An Unsentimental Farewell.
Oh boy. I’ve spent a lot of time on travelling over the past 4 months. On the road for hours. Spitballing. Killing time best I could. It’s not so bad in the van. You got leg room, sort of. You’ve got the road spilling past you on the sides. You’ve got space. Room in front of you and room to the sides and windows with things to look at that change and evolve. You can reach your back pack to get new things out, to move your hips. Ah to move your hips.
Today is the last day. I’ll be in Vancouver, back home, done with touring for at least a little while in less than an hour. We’re on a plane. Our second plane of the day. We left Moncton, New Brunswick this morning at 10:15 am and it’s now 5:30 pm. Not such a long travel day, in comparison. Oh. Except the time change. If we were still in Moncton it would be 9:30 Pm. And we’re still flying. And I’m losing it. So’s this kid across the aisle from me. He’s got his little tv screen set on music mode, I think. And he’s moving his arms around like he’s in the video for the song ‘Frozen’ by Madonna. He looks how I feel.
What is it to be trapped inside a cube that is only a few inches larger than you in area for nearly 12 hours? It is flying home from Moncton.
Usually I have something productive that I’m at least trying to get at with blogs. I’m just spitballing. I watched up all my shows. Finished Season 3 of the Wire. Read 55 pages of ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’. Finished ‘Tropic of Cancer’. Watched ‘Waste Land’. Went over some sides for an audition I have coming up. Tried to memorize said sides but felt like the words were pouring over my brain like tinny water from a shitty motel faucet.
So now I’m doing this. I like the word faucet. I also like the word tap. It’s pretty rare for an item to have two synonyms that both feel good to say. I was thinking about Garbage while watching that documentary. How there’s a lot of different words for it. Waste. Trash. Garbage. Refuse. They all must mean different things right? Otherwise they wouldn’t be words. ‘Waste’s’ definition is obvious but what is the difference between ‘Trash’ and ‘garbage’?
Some people don’t care about these things. They don’t care to pick at tiny points. They’re progression is forward. They are thinking about what’s coming up in the day, the week, their lives. They don’t want to stall and figure out miniscule little things. Details. Is it that they don’t like to get caught up in details for a reason or do they just not notice them? Are details malicious or just annoying?
Somebody get me off this plane so I can start thinking about my forward progression instead of just being stalled in this moment and the details within.
The sun is interesting. Because we’re moving backwards across the country we’re kinda chasing it. It was rainy when we took off. Once we got up above the clouds I could see the sun through my window. It has barely moseyed out of the position it started in since we left. How many times do you get to contain the sun for six hours. Hold it tight in one spot like some kinda investigator, taking the sun downtown for questioning.
Seriously. Get me off this plane and on the ground and into Kaitlin’s arms and into the stream of vibrating human voices that I know and haven’t been with for months. I’ve only heard them through the miraculous communication of the internet. On Facebook. On Twitter. Through Email. Over Text Messages. Via Blog. I feel disconnected. I try and stay up, sending emails. Provoking. But I have to admit feeling somewhat sifted. Feeling like a loser liking and commenting on statuses to keep myself relevant. “Remember me?” “I’m still funny.” I’ll be back soon and can’t wait to hang out.” “Please, for the love of God don’t forget about me while I wither in this airplane, biding time, watching the seat in front of me jiggle with activity and recline onto the top of my laptop screen all while cramping my wrists up in this Air Canada seat that has no room for my home rowed hand position or my straight-legged-restrained gait.”
I’ve managed to kill another 18 minutes writing this stream of consciousness bally-hoo. I see some lights on a mountain that I hope is Grouse but I doubt it. 18 minutes… out of 720. The little detail filled activities that make up a day.
You should probably stop reading there. If I had a real blog I’d put the rest of this ‘after the jump.’ I just found out we still have about 45 minutes before we land. I thought it was more like fifteen or twenty. I got up and went to the bathroom to move my legs around. I should’ve done that earlier.
Spitballing. I tore my pants yesterday. Not just a little knick in the knee (already got one of those) but a real, all-time, feels good when it goes, rip right across the crotch. They had laser tag in this little impromptu carnival we found in Moncton. I was wearing my winter boots and a heavy grey hoodie to hide my ultraviolet-white t-shirt underneath. Freestyle, workmen laser tag. Running about. Tearing my pants from seam to seam. Then we went on the roller coaster.
I didn’t have another pair of pants. I didn’t need two pairs of pants on the first two months of our tour so I only brought one for this section. So I had to sew them up. I took like four hours worth of sewing classes between high school and university. My Jacket broke too. My mom had just gotten it for me at Christmas time. The zipper broke a few days ago after a walk to a chinese food restaurant. It got caught up at the top of the coat. The teeth below got undone. I coudln’t get it off over my head for about a half an hour, the catch was so high up on the jacket. I ended up having to borrow scissors from the waitress and cut the top teeth off the left side right off. Sonofabitch still won’t zip up. But at least it’s got toggles. My camera broke too. That’s why there’s been less pictures of sunrises and shit. It still takes pictures but it won’t focus. Kodak.
In ‘Waste Land’ one of the guys was talking about how he can’t complain about his life. He said God would punish him if he complained about his life. He said it jovially, less afraid of wraith and more thankful for the graces he enjoyed. I know this is the same for me. I hope I’m not complaining as much as I’m just spitballing.
Charlie Sheen doesn’t know the internet. He should’ve stayed away from it. Stayed away from twitter. TV gave us ‘15 minutes of fame’. The internet reduces that window to 15 seconds. Remember Ted Williams, the ‘golden voice’? The internet will turn on you fast, Charlie Sheen; if it hasn’t in the twelve hours that I’ve been in the air. When minor league hockey players start hash tagging ‘Winning,’ you know it’s not long for this earth. The world, minus minor league hockey players and their like, have become hipsters. Once something becomes unilaterally popular, once housewives and moms and dads like it, everybody else is bailing off board. But moms and dads are just getting cooler, to be fair. They’ll be hipsters too, soon enough.
Ok. This is turning from drivel to utter drivel pretty quick. I’m gonna close my eyes, sit up straight and try to think of nothing for the remaining 30 minutes. This writing has killed a grand total of, I don’t even know, I can’t do the math, 28 minutes? Who cares, right? Let’s move forward and think about the future. Please. Please. Please.
