It's funny how sometimes I can leave this alone for close to a week because I really have nothing interesting to say, and then other times I feel compelled to run to a computer and add something. Today was an example of the latter case, I suppose, simply because I've had several blog-worthy trains of thought running around in my head over the last week, and have only now been able to marshall the time and energy and inclination to document them.

It's funny how small towns are, for all of the bashing and snide remarks they take from the "civilized" types, often a lot more welcoming, accepting, and in general, more real than bigger cities. Several incidents from last week's trip to Canmore (well, except the part where we almost died on the road filming speeding cars) for the documentary project keep recycling themselves in my mind. Being invited to film the closing standup (where we talk about "what happens next" on the camera, basically) on a stranger's doorstep? Getting a totally amazing context chartacter from a lonely and eecentric candy-store owner? Stripped of all the pretense and propaganda, small towns can be families in themselves. A small town is kind of like a metaphor for a community centre or a church, or even a metaphor for the stage, I think, with everyone playing their assigned roles - not because they are forced into it like cogs in a larger citywide machine, but because they have come to inhabit and take ownership and genuine pleasure in such things.