Every Day We Disappear Read online

  In lyrical prose that is sometimes irreverent, Angela Long takes her readers to places they might never go unaccompanied. As she searches alone for self-fulfillment and love in the British Columbia bush or a Ganges River ashram; in a Roman piazza or a Kashmiri houseboat, her readers learn about themselves too.

  – Lynne Bowen, author of Boss Whistle

  Engaging, insightful, and delightfully entertaining. Every Day We Disappear takes memoir to a whole new level.

  –Andreas Schroeder, author of Dust Ship Glory

  The writing is so unaffectedly deft and alert that it would be tempting to race through this chronicle at one sitting, as if it were a deck of soothsayer’s cards laid out one after another. That would be a mistake, for each card has a revelation that lingers like a poem. Angela Long travels the world and the heart’s unruly byways disguised as an innocent waif, with a wickedly kind eye and ear for place, culture, and character. The innocence is real, though – vulnerable, heartsick, too easily bruised by encounters with poverty, unfairness and simple endurance, and yet at the same time it is completely and wonderingly mischievous.

  –Sean Virgo, author of The Shadow Mother

  every

  day

  we

  disappear

  by Angela Long

  Copyright @ 2018 Angela Long

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher or by licensed agreement with Access: The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (contact accesscopyright.ca).

  Editor: dee Hobsbawn-Smith

  Cover Photo: Angela Long

  Book and cover design: Tania Wolk, Third Wolf Studio

  Printed and bound in Canada at Friesens, Altona, MB

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Creative Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Arts Board. The author would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for their assistance and support of this book.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Long, Angela, 1971-, author

  Every day We disappear / Angela Long.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77518-393-8 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77518-394-5 (EPUB)

  1. Long, Angela, 1971- --Travel. 2. Authors, Canadian (English)--

  Travel. 3. Voyages and travels. I. Title.

  PS8623.O525Z46 2018 C811’.6 C2018-904749-6

  C2018-904750-X

  Radiant Press

  Box 33128 Cathedral PO

  Regina, SK S4T 7X2

  [email protected]

  www.radiantpress.ca

  Author’s Note

  The stories in this book reflect the author’s recollection of events. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of those depicted.

  table of

  contents

  introduction

  The Train to Anywhere

  part one

  Go Big or Go Home

  The American

  The English School

  A Familiar Face

  Entering the Cavern

  2546 West Third

  The Phone Call

  Get Up and Spin

  part two

  The Travel Agent

  The Woodcarver

  The Carpet Seller

  The Long-term Guests

  The Boy on the Road

  The Monk

  The Five-Armed Goddess

  The Orphan

  The Sage

  Mother Ganges

  The Saint

  The Elephant

  The Mourner

  The City of Light

  The Waiter

  The Lonely Girl

  You, Beside Me

  The Hotel Owner

  The Jesuit Priest

  The Acupuncturists

  The Orchid Grower

  The Cook

  The Travel Husband

  The Young Woman

  The Beggars

  The Doctor

  The Villagers

  The Meditation Teacher

  The Volunteer

  The Gardener

  The Woman in White

  The Rickshaw Cyclist

  part three

  Between the Planks

  The Italian Doggy

  Notes from Off the Grid

  At The Empress

  Looking for the Forest

  Tuesday, North Beach

  The Princess and the Poet

  The Human Realm

  La Dolce Vita

  Sights Unseen

  This is Sunday Lunch

  The Hybrids

  Our Expiration Date

  Roma Ostiense to Alessandria

  Loneliness and Longing for Risotto

  Dear Jessica

  The Sounds of Silence

  Nabob Tins and Turkish Carpets

  Baring All to Resident Squirrel

  St. Mary’s Spring

  The Moon Over Naikoon

  Where the Pacific Meets the Sangan

  The Spare Girl

  This Thing Called Community

  Woman in Blue Bathrobe

  epilogue

  The Slow Lane

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  introduction

  The Train to Anywhere

  I stand in Amsterdam Central Station, staring up at the departure board. I am alone for the first time ever, it seems, in possession of two thousand dollars’ worth of American Express travellers cheques, a large sum of money for an eighteen-year-old in 1989.

  I’ve earned it by deep-frying doughnuts from midnight until eight in the morning, six days a week, in a bakery on a Canadian military base in West Germany. My big brother Todd is serving as a master corporal in the Canadian military, and I’ve been living with him and his wife in a town called Oberschopfheim since I graduated from high school two months earlier in Canada. Just a few days ago, we rented a Mercedes and drove to Amsterdam for a little brother-sister bonding in the hash dens and tulip fields.

  Todd gives me a quick hug beside the ticket counter. His buddies are probably waiting for him at the Bulldog. I’m supposed to catch the 2:34 p.m. to Cherbourg, and then ferry across to England. But, suddenly, as I watch my brother’s lanky frame disappear through the glass doors, I don’t want to go to England anymore.

  I walk over to the departures board, and scan it for the first train that’s scheduled to depart. A train to Anywhere. It leaves in five minutes. I buy a ticket. I have no guidebook, hotel reservations, or any idea how long it takes to get to Anywhere. But, none of that seems important. I feel alive, alive in every nerve-tingly sense of the word.

  I hurry toward the platform, lurching beneath the monstrous backpack flopping behind me like a dying fish. I smile at my fellow passengers on their way to Anywhere, convinced we’re part of some magical master plot together.

  When the train pulls out of the station, I feel my pulse quicken. I’m so excited I can barely hear the conductor ask for my ticket. “All the way?” he asks in English. “Are you going all the way to –” I no more want to hear him utter that name than deep-fry another doughnut. I’ve fallen in love with something, but, as is often the case, I don’t know with what.

  Twenty years late
r, I know. I had fallen in love with a moment of unfurling. A moment when an industrial parkland on the outskirts of Amsterdam became the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. A moment I knew existed but had never witnessed – like the opening of a flower. I had been in love with being a flower – exposed, vulnerable, flaunting the colours of my naïveté. I must have known it was imperative for my survival to be that way. Without unfurling my petals, how could I have hoped to photosynthesize, to pollinate?

  These days when I Google location, transportation, and accommodation options well in advance of an upcoming holiday, I wonder when those petals began to wilt. I analyze costs, schedules, and the potential positive and negative aspects of each choice as though I’m coordinating a voyage to Saturn. Why not just let go? Why, when I have so many more resources and travel smarts than my eighteen-year-old self, am I so much more afraid?

  It has become too easy to substitute comfort and security for living. I throw away my calculations and look for my old backpack instead. It’s time to catch that train to Anywhere.

  part one

  Go Big or Go Home

  “Do you have fire?” the stranger asked. He held up a pack of tobacco. Drum.

  I laughed. “Do you mean a light?”

  I could tell he was French Canadian. A blue-eyed, long-lashed, dark-haired mix of Old France and New World. Later, he’d tell me he was related to Jack Kerouac, and I won’t be surprised.

  We were tree planters, working in the “bush” of northern British Columbia. We lived in tents, ate in tents, and shat behind a tarp in a tent. All day long, we bent, dug, and slid trees into the ground as fast and as frequently as our bodies and minds would allow. For some reason this environment bred romance as quickly as mosquitoes.

  I left the screen door zipped tightly shut as I rustled around my tent to find a box of wooden emergency matches. I felt how I often had when I was twenty-one, like a boring Caucasian middle-class girl from Oshawa – a suburb in southern Ontario bookended by General Motors and Darlington Nuclear Generating Station – who didn’t do things like smoke. It was inevitable I’d fall in love with him from the first drag he took of his hand-rolled cigarette. He cocked his chin towards the sky, funneling smoke through his lips. The crickets began their chorus. The sky deepened to a perfect hue of sapphire. And in this dusky light, he looked as wild and beautiful as any creature I’d hoped to encounter in the British Columbian bush.

  I’d come to the West to re-invent myself. Since arriving, I’d met people with VW vans and shampoo made from chamomile flowers. I wore Birkenstocks now, and colourful bandanas. The new me could have unzipped her tent door all the way. She could have stripped off her layers of fleece and wool. She could have said – Yes, I have fire. You just lit it.

  Instead I crouched behind the screen, conscious of the pink long underwear my mother had given me. As the stranger took another drag, there was a chance to say something witty with a dash of sexiness. But Oshawa oozed from me like bug repellant.

  “I’m Michel,” the stranger said as he turned to go.

  “Michel,” I repeated, careful to get the accent right.

  It took a week before we spoke again. A week of me trying to look nonchalant when we lined up for dinner or sat around the campfire at night to keep warm.

  “Comment ça va?” I asked as he sat down beside me, the only vacant place left in the dining tent. I thought I knew how to speak French, after studying it all the way to the end of high school.

  “You speak French?” he said, and began talking at an alarming pace. I smiled and nodded until it was evident I had no idea what he was talking about.

  ~

  As the season progressed, it became increasingly difficult to look attractive. The weather wasn’t on my side. It rained, hailed, snowed. The only mirror I had access to was the side mirror of the pick-up truck (otherwise known as the crummy). I examined my reflection when no one was around. What I saw alarmed me. Dirt blocked every pore. My bandana had slid back, revealing the secret bobby pins I’d inserted to control my frizzy locks.

  The other women in the camp, women who’d grown up in this province and looked as lush as their surroundings, were confident in Michel’s presence. They all wore the same types of clothing – colourful, ethnic-looking stuff – faded just enough to show they’d always dressed this way. Their hair was long and disheveled. They knew how to roll joints. They looked at Michel exactly like the predators they were.

  You see, Michel was the camp’s highballer – a title given to the person who consistently planted the most trees. It was easy to know who this was. At the end of every shift, when everyone piled back into the crummy, dirty and sweaty and exhausted, the foreman got out his dog-eared notepad and did roll call.

  “Bradfield?”

  “1050.”

  “Mooney?”

  “1375.”

  The highballer usually doubled everyone else’s numbers. Double the numbers, double the money.

  It would be at least ten years, just into the new millennium, before tree planting was elevated to “silviculture” and online resources like “A Tree Planter’s Guide to Reducing Musculoskeletal Injuries” existed. Our foreman’s motto was “Go big or go home.” Those were the days of a non-unionized, non-online community, non-WorkSafe free-for-all. You could still dip tree seedlings in pesticides, then eat a sandwich. It would be a while before people planted trees with the goal of saving the environment. Things were simpler back then. You planted to make money. And whoever made the most money was the highballer.

  Highballers were the gods of the camp. They strutted through the cook tent at the end of the day attended to by their minions. They drank scotch with the foremen in heated trailers. The cooks offered them prime cuts of meat. We needed something to worship in those godforsaken outposts of clear-cut, swamp, and slash. The highballers were our heroes.

  I was the camp lowballer. I wore matching outfits acquired at Mark’s Work Warehouse in Oshawa. Clothing I had thought would suit this type of work – cotton work pants and matching shirts – while everyone else wore long underwear with boxer shorts over top, and either ratty grey Stanfields or ironic T-shirts (“Ringette Rules!”) curated from thrift stores on days off.

  It would have been natural for Michel to couple with the highballer goddess. Every morning she jumped out of the crummy before I’d even pulled on my boots. She streaked across her allotted chunk of clear-cut, auburn hair streaming behind her like the tail of a comet. I watched, dreading the moment I’d clip on my bags filled with tree seedlings and dig the first hole. I dreaded the hole after hole, the tree after tree, the desolation I’d feel later, when I’d lose sight of the rest of the crew, and stand alone in the clear-cut amongst the stumps and roots.

  Sometimes the land had been burned — napalmed — black and desolate as far as the eye could see. Once while pulling on my cork boots at the edge of a 300-square kilometre clear-cut in the Bowron River Valley, my foreman looked from the boxes of tree seedlings to the sweep of land void of any sign of life. “They say you can see this from outer space,” he said.

  In later years, planting on Vancouver Island, sometimes I’d stand on the edge of the remaining old growth, peering in to see what had once existed: majestic cedars and spruce, green carpets of fern and moss. At these times, I’d lay down my shovel. Sometimes, I’d weep.

  But something would always make me pick up my shovel again, and plant. I’d plant in the sun, rain, sleet, snow. I’d plant with mosquitoes buzzing from all sides, biting anything exposed. It was lonely work. Repetitive work. But it made me lean; after a few weeks, I was a finely honed machine of pure muscle. There was nothing I wouldn’t be able to do after tree planting. No job would be too strenuous or too dirty.

  At the end of the first shift we celebrated with a bonfire. The foreman dragged deadfall from the forest and threw it whole onto the blaze. “Go big or go home!” he yelled. We chee
red. Clouds of sparks exploded in the sky. Suddenly, I noticed Michel watching me from across the fire. He walked in my direction, can of Lucky in hand, and sat down. I stared into the blue heart of a flame.

  “Why are you here?” he asked and lit up a cigarette.

  “I’m trying to save money for university,” I said, taking a sip of Bacardi Breezer.

  Michel laughed. “Why do you want to go to university?”

  No one had ever asked me that before. University was just something you did, like get married and have children.

  Michel took one of my hands and flipped it over. My palms were cracked and raw from pesticides and dirt. Our foreman forbade the use of gloves, thinking they slowed us down. But Michel didn’t obey that rule. His hands felt as smooth as silk.

  “You should wear gloves, you know.”

  I nodded, too nervous to speak.

  “Do you want to hitch to Mexico with me when this is over?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t care that I’d been just accepted into the University of Victoria’s Creative Writing Program. I didn’t care that Michel was drunk and stoned and would forget about all of this in the morning. But he didn’t forget.

  ~

  “Make sure you look them in the eye,” Michel said. He unclipped his backpack, hid it in the ditch, and told me to do the same. “They trust you if you look them in the eye. But if they don’t look back, and they stop, don’t get in the car. Never trust anyone who won’t look you in the eye.”

  A car approached from the base of the hill. We stood on top of the only hill I could see in this corner of B.C., somewhere north of Fort Nelson, and just south of the Yukon. Our exact location, like many planting camps in this part of the world, was a mere coordinate marked by surveyors on a cutblock map. But we knew we were thousands of miles from the Mexican border. Muskeg dotted with islands of black spruce stretched in all directions. Just this morning we’d been part of that landscape, sweating in a tent scorched by the July sun.