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Meanwhile
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Yesterday - apply for jobs online. 7 jobs applied for (I'll get far more traction today on foot). But some slight success.
An interview today. Upscale Italian restaurant. Good, good.
And so celebrating - perhaps getting a little too deep in my cups, this morning everyone looking at you: A French girl accuses me: "You hate all the French!!!!".
Mmmm. Did I say that? Me? Moi? Merely when I'm drunk I like to provoke a bit, in the spirit of lighthearted banter. I'm actually not fussed, probably I was just making a scene. She regards me suspiciously.
Steve, bunkmate, gave me a copy of his book. Autobiographical, the oft-told tale of an abusive father, how he came to be and how he gave it all up, tales of his hitchhiking, 26 pages - self published & printed - 4 pages to an 8X11 sheet of paper, double sided, and somehow in his arrangement he didn't get the pages right and so each page when turned brings you to a different idea or time in his life, then back again. It doesn't make linear sense - sort of a post-modern ramble, done better it could be art - but it doesn't matter, I got the idea, made the appropriate pleasing noises and reviews.
I need cigarettes, and it's late, and I'm done with paying full price, there's cheap cigarettes around, I know, $5.00 a pack, and Steve sends me off to a group of natives down East Hastings who are selling them, so I wander amongst the teetering and addled enquiring, amongst the tarp villagers, no one knows anything, surely they know - definitely they know - I'm not yet - although close - closer - at the point where they're going to trust me, addled as I am, a 7 foot native youth tests my mettle - wrestling me, telling me how tough I am, not at all, not at all, merely sinew & bone at this point, I sit down and have conversations with the anguished at the end of the world, there's an incoherent poetry, a young junkie, tormented and wretched beyond description, telling me of her life - when she had a job, children, a place to live, all gone, all gone, and the glimmers of lucidity amongst the ravings - I could listen to this all night - but - careful, caution, listen too long and you'll be drawn into the depths as well.
I give up on the cheap cigarettes, find a shop, pay full price, back to the hostel, sleep.
I think I slept.
This morning, Steve - sleeping in, always he's asleep in the room - he's pleasant to talk to, discuss things with - but - clearly, given the time he spends in the room - and this room, it's no place to spend time in - he's profoundly depressed.
I'd be as well, only now - at this point in time - I can't afford it.
So now, onward-ho with my day, interviews to be met - and more to be sourced - Step 1: Find a Job - Step 2: Find a place to live - Step 3: Get a Jeep.
And there's quite a few steps in between so I'm off...
Photos around Hope
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
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None of them any good - but they reflect the general atmosphere - low, hanging clouds, mossy cedars, chainsaw wood sculptures, the burned out/abandoned houses, the wifi at the church, the lifebuoy app advertised everywhere, the neon of the cinema...
Which brings me back - this town, the Pacific North West - they don't need a monster - the place is plenty haunting enough.
Teetering
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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My phone is on it's last legs - and the camera as well. So apologies for the quality of the pictures.
If you fall over - you pass out - and the high is wasted.
1 down, 2 to go.
Shooting up on West Pender. Open heroin use here has about as much stigma as smoking a joint in the Kootenays.
Moving all of your worldly possessions in a couple of garbage bags on to a new encampment.
And the debris. It's doubtful you could find a 10 yard radius within a mile of East Hastings that wasn't contaminated with something similar.
The entire reddit thread of "Took Too Much" https://www.reddit.com/r/tooktoomuch/ could be filmed here in a day.
Bill Bryson - In A Sunburned Country
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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I enjoyed this. Not, perhaps, the "Travel Classic" the reviews made it out to be - but it's thorough, well researched, introduces you to a variety of places, people & histories that otherwise I might have had no interest in - so in this it succeeds.
And Australia's treatment of the Aboriginals rather mirrors our own failings with the Native Canadians.
Easy reading, thick book, lots to think about - only criticism that I wasn't enormously sympathetic to the authors' point of view - but that is a matter of our difference in personalities, not necessarily a flaw on his behalf. Personally, I would have liked a little more information on the Geology of it all...
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