The Dandilion Ice Cream Incident

You know, I've been places where they were rude to me and I knew why. I've been grabbed for 'shoplifting' because I looked poor, or been ignored for being young (ah, but those days are gone), or treated like a bad smell because they couldn't figure out my gender. Incidents not of discrimination comma major, which is what happens to people who are *actually* oppressed, but of Minor Discriminative Inconvenience.

But I'm not sure what happened at the Moss St. Market. I couldn't get served at the Shady Creek ice cream tent.

Maybe it was my own fault for not leaping at the white chocolate amaretto she first offered around, but I was just trying to be polite. She didn't offer it to me specifically, just waved it around the circle of faces like a torch she was using to illuminate strange visages. They had a whole range of flavours, and I had ambitions to Try All the Kinds.

I couldn't get eye contact from the woman who was doing most of the serving. The bearded fellow beside her showed some signs of acknowledging me (he twitched when I spoke) but he was deep in conversation with someone else and though he waved around one of those little ice cream shovels he never actually put it into the ice cream.

I thought it was maybe because I'd gone to stand on one side to avoid the crowd, (bad me) so I tried going around the front. But it was no better. I am one of your more passive consumers, and I fear rudeness like some people (well, me) fear spiders, but I, even I, asked loudly for ice cream three times. Shuddering at my own effrontery.

"May I try that too, please?"
"May I have some of that too, please?"
"MAY I TRY THAT TOO, PLEASE?"

I wish they'd at least given me a small card saying "We are ignoring you because _______." "...the market economy creates a humiliating dynamic for those in its thrall," for example. Then I'd know how to feel. (In that case, comradely approval and renewed commitment to the Struggle.)

Anyway, the ice cream wasn't very good. Don't buy it.

Then I ran into someone I knew and we had a conversation about voting, wherein we spoke somewhat at cross purposes; she said people she knew 'didn't know who to vote for'. I felt suddenly stupid for thinking that I did know.

I realized (but did not articulate until Just Now) that I am voting not because I have respect for any of the candidates, or think they will further my preferences for society, but because I am afraid that someone worse will get in. The BC Liberals thing shook me. Like a lot of disaffected lefties, I thought, eh, the NDP's gotten so bad that the Liberals will be pretty much the same. Coke/Pepsi. Pepsi/Coke.

No.

I don't expect integrity out of the voting process. I don't identify with my vote, and I don't think it's my Democratic Responsibility and my Voice in Society. But I can't help thinking that I could have at least voted against the Liberals. They still would've gotten in, but I'd know I set my vote against them. I think that would be a comfort now.

* * *

After that, I walked a long time up the coast with the bitter flavour of roast dandilion root in my mouth, until I was exhausted and happy and very sunburnt. I found all kinds of things I knew were there but had half-forgotten. An arc of incredible white-sand beach tucked into the back of a cove in that nebulous territory between Rocklands and Oak Bay.

I had a brilliant lox-and-bagel from the Mount Royal down that way, which always feels like a sudden treasure when I come across it, even when I'm expecting it.

And I discovered the coastline over that way doesn't look like I thought it did. I thought it was more like the Uplands coast, with trees carrying their shade down to the ocean, but it's much rougher and wilder. The rich and near-rich landscape down as far as they can, but the coast itself is all huge knotted boulders of dark, striated rock. You couldn't change it except by blasting it out.

It means some revisions to the novel, which involved a cliff and some trees that aren't where I put them (and they don't have to be, but they should at least be theoretically possible in the area) -- but it was a joy to scramble about on the rocks. I felt a bit shy, as I expect the homeowners see the shore as their own. I kept muttering to myself under my breath: "Anything covered by water at high tide is public property. Anything covered..." and looking for evidence of seaweed.

-rf