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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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This is it, the lease is done, the job, done, there are no other places to rent - and I - like Stormy - I'm done with the Kootenays.
This is not to disparage it, but - the ante is too high, too rich, for me at the moment. I need to fix that. I need to find permanent shelter, employment, less-nutball friends.
And, 1:00, the walk through done, the tenancy ended, and I'm off.
Nope. The jeep, chariot of the gods, it's needing a tire inflated, a boost to jump start the battery.
And I'm off. The time now 2:30.
Drive, over the Paulson Pass, snowy, slippery, southern interior BC now in for a "Atmospheric river", WTF Like the heat domes of summer, we're now perpetually inventing terms that gently describe a catastrophically decaying climatography.
To Princeton, foggy, rainy, but I make it and it's dark and I'm done, tired, need a shower and - every hotel/motel is booked.
A few notes, The Jeep, Godly Chariot of Debt and Penury, the drivers side door no longer closes. And so the entire drive I'm alternating - one hand driving, one hand holding the door closed. Like - fuck - this jeep is possessed.
And now - now - it no longer goes in reverse. This is the Transmission problem. I push it back and set out, over the Well's Grey Pass. David Paulides would have a field day with me.
And this is the trip.
Rainy, the "Atmospheric River", and - driving, holding the door closed, hydroplaning, I'm hitting 2 foot deep puddles that blind me, carry me into oncoming traffic and back, cars pass and blind me, cars approach oncoming and blind me - I'm getting old. The wipers can't keep up. This is the longest drive in my life.
And I hit a pot-hole - wash-out, and jolt heavily - WTF - "Deathtrap" - as I've affectionately renamed the jeep - still going - but 30 cars pulled over at the summit, everyone out changing tires, checking damage - dark, wet, snowy, I got away lightly.
God, please, please, get me to Hope. I need Hope.
Down, down, qown, and then there's the line of tail lights.
Stretching into the distance, none moving, like every disaster movie you ever saw where people flee the big cities escaping a meteor strike, earthquake, tidal wave, what have you.
And I slow to a halt.
And the jeep, chariotest of the gods, failing transmission, now - its' not doing so well. This idling in traffic for 20 minutes to move 10 feet forward, it's not impressed. It's the beast of forward motion, chariotest me to my goal, my end, my doom, destiny, what have you - but - at 80-100 km per hour.
Not this.
Pull over, Hazard lights, wave cars pass, try again, transmission engages, move forward 100 yards, fail again.
Same. Repeat.
And - eventually I'm in Hope.
Hope - closed early for a Sunday night - no lights, no lights whatsoever. Until the penny drops -
There's no power.
And find a place and park, because there are no vacancies - the hotels, motels, are all full, and wait it out.
Next morning. Today. Monday after the apocalypse. No power. Get food. Panagogo is giving away free slices. Tasty. I take two. I want more.
I need cigarettes been out for a day.
I need liqour been out for a day.
I need power to charge up my phone been out for a day.
The rain, torrential, the highway washed out into Vancouver. In many places. Mudslides, avalanches, washouts. No estimate as to when it all will be fixed. Wander the streets. The Grace Baptist Church has set up an emergency base, filled with people coming and going, grabbing coffee, muffins, breakfast, water. The city grey, every shop closed - because - no power. The few places that are open in the darkness are working on a cash only basis - and I'm cash short. Wander the town, hamlet. Brooding grey clouds hang low. The inner core is filled with abandoned businesses, vacant boarded up houses, shopfronts, and everywhere there are the posters of the missing and murdered women. Hope - it seems - is a popular dumping ground. Never was a town so poorly named.
Sit in the jeep, pass the time reading, avoiding the torrential rain. There are benches, I could be outdoors, but they're not sheltered, and it seems to me ridiculous that in a climate where 90% of the weather is "rain" they wouldn't think to shelter the benches.
My phone, it's dying, I send a few last texts, call the boy, he's asking me: "What's the plan?" and I laugh, scoff - who needs a plan? Fill me up with piss and fury and when the skies and highways are clear I'll blaze westward towards the coast, the island, like a meteor or doomsday comet.
The end of the Atmospheric river is followed by torrential winds. Someone knocks at my window - I might want to move my jeep - the cedars - 100 feet tall, 12-16 feet around, they might come toppling down and we're all at risk.
I heed the advice, the jeep mildly complies, I'm surprised, the transmission - it might have some life in it yet - might - it raises the flag of Hope, I drive it and park it outside the radius of crushing death to wait out the hurricane.
When the winds die down I canvas the town a little further.
There are a few shops, services, - most of the services seem to be of social assistance kind - Society for the Brain Injured, Society for Addiction, For Homeless, For Mentally Ill, For the Suicidal...the list goes on. The accessibility to these services is greatly at odds with Alberta, speaking volumes about the differences in culture.
I find, near the highway and other shops and services, a liquor store - open. The line up - 20 deep - no power, they're letting people in 1 at a time, by flashlight, the line is estimated to be an hour. I take my place. The line-up, a festive cheery band of like-minded alcoholics of all ages and stripes, jonesing for a drink. I'm here on the premise they take debit, or so I've been advised.
By the time I get to enter the power has just been restored. Still - it's a shit-show - and I have every sympathy for the few employees who managed to show up.
That said, I get my ration of Vodka - begrudgingly, and discover they don't sell cigarettes, walk across the road, another half hour in line for a pack of fags.
Get 2 packs. The world is ending.
Night passed reading my book, "The Good Soldier Schweik", amusing, Czech-portrait of an brilliant imbecile, in brighter moods I'd be laughing out loud. Then, curl up in the front seat, bend, deform my body into some temporary pretzel-shaped comfort.
Morning, get up - hungover as fuck, stretch. The hordes of displaced travelers roaming to the public washrooms in their PJ's, find a coffee - for the remarkably few businesses that opened this is a boon - how many people are stranded here? Hundreds, if not thousands. The lineups are hundreds deep.
Get my coffee, roam the town. How to pass the day. The vintage old cinema around the block from my new parking place is showing a free movie at noon - Pee Wee Herman. Why not?
And, right now, at the church, charging my phone, with the hundreds of others stranded - the miserable, unfortunates, but - fortunate they weren't on the highway, trapped between 2 slides, or swept away, listen to the news, go outside and watch the helicopters coming and going, I have - it must be admitted, admired, a talent for misadventure. Lemony Snicket's got nothing on me. Volunteer, help out, clean the toilets, help track the people coming and going, wait, wait, and waiting for what? Every pew is filled with sleeping bags, exploring the church, doing a census of all the people they've helped, as it were, and my initial impressions we're substantially off. The place is chock full, only most of them are off foraging, walking around the town.
And, walking around the town - meeting people, everyone has an opinion on how long they'll be stranded, some are forecasting today they'll reopen the highway, others, more pragmatic, are showing them their phones, photos of the slides, "3 or 4 more days, MINIMUM! they say. Pessimists.
We're here a few more days I think. And - even if I leave, what then? Will the jeep make it to the coast, the island? Up Island?
It remains to be seen. I am more than a bit curious.
And it comes to me - as of late, especially since moving out here - I'm anxious. Anxiety - out here - is a serious business, hampered by the climate, housing crisis, EVERY FUCKING WHERE - and jobs, pandemic stress, climate change - and - to make matters worse - you're living in competition with a million other people in exactly the same boat, all of whom are developing - or are further along in developing - their own mental illnesses and Anxiety.
The world has gone insane.
Lunch, McDonalds, I order a snack-wrap, cheeseburger, double big mac, poutine. I'm starving. It's been 2 days since I had anything substantive to eat. My order # - 777 - I've hit the jackpot, only there isn't a McMonopoly sticker on a single thing. And they forgot my cheeseburger. A couple of bites into the Big Mac and I recall just how disgusting their food is, I'll finish what I ordered but they can eat their own fucking cheeseburger.
Everywhere, wandering around the town, running into people like myself. Everyone is friendly, everyone says "Hi" or smiles & nods.
If only I'd a packed a gold pan, or a shovel, but the river's too high...
Kill time in a used bookstore. Every book - or 99% of them - $2.00. I find a copy of Bill Bryson's "In A Sunburned Country". This will help to pass the time. And the jeep - I only got a screwdriver and a bit of fucking copper wire, but I gotta fix the door. It is possessed, I swear, parked for 2 months, no wear and tear whatsoever, and everything that can go wrong on it is.
Now, inside the Church, trying to keep warm...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Today, a borrowed car and a few errands to thrift shops. Searching for Stormy Supplies, with little luck. Nothing of interest.
Returning, through Castlegar, downtown, across from a copse of trees. There's a line of traffic, moving slowly. And a deer jumps out into the road - the van in front of me, going slowly - still manages to hit it. The deer, large, catapults 3, 4, 5 times in the air, lands in the middle of the lanes. Traffic both ways is halted. The deer, trying to get up, flips itself a couple of more times before landing on it's belly, front legs propping up it's head, it's back is snapped, it's going nowhere. Blood is coming out of it's mouth, tinting the froth that's building, and it's watching traffic.
The driver of the van, he's pulled over, is gathering the bits of the van that flew off when he hit it. The deer is watching.
Traffic slowly resumes around it, the deer, there's nothing we - anyone can do, but I'm surprised at how cavalier he is about gathering up the front of his van, the deer watching him, the cars go by, there's that shocked final look of intelligence in it's eyes.
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And, getting nowhere in the departments that matter, in a holding pattern of sorts, I finally take it upon myself to clear the table.
I really need a desk.
The table, piled high with notes, pertinent and largely irrelevant, is a source of Anxiety. Like the dishes piled beside the sink and the unmade bed. SO - 2 minutes later and the table is cleared. That's how long it takes. The table is cleared and I can begin to "concentrate" on the project(s) I need to get done.
1 at a time.
This clutter, it's an externalization of my mental processes, an extension, I need only to review my notes to see, abundant notes, 100, 000 words where I only needed 1000, but the RIGHT words, the RIGHT phrasing, there is an alchemy to their combining, a recipe, a rhythm that I hit upon only occasionally, that I need to exercise, find the flow.
There are - so far as I know - 2 forms of creation. One, the generative - building, things upon things, growth - add letter to letter, build a word, word to word to build a sentence, sentence to paragraph to chapter to novel. So it goes. The other form, destructive, hammering upon stone to free the form you imagine is imprisoned within.
I am somewhere between them both, add, edit, revise, add some more, edit, revise, from a page of notes I - if I am lucky, inspired, quick, find a paragraph or verse. And begin it again, write another page, then reduce, edit, compress, scratch out, erase, write again, and - perhaps - another paragraph at the end.
So it goes.
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Turned leaves are now largely fallen, snow slowly creeps down the mountain, the chipmunks shaking down the nuts onto the pedestrians and cars. Don't loiter underneath the taller trees. Chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, acorns, dozens I can't identify, they seem to change brands street to street, every conceivable nut, which ones are edible? Which aren't? I haven't a clue. But fall is done, time to do a sweep up of leaves from the yard before the snow settles, and - there's no new place on the horizon.
Grim, grim, grim.
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And a couple of weeks ago, sitting at the kitchen table and I see...
Well, there's always things flitting out of the corner of your eye here, it's an old house, poorly lit, and - as old houses go, more than likely haunted. So these shadows caught from the corner of the eye, the clanging and banging of pots throughout the night, smashing of cups, always to awake the next morning with no damage done, auditory hallucinations, as it were, I'm used to it.
But this was different. And - watch the floor careful and it appears again.
Damn, I got a mouse.
Now - an unwelcome roommate for sure, but, I've got to say, of all the roommates I've ever had I'll tolerate a mouse any day. The rest of them, well, that's another story...
Anyways, long experience has taught me that if you too long tolerate one you'll soon have a family - or several, and so I go shopping for a humane, live capture mousetrap. I'm thinking one of the tip-and-release ones that I've used in the past - a plastic tube that the mouse enters, the trap tips, the mouse is imprisoned. $1.99 at any hardware store.
Any hardware store but here. A tour of every store in town turns up nothing. Asking about "Humane" mousetraps and you get the "Kill quickly" section, which, arguably "humane" (arguably indeed!) seems a harsh punishment for a tenant that - just like everyone else out here - is just trying to get by and survive.
No, I want a live-capture trap, I can let it go in the overgrown field across from the house with a pound of peanuts and it'll be set for the winter.
So I splurge, buy a tin mousetrap that promises to live capture several - dozens of the guys - even, $20.00, bait it, and set it out.
The theory is that the hole of the trap sits next to the wall, and as mice like to run along walls they'll run into the hole and be unable to escape. The bait, peanut butter and peanuts - that's just to sweeten the deal, give the mouse something to do until I can release it.
Set it up beside the fridge and wait.
And wait.
Mornings, up early boiling the water for my coffee. Step out for a cigarette. And turning around across the street I see I've interrupted 3 giant - I mean massive - raccoons that were in the process of raiding the leftovers of my garden. It's still dark out, but you can see their little masked faces under the streetlight looking over at me as they pile out of the yard, clearly I surprised them, but as I've crossed the street it doesn't seem I'm a threat and so they sit there on the path to my door debating what to do before they disperse. The middle one - ringleader (?) - is huge, maybe 2 feet high, as big as a mountain porcupine...
Back inside, the water's boiled, thermostat turned up, it's starting to heat up, put my feet up and drink my coffee.
It's early, quiet, and soon Mr. Mouse makes his appearance. It appears he's living under the fridge, and the theory of "Close to walls" is clearly not founded upon him. Nope, he's out, sallying about, in a top hat and vest, walking across the middle of the floor, crawling in my bag, under the sink, back out, middle of the floor, here, there - completely unperturbed, without an ounce of caution, I'm completely unobserved, and so I just watch him. I mean, you can TRY and capture him with your hands, but - well, I doubt that will happen. Although I'm sure there could be some amusing YouTube footage of me trying.
It's been 7 days now. The trap - nights I hear it rattling - as if the mouse were inside, in a rage, trying to escape, in the morning - nothing, the bait intact, no mouse-footprints in the peanut butter, the nuts are still there, I can imagine the mouse - cartoon mouse, rattling the bars of the cage from the outside, making noises as if he were trapped, like Bugs Bunny feigning death, merely to humor me or get a reaction, meanwhile he (she?) makes his /her nightly rounds, into this, into that, crumb here, crumb there...
Subcategories
Dating
OK. I've been on a few internet dates. I confess this with the same reluctance I would admitting to masturbating, adultery, or excessive drinking and drug use.
This is a list of some of my best -- AND WORST -- dates ever. Note that you gotta go on a lotta dates to get this kinda list, this kinda discouraged. And my online dating thing has been sporadic - an every few years kind of thing at best. Some of these dates go back 10 years, others are a little more recent. And to answer any people who might argue "It beats hooking up at the bar", well, you don't have to hook up at the bar, and at the bar you can see what your getting...
Anyways - apologies to the countless normal, decent dates that I went on but just didn't hit it off with. Memory is selective, it tends towards the extreme, and in this you will find the extremes...
Dear Osama
In which I write everyone's favorite advice columnist.
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