Moving I needed a change, a sophisticated change. So, I've moved here. I like it better.  ¶ 10:46 PM 0 comments

  An UProar I am starting to get "the nerves" about the Roar. I read on Saturday at the Three Bananas if anyone is interested, in the second segment. I work the morning shift, so it is doable, but not after much wrangling. I'm hoping to catch a lot more of the Roar this year than I did last year. It should be good, although I didn't get placed in the set I was hoping for. But, I'm not exactly going to be a picky bitch either. I'm excited.

But "the nerves". I haven't written a good poem in a long time. I've written, yes, but I'm going to have to figure out what it is I will read. Gah. Because yes, I have old good poems....one in particular, but I don't want to recycle it...but then, it's guaranteed good, as opposed to "completely experimental flop in front of the masses."

Oh this is dumb. I'll figure it out. Come support me, even if it makes your head hurt and your ears burn with the fire of embarrassment for me!

I hung up Roar posters in my building today. Damn are they snazzy!  ¶ 12:26 AM 0 comments

  Why I watch Sex TV John Paul Sartre was a very very ugly man. No doubt this sounds awful, but he had wall-eyes, and women generally found him repulsive, even the ones that loved him. But he seduced them not with looks, but words.

There's hope for me yet.

As has already been noted elsewhere, fireworks exploded by our house tonight. The only thing I could think of was that it was the first day of Oktoberfest. Good reason, good show.

We went and saw "the Last Kiss" at City Centre last night. I really really liked it. No one else did. It left me strangely restless though afterwards. I realized that my past loves have been a parade of men who don't try hard at anything, who never really put any real effort into maintaining anything outside of themselves. It's interesting, because it effectively means that I've systematically sold myself out with low expectations.

But then...isn't it bad to have expectations of your significant other? Of what they should minimally be like before you even meet them? This used to be such a taboo way of thinking for me, and now I'm like: Meet the fucking criterion, bitches, because I'll not have that anymore.

On the subject of being used.... I told Nate that I would no longer give him cigerettes. It doesn't seem like a big deal, I know, but it's a symbolic coalition that me and my co-worker have silently co-authored. Because as trite as it may sound, he needs to get a job.

Question for my audience (scanty, I know) to ponder: Being used is a part of life. It will always happen to varying degrees, for different reasons, and in different ways. Body, mind and soul sort of stuff even. But what do you do? Is it that inevitable that you must put up with it to a certain extent, or can any one person actually be completely free of it because of a certain mindset?

And: Is it a bad thing that one gets used? Does it make you a good person, a bad person, or a weak person? What about the people who use you?

This could be really a) horrible to think about b) stupid to bring up that I'm thinking and wondering about it or c) what the fuck? Who thinks about this?







Aaaaaand....I'm back to my uneasy relationship with the city.  ¶ 12:39 AM 1 comments

  I'm sorry, what ? This morning I awoke to the realization that yes, vacations are an escape from your problems, because you don't really realize you have to deal with all this oncoming shit (life is essentially just a torrent of oncoming shit, correct?) that you happened to just drop before you left, eventually.

That day, is three days from now. Three precious days are left for me to transform into someone who looks like they have had a relaxing and enjoyable time, who hasn't been mind-fucked with various other things in their absence, and who is ready to deal with all the things not yet dealt with and abandoned.

And I will deal with the problems when I get back in a really unsystematic order, because I'm not that much of a callous jerk. They'll get solved, and life will be convoluted and urbane once again.

I will have better things to do than just drink, smoke up, and listen to other people plan private raids on grow-ops while they smoke and drink, and fuck around on ATVS at the same time.

"Can I borrow your mag-lite?"
"Uhh...yeah. Why?"
"FUCK. Just stop asking me all these fucking questions...and gimme your damn mag-lite!!"
"Lucas, what are---are you stoned? What are you doing with my goddamn flashlight?"

I've been thinking of my long-lost friend/roommate in the time that I've been gone a lot. When I get home, there will be a concentrated effort put forth for communication. I worry still though that we might need more time to get over the threshhold of "this is how much space I've needed from you." But it's cool, no rush.

Also, in the time that I've been gone, and blogging while I'm gone, I have really really noticed my writing taking a dip into shit, so there will be more concentrated effort in this area as well, although I have been writing a little since I came out here. I am bothered by the fact that I haven't written a good poem in a hell of long time still though, despite having several ideas. On the top of the mountain I had a good idea that I'm definately going to pursue. I ended up writing it on the back of a paper plate with a piece of charcoal I found on the ground. Ooh..it stinks like romance.

I think I'm also going to write a poem talking about the quality of being brave, and how this seems to change in our lives, and why that is. I think I could make it darkly humourous. Any commentary on this is welcome.  ¶ 1:51 AM 0 comments

  Vampire in a forest fire I have just spent another lazy day doing not much of anything, although there have definately been key moments in the last couple of days.

We went to the "members only" beach in the village, which is the beach that all the locals go to avoid the tourists, again, and I went swimming in Okanagan Lake, which was nice, but I'm definately self conscious about my alabaster white skin around here. No tan, is unheard of-- I'm pretty much a standing dead person from the water, like a dead light-house girl guiding boats away from shore.

It was a really hot day too, the temperature was somewhere in the thirties. When I actually went swimming[1] I saw a little head poke out of the water, and discovered another snake. It was a little prairie garter snake, with beige scales flecked with black, trying to navigate easier across the bay.

Then today, snake number four was a common garter snake that my brother found on the side of the road and put in his beer holder on the dirt bike to bring home and show me. Another little runty snake, but it was still cool to see. I held it for a while, and it was pretty calm. They're much different garter snakes than home though, because they have bright orange spots that almost look fluorescent.

Today we also went up the mountain in the Scottsdale, which is this huge fire-engine red propane Chevy that my brother has (that has a small leak) to Clear Meadow Lake, which is a nice friendly name for a freshwater resevoir that has massive deforestation sites around it dating from 1987 that have only recently been replanted. It was pretty cool.

I guess the lake dries up in the fall, and the island in the middle is accessible via mudflats in a quad. Apparently it's the only place you can ever find mud around here sometimes. Anyways, the ride up was pretty rough, and the truck is very old, but it was a lot of fun. Babies have this thing about rumbling trucks too evidently, because she slept all the way up, and all the way down.

On the way down, we saw a huge toad cross the road, and a questionable horned beast (it was nighttime), as well as a Lynx. Today is also the first day of hunting season in the province, so we saw a lot of hunters as well.

The forest fires have been the hot topic around town lately, and the smoke has been really thick for the last week, but it actually cleared up a lot last night, because there was some rain. There's something like three thousand hectares on fire by Oseyoos I guess, which is now over the Washington border. People aren't worried yet, but you can tell that a lot of people have forest fires as one of their biggest phobias, which is weird to me, because it's not a mentality I ever grew up with. Yeah, they were bad, but not like "I'm shaking in my birkenstocks" bad. But, it's totally different out here. It just gets incredibly dry, so when they start, they start easily and burn fast. [2]

Anyways...I'm going to start mucking around with my brother's camera more tomorrow, so maybe I'll actually be able to throw some stuff onto flickr after...well, eons of not having the means necessary.


[1] By swimming, really I mean wading. The bay that we were in didn't get deeper than four feet in any spots. They had a huge crane parked in the middle of the bay to pound the posts for a dock they're putting in, and I could walk all the way around it in waist-deep water. You have to go really far out to be deep enough to really swim.

[2] Hello Captain Obvious. Where have you been? On vacation, yes.  ¶ 10:17 PM 0 comments

  "We can't stop here. This is bat country!" Hearing a regular
Shoving good fun
In a poor Scottish accent
Aussi
In the direction of the death
Of Steve Irwin
There is reality here
And I just can't trace it
With my ears alone

Sitting over half a joint
Four beers
I ash on a baby toy
Left to the heat
Sometimes the rain
And wonder of the sacredness
Of childbirth

Of a child desperate
For stimulation of the senses
She may be an artist one day
But only stimulus will tell
Or the sixteen beers
Her father throws south nightly

Because "I didn't choose this."
The choice of life was onesided
And the role of an aunt is mysterious
There are expectations
For playing on both teams
But really only playing for one
The unexpected

Yeah, suprise you drunkard
I'm on your burnt out wife's side
When it comes to familial responsibility
And the symbolism
Behind the title of 'designated driver'
Because you're designated
To do something
Perform a task
The act
The role
The stingray hunt of all time

Of the fucking responsible one.  ¶ 1:14 AM 1 comments

  Still a bad person   ¶ 3:08 PM 0 comments

  Since my last blog, I've realized that of course everything seems shitty on a hangover. Since said hangover, I've started having a lot more fun out here. My brother and I went riding (via ATV's) up Arrajauna road [1] which was completely fucking awesome. I always seem to forget myself when I jump on a quad and get to open it up on a gravel road. You wouldn't think this would be a good thing with a 350, but the gravel is suprisingly unslippery because of the amount of weight from the logging trucks that frequent it. I'm planning to go back up to where we ended up later this week. We ended up taking a trail to the resevoir that is really far up the side of the valley, because "the frogs are fucking amazing up there."

Yeah, frogs, I get it.

But he was totally right. I've certainly never seen frogs that large in the wild before, or prolific, apart from the mating season in CL bringing out all the woodfrogs. Most notable were the red-legged wood frog, and they're about the size of my palm, if not bigger. In the same hour, I also saw two pacific tree froglets, a brown one and a green one. I didn't realize this until later, but pacific tree frogs can actually change color, from brown to green and back. Crazy shit, I tell you.

So this...this was an awesome day.

Yesterday was really nice and relaxing. I've scouted out a coffee drinking "place" in the village that is actually pretty nice. Lots of babies and moms seem to gather there though, so I just sort of get in, and get out. I only like one baby, and one mom. And holy fuck, that baby sure frazzles her mom.

I hadn't realized just how challenging raising a baby was. It's just cry, eat, sleep, all the time, although specifically her routine is sleep, play hard, cry, eat, play, cry (she hates admitting defeat), sleep, repeat. But it's the play times that are the hardest. She has the attention span of a gnat, and she's got a short enough temper that she needs to be entertained constantly or else she'll start screaming. It's not a bad unhappy screaming, but the kid loves to hear herself do it. She's tremendously talkative. And, summing it all up, I love her dearly. She's become quite the character already.

So, enter the random really awful tangent that was part of my day today:

I decided today after an intense conversation about rattlesnakes with one of the locals yesterday, that I would jump on the quad today and follow their directions to finding one. Or two. Or swarms. I was definately imagining swarms of rattlesnakes, and the prospect was dizzying => Enter a lifelong and really obscure fascination with snakes.

So I jumped on the quad, and drove up to the KVR [2] trailhead, conveniently located five minutes away from my brother's house, and started the trail to rattlesnake mecca. Twenty minutes into the ride, I saw something tiny wriggling just out of reach of my front right tire and jumped off my quad to take a look. It was a baby gopher snake. They're really neat snakes because they have very different color variations, (like cornsnakes) and this one had a lot of red on it.

And unfortunately, the rest of the story pretty much tells itself. I found no rattlesnakes, but at the halfway point to where I was suppose to go, I did actually run over and kill an endangered species of snake. Rattlesnakes, I may remind you, are not endangered. In fact, though I have yet to see one, there are copious amounts of them in BC and Alberta. Western Yellow Bellied racers however, are endangered. In fact, on the website, they instruct you "if you see a Racer, contact your local branch of the Ministry of the Environment."

"In fact, if you smash a blue-listed [3]snake...you should definately call them and tell them that with explicit detail."

The story ends like this...I've never felt this bad about anything in a long time. It seems like a paltry thing perhaps, but the thing is that the quad didn't end its life. The quad broke its neck. I'm trying to laugh it off and everything, but I'm still pretty distraught about it. The quad didn't kill the snake. I ended up putting it out of it's misery because I couldn't decide what was worse, the pain of being left like that to just die, or having it be killed by something else...or as probably would have happened, been squished by a larger tire.

It's weighing on my conscience enormously, but I think I made the right choice. It's just weird, because I've been raised to be respectful to nature to that extent, and I never figured I would have to do that. I'm watching American Beauty right now, and have mysteriously heard, "take responsibility for your actions."

Blargh. It's been a weird post, but at least it's off my chest somewhat.

[1] I'm not shitting you, this is the real name.

[2] Kelowna Valley Railroad- converted into a multipurpose trail. If you're a lazy Washington tourist for example, you'll probably drive the whole thing in your SUV with the A/C on, and look at me contemptuously for destroying nature as you pass me. Fuck, but I did, so it was deserved. Sort of.

[3] Vulnerable to human activity!! AAGH.  ¶ 10:37 PM 0 comments

  God's Country So far the vacation has been interesting. I especially loved going to cash my paycheck so that my rent check does not bounce, and discovering way too late that my bosses father had forgotten to completely fill out the check...make it viable for cashing, in otherwords. So, my financial bracket is considerably narrowed for the trip, unless I can get things amended on Monday when Sam gets back.

The bus ride was a little on the long side, but it's interesting, because after something like the fifth hour, everyone on the bus is like "your buddy." You share things, you entertain each other's kids, and tell stories. I'd never been on the bus long enough to discover this. It is potentially annoying yes, but, it was interesting. I met a boy from Mississippi who was especially interesting. I think by the end of the trip we both were really curious about each other, but given the current status of both our lives (he essentially had just gotten spurned by an internet lover in Grand Prairie after going to see her), we ended up just shoving off in Kamloops (his stop) and wishing we'd see each other again while knowing we wouldn't. It was strange, because he was just very comfortable to talk to, very quickly.

Anywhoots...I'm out and about, and generally having a rednecky good time...such is the way of things around here. The weather has been good. I'm also very boring right now. I've been hanging out with BabyFace a lot, which is a lot of fun. She's been making strange with a lot of people, but so far she hasn't with me.

K, so maybe I'm getting fucking bored and lonely already.  ¶ 2:53 PM 0 comments