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Going to work reminds me of that dream I used to have of the Nuclear Armageddon, the time I was in London and I got word via the radio that the missiles had been launched, 20 minutes until they annihilated London, time to evacuate, seek cover, get out of London, and as I'm making my way up Kilyon road everyone is selling their shit, antiques, joking "you can't take it with you" and I'm torn, there's bargains to be had for sure, maybe you can take some of it with you, but I really should be trying to get out of town...the same feeling when I'm going to work, the smoke, the air, there's no fires near to us but the world now is on fire and this work, this "business as usual", there's nothing usual about it...we're all being distracted in the last days of the Holocene, there's secret climate change models and forecasts they don't dare to publish, Yellowknife, once the arctic begins burning up there's an incalculable amount of gases, methane to be released, and shit is going to start getting serious real soon.
Not that it isn't serious already, but shrug your shoulders and carry on...
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Mondaty, Tuesday, the restaurant, slammed. 2 hours of madness and not keeping up before it's over. An American woman, loudly complaining she can't get servers, telling me to "send someone over", completely oblivious, she's the center of her own show, it only takes one such ambassador to ruin the reputation of an entire country...
Anyways, Wednesday, today off, and now it's smoke, settled in, the slow rain of ash and dust, blotting out the mountain across the lake, the sky, a sooty, sullen sort of heat, 33, 34 degrees, the smoke is stopping it from getting to the 39 and 40 forecast, but it's still plenty hot enough.
Some photos of the sunset...
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The longest weekend of the summer. There will be more.
Whacked, nonstop, 7, 8, 9 hours running without a break, the restaurant, falling apart, customers firing into, out of the restaurant, 60, 70 per hour, seating themselves at dirty tables, it's crazy, maddening, you can't keep up with this. Monday, after all the shit that went before, by 11:30 is looking to be slower, by 12:00 is full, packed again, and so it continues, the same again on Tuesday. The smoke hangs upon the lake, the helicopters, water bombers are dunking and putting out a blaze up 9 mile, you see the red smoke like a volcano against the night sky on the drive home.
Tuesday, worth of noting, I ring out the most of all the days and do the least amount of work. The result of working with a competent team-mate, Saturday, Sunday, shit shows largely because you're picking up after others, bussing others tables, fetching others drinks, I'm ringing out $3, 000 on my own accord but bussing, bartending after $6,000.
Anyways, that was the weekend to be dreaded, and now it's over. Phew.
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Work, last weekend, crazy. The full 5 days, some days crazier than others. Full, walk-ins of 8, 10, 14, inside and out, on the beach, it's unending, relentless.
Just got to get through it.
Sunday night, park the car in town, the next morning I discover someone has rifled it, tore the drivers side handle right out of the frame. Which they didn't have to do, the window was down, door unlocked, I keep nothing I regard as theft-worthy in the car.
I was wrong.
Creating an inventory:
1 big-boy Pickaxe, yellow handle, stolen
1 Green handled spade, stolen
2 Estwing geology hand picks, stolen
2 large green gold pans, 1 smaller black gold pan, 1 1/4 inch classifier, all stolen
all crystals left hidden under ashtray, nice ones, photographed and posted the blog, stolen...
3 packs of cigarettes hidden under dirty laundry on passenger seat, stolen...
1 big tub of sani-wipes, emptied and used to hold rocks they dumped (flints and arrowheads) - they didn't recognize these, clearly.
***
The list grows as I figure out how much is missing....
***
Explaining to Michael while volunteering, because I'm not prospecting on days off, I'm desperately short of tools...
1 bottle of rubbing alcohol, stolen
10 packs of gum in glovebox, stolen
1 left dress shoe (they left the right one), stolen
...and here Michael chimes in...."So we're looking for a 1 legged man...."
he gets it..."Carrying a pick axe...with a vintage hardframe backpack, waxed canvas, sleeping bag inside, waterproof"
2 headlamps, 4 flashlights, stolen
1 vintage leather portfolio, with paper, stamps, calligraphy pen inside, stolen...
batteries for flashlights, glovebox, stolen
1 recreational map of the West Kootenays, logging roads, etc, stolen. Map book left behind.
1 box of Cherrybombs, stolen...
1 Prospectors travel coffee mug, with pick-axe logo, stolen
***
The list grows in every retelling. I find a crack-pipe in the back seat in going through the mess they made, there was more than one, certainly, and this right on Baker, it would have taken 2 people to carry all that they took. And I know where it is, approximately, it'll be either in the homeless encampment off Government or the one in Cottonwood falls.
And I'm itching, dying to go retrieve my stuff, but - herein lies the rub, the encampment is concealed behind tarps, in tents, and you don't want to condemn or judge a few hundred unfortunates by the behavior of a nasty few. A friend assures me it must be either the dislocated Trail or Castlegar junkies, they're a bad lot, and - maybe so, most of the homeless I know wouldn't do this, but, I'm annoyed.
Very annoyed.
They took what will profit them not in the least, and inconveniences me a great deal. And it's not as if I can replace them, because the car will just be broken into yet again, and the tweakers will have 2 pickaxes, and I will again have none....
Annoyed, annoyed beyond measure...
***
Monday night, I pop out for a cigarette, forget my keys in the apartment, locked out, I'm not used to this having a place to live.
And so the night is spent in my car on Baker, this time, on the look-out for a 1 legged tweaker (and his accomplice) carrying a big yellow pickaxe...
The night is long, I've moved my sleeping bag indoors and the back of the car, it's an uneven mess with all the rocks and crystals they left behind.
The sound of skateboarders careening down Baker.
Of people talking, crazy talk, tweakers, and I'm checking all of them out, looking for prowlers...
The street, even on a Monday night, is filled with no end of sketchy people all night long.
There's a girl in front of the Best Western, young, 18 to 21, tops, tall, slender, with a bag on wheels. She's waiting for someone to pick her up, clearly, someone who isn't showing.
I go to sleep, awake to her being accosted by a tweaker, get out to have a cigarette, watch the proceedings, tweaker notices, goes away. She moves her luggage down to in front of my vehicle, she feels safer there.
I try and sleep, fitful, restive, dreams, that I'm working my way from Cottonwood Falls up Baker, in Nelson-not-Nelson, homeless myself, the dream, not unpleasant in tone, I'm working my way past all sorts of the homeless towards a solitary house on the hill, it's night time, and when finally I get to this house, old, outside staircases to all the various floors, I meet a man, older, who's explaining to me that it's all an illusion, life, suffering, here, he's worked it out, and he hands me a notebook filled with equations and symbols I can't read...
***
Wake again, the girl, outside, in a corner, the night has grown cool and she's thrown on a large woolen cape, I see only her shadow and I can't help but think she's a Psychopomp come to ferry me on....
***
Wake finally at 6:00 AM, now, to wait for the building manager to let me into the building. The girl has gone. Head down to the A&W for a coffee, here are gathered a small crew of the homeless, arguing amongst themselves about stealing one-another's phones, other possessions,...these people, they will be no help whatsoever.
***
Come 8:00 I'm back in my flat. Time enough to change and get ready for work, although I really want to nap it wouldn't be safe...
***
Tuesday, busy at work, as I expected, but the night dies unexpectedly. Very unexpectedly. And so I escape to town to grab some tacos - all of the tacos, in fact, and begin my days off.
Days off, without tools, are rather dire. Wednesday morning volunteering at ...., as is Thursday morning. They're seriously behind, as am I in furnishing my place. I gather cutlery, a cutting board, pots, pans, some clear plastic totes so I can begin to organize my rocks, art supplies, paints, etc; winter will be here soon enough.
The afternoons, ambitions to write thwarted by the heat. Insufferable, this, 33, 35, higher even, my clothes are drenched in my sweat and I'm grateful for a place to escape it, my empty apartment, windows open, I haven't tried the AC, it's still hot, but lower the shades and siesta through the worst of it. And so I apologize for my lack of writing, it's not that nothing has happened, but I've been rather hobbled by the heat, I remind myself of the English Ex-Pats consigned to India, suffering long afternoons with gin and tonics while complaining of the locals, the heat, getting nothing done, and while I have no quarrel with the locals the heat definitely means I get nothing done...
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This morning, meet the building manager, get a look-see at the apartment, clean, vacant, ready for me to move in. Immediately. I need a shower curtain, bathmat, pot, pan, I need to first go to my locker and relocate it here before buying anything, I need a couple of stools, armchair, sofa, bed, I need...
soap, bar soap and shampoo to shower with...Toilet paper, toilet brush, plunger...towels,
...laundry detergent and some Oxy-Clean....
...Food to put in the pantry. Lots of food. Good food. Olives. Cheese. A steak. A fork and knife - no, wait - 2, 3 of them. 4. 4 is an even number. 4 plates, 4 bowls, 4 coffee mugs, 4 of everything...Pot, Pan, Bodum, Pasta....Gnocci....Rice...staples....Asian Food...Coconut milk & curry and jars full of nuts and seeds and a little food processor so I can make tasty dressings for salads like garlic-chili-ginger and...
I'm gonna get fancy and get a glass for my vodka. Fancy fancy.
I'm gonna go pick up my mantle clock from the antique store and my candlestick phone from a friends...
I'm gonna run to Calgary and start emptying out that locker (and, having just been to Practicar, quoted $800 for a 2 day rental this might be a ways away...).
Anyways, this is an entirely new way of living that I'm not in the least prepared for. Not in the least. And so, keys jangling in my pocket, what to do, I work tonight - and tomorrow morning, no point moving in just yet, perhaps tomorrow night, if it's quiet and I escape work early and I can start, unpack the vehicle of my clothes and the dozens of books and bags of arrowheads, rocks, mixed-media art supplies, the trash that has piled up and accumulated, nothing that I need and everything I ever wanted but now, it's back to the basics...
...hangers for my clothes, a desk, ...
the list will go on and on, but for now - I have a fucking place to live in a place I want to be. Bloody hell how long has it taken me?