half october

The shadows stretch westbound in Richmond as I'm doing my best to not do my job. I haven't not cared this much in my life.

I'm Inventing Electricity And You Look Like An Asshole

Kamloops, B.C. doesn't welcome me back so much as as it punches me in the mouth and steals my credit card. Same hotel, same room, same view of Mcdonalds and Dairy Queen out the window. I can't see the mountains from my hotel but I can feel them dwarfing me. Not nessicarily calling my name, just blocking my exit and forcing me to turn back. Every time I write I ask a question right about here, today I'll set fire to a forest instead. This is all on the way out and there's nothing I can do about it, everything will be different in early Winter.

My parents grew up with lead paint, plastic in the garbage, tire fires, red meat, off color jokes, smoking doctors, no birth control, lsd, manual labour, corded telephones, black & white television, real butter, church, Russian nuclear threats, married five years ago, beat up by the principal, no sesame oil, creaky stairs, drunk on airplanes, diesel, stick shift, math on paper and Richard Nixon and they're (relatively) fine, how is it that I'm still a child?

Nautical Miles Measured On Concrete

Standing on the property line in between two houses in White Rock I can see mountains and the Georgia Straight. I’m so close here that I can taste salt on my tongue and hear the waves kissing the beach. I feel peaceful and normal standing here, my problems don’t seem as out of control as they do every other hour of the day. It’s the same weight that’s lifted when I fall asleep with your hair surrounding my face.
I have this overwhelming urge to run the length of this property line, through the fences and down to the water. I could take off my safety vest, lie down, and take a nap. When I wake up, I’ll swim in the freezing water and forget about all of these things. However, duty calls and I’m too responsible to pretend I don’t hear it. Reckless abandon is a gift that I left on the curb years ago.

I want to knock down every one of these houses, take back the hidden beach and swim in the frigid ocean.

Direction

Age and money seem to make him very bitter, as if he’s worked his entire life up to this point just to get here. He sacrificed everything for a nice house and the ocean for a backyard. Too many long nights at the office takes the place of living life. He doesn't know his wife. Children don't come over. Dinner dried out in the oven at ten pm, goodnight wife, separate sides of the bed, reading magazines, pretending to give a shit. It’s a business transaction.

All this money sitting in the bank and still he hoards. Sons in law are terrified, bitter words and a snort are true conversation.
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I wonder what all these people are thinking when they slow down to look at what I’m doing as they drive by. I really don’t think that a guy with a defeated look on his face with a hardhat on is all that interesting to look at. Maybe it’s because they need some kind, ANY kind of distraction from the monotony of adult life or maybe they’re just nosy invasive assholes. What I’m doing in the middle of the street is of no consequence to them, and yet, almost every car slows down to see. At the same time I’m wondering where they’re going, if they have somewhere important to be or if they’re just going out to pick up some milk. I wonder if they can afford their car payments, if they love one of their kids more than the other one. Maybe they’re failing eleventh grade math or their life has turned out exactly how they thought it would. Maybe some of them just feel nothing. Maybe that monotony is what’s supposed to happen.. Impossible questions with no answers, all I can do is count the cars.

Red Stripes & Blinding Light

Dear Las Vegas,

I don't understand your blinking lights. It's as if I'm easily fooled into thinking that everything I need can be attained in free drinks and penny slots. Over the course of six days I saw the underbelly of the overbelly of the shiniest part of your shiniest parts, you lie to me and cheat on me and make me come back for more. "caricatures of used car salesman from Dallas", how true it is. Four am holds broken dreams that will never be fulfilled.

Everything has an angle here. The people selling to you are selling you and they're selling you out while they sell you. Dear sweetheart, am I alliterating? Probably, but it can't be helped as I can't think of another word for "give it give it give it now now now"....All this excess is creeping through the windows, it's fantastic and exhilarating while you're looking at it but hindsight makes it all feel so gross. I ate more meat, drank more booze, smoked more cigarettes, spent more money.....the list goes on and they still want more.

My name is Brent. I didn't grow up here, but I'm more local than you'll ever be. I don't play slots, I don't drink and I don't sleep with hookers because after a couple of years it get's old real fast.

You look at his face and in the deep lines, deeper than any thirty year old man's should be, constricted veins from a decade of first, second and third hand tobacco smoke, you can see hard. You can see wearing a ten pound board, the kind that's used to advertise strippers that covers your whole body for hours at a time for pennies just to get by. You can almost understand rationalizing a 3$ beer over food or a place to sleep. It's just so much more exciting that way, you feel like a part of it all when you're a part of the show. But how do you get out? You throw a dollar in a penny slot and maybe you'll get up to five bucks or so, but how easy is it to just let it roll?

I never know the answers to the questions I post here and I get to go home in three hours. leave this God forsaken fucking desert behind me.

Sap

The fact that it only takes a couple of hours for me to get lonely and desperate when you're not around is a testament to the fact that I can't survive without you. I've fearlessly built everything I am around everything you are, without you I'm a bicycle without wheels. Time drags, the clock takes hours to move minutes along. I hear happy voices outside my door and curse their very existence only because they have what I don't- a reason to face another day. Although I've felt the sun rise with a promise instead of a do or die ultimatum every day over the past five years, I seem to quiver and die when I'm alone, as if the collection of ropes and pulleys that pull that sun up are dependant on your proximity.

It's nighttime right now, but I know you'll be back and the sun will rise again.

Hotel Room

Las Vegas hotel room, I can't see the desert from your giant windows. The pleas of "Oh God please, I need this" have been silenced and muffled at least ten floors below me. I have six beers and no mini bar. Fuck. I need to force myself up and out of this room, down to the casino to get some food and have a smoke. So fuckin' alone surrounded by so fuckin' many people, how is this possible? I've got to get over this fear of being alone thing. I need to be able to confidently walk through a crowd by myself, Ignoring the prying eyes that aren't even looking in my general direction.

My life needs newfound purpose, like a junkie on his last shot before getting clean, I just need this little bit to get me through the rough times ahead, the light is there but can't be seen through the fog. Where am I going? Down to the casino to smoke and play penny slots. Fuck.

August Vs. Surrey Vs.Space & Time

I’m sitting in this stupid car in front of what could be any vacant lot. Where did this feeling of disappointment come from? I feel like I’ve lost a game that I didn’t know I was playing, my fire is out, my passion is dead. Is this all there is going to be? I want more when there’s nothing left to give. Who else is in the same situation that I am? Everyone or no one? Disconnected from everything yet so wired in at the same time, if I look like a pig in a cage am I the pig or the cage?

Every hour disappears with the flick of a switch, days go by and all of a sudden im thirty-three years old in this little apartment with these little dreams. I didn’t always care about these things. There was a time when I held fast in my beliefs and threw caution to the wind. I don’t know how to recapture that attitude and I don’t think I’ll stumble upon it by chance anytime soon.

Side of the road, Side of the road. How many more times? I’m wasting away so sincerely that it’s impossible to keep track of my lack of development. I don’t plan to take you down with me, but the cables have all been cut and splicing operations failed, we’ll never remember what a dial tone sounds like.

Tsingtao

why is it that i only want to write here when I'm alone and things aren't going so well? Nobody to complain to I suppose. I pledge that within the next four weeks, I will be on my way out of 12 1/2 hour locate days. It's interesting the way some people can take their lives for what they are with a shrug of their shoulders. I met my supervisor, Grant, for the first time these past few days. I don't know anything about him, his life, or what his favourite color is, but I feel like I know his whole story in a way. I feel that way about a lot of people. I like to think that I read people well, but maybe I'm just quick to judge. That idea also explains why I stare at people. I always stare at people everywhere, just trying to figure out why they are where they are at that exact moment. Also, people, people, people. I should probably say "people" at least one more time. People. I really need to start reading more...

Back to Grant. He seems to be a nice enough person, very gruff, but I don't have any problems with that. You can tell that he's been spending 12+ hours a day outside in blistering heat and freezing cold doing shit work for fuckall money for his whole adult life, and that's the way it will always be. The juice is never worth the squeeze.

But wait, that's subjective. What the fuck do I know? I think getting home from work after 7pm when you were out of bed at 5 30 am is fucking ridiculous, maybe to guys like Grant, it isn't. Maybe he believes in this fucked up company the way Scruffy believes in Planet Express. But at what point does spending more time at work than you do living your life become normal? How do people get like this?

I can remember a number of times where I've worked 70+ hours in a week, but it's never been routine. I did it when I either really really needed to, or I really really needed some extra money and I haven't worked a week like that in at least two years, I have a life to live and I was barely tewnty-six when I stopped living to go to my fucking job instead of the other way around. How do you learn your kid's names when you have to go to bed as soon as you get home because you're so exhausted? Whatever it is that motivates that guy, I'll never know. It can't be the money, because I even feel underpaid and I'm just a grunt and he's not making much more than me.

I had it good at G-tel. I wish I could go back, however my dilemma is that I refuse to leave Vancouver to work there again. Fuck it man, I'm going back to school...

food

people know about everything these days. swear it. I just read an article about Italy's first ever pizza shop, over 200 years old, in ITALY! What did it have to say about the food? Pretty much said the pizza sucked. I wonder, does reviewing food include the way it makes your heart feel? Food is supposed to be something that brings people together, no fucking hipsters allowed. I'd like to think that if I had the oppurtunity to eat at the first pizza place that ever existed, I'd be happy just to be there. I'm a romantic though, sometimes I don't consider taste. But if it tastes good, why do you have to overcomplicate things by looking for intricate flavours? If three things taste good together, why should the cook suffer because there's no fresh thyme? fuck this!

Dear Baby,

when we get married. When will we get married? Thirty had better be the new twenty.....fuck. When we get married, we will do the Italy honeymoon. We'll cook, we'll see things....I don't even want to look at me fuckin' bank account and I'm talking about ten thousand dollars and college at twentey-eight years old. hm...a little schizo. I'm going to bed

motel life

everything exactly as it was. nothing changed, nothing changed. who am i to make these allegations? sometimes something new feels so fuckin' old. how far have I come since I was last here? in one way i've been around the globe a hundred times. in another way i haven't moved an inch. i suppose i should probably be measuring these things in metric. However, snow in July is one of the greatest things I've ever experienced.

untitled fuck off and live in a cardboard box

secret plans to kill the internet