Rockies

My trip to Edmonton started my trip with a ticket at the docks.  The greatest consequence of rock and roll makes against the soul is acceleration.  Politeness, discernment, and Solomon’s proverbs defied any actual quantifiable monetary manifestations of this vice, but as I pulled into Swartz Bay my speeding finally caught up to me, and I only escaped with a minimum fine.  This monetary set back did not defy my optimism – consider that 10 years of cruising in the company of Freddie Mercury might be worth the cost of 137 cnd.

Hardy expecting to actually make the ferry I’d taken the Millstream Lake Rd route from west shore to Swartz Bay, and was obliged to wait for the 1700 to Tswassen.  I texted my cousin P to confirm I could stay the night with him, crossing the rockies into Edmonton the next day.  The GPS lady was giving wild and misinformed directions, and mistrusting her, I became lost in the labyrinth known as Burnaby, and when I finally found the house and windows to the apartment locked.  My innate sense of direction defied, combined with the frustration of a rewardless quest, beligered my ego and I departed immediately for Kamloops in a great bout of denial.  For a long while I staved off the impending eventuality of denial by blaming the deficiencies of my hypocampus on Burnaby’s defunct layout and Paul’s locked window.  Hilariously, it was when I passed Hope that I felt acceptance of my directionlessness begin to sink in, and it was from the great mercy of the Father that I was provided with a distraction so I might never need to admit any shortcomings in my navigation-skills.

About 50km towards Merrit at around 20.00 I saw a man hitch-hiking on the icy Kokahala.  If I hadn`t stopped he might have frozen alone, and his Langford dinner jacket reassured me that this hitch-hiker was legit.  His story put my small predicament into perspective.  He was discovered at the Greyhound station by a friend of his older sisters, who insisted he just catch a ride with him to Vancouver.  Partway down the road his serendipitous driver began to suffer from bouts of schizophrenia and paranoia, induced by shrooms he`d consumed prior to leaving Merrit.  That`s when the accusations began flying, and north became south, and fairies began flying next to the passenger-side window.  My new friend had bolted out the door in a panic, and believing himself to be closer to Merrit than Hope, began 3 hours of hitch-hiking in the wet snow and howling wind.

You should listen to these mountains at night.  I stopped past Kamloops in complete darkness.  The valleys like sleeping mouths breathe cold smells of crushed snow and bleeding pines.  A passing car becomes a rocket ship, alien, roaring strangely.  The world you come from seems so backward and irritating, disowningly foreign.  And on a clear night, cars do seem to pass through the very same heavenly blackness of the sky, and all is blackness and stars.  I fell asleep in darkness, and woke to the most startling sight.  All the great, black shapes of the rustling mountains still lay sideways in sleep.  Their blankets wrapped tight about them, stirring occasionally with the sound of their breathing.  The world had turned from blind to blinding.

 

Best Song Ever of the Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0-bUtJjSeA

Quadra Island

Unaware of the impending awesomeness that would explode later this very same day, I started my Friday with the meditative decimation of 3 chocolate chip pan-cakes.  This lead me to some startling considerations regarding the food-chain.  In terms of evolution, it would be interesting to chart the lowly pancakes journey from simple ingredients to the wonderful floofy being that currently occupy so convenient a link in the food chain.  I have heard of cooperative evolution, like cats and dogs advancing alongside humankind.  So also do the items in the pan evolve from our species unique propensity for mixing.  In the last 6000 years there has been a Cambrian explosion of deliciousness.

In considering such frivolities I missed the ferry to Quadra Island, and very nearly missed the second while frantically wheeling around Campbell River in search of the “one true” official BC Ferries parking lot.  Instead I parked it on the surplus concrete that the downtown grows like an abundance of zurg-creep.  The delay left me with just enough time for a good cardio as I went from the ticket-concession to the boat-ramp.  If I caught a ferry every day, I could do marathons.

The water of the Strait is full of tides, currents, and counter currents that make it sufficiently dangerous to want to kayak.  I love to watch the tides pulling against the currents, and the current pushing back against the fetch, and all swirling around one point like an explosion in a blender.  The sky is dragged spiraling downwards through the whirlpools that descend to the seafloor like the finger of God.  These pools so hypnotic it is dangerous even to gaze into them.  Like the eyes of a succubus, they will pull you in from afar.  The pull of a whirlpool between two currents is a lot like a meteor, cutting through an imagined border between the atmosphere and space.  It runs along the fabric of gravity like a crack caught between two halves of a window, a spiral of fire reaching out for earth.  How terrifying a tornado would look from the surface, where it would first be seen from a few meters away, when it was too late.  I heard of cars and cattle being ripped apart by the forces of tornadoes.  Surely combined with the weight of water a whirlpool would easily crush a person.

I hope to improve on my experience with tornadoes, but I don’t share Baum’s natural perception of them as gateways into other worlds.  However, from above its marine counterpart looks fully equipped for inter-planal transport, and staring through the snarled and foamy teeth of a whirlpool brings to mind all the lungless, marine aliens that ever terrified us from that other world.  The entire hoard of the celestial monsters would number 1 to 10 to their cousins in the sea, whose imagined depths incubated horrors more massive than the whole assembly of dragons.  Inky masses writhing with hankering tentacles thick as anchor-cables, leaching the blood like the goodness of dreams from the valiant countenance of our ships, gurgling in trivial suffocation as they descended to the surface of another world, whose foreboding pillows disgorged a thousand worms every sizes, and congested the deck with the cracked bones of faceless beasts, half-dead, whose mouths protrude from sockets intended for eyes.  Drowned sailors were tossed mercilessly through restless dreams or rummaged delusionally through the filed faces of toothy-toungued sea-swine for the likenesses of their loved ones.

Anyways.

My dear friend A and her boy S picked me up at the ferry.  I’m their first guest, and they showed me an awesome time!  The whole family lives on Quadra, and they’re establishing a kind of empire there made up of small conjoining properties.  We toured around in the truck then settled in for some Irish coffees.  Later we resolved to visit the beach.  We colleted A’s sister, D and went to the bay to build a fire against a rock, which began crackling loudly.  We imagine the rock to be a giant, unincubated ogopogo egg, and I hoped it would emerge like a sandworm from the surface of Dune.  Alas it was a mere rock with no such sinister contents.  S did try sitting on it, though, to the devilish injury of his nethers.

Later we went to the pub for a cultural experience.  Quadra Islanders seem pretty rad.  We all dressed in togas and flailed around on the dance floor with the locals.  I danced with the server, who looked eager to bust a move, and with S, and A, and D and everyone really.  I met an old-timer named Rod who, with little encouragement, told me the most fascinating near-death experiences involving fish-hooks wrenching him by the hand into processing machines and logging blocks blasting past his nose like bullets from Hellboy’s revolver.  Out in the smoke-pit the local anti-hipsters sprouted ironies like alfalfa pastures from the corners of their cheeks, and sighed passive insults that billowed up in the air and settled among them, beckoning a fist fight none were ballsy enough to pick.  Later we went to a house-party, where they charged us all a 5-dollar entrance fee, which we imagine went to the local dealer for some kind of dabbling we didn’t care to share in.  I was happy chattering away, but we left early as the general disposition of the rabble disagreed with S, who only wanted his money back.

I love Quadra Island.

Definitely check this out

 

The Peak Reminded me of this today:

Campbell River

Woke up on the couch this morning at around noon.  The vapours of the most sidereal dreams evaporated like the window’s sweat.  Small droplets like stars glittering in sunrise.  Dreams and condensation are like the stories of Gravity mounding atoms into heaps.  Piling atoms on atoms until they explode, igniting for a while, then dissipating back into the universe.  Drops of rain on window panes are alot more like stars, sinking away from the explosion of the universe.  And sleep perspires from the fragments of the day onto the planes of our bodies.  Now dreams of space sink away from me, soaked up into my conscious body.  And like the vapour on the window, I let my dreams return to that sky where all dreams come.  Our bodies in the morning are like tidal-zones.  Between the sky and the land for some brief minutes the sea and land are revealed to be joined together.  Our minds emerge like primordial fish from our depths, cross this space from dreams to conscious life, and continue into the firmament well remembered from the day before.  Like amphibians we sleep and mate in the sea, hunt and eat on land.

The conversation of the morning included discussion with uncle J about the coffee industry, pricing, and grading.  We committed to hiking up a hill that rises behind the town, but rain complementing a slight gale deluged the family’s enthusiasm.  The weather seemed volatile and dangerous, so J and I took his boat sailing.  ”Chase Me” is a 28 ft 1986 fiberglass flatdeck with a rolling foresail.  I’d never sailed a flat-deck before.

We also tried out a new GoPro 1080, which collected disturbing footage of my pocket’s insides, whose cryptic depths have never before been filmed!  We sought some pretty wild fetch out past Green Point, south of PR, and had a good time surfing it back into port.  I wanted to dive the harbour and inspect J’s hull, but the ferry arrived abruptly and on-time, which was unusual considering the crew’s apparent disposition for cancelation.

The hours on the ferry were spent browsing Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” on a new Kobo Touch.  I am happy to be reading it now, as I have often considered it.  I also recommend a book I started this morning, Claude C Hopkins’ “My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising” , lent to me by Aunty L.  It seems very readable, rich, practical and its first pages are loaded with excellent advice for this high-paced, high-stakes, high-as-psilocybin industry.

Speeding is perhaps my strongest vice and once in the van I enjoyed a brisk race to Prince Rupert, where I was welcomed by my sister and brother-by-marriage, A and S.  I was hungry, and therefore grouchy, and it was good to slup some homey cabbage stew in my belly.

I took the van to the rez gas-station, showed my papers, and was flustered when the attendant rejected the status-confirmation sent to me by the dept of Indian Affairs declaring my new status.  His east-Indian origin, my white skin, and curly hair might’ve contributed to his bewilderment.  I’m keen to get my photo ID.

Today I was introduced to Becky’s friend, Levi, a marvelous joker and connoisseur of wit.  He stayed over and played a round of Dominion with us.

Went through some pretty wild music today w/ Alana, including fervent Hungarian flamenco, surreal Bulgarian traditional, gallant Mongolian throat singing (which I discovered through this very excellent Mongolian movie, now with a new version I might watch.  if you don’t like blood, then just watch this one.  I own it and will lend it to you), fun Inuit throat singing, hypnotic Balinese Gamelan, and this controversial footage.  All this lead to the most amazing footage captured by special cameras place in the wings of WWII RAF planes, intended to capture snaps of Nazi stuff exploding, to simply relish in their boyish delight and raise moral morale among the brave citizens during the bombings.  Which calling is higher would be difficult to say.  If you watch that last link, mute the cliche soundtrack, and listen to this classic norse war poem instead.

Now I’ma study Physics and listen to Yann Tiersen

Quadra Tomorrow