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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2022
So it's been almost 10 days, and while I'm substantially better I'm a long way from well. The fever is generally abated, the coughing is a little more fluid, less painful, there's some shortness of breath that suggests panic, but it's disappearing, overall I'm generally feeling exhausted with waking patches, and when asleep I'm never quite resting, and when awake I'm never quite alert, always a bit of a fog over everything, but well enough to get things done.
These things, these are the abundant illustrations I need to try and sell my kids books. 1 at least, the most current project, I seem to have finally overcome my prejudices against my inability to draw with a "good enough" attitude - when, off the cuff, I'm drawing illustrations to clarify text or rhymes it sometimes comes to pass that I get an illustration that I kinda-rather like. But upon attempting to redraw it I'm faced with error after error, crumpled ball of failed paper after crumpled ball...
...So I've come up with new strategy. You're going to laugh, I don't blame you, it's ridiculous enough - not the technique, rather the decades it's taken me to embrace it.
That is, I do a faint outline of the drawing first in pencil. Get the layout, the figures, the background just right, draw, erase, draw, erase, draw ... until finally I'm ready to ink it, wherein I fill in the drawing, retracing the lines, adding crosshatching ...
Every artist in the world probably does this, or something similar, but to me it's all new. I'm thinking that - just like when I'm hastily jotting notes, I should be able to off-the-cuff doodle an ink masterpiece, and while it works for notes it never works for the final illustration. This pencil - drawing first technique, though, it's working fine - I don't need print-ready illustrations, just good enough to convince a publisher to take a chance on it, find someone of talent to illustrate in in the general direction I'm heading, and for the first time in a long time I'm madly off in the right direction. The drawings, like my health, they're not well or good, but they're an awful lot better...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1651
The daughter visited, stayed a week, quiet visit, the Kootenays, winter, they're quiet. It's not summer, not by a long shot. Hot springs, Yellow Deli, other small diversions, but really just good to see her.
And when she leaves I notice it, I'm getting far too cold for the temperature outside, cold, shivering, shaking, begin a painful cough...
See her off on the bus, that night it begins. High fever, cold fits, shakes, fever, sweats, fever dreams...
Garbage dreams. Of green mesh plastic trays filled with crockery, tin tea-pots, enough, and I try to clear them away, wake, start again...the same...
I'm serving, ridiculously ornate tea services, busy-ish, but I realize I'm not working, I'm sleeping, awake, I shouldn't be dreaming this, fall back asleep, the same again...
A cold light coming out of the kitchen in a small town Chinese restaurant...
And, from somewhere when I was a child and this sick, the same, feelings of inadequacy, despair, I know it's the fever but can't get over it, the sheets are drenched, soaked, I wake, fall back asleep, the same garbage dreams over and over again...
I'm still going to work. I'm dead man walking, dead on my feet, but we're slow enough it can pass. Batshit comes by, he's been gone for weeks, he's got Xmas presents, dozens of them, sitting there, he gets me to buy him a drink (his tastes have grown this holiday season), some food, he throws the empty Styrofoam container towards the garbage - from his chair 40 feet away - he misses, he beckons me to come over, pick it up, I'm looking at him, WTF? I'm fucking dead, sick as a dog, no patience for this today...he's laughing...
home by 3:15, in bed, asleep, 18 hours of sweating, fever, chills, shakes, work again...
A full five days until it breaks. It hasn't broken yet, still, slight chills and fever, but it's a lot better. The dreams, every night the same. 2 Bowls of soup in 5 days, I try solid food for the first time yesterday, it's wrong, chips, wrong, the texture, flavour, salsa - all salt, metallic, licorice, bitter, nothing tastes like it should, this, apparently, isn't unusual.
It's been a long time since I've been this sick. And coming out of this well I can only hope it's a long time until I'm this sick again. Death, I'm sure, would be easier.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1828
I've got the internet, again, finally, it's been a while and I'm not to into hauling my computer into town and cybersquating cafe's, this should make my writing a little more regular...winter's settling in and it would be a long one without entertainment...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1753
This is a short list of all the places that I've lived these past 6 or so years.
Prospecting, in the bush, camping by the highway, off on logging roads, in motels, with crazy and his every conspiracy theories in the NE of Calgary while I did construction, around Drumheller, Alberta, back in the bush, at the restaurant - with crazy again, and back into the bush, finally into that apartment in Bankview - then out of there, and in with that crack-addled waitress and her sex swing, and on various sofas and couches throughout the city, then finally to Nelson - not Nelson, not quite, the guest-house, the tent on the front lawn, the highway, beside, the logging cuts, a hundred places and turn-outs between here and there, then the staff accommodations at the pub - just a place, really, to store my clothes, then the basement - hell - at the pub, dire, bleak beyond description, the trailer, fine at the beginning but with winter closing in, the propane running out, ran out, cold, foot stirring the air beside the space heater, it ain't much but I'll take it, all my life has been preparing to live in the Kootenays, add hardship upon hardship, intolerable situation to intolerable situation and then learn to shrug it off, and finally now, here, the nicest place I've probably rented in my life, loft, modern, if you like that, I'll like that for the moment, shower, flush toilet, all en-suite, power, heat, I've no complaints for another 6 months. At which point I'd better be settled, really, better be a lot closer, this regular living is costing me dear in money that I can't at the moment afford...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2106
And the pub, business dropped off a cliff, long days cleaning, the place is spic-and-span, the season apparently will pick up in another month. Fingers crossed. We're down to 2 staff members - Myself, and the chef, the other chef wasn't getting enough hours and so found a more reliable job at the hotsprings. She gave notice, then they terminated her, they were doing her "a favour" they tell her, and that if the owner wants to scream at her that's her right as owner of the business, and that she doesn't - the owner - owe any one an apology because she is, after all, the owner...
It's unbelievable.
The other waiter - 1 shift per week - 4.5 hours, and they ask me if I want his shift, if I do they'll lay him off, I don't - I need more work, for sure, but not at the expense of firing somebody else...they're proper corporate sociopaths...
But I know the remaining chef is looking for work, if he finds it the pub will close. The reputation they have in the community is well deserved and hard won, and it's definitely what they imagine it to be, I trust them about as far as I can throw them, they've done nothing to me but I've seen too much their treatment of the rest of the staff to deceive myself that my day isn't coming...
Keeping a full tank of gas in the Jeep just in case...