Author: Nic Olson

I was walking home last night around midnight after a pleasant time at a bluegrass night, featuring hits from Hank Williams and a handful of others at Barfly, the only bar in the city that loves Habs, country music, and lets a pair of giant huskies walk around the stage while the band is playing. While walking, on the side of the road about five blocks from my apartment was a nice old wooden desk. It was sitting tipped over with the drawers sitting next to it. I needed it. My room is pretty humble; mattress on the floor, clothes in the bag that they traveled in, and everything else placed strategically around my mattress so as little movement as possible is necessary to reach the essentials, i.e. the laptop and water bottle. So this desk was necessary. I put the drawers in the desk and lifted it up, walked it up a block, dropped it and left. It was a little much for my lowly retail biceps.

I walked home. I was greeted by my newly engaged roommate, and convinced him to help me carry it the four blocks to the apartment. We walked there and talked about how he proposed, in a pitch black restaurant with only blind employees, as they ate their meal in the darkness. After three or four breathers and a few more groans, the desk made it home. It made it down the stairs at 1am. It made it through the front door. It did not make it through my bedroom door. So in the hallway/entrance way it sat for the night. Sideways and drawerless, completely naked. I popped my door off this morning and slid it in without a trace of damage… My first furniture purchase matches the hardwood impeccably, and matches the owner even better.

I got a job. La Cage Aux Sports. Sports Bar inside the Bell Centre. Dishwasher. Minimum wage. If that’s not living the dream, I don’t know what is. Washing dishes for the Habs. Nothing sweeter.

I was worried I wouldn’t fit in. I don’t speak French, I don’t like wine, I don’t dress well, I don’t wear boots, I don’t eat much cheese. But..

I am sitting alone at a full pub 4 blocks from my house, surrounded by the fans of the team that made the sport great, cheering as loud as I can and my voice is still drowned out by the masses. I am high fiving strangers. I’m in the heart of it all. So…

I could care less.

Saturday it becomes real. Tangible. The Bell Centre, alone again, doing what matters: living the dream.

After staying up only until 1am last night, I slept in until noon today. It was pathetic. I have no job, I don’t even stay out that late, but I can’t get out of bed in the morning. So, to counteract that immature, irresponsible act, I threw a dinner party.

After waking up I finally slipped on a crisp pair of jeans and looped the shoelace in my belt loops and around my waist, I went back to my bed. My bed is about all I’ve got in my room; it is my desk, my breakfast table, my dinner table, my lounging chair, my movie theatre, my computer charger, my bookshelf, my hat rack, my classroom, my everything… I cracked open my laptop and decided to get responsible the laziest way I knew how, applying for jobs by sitting on my ass at my ‘desk’ at home. The internet will be the cause of my first heart attack. I applied for probably more than twenty jobs today, ranging from Telemarketer, to Fancy suit Rental-man, Female clothing Sales Associate, Bartender, Dishwasher, Stripper, Hitman, etc. I got two e-mails back, both saying that I forgot to attach my resume, and one call back, a very short conversation that ended when I said I did not have three years experience selling insurance over the phone. Not bad. Tomorrow might be Tangible Friday where I actually speak to human beings that don’t actually speak my language, hoping that somehow someone needs a dishwasher or upper body model.

I went to an art show later in the evening. An exhibit at some fancy restaurant/bar/independent theatre on the fancy street featuring the photography of some French man that went to India. The photos were truly amazing, with proper lighting and colours and ideas that may have captured a piece of the truth of India. He sold some 4’x8′ portrait of some old Indian dude for three grand. To make it all seem better, he was giving a decent portion of the proceeds to the Red Cross for the recent troubles in Haiti. But the Indian man he took the photo of got a few rupees. Unshowered at 8pm, wearing my Habs hat and dirty jeans, watching rich, well dressed Montrealers drink $20 glasses of wine and listen to fancy club music while glancing at pictures of the destitute, I had my fill. We went home to catch the end of the game with a friend. Montreal 5 Dallas 3. I missed most of it as I cooked Indian. A few other friends joined. It was a dinner party. And I charged nothing.

A friend in the big city from the small town once expressed his confusion saying he couldn’t tell if the big city was the real world, or if the small town was the real world. Montreal is real, but when I explain Regina to the unknowns, Regina seems like it is reality, but when I think about India, it seems like the only part of the world where everything is actual and authentic. Not all of these places can be real. Tonight Regina was in Montreal which was, for a brief moment, in India. And the only thing real about it all was the realization that there is no ‘real world’.

Except dinner parties. Nothing more real than that.

I went to a ‘Youth Employment Services’ (YES) ‘Seminar’ today. I separately quote ‘Seminar’ because it wasn’t officially called that, and I don’t know what it officially should be called, except that I felt like I was in seminary. It was entitled ‘Jump-Start Your Job Search’. An introduction to the government run YES programme of Montreal. The seminarist ran the session in English and there was about twenty or so young unprofessionals, unhireables, in what was more or less a support group for those too weird, too awkward, too specialized, to find jobs. A few people I met yesterday told me about it, said they were going. They weren’t there. So I sat in a room with people under 40 years with at least one degree each talking about how impossible it is to find a job in Montreal in this terrible recession we are in. I learned that I need to know my personal human being ‘market worth’, so when I apply at jobs, I can tell them how much they have to pay me, because that is how much I’m worth. I decided that my own personal ‘market worth’ would be an extra large tube of salami and a $2.50 international calling card.

So, I was in the wrong room. After terrible introductions of each seminaries, the seminarist said that she wasn’t going to find any of us any jobs. She was going to support our search for jobs by essentially doing nothing and telling us that we were special. I pretended that I was manager of a lucrative store in Saskatchewan and moved to Montreal to broaden my entrepreneurial horizons. But really I just wanted the lady to find me a dishwashing job near my apartment. I left before she could take any more of my information and set up a further cumbersome one on one meeting with a career specialist. I took a pen. I walked home.

‘They’, whoever ‘they’ are, have created an industry out of people that can’t get into an industry. A trade was created for those who employers don’t want in their own trade. Resume writers/translators, head hunters, agencies and billion dollar companies. And I am sitting outside of these places, without a job, hoping my money lasts as long as it takes to find a new source of money, so I can save it up again for the next place.

Before I humiliated myself and told thirty-three year olds with three degrees that I moved to Montreal for fun, I went for free vegan food at Concordia University. Unreal, free, likely very organic chick pea curry and some sort of soup with couscous on the side. Socially conscious students with tupperware in hand, lined up for free, donation encouraged vegan food, complete with a full banana. This city is a mindwarp. Hippies serving free vegan delights. Australian Engineers nearly homeless waiting for jobs in big yellow rooms with other Masters with numerous undergraduate degrees under their ‘oh so high’ belts.

I sleep on the floor, but now on a futon mattress. I listen to real people have real conversations. I cook my own dahl. I’m a grown up. If I had a job where I wore a suit, I’d be Donald Trump.

I’ve been here less than twenty four hours and have already done everything I thought I would. Art show at a cafe downtown. Bluegrass show at a pub near the house. Internet on my laptop at a coffee house. Fumbled with French language and customs. Bought groceries. Ate cheap slices. Got lost. Rode the Metro. Saw a dude get thrown out of a bar and a fight ensue. Walked more than I have in the past month.

I forgot how exhausting languages are. I hope/plan to learn some/all of the French language, but sitting in a room trying to understand three Francophones talk about anything is not easy. Sitting in a room not trying to understand three Francophones talk about anything is not easy. It’s exhausting. But perfect. More time to think my own brilliant thoughts. And now I only understand about 25% of the conversations around me, so there is 75% less time shaking my head for the halfheaded things they say.

Yesterday when I arrived, I was terrified. I sat in my apartment alone, more nervous than I’ve ever been, not having a clue what to do next. So I had a nap. Woke up, and I was slightly soothed. Went and bought groceries and some cheap slices, practiced some French and I was further soothed.

I just saw two men walking, one looked strangely like Carbo, the other strangely like Koivu with face piercings… Too bad one lives in California and the other doesn’t wear puffy NorthFace jackets, or I’d be set.

Some dude that smells of smokes and sausage sat next to me. I should probably go home and cook dal..

Countries celebrate the day that they sever ties between themselves and the motherland.

I have thought it absurd that I have lived in the same place for my whole life. I may have lived my first three years in a different city, but the first three years of life are about as important as the first three years of elementary school or the first three years of university or the first three years of a relationship, phoney and useless. But there are paths yet to tread. And there are people yet to meet. Twenty years in one place gives you a pretty good idea, but I don’t want a good idea anymore. I want no idea. But that’s not why I’m leaving.

I am about as dependent as I was when I was twelve, and it is a sorry life I’ve been living. Eating the city’s best food in the city’s newest basement suite, never doing anything except what I want, when I want, driving a car that doesn’t belong to me, eating food that I don’t pay for, sleeping on a floor that I didn’t vacuum. It is really quite pathetic. I need to struggle to flourish. But that’s not why I’m leaving.

Dependence isn’t a bad thing, but isn’t always great. Dependence exposes vulnerability, meekness; both are unwanted characteristics for most people. I could live dependent on someone for the rest of my life and be totally comfortable. But that’s not why I’m leaving.

I am severing myself from the motherland. And I’m not yet celebrating. I am declaring my own Independence day, January 10th, 2010. It could be disastrous. It was January 10th, three years ago, when I boarded a plane bound for India. Who knew that three years later my mind would be totally warped because of a combination of that first trip and two later trips. Who knew that January 10th would twice be my day of Independence in my life. Let’s see what this try will do to me.

I don’t know why I’m leaving. Nor if I stayed, would I know why I stayed. It’s just happening. My television serial has finished here due to lack of viewership. My spinoff begins Sunday.

Sorting. I, you may be surprised, like to keep tangible pieces of the past to be able to look at and remember the good times. Old shit. I probably had one hundred movie ticket stubs in this shoebox that held hundreds of other papers, notes from Indian girls, dirty notes from high school friends, a piece of a broken Nalgene bottle (I kept it because we broke the unbreakable with a baseball bat), cards from Birthdays, Christmas’s, Graduation, ticket stubs from concerts ten years ago. I have literally kept these things in the same three shoe boxes for ten years. I went through it for the last time, and lessened it all into half of a shoebox of important phone numbers, photos, gifts, and a few golden memories.

Among the garbage memories that I have hoarded over the years, I found my old notes, assignments, papers, exams from my very brief stint at university. I kept these notes in the same messenger side bag that I used to lug around my clipboards of paper, back when I had a future. I thought that I’d probably end up back at university after my trip to India, but I was wrong, and as those papers died lonely and dark in the same bag they lived, I traveled to India two more times, and finally brought them back to life today. I browsed my old Chem102 notes, interesting but useless information all in three Hilroy notebooks. I reread my Physics 109 final exam and understood none of it, and understood why no one likes Physics. I didn’t even bother rereading my Psychology notes, because that was a completely useless one hundred hours of the opinion of a bigot misogynist professor. I reread my English notes. They were terrible. Everything I wrote down in that class was for the sole purpose of passing. I wrote down pages of grammar theory and of Polonius’ role in Hamlet. I wrote them down because I wanted to pass, and for no other reason. I even remember hating writing it down, because I knew it was completely profitless except to get a higher mark for the reasons that the system tells you are important. My papers were terrible. The actual writing wasn’t that bad, but the way it was written, was so forced, so rigid, so framed, that it totally disregarded the actual purpose of writing. But that is what I had to write, and I knew of nothing else. The system allowed nothing else but words that were supposed to be written because of curriculum, because of lazy profs and because of a flawed system in the first place.

So I recycled it all. I thought of keeping my one Math 110 midterm where I got 100% so Wilf could remember the years of old where I could derive a function in a matter of seconds. I also thought about keeping a few other educational items, like transcripts, awards and scholarship letters, Graduation programs, but I recycled them too. My past life was great, but I’m never going to become anyone important enough to write a book about, or require historical research for, and if I somehow do, my actual amateur freehand writing would probably do the same good. Holding on to old memories isn’t bad. But once the holding becomes living and breathing, things need to change. I’ve been uncomfortably near that living and breathing state for sometime, so the trash was calling, and so was the road. Montreal because of hockey, because of opportunities, because of a few friends.

So most of my tangible, physical past is now in the garbage awaiting a proper burial, in the recycling awaiting a proper shred, or in my backpack awaiting a proper shift. And everything else is embedded on a series of hard drives somewhere, through photos and documents, and that’s about all I’ve got.

It’s a long way from me to then.

It’s a long way from SK to Montreal.

The first thing I heard in 2010 was the worst song written in decades. I’ve got a feeling. ooOO. The first five times I heard that song, it ended up being the worst night of the week. But that has changed slightly. I mean, the song is still terrible, but the last five times I heard that song, it ended up not being the worst night ever.

I wanted to look cool, so I skated a half lap and looped back around to the Maid of Honour, who was standing in flats near the entrance gate. I shifted my body weight and angled my skates to that angle of spraying snow and friction that characterizes stopping on ice, except my blades were dullards of similar stature of the writers of the ‘Tonight’s gonna be a good night’ song. My skates gave out, lost my footing, I cut her leg with my skate, and we fell onto the ice in front of a crowd of cameras, her in her dress, me in my tuxedo. She bled. I apologized. I had a feeling I would ruin the wedding celebration in someway, and I guess I slightly ruined Mara’s shaven leg. With blood and cuts.

I’ve got a feeling that hellos and goodbyes that are done with purpose are big. Hugs are huge lately. I said goodbye to a friend a short while ago and my eyes welled up and inside my chest my inner self shook its head in complete despondency. Then a few other friends later, I felt a stirring in my chest while saying a hello. I have a feeling that this is normal when a person plans on leaving his or her hometown of eighteen years, in the short period of a week. Things such as driving to Pilot Butte to try and boost a giant truck are important to my mind’s well being. Because I’m leaving. And because of this I ask myself why would humans fool themselves by pretending to resolve for a New Year’s change when they could just make a decision and actually act?

And it turned out that it was a good night. Great night. The clock danced in my hand at the moment of new decade. Danced to the worst song of the previous decade. And it danced with the purpose of the upcoming in mind.

I had the opportunity to watch Canada’s World Junior team play an exhibition pre-tournament game last week against Sweden. Friends with tickets are the friends to have. Or just nice friends are friends to have. Every time I am at the Brandt Centre in Regina, whether it be a game seven playoff Pats hockey game, or a Circus Gatti, or the Western Canadian Agribition, or the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the stadium is dead. The capacity is only like 7000 for sports events, but considering that 7000 Rider fans are louder than 100,000 Leafs fans, you would expect that the Brandt Centre would get loud every now and then. But it never does. Game seven, Regina vs. Saskatoon, silent.

So Pepsi thought they could change it. Canada’s Cheer, a spoonful of cough syrup down a child’s throat. Forced and distasteful. I’m not worried about Canada selling its soul to a major corporation, because I’m sure they’ve already done that, and the idea of borders creating nations and subscribing to nationalities is not a very progressive idea towards a united human race. But when a giant world corporation decides to hijack a favourite past time of many, trying to hide their newest ad campaign behind cheering for good hockey, is low, even for Pepsi. If Coke did it, then it would have been fully Canadian.

Boxing Day does little more than assist the division of the human race. Christmas is mind boggling enough of an idea, and when I witness the mayhem of Boxing Day from behind the cash register, I question the need of a week long sale to promote extreme consumption after the week of highest annual consumption.

But the sign says 50% off. Aren’t you going to honour your sign?
These mitts are only 30% off and not 50% off, well shit, I’m not going to buy them.
I guess I’m not going to buy this hoodie, I might as well just bundle it up in a ball and throw it on the ground. Oh and I might as well spit my gum out on the floor too.

I guess consideration, moderation and untainted past times have gone extinct along with sobriety, the unmarried, and independent thought.

Gotta love the holidays.