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Noise
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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This hostel, it's loud, I've had to change my hours to work around the din & hubbub of a largely babbling clientele.
The TV, frequently on and always too loud. People always coming and going. Smells, the kitchen, some good cooks for sure, accents, some more pleasing than others (usually in languages other than English), it's raining and I need to be writing, studying the menu at work, and it's a challenge here to stay focused, forever and always the burden of other peoples thoughts voiced loudly.
Bunkmates, Steve, still, forever marginal and hanging on by his teeth, selling just enough books every day in Gastown to keep him in the hostel another night. He's growing stressed, increasingly, the rain doesn't allow him to sell, can't make that connection with people, nobody wants to stand and talk to him in the rain.
A small town German boy, here to learn to Ski in Whistler, he's terrified of the city, no bloody wonder, step outside the door of the hostel and you'd understand pretty quickly why. No one comes prepared for this.
And we've a drunk Irishman, he's in all day, then leaves in the evening - returns at 5:00 AM, coughing in the bunk below, he's a tickle in his throat, insensate, drunk, he's come in from where? The meth has irritated his throat, he lies there coughing, hacking, sleep here is precarious, Steve is annoyed, telling him to leave - he doesn't want to get sick, Anti-Vaxxer Steve, how to reconcile this? Afraid of the virus, afraid of the vaccine...
Always here there's the Noise, the traffic, periodic sirens, engines and wheels ploughing through wet streets, the rats in the walls, scratching, and - while I've a place to live I'm missing quietude of the Kootenays.
Work has become an escape.
Kamongo or, The Lungfish and the Padre - Homer W. Smith
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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Picked it up, slender, curious worn cover - it's the slenderness and obscurity that draw me towards it, that and that it's priced at a dollar.
Enthusiastic reviews by nobody I've ever heard of adorn the back cover.
Written, late 1930's
A dialogue between a priest and a physiologist, both on a long ship voyage through the Suez Canal, the Priest, or Padre, on his way to a Mission in deepest colonial Africa, the Physiologist, also in Africa, studying the Lungfish, an evolutionary throwback to the days when fish breathed air before developing gills.
The conversations, on the one hand representing the evolutionary point of view, that life will out in all it's diversity, and the Priest is largely silent, his belief in something other than this - argued, but - not so much.
Not so much a dialogue as a advertisement for evolution and the randomness - and inevitability - of life.
So - always good to read - always, books from a different era, books with something to say. His Point of View stands today - even with all the advancements of science - the world is largely colored by our interpretation and understanding of it.
And there are no ready answers, which is, I suspect, as it should be.
2 Weeks
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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And I mean, the longest 2 weeks in the world. I just realized it today - thinking - it was 2 weeks ago yesterday that I fled Nelson in a rumbledown jeep, blazing through floods and landslides on a wing and a prayer to...
Where?
Wherever.
And 2 weeks later here I am. Hope, the disasters, floods, meals at the church and matinees at the cinema. It seems like months, years ago even.
Followed by the trip to Vancouver, 3 days in the Hostel deciding, indecisive. And then - on the computer - looking for, finding a job - all - quite literally - in the same night.
My head spins. Work - a surreal fever dream, "The Cook, The Thief..." lived out in pantomime, imposter syndrome, wandering the Zombie land of East Hastings, Steve, the hostel, the memories crowd my head, make it seem like years have passed when really - it's only been a few short days.
Walking Vancouver, relearning it, I'm not sure I ever forgot, there are everywhere jogs for my memory, Seabus to North Vancouver today, thrifting - expensive, nothing I'm looking for, another white shirt for work, studying the menu...
Time passes.
The French Dispatch
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 727
Night off, take advantage of the big city to see a movie.
I liked this. Wes Anderson, he's a master of visual storytelling - embodying humor, irony, satire, nothing too "meaningful", but therein lies his charm.
The instantly recognizable visual styles, the amusing and irrelevant camera tricks, background "jokes", he is - after his own fashion - a genius.
A wonderful ensemble cast (the same players as always), 3 stories on diverse themes - love, art, crime, not every one as much to my taste, but all brilliant.
Worthwhile.
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