Long - Every Day We Disappear

In lyrical prose that is sometimes irreverent, Angela Long takes her readers to places they might never go unaccompanied. As she searches alone for self-fulfillment and love in the British Columbia bush or a Ganges River ashram; in a Roman piazza or a Kashmiri houseboat, her readers learn about themselves too.

Lynne Bowen, author of Boss Whistle

Engaging, insightful, and delightfully entertaining. Every Day We Disappear takes memoir to a whole new level.

Andreas Schroeder, author of Dust Ship Glory

The writing is so unaffectedly deft and alert that it would be tempting to race through this chronicle at one sitting, as if it were a deck of soothsayers cards laid out one after another. That would be a mistake, for each card has a revelation that lingers like a poem. Angela Long travels the world and the hearts unruly byways disguised as an innocent waif, with a wickedly kind eye and ear for place, culture, and character. The innocence is real, though vulnerable, heartsick, too easily bruised by encounters with poverty, unfairness and simple endurance, and yet at the same time it is completely and wonderingly mischievous.

Sean Virgo, author of The Shadow Mother

Copyright @ 2018 Angela Long

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher or by licensed agreement with Access: The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (contact accesscopyright.ca).

Editor: dee Hobsbawn-Smith

Cover Photo: Angela Long

Book and cover design: Tania Wolk, Third Wolf Studio

Printed and bound in Canada at Friesens, Altona, MB

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Creative Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Arts Board. The author would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for their assistance and support of this book.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Long, Angela, 1971-, author

Every day We disappear / Angela Long.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77518-393-8 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77518-394-5 (EPUB)

1. Long, Angela, 1971- --Travel. 2. Authors, Canadian (English)-

Travel. 3. Voyages and travels. I. Title.

PS8623.O525Z46 2018 C811.6 C2018-904749-6

C2018-904750-X

Radiant Press

Box 33128 Cathedral PO

Regina, SK S4T 7X2

info@radiantpress.ca

www.radiantpress.ca

The stories in this book reflect the authors recollection of events. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of those depicted.

I stand in Amsterdam Central Station, staring up at the departure board. I am alone for the first time ever, it seems, in possession of two thousand dollars worth of American Express travellers cheques, a large sum of money for an eighteen-year-old in 1989.

Ive earned it by deep-frying doughnuts from midnight until eight in the morning, six days a week, in a bakery on a Canadian military base in West Germany. My big brother Todd is serving as a master corporal in the Canadian military, and Ive been living with him and his wife in a town called Oberschopfheim since I graduated from high school two months earlier in Canada. Just a few days ago, we rented a Mercedes and drove to Amsterdam for a little brother-sister bonding in the hash dens and tulip fields.

Todd gives me a quick hug beside the ticket counter. His buddies are probably waiting for him at the Bulldog. Im supposed to catch the 2:34 p.m. to Cherbourg, and then ferry across to England. But, suddenly, as I watch my brothers lanky frame disappear through the glass doors, I dont want to go to England anymore.

I walk over to the departures board, and scan it for the first train thats scheduled to depart. A train to Anywhere. It leaves in five minutes. I buy a ticket. I have no guidebook, hotel reservations, or any idea how long it takes to get to Anywhere. But, none of that seems important. I feel alive, alive in every nerve-tingly sense of the word.

I hurry toward the platform, lurching beneath the monstrous backpack flopping behind me like a dying fish. I smile at my fellow passengers on their way to Anywhere, convinced were part of some magical master plot together.

When the train pulls out of the station, I feel my pulse quicken. Im so excited I can barely hear the conductor ask for my ticket. All the way? he asks in English. Are you going all the way to I no more want to hear him utter that name than deep-fry another doughnut. Ive fallen in love with something, but, as is often the case, I dont know with what.

Twenty years later, I know. I had fallen in love with a moment of unfurling. A moment when an industrial parkland on the outskirts of Amsterdam became the most beautiful sight Id ever seen. A moment I knew existed but had never witnessed like the opening of a flower. I had been in love with being a flower exposed, vulnerable, flaunting the colours of my navet. I must have known it was imperative for my survival to be that way. Without unfurling my petals, how could I have hoped to photosynthesize, to pollinate?

These days when I Google location, transportation, and accommodation options well in advance of an upcoming holiday, I wonder when those petals began to wilt. I analyze costs, schedules, and the potential positive and negative aspects of each choice as though Im coordinating a voyage to Saturn. Why not just let go? Why, when I have so many more resources and travel smarts than my eighteen-year-old self, am I so much more afraid?

It has become too easy to substitute comfort and security for living. I throw away my calculations and look for my old backpack instead. Its time to catch that train to Anywhere.

Do you have fire ? the stranger asked. He held up a pack of tobacco. Drum.

I laughed. Do you mean a light?

I could tell he was French Canadian. A blue-eyed, long-lashed, dark-haired mix of Old France and New World. Later, hed tell me he was related to Jack Kerouac, and I wont be surprised.

We were tree planters, working in the bush of northern British Columbia. We lived in tents, ate in tents, and shat behind a tarp in a tent. All day long, we bent, dug, and slid trees into the ground as fast and as frequently as our bodies and minds would allow. For some reason this environment bred romance as quickly as mosquitoes.

I left the screen door zipped tightly shut as I rustled around my tent to find a box of wooden emergency matches. I felt how I often had when I was twenty-one, like a boring Caucasian middle-class girl from Oshawa a suburb in southern Ontario bookended by General Motors and Darlington Nuclear Generating Station who didnt do things like smoke. It was inevitable Id fall in love with him from the first drag he took of his hand-rolled cigarette. He cocked his chin towards the sky, funneling smoke through his lips. The crickets began their chorus. The sky deepened to a perfect hue of sapphire. And in this dusky light, he looked as wild and beautiful as any creature Id hoped to encounter in the British Columbian bush.