dozen other texas hold'em hopefuls. it was glorious!! also noteworthy was the pitch in putt in stanley park, a “sport” i do not excel at.. but i had a ridiculous amount of fun and between the smiles and chat, i could not stop from gasping in admiring pleasure at vancouver's most majestic park's endless wonders.

as if that wasn't enough, each shift was bookended by a bike ride from commercial drive (where i'd been living) down to the seaside bike trail. weaving through sunday strollers and smartly dressed joggers, taking in all the sweeping beauty. i can't tell you how many times i caught myself breathing, almost reverentially: “it's so beautiful!!!!!”

when the run came to and end, i worked on the crew, pulling down tents and pulling up floors. as back in may with kids fest, i loved the work: chortling with the other crew members and feeling my limbs whirr and purr in action. unlike kids fest, i had spent almost two months instead of only two weeks in that world; it made it just that little bit harder to let go. each fallen tent was a mild torture, a reminder that this exquisite experience was finite. on the first day, one of the actresses came into the tent she'd been performing in. she gasped, seeing the seats all gone and the stage up in splinters. it already looked so barren, and i could feel her trying to grasp onto something intangible. something that now lived only, ever, in memories.

after three weeks, it was over. the last tent had fallen and finally, i had a day off. i was slow and lethargic, hardly moving, hardly thinking. just barely being. a drastic change from the activity of the last weeks. it felt kinda like a sugar crash. that sweet sickly feeling that leaves you bloated and sleepy.

but smiling. for oh, how sweet it was...