Soon. Wait for it....

For certainly not the first time in my life, I find myself wishing I could be somewhere, and someone, else.

But here is where I am.

Another oddly eventful weekend in which nothing really happened- though Mr. George O'malley did take advantage of the comings and goings of Saturday Night's campfire gathering to make good on his third escape attempt. Like a true Irishman, he wasn't loose on the town ten minutes before he landed in a brawl. To the very short list of creatures that George does NOT love with all his fuzzy heart (the previous two entries being large, black poodles and The Cable Guy) we can now add the orange tabby next door. Following the unmistakably bone-chilling sound of pure,unsheathed feline hate, I found the combatants tumbling over each other in a furry whirlwind. Much chasing around ensued before the neighbor's cat pulled a strategic retreat to his own yard, and I was able to scoop the indignant Mr O' Malley from the firelit driveway and toss him inside to cool off. He is fine, save that his already foreshortened ear is looking...well, a little bit rougher. He seems to have given as good as he got - when I got a look at him in the light, he had a large,bloody chunk of cat-fur in his mouth.

Ick.

My only regret, besides the obvious, is not having more to give back. If there's Justice in this universe, the good you did for me will come around and return to you from somewhere else.

The Incredible Dot-head Man has a Rough Day at Work

Though I admit I am often tempted to shake my fist at the heavens and complain bitterly about the role assigned me in life, I must remind myself that no matter how bleak it gets, I’ll always have it better than This guy:

And, as if that wasn't horrific enough...

Ooookay.....Um...I'll make sure I....uh...avoid that.

Working for extended periods of time in the yard with the forklift I get the odd sensation that I am back in China. This is instructive, because apparently the smell of Diesel and burning oil really takes me back.

The hardest part, so far, is getting past the horror of seeing your living dreams imprisoned in cold, hard type.


Well...that, and getting over 30 years of habitual procrastination, endless self-editing perfectionism, post-work exhaustion, and those pesky friends who suddenly come out of the woodwork with tempting social engagements THE MOMENT you actually have something you really should be working on.

The theory behind my escape to the mountains was that I would write. Well, it might have worked, if I locked myself in a room and ignored the outside world, which would more or less negate the advantages of being in the mountains in the first place. It would have worked better if I hadn’t spent some 2 hours sitting at a bar sort of vaguely hoping to talk to someone interesting, because I was away from home and feeling lonely. Vaguely. The only conversation I managed to strike up was with a pimply faced 18 year old kid who looked at me and my laptop with a sort of fresh-from-somewhere-small-in-northwestern-Ontario awe and asked, rather out of the blue, “Are you a writer?”

Yeah, Kid. I’m a writer. I gave myself a deadline two weeks ago and I have written exactly two and a half actual paragraphs in that time. I’m a Reeeeaaaal, live writer.

I said something immensely clever like “ sometimes” and pretended to be examining my beer for impurities. I suppose the “Leave me the hell alone” vibe isn’t terribly useful if you’re still sort of hoping to pick someone up, but It’s a vibe I happen to be quite good at emitting( quite often accidentally). In this case, sadly, I was unsuccessful. Either too young or too drunk to pick up that I was about as interested in chatting as having another one of those “Moose-antler” Stouts, he kept going. Somehow he got me to mention I had been in China ( a fact very difficult to wring out of me, I know) and his first thought on that was “ I hear the girls there are easy” which both tipped me off to the level of conversation I was likely to have here, and helped me make the transition from wanting him to go away to kind of wanting to hit him.

I had begun to feel plenty ridiculous well before this, but had a genuinely good beer in front of me that had to be finished. I downed the remains rather too quickly, paid Andre the depressingly handsome and charming bartender, and stumbled home in the dark to get back to that “writing stuff”. Well…another useful thing I’ve figured out is that I’m NOT actually a better writer after four beers. Damn Andre and his “Elk Run Red”.

The "Great Project" does not progress terribly well at the moment. But we're just getting started.

To seek to simply return to what was…this would not be growth. But neither is growth necessarily a constant moving on to something new and different. It can be growth to recognize that there are some places one has been that are better than where one is now – that the value of some things might have been misjudged, and some things abandoned that were better kept., some things pursued that were better left unachieved.

I need to get a few people together and stage an intervention. I’m starting to feel the strain of living with someone with life-controlling issues. I’m afraid it has become obvious to most, but for any who still haven’t seen it, well... there’s no easy way to say this…

My Cat….is a tap addict.

And by tap, I don’t mean the whole Fred Astaire thing, which is too bad, because there’d likely be a way for me to make money off that. No, my cat is flat out addicted to the tap in the bathroom sink. The house comes with numerous other water sources that provide the good stuff without the necessity for a human to be badgered into turning a knob, including a 35 dollar “cat fountain” engineered, apparently , for no purpose at all besides feline drinking needs – but he turns his nose up at these. Heck, he won’t even drink from the toilet anymore. I am beginning to suspect that does without water all day, even when I am gone from 630 in the morning to 11 at night, just so he can hold out for the holy elixir that spills from the faucet I rinse my toothbrush under. After two or three obligatory “happy-to-see-you” belly rolls, he takes off for the bathroom counter with the urgency you’d expect if a Doberman had just bitten a chunk off his tail, and simply won’t stop meowing until I cave and give him what he wants. Anytime I get up and head in a direction that might conceivably lead to the bathroom (Which, in my place, is pretty much any direction at all) he scurries to that door and looks up at me with eyes that tell me I have the power to validate his entire existence. “Please sir, just a little bit more tap…”

Yeesh.

Snowflakes like little, flat shards of glass were drifting in the air, hanging still, slicing sideways, twirling and flipping, slowly working their way to pavement as if from giant windows shattered thousands of feet above. The earth, some immense greenhouse in space, its air kept in by an enveloping lattice of glass. I imagined all the world’s air leisurely escaping in the night, through a single missing pane. In the morning the whole world would wake up in a vacuum, our only warning these few delicate fragments fluttering their way to the ground.

And then, for the briefest of moments, the sun came out. But it was enough.

I deserve that.

Oh yeah. Here am in doing that industrial worker thing. I particularily enjoy my embroidered nametag. Always wanted one of those. What you need to ask yourself is this: if you were a four-footed wooly mammal, would you mess with this guy?




















Now, this guy...

What can I say? This is the one and only Jason.

I open the battered hatch in time for the sunrise , distant fire flickering on an underbelly of cloud and in a thousand tiny mirrors - a frost-covered world. I trudge out to inspect the pipes. It is silent. I stand in my little trampled path between mounds of snow. In the summer, I am told, the steel rack that the pipes are on comes up to the chest. Now, the snow I stand on puts it below my knees.
Strange things in a shop can be beautiful. Morning sun backlights the saw, rendering the unseen visible, a golden brightness in a fine spray of liquid and pulverized metal, steam rising lazily from cold pipes, glinting in drops of coolant spray.

Farther inside, showers of sparks flicker in mirror-polished steel. Long pipes, fluted with precisely spiraled holes, are stacked upright like magnificent church organ, immense, dignified and full of unheard music.

Yesterday I ate a sheep. It was glorious. They had it coming.

I told you they were not to be trifled with. The other day I came home, threw my coat on the chair, stretched, reached for the light, and....froze, clenched in the icy creeping grip of sheer woolly terror. THIS is what awaited me.



They were here. In this room. IN THIS VERY ROOM. The sheep. They followed me. they know where I live. They have somehow escaped the bounds of the interent, entered the real world, and, in their menacing herd, have bounded over green fields and fences to my very door, and left me this terrifying token. What does it mean? A warning? Some kind of voodoo curse? I tired to notify the authorities ( um...Alberta Fish & Wildlife?) that the sheep were preparing for some kind of massive assault on humanity - but they informed me that sheep were livestock and therefore not their jurisdiction, sent me to an Agriculture Canada office, who referred me to an Alberta agriculture office, who sent me to an infectious diseases control office, who sent me to an office listed as in the second basement level of the Mcleod building, which, upon investigation, has been turned into condos and never had even ONE basement - at which point i began to develop the suspiscion that i might be being given the run around, and went home in a huff to leave humanity to its well-deserved fate.

In other equally terrifying news, my cat can walk through walls. Now that i have accepted this odd, but increasingly obvious fact, the world seems to make a lot more sense. On several occaisons i have left my house secure in the knowlede that O'Malley, while a super-being, lacks the opposable-thumb-granted dexterity to turn doorknobs, and is therefore safely imprisoned in my apartment till my return. How wrong i was. More than once i have opened my outer door to a much louder than usual meow and the incongruous sight of my self satisfied cat waiting at the bottom of the steps. In the laundry room. Where he is not supposed to be. Two triple locked steel hydraulically-sealed doors and a sophisticated anti-sheep security system away from where i left him. Once I arrived at my door to the eerie silohette of a cat in the upstairs apartment window. For a moment, i thought the ghost of my landlords demon-posessed cat Simon continued to haunt the place after his departure. It was somewhat relieving to find it was only MY cat, who had simply developed the ability to pass through solid matter. I theorize that Mr. O' Malley has learned to exploit a little known physics loophole - one that was first brought to my attention by renowned physics expert My Friend Gerry - whereby it is theoretically possible that when two solid objects collide their molecules all simultaneously miss each other and they will pass through unaffected (Which sounds like much of Jeremy's love life).
My cat, being exceptionally lucky, has managed to do this on numerous occasions.
My other theory involves the scientifically documented Feline Multiple Life phenomenem. (Actually 9.65, according to the latest studies). My Cat could be killing himself in my apartment, only to resurrect in the laundry room. If that is the case, a stern talking to is in order. We don't know how many of those things he has left! (Newer cats come with a bar of little cat icons on their collar that dissapear each time a life is used up- for the nintendo generation of pet owners)

There might just be a secret cat-sized passage in the closet. But that doesn't seem very plausible.

Well-.... um.....who exactly are you again?

I could've waited a few days and gone for an even month, but....Since i am linked to exciting and prestigous blogs written by exciting and prestigous people, I am beginning to feel a little bit of pressure to be, well...a little more exciting. And prestigous. And while that IS a fantastic shot of my cat plotting world domination in his (very pretty) Hood of Doom, it is not, perhaps, as rivetting as it was a month ago.
My sincere apologies. I...have let you all down. I am ashamed. BUT! there is good news! That's right - I.... am raising my game. I am striking a fatal blow to the vile beating heart of blog procrastination. I have nothing brilliant to say. I am tired. I am sick. I am riddled with crippling insecurities. But i am writing anyway.

I have excuses.

I have been busy. Some of it has been the good kind of busy. Some of it has been the "I'm huddled in a corner shivering because i have a fever, it hurts to stand, swallow or breathe , and my throat feels like i've been drinking shredded metal and bits of broken glass" kind of busy. That second kind gets to be less and less fun after a few weeks.

If those exist for whom this blog is the sole source of information about my life(!)...you may not know i have a job. Well, another one. It is grand. Perhaps i will have something witty and brilliant to say about that later.

I am working with my Childhood Friend Eric, and my Slightly-Post-Childhood friend Jason. That is grand, nostalgic, and weird all at the same time. Perhaps i will have something witty and brilliant to say about that, too. Something thoughtful and poignant, no doubt.

The great thing about "perhaps" is that it completely absolves me of any definite promises. Perhaps i will post again soon.



Oh,and check out my new links. Photos, people!

And very cool new people.

Person.

You get the idea.

Here’s an interesting cultural experience for you: Go to a downtown Denny’s at 8 O’clock on Christmas Eve. For one, the place is packed like a glistening oasis of food-serving establishment in a vast desert of unlit “open signs”. Quite a cross section of humanity. Multi-generational families in suits and their Sunday best, fresh out of a candle-lit service somewhere. Tables of young punks skipping out on family gatherings. Sullen young couples. A gigantic, brooding African man who’s been sitting alone staring at the wall for the last 15 minutes. The guy across from me with a coffee, a newspaper, and a hospital band on his wrist. Guy with a beer and a cellphone, texting away and looking forlorn. Missing someone. One manic waitress, repeating “I quit” over and over in her head. So many stories. Why are the Young couples sullen? Its Christmas eve, and he took her to Denny’s. You do the math. We all have our reasons for being here.

The Five Things Most People May Not Know About Me:


1. I like to sing. In the car. Not the shower (do I look stupid? Water amplifies sound!), but the car. Frequently. Hymns, songs from the radio, Christmas carols, songs from musicals I’ve been in or seen too many times – anything familiar enough for me to know at least half the words. I used to sing while I cleaned the Korean Church( In Buffalo), because it was old, had a marvelous arched ceiling and pretty decent acoustics, and because it was normally empty. Pastor Hong caught me once, but didn’t say anything. Shortly thereafter someone asked if I wanted in on their production of “Messiah”. During a short lived delivery job, I once rolled into a downtown parkade polishing off “ amazing grace” . The burly, grubby loading dock guy greeted me with a strange look on his face, and at the end of our interaction, added, sincerely, “you have a nice voice.” It hadn’t dawned on me that if bad hip-hop could escape the plastic-and-steel confines of a vehicle, my pipes might as well.


2. On the subject of strange things coming out of my mouth…( is there any worse way to begin a sentence?) I sometimes indulge in that pentecharismatic practice referred to as “Speaking in Tongues” or something that might be like that. This one is not commonly known, even in my church circles, because I keep pretty quiet about it. Perhaps because I retain a fair bit of Baptist/ Rationalist suspicion of the practice. This might freak some people out, but perhaps it’s easier to relate to feeling a need to pray, or express something, but having nothing intelligible to say. If you think I’m trying to look particularly spiritual, I’ll tell you that my first experiences along these lines occurred at times when I would otherwise have uttered an obscenity. Or on the toilet.


3. Another thing: I am a Nerd. Not the modern, socially-acceptable COOL kind. I am a completely authenticated nerd. The Battlestar Gallactica is just the tip of the iceberg. I was a painfully shy and awkward child/teenager. Seriously. PAINFULLY. I know this is unfathomable to anyone who knows me now - But I was a full-scale, greasy-haired, tape-on-glasses NERD in school. Really. Don’t look so surprised.

4. Anger. JeremythePolite has more of it than you might expect. A few of his friends are unfortunate enough to have experienced this first hand. In fact, while it usually takes quite a bit to get him there, he feels a bit more like his “real self” when he’s angry. He likes to think of it as righteous anger, though. Because it sounds better.


5. I love The Church. Meaning not just my particular little chunk of church, but the big messy mass of people who tend to go places on Sunday and call themselves Christians. I know very few people ever hear me say anything NICE about “The Church”, but I do love it. Sometimes I love it the way you would love a close relative who lied, cheated, and stole his way out of the rest of the family’s good graces, has used, insulted and belittled you your entire life, who wrecks your car in a drunken binge, sleeps with your wife, and then shrugs and says “ What? I’m only human! What did you expect?” More to the point, I sometimes love the Church like you can love a married pastor and father figure who gets “ A little too close” to your girlfriend, uses and abuses his authority to try to cover it up, and ends up destroying something that you (and he) and whole bunch of other people poured years of their life into. In other words, it sometimes makes me very, very ANGRY…but its family. It makes me angry because it hasn’t always been kind to me or those I care about, and its positive contributions to the world often seem outweighed by some pretty big negatives…It makes me angry because I have this sense of what it COULD be…but so often isn’t. Like so many things, it makes me angry BECAUSE I love it. The way only something you love can. I love it because I am part of it – IT… is me. It’s where I belong. It’s family. And I love it because, despite all the things that infuriate me, wherever I have gone in the world, I have found some very, very GOOD people among its ranks.





There. I did it. For real. I’m not such a rebel now, am I?

Now the fun part.

List Five things people don’t know about you. I tag….

Chuck

Erika

Amanda

Sadie (I don’t think you have a blog. I’ll accept a paper, 500 words or less, in my hands by next Tuesday)

Matt (maybe this will shake him out of his blogging slumber)

And, if I may…

Elaine.