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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Last week, an email, that I'm up for consideration for subsidized housing. A committee interview, I'd put the application in some 8 or 9 months before, and am just now getting considered.
At first I'm thrilled, and then anxious, because what do I need housing for in the summer? And I do, there's actually a hundred reasons, not least of which living my vagrant lifestyle is far more expensive, eating and coffee out, gas, and I need a space to work on my creatives, and .... well, I could go on forever.
My lifestyle is far more trying on my friends than it is on me, than it should be.
Anxious, because it's been so long that I've had even a cupboard to call home and I need this and I don't particularly like needing anything.
Commitment to a place to live, not where I want to live, but still, economical; just a new economy I need to readapt to, a healthy economy of home-cooked meals, of nuts & berries, of creative productivity and staying up late with a book or a movie and affording a working laptop so I can do my writing and painting...
I don't know. I'm an all-or-none sort of guy, this step - it's only a step, and somehow I imagined that I'd win a lotto or all at once....and this would all be dealt with, only, well, I have to take a step in the right direction. This is how it will begin..
I bought a Lottomax and 6/49 and won both, $1.00 each draw, bloody hell, and so my intent has been fulfilled, just not in the capacity required. No cancelling the interview yet.
Wednesday morning, the interview, tour of the building, the apartments small (but bigger than my car), well kept, and I imagine myself Indoors, playing with light switches and the faucets in the Bathroom, flushing the toilet, working out all this indoor luxury living...might have to get myself a glass for my Vodka, be able to get mail and order things off Amazon, things like resin and resin molds and luminous paints and...
Well, it could become a long list.
Before the Interview I consulted the Tarot, long overdue: Single Card, drawn from the deck, Upright, The King of Pentacles...An auspicious omen.
The date, if selected, would fall mid August, and I'm reassuring them, I'm housed in my car all summer if required, I have a hard time arguing my need when there are so many people clearly in worse straights than myself, they reassure me that I "Check all the boxes"...bloody hell...
They give me a tour of the features I'd never use, the rooftop deck, the social room,...
I'd have a home.
After the interview, a trip to the Antique Shop on Baker, I'd not been for a few months, and lo-what do I discover hidden on a shelf (after umpteen perambulations, I knew I was missing something) - an Atmos Clock, Jaeger la Coulter, this, this is it, $280 after tax and while it's worn, missing it's top glass, points of corrosion on the base, this is it. This is my housewarming gift to myself, buy it, I'll pick it up in a future imperfect...
I'd bought one before, it ended up at the Boys Mothers, this one will be for the daughter...
And so the day passes in the celebration of things that may not come to pass, but - fingers crossed.
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driving, leaning out my car window, a pinched nerve, left arm. It's able to move, work, but for some reason it's become tingly and clumsy, as if my brain doesn't get any feedback as to what it's handling, I'm unable to efficiently pick up anything with it, holding a cigarette with it and it flips out of my fingers, trying to tie a balloon becomes an effort of will, this is bizarre and I'm getting a good foreshadowing of what a stroke will feel like if I don't mend my ways...bloody hell...a peculiar sensation this, when your limbs don't respond to your will or accurately report upon their senses...
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Having worked the early shift Saturday I'm off to investigate a few prospects out Kaslo way. Archeological surveys suggest there's a Neolithic quarry north of Kaslo at the headwaters to Milford Creek, and so I find the appropriate logging road and I'm off...
This logging road, 10KM long, rough and what's left of my exhaust is scraping the dirt about to fall off...slowly slowly up and up.
It makes it, surprise surprise, and I get out to explore. Milford Lake, headwaters of Milford Creek, thick brush, more a small pond than lake, solitary campsite with a sign-in book that complains largely about the road...
Exploring is brief, the mosquitos will be overwhelming come dusk and so I head back done, stopping at the roadcuts along the way.
The rocks, heavily metamorphic mudstones, and in the veins of quartz I find the chert nodules. Quality varies, I collect a few with some hard banging then continue down the mountain. When the trees break there's great views of Kootenay Lake, I must be a KM above it at least, and no trace of snow.
Back in Kaslo I head on the highway North West to spend the night.
***
Night spent, morning is spent gathering coffee in town, French Toast, 2 slices, $13.00, coffee $4.00 per cup, and people say we're expensive...
Then off to walk the banks of the river, collecting more flint nodules, better quality, the water has polished them much like the arrowheads I've found, how long does it take? I mean, I've found flakes with sharp edges, but the longer they lay in the sand and waves the more they come to resemble just pieces of Chert, no longer discarded tools erosion has smoothed all their rough edges and knapping marks...
Other rocks, none of interest other than for possible mixed media projects that hinge upon me finding a time and place to get them started...
***
Sunday night, slow, working with T* who is not so competent I'm discovering, and she's having a rant about the tip out, thinks it's too much, unfair, and I hate to break it to her but it's literally half of what anyone in town is paying to the house, but she doesn't get it and the squeaky wheel may soon be replaced...
Customers, a couple of good ones, the rest, well, should have hung a wreathe of garlic on the door and sprinkled it with Holy Water...
***
Monday, up and ready to go to Gym, days off, only now H***** is texting me, 7:00 AM, she's sick, heatstroke, too long in the sun yesterday, could I please, pretty please, work her shift for her....
This is fucking annoying. I'm working 6 days a week now, 4, 5 hour shifts, no chance to go anywhere, she's working two and this is the second time this month she's dropped one..."I really need this job" she'd told me in confidence, nope, she doesn't, and yet - here we are, her second absence, 2 shifts a week and she's 50/50, next time it'll be a bee-sting or Lyme disease or the blueberries need harvesting or a favorite laying hen needs to go to the vet...
The excuses are a bit much and I'm getting pissed, here on a day off when I should be off on a hundred other adventures, and this is not going to be the pattern for my summer...
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Sunday morning I wake up in Glade, time to visit, lightly clean out and organize the locker. Put some stuff in, take some stuff out.
This is a big task, but most certainly the best garage sale I've been to in a while. Candlesticks, art supplies, easels, rocks, more art supplies, and I'd forgotten but a formidable amount of Stormy's artwork. I mean a formidable amount, it had slipped my mind how prolific he was.
And, i hate to confess but my storage of these priceless artworks is less than archival and I'll be damned by all of history if I don't find a better way to lay these boxes all up.
Anyways, 4 hours of this unpacking/repacking the locker and I'm done, to look at it you would think nothing had been accomplished but I need a space to unpack, discovering bales of forgotten clothing, shoes, shirts, trousers, I need to come here with a mind to start cleaning all this stuff out, leaking stuff into the trash, how I have this much stuff - in this the tiniest of lockers, is beyond me, and I'm always pleased to discover some long lost treasure I'd forgotten about - here it is! Wow, I'd buy that....wait, I already have...
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Wake up, my watch - vintage Smith's Astral, shows the correct date. The 27th. I've not noticed this before, the date function on my watches, given I mix them up, has largely been irrelevant, but it seems a curious coincidence, and I think that I've been wearing this for months now on end, and this is the first time I've noticed the date is correct?
Saturday, I've spent the night in town, the first order of business (really, the only after coffee) is to go garage saleing.
There's a big one in the basement of the Jam Factory, starting at 8:00 AM, after coffee I head down. The basement is the big puzzle, there's a few confused bystanders on Vernon St. looking for access to the basement, eventually they give up and wander down to the alley.
The Jam Factory, a big, 120+ year old building on Vernon, currently being used as an office/studio space for freelancers; shared space, interesting concept.
But the basement...well, this is a different story.
The basement, 3 stories down at ground level with the alley, filled - not upward, not mostly, but filled nonetheless, with rubbish. This is a garage sale of necessity, they've been told by the fire department to clean out the basement or else...
The basement, 6, 7000 square feet, unfinished, dirt floor, various rooms, no lighting, box after box, room after room, heaps of moldering rubbish. Bags of clothes, rat droppings & piss, old electronics, answering machines, stereo receivers, boxes of assorted garbage, old plastic toys, broken gew-dads and what-nots.
20 minutes, 30 minutes of searching with my flashlight, there's nothing here of any value whatsoever. Nothing. Burn it all. This garage sale, it's a last-ditch attempt to sell off or give away and stave off dump fees. It's a failure.
But it makes me think, all this empty space, what with a bit of flooring, lights, plumbing, it would be an amazing underground nightclub. And why is it being used for rubbish when real estate and rentals are so impossible to find?
***
Head up lake, a garage sale at 6 Mile. $10, 000 worth of art supplies, brushes, oil pastels, copal resin, linseed oil, varnishes, sprays, dry pigments, unglazed ceramics, there's everything for artists in any discipline. A couple of older ladies, competent but not inspired. Prices are good and it makes you wonder how someone suddenly decides after a lifetime they're no longer an artist. Anyways, great deals, but I summon a great deal of mental fortitude and buy nothing. Nothing. I have all this in lockers both here and there...
***
Further up lake, someone selling new bike equipment, clothes, ball caps, exercise wear. A storeowner from town cleaning out new old stock. Nada
***
From here on to Kaslo, stop at another rubbish sale in Woodbury, more landfill stalling on it's destiny, then Kaslo, coffee, the thrift shop there. Nothing. Then back, find another Garage Sale at Sentinel, more hope, some interesting tools but in the end nothing. Then to work.
Garage Sales, May 27th, a complete shutout.
***
Work, slow, but a few of my more generous regulars elevate "dead" to "OK", but - this year, it's not like other years, the money-machine is not churning out cash...
***
After work to town with JR - he wants to show me a new speakeasy with fabulously overpriced hipster cocktails and inept servers. But town, it's busy, the speakeasy is full and he's overrated his clout with the doorman. We end up around the corner at the Hume hotel, which just played host to "Grapes and Grains", some craft beer/wine tasting, a dress up event, the theme - "The roaring twenties" and every man is dressed like someone out of "Peaky Blinders", the peaked cap and suspenders, and all the women are looking beautiful in shimmery sequined dresses, flappers all, it's like out of "the Great Gatsby", this event, it attracted the town, 2, 300 people at least, and it's great, we're both a bit out of place. For a small town this place packs well above it's weight in terms of culture and participation.
This wraps up Saturday, May 27th 2023.