...Samoans and those who want to be them."
---kid's T-shirt that I passed walking down the street today at lunch time, holding my sub from Subway (6-inch tuna on whole wheat, extra dill pickles, honey mustard sauce, tasting just the same as if I'd ordered it from Antigonish or anywhere that ubiquitous yellow Fresh Sandwich chain store appears) and going back to work to unload the porcelain bisque, hopefully before Maddie arrived so she could then glaze it; he was walking with his big mama, an Islander woman in a blue dress. We were by the Van Long Butcher Shop, which is two stores away from Van Long Supermarket, both Van Longs are from Vietnam, I'm not sure if that is the name of the proprieter or some other reference to Vietnamese culture, in any case there are many Vietnamese shops along Marrickville Road, along with Greek optomotrists and takeaway delis, Arabic hairdressers, and one Tibetan Emporium with the Dalai Lama's smiling face in the window.
Not far from where I'm living now (Lewisham, pronounced like a sneeze) there is a church that has English and Portugese sermons twice a week. I pass it after I pass the ripped show posters along the hidden walkway, and I think some weekend I might go to a Portugese one, even though I'm not Catholic, and sit at the back and listen to the strange sounds of another language roll over me.
I went camping on the weekend (... and I didn't tell you about the pelicans, did I? Well, just that there were 24 of them way out on the mud flats and they stretched thier long needle-thin beaks up to the sky and then bulged the bottoms outward into a pocket of skin designed to hold fish, and I didn't have my glasses on nor my camera with me so my memory is a bit fuzzy and only in my head...) and my sunburn from all the walking has turned into a deep rosy-brown tan. Part of me (a childish part, to be sure) can't wait to get off the plane in June into sleepy lime-green Atlantic Canada where all the inhabitants have pasty-white legs, and wear singlet tops and smile at everyone with my winter-browned face, remembering hibiscus.
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the human behind the bean
I'm a 27 year old Canadian woman. I grew up on Cape Breton Island, although my parents and their families are from Quebec and Ohio. Currently I live in Cape Breton, in a small town by the Bras D'Or Lake.
I can make a good soup and tie my own shoes. I've worked as a nanny, a potter's assistant, a shop clerk, and a janitor. I've also worked in a library, and taught computers to seniors. I've travelled to Australia and New Zealand and across Canada by train. I spent two and a half years in university before I left. I like the way the air smells in the Fall.
Since 2002 - this is my blog, a place for me to write about life, what I experience, to share my photography and my writing. I'm glad you're here!
I can make a good soup and tie my own shoes. I've worked as a nanny, a potter's assistant, a shop clerk, and a janitor. I've also worked in a library, and taught computers to seniors. I've travelled to Australia and New Zealand and across Canada by train. I spent two and a half years in university before I left. I like the way the air smells in the Fall.
Since 2002 - this is my blog, a place for me to write about life, what I experience, to share my photography and my writing. I'm glad you're here!
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