New Job

Next stop, Batam, Indonesia. I had no idea there were places in the world that would value my University degree. But there you have it. Stay in school kids.

Whistling Dixie

When I woke up today I didn't think, today I am going to see a glass bottle house. I didn't think, today I will meet a man in a T-shirt that says "God Says "Go Hunting" Jer 1:6", who will proudly show us his beautiful restaurant, still so new you might choke on the pungent wood smell, even though the restaurant is closed because the cook, his wife, has taken their granddaughter to tea at tea house. When I woke up today I didn't think I would, in a few short hours, find myself in a converted Railway Station buying ice cream in a dixie cup and eating it with a miniature wooden spoon, just like at church picnics when I was a child. I most definitely didn't imagine I'd see a tiny village called Wade sprung up in a forest and only accessible by a rustic dirt road.

But, because every day's an adventure, I did.

I am not the sort who's eager to split the populace in two. "There are two kinds of people in the world: Winners and Losers" or "There two kinds of people in the world: Those who see the glass as half empty and those who see the glass as half full."

Dichotomies are cliche, inaccurate and lacking sophistication. Still, I've come to realize that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who value things and those who value experiences. One is no more correct than the other. Neither is loftier or nobler. One will not get you any more chicks than the other. No, there is nothing wrong with either but I am the sort who values experiences over stuff.

I wish I had figured this out earlier in my life. I think I would have made better choices, in friends, careers, dates, lovers and underwear.

Wild Game

I went moose hunting today. I didn't see a moose but I did find a gorilla. The gorilla. That gorilla. In that picture, you know, the one of me and that gorilla. That you took. I've framed it in glass, part of a triptych in black and white. On the left is a marble statue at the top of the National Parliament Building in Havannah, Cuba. On the right side is a dead frog floating in a chlorine pool. And, between them both, is a picture of me, wearing your hat, in front of the highway monument gorilla. I am smiling at you, so naturally and easy, it, the smile looks real, even to me.

Before the picture, Jack, who hadn't smoked a day in his life until his divorce at forty, fell asleep with a lit cigarette between his lips and died in the ensuing fire at the age of forty three. You said, "Baby, baby, baby. What's it going to take to cheer you up?"

I said, "I need a road trip."

Forty-two hours before the picture we dropped off the Boy, the one I'd had a crush on since before you and I met, at his friend's campground. In fact, the night you and I met, I'd been at the pub telling my best friend all about him when he walked in with a girl.

"Huh," I said, watching the two of them walking hand in hand to the bar, "I hadn't considered that possibility at all." When my friend and I finished laughing we ordered another two rounds which is how I ended up pretending to french kiss you through the window pane before we ever spoke a word. (I like to blame the alcohol but you and I both know, I'd have probably done the same sober.) This, the pub and the kiss and the poem you recited when we stumbled out into the street after closing time, are all a years worth of hours before the road trip.

So after dropping off this boy whom I still had a crush on at the camper his friends dubbed the "The Silver Bullet" which, it turns out, was only a double entendre to you and me, after this but still before the gorilla, we spent a night in a nicotine coated cabin under linens that smelled like fermaldehyde and moss. when I couldn't sleep, you called me back to bed and, placing your lips beside my ear, told me the story, again, about your favourite snowboard run. When you got to the part about the unblemished powdery snow and made the swooshing noise that tickled my ear, the vibration made my toes curl for the third time that night.

Thirty-two hours earlier there was that small town with the best ever second hand store, where I had to buy the blue cowboy shirt with snaps and the brown wool sweater, the one like your ski sweater without all the holes, because both were too small on you. After that, any time I wore either one you'd say, "Man, it tears me that that's too small for me," and it made me happy to make you jealous over something so mundane.

Thirty hours prior was the 200 km side road that dead ended in a peculiar town with a two table coffee shop and a grocery store that sold only blighted vegetables and expired milk. The people in both establishments eyed us suspiciously but, while I have no patience for small talk, you quickly won them over with your rent-a-smile and bad jokes.

Twenty-two hours before we were caught in a pulp trailer checkstop by a trucker who went around us to park in front of us and so must have seen everything. "No, wait, c'mon who cares," you said but I was already back in the driver's seat. You smiled and made the airhorn gesture at the driver as we drove past, then you mooned him as we drove away. I ought to have been embarassed but I couldn't stop laughing.

Twenty hours before the photo there were hours of silence; just us and the road and motorized metal containers hurtling behind us like our blurry pasts or towards us like our even blurrier futures. You hit repeat to listen to Leonard Cohen's, "I'm Your Man." three times. After the second listen you said quietly, more to yourself than to me, "I think I'm starting to get it." I didn't know what "it" was and I didn't ask. We finally found relief in the guise of a hitchhiker. A tree planter. Money for school, he said. Was it to be a doctor? Or an engineer? Neither of us cared. He was glad for the ride, we were grateful for the company. He was not either of us. Nothing else was important.

Just eighteen hours before that photo we played pool and owned the juke box in a seedy bar in Thunder Bay, until a drunk girl in white hightops and a ZZ Top t-shirt challenged us to pool and tried to pick a fist fight with me.  You were disappointed I didn't take the bait. This after checking into the Art Deco 50's style hotel, and the steak dinner at the Casino that made you throw a tantrum which in turn made me laugh til I cried.

Four hours before you took that photo I tried telling you the story about the conversation I had with the old man in the Swiss Chalet parking lot only I got the sequence all wrong and somehow it sounded like I had told him I wanted you to propose. "OHHH," you said, "If that's what you want let's do it. Let's get married right now." I told you to fuck off.

After all of this, as if only to prove the absurdity of us, there is a black and white photo of me in front of a gorilla, wearing your straw cowboy hat and smiling at you like I mean every dimple of it. when I got the film developed I couldn't remember where the picture was taken. What remains vivid in my memory is the minute after you snapped the picture.

Three jeering pre-teen girls came walking down the highway, resentful of their tiny town and the tourists passing through to bigger cities with brighter lights and cooler, harder boys. You turned to watch them and I knew you saw your own daughter and wondered what she despised now. There you were, a grown man, wondering what they liked and what was the secret codeword to get into their club. And I, watching you, wanted to tell you, reassure you, there is no way to crack that clique when you are older than twenty, but I realized no matter how many miles we traveled together, the distance between us would always remain the same so I didn't say anything at all.

We got back in the rental car and drove away. We didn't stop again.

Under the Boardwalk

I don't believe I have ever taken ferry without being hungover. I'm still trying to decide whether this is a coincidence or just more evidence that I have a drinking problem but I know for certain that it never makes for a pleasant crossing.

There was an excruciating trip to the island of Ometepe after a night of bar hopping with a couple of Swedes. We'd stayed up to watch one of the most beautiful sunrises I've ever seen before I tossed my belongings into my backpack and made the border crossing from Costa Rica to Nicaragua. It was early afternoon by the time we finally cleared customs and my headache was peaking by the time we boarded the dilapidated ferry to cross the only shark infested lake in the world. The lake was roiling as wildly as my stomach but, unfortunately, the two were syncopated rather than sympathetic so, in a concerted effort at not hurling, I fixed my gaze on the ancient man who was bailing water from the the leaky bottom, and tried to think of anything but sharks.

Later that same trip a mudslide had made the road out of the penninsula bound Montezuma impassable so we paid ridiculous sums to be ferried across the ocean to the mainland in a motorboat. We were escorted by a pod of black dolphins. Have I ever told you how much I love dolphins? But, that morning, I couldn't even smile at the sight of them for fear of losing my hangover all over the boat.

So, when a party broke out round our campfire on Friday and I drank half a bottle of wine too much, it seemed inevitable that Saturday morning found me on a pontoon boat being ferried to Coney Island for the second annual music festival while wrestling with my hangover. If ferries are the worst place to find yourself with a hangover, music festivals are the best. Particularly music festivals with beaches only four feet away and an art exhibit along the boardwalk.

That's right, a real bonafide wooden boardwalk from the island's heyday in the 1920's. I was strolling this shady edifice when I met the musky chasing Fisherman. We became fast friends, that rare kind, who can sit without saying a word and it isn't awkward in the least though we actually laughed and talked a lot in between the musical acts. He gave me iced tea and we sang along to "Don't give me no hand me down world" and other greatest hits by Bill Wallace and his band the Best of Guess Who.

"See those two couples on the picnic table over there?" he said between sets. I nodded.
"I'm going to sit between the husband and wife on the right, you sit between the two on the left. Just to see what happens." Kindred souls we were but there was an ominous storm brewing in the East by the time the last act hit the stage and too quickly it was time to say goodbye. When he offered I could stay and weather out the storm with him and he'd ferry me back personally when it passed I wanted to say yes but there were bison burgers and sweet potato fries waiting for me at camp-familial duties and obligations really- so I worriedly left him at the mercy of the increasingly howling winds and blackening sky to catch the next ferry back town.

Why it is that, unlike cars, boats always take you someplace good?

Sha La La La La Na Na Nee Na

I have often wondered what it might be like to be one of those people for whom things went right, more often than not. The kind who doesn't bother making a "Plan B" because, well, why would they need one? Apparently, I have won the "charmed" lottery and this is my year to live the fantasy. At the risk of inciting the wrath of whatever fates have deemed it so, I must confess, it feels pretty good to be flying without a net, not mapping the emergency exits, or packing the umbrella without any consequences.
  
Spotted at the local library today:

July 30, 2010 Community Wellness Committee to host a BBQ. Your choice Hot Dog or Hamburger, Chips and Pop for $3.

Tuscon Sam

I was three rows away from done when the mower began to sputter. "Please, oh please, oh please don't run out of gas," I muttered. But it did. It always does. I sigh. Now I will spill gas on my fingers and smell like petrol all evening. I am resigned. I have, it seems, a subconscious aversion to gardening gloves and have come to regard gasoline soaked skin after mowing, as inevitable. Which is how I came to be sporting parfum de la gas vapors at dinner with Grandma, the Diva, Best Uncle, Fave Aunt and mother at the local pub last night.

A distracting odor that ought to have ruined my meal but, in truth, I find comforting. In fact, when I was ten years old, I traded almost half of my sticker book for a scratch 'n sniff sticker that smelled like a gas station. I know! I really am the product of a bygone era. Can you imagine slipping a kid a gas scented anything to sniff these days without a lawsuit immediately pending? It's a miracle we've all survived to tell these tales.

The reason I traded half my hard won sticker empire for that one singular treasure was not my proclivity for getting high and killing brain cells, which didn't manifest until several years later, but because my father, when I was very young, was a gas station mechanic and that smell reminded me of him. And it still does, even though he hasn't crawled under a car in years and was already a trucker by the time I negotiated that trade decades ago.

So much of memory, and almost all of my nostalgia stems from my nose. Walking down the halls of my alma mater today to pick up transcripts, the smell of coffee and stale cigarettes emanating from the student body, I was punched drunk with desire to return to Uni this fall. I don't recall enjoying University that much. I don't recall ever missing it. But this afternoon, when the subtle pulpy undertone of ruled paper mixed with heady aloof scent of highlighter pen provoked my senses it took every effort of self discipline to not run to the bookstore, buy a tabla rasa virginal notebook whose destiny would be decided when I flipped through the course catalogue and plopped my index finger decisively down on the page:  "Conceptualizing Past Futures: Theocracy and Globalization in Mesopotamia". Sign me up, I want to stay here, where there's always someone in the room who knows all the answers.

Instead I go back into the asphalt, exhaust choked world where no less than five photographers shake their heads sadly and tell me they can't help me with a photo for my work visa.

Rain Makes the Flowers Grow

There are some people who prefer, when a cloud crosses the sky, to just go home. I am not this sort. This worked to my advantage when the people my mother planned to spend Saturday with bailed and headed back for the city. I got to spend the day with my partner in crime, who continued down the highway with me to sit on a beach while I went hiking. Turns out the hiking trails, when we got there, were washed out so I went berry picking instead.

The rain started just as I finished filling my container (although truly, I've developed a berry picking compulsion and have trouble walking away no matter how full my basket. "Oooo, but look at those, they're so ripe and big" and before you know it you've scampered over to clean out the next patch) so I hiked back to the beach and went for a swim.

On the way back to the car I spotted the swings. How often do I get to swing in the rain? So, being that I was already wet, I sat down and pumped so high I could see over the trees to the lake while I stuck my tongue out to catch the rain. Afterward Ma and I went into the nearby tourist town in search of hot chocolate. The town is really a village of souvenir shops, Trapper John's Pub, a wigwam and a giant inukshuk.

Oh, and this guy who may be a resident or just another tourist passing through but took my breath away in either case:

On our way out of town Mom wanted to stop at another souvenir shop. I was pretty eager to drive the back roads and sip my hot chocolate-harumph- but I was glad she insisted. Ma found a bracelet she liked and I decided I had to buy it for her as belated Mother's Day/ Birthday present. Nothing is more fun than buying a present for someone when you know they're going to love it particularly when you're trying to do it under their noses without them knowing. I have to give a huge nod to the YMCA men who were running the place. As stoned as I suspect they all were, they not only caught on quickly to my scheming ruse but seemed delighted to be involved in trying to pull it off. This required much interpreting of my darting eyes, twitching face muscles and spastic head bobbling. Plus they were kind enough to laugh at my self deprecating humour, although, like I said, they were pretty giggly all around after coming out of the back room en mass.

We spent the rest of the day driving down washboard gravel roads to various lakes and resorts, finally stumbling upon my Utopia. There is a road that leads to nowhere. There is nothing down it. Why this road even exists is debatable. To give bored cottagers in compact cars thrills perhaps, or maybe it was just a make work project.  I like to think it was built as a Zen koan and so I have access to the place I will one day build my very own hermitage  cottage:

I picked a handful of raspberries for Ma to tide her over until we got back to camp and listened to a waterfall somewhere behind those trees. It was hard to resist a closer look but it was well past dinner time, and judging from the gigantic fresh turd in the middle of the road when we're leaving, we're vacating just in time.

(Nervous) Gales of laughter over of dying of fright at the sight of Windigo "Winnebago" pooh ensue.

"They'll say, 'Her last words were "Holy sh*t!" and there's more hysteria as we crest a hill to see a car below.

"Oh no!" Ma exclaims in mock terror, "Traffic!" We haven't seen anyone on the road since we turned onto it.

The man driving the mid sized sedan seems to be waving at us to stop but when we pull alongside him it turns out he was just chair dancing to his favourite tunes. He's an older man, fully grayed hair and a mildly weathered face, but he's friendly and happy to talk.

"I'm the maintenance guy for the camp. I had to get out of there, it was driving me crazy. I've had two or three hours now I'm going back." He tells us he's Dutch, by way of explaining his music, and that the road today is in good condition and should only take about twenty minutes to make it the 11 km to the camp.

We had taken a fork in the road and never made it to the camp. Another adventure for another day.

I almost forget to give my mother her bracelet but, when I do she tells me she genuinely thought I was buying the $7 polished stone I openly handed the cashier while slipping him the bracelet. Part of me hopes this is true  and the boys and I really pulled it off. The other part of me is still worrying about what it says about me, my character, my budgeting skills, that anyone would think it plausible that I would pay $7 for a rock.