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Packing

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 26 October 2016

Hits: 1879

Packing, now, all the shit that won't be coming with me. Despite only being here a year, maybe 2, there's a lot of shit. 

Treasures, new candlesticks, old candlesticks, chambersticks, inkwells in colors of pale violet to mercury blue, glass pens, ancient keys, dinosaur bones, knick-knacks, breakables, delicate curiosities, to return to the locker. Furniture, to be given away or placed in the alley (where it disappears suspiciously quick). Separate the shit I'm taking from the shit I'm leaving. This is not so hard, I'm still taking far more than I should, I need, better to be prepared, but whatever I leave will be what I miss most.

A shame, this packing of the treasures that have been acquired but barely enjoyed or appreciated, a good many of them are given away to appreciative audiences, I console myself, do this right in a year or two you can be unpacked. Properly unpacked. Looking at real estate - Kaslo, 10 acres, walking distance, under 100K. I could do this, better in the spring, of course, time to build my homestead over the summer, but this - 100K, this is not impossible...

I think I'm top of it, that I've thought of everything, but thoughts percolate to the surface, the need to fix the jeep, to clean, to make it to the consignment shop, slight commitments to art projects, paintings, other, a hundred tiny things that distract me...

Tomorrow, everything to the locker but the bed and what's coming with me. The bed, it goes on Sunday. I'm living the Zen, but at the moment, surrounded by a hundred semi-packed boxes of treasures and trifles I'm living the nightmare. Soon...

World War III

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Conversations

Published: 26 October 2016

Hits: 2257

• Conspiracy,
• Thrift Shop,
• Survival,

The Final Tour, Okotoks, Cochrane, a few select shops in Calgary. A few final things before I depart, general treasure hunting, nothing I needed.

Stop in the crazy thrift shop in Bowness, packed to the brim, overflowing, can barely move, there has to be something here...nothing...

The owner, or proprietor, or maybe just the shopkeep, is on the phone, an older lady, loudly conversing with an invisible other:

"I tell you, it's going to happen...no later than a week after the election"

"No, she doesn't believe it, some people, they're not ready for the truth...."

"We need to buy land...somewhere remote...that's why I'm asking you...the more people the better...."

"...I'm telling you, it's going to be World War Three..."

"...I'm prepared, I've got a ski-doo suit and mitts, I mean, I don't have any Mukluks or anything..."

I keep shopping, this is too entertaining to leave. I've got a boyfriend for her...she's the perfect counterpoint to John Goodman in "10 Cloverfield Lane"...Pretend to browse, look long and hard at the dusty rubbish for sale, I try to buy something, it's not for sale, she doesn't want to sell it, polite but rudely declining to show me, poor preparing for the end of the world in my book, but I get her, get every conspiracy-nut-job out there, she's doesn't believe it's going to be the end of the world, she's praying for it, wants to be vindicated, off the hook for any real world responsibilities, wants to be right just this once in her life, the leader of her own dysfunctional tribe of survivalists...If there's ever a final world war, and these are the "survivors", the human race is doomed anyways...

Epictetus

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Quotes

Published: 26 October 2016

Hits: 2276

• Philosophy,

Found this, thought I'd share, like his philosophy, I rather share it but would not have articulated it so clearly. I'm not a philosopher, after all...

"The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things."

"No man is free who is not master of himself."

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants."

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus

& More Quotes: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/epictetus.html & https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epictetus