So, I go to have lunch downtown with a friend today.  2 hours.  $15.00 for parking.  That makes me laugh out loud.  My lunch was $12.00!

I attempted to park at another lot the other day but it required me to ‘swipe my phone’ to pay.  At that point, I did not have a smartphone with which to swipe and, even tho I am sure there was an option to pay with a credit card (but NOT money!) I was deterred.  So, I left.

I went to a third lot on another day and tried to buy 3 hours of parking (that robot took cash) but it would only give up 2.5 hours.  I tried phoning the company to pay for another 30 minutes.  Phone tree only.  No joy.  So, I went to the manager of the big box store I was parking under and he said, “We have nothing to do with the parking. I  can’t do a thing.  No one can.  If you call them, you get a phone tree.  We have given up!”       

This is a funny way to run a big box store….don’t you think? 

At the time, of course, it was frustrating and such events make me feel as if I am stupid (and usually I am.  I find out the solution to the above mentioned problems a few days later sharing the incidents with friends).  Living a mini Rip van Winkle experience is a major adjustment best digested with a large does of humour.  And so I try.

But I am not alone in scrambling up this steep learning curve.  I share my stories with waitresses, clerks, elevator-riders and even pan-handlers and, to a person they say, “Geez, me too.  I came from Kelowna three years ago and when I go back, I am just so happy to use a quarter in the meter and have no other problems.”

To the panhandler I say: “Sorry, dude.  No spare change. Get a card reader!  Can I swipe you with my phone?” 

Technology is OK.  I guess.  I don’t really have a problem with it other than the problems I personally have with it.  But I can eventually learn how to use it and I will.  It will be fine.  But, one has to ask if it isn’t a smidge out of control?  When hip young waiters and waitresses downtown are scratching their heads over their smartphones, you have to wonder ‘who has mastered these damn things!’   When paying customers can’t pay without a smartphone, something is wrong.  And I can’t even begin to describe what kind of mental illnesses smartphones and phone trees are causing.

Steve Jobs died young.  Coincidence?     

It is a brave new world that requires more than courage.  There is the prerequisite of NEWSPEAK (English mixed with techno-babble and e-jargon), an electronic bracelet like the ankle bracelet that convicts wear (we call them smartphones and they track you just as well as the ankle types) and a form of subservience to disembodied voices and unpublished rules of social order that is not only enslaving and brainwashing, it is involuntary.  Don’t do it…you perish.

Welcome to Borgville.  You will be assimilated.  Resistance is futile.

Over the last ten years the most common question posed by friends in the city was, “So, exactly what do you do all day up there in the middle of nowhere?”  The implication in the tone and the question itself was that we were living in some kind of stimulus wasteland, a boring backwater of staring at trees and hammering nails.  Where was the interest, they wondered?

‘Surely, you must be bored out of our gourd?’

My answer to that was pretty direct.  I wrote a blog almost every day about what was happening.  And there was always something happening.  The days I missed writing were usually because the day was so full, there was not even time in it for writing it up.  Life there was never boring.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Life was (and likely still is) always interesting, challenging, entertaining and fascinating.  Beautiful, natural and magic is a bonus.

You might have noticed that my writing output down here has tapered off somewhat.  And what I am writing about has a negative tone.  Yesterday, I wrote almost 500 words about the ironic isolation of the rich residing in the über expensive neighbourhood we are visiting.  Despite the lavish surroundings, community is nowhere to be seen in this neighbourhood.  More to the point: people are hardly seen.  Luxury cars are the substitute.  This is a stimulus wasteland.

I didn’t post that blog.  Too negative.  Sal didn’t approve.  And, honestly, I don’t dislike the people in our neighbourhood.    I don’t know them.  Nor will I ever get to know them.  I will not bump into them.  I will not exchange pleasantries.  No one will ever stop and chat.  We are all invisible to each other.

Nor do I dislike a little luxury now and then.  There is nothing wrong with a granite counter-top or a big screen TV.  And I confess willingly to drooling over some of the new cars.  But I don’t need them.  And they are NOT interesting.  Once the granite countertop is in place, it is a counter-top.  A simple hard surface.  It is NOT a raven.  It is not an Orca.  It isn’t even comparable to a visit from a squirrel.  It is just a counter-top in a kitchen upon which one makes a sandwich.  Plywood will do that.  Sadly, the same can be said for the TV.  I don’t care how big the screen, the content is drivel.  Watching it is a waste of time.

But, let’s face it, materialism is kinda fun.  For a day, anyway.  OK, in the case of fancy cars, maybe a week.  Two at the tops.  After that, it all fades into the background.  To get that same kind of first-time, new-car-smell ‘kick’ we have to buy something new again.  And soon.  And then we need another  shopping ‘fix’ soon after that one when the thrill wears off.

I have met people down here who think shopping is their job!

You wonder what we do all day up there in the forest?  Well, first off, the Orcas and the ravens are the gifts that keep on giving.  So is the giant canvas on which nature is painted.

The real question is: what do urban people do all day?

And, yes, I know the hypocrisy of what I am saying.  I lived down here (when I didn’t know better) and I am currently living here and, yes, I am shopping.  But instead of that disqualifying my comments I think it partly validates them.  I can see the difference now. It is so obvious once you get out.

The house we are at has pallets of granite to get rid of.  I said that I’d be here on the weekends and I’d try to sell it.

Ever tried to sell granite?  Like, stones as big as your head?  Trust me, it is not an easy sell.

First off, people will look at the stones as if they may be some kind of fake Styrofoam rocks or something.  They look at you as if to say, “These real granite?” 

“Gawd!  You caught me out!  I am so ashamed.  They are really just some kind of faux, felsic, igneous rock we picked up out of the ground.  Put ’em on pallets as a kind of merchandising gimmick.  Cheap knock-offs, probably.  Chinese-made imports maybe.  Honestly, I think they are a bit shy on the mica and quartz component.  I am so embarrassed.  Give you 20% off?”

“Huh?  So, they are real granite…?”

So I pick one up.  Pieces are typically about 90 to 100 pounds.  I hand it to the doofus.  They struggle for a sec and then drop it back on the pile.  And I say, “Hey!  Ya break it, ya bought it!  Ha ha!  Pretty close to the real thing, eh?” 

Even tho the price for the pallet of rocks is on the Craigslist ad, they always say, “So, how much do you want?” 

“Each rock is $10.00.  Each pallet is $400.  Take ten pallets and the price drops to $300.  Take ’em all and you are lookin’ at $250 a pallet.” 

“So, how about that twenty percent off?” 

“OK.  Fine.  Everything I just said less 20%.  How many pallets ya want?”

“I gotta think about it”. 

As if a few tons of rock is an impulse purchase and he doesn’t want to get carried away in the moment! 

Barely suppressing a rising anger, I say, “Good idea.  Talk it over with the wife.  Get back to me.  Ya never know…it might be the wrong colour.  These are grey.  Wanna take a sample rock?  See if she likes it?”

I pick up a small piece.  My face is stern and getting a bit red.  I hold the rock over my head like I am gonna beat him with it.  He backs away.  “So, punk!  What’s it gonna be?  You wanna rock or just waste my time!”  He turns to run…..

I’ve delegated the selling of granite to Sal.

The city has been having it’s way with me and I have been pretty busy this past week.  Crazy busy.  But I won’t bore you (not more than usual, anyway).  Suffice to say: “Despite the lipstick, pig-face, it just ain’t workin’ for me. It was nice visiting with you but I’ll be glad to say goodbye darling! Trust me, you’ll find someone new.” 

There is a sucker born every minute.  

‘Course, I talk big.  And I have a weakness for lipstick (even on a pig).  A little red face-paint, torn underwear and a come-hither glance and I am pretty much rapidly hardening putty in someone’s hands.  Silly putty, to be sure.  But malleable and tender to the touch.

And there is definitely some seduction playing out here.  Make no mistake.  I can feel the pull.  And I am weak.  Weak like a willing John.  But money is my siren this time – not the glitter.  Not the excitement.  Just the filthy lucre. Seems I can make enough to buy some solar panels, get my car fixed and maybe buy some new lipstick for Sal. And I can do that relatively painlessly.  If you count four hours stuck in traffic painless.

Hard to turn down.

So, I didn’t.  I went for it. And then I got busy.  Crazy busy.  But – reality check – one week at full-tilt zooming and I am exhausted. Done like Mike Duffy.

But you guys know all about that….the city lures you into the car with candies…….sorta like golden handcuffs but more like golden plastic zap-straps?

“We gotta get outa this place….if it’s the last thing we ever do…”. (The Animals, 1965)

Honestly?  It feels like that.  Feels like a trap.  IT IS A TRAP!

I will try to get some perspective…wrap my head around it…..go for a walk…..Help me, help me, Jesus!

When I understand what I am saying, I’ll say it.  For now, “I missed you, too!” 

Basically a blog is a journal and, in an extended form, a kind of memoir.  Or partial memoir at the very least.  What started out for me as an exercise in writing discipline a few years ago has morphed somewhat into an ongoing journal of my last few years.

As if that was interesting to anyone…………..

But it was interesting to me, of course.  Me, me, me.  Having admitted to the narcissism, I still truly believe the life I was living off-the-grid was sufficiently interesting and different to others that I could commit to sharing it…especially if my writing improved enough to convey it.  That was the theory anyway.

And, to some extent, I was right. People love Orcas and Ravens. And women-people seemed quite intrigued at Sally’s increasing wilderness-living skills.  They relate to Sal.  “Cougar-Sally, you go, girl!”  (Or something like that.). Men readers are interested in the lifestyle but more in a vicarious way.  Like arm-chair lumberjacks and carpenters. They relate to a lot of it even if they don’t particularly relate to me.

I, on the other hand, am more committed to telling it as it is.

And thus the long introduction for this entry.

And here is how it is right now: We are in the city and it just isn’t as interesting.  Sorry.  I have been trying to ‘see it’ through new eyes but I can’t.  Old is old.  The city is dull for me now.  Of course, there are some things that I find interesting enough to write about – although I confess that most of those things are inclined to the negative (and I apologize for that) and a few things, of course, are pretty neat (mostly meeting new people) but, by and large, the city has come to mean driving the car, lining up, working-for-a-buck and shopping.  And TV or a restaurant is the reward.

It is not enough.  Not by a long shot.  I can’t really explain how much richer living off the grid is.  I can say this: there is a similarity in description difficulty with sex.  Pictures, pornographic movies, talking about it….nothing compares to the real thing.  And so it is with living off the grid.  The words and pictures just don’t convey the reality.

I also have no real explanation as for why hammering and sawing and digging and doing it all for yourself and at your own pace in a beautiful setting with wildlife breaking into the work-space now and then is so special.  But it is.

Part of the answer to that question is rage reduction.  I know that sounds silly but both Sally and I are finding that we are on the verge of getting angry so much more while living in the city.  Bad driving, stupid store clerks, delays, urban confusion, sensory assault, wastes of time, advertising everywhere and the in-your-face presence of the BIG LIE is aggravating us.  We are just not in our happy place.  Worse, I see very few others in their happy place, either.

The people are ready and willing.  They want to be ‘nice/happy/content/relaxed/slower paced’.  But they can’t.  They are usually pretty busy, they can barely focus on the task at hand and they seem to have a cold urban social veneer so that they can cope.  A little conversation, a few jokes and a human ‘tone’ goes a long way and quickly to ‘flipping them’ back into ‘real people’  and we have enjoyed a lot of new connections as a result.  But the initial response is almost always mechanical.  It is often like dealing with a phone tree.  “Just press three and let me get on with my day, please sir. No jokes.  We are urbanites here and my smartphone is ringing!”

“Dave, what is your point?”

I don’t think I made it very well but here it is: our days here are a blur.  Little stands out as memorable.  This is NOT the stuff of memories.  But I do remember living in the forest.  I remember the smells, the breeze, the birds and the sounds of the wild.  That, it seems, is the stuff of memories and, like all good memories, I long to return.

Well, ahem….ummmm….I apologize……kinda.  Here I was gettin’ all philosophical and nice and trying to fit in and ‘learn about the city’ like an open-minded guy complete with smartphone, hockey game and all….and…well…..I kinda lost it……sorry.  I was trying NOT to act my age – be hip –  and I should know better.

The hockey game was bad (Really bad.  So bad, it made the news as B-A-D) and the smartphone kicked my butt but I really shouldn’t take it out on you.  That’s not right.  Worse than the right and wrong of it, you guys left me in droves.  It was like a quiet riot-in-reverse.  Exodus of the faithful, stage left!  50% of the readership avoided the last two blogs like the H1N1.  Numbers fell like the Sedins.

You can’t vote with your dollars but I could feel the cold in the numbers.  The love had left the building.

I’d make it up to you but I got nothing.

A little smartphone…maybe……?

Rogers gave me an upgrade.  Blackberry Z30.  Cool.  Smart.  Intriguing.  And I was in the mood……………..so, I sidled up close, cupped her curvy shape into my hands and stroked ‘er.  Got a nice response.  Fingers up from the middle bottom first to get her started and then sideways this way and that to make her warm up.  I was dizzy with the excitement.  She was showing willingness.  But, well….somehow…we weren’t clicking.  It just wasn’t working.

“It is not you, baby.  It’s me. I am just getting too old for this nonsense”.  She remained difficult, petulant even and started to shut down.  So, I tried again.  And again.  And two days later I finally gave up on ‘er.  Took her back to the shop and said, “What am I doin’ wrong?”

The guys in the shop had their way with her and said, “It is not you!  It’s her!  DOA.  Some bug in the system. Send ‘er back!  We’ll send you another.” 

“Ya know…but maybe not a Blackberry…?  I mean…I have no problems with her pedigree or anything….some of my best phones were black……..but, well……maybe I better stick with my old standby, ya know…………I’ve had a Sony for a long time.  Got a smart Sony?”

“Yep!  We’ll send you a Sony, then?” 

“Yeah, but you can take your time.  I am just getting over one, ya know….?  It was intense.  Not quite ready for more pain.  Not quite yet.”

“Hey, buddy, we understand.  It is dog eat dog out there.  Remember FIDO?”     

There’s an old joke: “I went to the fights last night and a hockey game broke out!” 

Well, last night that joke was not only made true but the hockey game that ‘broke out’ was sub-sub-par, stupid and just a minor part of a glitzy show that included, of all things, a sensory assault of lights, noise, advertisements, uber-marketing efforts, booze, louts, mascots and hokey audience participation gimmicks.  Hockey never really showed up.

“We was robbed!!” 

Well, we would have been had we shelled out the $280.00 each for the tickets we had been given.  The seats were great!  I could see the Tim Hortons ad and the McDonalds ads so clearly!  With parking, it was a $600 mugging of sense, time, mockery of the game and disrespect for the audience.  It was a fraud – plain and simple.  It was a crime.

Typically teams send out their best players (first line) to open the game.  But, strangely, last night a fourth line for both teams were on the ice for the first puck to drop.  The Vancouver Canucks had brought up a 6’6″ rookie (Laine) to take the face-off.  ‘That seemed weird.  Where were the Sedins? Kesler?  Burrows?’ 

With the clock showing a generous two seconds spent, the teams were in a full Donnybrook.  The choice of opening line-up was thus explained.  It was a staged fight!  Like the WWF.  It was not a fight that came from two teams competing to the best of their ability and escalating out of frustration and minor cheating.  It was an arranged-by-the-teams beforehand brawl.  It was a set-up from a cheap B movie, not Hockey.

Even the hockey movie, ‘GOON’ was more real.

How can a society prosecute young drunken louts for participating in a hockey riot and still condone the debased debacle of a massive fraud inflicted on the gullible audience of same-louts by gazillion-dollar so-called stars of the game?  Makes no sense. There is no logic……….well, except that one group of professional louts makes money and the larger group of infrequent louts actually cost some money…..

So……I guess it is just about the money, eh?  To hell with sport, integrity, justice and common sense.

If it makes a buck, it is OK.  If it costs a buck, it is not.

I remember Guy Lafleur literally flying down the ice with Yvan Cournoyer at unbelievable speeds demonstrating brilliant stick handling and poetry in power as they combined to score a goal when I was at the forum in Montreal in the 60’s.  It was awe-inspiring.  The multi-million dollar players of today may have those same skills but they don’t bring them to the game.  Throughout the ‘show’ last night there were fewer than a half-dozen ‘plays’ that included passes that worked and shots taken at speed.  Most goals were the result of scrambles in front of the net.

Louts can do that!

Vancouver won the melee against the Calgary Phlegm 3-2.  The audience lost millions along with any self-respect they may have had.

The sport of hockey? DOA. Collateral damage.

At taxpayers expense, Steven Harper is escorting 200 prominent citizens of Toronto to Israel for reasons diplomatic. Cost: in the tens of millions. This is wrong.  Pork barreling is NOT kosher!  In the GLOBE & MAIL/ January 17, 2014.  Taxpayers will pay for private participants in one of the largest Canadian delegations ever, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper travels to Israel, picking up the air fare and hotel costs of those invited from Jewish community groups and other non-governmental organizations.

I hit a chronological milestone today.  Prompted a small attitudinal shift.  I might dye my hair, punk it up and make my teeth so white I can blind people.  It’s all the rage, it seems.  But first….

“I’ll take smartphones for $200, Ken!” 

……..learning is what it is all about.  Really.  For me, anyway.  Getting out to the forest and learning how to build and garden and fix things (and heal trauma) is a treat.  I enjoy it.  I hope to be adequate at some of those things some day.  I aspire only to mediocrity.  If I can increase our independence, our self-sufficiency some day, that would be HUGE.

Aim high!  I say.

So, then I come to the city and start grousing about it.  That is not cool.  The fact is, I should be rejoicing in the re-learning of the urban life experience.  Whoopee!  It is once again, a challenge.  I am striving for basic functionality and aspiring to madding mediocrity all over again.

So, I got a smartphone.

It’s a start.

Oh God!  Oh Science!  Whatever.  If I thought learning to sharpen, tune and wield a chainsaw was tough, you can imagine my trepidation at mastering a smart phone.  Seriously, Dude, they didn’t have smartphones when I went feral ten years ago.  I am definitely over my head.  E-impotence, here I come.  My antennae is flaccid.  I just don’t have the same desire for smartphones.  It’s an age thing.  But, I’ll give it a shot.

Hmmmm….I have a smart TV…..maybe it can teach my phone…? 

If you can master the damn thing, it is amazing.  I admit that freely.  Mind you, I don’t know anyone who can play the smartphone fluently.  Not by half.  Apparently, it is like learning a second language.  Like Klingon.  Static Klingon, to be more precise.  You might get the basics down pat but it is always a second language and you are always mostly unintelligible to the young and hip.

Actually, we are all but invisible to the young and hip.

Young people learn second languages faster than old people.  And they also talk in a new, hipper, faster version (2.0) of English now that I think about it.  Some kinda jargon-esque mix between English, computer-ese, techie but with a liberal sprinkling of gratuitous expletives everywhere.  All the time.  And all done seemingly naturally and absent any actual knowledge-of-anything whatsoever!  Quite fascinating.

Apparently they can sext! 

I have older friends with smartphones who say, “Oh, yeah, it’s great.  My grandkids can do wonders with the damn things.  I just use it as a telephone, myself.  Really, I don’t need one of these Gooseberries, but I do like the XYZ app.  Lets me compare prices of produce between the chain stores, ya know?  Best Broccoli prices are Save-On!”

That is not even a mediocre level of competence.  I have to do better than that.  Hopefully.

We’ll see.

…..any confusion generated by the author’s last blog entry.  The author DOES NOT now, nor will he ever (likely) seriously posit the BIG BANG theory as defined by Cheap B action flicks.  I apologize to every scientist whose feelings were hurt and swear allegiance to the Scientific Method.  So help me, GOD!

That last post generated a response in defense of science reminiscent of a debate between Muslims and Christians.  “We only agree to the point of Abraham.  After that, you are completely wrong and I may have to blow you up to convince you!” 

Yes, I know.  It is the big bang theory that is the only uniting force between those two points of view, too.  Ironic, isn’t it?

Still, the BIG (or multiple bangs and crashes in slo-mo) BANG theory was presented tongue in cheek.  (And, as you know by now: there is nothing wrong with that!). I don’t expect anyone to subscribe to it.  Neo (The Matrix) as the Messiah?  I don’t think so……

Just because the BB theory is employed by scientists (“In the beginning there was this really BIG BANG….see….and then…we all started out as elements in a primordial soup…oooh….it gets better…..and George Lucas has the movie rights…just wait…so exciting!”), and that that theory alone kinda proves scientists themselves have a huge belief system fuelled by faith in BIG BANGS does NOT mean that I am saying vaccines are bad.  Or toasters or whatever other modern appliances the sensitive scientists use to justify their work.  I like science.  I swear.  Some of my best friends are scientists.  Love ’em.  Honest.

I like cheap B flicks, too.  That so many cheap B flicks tell stories about science…..coincidence….?

Oh…I am only kidding.  Everyone knows that science is the answer to everything.  Well, eventually.  Some day.  If we don’t exterminate ourselves with it first, anyway.  Right?

C’mon…!?  What’s not to like about science?  Genetically Modified foods?  War?  Pollution?  Global warming with science as the cause, the observer and the possible cure? Science: all things to all people all the time.  Like TV.

Listen, I like science.  I really do.  MMMmmmmMmmmm good!  Love what they have done with food, eh?  Science has been good to us. Entertaining, anyway.

And religion?

Well, the churches seem to be failing us lately but it could be argued that GOD is NOT religion.  I have often said, “Religion is to God what Safeway is to food.”  Just a marketing arm.  Just a business.  The existence of God is not dependent on the existence of religion.

Just to be more clear: Blackberries grow in the woods whether or not some fruit distributor picks them.

One thing is for sure: people tend to have a sense of spirituality.  In spite of everything (maybe because of everything) people believe in a higher power or state of being at the very least.  They have been believing this way forever.  It is natural.  N-A-T-U-R-A-L.  There is a kind of a comfort in that long standing tendency alone.  Belief in God is natural even if it is false!

And I was just pointing out that that tendency seems to pop up with increasing frequency the older we get.

Of course, it is just pathetic ignorance and fear clinging to mystical beliefs in hopes of a fantasy after-life. Right?  Science tells us that, fer GOD’s sake.  Must be something wrong with us….continuing to believe in something that clearly doesn’t work.  Like most of science.  I mean, it is not like GOD’s track record is really any better than science now is it?  Or science’s track record all that great either.  I mean: if there is a GOD then HE invented science, right?

Maybe both points of view are wrong.

Could be….

Have I mentioned my BIG BANG theory?