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Meanwhile
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Yesterday - apply for jobs online. 7 jobs applied for (I'll get far more traction today on foot). But some slight success.
An interview today. Upscale Italian restaurant. Good, good.
And so celebrating - perhaps getting a little too deep in my cups, this morning everyone looking at you: A French girl accuses me: "You hate all the French!!!!".
Mmmm. Did I say that? Me? Moi? Merely when I'm drunk I like to provoke a bit, in the spirit of lighthearted banter. I'm actually not fussed, probably I was just making a scene. She regards me suspiciously.
Steve, bunkmate, gave me a copy of his book. Autobiographical, the oft-told tale of an abusive father, how he came to be and how he gave it all up, tales of his hitchhiking, 26 pages - self published & printed - 4 pages to an 8X11 sheet of paper, double sided, and somehow in his arrangement he didn't get the pages right and so each page when turned brings you to a different idea or time in his life, then back again. It doesn't make linear sense - sort of a post-modern ramble, done better it could be art - but it doesn't matter, I got the idea, made the appropriate pleasing noises and reviews.
I need cigarettes, and it's late, and I'm done with paying full price, there's cheap cigarettes around, I know, $5.00 a pack, and Steve sends me off to a group of natives down East Hastings who are selling them, so I wander amongst the teetering and addled enquiring, amongst the tarp villagers, no one knows anything, surely they know - definitely they know - I'm not yet - although close - closer - at the point where they're going to trust me, addled as I am, a 7 foot native youth tests my mettle - wrestling me, telling me how tough I am, not at all, not at all, merely sinew & bone at this point, I sit down and have conversations with the anguished at the end of the world, there's an incoherent poetry, a young junkie, tormented and wretched beyond description, telling me of her life - when she had a job, children, a place to live, all gone, all gone, and the glimmers of lucidity amongst the ravings - I could listen to this all night - but - careful, caution, listen too long and you'll be drawn into the depths as well.
I give up on the cheap cigarettes, find a shop, pay full price, back to the hostel, sleep.
I think I slept.
This morning, Steve - sleeping in, always he's asleep in the room - he's pleasant to talk to, discuss things with - but - clearly, given the time he spends in the room - and this room, it's no place to spend time in - he's profoundly depressed.
I'd be as well, only now - at this point in time - I can't afford it.
So now, onward-ho with my day, interviews to be met - and more to be sourced - Step 1: Find a Job - Step 2: Find a place to live - Step 3: Get a Jeep.
And there's quite a few steps in between so I'm off...
Hostel - 2
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
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I meet in the common area Steve from Cafe Beano, apparently he's one of my bunkmates, I didn't recognize him without his beany on, but something about him seemed familiar - from my old hood in Calgary, we chat about Calgary, he's here to promote his chapter book, he's serialized it, selling it on chapter by chapter, self-published, he's escaping his old life to live about here on the breath of the wind. He sold 24 copies today in 4 hours, on the streets of Gastown. And there's the Yogi, the guy I'd noted was perpetually on his computer, He's lived and hitch-hiked everywhere in the world, India, New Zealand, the US, Europe, the world, quite literally - almost every continent less Antarctica, He's on a quest for enlightenment, he's the chosen student of this Yogi (? don't know who, not so much into Yogi's) now discussing with Steve the drug addiction problem - and 'Krishna' announces (his name from the Upanishads, Red hair and freckles make me suspect it was chosen, not given) - that he has no interest in helping these people. Any people for that matter. He's got his own problems.
And I'm thinking ... the essence of enlightenment is compassion ... and - for someone so concerned - the solution is in front of his nose - and yet - he's turning away from it, a distaste for the work, he has all the understanding of a computer programmer trying to explain love, ghosts, anything outside of the directly quantifiable, measurable universe.
I ask about what he's doing on the computer all the time - apparently mixing music. He's a musician.
Other conversations fade in and out...there's a fat girl on the sofa, going on about how hot Justin Trudeau is, she's stayed in Hostels all throughout the US, she's got recommendations, talking about all the countries she won't visit because she's afraid of being raped, discussing her favorite porn, what she likes, getting drunker and drunker, sloppier and sloppier, she has opinions, for sure, and she's only too willing to share...
It's insufferable.
Photos around Hope
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
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None of them any good - but they reflect the general atmosphere - low, hanging clouds, mossy cedars, chainsaw wood sculptures, the burned out/abandoned houses, the wifi at the church, the lifebuoy app advertised everywhere, the neon of the cinema...
Which brings me back - this town, the Pacific North West - they don't need a monster - the place is plenty haunting enough.
Teetering
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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My phone is on it's last legs - and the camera as well. So apologies for the quality of the pictures.
If you fall over - you pass out - and the high is wasted.
1 down, 2 to go.
Shooting up on West Pender. Open heroin use here has about as much stigma as smoking a joint in the Kootenays.
Moving all of your worldly possessions in a couple of garbage bags on to a new encampment.
And the debris. It's doubtful you could find a 10 yard radius within a mile of East Hastings that wasn't contaminated with something similar.
The entire reddit thread of "Took Too Much" https://www.reddit.com/r/tooktoomuch/ could be filmed here in a day.
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