Vancouver—The William Blake Way

Jul 1, 2024

Early this morning, and by that I mean 3:30 a.m., after 18 hours of traveling (broken plane, thunderstorms), we arrived in Vancouver. Wow. The only place that affected me this way was when I first saw San Francisco in 1977 and called my parents to tell them I was going to live there as an adult. In fact, I called my parents from the phone booth across the street from Tower Records on Columbus and Bay.

*The tower behind the record store is The San Francisco Art Institute where I met Vernon and had the most romantic Valentine’s night of my life.*

Ten years later, I lived in this “apartment building,” which had a spectacular view of the bay, although, as you can see, was a revolting place to live.

I’ve visited a lot of beautiful places—Fiji, Hawaii, the Caribbean—but I love trees and water. Vancouver has mountains, too.

This is the view from my room.

My big goal for this visit, aside from getting on the cruise ship tomorrow, was to go to the Capilano Suspension Bridge because of the website.

It is as spectacular as the website shows. Here is how much the bridge shakes.

The bridge shakes a lot and many of the people on it are scared. It kind of feels like being on a small boat with a lot of waves.

Sometimes, and by that I mean, every day, I wish we lived in a world where we worshipped animals and nature.

There was a plaque on the walkway through the trees with a William Blake quote: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green things that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity…and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”

I love William Blake, and one reason is because of another one of his quotes: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom…You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.”