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...