so i just tried responding to a "fan's" email after too many months, and alas the email account no longer exists. i'm really sorry for the delay in response... so anyway, "audrey hepburn"/pretty_1975, if you're still reading my words, here's my reply:
> is that your real name?
yes, kaen is my real name. well, it's short for "kathleen." some people got kate or kathy, i got kaen. and i love it!
> I am afraid to tell you where I live, for the fear of 'turning' you off
> completelty - I live in 'toronto' sad, but true.
i was really shocked to read this. i know i was really happy to be back in vancouver, but i'm dismayed that experiencing joy to be back there somehow had to translate into my disliking toronto. sure, there may be things i don't love about toronto, but there are things i definitely don't love about vancouver either. and there are also things i love about each city. and i do, i love toronto. i love the buildings, the mass, the amount of things going on and on and on. i even love the silly tower!! i'm sorry you don't seem to really like this city, and i'm even sorrier you somehow interpreted that i also dislike it.
anyway, hope yer doin well,
k)
Thursday, November 23, 2006
gravy capital of canada
so i spent my summer months in drumheller, alberta.
a few quick facts:
- drumheller is located in the awe-full badlands of alberta, about an hour northeast of calgary (get it, awe-full? bad? get it? please note my geeky attempt at humour is in no way meant to imply the badlands are awful - they are in fact beautiful. stunning.)
- it is the "dinosaur capital of the world," and home of the world-class Tyrell Museum (that i never actually made it to, funny how those things happen)
- it has about 8,000 residents, according to their municipal website (http://www.dinosaurvalley.com/) but i find that hard to believe. i suspect many of these residents are the neo-gypsy "rig pigs" who work the oil fields for several months at a time before movin' on. either that, or they're all hiding in sub-terranean dwellings. either that, or 8,000 is a lot smaller than i think it is...
- it is a hole. i don't mean that in the deragotary, colloquial way - i mean it literally. to get to drumheller, you must descend, descend, descend into a valley until you are what feels like miles below the surface of the planet. it is, as such, the perfect place to hide out from the big, bad world up above.
months later, i look back on my time in drumheller as... a bit of a blur really. and in some ways, it feels as though i wasn't really ever there.
but boy, was i. i strolled its streets, giggling at the cement dinosaurs that grace almost every street corner, sometimes creating whole stories and lives for them. my favourites were the dalmation-asaurus that lived outside the firehall and the nerd-asaurus (complete with buck teeth).
i savoured the culinary feasts and foibles of pretty much every restaurant in town. my favourite was a greek restaurant that surpassed even some of the restaurants i went to in athens. oh those long slow evenings of lamb and retsina. it was also one of the few restaurants that didn't have a majority of its menu items topped with gravy. i'm telling you - drumheller may call itself the dinosaur capital of the world, but i will always know it as the gravy capital of canada.
i (we) had a sushi party in our fabulous "penthouse." (you'd need to see it to understand the humour. yes, it was on the top floor. yes, it was bigger than any other "suite" in the place. but no, it was not the kind of hotel that has "a penthouse.") anyway, our sushi party: we had discovered a beautiful little cafe run by a very charming japanese lady. noticing a few sushi items on the menu, we got to talking. well, we had to order a week in advance, but let me tell you, we had quite the little feast that night! we even found bottles of sake at one of the... i counted it once, was it 8? local liquor stores. anyway, we found sake and found sushi and found willing participants. it was a blast.
i recited passionate poetry at a local gathering of wordsmiths. drumheller may be a small town, but don't be an ignorant urbanite: people are inspired to create, even when not overshadowed by a city's buildings. yes, city-slickers, it's true. and no, it's not all hoaky. i heard some wonderful words, and smilingly sailed some wavelengths with the gentle residents of this hushed valley.
i met an avid amateur archaeologist. we'd noticed him one evening at a local pub, and we marvelled at what was surely the skinniest man either of us had ever seen. he was a mop-man: stick-thin with a mad mess of grey hair. later that evening, we stumbled upon and gathered around a table spread with his day's findings: bones, teeth, petrified wood, crystallized bits. he eagerly told us every detail about his findings and methods. fascinating, all of it. he was a diligent amateur, zealously reporting important finds to the local pros. he even had a dinosaur species named after him!
i met a palm-reader, a soul-seer who told me december would be a time of great happiness. as i prepare to spend it with my lover, it's possible this is what she was talking about. or maybe she was just drunk. either way, she was a sweet, shiny person and i was glad that she felt a desire to try to see my soul.
i took my visiting nephew to the reptile museum. with large smiles and wide eyes, we watched a host of slithery beasts. we marvelled over the wild colours, wild shapes, wild ways of these wild beings. and i lovingly watched him cower from the boa constrictor a staff member offered to wrap around his shoulders. (the boa a younger, sweet-faced, angel-haired girl eagerly embraced in his stead. hooray for the destruction of gender roles!!)
i hosted a salon. sort of. see, i was returning from 3 weeks in newfoundland and calgary. back in drumheller, i had lost my social momentum and needed to do a bit of soul-searching anyway, so just hid in our hotel room, writing instead of going out and reconnecting with/reinviting the friends i had made before disappearing for almost a month. so rather than being a bustling salon, it was an intimate evening with a local music-making duo. i'm listening to one of their songs as i type. it was exquisite, and rather than feeling disappointed with the small turnout, i was instead treated to a private concert by two gentle troubadours. it was a great night.
i met a chameleon-haired pixie. a group of us went to see a band one night and her wild dancing and freakish sexiness inspired me to dream up a burlesque troupe. i had several local gals interested, but again the trip to newfoundland truncated the momentum and then i just left a few weeks after coming back from that. so the burlesque troupe remained an unrealized fantasy. but perhaps some day, i will return to see it fulfilled.
and i even joined its working class. near the end of my sojourn, i decided that while i do like being a kept woman, i like being independent even more. so i got a job! i hesitated over the options. like the rest of alberta, drumheller was (is still?) in the throes of a staffing crisis. not only could you be sure to find a help-wanted sign in almost every window in town, some stores even had to cut their hours due to the staff shortage.
i chose to serve cup after cup after cup of coffee. i first did this at Diana, a chinese/"canadian" cuisine establishment. it seemed always moderately busy with nice enough folk. but mostly, i was drawn to the orange booths and flowery aprons. i mean hell, if you're gonna sling hash in a small town, may as well do it proper-like, ya know? well, unfortunately the OCD owner bitch-slapped any possible fun out of that experience. at the end of my first week, i found myself in a competing restaurant having breakfast. a few shared words with the waitress found me some sympathy ("oh, you don't want to work there") and a job offer.
so i started serving at Yavis, a family restaurant/pub. it was certainly a better job, but i never did make it over to the coolio pub side. i was instead trapped in family restaurant hell. when i got what would be my final schedule, it promised a week of 7 am shifts. although it would mean leaving my lover (until a more propitious time and locale found us?), it was not a difficult decision to load my shit into my visiting family's car, and hitch a ride back to vancouver.
and so my summer in drumheller came to a rather sudden, but not at all bitter end. thanks for an interesting blur of a summer, gravy capital of canada.
a few quick facts:
- drumheller is located in the awe-full badlands of alberta, about an hour northeast of calgary (get it, awe-full? bad? get it? please note my geeky attempt at humour is in no way meant to imply the badlands are awful - they are in fact beautiful. stunning.)
- it is the "dinosaur capital of the world," and home of the world-class Tyrell Museum (that i never actually made it to, funny how those things happen)
- it has about 8,000 residents, according to their municipal website (http://www.dinosaurvalley.com/) but i find that hard to believe. i suspect many of these residents are the neo-gypsy "rig pigs" who work the oil fields for several months at a time before movin' on. either that, or they're all hiding in sub-terranean dwellings. either that, or 8,000 is a lot smaller than i think it is...
- it is a hole. i don't mean that in the deragotary, colloquial way - i mean it literally. to get to drumheller, you must descend, descend, descend into a valley until you are what feels like miles below the surface of the planet. it is, as such, the perfect place to hide out from the big, bad world up above.
months later, i look back on my time in drumheller as... a bit of a blur really. and in some ways, it feels as though i wasn't really ever there.
but boy, was i. i strolled its streets, giggling at the cement dinosaurs that grace almost every street corner, sometimes creating whole stories and lives for them. my favourites were the dalmation-asaurus that lived outside the firehall and the nerd-asaurus (complete with buck teeth).
i savoured the culinary feasts and foibles of pretty much every restaurant in town. my favourite was a greek restaurant that surpassed even some of the restaurants i went to in athens. oh those long slow evenings of lamb and retsina. it was also one of the few restaurants that didn't have a majority of its menu items topped with gravy. i'm telling you - drumheller may call itself the dinosaur capital of the world, but i will always know it as the gravy capital of canada.
i (we) had a sushi party in our fabulous "penthouse." (you'd need to see it to understand the humour. yes, it was on the top floor. yes, it was bigger than any other "suite" in the place. but no, it was not the kind of hotel that has "a penthouse.") anyway, our sushi party: we had discovered a beautiful little cafe run by a very charming japanese lady. noticing a few sushi items on the menu, we got to talking. well, we had to order a week in advance, but let me tell you, we had quite the little feast that night! we even found bottles of sake at one of the... i counted it once, was it 8? local liquor stores. anyway, we found sake and found sushi and found willing participants. it was a blast.
i recited passionate poetry at a local gathering of wordsmiths. drumheller may be a small town, but don't be an ignorant urbanite: people are inspired to create, even when not overshadowed by a city's buildings. yes, city-slickers, it's true. and no, it's not all hoaky. i heard some wonderful words, and smilingly sailed some wavelengths with the gentle residents of this hushed valley.
i met an avid amateur archaeologist. we'd noticed him one evening at a local pub, and we marvelled at what was surely the skinniest man either of us had ever seen. he was a mop-man: stick-thin with a mad mess of grey hair. later that evening, we stumbled upon and gathered around a table spread with his day's findings: bones, teeth, petrified wood, crystallized bits. he eagerly told us every detail about his findings and methods. fascinating, all of it. he was a diligent amateur, zealously reporting important finds to the local pros. he even had a dinosaur species named after him!
i met a palm-reader, a soul-seer who told me december would be a time of great happiness. as i prepare to spend it with my lover, it's possible this is what she was talking about. or maybe she was just drunk. either way, she was a sweet, shiny person and i was glad that she felt a desire to try to see my soul.
i took my visiting nephew to the reptile museum. with large smiles and wide eyes, we watched a host of slithery beasts. we marvelled over the wild colours, wild shapes, wild ways of these wild beings. and i lovingly watched him cower from the boa constrictor a staff member offered to wrap around his shoulders. (the boa a younger, sweet-faced, angel-haired girl eagerly embraced in his stead. hooray for the destruction of gender roles!!)
i hosted a salon. sort of. see, i was returning from 3 weeks in newfoundland and calgary. back in drumheller, i had lost my social momentum and needed to do a bit of soul-searching anyway, so just hid in our hotel room, writing instead of going out and reconnecting with/reinviting the friends i had made before disappearing for almost a month. so rather than being a bustling salon, it was an intimate evening with a local music-making duo. i'm listening to one of their songs as i type. it was exquisite, and rather than feeling disappointed with the small turnout, i was instead treated to a private concert by two gentle troubadours. it was a great night.
i met a chameleon-haired pixie. a group of us went to see a band one night and her wild dancing and freakish sexiness inspired me to dream up a burlesque troupe. i had several local gals interested, but again the trip to newfoundland truncated the momentum and then i just left a few weeks after coming back from that. so the burlesque troupe remained an unrealized fantasy. but perhaps some day, i will return to see it fulfilled.
and i even joined its working class. near the end of my sojourn, i decided that while i do like being a kept woman, i like being independent even more. so i got a job! i hesitated over the options. like the rest of alberta, drumheller was (is still?) in the throes of a staffing crisis. not only could you be sure to find a help-wanted sign in almost every window in town, some stores even had to cut their hours due to the staff shortage.
i chose to serve cup after cup after cup of coffee. i first did this at Diana, a chinese/"canadian" cuisine establishment. it seemed always moderately busy with nice enough folk. but mostly, i was drawn to the orange booths and flowery aprons. i mean hell, if you're gonna sling hash in a small town, may as well do it proper-like, ya know? well, unfortunately the OCD owner bitch-slapped any possible fun out of that experience. at the end of my first week, i found myself in a competing restaurant having breakfast. a few shared words with the waitress found me some sympathy ("oh, you don't want to work there") and a job offer.
so i started serving at Yavis, a family restaurant/pub. it was certainly a better job, but i never did make it over to the coolio pub side. i was instead trapped in family restaurant hell. when i got what would be my final schedule, it promised a week of 7 am shifts. although it would mean leaving my lover (until a more propitious time and locale found us?), it was not a difficult decision to load my shit into my visiting family's car, and hitch a ride back to vancouver.
and so my summer in drumheller came to a rather sudden, but not at all bitter end. thanks for an interesting blur of a summer, gravy capital of canada.
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