A croissant and cappuccino: croissant from La Baguette et L’Echalotte on Granville Island facing the market, cappuccino from The Blue Parrot Café in the market itself.

Why is it so difficult to find good croissants in this city? La Baguette et L’Echalotte used to be a reliable croissantery; and the Café Creme — 4th Avenue at Yew when I lived at 5th and Vine, nothing but a memory now — had croissants crusted with slivered almonds and heavy with a generous filling of almond paste. The standard Vancouver croissant of today is lustreless, and pudgy as if from lack of exercise, when it should be glistening with baked-in butter and formed into a crisp crescent; which, when pulled apart, should offer springy resistance as an indication of its vitality. For my money the Pattisserie Bordeaux makes the best croissants in town — but I’d love to hear of others.

Three spinach pies: from Serano Greek Pastry on West Broadway. The woman ahead of me telling the girl behind the counter that she has a grandson the same name and age as Nico, the 5-year old who treats the bakery as his own kitchen; which it may well be. “Can I have another cookie?” he asks innocently, pretending to reach into the window display for a shortbread decorated with a maraschino cherry.

Two Ataulfo mangoes: from the produce store three doors further down. A pair of plump commas (or are they apostrophes?) in that trademark, deep orange-yellow which means “mango” and nothing else; a bit of give to their skin — and the seductive scent — says “ripe.”

A wedge of manchego cheese: from the cheese merchant in Granville Market. Evoking memories of bread and cheese lunches during my bike ride across northern Spain three years ago.

Three books from the Kitsilano outlet of Pulp Fiction: Sybille Bedford’s 2005 memoir Quicksands; Alberto Manguel’s A Reading Diary; and George Payerle’s The Last Trip to Oregon.

I heard George read from this collection at the Poetry Bash a few years ago, and was moved by these “Poems in Wake of Red’s Death” — “Red” being the nickname for Charles Lillard, the BC historian and poet who died in 1997. I never met Charles Lillard, but I love his writing, and wonder what he — in Payerle’s words “a Ketchikan logger and boom man recently returned from Germany, where he had gone to learn how to read Rilke. By reputation, a kind of literate Paul Bunyan” — would would have made of me: an amateur in too many senses of the word.

Discovering an unexpected conjunction in these books, which were evidently waiting for me to happen by: Charles Lillard was just 53 at the time of his passing; which happens to be the age at which Alberto Manguel began his year-long journal of reflections on rereading twelve of his favorite books. It is also the age I will be in little more than a week. Time passes, and who knows what a year will bring?

On that sombre note, here is one poem from The Last Trip to Oregon:

The Death of Charles Lillard

He had become translucent,
like an angel,
eyes dark that had been grey
and looking through us, now and then,
over the next hill to climb.
I’d never seen him do this before
but in the sixty days since I’d seen him
last, he’d dropped sixty pounds
and aged forty years —
a man fifty-three gone somewhere past ninety.
We agreed we needed to talk.
It could be done tomorrow
and the next day.
Now was a time to be.
“Weary,” he said.
voice a whisper of angels’ wings.
“You’re weary?” I said.
“Yes.” And a nod,
and eyes gone over the hill.
I didn’t say, “What’s on the other side?”
thinking, “Tomorrow.”
And he died tomorrow, 4:15 of the morning,
angry that he couldn’t get out of bed
to go to the can.
Contrary man gone beautiful
at Michelangelo’s angel.
My friend
at the end of the trail
as always
simply going away.
A tough, gentle, courageous sonofabitch
who always knew his time
and the next hill that’s always
the other side of this one.
There was no tomorrow for talk.
We just didn’t know
how close
that hill was,
and understood what I hope
I said to him:
this last trip to Oregon
is going to be a long one.