If religion is a bargain, if it's made in bad faith is it returnable?

Recall, if you would, yesterday's photo of the Student Schoolbus of Doom. Note how warm and sunny it is, how bare the pavement, how nearly green the grass.

Enjoying that scene? Excellent. I was too. Enough that I wore sandals to work today. When Vicky came tromping into work at four this afternoon, clad in Uggs and a winter coat, I scoffed. "Bah! Snow you say? Pshaw! I won't stand for snow! Not in early April when I have flats and cardigans to be prancing about town in!"




Silly rabbit, weather-related optimism is for people who don't live in Calgary.

Metaphysical Poem


When do you want to go
I'm not sure I want to go there
where do you want to go
any place
I think I'd fall apart any place else
well I'll go if you really want to
I don't particularly care
but you'll fall apart any place else
I can just go home
I don't really mind going there
but I don't want to force you to go there
you won't be forcing me I'd just as soon
I wouldn't be able to stay long anyway
maybe we could go somewhere nearer
I'm not wearing a jacket
just like you weren't wearing a tie
well I didn't say we had to go
I don't care whether you're wearing one
we don't really have to do anything
well all right let's not
okay I'll call you
yes call me

-Frank O'Hara (1962)


I've been going back through old books lately, looking more carefully at the writers and the stories that have tickled me into the voice that I currently have. Frank O'Hara is high up on the list of poets whose moment of influence I can remember exactly. I would have been 14, reading a poetry anthology that included O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died". The poem's function as a eulogy to person, place and time struck me with its unity, its clarity and its perfectly constructed inside-out voice- O'Hara inviting us into his context. It struck me as an extremely sensible and delightful way to go about writing about Things.

In September, I found a selected collection of O'Hara's work, including the above poem. Again, it captures a very particular moment, compressing the conversation of early love, the first compromises of a relationship, into 22 lines. The lack of punctuation articulates the exact sort of breathless momentum that drives a courtship along. Yet that momentum carries a tinge of menace: the energy of the early days with someone can overwhelm the individual. Indeed, here the two voices move with such speed that it becomes difficult to tell who is saying what without paying careful attention. The final pair of lines are without resolution, unsure of who has accepted what responsibility or where the evening is going. "Metaphysical Poem" expresses in short O'Hara's particular talent: to speak of the deeply familiar moments of life in a way that energizes them, and in doing so destabilizes our expectations of resolution. These are poems freighted with too much inertia for a period to stop them at the end of a page.

Go read Frank O'Hara.

The Olympics has brought all sorts of people to town, and they have one thing in common:

They all want to come to Roots:



That crowd was inspired by the presence of Alexander Ovetchkin casually shopping last night. Of course, "casually" means entering through the side door, shopping with the assistance of four staff with the men's section blocked off and the rest of the store locked down. We had to bolt the doors to deal with the massive crowd of fans and looky loos that spawned outside.

While Ovetchkin has caused the biggest crowd I've seen so far, he's not the only one who's caused a stir. Michael Phelps, Cuba Gooding Jr. George Stroumboulopoulos, Adam Van Koeverden, Howie Mandel, and Janet Gretzky, Jamie Salé have all stopped by, and probably even more people that I've just forgotten. The visits add to the perpetual party atmosphere that goes on at Robson.

The party is, of course, starting to wind down. Today is the last day of the Olympics, with the men's gold medal hockey game playing in the background as I write this. For the staff, this is a bittersweet time. We've been running around in circles for weeks under blaring music trying to find X Random Famous Person 27 toques- but we've also been dancing and taking pictures and meeting fabulous people from all over the world. Roots has been the place to party during the Olympics, and when the lights go out and it's time to go home, we won't quite know what to do with ourselves. It's going to be so quiet. Adjusting to normal, post-Olympic life is going to be almost as difficult as it was adjusting to the high-octane Vancouver 2010 experience.

Maybe I'll take up stalking Ovetchkin?

Hi.

I know, I'm a bad blogger. You were all expecting lots of updates and gratuitous tweeting.

Whoops.

It's not that I don't love you all, but to say that it's madness out here would be a slight understatement. Led Zepplin playing the second coming of Jesus would be madness- this is the Olympics.

Nothing whatsoever could have prepared me for my first couple of days here. Fresh off the plane I volunteered to do an overnight stock shift at the store in Whistler- packing merchandise to haul back to the Vancouver stores to replace the stuff that was rapidly selling out. The best part of that trip wasn't just the initial getting to know you with some of the other Roots team members, or even whipping up mountain roads in a borrowed BMW- it was the fact that at 4am, when we finally staggered out of the store, there were still a ridiculously strong police presence. Several groups of cops asked us how our night was going and where we worked as we wandered back to our beds to sleep for a few hours before heading back to Vancouver.

(If you're curious, Whistler is pretty much just like Banff, but laid out in circles that are startlingly easy to get lost in during the wee hours of the morning. There was also a public parking embargo on when I was there, which made finding your way around doubly difficult.)

We returned to the complete insanity that is Roots on Robson.

"Unload this."
"Move this."
"Go on cash."

Go. Go. Go.

"Stop" is not a word uttered at Robson- not with hundreds of boxes of stock, thousands of people, and profit pouring through every single day. The Olympics is a time of business, and your business is to haul ass. It hasn't slowed down a bit since the opening ceremonies, and we expect to be busy right through the closing ceremonies. You eat, work, and sometimes sleep in your store. It is retail on a scale beyond comprehension, where every day is Boxing Day x2 with Black Friday thrown on top

If I were working with any other crew of people, this would be hell- and I will admit, some days, it's tough. You want to do nothing more than swear and sleep. But the people who are working here are some of the most phenomenal individuals I've ever met. They are insane, and tireless, and I am so lucky to live and work with them on a daily basis. The people here are the reason this experience has been such an incredible one. I couldn't imagine us pulling this off with any other group.

Roots rock reggae!