Tag: Elee Kraljii Gardiner

week thirty eight

Books Read:
51. XEclogue — Lisa Robertson

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 58.77
to date — 1,467.82

I haven’t finished In the Garden of Evil or whatever it is called but I’m just putting it on hiatus for a bit and I’m determined to get back to it and finish it but I just wanted to read something else for a bit. I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to bring it with me to Scandinavia. I went to Word today, formerly known as Word on the Street, formerly known as a thriving literary festival. Sad. Anyway, it wasn’t all a bust because I got to say hello to Rolf Maurer at the New Star table and catch Jen Sookfong Lee talk a bit about her craft and hear Elee Kraljii Gardiner read poems about figure skating and sex in hay bales and get Stephen Collis to sign my copy of his new book Once in Blockadia that I just picked up over at the Talonbooks table where I got to congratulate Kevin Williams for winning B.C. Publisher of the Year and run into the ineffable Jordan Abel and I wish that I would have brought my copy of Martin John along so that I could get Anakana Schofield to sign it and I’m sure that I left someone out but that’s more than enough name dropping for one run-on sentence so I went home and read the copy of XEclogue that I picked up for the steal of just $4 (thanks Rolf!).
week-thirty-eight
But before I read poetry I ran over the Lions Gate bridge for the first time after thinking about how I’d wanted to do that for a few months and it was a really nice run with the change of scenery and the long hills up and down that were pretty great. I did have a bit of a freak out as I passed the lion statues at the foot of the bridge on the Stanley Park side and the ground dropped off on my right and my acrophobia kicked in rather strongly. Or was it gephyrophobia. I wonder if you can have gephyrophobia without acrophobia. It seems like they would go hand-in-hand. I run over the Burrard Bridge pretty regularly but I’ve never really noticed the traffic exhaust but going through the Stanley Park causeway and over the bridge I really noticed the vehicle exhaust. By the time I crossed the bridge and back again it was really starting to bother me or so I let myself believe, and I had a bit of a sore throat that may be merely coincidence.

week twenty

Books Read:
33. Poverty Creek Journal — Thomas Gardner
34. Serpentine Loop — Elee Kraljii Gardiner
35. Ignite — Kevin Spenst

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 45.97
to date — 653.13

I don’t know anything about figure skating but I do like dance and I played hockey for a decade or so and they’re kind of a combination of the two, but Serpentine Loop has so much more to offer than just a crash course in figure-skating-meets-poetry. I really liked this book. It was launched a few weeks ago along with Kevin Spenst’s Ignite at a mediocre hipster joint in the old Heatley Block building on East Hastings, the best part of which (other than the poetry that eve) is certainly the Ola Volo piece on the wall above the bar. We sat at the bar for a little while then I leaned over to SC and said not too subtly that if the bartender ever decided to ask us hat we’d like to drink that I would have the pilsner on tap and that I was going over to the book sales table for a sec. He heard me. The dirty looks and curiously the service level both increase dramatically.
week twenty
There’s this entry in Thomas Gardner’s running journal where in he comments about how unfriendly the runners are compared to his frequent trails in and around Poverty Creek and I got to thinking that the Seawall isn’t the friendliest place either though I think that’s Vancouver in general and not something particular to the running community here and I use the term community loosely though that’s as much because I prefer the solitude of running and really do not understand those that can run and carry on a conversation amongst each other but every once in a while I’ll pass someone and get a wave or a head nod and once on the Burrard Bridge a high five which was a bit weird. Anyway, I’m part of the problem though I’ve started to at least acknowledge another running if we make and maintain eye contact.