[Photos by Jay Sturdevant]

Evening descended upon the Ou river in Laos, and still we had not found shelter. Our hand-scrawled map of the river was not drawn to scale. The next village could be mere minutes away, or many miles yet.

Arms sore, I laid down my paddle across the front of our canoe. Looking up at the towering limestone cliffs that enclosed both sides of the river, I asked the question on everyone’s mind:

“What if they don’t let us stay?”

We had encountered only one other village that day. They dismissed us with a simple head shake. Whether out of mistrust or misunderstanding, we didn’t know.

The canoe rounded a bend in the river. The American, James, sat up suddenly at the stern. “There it is!” he shouted, pointing towards the river’s edge.

Along the shore, women in argyle sarongs bathed themselves in the murky river water. A lone man in shorts scrubbed his laundry against a boulder. Children chased each other along the water’s edge. One child spotted our approaching canoe and halted.

“Fallang!” the boy shouted out. Foreigners.

The villagers stopped and faced us. In the middle of our boat, Annike turned around towards Ellen. “Get the paper out.”

Ellen stopped bailing out water, then pulled out our Rosetta stone: a single piece of paper containing every phrase of Lao we knew.

“Sabaidee!” she read aloud. “Náwn yuu nîi dâi baw?” Can we stay here tonight?

The villagers continued staring for a moment. The man turned to the women. The women shrugged. He faced us again, evaluating the four canoeing backpackers in front of him. A radiant smile dawned upon his face. He dived into the river, swam out to the canoe, and towed us back to shore.

Annike and Ellen were stereotypical Swedes, tall and blonde; sisters in every way except by blood. They had first found me two months earlier in a Cambodian bar, curing a case of travel romance heartache with a bottle of Thai whiskey. The three of us clicked together easily in that strange way travellers are able to do in far-away lands, despite having nothing in common other than the bags on their backs. Memory of that first night blurs into darkness as the empty glasses piled up on the bar counter. I remember neither the final rounds of drinks, nor literally being carried back to my guesthouse.

The next morning when I came to, I was in the back of a bus with the Swedes, heading out of Cambodia and into Vietnam. I had been kidnapped.

“We rescued you, Sean,” Annike would interject as I recounted the tale to others we met later along the road.

We took the scenic route together through Vietnam, one bar at a time. From Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, we drank at sidewalk speakeasies, danced on the pool tables at the Apocalypse Now, and pounded back snake whiskey while floating in Halong Bay. We trekked through the country seeking new places to drink and dance, culture and history be damned.

“It’s incredible how well you three travel together,” a girl once commented to us at the border crossing from northern Vietnam into Laos.

Ellen laughed. “That’s because none of us have slept with each other.”

“Yeah, there’s absolutely no tension,” I said in feigned agreement with Ellen, making sure not to keep eye contact with her for too long.

In between thatched cottages and palm trees, an unpaved space served as the village center. Dozens of the villagers formed a circle around us. The adults kept a cautious distance. The children clung tightly to each other, giggling and pointing, venturous enough to come close, yet too shy to talk to us. We stood still, grinning idiotically.

“Now what?” James asked through clenched teeth. We had just introduced ourselves and were running low on language.

An idea formed in my mind. I took a deck of playing cards from my bag, shuffled, and fanned them out to the children.

“Pick a card, any card.”

Giggles erupted. The crowd pushed forward a reluctant volunteer. She took a card. “Now show it to your friends,” I said, pantomiming the action. I flipped the bottom card of the deck upside down while her back was turned, then turned the entire deck over.

The girl slid her card back into the deck. I waved my hands over the cards, chanted a spell, then secretly flipped the deck over once more. I fanned the cards out to the children again. The girl’s card was the only one facing face up.

A collective oooohhh went up. I performed the trick once more, showing them how it worked. The children took the cards, performed it a few times with each other, then rushed over to the adults to show off their new magical powers. The adults laughed. The tension broke.

A light flashed. Everyone jumped back. James snapped another photo of the children playing with the cards. The adults scowled.

“This isn’t National Geographic,” I muttered.

“It’s cool, man,” James said, adjusting the focus on his camera. “It’s cool.”

* * *

Three’s company. James made it a fucking crowd.

Annike introduced the interloper into our travelling posse. They met in northern Laos, where we bought our dilapidated canoe. Infatuated at first sight, she charmed James into making the week-long journey down the Ou river with us.

I knew his type, had him figured out from the start: loud, ignorant, neo-Conservative. Condemned to spend the next week in close-quarters with an American, my misguided sense of Canadian superiority became enraged. I held him personally responsible for the current state of world affairs.

“Hey James, who did you vote for in the election?” I asked guilelessly during the first day on the river.

“Gore, man. I can’t believe Bush got in.”

No doubt he was completely ignorant of the world, however.

“Have you guys ever been to Nepal?” he asked on the second day. “Beautiful country. Even with the Maoist uprising going on there.”

Dammit. I knew he was a prick at heart though.

“Hey Sean, the sun’s burning you up pretty badly there,” he said on the third morning. “Here, take my hat.”

I hated him even more for being such a nice guy. I told myself it had nothing to do with his Adonis looks, or the fact that Ellen kept glancing at him when she thought no one was looking.

* * *

One of the village families sheltered us within the bamboo-thatched walls of their home. As we dined with our host that night, an English-speaking Buddhist monk from a neighbouring village appeared at the door.

“You are the first foreigners to visit here in over a year,” he announced, digging into what was left of the sticky rice. “And your timing couldn’t have been better. There is a wedding in the village tomorrow. Would you like to stay for it?”

“I don’t know,” James said. “We really should be going –”

“We’d love to,” I interrupted. I locked eyes with James. “I mean, seriously, when will we get another chance to attend a Laotian wedding again?”

Annike and Ellen sided with me. Take that, USA.

The wedding began with a bachelor party in the early hours of the morning. The men gathered to throw back shot after shot of gasoline-flavoured rice whiskey. The four of us were invited to join the men, though whether as honoured guests or as foreign amusements, I wasn’t sure.

I excused myself after two hours of debauchery to sneak down to the river. There had been stories in Thailand of backpackers drowning while swimming intoxicated. But the appeal of a sobering dip on a humid day was too much to resist. I dived into the Ou river, and felt drunkenly rejuvenated.

I swam back to the shore. A group of children stood over a still body on the ground. James had passed out by the river bank. I stumbled over, looked down at James. “This, kids, is why Americans shouldn’t drink!” I slurred.

I led the kids back to the village, leaving James behind. We ran into Ellen along the dirt path. “You better check on James down there. Make sure he’s alive.” I staggered back into our cottage, climbed underneath a mosquito net, then promptly passed out.

* * *

Annike’s crying broke my reverie. The afternoon sun still snuck through the cracks of the walls. I rubbed my eyes open, then looked over at Annike on the other side of the room. “What’s going on?”

“Ellen and James, that’s what! I thought he liked me…” She burst into tears again before she could continue.

I pulled myself upright, stumbled past Annike towards the door. Outside, only a few lingering guests remained in the village center. The wedding had commenced and concluded while I’d been comatose.

I jogged back to the river’s edge. Several villagers were gathered in front of a tangle of bushes. They spoke in hushed tones, their body language betrayed vexation. I drew closer. The bushes rustled loudly. Ellen emerged, tucking up a bra strap up as she stepped out of the bushes. She gasped, taken aback by the gathered group. The leaves shifted again, this time James emerged, tying the cords of his shorts together as he walked out of the foliage, dazed and oblivious to others around him.

In a country where exposed shoulders are considered offensive, one massive cultural faux fucking pas had just been committed.

From honoured guests to ostracized delinquents in a matter of minutes. We hid in our hosts’ cottage for the rest of the evening, cut off from the rest of the village. Shouts and arguments broke out between Ellen, Annike and James long into the night. I passed the time by polishing off the rest of the rice whiskey in silence.

I woke up first the next morning, walked down to the shore, and prepped the canoe for departure. One of our hosts was down there as well, watching dawn mist rise from the river’s surface. We stood in silence together. I desperately wanted to say something, anything. Unfortunately, I had never learned to say I’m sorry in Lao.

* * *

We paddled the last two days down the river in relative silence, speaking only when necessary.

What had we taken away from the village? A hangover and a few photos. What had we left in return? We had been on the cusp of a moment, of a unique experience, and we squandered it. I couldn’t even remember our host’s name.

The water’s flow gained velocity as we reached the end of the Ou river. An airplane flew over us, the first engine heard in a week. The old colonial city of Luang Phabang appeared in the distance. We stopped paddling, put down our oars, and gave in to the river’s force as it merged and became part of the Mekong. I wanted to turn around, to go back, to do it over again, but couldn’t. The current was too strong, the course could not be changed.

I’m working at The Tyee — an independent online magazine based in Vancouver — for the next several weeks.

Check out a few of my recent posts there:

• Police conduct report shows flaws with complaint process: Pivot
• Canada slow to track human trafficking: UBC legal prof
• Vancouver may loan Millennium up to $100-million

Coffee is the new smoking. It seems like everyone’s trying to give it up. I’ve overheard it everywhere recently: “I’ve been trying to quit since last week / My friend’s felt fantastic since giving it up / My manager picked the wrong day to get in a fight with me, it’d been three days since I had a cup / Decaf makes me want to stab someone.”

The pros to cigarettes and coffee are almost identical. Both offer an amazing pick-me-up mental boost. Both serve as a great tool for social interaction. There’s no better way to start the day than a drag of smoke or a slurp of brew. However, they also leave you feeling edgy and twitchy. And darken pearly white teeth. And let’s not forget the hopeless addiction. Apart from the lung cancer, they’re basically the same vice.

Too extreme of a comparison? Perhaps. But consider the marketing behind both addictions. Not too many years ago, most advertisers portrayed smoking as the habit of the suave and sophisticated. Celebrities proudly endorsed their favourite brands. Marketers presented tobacco consumption as a cultural activity, an edifying practice.

Sound familiar?

1951 du Maurier ad

2008 Nespresso ad with George Clooney

Marketing has subtly turned a simple caffeinated beverage into a fashionable lifestyle, just as they did with cigarettes. Friends showed North America that cafes were the place to be. Celebrity powerhouses, such as George Clooney, have helped brands like Nespresso obtain global revenues nearing almost a billion dollars. And we, the consumers? We have gradually substituted one addiction for another, trading cigarette packs for soy lattes.

I’ve been both a smoker and a coffee fiend. I’ve managed to quit the cigarettes, but giving up coffee has been virtually impossible. I tried joining the abstinence trend last week by switching to tea, the caffeine addict’s methadone. But it’s just not the same high. Besides, the battle was lost from the moment the coffee beans in the kitchen cupboard began to whisper my name.

Nicorette marketers take note: caffeine patches will be the next big thing.

Top photo credit: Thought Sparks

I don’t normally associate drinking and dancing with municipal politics, but tonight was a unique showcase. Vision Vancouver held their results party at Science World, complete with live music, a dance floor, and of course, a cash bar.

The results were originally forecast to be announced at 9:30 pm. Because of massive voter turnout however (over 4400 voters), the final count wasn’t announced until just before midnight (after much dancing by party members to cheesy ’80s tunes).

Officially elected as Vision Vancouver City Council nominees are Raymond Louie, Heather Deal, Tim Stevenson, George Chow, Andrea Reimer, Geoff Meggs, and Kerry Jang.

However, the eighth and final position on the council slate is still contested. A recount is underway between Kashmir Dhaliwal and David Eby, for their votes fell within the error of margin (a difference of 17 votes in favour of Dhaliwal). The official recount could take up to 72 hours, so it may not be until Tuesday night before we know who the eighth candidate is.

A dramatic night overall. The final wait for a decision between Dhaliwal and Eby proves once again that every single vote truly does count.

Quick field notes from tonight’s Vision Vancouver City Council Nominees debate:

- 17 nominees are contesting for one of Vision’s eight City Council slots.

- Mayoral candidate Gregor Roberston has endorsed incumbents George Chow, Heather Deal, Raymond Louie, and Tim Stevenson. This may all but guarantee them a nomination.

- The nominees were divided into groups of four. Each group was asked two questions by a panel of journalists from the Tyee, 24 Hours, and the West Ender.

- All nominees generally focused on the same core issues: homelessness, affordable housing, transit, the environment, and the overall failure of the NPA to invoke political willpower.

- Group 1 consisted of Catherine Evans, Heather Deal, Vaune Adams Kolber, and Andrew Dewberry. Heather Deal dominated the first group, displaying a depth of understanding regarding Vancouver’s transit and recycling problems. Last-minute nominee Dewberry constantly brought up the over-hyped “treefort saga”, and struggled to present any big-picture solutions to the city’s problems. His heart’s in the right place, but he’ll need several more years involved with community affairs before he’s ready to tackle city council.

- Kerry Jang, Kashmir Dhaliwal, Geoff Meggs, and George Chow formed Group 2. Jang was by far one of the smoothest talkers of the night, responding articulately to the panel’s question regarding drug treatment centers and NIMBY (”Not In My BackYard”) attitudes. George Chow won the crowd over with his self-effacing sense of humour. Chow and Jang emphasized the use of government endowment lands for the use of building affordable housing.

- Group 3 was made up of “Heather and the three Raymonds”: Heather Harrison, Raymond Louie, Ray Lam, and Rey Umlas. All four nominees agreed that ticketing the homeless for sleeping in the street was ineffective, if not stupid, and promised not to continue that NPA strategy. Umlas’s energetic responses were invigorating, energetic, and a bit vague all at once. Ray Lam deserves an honourable mention for giving the most honest answer of the night. When asked what his solution would be for middle-class renters unable to afford the rising rent prices in Vancouver, he honourably admitted that he had no immediate answer to such a complex question instead of rambling nonsensically. Props to Lam for his honesty.

- The final group comprised of Tim Stevenson, Doug Bencze, David Eby, Demitri Douzenis, and Andrea Reimer. Reimer and Eby shined most brightly of the four, fielding questions on civil liberties and safe housing with ease. Douzenis was strong on passion, but weak on policy. Benz and Stevenson both felt that the Provincial and Federal government need to be brought in to solve Vancouver’s drug and homeless problems.

A fascinating night overall. With nine days left till the nomination vote on September 20th, the Vision Vancouver City Council slate is still anyone’s game.

“Pleasantly shocked” best describes my reaction to David Eby’s announcement today that he is seeking a nomination for City Council for the November elections, and will be running under Vision Vancouver’s flag.

If you don’t know who David is, here’s a quick run-down: he’s a social activist lawyer who has worked with the Pivot Legal Society for the past three years, and has become one of the leading advocates for social housing and homeless rights in the Downtown Eastside. He co-authored the 2006 Cracks in the Foundation report, which exposed the numerous roots and causes of the housing/homeless crisis in Vancouver. In a short amount of time, he has become a leading human rights activist in the city and a noble example of how one person alone can make a difference.

I interviewed Mr. Eby a few weeks ago for a profile piece. I was convinced he wouldn’t make his election bid until the next term in 2011. However, I’m glad that he’s making his move sooner than later. If there’s one person that Vancouver needs on the city council to prevent the city from further becoming a property developer’s playground at the cost of basic human rights, it’s him.

Photo of David Eby courtesy of The Blackbird

The needle on the instructor’s altimeter reaches 10,000 feet. The plane’s exit door is thrown wide open. Outside, the wind howls. Beside me, a fellow jumper screams. The reality of what’s next sinks in.

The tandem pair in front goes first. Within three seconds, they cartwheel out of the plane and disappear into the blue horizon. My instructors taps me on the shoulder.

“We’re next!”

Second thoughts. What the hell am I doing? This is not the way to get over heartache. A bottle of tequila would have been so much wiser.

No time to protest. My legs suddenly dangle off the plane’s edge. No countdown is given, no “are you ready?” offered. The instructor simply leaps forward, pushes us outwards.

The plane disappears. The world below opens wide.

***

I have been terrorized by heights since birth. Childhood nightmares involved plummets toward the earth at terminal velocity. I shut my eyes tightly every time we drove over a bridge. Ladders and diving boards inspired mistrust and vertigo.

As an adult, nightmares became daymares every time I flew overseas. Though a devout atheist, I lapsed briefly back into a repentant Catholic on take-offs and landings, and sought divine intervention from bottles of wine in between.

Heights and flying, flying and heights. Skydiving combined these ultimate two fears into a package of sheer terror. For years, I promised myself I would one day take that plunge and face those fears. Only talk, however. One day I would be wheeled around in a retirement home, still promising to take a dive.

At least, that would have been the case, had it not been for an uncalculated moment of insanity caused by the end of a relationship. One moment I was at home, feeling sorry for myself and counting the number of bumps on the stucco walls. The next, I was in the grass fields of the skydiving centre in Abbotsford, receiving instructions on how to tandem dive.

The lesson lasted no more than five minutes. Cross your legs and arms. Tilt up your head. Arch your back as you plummet toward the earth. Safety lessons for paint ball games last longer. Jump gear was handed out: technicolour jumpsuits, tight leather caps and goggles. Circus carnie clothing, appropriate for being shot out of a cannon.

Like a death-row inmate minutes away from execution, a strange calm of acceptance descended as we approached the plane. Packed together tighter than passengers in a Guatemalan chicken bus, nothing was said as the plane took off and climbed cloudwards. The tandem instructors tied themselves to their human cargo. The plane became parallel with the summit of Mount Baker. Gravity eagerly awaited our descent.

***

My brain blue-screens as we fall through the atmosphere. The utmost important rules of survival had been violated: thou shall not jump from insane heights. Mental computation is impossible: invalid operation, situation cannot be processed.

It’s pure serenity as we free-fall. Momentary nirvana in the atmosphere. No desires. No doubts. No worries about ex-girlfriends, dead-end jobs, or economic futures. Rinzai Zen Buddhists call it sudden enlightenment: instantaneous understanding of the universe, caused by an intense, shocking experience. The ground dances below as we approach it at several thousand feet a minute. For sixty seconds or sixty-thousand years, everything is in its right place.

There is a whoosh as the parachute deploys. We’re jerked violently upwards, torn away from gravity’s grasp. Caught in the safety of the chute, the brain reboots. Reality comes back online.

It is only then that I remember to scream.

***

I babble incessantly to the tandem instructor as we float downwards. Thank you so much, this is the greatest moment of my life. He struggles to share my enthusiasm. He’s jumped ten times already this day, and many thousands of times before that.

“Let’s do some spins,” he says. He yanks hard at one of chute’s toggles, and sends us into a horizontal spiral. It shuts me up for a few minutes as the world whirls round.

***

There’s a scene in James Clavell’s Shogun where the novel’s protagonist attempts seppuku, only to be stopped at the last moment. For the next several days, the protagonist lives in a transcendent state of awareness. Having tasted death for a brief moment, the perception of reality becomes altered. Life is brighter, more vibrant.

Below our feet, Vancouver spreads out like a quilted patchwork. The grass glows neon. The horizon holds no boundary. Held tightly in the parachute’s embrace, the world below has never looked more promising.

Photo courtesy of Tandem Skydiving Hawaii

[Photos by Brett Beadle]

In the grey Sunday morning light, a costumed procession marches through the quiet streets of Downtown Vancouver’s financial district. Dressed in matching black business suits and stylized Guy Fawkes masks, the sombre group looks more like a displaced Day of the Dead parade than members of an organized protest.

A loud cheer greets the group as they swing onto West Hastings Street. Over a hundred fellow protestors await them, most of whom also have their faces hidden behind Halloween masks. The two groups merge, and the protest commences. Pamphlets are handed out to curious passerbys. Picket signs rise high. A man with a microphone begins a chant: “Brain-washed, brain-washed, brain-washed!”

On the opposite side of the road, the Church of Scientology doors swing open. Two members strut out proudly, unfurl a banner, then raise it high on poles. “Scientologists For Peace,” it boldly proclaims.

The protestors break out in mocking laughter. A new chant starts, aimed at the banner: “Lies, lies, lies!” A section of the protestors splinter off and sprint across the street to the church. They raise their picket signs high, blocking the banner from view. One protester, her face hidden with a plaid handkerchief, wields a simple cardboard sign: “Religion is free. $cientology isn’t.” A veiled man beside her holds up a hand-written plea: “Free Tom Cruise.”

It’s difficult to describe the inside of the Scientology building in Vancouver as a church. Devoid of the scents of melted wax or burning incense, the Vancouver mission looks more like a marketing office than a sanctuary of religious devotion. Tall promotional signs line each wall. The receptionist’s desk is adorned with a bookshelf full of Scientology material for sale. In two cubicles behind reception, Scientologist members place follow-up phone calls to potential members.

George, a Scientologist for over 27 years, sits at a promotional table near the church doors. The table is decorated with E-meters and books on Dianetics, the foundational belief system of Scientology. George calmly sips on a cup of coffee as he offers a demonstration of the E-meter, paying no attention to the protest across the street.

The E-meter looks like a volt meter, the kind available at Radio Shack, attached to two tin cylinders. He turns on the device. The needle on the meter hovers at neutral. The E-meter, George explains, measures the electrical current in the human body, and can be used to observe changes in a person’s mental energy. “Hold the cylinders and think of a stressful moment in your life,” he says. “The needle will react to your thoughts.”

The needle fails to budge.

“Are you concentrating? Here, let me make an adjustment.” He turns the dials on the meter. Suddenly the needle violently swings back and forth.

“See?” he says, smiling affably.

Back outside at the protest, an altercation has broken out. Two muscular passerbys become enraged when videotaped by a protestor. They corner her, demanding the tape. Other protestors rush over, surrounding the two men. While outnumbered, they still pose a potential physical threat. The men begin shouting. “Why are you hiding behind masks? Stand up for what you believe in!”

“We are,” counters one protestor. “This is about free speech.”

Rain begins to drizzle. “Then prove it! All of your shit stands for nothing. Take off the masks! You’re all a joke. Behind a mask you’re nobody.” The two men storm off.

“We’re not nobody,” another protestor weakly retorts, his voice muffled under a Guy Fawkes mask. “We’re Anonymous.”

[Photos by Lung Liu]

Seen through the lens of Lung Liu, a scarred victim of a motorcycle accident becomes buoyantly handsome. A half-nude woman lying in a condom-strewn alleyway transforms into a caricature of beauty. Photos from his series on the Downtown Eastside capture Vancouver’s ignored and isolated denizens, of those forced to live in SRO hotels or on the street. While Lung’s street photography lacks any candidness, the black-and-white portraits humanize his subjects without capitalizing on shock value.

Lung claims the beauty in his work is neither contrived nor created by him. “It’s everywhere. If you stop and really look, there’s something beautiful about everyone.” He spins around in his seat. “Like that girl right behind us, she’s fucking gorgeous!”

I lean past Lung and look. Until now, I hadn’t noticed the woman he points to. She hovers over a pile of textbooks, oblivious to us. She sips on coffee and nods her head in rhythm with the beats flowing out of her headphones. Sure, she’s moderately attractive, but gorgeous? I don’t see it. She’s not someone that would cause a look-back if passed on the street.

Lung continues unabashed. “Sometimes you have to just go up to someone and say you’re really lovely. People aren’t going to be weirded out.”

I don’t buy it. A random stranger claiming that you’re beautiful? Surely a hidden agenda would be assumed. It can’t be as simple as that, I tell him.

Lung’s out of his seat before I complete the thought. He walks across the café and taps the girl on the shoulder. The words “I just wanted to say you’re beautiful” float across the room. The girl smiles. A thank-you forms on her lips.

Lung sits down again nonchalantly. “Just like that,” he declares without a trace of embarrassment.

I look back at the girl. She hovers over the textbooks once again, only now the headphones remain off. The curved edges of her mouth betray the remnants of the compliment.

The confidence to approach and profess admiration to complete strangers is relatively new to Lung. Adolescence and his early 20s were marked with little social interaction. Friends were few, girls were admired from afar. His idea of fun on weekends during high school was memorizing Pi to 120 decimal places.

His social isolation may have been due to the upheaval in the formative years of his life. Born in northern Vietnam, Lung’s family fled to China during the war in the early ‘70s. Five-year old Lung spent the next few months in a refugee camp in Macao, before his family was sponsored for immigration to Canada by a church in British Columbia.

As with many children of immigrant families, parental pressure was placed on young Lung to excel academically above all others, to earn a prestigious and secure financial future. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, a path he initially followed: after high school he went directly to UBC and earned a degree in microbiology.

“The future was all set for me, and I couldn’t handle it,” Lung recalls. “I had ulcers because I was so stressed about academics. I had these fantasies about just getting away, seeing things I hadn’t seen before, about getting away from life as I knew it. I kept dreaming of things like going on a trip and finding a cave which exits into Shangri-La, where no one has to work, and people can be happy and do whatever they want.”

His relationship with microbiology after university was brief and bitter, lasting a mere three months. On the rebound, he started anew as a systems analyst for a market research company. Life outside of academia became mundane and routine: “I would wake up, have breakfast, go to work, come home, cook myself dinner, go to sleep, do the same thing every day. After three years I realized I couldn’t differentiate one day from the next.”

Lung knew he had to change, but logically he couldn’t figure out what needed to be altered. He was at a loss.

And then the planets aligned, and Venus entered his life.

They met at a costume party. Lung was dressed as a woman; Venus was into drag queens. She approached him and complimented his beauty, and they chatted throughout the night.

Their next rendezvous was on his birthday. For a present, she promised him a print from her photography. She showed him her portfolio, containing nudes of every man she had been friends with. Conservative Lung told her that he could never pose nude. His resolve lasted a full week.

They went down to Wreck Beach. While taking photos of Lung, she removed her own clothing to make him more comfortable. “That’s how I started photography. I thought: If she can do this, so can I.”

Venus moved to Montreal for film school a few months later. Hundreds showed up to her going-away party. Many were so affected by her departure that they literally burst into tears. Her life was in an opposing orbit to his: loved by many, chasing her true passions. The party was a catalyst for Lung: “I just realized that, wow, what was I doing with my life? I had no real ties with anyone, I was working at a job I hated, all for a nebulous goal that I really didn’t know.”

In a pitted moment, he made his first unplanned, irrational decision. He moved to Montreal as well.

Jobless and unable to parle français, resources became scarce in Montreal. Desperate for cash, he tried to become a dancer at Club Adonis, a gay strip club, even though he is straight.

But could he actually dance?

“No, but I figured I could work the small Asian kid angle. I figured I was the type that could attract the Bears, that I could be a cage dancer or something. It was the only thing I could think of that would give me money and time to pursue my photography.”

Quebec’s governmental employment agency saved him from cages and bears, however, by sponsoring him to learn French full-time. Freed from financial worries, he pursued his hobby of photography, and excelled quickly in both language and imagery.

Separated from structures of family and familiarity, Lung was forced out of his introverted shell, forced to experience life less passively. Two years later when he moved back to Vancouver, the rese
rved persona was gone, replaced by an outgoing, freer personality. As Venus had first approached him years previously, he now had the confidence to do the same.

The change in confidence parallels the evolution of his photography. Over the course of the past four years, his work has progressed from traditional nature shots to complex, narrative portraits. Lung credits the escape from introversion as the key to his work. “Everything you need to know about photography, the technical aspects of it, can be learned in a day. The difference between a great photographer and a brilliant photographer is just social skills, that’s all.”

His art has developed a large following on several community websites, such as Livejournal and Flickr. His four major series – centered on the Salton Sea, Northern Vietnam, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and Majico in Mexico – have won praise from viewers around the world, which has not gone unnoticed by photography community. Last summer, he was awarded Editorial Non-Professional Photographer of the Year by the International Photographer’s Association, an organization which annually draws in nearly 20,000 entries from over 90 countries.

“When you take a picture of someone, you take them at that moment you see something in them that reminds you of how you feel about them,” Lung says as my coffee grows cold. “Your audience will clue in on that.”

Lung’s gorgeous girl gathers up her textbooks and exits the café. She turns and glides past the window we sit behind. I look up as she nears, and comprehension comes together like the click of a shutter.

This woman will never be on the cover of Cosmo. She will never star in the next summer blockbuster. She will never drink Diet Coke on a commercial. And that’s the point. She’s beautiful in a way I have forgotten exists, gorgeous in a way that doesn’t require silicone or Photoshop.

I ask Lung if he ever falls in love with his subjects.

“All the time,” he says.

My grandfather Jimmy steps, steps, steps into the living room, led by a stainless steel walker. He lowers himself into the nearest chair, and pulls the dinner table towards him. An empty glass sits beside his daily can of Guinness.

Jimmy struggles to grasp the can with his left hand. Two major strokes have deadened the entire right side of his body. His hand trembles violently as he pours out the dark stout, so much that I worry it will spill everywhere.

It doesn’t though. He fills the glass to the top, takes a sip, and lets out a satisfied ahhhh. He winks at me. “Still got it,” he says.

* * *

My first memory of Jimmy is the strongest. I was seven, on a family pilgrimage back to England, running around maniacally with my cousins in their garden in Middlesex.

“Hey kids,” Jimmy called. “Come here for a second.”

We ran over to the man I barely knew but nonetheless called grandad.

“Watch this,” he whispered. Jimmy opened his mouth wide. The top row of his teeth fell out of his gums.

We fled in terror to our parents, screaming about bewitched teeth. Our parents looked back at Jimmy. “I don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said, smiling with two sets of perfectly aligned teeth.

Our parents returned to their conversation. Still smiling, Jimmy looked back down at us, then dropped his dentures from his skull yet again, sending his grandchildren fleeing once more.

* * *

The years pass, and yet I still know little about Jimmy beyond his cursed teeth. The Atlantic separates us. The little knowledge I have of him comes out of the stories told by visiting uncles.

“I was 16 years old the first time I flew in a plane,” says my uncle Gerald, the youngest of Jimmy’s children. “As we’re about to go on, Dad suddenly tells me that near the end of the war, planes were assembled so quick and carelessly that most of them fell completely apart on take off. I’ve been a nervous wreck on flights ever since.”

Jimmy rarely spoke of the war. His sons have only a few small anecdotes of his experiences. “Like the time I introduced him to Sue,” his son Chris says, recounting the first time Jimmy met his future daughter-in-law.

“And whereabouts are you from?” Jimmy asked Sue.

She named a small town in northern France.

“Oh yes,” he said. “I was there once. Back in the early ‘40s.”

She was surprised. Her Norman hometown was far off the tourist track. What was he doing all the way out there?

He shrugged absently. “Bombing it from the sky.”

* * *

I return to England over a decade later and tour the Imperial War Museum in London with the Kevin, the eldest son. He points out a replica of a Lancaster, the bomber plane Jimmy served in. “He once told me how everyone in the plane would be chatting and smoking as they flew over the Channel, laughing like they didn’t have a care in the world,” Kevin says. “Then the pilot would shout out from the front – twenty minutes to target! – and all of the boys in the back would fall utterly silent.”

Jimmy was positioned in the rear turret, an exposed glass dome that hung from the tail of the plane. The turret was uninsulated and unheated; the gunner had to wear an electrically heated suit to prevent frostbite. I climb into the Lancaster replica, through its fuselage, and drop down into the gunner’s nest. I try to imagine what it must have been like, waiting here, shivering, alone with my thoughts and my machine guns. I try to envision black clouds of flak detonating around me. I lean forward and listen for the whistle of falling bombs. I try to imagine what it felt like to be Jimmy, but can’t.

* * *

By the time I’m old enough to appreciate that there’s more to Jimmy than false teeth, it’s too late. Another stroke destroys his memory.

“Remember the time I came to Vancouver for Expo?”

It’s the third time he’s told me the story today. I look across the living room to the man who once dangled in a frozen glass bubble twenty thousand feet in the air. There’s no chance of recovering the experience. Born in a generation that didn’t worship the individual, his experiences were never recorded in a diary, or a movie, or a blog. His memories die as his neurons do.

“I can tell you everything that happened a decade or two ago,” he tells me. “But everything else…”

What about fifty years ago?

“Nothing,” he says. “Were you here yesterday?”

Yes, I tell him. And earlier this morning.

“Oh. I see,” he says, polishing off his glass of Guinness.