Secret Worlds

My last day in Vancouver and I had already bought postcards that failed to capture the beauty of the city, so I decided there was just one thing left to do: pretend to be in a Douglas Coupland novel.

I headed to the pub at the Yale Hotel to look for Cathy and Pup-tent and found myself right next to Drake Street. I could see no crows, but there were pigeons. There were also puddles to peer into, where the snow had begun to melt, and I began to look for a secret world.

'Once, on a morning after a particularly noisy night, Cathy and I were walking down Drake Street and we saw a crow standing in a puddle, motionless, the sky reflected on its surface so that it looked as thought the crow was standing on the sky. Cathy then told me that she thinks that there is a secret world just underneath the surface of our own world. She said that the secret world was more important than the one we live in. "Just imagine how surprised fish would be," she said, "if they all knew all the action going on just on the other side of the water. Or just imagine yourself being able to breathe underwater and living with the fish. The secret world is that close and it's THAT different." ' - 1: Cathy, My Hotel Year, Douglas Coupland.