I wrote this when i was in the airport about to leave ontario forever … i had just spent 2 weeks in calgary and a week in cuba … and was gearing up for 2 months in saskawan …
i wasn’t going to put it up on here, being among my more private thoughts, and me being among the more private people … but what the hell … i am also a staunch believer in accuracy …
Hardest goodbye yet …
sitting in the airport choking back tears and not doing a very good job of it … staring at a plate of swiss chalet i haven’t touched … don’t seem to have much of an appetite … don’t think that has ever happened to me before …
When you’re dreaming with a broken heart …
I miss my Kathy … i don’t want to hurt her … i don’t want to walk away … i don’t want to be gone …
I don’t care that i hurt … hurting is part of life … but it destroys me that she hurts … and that she hurts because of me … i hope she finds somebody soon to make her smile … i hope this more than anything else in the world … i hope they love her and make her forget everything (except that i am better) …
Failing at choking back tears in the airport … glad i have a hat … don’t want to close the book on this part of my life … time and time again it has been laid upside down on the table … but re-opened … now it is time to close it … to put it on the shelf … and i don’t want to put it back on the shelf … it’s the best book i have ever read … but while books may make life complete … a complete life can not be lived in books alone … so i must …
It’s funny … i have had my heart broken a few times … and i always felt that in such situations it had to be better to be on the other side … how wrong could i be … to be hurt is an eternity better than hurt someone you love more than yourself … i have never felt so empty … i have never felt so alone …
I look back on a year of smiles and laughs … and of 2 souls wishing for nothing more than for time to stand still … for time to slow down … to make the moments last forever … but time is cruel … and the time is here … the smiles fade into precious memories and the laughs into cheerful echoes … hidden for the moment behind a thick wall of grey fog the reminds me only that the beauty behind it, the true love i longed for, is gone … maybe forever … and that it is my fault …
I am such a fool …
Filed under: Canada | Tags: Brian, Calgary, Canada, East Side Marios, Thoughts, Transportation
So now i live in Calgary …
My whole experience of life is a little surreal right now … i mean … i kind of have a job … but not so much … i am working … but just kind of … my whole world is sort of fluxing, and i am like a pinball bouncing from bumper to bumper, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes with lights and sounds, sometimes just a slow quiet roll … and everytime i start to come to rest, i get launched back out again for another round of unpredictable adventures … i would be lying if i said i didn’t find the whole experience fun … but it’s unsettling at the same time, to just kind of be … and not be anything specifically … i am not a student, or an employee, or anything … just a lowly vagrant …
Not sure how i feel about the city … i recognize my own ignorance in saying this, and understand that it may be a self-fulfilling prophesy, but i can’t help it … the proportion of rednecks in this town is staggering …
Its really spread out as well … it’s a western thing … in the east, all the cities were founded and grew when cars were either non-existent or rare … in the west, cities grew predominantly after the invention of the car … this has its goods and bads … i love the quaint little towns in the east, with their crowded in buildings … where most major intersections have buildings crammed right against the sidewalk and the sidewalk crammed right against the road … while this prolly causes issues with traffic, it keeps things tight … out here … there is SPACE … so for a guy who walks everywhere … the ‘crossing of the road’ is easily 50% farther every single time here … it took me a god damn hour and a half to get to work today … wtf is that all about ???
The people are nice though … Canadians, by and large, are Canadians, and a pleasure to experience wherever they may be … we all seem to love hockey, alcohol and to make fun of each other … so that is nice … i have really enjoyed my time at east side marios … the owner, Randy, is really an incredible guy … he runs a really tight ship and goes to great lengths to keep his finger on the pulse of the place … and it shows … it is clean, efficient and everyone is always working … a huge change from what i am used to … there is also always enough of everything … which is nice … randy has great taste in music, seems to be a great father, and genuinely cares about his staff … who are also all pretty cool … i have started to bond a little with handful of servers, and i will be disappointed when i leave … tipout’s a bitch though … tonight i gave away $15-20 more than i would have in London … thats $50+/week … or $2,500/year …
And it’s been great living with my brother … though our schedules (both work and sleep) are utterly incongruent … we have had a few chances to hang out … we went to yukyuks one of my first nights in town and it was fuckin hilarious … then went to a Calgary Hitmen game a few nights later … we see each other so rarely that we spend most of our time focusing on differences … it’s nice to find the common ground again after so many years … i also, finally, got to hang out with my parents for a bit … it’s been nearly a year since i was last out here, and i missed my family a lot more than i expected … i am looking forward to being home …
The biggest frustration for me right now is my lack of a ‘homebase’ … it’s really hard to coordinate anything when you are constantly in flux … i suppose this is something i shall have to accommodate myself to … but with so much planning still to do, and so many things still to take care of, not having a place to really launch from is really dragging me down … oh well …
Restaurants that say things are ‘home-made’ should be ashamed of themselves … because as far as i can know (and granted i don’t know everything) … a restaurant is not a home … so unless these people spend all their free hours hunched over their stoves at home cooking food to be sold in their restaurants’ … they are all a bunch of dirty liars … duping the sheep of our world who are only looking for a little taste of grandmas house, and instead get a steaming pile of microwaved mashed potatoes …
I propose an accreditation process … like fair trade goods … food promoted as “home-made” must be certified as such … with a lengthy and rigorous approval process … involving government sanctioned and independently audited international bodies … so that us, the simple minded consumer, must no longer fear the tyranny and propaganda of the small restaurant owner …
Some things are just to precious to allow such criminal distortions …
I am now in pickering … spending what really will be my last few days with Kathy … yesterday we spent the day together at the Royal Winter Fair and Agricultural Show … i was excited, just because i am the type to get excited about things … particularly things involving the words “show” “winter” “fair” “agriculture” and “royal” … so when you put them all together, you pretty much have a sure thing right ??? …
Was my mind ever blown … i love animals, and i love horses … but i like to ride horses out in the bush over streams and through fields and all that … so all this “English” riding has always seemed a tad perverse … people have described it to me at length, and my eyes generally glazed over as one would expect … but then … some things in this life you just need to see for yourself … these people sit on their horses … their goal is to look as though they are doing nothing at all … and with minute gestures with their hands and feet and legs, make the horses dance … and you are saying “yeah right, dance” … i am telling you … they DANCE … i have never seen a horse move with such grace before … i have never seen an ANIMAL move with such grace before … they would skip in time with the music … then skip sideways in time with the music … then trot on the spot … and on and on and on … i took in a newspaper figuring it would provide a nice distraction … it was forgotten under the seat of my chair before long …
This ‘dressage’ was followed by the old standby ‘jump the horse over the bars’ … this is something i have seen on TV many many times .. it’s one of those Saturday afternoon shows that the channel just kind of ends up on and numbly entertains for awhile before the ‘what else is on’ instinct kicks in … and that’s all fair … seeing it in person??? … TOTALLY different experience … an arena with thousands of people … where you can literally hear a pin drop (or a horse fart) … horse after horse runs through the course, and the collective breath in the room catches again and again … as nible riders pilot their giant animals more than a meter in the air, clearning the bars by millimetres … there is no opposition team … everyone cheers for everyone, and when a gate is knocked over by a horse at a late stage in a run, the collective “ohhhh” tears the silence … and the disappointment is felt by everyone … what an experience !
Kathy, as always, was a riot … we went to see the super dogs early in the day and she pretty much single handedly took our sedate crowd from numb silence to energetic cheering … such is her gift …
I just spent my weekend learning first aid … i assure you that if you require emergency childbirth, i am there for you … just so you know and can plan ahead …
I love the dynamic of such situations … take a random sampling of 19 strangers from all over the Ottawa area … throw in 2 instructors, and spent 16 hours in a small room together over 2 days … there is the gentle old lady, forced to sit on the floor for the better part of day one, and who had a hard time willing her fragile self into compressing the adult chest 1.5-2” … the shy middle aged Indian man, missing out on some activities b/c he was too shy to find a partner, and too shy to say he was missing a partner, until after the activity was over … the buddies … 2 20-something friends, taking the course together and showing up late as often as possible … the chatterbox … a 20-something Harry Rosen employee with terrible taste in clothing, obnoxiously large glasses, and an even larger personality … he enjoyed the sound of his own voice very much, and felt the need to share that joy with everyone else at every convenient juncture … and so on and so forth …
I, being me, immediately sought out the most attractive women in the room (of which there were 2) … and sought out ways to befriend them … it was lunchtime on the first day before my opportunity presented itself, and not for a simple twist of fate, i may have never … the whole groups still was unsure of what to make or what to expect … there was occasional friendly chatter, but mostly everyone kept to themselves … i had gone for lunch at tim hortons (the sandwiches are good, and subway wasn’t appealing) … and found myself with the most attractive young woman in the class right in front of me … testament to the awkwardness i was speaking of … she stood in front of me through the Timmy’s line for a good 10 minutes, we clearly recognized each other, yet said nothing … after getting my food, i thought about sitting down with her … but chickened out (i am such a pussy) … only to find that every other table in the room was occupied … armed with the perfect excuse, i asked to sit down, she was only to happy, and away we went …
I learned very quickly that, while quite stunning in her natural beauty, she was only 17 years old … with all pretense thus faded (i had no sexual interest and she knew it), it suddenly became very easy to expose our humanity, and before long we were talking and laughing like old friends getting to know each other for the first time … she (Gina … whose last name i do not know, and will thus never see again) … is about to graduate from high school and has been offered full ride scholarships to a couple of American schools … apparently she is some kind of soccer phenom … having just slid that whole era of my life into a file folder and filed way, it was thrilling to look into her eyes as she described the excitement about the future, and the fear of leaving home and the monumental uncertainty associated with the choice … and the panic of the rest of her life looming large ahead of her … and the challenge of having her boyfriend and family understand … and all of it … she seemed to latch onto me like an older brother, a roll i was only to happy to play, and i did what i could to calm her fear and uncertainty and to help her to focus on the excitement and potential of the future … we talked occasionally over the next day and a half, and she took me out for lunch to her favourite deli the next day … (such good sandwiches) …
As we finished up our tests and our classmates, who now seemed more like a group of friends, having shared 2 endless days learning about everything from frostbite to impaled objects in the eye … began to filter out of the room … at the last moment, gina and i said our goodbyes and our good lucks and for the fleeting second our eyes locked, i knew that we both were disappointed that this was to be all … but so it goes … lives touch and move on … maybe they will touch again and maybe they won’t … either way, neither of our lives will ever be quite the same again … and everytime i think of first aid, i will smile and remember gina, the beautiful little portugese girl, hands over her eyes peering into her future through the crack between her fingers …
