4 Seemingly Unrelated Nodes of Today.

4-wheeler ride:
Dragonflies in numbers thick enough to dazzle, amaze and bounce off my un-visored face zig-zagged around the swamps they were spawn in today, as my dad and I took the 4-wheelers through the bush.  He spotted a doe and her fawn, who was taking milk by a creek. Curious about what my dad was looking at, I dismounted and came down to witness the surreal scene, shadowed as it was under the forest canopy peppered with sunlight. Neither animal seemed alarmed by our presence and left at leisure. It breaks my heart that they're so delicious. Such beautiful and majestic animals don't really deserve to become sausages. But I wouldn't turn one down, even with the memories fresh in my head.  Mmmm...fresh venicine venison (thanks dad). 

Interview:
After working for 6 years in Korea and then taking off almost half of 2011, I was interviewed today for a position at No Frills. I admit this not without some shame.  Part-time minimum-wage-slavery isn't the best way to welcome myself back into the Canadian workforce. I got the job at least.

Irritatingly, 5% of Bancroft is unemployed (according to 2006 stats). After only a 2 hour job search without even selling myself (it never came up that I have an MA, or even a BA) I got this position. I surmise that this 5% isn't even trying. Presumably, garnished from my meager paycheck will be taxes to benefit those that consider themselves above stocking shelves, those who would sit on unemployment instead.

Dear welfare bums: You people are why Canada will never have nice things.  Except welfare.  I guess that's a nice thing for some people.   

Hot & Cold:
I lay almost dead in my sweat-dampened sheets last night trying to savour this unwintery season.  Eventually I gave up the pretense and simply cursed the goddam heat. It was a guilty little pleasure. Then a thought struck me: Is the summer as hot as the winter is cold? (That is..am I justified in hating this heat?) I even tried to be calculating about my opinion as opposed to merely biased in my current, miserable, unairconditioned environment.My conclusion is that winter is worse for humans in Ontario. The reasoning goes like this: if left nakedly exposed to the elements, a cold winter day would probably kill you. A summer day would do damage too, but you'd likely survive. So the summer heat really is the lesser of the two evils. But it's an evil nonetheless, in my books.  

Blorenge:
I'd always thought it an unfortunate gap that no word in the English rhymes with "orange". Consider the possibilities: mornge, thornge, klornge, etc. Nothing is wrong with these sounds except that they lack meaning. To rectify this, I was going to propose the word "blornge" to refer to the sound trees make in the breeze. "As the wind gusted, the trees blornged earnestly".  Then I discovered that blorenge really is a word and already has a meaning.  Go figure.

Secrets in the Dump, and the Universe.

Damned Mundane Reality....BE MORE MIRACULOUS! 

1) We live in the boondocks of the Milky Way, far from the busy center.  We're cosmic hicks.
2) Neither scientist nor philosopher have been able to solve the so-called 'mind-body' problem.  That is, no satisfying description has been given regarding how you can have an idea (mind) that you'll raise your arm, and then actually do it (body). How does mind influence the physical?  
3) Because the light arriving on Earth has been traveling through space for years, to look up at night is to see backwards in time.
4) We awake every morning with memories of events that didn't seem to have happened, brushing it off as mere 'dreams'. 
5) No matter which way you plant a seed under the soil, it will always sprout "upward".
6) Our lives are colorful and noisy tunnels of experience sandwiched between the nothingness before birth and the nothing of death.
7)  Men and women walk the Earth talking of Gods, other worlds, UFOs, gnomes, enlightenment, magic, and even stranger things. Lots of men and women. Mathematicians claim there are 10 dimensions. Quantum physics describes a world too weird for natural language.
8) We are born on Earth with no scroll of instructions, no mission objectives, no game-plan. We're a brain carried around by our bodies and our instincts, making the whole thing up as we go.
9) We don't know if human nature is good. By our own standards & measurements, we're the evilest, cleverest, and most caring species on this planet. 
10) Life is brief, and in spite of the first 9 things on this list, we have the capacity for boredom. 

Things at the Dump:

A rotting zombie-deer head on a plaque. 

Like a dog who jolts to life at the word "walk", I'm all about trips to the dump. Partly, this is because I'm out in the sticks and a trip out is a trip out. Discrimination is for those with options.  But I'm also eager to go because it is a place of fine-dining for bears. Bears: fascinating honey and people eating creatures that are to dogs what lions are to cats. As a child I kept a plush toy (code name: 'brown bear') and loved it sincerely. My great grandfather, around the same time, told me tales of a bear that stayed under his bed. The memories bring back the sense of terror only a 5 year old can feel. And I'm still fascinated by bears.  But I've yet to see one at the dump.  Just this thing:

Notice the eyes? The nose appears to be made of wood. Man-made?

 And this thing.

I don't know if I'd call this art, or even 'sprucing the place up'. It's no longer just a pile of garbage though; mere rearrangement has transformed it into something else. Something without a name. Magic.    

D'oh Canada.

This is the road home, and I've arrived. 

This post was originally to cover the detailed labyrinth of diligent and hair-splitting bureaucracy I've been wondering through, and with which the auspicious and noble-minded gooberment officials of Canada--duly elected by an educated and discerning populace--generously welcome and process their citizens, returning home from an extended sojourn.  But, as this blog is not politically motivated, my true heart and mind shall not here be revealed regarding the security-laden policies, written in the high-minded voice of learned lawyers rather than one established by time, and in a perceived atmosphere of mutual mistrust, tailored to maximize citizen resource expenditure for the purposes of due diligence in the efforts to avoid losses of their own.

Since I'll not yap about that, I'm almost at a loss of what to yap about, given that most of my time and energy here has so far been directed at Houdini-ing myself out of the locks of red-tape. 

1) Paudash has a lot of trees.

2) A worthwhile goal for me right now would be to enjoy this calm, and maybe root out some of the neurosis and get a clearer perspective of myself.

 3) Find a way to earn my keep, and then give the gooberment the opportunity to tax me their farce share.

4) Accept that the gooberment is what it is and that they can punish me but I cannot punish them. I'm not powerless in the face of them, but I almost am. We all are. Part of living one's life is jumping through their hoops when they hold them, or be punished. 

“The only difference between us and 1984 is we dress better”
--Terence Mckenna. 
. 

Going Home with Poopy Bum.

"Too Legit to Quit"  has been beaming through my head from the moment I got up yesterday.  This has been a spontaneous decision on the part of the weird gray thing in my skull, seemingly uninfluenced by any input. I don't even like this song. Does anybody else hear it, or is MC Hammer my personal prophet?

Perhaps I need medicine for this.
Perhaps I have jungle fever.
Can you get that from a forest?

Oh yes....the forest.
The story about how I find myself miles deep in the lonely sticks of Canada shall be now told:


(Some history: I'm a Canadian whose been living in S.Korea for the last 6 years but traveling home with a few stops---namely Turkey's Istanbul when this story begins).  

To travel is a hardy kind of fun. 
But growing tired of totting around my deflating bank account and constantly vomiting anus, the word "home" began summoning increasingly pleasant emotions. At the same time, my travel buddy, BM, seemed increasingly nostalgic about America. When cheap American-bound flights were advertised in the window of a travel agent's window, the cards appeared to be stacked in favor of return.We'd both been gone so long that the return would be a trip any way.

BM talked me into going to Chicago on my way back.  Deep-dish pizzas, live music, a baseball game, a place to stay, a museum of dinosaur bones, an aquarium with sharks. He made Chicago appeal to the nerd in me.  I was sold. 


The last thing of real beauty I saw in Istanbul was a nurse.  With her killer accent she said, "Please use this to defecate into", handing me a plastic see-through bottle. The doctor would later tell me with a weird robotic enthusiasm that my colon didn't seem to be bleeding. I was glad to leave on such a positive note.

***I've read that a good blog tends to omit bowel problems. If I am offending my readers just know that I'm more delighted to have readers than diligent not to offend them, sort of like a puppy whose excitement to have visitors unduly relaxes his bladder. Strange are the ways we express fondness for one another.***

On the plane to Chicago the next day, I had one of those rare moments with a perfect stranger. It went sort of like this:

Bump bump bump and also, rattle rattle. Turbulence frightens me and there was enough of it that I was actually getting weary (bored, even) of being afraid for my life. 'Oh, *yawn* I'm having those damned heart palpitations again because the plane is rattling its tail off *yawn*'. During one bout, a young woman simply said, "I am SO AFRAID". And my first thought was, "God, repress that crap".  But then my perception abruptly changed (because brains are weird things).  Suddenly, we were some kind of talking monkey (biological truth) sitting in chairs above the clouds (physical truth) fearing our own mortality in a reality we were born into without choice (existential truth). And I admired her simple, honest statement in the face of such complexity. 

We landed safely at Chicago's horrible airport. This is where BM and I parted ways. I decided to forgo fun in Chicago to simply go home and allow my body and rectum some recovery.  After a hand shake and well-wishes with him I bordered a train to Cleveland where my sister lives.


The train represented yet another night spent in transit. 
The circumstances of last week's sleep were like this: 2 nights on a floor, 1 in a bed, 2 in a bus, 1 in a plane, 1 in a train.

Next day: Mike & Ike's (chewable, fruit-flavored candies) isn't a totally unsatisfying breakfast, if you have enough quarters for the dispenser. They also coat your teeth and hence, are a passable substitute for brushing.

Bug-eyed, sleep-deprived, foul-boweled, and ungroomed, I chewed (and chewed) and tried to come to grips with the reverse culture-shock I was being slammed with.  All the open space, high prices, English and cellulite was blowing my mind.

Later, my sister picked me up and took me to her house. There,  my parent's, her, and my brother-in-law and I tried to have a pleasant reunion but their dogs licked me into hives and scratching. Plus I had a "distinct odor". Shower gels and detergent "fixed" it.

Despite being a vegan, she cooked me one of the best meat lasagnas I've ever had. I'd forgotten how much my family rocks.

Cleveland's clouds were pleasantly strange during my stay there

as well as on my way back home, to Bancroft (actually Paudash lake), Canada

and then I arrived...to a bed in a house situated on a quiet lake, with 2 loving parents, out in the sticks of Canada.

I have to figure out my next move. And it's scary. I'm 33 and my skill set seems most marketable in Korea, followed by just about anywhere else but here. But here is where I want to stay. 

Can a year or two of schooling fix this problem? 
It probably can...If I'm too legit to quit.