Idaho

It’s been a week! And a good week, at that. I think my writing tends to make everything sound depressing, but that’s only because writing about happy things is boring. Or something.

Tomorrow we are going to Lynn Valley, I think. I’m not really sure what it is but apparently it is exciting. I will google it. Don’t go anywhere.

Google confirms that it is a valley in British Columbia. There are some pictures of trees and also mountains and also more trees. I give this Valley my personal thumbs up and rank it up there with some of my all-time favourite valleys, including the Valley that was the school Zack Morris and the gang were always having wacky hijinks with.

Watched Simpsons tonight — couldn’t really focus. It’s such a dry, characterless show these days. A bunch of disjointed sight gags and pop culture references held together by a bunch of characters who LOOK like, but don’t resemble, their mid-90s counterparts.

But I’m not bitter.

One day I’ll write a novel and it will have characters and metaphors and run-on sentences with beautiful imagery that doesn’t mean much in the end and then I’ll finally know why I can’t get the phrase Where Are We Going If Not Idaho out of my head.

He writes in tangents and fragmented prose. Together they spin and turn in the summer breeze, watching the yellow line forever disappear under the hood of the car. Exhaust smoke always rises and the horizon never comes, and they both love the way their hands always come together with a soft touch. She doesn’t ask where they’re going, because after all: where are they going if not Idaho?

There. I started it. Tomorrow I will write more or perhaps decide that’s nothing more than empty-headed crap I wrote while watching a Jack-in-the-Box commercial on Vancouver TV. Then I’ll laugh and delete it.

But one day I’ll figure out what Idaho means. I’ve never been there. I have no desire to go there, and it honestly sounds very boring. But what the hell, somewhere in the dark corners of my mind, there is no truer statement than Where Are We Going If Not Idaho.

Go figure.

Happy Victoria Day! More tomorrow.