Below the fold. Note that "the mall" gets a name this chapter, Panther Heights. And West Philadelphia's local malls have been in trouble for a while due to competition from the King of Prussia megamall.
....
I'm such a clever Austrophile. (Explaining your jokes makes them even funnier!)
Below the fold. I haven't figured out how to make Google Blogs do first line paragraph indents. Hence the annoying line breaks between paragraphs instead of denoting indentation.
You can see Hornby Island from my mother's place, poking around the corner of Denman Island. I don't have photos. I can make them, now, because I haz joined the 21st Century and got a smartiephone. Now all I need is smarts! Or time to learn how to use the phone. Or fewer excuses. You take your choice of reasons. (The smart money is on the last.)
About the same angle, shot from a great deal closer. You take the ferry to Vancouver Island, then you take another ferry to Denman Island, then you take another ferry to Hornby. Sounds easy enough, but imagine the worst three connection bus trip you've ever been on (no, not Greyhound, that's too horrible), and that's what a three connection ferry trip is like. Except that you can do your waiting in bars and cafeterias, which is better than hanging around at the bus stop. Though that might be a bit of torture for young men trying to live on what musicians make.
It's hard to imagine a worse venue for a music festival. It's just such a drag to get there. Or maybe it's the best venue, because the journey is the destination. But I'm going to go with the former. The audience there might be enthusiastic, but it's also small. Hard to imagine so much enthusiasm after such a long trip, but maybe they were waiting for the band. Maybe, for once, they got there before she was gone.
I went on the ferry to celebrate my birthday, to my mother's house, a place just south of the ferry landing for Denman. It was just past her birthday, and not that far from my aunt's, come to that. And my brother marked the occasion by bringing his wife and as many of my other set of nephews and niece (Hi, Katy, if you ever read this!) as he could. The eldest was absent, working at a grocery store. The second-eldest went to see Harry Potter with his girlfriend and worked a closing shift that night. Because when you're young, you can do that. He also showed me how to do some things with my new iPhone. My brother has been to Denman Island, and so has the second-eldest.
There's irony to knowing that both of the older boys have summer jobs in the grocery business. And there's a sense of Death's grey wings brushing by, knowing that the eldest will be at university in less than a month.
I never took the turn for the ferry to Denman Island, although I've been there, on Pearl's boat. If I'd listened to her when I was as young as these musician boys, maybe I would have. Everything would have been different.
Or maybe not. I've no wisdom to offer about that. Only regrets that I didn't see more of three nephews and a niece in these last five years, and hope that I'll see more of them in years to come Maybe I'll even make the ferry to Denman. Maybe I'll find someone waiting there for me.
Below the fold, with apologies to James Tiptree, Junior. In modern Buddhism, Pure Lands are not in the eschatological future, but I think that wasn't the case in the 600s.
