The Old Curiousity Shop

2303 East Hastings, Vancouver, BC

$50.

$1,200.

$50.

Good Old Day Priceless

… one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. —Charles Dickens

Vancouver Special

Vancouver Special  —Evelyn Lau
Those summer days of searching
for a new house seemed an adventure—
I rode into each castle
on my father's shoulders like a small king,
pointing, nodding, the realtor fawning over me
as if I held the key to my family's future.
I beamed under the attention, busily bustled
from room to room stroking the walls,
the shag carpet, the realtor with his oily round face
rustling up a sweaty mint from his pocket for me.
I remember kitchens with carpeted floors, sundecks,
covered carports, avocado appliances everywhere.
Seventies' sunlight flooded in.
The realtor got down on one knee,
peered into my face as if I were an oracle,
repository of my parents' desires—
I was the firstborn, I sat at the head of the table
holding court, I held their happiness in my hands.
They were marvellous, these boxy modern houses
we might make our own—all except
the last one. Not this one, we can't buy
this one, I cried, peering down
from the great height of my father's shoulders
at the unfinished sink, the hole in the counter.
My scratched legs bracketed his face—
his hands held me in place
steady as a surgeon's.
But who knew where it could lead, this ugly gape
scattered with sawdust, this empty well
into which I could fall forever. Please . . .
The adults laughed, signing documents
with the realtor's gold pen—
the sink would be ready
by the time we moved in.
Nothing could happen here
that wouldn't happen in any other house.

Evelyn Lau is a Canadian poet and novelist. 

The Leaves are leaving….

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.
—The Falling of the Leaves, W.B. Yeats

Simple life

Homemade watermelon juice

Used up the left over

As simple as can be

I love simple life. It's so simple that it's impossible to f#@k it up.

The Shawshank Redemption (Mozart Opera Scene)

Mozart: Canzonetta sull'aria, Marriage of Figaro

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t wanna know. I would like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.” —Red, The Shawshank Redemption

Russian Textiles

Vancouver Public Arts

Quebec St. @ National Ave.

Science World

Dragon Zone @ False Creek 

Hinge Park @ False Creek

Olympic Village Square

Olympic Village Square

Only connect...

Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. —E.M. Forster

That’s what E.M. Forster said on the first page in Howards End.

And at the Introduction by Benjamin DeMott… “the only living novelist who can be read again and again and who, after each reading, give me… the sensation of having learned something.”

E.M. Forster is not the easiest author to adapt to the screen as so much is left unsaid. The plot itself was always of secondary import to Forster, a Fabian who truly was a social commentator. 

It’s bluebells season in Vancouver now! Remind me so much about a scene in the 1992 film Howards End by Ivory and Merchant when Samuel West character Leonard Bast walking right out of London into a bluebells wood. 

I learned to love the bluebells.  

Edward Morgan Forster January 1, 1879 — June 7, 1970

Springtime in Vancouver

Every year in spring, Vancouver hosts the most stunning flower show on earth.

love maps

I love maps, of all kinds, practical maps on road trips, treasure maps, historical maps, National Geographic maps, fictional maps in books like The Hobbit, etc., and these, just gift wrapping papers from art supplies shop, recently caught my eye.

Hans Blomquist

I once had had a thought
About a thought I once had had
About whether it was natural
For nature to seem so natural,
Whether there was a Man in the Sun
Who steadied the sun with levers,
Pulleys, and gears, and if so whether
He ever managed not to be there ...
—Rowan Ricardo Philips