MONDAY...
— Work 4 hours today. Now that I’m doing a compressed schedule, Mondays are part of my weekend... so today was to build up some extra vacation time.
— Ball game... we lose a close one but it’s a pretty fun game all the same. I leg out a triple... first one since I popped my hamstring... and there was no problems. The shoulder is feeling fairly loose though. And that’s bad loose... as in the rotator cuff doesn’t feel real stable. So throwing is kinda painful and weak tonight.
TUESDAY...
— Sore day. Signs of age... when you need recovery time from slow pitch softball... oh dear oh dear. The shoulder and knee are whining at me this morning.
— Beaver evidence at the pond. I wasn’t crazy! Two downed trees along the pathway. Lots of beaver bites seen makes the downing an easy one to figure. Kind of cool but I’m sure this means there’ll be city people coming to try to capture the poor thing soon enough. Run beaver... RUN!
— Work is okay. The first of my 10 hours shifts.
WEDNESDAY...
— House hunting... go out with an agent and check out three places around the city. Two are nice but one of them is a bit small and the other is a bit expensive. Nothing immanent but I may be out of Orleans one of these days.
— Work alone. It goes alright... supper with Melissa and a walk at break.
THURSDAY...
— Sleep until 10:00 today. Do a little walk around the pond in the morning and then work with Annick in the evening. She’ll be leaving me soon... going to work in a different section and to be replaced by some guy who’s supposedly on his way once security checks end. Too bad, Annick’s been a fun work buddy.
FRIDAY...
— Shopping before work. New running shoes and shorts are gotten... cleats and turf shoes are missed. I’ll have to go search some more for those.
— Work is okay but pretty long. Megan, Annick and I go to supper.
— Watch a movie on TV after work and off to bed.
SATURDAY...
— Work for two hours. Need this in order for the time to add up this week with a short work week and compressed schedule.
— After working, I go to the baseball park to meet Melissa, Nick, Isaac and a couple of the boys and we watch a game. Rapidz win 7-1 and it’s a good day for it with sun and mid 20s.
— A walk around the pond and some TV in the evening ends the day.
The Fight for Food
I’ve started doing more working out. I bought dumb bells and am working shoulders, biceps and triceps. I’m working my chest too. Some may argue this is all for increased strength or a more appealing body. But they would be wrong. It is for a more practical reason... opening my groceries.
Machine sealed food may very well be the death of the human race. Sci-fi movies make it out that the machines will rise up and rebel against us. They’ll attack us with weaponry or simply stomp us into oblivion. But I’m thinking the end will be much less dramatic than that. I think they’ll just seal our food so well, we’ll never be able to get into the packaging.
The human race will starve to death as we bruise hands trying to unscrew jars or blow out chest muscles as we strain at opening a box of cereal.
I long for the day when things were packaged by people, for the people. It must have been a wonderful and simple time. You’d sit out on the porch with a cool glass of home squeezed lemonade and if you felt like a tasty pickle, you’d reach over and easily unscrew the jar. No strain. No sweat. No need for a round of physical therapy when the job is done. Ah, all was right with the world.
Now we live in a time of vacuum sealed goods. You know the jar has never been opened before because you hear the sucking rush of air enter once you finally break through. I don’t know when we decided our foods must be stored in conditions equal to that of outer space. Sometimes it’s as though we’re supposed to place our jar of jam in a decompression chamber before enjoying the fruity goodness. Who knew that the raspberry spread for our toast actually comes from the depths of the sea?
Think of what it all does to our psyche. My father was once a robust man able to take care of himself. But on my last visit home, I noticed he had to cut the top off the vacuum bag which held his cereal. Years being able to open a box of cereal... all gone. He’s left needing tools to pry into the packaging. He’s left feeling like a shell of his former self while his corn flakes remain open to the harshness of our atmosphere and go stale before his eyes.
With all of this being so absurd, I’m left thinking that it must be the machines doing it. People would never aim to make such simple tasks so incredibly hard.
I think it’s actually a government secret that’s kept from the rest of us in order to avoid panic. They know that the machines are out to get us... they just don’t want to admit it. Especially not in an election year.
This all leaves me to battle the problem myself. If I am to survive, I’ll need to gain access to my food for myself. So it’s time to bulk up. To take on the look of a movie action hero with abs rippling and pecs straining to be released from the shirt. So help me God, I’m going to gain access to that new box of Fruit Loops.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Making It Up As I Go Along #334
MONDAY...
— I work okay. Not too tired today. It took a week but I’m getting the hang of days again. Still like the evening better.
— Rained out softball. Heaviest thunder storm I’ve been in since London, Ontario in 1985. Inch sized hail... probably 5 inches of rain... big lightning strikes. I think one hit the house next door. I just about jumped through the ceiling with the blast of light and crash of thunder.
TUESDAY...
— Got through today fine... but still, at the end of the day it felt like it should be Thursday, not Tuesday... oh dear oh dear.
— Walk to the grocery store. Over to Farm Boy for some healthy food... and supper. And walking instead of the car is good too.
— Post supper nap is accidental... I hope I don’t pay for it come 11:00.
WEDNESDAY...
— Work is pretty normal. Go across for lunch today with Janice, Devin and Annick. After work walk around the pond and some evening napping make for a pretty relaxing time.
THURSDAY...
— Leave the office for lunch today. Janice, Devin, Bruno and I hit the Chip Wagon for burgers and fries. Good good.
— Go to discuss real estate with an agent after work. Not sure if I’ll sell or not, but knocking the idea around in the mind... getting out of the suburbs would be nice.
FRIDAY...
— Last day of CNI supervisor work. It goes alright. Home for a short time afterwards and then off to supper with Karl at the pub. After supper, I go on to the Mayfair for a movie alone... Mongol is good. After that I meet Sheila there for the second of the double header... Hancock is pretty good itself.
SATURDAY...
— Quiet day around the house with some cleaning and a ball game. Paula and Eddie come over with the baby in the evening. We hang out and talk for a while and then go to the Works for burgers. A nice visit with them.
— I nap in the evening after they leave. I’m having to work at staying up again now. With the compressed schedule I’m going on, I’ll be at work until midnight each night... so I need to get my late night legs underneath me again.
Ever Changing Landscapes.
People always change the landscape they’re on. Yes there is that sentiment that we can’t tame nature, that it’ll put us in our place. And there’s truth to that. But it’s a neck and neck fight and sometimes we do win.
Our initial reaction is always that people’s influence on the landscape is a negative one. I remember, years ago back in Wedgewood Park, there was once talk of building a snow plow garage in the open space that stood between the softball field, our line of homes, and a group of houses that were built only a few years prior. One of the new home owners went around with a petition, trying to get us all to sign and stop the building of the garage... that it would be harmful to the peace and beauty of the neighbourhood.
I was struck by this because, only two or three years before, I was a heartbroken teenager who watched the destruction of the forest I had grown up with. My playground of trees, paths, rivers and (most importantly) imagination was all destroyed... or permanently altered... to allow this neighbour to come live near me. They were as big an intrusion to me as the garage would be to them... and I ignored their petition.
And the fact is, the home I had grown up in had severely altered the forested environment as well. How many animals were dislodged from homes... only wishing to have the brains and equipment necessary to petition the houses me and my friends grew up in? Were there hiking and ski trails that others had used... simply destroyed for my home?
The newest arrivals are often seen as the destroyers of paradise. And often, for the people in question, that extreme view does become reality. The Irish and English immigration to Newfoundland was the primary reason for the extinction of the Beothuk Indians who already called large portions of the island home.
In later years, for my cultural and historical geography studies, I wrote a dissertation on the history of a particular plot of land located near the university. The present day cul-de-sac, left paved and ready for homes, yet only as a large green space among homes instead made for an interesting study.
Forest, tamed for farming... it was a rural farmstead for several decades. A place where a family lived on the edge of the city. People grew up on this land, used to a particular way of life. Taken horse drawn carts into the city to sell their produce or walking to the lake a few farmsteads over for a Sunday picnic.
As time went on, the city grew around the farm. In fact, expropriation took away much of their land for the good of the city. The farm was left cut off at the neck. The family still owned the head (the homes and sheds which surrounded them) but the body... the fields... were taken by the city and homes built up around them.
For a few years, the family hung on... grasping at the past through a maintenance of what remained... but the writing was on the wall. Soon the chickens had to be removed as well. Selling eggs is a life best left for those living in the countryside, they were told... there were too many complaints from the neighbours. Too much smell... too noisy in the morning.
Eventually, the family sold off what remained. It was too painful to stay in a farm house that no longer stood on a farm. They were aliens in their own homes... surrounded by those that were different. Stared at as an annoyance in the way of a civilized neighbourhood.
And there the land stays, half developed and waiting for the right price to be paid for the good of real estate investment. A home, and way of life is now long forgotten. Only a few have reminders of it. Family pictures for those that once lived there. Some papers and my dissertation in the university records. I have a brick that I pried from the dirt where the house once stood. A piece of the chimney of a Newfoundland farm house now lays dividing books upon my bookcase in Ontario... an out of place artifact that would be a mystery to any other who’d notice it there (although few do).
Today, I’ve witnessed such a destruction first hand. But now I’ve been on the side of the villain.
I bought into a new neighbourhood. A neighbourhood built on top of old farm land. In fact, the old farm house was still standing when I arrived. Off in the distance, across the now abandon fields only a few hundred yards from my back window. Possibly, while I stood at my window, looking out at them, they stood at their back porch, looking over towards me and trying to remember the pleasant times when they could walk through their fields to some grove of trees that may once of stood where I now live.
Like the farmstead I wrote about in University, this house stood as another severed head... hanging on for a few more short breathes but with no body to keep it going. The once quiet road that once connected this farm to civilization is now a thoroughfare that I use daily. And even I mutter under my breath as the traffic has increased along this road in the five years I’ve been here... used by more and more as the surrounding farm land continues to be converted into the sprawl of a city.
But I always was drawn to the old farm house. I’d use it in my directions for coming visitors. Telling them to pass the strip malls and keep driving until you come to the old farm house on the left. There you make the turn into my subdivision.
I’d pass by and glance at the home each day. Admiring the trees around it. Imagining the life and history that once took place in and around it. The rope swing in one of the trees. The front porch for those evenings when the family sat and watched the sun go down. The last light on in one of the upstairs bedrooms as one lay reading in bed while the rest of the family slept. I imagine the history of the place so vividly that they almost appear as ghosts to me when I pass.
One day last year, I passed the farm house to see a large gathering of people in the back. Tables of food were set up and dozens milled about talking and laughing with each other.
In fact, from that day last summer, to now... I don’t remember seeing people around that house again. Maybe I passed them by and saw them as more of those apparitions of my mind. Or maybe the house was left abandoned from that time on. I will never know now. For the house is no more.
I didn’t realize the end was so close until last week. Working day shift again, I had the opportunity to walk to the grocery store after work rather than drive to it on the way home at night.
You see much more of your surroundings when you walk. Driving by the house, it’s easy to glance at it and think nothing had changed since you first saw it five years before. Walking by last week, I saw the signs that the respirator was to be turned off. That the machines would be unplugged. And that the home would soon be dead and gone.
The large trees out front were stripped of their limbs. Only thick parts of trunks remained standing. And looking through the windows, on my way past on the road, I could see there was nothing inside.
The next day, a back hoe stood in the driveway. And the day after that, the front porch and part of one side was gone. I knew, driving past, that I wouldn’t see the house again.
And sure enough, I drove by yesterday to see a pile of rubble where a house once stood. The back hoe propped over top of the carnage like a victorious beast having fed and gorged itself.
Now I look from my window and there’s no more family on their back porch, peering back towards me and dreaming of their grove of trees at the end of their fields. I see a line of old trees that survived the assault. They frame the site as a reminder, for those who choose to look for the signs of past civilization within the place they now live.
And that day last year, when the family was all gathered for food out back, stands as the last hurrah. The celebration of a lifetime that has to move on to another chapter. The people are now scattered about, probably in more urban settings where they look out their window and wish for more rural views. And the home is gone. To be forgotten by many and never known by most.
Kids will grow up only a few tens of metres from where the place once stood. New memories will be made on this landscape. Happy ones of barbeques, meetings with friends and play in nearby parks. But those distant memories of the farm will remain subtle as ghosts on the land.
— I work okay. Not too tired today. It took a week but I’m getting the hang of days again. Still like the evening better.
— Rained out softball. Heaviest thunder storm I’ve been in since London, Ontario in 1985. Inch sized hail... probably 5 inches of rain... big lightning strikes. I think one hit the house next door. I just about jumped through the ceiling with the blast of light and crash of thunder.
TUESDAY...
— Got through today fine... but still, at the end of the day it felt like it should be Thursday, not Tuesday... oh dear oh dear.
— Walk to the grocery store. Over to Farm Boy for some healthy food... and supper. And walking instead of the car is good too.
— Post supper nap is accidental... I hope I don’t pay for it come 11:00.
WEDNESDAY...
— Work is pretty normal. Go across for lunch today with Janice, Devin and Annick. After work walk around the pond and some evening napping make for a pretty relaxing time.
THURSDAY...
— Leave the office for lunch today. Janice, Devin, Bruno and I hit the Chip Wagon for burgers and fries. Good good.
— Go to discuss real estate with an agent after work. Not sure if I’ll sell or not, but knocking the idea around in the mind... getting out of the suburbs would be nice.
FRIDAY...
— Last day of CNI supervisor work. It goes alright. Home for a short time afterwards and then off to supper with Karl at the pub. After supper, I go on to the Mayfair for a movie alone... Mongol is good. After that I meet Sheila there for the second of the double header... Hancock is pretty good itself.
SATURDAY...
— Quiet day around the house with some cleaning and a ball game. Paula and Eddie come over with the baby in the evening. We hang out and talk for a while and then go to the Works for burgers. A nice visit with them.
— I nap in the evening after they leave. I’m having to work at staying up again now. With the compressed schedule I’m going on, I’ll be at work until midnight each night... so I need to get my late night legs underneath me again.
Ever Changing Landscapes.
People always change the landscape they’re on. Yes there is that sentiment that we can’t tame nature, that it’ll put us in our place. And there’s truth to that. But it’s a neck and neck fight and sometimes we do win.
Our initial reaction is always that people’s influence on the landscape is a negative one. I remember, years ago back in Wedgewood Park, there was once talk of building a snow plow garage in the open space that stood between the softball field, our line of homes, and a group of houses that were built only a few years prior. One of the new home owners went around with a petition, trying to get us all to sign and stop the building of the garage... that it would be harmful to the peace and beauty of the neighbourhood.
I was struck by this because, only two or three years before, I was a heartbroken teenager who watched the destruction of the forest I had grown up with. My playground of trees, paths, rivers and (most importantly) imagination was all destroyed... or permanently altered... to allow this neighbour to come live near me. They were as big an intrusion to me as the garage would be to them... and I ignored their petition.
And the fact is, the home I had grown up in had severely altered the forested environment as well. How many animals were dislodged from homes... only wishing to have the brains and equipment necessary to petition the houses me and my friends grew up in? Were there hiking and ski trails that others had used... simply destroyed for my home?
The newest arrivals are often seen as the destroyers of paradise. And often, for the people in question, that extreme view does become reality. The Irish and English immigration to Newfoundland was the primary reason for the extinction of the Beothuk Indians who already called large portions of the island home.
In later years, for my cultural and historical geography studies, I wrote a dissertation on the history of a particular plot of land located near the university. The present day cul-de-sac, left paved and ready for homes, yet only as a large green space among homes instead made for an interesting study.
Forest, tamed for farming... it was a rural farmstead for several decades. A place where a family lived on the edge of the city. People grew up on this land, used to a particular way of life. Taken horse drawn carts into the city to sell their produce or walking to the lake a few farmsteads over for a Sunday picnic.
As time went on, the city grew around the farm. In fact, expropriation took away much of their land for the good of the city. The farm was left cut off at the neck. The family still owned the head (the homes and sheds which surrounded them) but the body... the fields... were taken by the city and homes built up around them.
For a few years, the family hung on... grasping at the past through a maintenance of what remained... but the writing was on the wall. Soon the chickens had to be removed as well. Selling eggs is a life best left for those living in the countryside, they were told... there were too many complaints from the neighbours. Too much smell... too noisy in the morning.
Eventually, the family sold off what remained. It was too painful to stay in a farm house that no longer stood on a farm. They were aliens in their own homes... surrounded by those that were different. Stared at as an annoyance in the way of a civilized neighbourhood.
And there the land stays, half developed and waiting for the right price to be paid for the good of real estate investment. A home, and way of life is now long forgotten. Only a few have reminders of it. Family pictures for those that once lived there. Some papers and my dissertation in the university records. I have a brick that I pried from the dirt where the house once stood. A piece of the chimney of a Newfoundland farm house now lays dividing books upon my bookcase in Ontario... an out of place artifact that would be a mystery to any other who’d notice it there (although few do).
Today, I’ve witnessed such a destruction first hand. But now I’ve been on the side of the villain.
I bought into a new neighbourhood. A neighbourhood built on top of old farm land. In fact, the old farm house was still standing when I arrived. Off in the distance, across the now abandon fields only a few hundred yards from my back window. Possibly, while I stood at my window, looking out at them, they stood at their back porch, looking over towards me and trying to remember the pleasant times when they could walk through their fields to some grove of trees that may once of stood where I now live.
Like the farmstead I wrote about in University, this house stood as another severed head... hanging on for a few more short breathes but with no body to keep it going. The once quiet road that once connected this farm to civilization is now a thoroughfare that I use daily. And even I mutter under my breath as the traffic has increased along this road in the five years I’ve been here... used by more and more as the surrounding farm land continues to be converted into the sprawl of a city.
But I always was drawn to the old farm house. I’d use it in my directions for coming visitors. Telling them to pass the strip malls and keep driving until you come to the old farm house on the left. There you make the turn into my subdivision.
I’d pass by and glance at the home each day. Admiring the trees around it. Imagining the life and history that once took place in and around it. The rope swing in one of the trees. The front porch for those evenings when the family sat and watched the sun go down. The last light on in one of the upstairs bedrooms as one lay reading in bed while the rest of the family slept. I imagine the history of the place so vividly that they almost appear as ghosts to me when I pass.
One day last year, I passed the farm house to see a large gathering of people in the back. Tables of food were set up and dozens milled about talking and laughing with each other.
In fact, from that day last summer, to now... I don’t remember seeing people around that house again. Maybe I passed them by and saw them as more of those apparitions of my mind. Or maybe the house was left abandoned from that time on. I will never know now. For the house is no more.
I didn’t realize the end was so close until last week. Working day shift again, I had the opportunity to walk to the grocery store after work rather than drive to it on the way home at night.
You see much more of your surroundings when you walk. Driving by the house, it’s easy to glance at it and think nothing had changed since you first saw it five years before. Walking by last week, I saw the signs that the respirator was to be turned off. That the machines would be unplugged. And that the home would soon be dead and gone.
The large trees out front were stripped of their limbs. Only thick parts of trunks remained standing. And looking through the windows, on my way past on the road, I could see there was nothing inside.
The next day, a back hoe stood in the driveway. And the day after that, the front porch and part of one side was gone. I knew, driving past, that I wouldn’t see the house again.
And sure enough, I drove by yesterday to see a pile of rubble where a house once stood. The back hoe propped over top of the carnage like a victorious beast having fed and gorged itself.
Now I look from my window and there’s no more family on their back porch, peering back towards me and dreaming of their grove of trees at the end of their fields. I see a line of old trees that survived the assault. They frame the site as a reminder, for those who choose to look for the signs of past civilization within the place they now live.
And that day last year, when the family was all gathered for food out back, stands as the last hurrah. The celebration of a lifetime that has to move on to another chapter. The people are now scattered about, probably in more urban settings where they look out their window and wish for more rural views. And the home is gone. To be forgotten by many and never known by most.
Kids will grow up only a few tens of metres from where the place once stood. New memories will be made on this landscape. Happy ones of barbeques, meetings with friends and play in nearby parks. But those distant memories of the farm will remain subtle as ghosts on the land.
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