Karl Anderson

Three scrubjays rooting in the gutter outside my window.  I missed them in Vancouver, although it wasn’t so bad because EFFIN BALD EAGLES would fly by my window on the way to their nest in the park.

Scrubjays are noisy and obnoxious.  They ate the toes off of the birds clinging to the walls of their cage on a friend’s porch, and they dive at cats just to rile them.  They have an annoying squawk which I like to hear because it sounds just like the shriek of the man who sold keffiyehs on Belmont Street in Chicago, walking down the sidewalk yelling “Five!”  We followed him one day and imitated him until he turned around, smiling, and said “For you, six!”

Horns of the C&N engines.  My apartment was a few blocks from the tracks, the farthest from them I’ve lived for years.

The mournful whistle of the BC Sugar Refinery.  I don’t know what it was for, it went off every hour during the day.  If it was a shift whistle, they chose the spookiest one they could find.

The scary howling siren somewhere in East Van.  I never figured out what or where it was.  It used to frighten me, and never stopped giving me the creeps, but eventually I appreciated it because I was used to it.  It sounded like an ambulance that just found out that its child was murdered.

The daily “O Canada” horns.  I probably shouldn’t admit to enjoying them.  Maybe if I heard them a thousand times more I would have gotten sick of them.

The Nine O’Clock Gun.  I love it.  I watched it fire from ten feet away once, and my ears rang for the rest of the night.

Deef old Chinese women yelling at each other from the sidewalk under my window.  They were my alarm clock on weekends.

Was a wonderful experience to mill around with the crowd in the middle of Hastings during the Insite benefit show.  You kind of have to keep your eyes extra open when riding in the DTES to avoid hitting the tweakers playing Hastings Street pinball; this time I got to be the one in the street.  And it was fun to blend in with all kinds of people in the rain among the smoke from the grills, lines of people waiting for the free food, propaganda banners hanging from the worn buildings all down the block.