Or Putting Your Thoughts Together Without the Instruction Booklet…
DOCUMENTARY FILM SHOOT – CONTINUED
DAY 7
“Bienne, Grenchen Süd, Solothurn, Olten, Aarau, Lenzburg, Zürich Hauptbahnhof… naechster halt Zurich Flughafen…” the seemingly endless litany of stops on the way to Zurich airport always puts me to sleep. Thankfully, Switzerland is a pocket-sized nation, rather like a paperback crammed onto a shelf of coffee table books. According to my latest Kummerly & Frey, the two localities the farthest distant by car are barely over 500 kilometres apart.
From the top of the Chasseral, 30 minutes drive up into the mountains behind our place, you can see right across the whole country. Turn around, France is at your feet a few miles down the northern slopes of the Jura. In front, as if laid out by a pastry cook, are the lakes and the plateau, a layer of Bernese Oberland, topped by the icing of the Alps. Beyond is Italy.
But, this morning, that makes no less mind-numbing the trip to the airport. Can’t draw, can’t sleep, forgot to get even a crummy paperback at the station. Years of commuting from home to work in the same house – at most up or down a flight of stairs – have spoiled my reflexes.
Finally, Zurich, then horrid Heathrow – chaotic beehive run by swarms that eat petroleum not honey – and on to the west, lulled by the soporific selection of in-flight movies.
DAY 8
It always seems to rain when I arrive in Vancouver. Is it just a question of odds, or perhaps it MUST always rain, the same way it does in paintings where rain is required. Rain in Vancouver is almost a state of mind and bright sun seems odd, like an extravagant gift or an unexpected inheritance.
In any case, it rained all evening I arrived, when whatever private demon that always pushes me to reject company and decline kind invitations urges me out into the street to wander as fast and as far as I can in any new city. Unable to stop or sit down, preferring a hot dog on the run to the most enticing of restaurants, until I’ve covered what I can of wherever it is circumstance has taken me. (Granted, Vancouver I know more or less, but it had been some time…)
I should think in a different age I would have been one of those lanky wild-eyed tramps that ride freight trains, or a ragged minstrel errant seeking shelter in meadhalls and sleeping on the rushes with the hounds.. I cannot for the life of me fathom what it is that makes me behave like that – some ill-tamed wildness, restlessness akin to waves breaking or a fretful breeze – or an animal worrying its own leg in a trap. As if this aimless haste is either a flight or a pursuit, as if somewhere not far ahead, or uncomfortably close behind is the thing I must either catch if I can or avoid at all costs. Everything hurts – the air, the sounds, the light, as if every nerve ending is magnified a hundredfold and the incapacity to somehow translate it into imagery is excruciating. I wish I had words to sooth the ache, but I don’t. The only solution is to move, to try to swallow it all in that brief wild hunt. Somewhere between Herne’s hounds and the Grail, or the Ancient Mariner and Pellinore.
(Or maybe just somewhere between jet lag and mixed metaphore…)
There’s time enough for a circuit of downtown, out to Stanley Park as far as Lion’s Gate – iron calligraphy linking the park to the North Shore in the dawn’s first light, and back to English Bay. A conversation with the crows at low tide, and the sun comes up over Burrard Street Bridge to the southeast, suddenly painting red and black and grey the freighters anchored out in the bay.
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Left: Sunrise over Vancouver.
Right: The fine art of windshield photography – snow on the Hope-Princeton highway.
(May I be pardoned this long litany of place names that will mean nothing to most – but to explain them would make no more sense. They are an incantation.)
Breakfast, and then an early morning start for the Interior.
Snow in Manning Park on the Hope-Princeton, suddenly winter seems inevitable again. Road works on the Skagit Bluffs, so we arrive late for our appointment in Keremeos and are whisked immediately – just enough time to clip on the radio mike – into my old high school and a reception worthy of a head of state.
(Actually, I think the term refers not to leadership of nations, but to the state you risk getting your head into when faced with an eager and voraciously cheering crowd. No wonder it goes to some peoples’ heads…)
Very strange being back in Similkameen High, chatting with kids whose moms and dads were in my class. Signed a lot of scraps of paper, drew a Gandalf on a t-shirt, got a hug from a 5th-grader, and we were off before the light failed to see the old ranch where I spent years chasing cattle, baling hay, clearing sagebrush and shifting irrigation pipe.
Finally, the light was gone. Hotel, dinner (at a seafood-pasta-schnitzel place) and end of day eight.
DAY 9
Breakfast with a local journalist, filming in Keremeos. Downtown is little more than a junction where Highway 3 makes a sharp left under a quatuor of red and orange flashers to climb the town hill and continue east into the continent.
I had forgotten how surreal small towns are out here. There is nothing from the land in the structure of them. They are cinema sets – plywood and neon. No relationship to the land on which they are built. Superimposed, a collage. I feel the transience of it all slipping from my fingers, rather than grasping any sense of permanence that would reassure me. From afar, it is dwarfed by the land itself, K Mountain seems to be poised to topple and obliterate this brief and pretentious human intrusion.
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Left: K Mountain. There is a capital “K” of sorts inscribed by the scree slopes. The gate to the left is where the local bully who used to threaten to beat me to a pulp daily would board the school bus… I hope he’s flipping burgers somewhere now…
Right: Standing rock. From stone age to souvenir shop in a few generations. Standing Rock was once a native meeting place.
The presence of the land is so strong it makes my eyes hurt. That’s when I realize how much of this little backwater valley junction, this little wide spot in the highway, I truly carry with me, how much of it I unconsciously packed away in my hasty suitcase nearly 3 decades ago, how important it is to know it’s still there though I will never return. When I was 19, I thought I was getting out of a town that held nothing for me. Now I realize that I left none of it behind and it has been the warp of my whole being. I feel myself unravelling, as if the intensity of it is enough to make me fade back into the landscape. Thankfully someone suggests we go have coffee, so I am spared from an untimely dissolution.
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Left: Welcome to Keremeos.
Center: My home town. Remember that song by Springsteen?
Right: Up the town hill and east – the other side of the country is 4 or 5 solid days driving. No wonder road movies are THE North American contribution to cinematography…
Later, we meet up with Harold Rhenisch, who is not only one of my best friends from high school, but also one of Canada’s top contemporary poets. But even best friends that live on opposite sides of the world have trouble getting together, so I’m grateful to the documentary for provoking the itinerary, from Neuchâtel and from 150-Mile House, even for just a day at this crossing of paths in Keremeos. More filming around town and in the valley, that sees me riding a horse up a mountainside over what looks like an exaggerated number of thorny bushes and pointy rocks (I who don’t ride, but suddenly am convinced it is an eminently worthwhile skill) with the encouraging comments like “She’s never had strangers ride her before but it should be fine”… Thankfully, I survive, but my behind is still sore days later. Long interview with Harold, while I pass the time in front of the motel TV, and finally the shoot wraps at 11 pm and he and I sit up for hours philosophizing and reminiscing, aided by a clear bottle of B.C. Gewurtzraminer, into the early hours of the morning.
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Right and left: The standard ingredients of the B.C. Interior landscape – sagebrush and rusting farm implements…
Center: Harold
DAY 10
Half the next day is spent half-asleep in the van, watching semi-trailers come rushing past in the rain on the road back to the coast, trying to slap myself awake to do an interview in front of a greenscreen.
All this earnest jogging down memory lane has made me realize how poor my memory is, how much I live in the moment. Reminiscing in good company for me is like being read a story. I know there’s a happy ending because I’m sitting in the midst of it, but I can’t recall any of the chapters. Even the title eludes me.
“What’s it like coming back?” says Gretchen. The camera is rolling. Suddenly I no longer know where I am. Nothing to do with stage fright, I’m no longer shy about my feelings, and undeniably all this filming ang talking has helped me find a rhythm where I am half a phrase ahead of what I’m saying, but I am tongue-tied. I dearly want to say something. Anything. Profound or off the cuff, I don’t care. But I can’t. I don’t know. I hardly even know where I am. I can feel myself growing thinner and fading, until finally I’ve fallen into the empty spaces of the last few days – into the clear depths between the sun and the mountains, into the light over the water. Crows fly right through me. I am air.
They have to cut.
And call it a day. We have to be up at 5 a.m. next morning. There is a boat to catch.
