Disjointed.

So, if anyone out there needs a really excellent 'children's' (I'd say 8, maybe 10+) book to read, Dianna Wynne Jones' The Homeward Bounders is my current recommendation. And not just because I just finished reading it.

Among other things it's a book about people who have been thrown out of synch with reality; which describes my current situation quite aptly.

( Here I ramble a lot about why you don't want to be an insomniac like me )

Things I Miss About My Former Life In Vancouver: BC Transit Time

I used to really enjoy waiting for the first bus in the morning in Vancouver -- particularily somewhere like Dunbar or another isolated, mostly-residential neighbourhood. Somewhere near the start of the line was always best, and I had several friends whose houses were so excellently located. The first bus out of the Dunbar Loop would haul itself up the street right as the sky started to swell, but before the sun was actually up -- and it would sort of drag the morning over the pavement, lumbering up the street. And until you got on, it was still last night. Even then, if the driver wasn't too cheerful, it could extend. But as soon as another passenger got on -- someone who clearly had just woken up -- it was officially morning. It was the next day, and your thoughts shifted forward with the strange, clunky weight of old machinery. 'What is it I'm going to do today?'

And all around the city, you could imagine these busses, glowing faintly with their evening lights still on, carrying around pockets of time. Negotiating with the daybreak. And on the 22 McDonald, winding down past MacKenzie and 33rd, it might still be three in the morning; on the 7 Nanaimo, five twenty-three -- and down at the Quay, waiting for the Seabus, the early morning businessmen would sit across from the late night skaters, waiting for the first ferry to make their victory official.

It doesn't always happen that way, but occasionally -- sometimes you walk through the streets and you can feel the time congeal on your coat, and you know that when you walk out the other end, into the busy street or onto the metro, you've still got it with you. Everyone else is out of synch.

--

And the thing about staying inside is that this never happens -- you'd think isolation would give you your own time, but instead it strips time away. The measuring-stick is gone. That's the problem with time capsules: you don't open up the metal box and find 1963, you open it up and you find 'old.' Archeology, I suppose, would be an attempt to counteract this problem.