Author: Nic Olson

A week is about the maximum length of absence I could have from WordPress until I start to feel like I am letting myself down. My mind has been swirling from visits and revisits of friends here in the homeland, the summer blockbuster ‘Inception’ and the dreams that have followed, and a previously unknown midday fatigue that hits me after my midday meal. I am in a mindset I have not previously been in, thinking is more than it should be, and verbally explaining these thoughts is even more laborious.

I’ve never been the man who only gets to visit his own city for short periods of time, needing to jam in friendly hellos and goodbyes together in one visit. Usually the hellos are well spread from the goodbyes and the relationships have time to mend, after I leave everything behind. But the friendships where you can start exactly from where you left six months ago, they are the ones that count.

I believe in signs. And I’ve had no signs lately. No signs that I should be here. No signs that I should be there. No signs of anything, except signs of a possible stroke, and a possible quick end to a young life. If Cirque Du Soleil doesn’t cause my heart to stop, I don’t know what will.

That’s about it.

There are certain things that habit doesn’t forget, no matter how long it has been. Even when new routines have been remade several times, and old routines are primarily forgotten but rediscovered when streets and buildings and senses become familiar. Like unbuckling the seatbelt when driving under the ‘Welcome to Eastview’ sign. My hand just knew when.

At times I feel like I have a firm grip on the idea of home, that it is where you presently are, and it is more than just something physical, but I’ve caught myself in certain situations. Like saying, ‘No, I didn’t bring my camera, I left it at home,’ referring to Montreal. Or while in Montreal, ‘Yep, I’m going home for two weeks.’ Something doesn’t line up. Because both places feel homey, but many times neither feels like home. And if home is where I presently am, and where I presently am doesn’t feel like home then I have a backwards idea of home, or home doesn’t feel like what I think it should. But it is good to be here. Real good.

I am doing my best to discover if there is difference is between this idea of ‘home’ and the idea of ‘where one belongs’ at a certain moment.  If a difference actually exists, then I feel like I’ve found many temporary homes, and that might be all I can find.

Habit doesn’t forget places, nor does it forget how things are done. The floor is where I sleep. The chair is where I lounge. The DQ is where I eat. But habit can forget hows and whys.

Nice.

I’m a full time student again, and this time I’m doing it right. Doing it right, which means, not studying yet learning, not spending yet drinking beer, and getting paid yet not ‘working’. I now might have a harder time going back to a post secondary education with a bunch of suckers who pay thousands for an education you could gain from YouTube, especially when I can get paid to go to school. I’ve figured it all out…

I always had a pretty good attendance record, rarely skipped class, rarely late and rarely asleep, and it is still about the same but instead of fear of parents coming down on me, I’ve got the weight of the entire government, the new Quebec, and my paychecks. It is the same pressure, but sans puberty, and with adulthood.

I had a flashback of Chemistry30, grade 12 Chemistry, the other day and I have something I feel I need to admit. I had a friend who required a grade twelve science to graduate, final semester and dreams of graduation swirled in our heads like our hormones told them to. I tried to teach him everything to pass the class, but all he wanted to do was to mix random chemicals and hope for an explosion, or steal the formaldehyde frogs and put them in girls purses and lockers, both of which we did. It was hopeless, so each test, quiz or exam I would finish the first five questions, write the answers on my graphing calculator and he would subtley ask for my calculator out loud, I’d hand it to him and he’d have the answers.  Typed out for short answer question or A, B, C or D for multiple
choice, even on the government regulated final examination. Needless to say, he passed the class with ease and we pulled off one of the greatest cheats in christian high school history. We were a real team, and now he is making 6 figures for his wife and two kids by creating underground explosions searching for precious minerals, and I’m back to complaining about teachers, their outfits and their teaching methods. Oh, the irony.

Now, watching a 40 year old American in my French class cheat by speaking English in French speaking activities, I realize that cheating when you’re naive, trying to graduate high school, and don’t care about chemistry is one thing, but when the class is voluntary, a language, and midlife it is different. It is a whole new world of pathetic, highlighted by pride and laziness. I hope to never be that man. Being bilingual is something I’ve wanted for a while, and now I’ve got a chance to get it. I’ll try not to cheat.

About a year and a half ago I felt my death was imminent. I was sure I wouldn’t last long. Now, despite what my palms were read as, the feeling has returned. I am not exactly sure what it is, but it is specific and it is there. The mob, possibly the Hells Angels are on the horizon, caused by my overactive conscience and a bad call centre. I talked with a young Mormon man on the metro for fifteen minutes the other day and he told me about how he knew the church was perfect because it was run by God. Russians with 80’s outfits are teaching me French. Dreams about it all.  Experiencing everything I feel like I need to in a life time. $4 loaves of bread, etc… My apocalypse seems forthcoming.

I may have cheated in high school, cheated death once when climbing a mountain, but the feeling is back, and if I ever become fluent in two languages, doom awaits me. You can only cheat so much.

Backside 180. Click for more.

Sometimes there just isn’t much to say.

A heat wave of tropical proportions hit the city just a few weeks after an earthquake. Welcome to hell. When where you live is hotter than any other location in the city, and is less comfortable than anywhere else, is when things are backwards. But where crotches and armpits become offensive, living and seeing has been real.

Last week I tried climbing to the roof of the apartment for celebratory fireworks and general evening hangouts, but it wasn’t as easy as grabbing a shelving unit from the dumpster and climbing from the balcony up. The lid to the roof hole is still loose from pushing up against it with a broom handle. The roof has yet to be pioneered but I’ve reached new heights.

I’ve always been partial towards traveling and the intimacies of it all, but after a short bus ride to a nearby city, alone, reading and being, I realized that it may not be exclusively be the traveling, the newness, the distinctions, but the fact that I like being away from home, wherever that is for the current month. I’ve reached new lows.

A week into school and I start to question its and my motives. A school of celebrated assimilation, where everyone gets paid to learn a language so they can be part of the purified whole. This is either hell or the best deal I’ve ever got, and I’m thinking it is the latter. My bank account has reached new heights.

Today, to finally cease the four day wave of extreme warmth and stickiness, it rained. It really rained, tropical climate rain. And our garbage can was rolling down the street below. Barefoot and shirtless I slipped my way down the spiral staircase fire escape, kicked the other garbage cans aside and rescued ours from the river-like Rue de Richelieu. All the while the storm percolated through the open door and open window in our room, soaking the futon mattresses and all else. I’ve reached new lows.

But generally, the highs and lows have balanced out to a soft, even and true medium which cannot be denied. When you are drinking an Arizona and eating a bagel whose cousin has been to space, then it just seems alright.

The things I hear while sitting for twelve hours playing Sudoku is truly amazing. Talking about work is really timeworn, but when you hear from the nation’s finest in the old people and angry people for twelve hours in a day, some good things happen.

Nic: ‘…Would you like to participate in this study, ma’am?’
Woman 1: ‘Calling on a Sunday? Ugh. Pathetic.’
(The woman puts down the phone, meaning to hang it up. The volume goes up on the TV)
TV: ‘Tonight on America’s Most Wanted, A killer who rapes with a knife.’

People that make me lose hope in the world: people that hang up, people that groan, people who answer with no thought and say everything is ‘Very Satisfying’, naive teenagers excited to do surveys until they realize it is for people over the age of 18 and they give it to their angry parents, etc.

People that make me make me less embarrassed to be human: people that aren’t brainwashed by the RCMP and banking industry, young people who take a long time to answer questions because they are actually thinking about the answers, people over the age of 70 in general, etc.

One man, old, wealthy, dignified, from Ontario, had no belief or trust in the RCMP, something I’d never seen before. On a question about the RCMP and the G20/G8 summits, his rhetoric was ‘What kind of democracy do we have when the leaders actually need to be protected?’ He later got beaten down and arrested by the RCMP for even thinking such a thought.

And I ask questions about investment portfolios, and investing for the future of retirement, while I scrape the minutes to make hours to make $10. I am retiring on Thursday. For the fourth time this month.

And all the while, while interviewees struggle through the sentence composition without any visual queues, and deeply consider how to best answer the question so that their opinion has a lasting effect in the statistic sheets of completely useless HR divisions of unnecessary institutions, I slowly plod through a Sudoku in pen, so that when I inevitably make a simple mistake, I have to rewrite it in my notebook and try again.

And the Fleur-de-Lis tattoos come out in full force, bulging out from under large boots and wifebeaters, and the blue and white flags ripple in the soft patriotic wind. Quebec Nationalism is in full force on today, St Jean Baptiste Day, when Anglophones are openly persecuted and burned in the streets, and French Canadians walk around the streets like it were their own gay pride parade, maybe with less naked men. Maybe.

So I get the day off. Probably so I can stay home and avoid public humiliation events designed for Anglophones. Like trips to the pizza place and they won’t speak English to you, and everyone is there watching and laughing. And avoid other general Anglophone torture. Just when the language is starting to exhaust and overwhelm me, they have a French Festival in the city, the French holiday the same week, and I start French classes next week. If I don’t make it out alive tell my mom, ‘Je t’aime.’

There was an earthquake yesterday in Quebec. I was watching tennis quietly on the couch, seeing Federer barely scrape by and Isner barely stand up. And I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t know it happened until my brother emailed me and told me. The French part of the earth was rumbling with anticipation for Quebec’s birthday 400+ years in the making, trying to scare away the English immigrants out of their hip bars and back to the west.

And I celebrate the fact that I didn’t get paid as much as I thought I would yesterday, the fact that I don’t work one or two jobs today, and that I won’t actually be martyred for my monolingualism, only quietly mocked. Thank god.

Let the persecution begin.

I put a lot of work into the garden in front of my house. Mostly by sitting on the front step every now and then, and brushing my fingernails and toe nails into the abyss of clovers and knee high grass of our 4’x4′ front yard. But conquering my weighty toenails were these flowers. Summer days can be nice, even if you work two jobs in one day.

I guess.