Author: Nic Olson

I have seen dozens of towns that run on Tim Horton’s and environment strangling mines and paper mills. It is like the Canadian dream is built on non-unionized industry and coffee beans stolen from indigenous groups somewhere. This trip feels like an afterthought of the 1970’s with all the payphone usage and the thousand different tints of brown in every room we stop at. I am amidst and partaking in some lower class spiritual discovery. I, the struggling writer, am travelling with strippers and serial rapists and Winnipeg Asians, or at least that’s what I would like to think them as. They are nothing more than serial arsonists, internet strippers and Brandon Asians. I kept wondering how some of these people could stomach 3 bottles of Coke a day, or a giant bottle of root beer Faygo, but understood when I saw the thin bottles of rye whisky they mixed to make the ride a bit warmer.

The average age of the passenger of my bus has increased maybe tenfold since I first took seat in Montreal. Students going to visit family were quickly replaced by middle aged people going back to see their family which, when the prairies hit, even more quickly transformed into cloud-headed old ladies going to Regina from Moosomin and Grenfell. But hold on a minute, that woman across the aisle looks a lot like the woman who got on next to me in Montreal, only thirty years older. And that young woman at the front vaguely resembles a new born baby I saw in Ottawa. I might have actually just traveled through time.

The best business sighting of the trip was the carwash called Baywash, written with the same typeface as the 1990’s television hit, with half of a truck sticking out of the building. The best question uttered was, ‘Is it a cheese string or a cheese stick? I don’t eat cheese sticks.’ The best meal was bagel number four of six, shared at the Winnipeg airport with Nathan. The best redneck was going to Saskatoon. Go figure.

I can see nothing but white again, besides the laser show inspired upholstery of the seating. The sky, the ground, and even the brown bark of the trees is being hidden by the light frosting of the hoarfrost, like someone was sprinkling the past ten hours of prairies with confectionary sugar to sweeten it all for Christmas day, or someone sneezed instead of huffed the biggest pile of cocaine in the world.

Internet on buses is technology that blows the minds of anyone I talk to. It is also technology that I have witnessed only in Saskatchewan and New York. This trip only took a Saskatchewan Second. (I am coining this term before Brad Wall does.)

It is proven that a half-dozen Montreal-style sesame bagels, three dozen cookies, a whole pile of rum balls and several litres of water are all it takes to travel across the country, however badly the executives at Greyhound want you to eat at Tim Horton’s. Must be some dual shareholders there.

I regret nothing. I am car sick.

Forty-eight straight hours sitting on my ass is no different than usual, but people seem think that it will be hell. Several have told me I am stupid and should have just taken a plane. A padded seat, huge windows with views of the picturesque Northern Ontario on a hopefully heated bus. How could this be bad?

Right now I am looking forward to the bus ride more than I am looking forward to Christmas, or even arriving home, although the second of those two will be a treat. My last 24+ hour bus ride was a special time, which included making friends traveling to Schenectady and Plattsburgh and from there on, streaming a playoff hockey game with the bus wireless internet. Although Sudbury to Regina may show me a new and horrendous side of the country that my parents never showed me for a good reason, I can’t wait to sit on my ass and watch it ride by.

A long while back I decided that I wanted to boycott domestic flights for taking advantage of the world’s second largest landmass, gouging us with ‘seat sales’ that rival international flight prices. I never got very far in my boycott, but this could very well be the start. I will, however, fail my boycott two and a half weeks later when I fly back to Montreal. For reference reasons these are other things I have boycotted: BestBuy, Kleenex or any other nose tissue brand, Blackberry and any other cell phone company, the nation of England, Kokanee, Tim Hortons, hair salons, boxer briefs, etc.

I will be tempted in several of my boycotts throughout my trip home, including Tim Hortons during my 3 hour layover in the Winnipeg Bus Terminal. I believe that Tim Hortons is the only restaurant in the province of Manitoba now, but I will be equipped with a half dozen of the world’s best bagels from Beaubien.

The protest begins Tuesday night, and will end with bed sores from the fuzzy bus seats. It will be progress.

In an effort to subvert my daily dependence on the things I do not need, I came up with the idea to go a full day and two nights without a screen in my face. Out of no other motivation but my own, out of no other realization but the fact that we rely on things we don’t need, all too often, all too much. I plan to try to institute such a day once a week and I hope it to become an integral part of my weekly life.

Although I accidentally stumbled briefly and used the computer for five minutes to remind myself how to teach quadratic equations without realizing that I was using a computer, the rest of the day was devoted to reading, studying, walking, grocery shopping, laying under a blanket in the corner of my room trying to keep warm, sitting, breathing and doing nothing. Doing nothing is something I don’t do enough of. Since buying a MacBook, when I have nothing to do, I am still doing something, whether it is mindless surfing or reading way too many articles on hockey or pretending to be doing something productive but actually only scribbling pathetically on here. Doing nothing by is one of the greatest things to do.

Slowly I plan to wean myself off of any technology for my one day a week, no lights, no toaster, no bus ride, no stove, nothing that plugs in, no ballpoint pen, no clothes made with sewing machines, no recirculated air. Can’t be that hard, fifty years ago they didn’t have the choice, and fifty years from now we probably won’t have a choice either.

But now I am back, prepared to spend an entire 24 hours in front of my computer screen, watching movies and playing Scrabble and writing and looking at pictures and checking my bank account and buying hockey tickets. Just to make up for my one day off.

I woke up with a gnarly headache. I wonder if they are related.
Try this. I recommend it.

Words: I’m exhausted of words. Every time I post something I either think it is brilliant or hate it, either way fulling knowing that I basically just stole the words from someone greater than myself. Finishing my book I realize that all my ideas have been used and overused by myself as well as millions of others and that there is no use. Photos are easy but I can’t take them worth a damn. Music is effective but again, not for me. I am left with nothing but angry, repetitive, and discouraging writing. Not much is new.

vs.

Photos: 

Winner: It’s a draw. Both were out of focus. The fan favourite might have been ‘Photo’ because it was less of a waste of time.

Fish cakes. Street food. Seoul. Wow.

Formal education. I think I still hate it. Maybe I’ll become a teacher.

While most of the young adult population of the world hunkers down for the two dreadful weeks of exams that will dictate their futures, I do the same, kinda, for once. I have exams every two months, with shorter holidays, but I don’t complain. I also get paid for it. In order to get paid for learning French I lied to my guide and said I was doing it so I could find a good job when I was done. Maybe I was lying to myself too. I’ve met dozens of bilingual homeless people, and everyone that works at A&W is bilingual, so I’ve got a promising work future ahead of me. Just like I did before.

I tutor math sometimes at a centre downtown. I met a kid yesterday, I forget his name because I’m a good tutor like that, and he asked me a lot of great questions about university, silently wondering why someone without a degree would be tutoring him.
He asked:
‘So if you don’t pay your fees they kick you out?’
‘It costs how much to go to university?’
‘So, all your friends are finishing university and you should be too?’
‘How much would Harvard cost?’
I told him about getting degrees that prepare you for the workforce and working in restaurants and wise advice about the job market. Then I tried to help him with his grade eight math homework and could barely pull it off. Word problems were always the worst for me. Problem solving in the math textbook was always my weakest point, and maybe it carried over into real life. My tutoring abilities are a real encouraging thought considering I’ve been thinking of getting a math degree. Better stick with English, Education and/or minimum wage.

During class yesterday, when things got dry as usual, I began to draw. I drew a classroom, with a chalkboard and recycling bin and the alphabet. It took me several minutes to come up with another cynical tagline for the drawing, but once I remembered the words of the ever wise SchoolHouse Rocky I knew I had it, and I re-understood the basic undertone of schools everywhere. Education for knowledge. Knowledge for power. Power for wealth.

I can do things I love, impact people, learn things (maybe to a lesser degree, pretty big maybe though), be a human, without school, and although right now school seems like the ultimate sell out, I will continually admit that I will likely end up there, maybe just so my parents keep talking to me. A few friends, promoters of education, ‘sat me down’ with a few beers and told me of its merits and the value of feeding off of other people’s knowledge, people smarter than yourself. The idea rang nicely, but I’ve understood that that my idea is no better than theirs, and theirs no better than mine, and it still all works out.

Education isn’t a commodity to be sold like oil or Gucci purses. Knowledge can be gained without the assistance of semester schedules and final exams. When knowledge is gained for the purpose of power, money, or fear, it becomes disadvantageous. You can’t go to school expecting to become a better person, or a completely changed person. You usually come out feeling the same, a bit tired, and much older.

Maybe no one agrees with me, and I’m just a stubborn moron. I like it that way. The more uneducated you are, the more stubborn you are. I guess you pay high dollar for the softening too. The opinions of a full time student, and a part time student differ from my own and I appreciate that fact.

I understand there to be four ways to go about it all.
Two good ways, and two bad ways.
The good ways, one including formal education and one which doesn’t, both include a a desire for personal knowledge and refinement, although one way is not better than the other.
The two bad ways, one including formal education and the other which doesn’t, are rooted in personal gain, possibly even with knowledge gained, but for reasons that demean the process itself, i.e. power, money, fame, title, nice underwear, etc.

I was nominated top four in my French class. The teacher put our four names in a hat, and the two names she picked got a $20 pen and a certificate from the school. I didn’t win. But that’s going on my resume for sure. ‘Almost picked out of a hat for top four in Level 4 French class.’ I should be able to use such a resume to prove the knowledge I gained so that I can get a position of power within a company, and we all know what happens from there. Teach in a university.

It arrives when you least expect it. Babies, STDs, large cash settlements, snow. It has snowed finally.

Running home I found a four foot snowbank in my neighbourhood. I just dove into it ass-first anticipating cloudy landings and great bodily imprints. My tailbone cut through the snow straight to the sidewalk. I can’t stand up straight. It was worth it.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.

-Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country

There are several ‘How to Build a Community’ posters around my neighbourhood. All the cheap and poor Anglophones move into a French part of town and want to start a community in English. Real great. I wouldn’t call it a community quite yet because I don’t even know my roommates. One has shingles on his face and the other is from Ontario, or B.C, or Newfoundland…
The apartment below me has a dog that they abuse. It whines and barks all day long, then they come home and yell at it for shitting on the floor and the bed. Great parenting.
The homeless man that asks for change at the highway intersection stands at the depanneur throughout the evenings.
The apartment at the end of the block in the middle of renovations have been very neighbourly however, donating pieces of insulation and brand new bricks for shelving. Donating may be a liberal way of putting it.

I watched a French video today in school about how people are addicted to the internet, and how in the year 2030 we will all work in Iran but from the comfort of our homes on Simulated Reality machines and how all of this will cause schizophrenia. The lady on the metro billboards with god-awful glasses said so. She is undoubtedly a genius.

I just finished a chapter today trying to explain, mostly to myself, why we are on Earth. I did so with uncomfortable ease, being that it is a question that philosophers have been asking themselves for thousands of years. But I got it. I’m twenty-two years old but I’ve got it down pretty well. You’ll have to wait and buy my book to see what I think it is. But Vonnegut disagrees. Not directly, but indirectly. They could go hand in hand. I would love to walk hand in hand with him and his moustache.

Community isn’t as easy as saying hello to your neighbour. I smile at nearly everyone I walk beside on the sidewalk, but I have not once got a smile in return in this city, until today, when there was a foot of snow on the ground. I got a wave, a smile, and some positive curse words from a man shovelling his car out of his parking spot. Community could stem from this but not entirely. Community is comfort. Community isn’t cold, and I couldn’t feel my toes when sitting and eating supper today. Community isn’t electronic. Just ask Vonnegut. Community is support for someone jumping ass-first into your neighbourhood snow drift. It didn’t support me, and my lower lumbar is paying for it.