How Does It Feel To Burn?

I’m full. Overfull, in fact… I feel as if I contain every emotion that it’s possible to feel, all at the same time. I’ve spent a lot of the last day or so in a free hotel room, writing and journaling and moving with some concentration to make some kind of relative sense out of everything that’s happening, has happened, and is about to happen.

It’s Been a While

Sorry.

Here’s what’s up:

I’m without a job right now, and I’m just about to head down Commercial Drive to canvass the local cafés for work. I only need two or three days a week to cover everything, and really that’s all I need and want, so hopefully it won’t be too difficult. I’ve also signed-up at an office temping agency, so hopefully that will yield a few days work.

Without boring you with too much detail, things in Vancouver (as far as the basics like accommodation and employment go) have not been very successful, ever since I arrived in September last year. It feels like I’m constantly trying to dig sideways and clear a path up to solid ground, and every few feet I get shoved deeper into this hole. In sum, it seems like Vancouver and I are just not resonating very well with each other, at this point in time. I am, simply, not feeling settled at all.

It’s not all bullshit, though—not by any stretch. I have made some amazing friends, plus I’ve been spending quite a lot of high-quality time with an intelligent, gorgeous and delightful woman, who, brilliantly, is named Randi. And, this continuous ‘digging’ has also led me into yet another re-evaluation of where I’m going and what I’m doing with my Life; basically, after feeling kind of stagnant for the last few months, I am once again feeling re-invigorated. Again, without boring you with the introspective details of how I got here, let me break it down for you…

[Cue thoughtful background string music, with montage of biological cellular growth and division]

The Plan

So here it is, based on current projections:

My working holiday permit expires on 15 June 2011. To stay longer than that, I require a job offer from an employer who is having difficulty finding a Canadian to fill a particular position; and, it must be a job for which I have at least three years of full-time experience; and I have about seven months to search such a position out.

So, something in aboriginal history research, or aboriginal historical claims case management, would do it. Considering the number of aboriginal Canadian groupings with claims or treaty negotiations in the pipeline, this might not be so difficult. I really don’t know yet—but there is a LOT going on here in those areas. And, knowing what I’m looking for makes the search much simpler. It also gives me a perfect excuse to drop in on some of the locals and introduce myself.

I can even apply for jobs in other parts of Canada: all I’m really going for is residency for long enough to be able to apply for citizenship. And I do want citizenship—make no mistake.

It’s December, and that means people everywhere are FREAKING OUT. Also, I’m still kind of enjoying the physical challenge of my current full-time job with Matakana Scaffolding, as well as the part-time job on the bar at BierCraft. These are concurrently taking care of my most pressing financial commitments, which is excellent; and furthermore, these are jobs that I have. Finally, I am really enjoying my current state of calm and simplicity.
Because of these things, I’m not going crazy with the search until the new year swings in.

If it should happen that I don’t find a job like this, then I am, quite honestly, perfectly happy to return to Aus/NZ, in order to continue studying. Further higher learning and specialisation in my chosen field will make me a much more attractive employee, and provide an even better platform from which to continue applying for jobs here in Canada.

While staying in Canada for now would delay studying by a few years, it also means gaining valuable experience in the field, and being able to save money for that same study; So, it works out either way. It’s win-win, no matter what happens.

Sweet.

Fresh Air, Fresh Eyes

The other day I was out on-site for work with Matakana assisting Rusty, one of the scaffies, to erect an 18x8ft cantilever platform eight floors above 2nd Avenue. This involved jamming six uprights between the floor and ceiling in a rectangle, then attaching three diagonally placed supports out into open space, connecting them with horizontal bars, and then placing plywood & aluminIum decks between those horizontals, creating the platform. (We were, of course, tethered to the structure for the duration by lanyards that can take 5000 pounds of weight.)

Having erected the platform, we were up there zap-strapping some capture-netting to the handrails to finish things off, when Rusty turned and said to me, “by the way mate, I s’pose this is as good a time as any to tell ya: this is the first time I’ve done a cantilever platform, eh.” He then emphasized his smiling pride in his handiwork by stomping loudly a couple of times on the platform with both feet, eight floors above six lanes of fast-moving traffic, and punctuating this demonstration of self-belief by stating rhetorically, with a wide grin, “pretty good job though, eh?”

fff

Just before we’d suspended ourselves out there in the chill winter afternoon air, I had taken my wallet out of my back pocket so that I could put on my harness and lanyard. If I’d kept it in my pocket, there was a good chance I would have lost it to that six lanes of traffic. I swear to the world that I chucked it into my backpack, well inside the building, but bugger me six times sideways if it isn’t bloody there now. While I didn’t lose any cash or credit cards, that wallet did contain my NZ driver’s licence, my Canadian social insurance card, and my NZ and Canadian bank cards. More of a hindrance than a catastrophe; still a pain in ze azz. Last time I lost a wallet was about ten years ago, when it got stolen while in D.C.

Anyway, earlier today on Sunday afternoon, I pulled on my grey wool jacket and turned the collar up. I put some polypropylene leggings on under my jeans, and fired a new DJ mix across to my mp3 player. I laced up my shoes and locked the door behind me, setting off down West 1st avenue to Clark Drive, turning south in the direction of Vancouver Community College, back towards the site where I last saw my wallet.

I noticed something as I rounded to corner onto Clark Drive, and the tall glass and steel and concrete monoliths of Vancouver piled proudly on the landscape before me, mantled majestically by snow-smeared, cedar-dotted mountains just a few miles north—strong ramparts about the keep. As I looked up to the iconic East Van Cross standing in the bright, crisp slanted sunlight, and watched the breath condense before my face in the cool air while the sounds of Alex Levin’s smooth, deep breakbeat warmed my ears and stimulated my senses under my chunky headphones, I felt something new—Something fresh. I stalked with hunched shoulders across the Skytrain overpass as two Millennium Line trains crossed paths beneath me, and as the padded bass pumped confidently in my brain, the steel bars in the bridge sidings made the sunlight strobe judderingly over me at a low angle and a high frequency… and I noticed that I was smiling to myself. I noticed that I am feeling Good.

The East Van Cross

I Weep

Today is Remembrance Day in the USA and Canada, including where I now live in Vancouver. The day is a holiday in most of the country, allowing time and space for us to reflect upon the sacrifices of those fallen in battle during World Wars I and II, and other conflicts in recent history. Today is Armistice Day, the date in 1918 when war was declared to be over in Europe, heralding the close of four years of ceaseless killing of young men in muddy trenches.

This morning, along with a few friends, I attended the public service given in Vancouver’s Victory Square, where the city’s cenotaph stands.

In New Zealand, where I’m from, we take the 25th of April every year—ANZAC Day—as our day of remembrance. It marks the day in 1915 when Australian and New Zealand Army Corps forces were landed at Gallipoli, in the Dardanelles of Turkey, and suffered horrific losses in a catastrophic tactical blunder, before finally being evacuated later that year.

There are a couple of things that never fail to squeeze a few tears out of me. Human triumph against all odds or conventionality is one; the other is the sadness elicited within me by our loss of human life in armed conflict.

Neither Remembrance Day nor ANZAC Day are occasions to glorify war and death; they are times to cease fire, reflect, and remember the dead, and the reasons why we have, in their thousands upon thousands, sent them to die.

The Psychology of Hitch Hiking

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who pick up hitch hikers, and those who don’t.

Yup, it’s a truism. Shoot me. But never mind that; just who are these people?

90% of people who pick up hitch hikers have hitch hiked before, just like 90% of people who volunteer in homeless shelters and soup kitchens are people who have spent time on the street themselves—they know what it’s like. They appreciate that most hitchers are probably just economical travelers and not escaped prison inmates; and they also have a much better appreciation of the actual risks involved with inviting a stranger into their vehicle—which, by the way, is far less than the risk of the vehicle being involved in an accident, and also less than the risk of either party committing a personal offence upon the other.

The only way to travel.

I personally hold that these risks are not generally well-understood by the wider population of European-descended cultures. Hitch hiking used to be fairly commonplace, especially in the United States, where anectdotal stories from people who have picked me up tell of lines of twenty or so hopeful hitchers standing on the highways out of San Francisco and L.A. on their way out East during the 1960s and 70s. Since then media reports of murders and kidnappings—both of and by hitch hikers—have seen those numbers dwindle to just a few keen men and women here and there. Worried mothers in every town and city counsel their children never to hitch hike, and never to pick up hitch hikers. My opinion is that hitching is no more nor less dangerous since then; the reasons that it seems more risky nowadays is due to increased reporting of calamities, and a concurrent increase, more generally, in the risk-perception of the general populace. Many folks seem to think that Life, generally, is more dangerous these days. Personally—and this is just me—I think that’s rubbish. For starters, isn’t life-expectancy on the continual increase…???

Despite the media hype, I’ve found that it’s still been fairly easy to hitch my way across most of North America, Europe and New Zealand, and many of my friends and acquaintances who hitch share similar stories. I’ve covered about 10,000 kilometres in total, at a guess, and some people I’ve met have covered close to a hundred thousand. On perhaps two or three occasions, I’ve volunteered to put in money for gas; every other time I haven’t been asked for a cent, and on numerous occasions I’ve even been bought a meal or handed a beer, or even given a little cash.