Author: Nic Olson

Courtesy of TruthDig.

Week One he brought me his homemade potato parathas. The next week he brought Al00 Gobi and naan. This week he brought daal, and we went to the depanneur for samosas. School is easy when you get paid and when you get Pakistani food as performance bonuses.

Azad is a single thirty-something year old man from Pakistan living in Montreal, on EI because he got laid off working in BC, and is now learning French because he didn’t want to be wasting his time. He is the perfect man. I should probably marry him before interracial marriage inevitably becomes illegal in this great liberal country of ours. We sit in the back of the class, working hard but making witty and well-timed jokes for 30 hours in a week. It is great.

This past week was the first time I had visitors from a far away land who had time, money and youth to spend. I feel like after seven months in this city, I know it pretty well. I know what tourists do, and I know some nice places to go for meals without reading a Lonely Planet book, I know where celebrities go to take dumps in public washrooms, I know where the terribly dressed Anglophone youth live. But besides a few select sights to be seen, basically all we did was eat. Poutine, smoked meat, pizza, sandwiches, crepes, bagels, baguettes, croissants, etc, etc, etc. I practiced my abilities unlike I have ever done before. And I came out on top.

I like eating more than I like mostly anything. I feel like my greatest attributes all deal greatly with eating. If there was one thing I feel I can do just as well, if not better than most, it would be this. Speed, agility, quantity, diversity, heat, etc. Being independent gives me less chance to practice my one true skill, and then when I return home for brief periods of time, my great self just isn’t ready to unleash what it once could.

But unlike many people, like those who drink too much coffee, or wine, or beer, etc., my love, ability, addiction hasn’t turned me into a food snob. I enjoy the finer meals, but I still eat $2 peanut noodles, still eat generic peanut butter, still eat garbage loaf. I feel like I’ve kept my head when it comes to food humility. Foomility. My frugality balances well with my foomility.

I’ve been telling Azad for a while that I’d bring him some of my home cooked dal; very different from his home brew, but I like to share my wealth of lentils and mostly get opinions from reliable sources that matter, if you know what I mean. But so far I’ve only bought him a few samosas, 2 for $1, and a handful of French answers. Who needs currency when you have grades and stomachs?

And now I’m back to eating mouldy bread and Pakistani scraps. Now I am back to dry puffed wheat and softening fruits. Now I am back to reality.

And it feels alright. So far. For now.

It’s a whole different world wearing green in a different stadium. But it is still beautiful.

I awoke this morning with the most peculiar of feelings. I couldn’t really put my finger on exactly what the feeling was, but it was unpleasant, it was stale, it was cold. Likely stirred on by my subconscious, because my dreams have been pretty gnarly lately, when remembered. The closest thing I could think of to adequately explain the sensation I had was this: It felt like everyone in the city was dead, or dying, except me. The apocalypse. And so far I’ve had nothing to prove wrong this feeling. My roommates are sleeping, probably hungover, zombie-like beings. The highway just outside the apartment is strangely quiet. It is overcast and cold. And I have this instinctive feeling that I am the only human being on earth.

My throat still scratches from yelling with my entire body’s strength at the Rider game. My head still slightly itches from the watermelon juice. My knee still hurts from kicking the orange highway divider in anger. That is love for the game. Post apocalypse, this will change.

My last bar of soap has been reduced to a mere sliver of usability. My feet emit odours never smelled before in this world. My clothes smell sour or stale or like they were urinated on by a cat. This is hygiene at its absolute best. Post apocalypse, this will not change.

We watched a 30 minute firework show last night from the second floor of a barge-parkade. I wondered what aliens would think if they saw us, thousands of viewers with childlike eyes, watching firing yellows and flashing blues. They probably think we are real dumb. And I guess that this thought alone is what saved me from the apocalypse.  So far.

So today I will go out on the town, forget about this all, eat crepes and tacos and so on and watch hippies make music, all to convince myself that we indeed are not currently in the apocalypse. All to convince myself that people aren’t dying everywhere, and living like they’re already dead…  Based on this, today, like many other days, I will likely understand that the apocalypse is now. Say your prayers.

The ultimate in sports love hits Montreal tonight. Two part-time fans and I will be at McGill with Watermelons and green. My first away-from-home-field game.

At The Catalina Wine Mixer, our party to which none of us invited friends, we drank wine in our nice clothes and played Crazy Eights. After chatting fine wines, classical music, and just how ‘crazy’ an actual ‘eight’ might be, boiling cob corn and throwing the decorned cob on the roof of the apartment across the alley, and capturing a few of the moments with the camera, the topic of ‘purpose’ came up. Some felt like they knew their purpose. Others felt like they were without it. And I stood there silently, as per usual, thinking about something I have been thinking about for a long time.

Ever since I figured out what a defeatist was, purpose has seemed inconsequential. Since youth I’ve been told by people, mostly my mother, that I needed to change my attitude. I am the one telling myself to do this now, but it is rarely as easy as ‘opening the lights’ or ‘putting on the power’ to an electrical device, and I really don’t know what the logical, progressive steps would be. Giving up on giving up I guess. But since last year, purpose hasn’t been around, and I’ve just been boldly living like I’ve never lived before: selfish and semi-mindless, but almost on purpose, because I don’t know what else to do. Without purpose, temporarily, on purpose.

But purpose might be found in a book, or in a classroom, or in a blog, or in a simple Wine Mixer. But it is not found in my everyday cynicism. But right now that might be all I’ve got.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching out toward expression, an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the word.

ROBERT FROST

courtesy of Advice to Writers

Sitting next to the city lake, lazy and listless on the bench, you really get an understanding of Regina’s second place finish of Canada’s fattest city. Buttloads of flesh being hauled around the lake with a hope of thin days ahead. Arriving to the Wascana from anywhere besides Fort Wayne, Indiana or St Catherines, Ontario will shock you at the general girth of the city. Not enough curry or poutine or curried poutine.

And now I get to watch the portly file onto planes and spread the Western gospel of obesity to the world. And I get to sit, fiddling with my boarding pass wondering if I got bumped to first class because I was still sleeping while doing that computerized check-in and charged myself $309 extra, or if it is because I booked my flight months ago, or if it’s because I just looked good and eye-flirted the check-in girl at 530 am.

Besides the average weight, being in Regina reminded me of how storms can be seen in full and how this is one of the only places this is possible. If you could anticipate physical and mental storms more places in the world maybe we’d be somewhere else, and not constantly sheltering ourselves from rain and general storms.

A comedy film showing on the plane had a disclaimer that the film had or referenced a plane crash. I feel like I should warn you that while reading this post or most posts on ‘Balls of Rice’ there may be references to how much blogging sucks. Also, storms, obesity and how first class I am.

The first thing I did when I arrived in Montreal was get two slices of vegetarian pizza. Then I bought groceries. Obesity follows me everywhere. I hope that metabolism follows just as close.

I love these people, their music and their ideas. Perfect group of gentlemen.

In January 2009 I started writing poems. Usually several in a month, written about the man peeing in the alleyway, the sense of hopelessness that comes with reading a lot of angst filled books of the early 1900’s, the path I walked to work, etc. The first few I wrote were fairly pathetic, heavily influenced by the new Propagandhi album, and were intended to be songs for when I finally found a punk band to join. After writing a few of these, I actually realized that my proposed songs were poems, and that I was enjoying the entire process of writing and not editing as much as they needed to be, so I decided to continue writing them as much as I could.

A year and a half later I had compiled a small number of things of my own that I enjoyed reading, things that took less than five minutes to read, things that I slapped together and made a poetry book with. Loose Ends, is what I called it, and loose ends is all they are. I tried for hours to make a photo book of all my favourite pictures from my previous world trips, but couldn’t do it, so this is my more recent compilation, my own scrapbook. It is my physical photo proof of where I’ve been and what I was thinking.

For the admittedly steep price of $29.99 (less than a dollar a page, but not by much) you can own a copy for yourself. Fancy paper, printing costs and a solid 80cent profit will do that to the price tag. Click on the photo above, or the link for a short preview of what it may look like when you get it. I only realized until after that you must have an account at the Lulu website to order a copy, which is a complete scam, so if you really want a copy you can make your own account, or email me and we can figure something out (olson_nicholas(@)yahoo.ca)

My real book is still in the processes of becoming a reality. This is a shorter, more visual, less edited, less professional preface. I finally did something with my time.

Disclaimer: This book is not suitable for children between the ages of 8-15, under the age of eight is fine, because they don’t understand most things anyways. Nor is this book suitable for adults sensitive to real thoughts, dirty hockey quotes and the occasional swear. But there are less than 10 swears, I promise.