vancouver-girl-itis

On living long enough to become that which you most feared and finding out that making your own granola and doing yoga is in fact just as amazing as you had heard advertised.

Growing up in a small town in the Rockies, there was a certain blue sheen to the words: Vancouver Girl. Hippies and yachts and no more snow. Then I moved to the BC interior for my undergrad and added layers of context to the phrase from that safe distance: 19-year-olds driving luxury sedans, cafes open 24 hours, wind and rain, wind and rain. I visited a friend going to school there on Halloween weekend and had pho for the first time. I saw soggy students on the bus to UBC, all in black raincoats. Black umbrellas dripping by their side. The dorms were smaller and older, the cafeteria massive.

But then I became a different person and the city became a different thing. I moved there. I knew neighborhoods. Everything came to life like a pop-up card that only made sense when you opened it.

This is how good olive oil tastes, and you’re lying on a boat in summertime. You let your skin turn brown. You walk the tree-lined streets until you know them. The beaches are familiar and you swim at sunset. The city isn’t grey anymore. Even in February, you know how to find where the flowers still grow and the trees glow with moss.

You start meditating. You fall in and out of love. You start running again. You own everything, you swear.

If there’s one more

beautiful thing around the corner

you might cry.

:)

This has been a dispatch from the desk of EMILY MANZER

who THINKS YOU ARE VERY SPECTACULAR!

PS.

Good podcast (coming from someone who will almost never listen to them)

Songs of the season:

Yes, these are both on my January playlist. Thank you for reading :)