Category: Uncategorized

The story of how my day yesterday was ruined by a very pleasant man doing his job properly begins nearly two years ago.

To shorten a lengthy tale that has likely already been told, I will simply say that I no longer trust salesmen or lawyers (or anyone that wears a suit everyday), blondes, people that drive BMWs, the well-dressed, or people that just look untrustworthy. This is all because of a call-centre job which tormented me as an employee for four weeks in downtown Montreal.

A young professional entered the store and I was a tense mess immediately after he left. After he left I doubted his sincerity. He was an impostor, I told myself, a man wearing fine clothes, complimenting the store and eating the cookies, all in order to take advantage of me. I can’t tell the difference between someone genuinely being nice and someone that knows how to be nice in order to fuck your life up. This man, apparently, turned out to be the former. I am still unsure.

My frenzy saw me e-mailing several sources to follow up on the happenings of last year. The legal proceedings have come to a close. Settlement out of court. My dreams of being flown into Montreal as a surprise witness have been quashed. Things are settled, life is normal, but my mind is perpetually skeptical of this. An anxiety, something new to my repertoire of issues, keeps tugging at my sleeve. A non-issue pricks me in the finger and my mind imagines that my entire finger was cut off. And then worries about the other nine fingers.

It stressed me out because if the young professional had been an agent of evil, then I missed my chance to strangle him and yell in his face until his morals became clear. It stressed me out again because if he came back I wouldn’t know how to express my hatred for him and his ways of earning money. It stressed me out even further that I assumed he was a sleazy thieving salesman even though he was not.

A negative day for an already negative man becomes a desperately painful sight.

For some reason, as if it were the remnant of a long night of dreams, this phrase kept repeating itself in my head. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” I was thinking about owning cars and eating meat and taking advantage of people and pummelling salesmen.

The story of how I lost my mind because of an issue that solved itself ended yesterday.

It is still nowhere to be found.

I was contracted to case an old Honda Civic. Just go there, take everything inside, and get out. Might need a few tools, might need to break a few windows, it doesn’t belong to me anymore, so do what you’ve got to do, is what I was told. I was free this morning at 7am, so was glad to oblige. Casing an old Honda, sounds like a person I’d like to be come. Eight in the morning, rooting through piles of textbooks and rubberboots and windshield wipers in the brisk wind, I reminded myself, “Don’t own things.” My priorities were obvious as I picked up every individual coin and cellophane-wrapped toothpick off the ground with stiff hands, giving more importance to those, and the Aerobie Superdisc in the back, than the five-hundred dollar stereo that was the real reason behind being hired. Unfortunately for myself and the former owners of the car, a near-retired security guard of the SGI impound lot pulled up next to me, the same man that gave me permission to peruse this one car in a sea of hundreds. This time he told me that I was prohibited from taking the audio deck. Not knowing why he suddenly demanded this, I became standoffish, put my hands up and waved them in innocence, asking him if he was going to believe the apparent ‘unnamed man’ that had just called him with the new orders. We solved the problem with a tire-iron fight which ended in an exchange of phone numbers. Nice gentleman.

Throughout the process, waiting in the car for the lot to open, piling shit into bags and laundry hampers on the icy ground, picking up frost-flaked coins, I kept saying to myself, “Oh, they better buy me a beer for this. Or at least a backrub.” Until finally the not-selfish part of my brain kicked in and said, “Shut up, you dinkbag, you are doing something nice for your sister who is unfortunate enough to live in Saskatoon. You don’t deserve a beer for this.” And I drove home.

I listed most of my insecurities to a single soul last week, and I even spared this particular insecurity. I can only think of so many at one time, so I thought I’d share it with you instead. My insecurity of easy unmotivation. Of how comfort seems to stifle my motivation. I can somehow muster up the energy and willpower to drink six beers a night for a week, or to drive nineteen hours out of twenty-one, a selfish motivation, but can’t muster up the energy to read things that benefit my brain, or to be productive, or to help anyone else without subconsciously deciding that I deserve a reward for doing so. The incentive program, as effective with credit cards as it is with beer drinking. While behind the wheel two nights ago, I had ample amounts of time to think through all of the good habits I would keep upon returning home. Like a New Years Resolutionist in denial. Or a recovering addict sure that this time would be different. I had lists of character-building things that I would commit to doing upon arriving home now that I had the chance to marinate in a week of enjoyment. And upon returning home, they all seem to weigh more than ten-thousand Superdiscs. Here’s to hoping that it is just a lack of sleep.

With one more of my insecurities out in the air, and one more Honda Civic cased, I think this is a Wednesday well spent. I deserve a beer.

I think I just realized something about myself that most people likely already knew before. I am getting to know myself better, and the relationship between myself and myself could have started out better.

I’m an arrogant prick.

When I was in the Southern United States I learned about Texas. About how it was once a Republic of its own and how this has bred a group of people, an entire state, that has some sort of extra Texan pride that no one else can understand. A sort of nationalism within a nationalism. Can’t get much worse. But after a while I felt like I could understand where they were coming from. I could care less that I’m Canadian, really, not to say that I don’t understand my luck to live in a place like this, but I am happier telling people that I’m from Saskatchewan, if they know where it is. It seemed to me that people from Saskatchewan held a stronger pride in their province than those from anywhere else, except maybe Alberta. People from elsewhere in Canada would be comfortable enough saying that they were from Canada, while those from Saskatchewan might want to ad an asterisk, or the world’s new asterisk, #Saskatchewan.

While on the road I would start telling people I’m from Canada. This would satisfy ninety percent of people who asked where I was from. The other ten percent would ask where in Canada, and I would say Saskatchewan to avoid the looming gynaecological city discussions, and ninety percent of this ten percent would smile and ask if it was near Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. I would respond that it was somewhere in the middle of Toronto and Vancouver, a significant gap to be sure, but easier than trying to explain the location of a province with the population equal to a single block in their city. The final one percent that knew Saskatchewan asked what city, then I would tell them, and then maybe even mention where I was born and where I lived most of my childhood. Start broad, end specific.

I have had similar feelings surrounding my birth month. I always had this impression that people born in October had some sort of connection to one another, that we had some aura about us that no one else did, and that coming out of the womb into the chilled air with the smell of decaying leaves in our lungs, that we somehow meant something more than someone born in the meaningless month of July. I recently realized that this feeling was just born in me, thinking that I am greater than the rest of the population because I and several other friends were born within the same fictitious set of thirty one days, as if the Gregorian calendar knew something about us that others never could understand.

I think similar things have developed in my immediate family. I have heard reference to ‘The Olson Vibe’ in the past, which has always worried me when I hear about it. Someone once described it to me as, ‘a certain coolness’, but others, more blunt, have described it as, ‘basically thinking you are better than everyone else.’ At times I notice an instance that people may consider to be part of this ‘vibe’, and I sincerely hope that it is nothing more than an introversion mixed with a timidity and an anti-conformism. I hope that it isn’t an arrogance or vanity. We are just quiet and sometimes seem rude.

The word entitlement has found it’s way into my vocabulary lately. I use it negatively about people that feel they deserve something when I feel that they do not. Then I realize that I subconsciously think that I deserve a certain treatment, that I am entitled to be shown respect, when I do not. I always felt like I was worth more because I was born in between imaginary lines on a map, in an imaginary month on a calendar, into an imaginary system ruled by paternal surnames. My birthright.

Now I am working on meekness and humility. I am learning that although it is nice that I’m from Saskatchewan, that I was born in the month of October as an Olson, that it doesn’t mean a damned thing, and it doesn’t make me any taller than the man next to me born in Manitoba in the month of July as a Falloon.

I am entitled to an old man spitting a mixture of hot coffee and phlegm in my face. Filtered through his rotting teeth.

Or at least I’m not entitled to anything more or less than my neighbour. Maybe thats it.

I often wonder to myself, “If people aren’t thinking about what to write next, then what the hell are they thinking about?”

Food.
Hockey.
Sex.
Work.
Alcohol.
Deadlines.
Bills.
Healthcare.
Bacon.
Sex.
Laundry.
Elections.
Etcetera.

Oh.
Well.
I guess there is quite a bit on the average person’s mind.
My mind usually includes the following:

Witty titles for blogs.
Intellectual phrases for stories.
Lines for poems.
Obscure ideas.
Elections.
New ideas.
Myself.
Not being selfish.
Books.
Authors.
My book.
Stolen ideas.

Plus several others from the first list above. (You know which ones.)

Then, sometimes in the middle of thinking these things, or in the middle of an attempt at writing, in the single moment of clarity that I get in a month, I abruptly throw my hands in the air and groan, “Why do I fucking continue to kid myself?” This thought is born when I somehow compare myself to a writer of worth and realize that I will never reach where I wish to be. I realize that I am in a shop basement writing short stories with one-dimensional characters, sitting at a desk made of paint cans and used plywood at 10pm, staring at a black drywall screw holding up vinyl wood paneling. With this realization, any sort of motivation or feeling of worth dissolves on the concrete floor in the corner that the light doesn’t quite reach. Oh, it is disheartening. Enough to make me consider the deletion of all I’ve ever written and all I’ve ever thought about just to spite my own self.

I need to get real.

Get real in understanding that the world doesn’t need some amateur, second class ‘art’ to give it worth. Get real in understanding that my attempts at expression have been attempted and expressed far before my time. Get real in understanding that although it may not be hurting anyone, fiction or non-fiction or poetry, is all a form of rambling. Sometimes with a mediocre plot, sometimes without.

I won’t ever really know what other people think about if they aren’t thinking about writing. But at least they are lucky enough to be wasting their time thinking about something besides writing, nor will they be obligated to question the productivity or worth of their past five years of life. I will undoubtedly subconsciously continue to kid myself in thinking that what I am doing here is worthwhile, so that maybe someday I will accidentally stumble upon something that no one ever has.

There is no such thing.

A possible answer:

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”
-George Orwell

The past always seems brighter than the present. The sun shone brighter, the rain was warmer, the times meant more. Images are more impressive seen reflected off of a convex mirror, especially an extreme convex like the back of a spoon or chrome toaster. I have obtained a taste for mirror photography. Not the self-taken celebrity nudes, nor the internet photos of new haircuts in the bathroom, but reflections in interesting places, or through objects whose primary function is not reflection. Side view mirror shots are included in the category.

Upon settling in a place that is physically familiar but mentally foreign, I noticed that I continuously crave for what my life was a month previous. For the one month old life. Either I wish I hadn’t settled, or I wish I hadn’t left, but I always wish I was one month younger. I will never be one month younger. In all occasions, my life a month before was more certain than the present, and seemed like a better fit. When in Saskatchewan, I thought this of life on the road. When on the road, I thought this of life in Montreal. When in Montreal, I thought this of life in Saskatchewan. A certain regret for the present and a nostalgia for the past builds up an uncomfortable discontentment in any situation, and this breeds negativity. Contentment, in a certain regard, is needed in the present.

I need to live as if it were a bike ride with no side view mirrors. Straight ahead without any second thought, with a nice song playing in my ears to blank out the hums of cars and the signals of safety. Because safety and looking forward are not related very closely. Worrying about safety creates the reaction of looking backwards constantly.

The present is never worse than the past. The past is never worse than the past before that. Objects in the mirror are not as good as they appear, nor are they any worse than what is inside the car, or what is on the thin flat line of the horizon.

When I read poetry, I write poetry. When I read fiction, I write fiction. When I look at black and white photos, I take black and white photos. The gap between ingestion and production is often several days, so if I want to write a decent poem I have to read fifty good poems a week in advance, and then the styles often cooperate, that is, I write how I read. From the source (X), idea filters through a screen to keep the insects out, and is regurgitated as new (Y).

X ≈ Y
i.e. X is pretty much equal to Y
The skeleton is the same.

In a day a human constantly observes new ideas, images, thoughts, literature, sights, styles that are not his or her own. Today when I wasn’t reading I was listening to music, when I wasn’t listening to music I was watching a movie, when I wasn’t watching a movie I was on the internet, when I wasn’t on the internet I was listening to the radio. These are all filtered through the mind’s small screen that cannot allow all of the data through, so the bits and pieces considered relevant or consequential but small enough to slip through the squares of the metal screen, make it through and end up with the personal flavour of the mind it travelled through.

To ensure decent production we must ensure decent ingestion, like an athlete’s body. The constant entertainment that we demand is created as mindlessly as we decide to devour it. Parallel to the nutritional food rhetoric that we have learned to ignore, we are the vapid television shows that we watch constantly. We are the money worshipping music that we put in our headphones. We are the poorly written sports articles that we browse daily. And if we put nothing in, nothing comes out. Our minds are our bodies.

I have become an easily influenced social leper. What I write is a direct coffee filter version of what I read. If I stopped reading, nothing would come out. I used all of my sociality when it was necessary on the road. I became comfortable with strangers and friends I haven’t seen in ages, but now, maybe out of social exhaustion, I have lost the ability to seem like I give a shit. My intake of the socially able has not subsided in any way but my production has halted as if the filter were clogged.

I am like echos off of a mountain wall. A bedroom with another layer of paint on it. For my production’s health I need to control what I take in, and enjoy the moments when there is nothing forcing itself upon my mind except trees in the wind or the light on the road. Or else my filter will become clogged and my production of decent thoughts will become like my recent social ineptitudes.

287 hours

or

11 days and 23 hours.

or

16,653 km

This is the amount of time that my body spent on a bus in the past 101 days. Nine percent of my past three months I spent marinating in my own odour. It is unknown how much time my mind spent on the bus in the past 101 days. It wasn’t always there. My body withered away while in constant wait. Trail mix and apples will thin a man out when it is all he eats for nine percent of a quarter of a year.

During this time I thought about every possible thing there is to think about. I thought about thought and wondered about the juncture when thought becomes useless. I have always wanted to be thoughtful, but constant thought will only ever make a man more stubborn or more confused. I am the latter. Maybe both. Arriving/settling only accentuates the fact.

A lobotomy performed with a cheese grater. It is like I have nothing left to think about so I can simply glide through the days as if they require no thought. As if every human has a certain fixed quantity of thought time for their life and I spent all of mine on the bus. Or as if my mind can’t keep up to where it seems it should be. Either I’ve thought too much or I’ve thought too little. Which is worse is hard to tell.

But where the bus stole my brain, which includes my reasoning abilities, my decision making abilities, my planning abilities, it gave me a lack of expectation. To expect the bus to be on time is to expect the impossible. The trip made me believe greatly in the possible.

Although my mind feels sterile after two-hundred and eighty seven hours of dizzying thought, I am confident that with a fresh start in an old city I can once again find something to fill it with, be it old cynicisms, or be it something I haven’t found before.

I am a man of many goodbyes. I see the importance in saying goodbye so I seem to make a subconscious effort to do it two or three times in each place I am at. I do that by flaking on ‘set itineraries’ and staying in town for several days longer than ‘planned’. This has occurred more than once in the past few months. And it re-happened this past week. Any psychologist or half-observant friend would cite this to a difficulty with commitment. My problem with committing to noncommittal visits. Before arrival I knew Vancouver would be difficult to leave but didn’t think I would be broken so easily. I thought I had honed my ability to say goodbye without a second thought thanks to the last three months of weekly practice. The one-week-in, one-week-out life of an oil-rigger, a diamond miner or a bus rider allows for attachment that isn’t concrete but still real enough so that goodbyes are like letting go of a limb or a really nice ottoman. I should’ve stuck with the one night stand.

Before I left, I awoke from my nightly unconsciousness with a story ringing in my head. The story included myself forgetting bags and missing buses and purposefully enjoying myself sliding down steep city hills instead of deciding to get to my next point of transit. A dream of the difficulties of leaving. Two days later, in real life, I failed to leave. Whether it was fear of the forty-two hour trip on the Godhound, or fear of what was on the other side of settling, or fear of leaving the city with the most friends I’ve had in years, I was easily convinced to stay in bed. Two days before, my subconscious mind knew it would happen, and so did those in Yellowknife.

So far the reuniting hellos have been more enjoyable than the woe of the separating goodbyes, so the trip still makes sense. When the depression of departure is greater than than the joys of arrival, then it no longer makes sense. The gap has been closing.

Soon I will set my clock to the place where the clock never changes; with Central Standard Time as our reference we’ll have to see what happens a week and a half in. I will undoubtedly go through a raging case of ‘Goodbye Withdrawal’. If I seem distant and withdrawn, more than usual, just say goodbye to me and give me a hug, and it will probably feel just right.