I love it here

The free Vancouver weekly The Georgia Straight runs a column called “Confessions”, an “outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives”. Rather than being an agony aunt column, where you put a problem to someone who will then answer and give advise, these are just everyday confessions or statements without the expectation of a feedback. They range from the banal and  entertaining to the sad and philosophical. The astonishing thing about these little paragraphs is that they are an excellent slice of Vancouver city life, of the people who live here, of their concerns, pleasures, worries and attitudes. There is the husband who confesses to be fed up with his wife sleeping in until ten and then going to yoga while he works all day. A woman who is exasperated because she gets up early and takes care to make herself presentable only to be splashed from head to toe by a car driving through a gigantic puddle in the bike lane. A post-grad is disheartened after 10 months of unsuccessful job search in a city where (s)he knows nobody and can’t afford to live without a job. A 60-year old states that out of the recommended RENT (Rest, Exercise, Nutrition, Touch) factors, (s)he counts him/herself lucky to be able to tick off the first three, but hasn’t been hugged or kissed for years. One person is tired of the endless recreational marijuana debate, while another is happy to have memories of people (s)he has known and strongly bonded with, even though they might only be in his/her heart and no longer in his/her life. A confessor sees her cat as the person (s)he would like to be: holding no grudges, giving comfort when necessary, chilled, silly and able to keep her mouth shut. Half a page of simple confessions and reflections paint a sketch of Vancouver, the people that live here and what moves and bothers them – almost ingenious, people power at its finest.