Formulaic Creative Process

“Combine everything and you will have your answer. You will have yourself.”

I have begun the down from British Columbia’s mountaintop of graceful living. I just got my last returned mail from Canada, postmarked from Minneapolis on March 18th. The second sign was an empty bilingual Centrum multivitamin canister. One hundred of those and sixty-eight days later and I’m back to working like I was in college. Perhaps a regression, working bit by bit, twelve hours on the weekends, no more than thirty five during the week. The full-time “real” job search goes on concurrently. As I find moments of sanctuary, the muse in the transition from college graduation –> Olympics –> June is constantly being revealed to me.

For instance, midmorning, with the majority of the routing complete, a moment of precipitousness stuck me. A revelation in a window of time that poured into me for maybe five minutes. It was that period of writer’s inspiration. The moment was successful in breaking the internal and external tension of the moment.

Later, talking at lunch, and gazing out over the background of Island Lake with a boat of three young fishermen in the foreground, the focus of the conversation was about the growing discordance as we built. Behind it was reaching the same end with very different means. The same feelings of being out of tune, different harmonics playing without words. All this seems to happen around this time as I get on the familiar track of getting off track from where I had been. It is common to June. I began to feel Angst creep back, anxiety on deck, waiting to strike me in a moment of weakness.

Unbeknownst to me things were working themselves out behind my back, though somehow, I knew it, I could feel it. The ideas I jotted down upon a piece of cedar became clear and present hours later. Intuitively I made a note to send a text. Turns out, hours later, that this person is en route to Duluth. Though we hadn’t spoken in months, something – It (that combination of everything) was driving me to relay that similar moment of connection.

I had been thinking about Canada and Squamish quite a bit, recently. Contained within the letter I was due to receive there is timeless information, even in today’s digital age. Opening it tonight and the words rushed at me. I quickly read it, re-read it, and pored over the pictures inside.

The wave function rebounds, the formulaic creative process holds true.

Lifestyle : “Believe that it is yours now in spirit”

Missing Canada …? I realized, and realize, that there is a different sense of community there. At the time, the people and the mentality of the town make it what it is. So many people seem to be implants and have satiated that spot in their souls with Squamish. The rest continue their quest to quench that wanderlust. To find it is middle ground. Not Whistler, nor Vancouver. Community is part of a cultivated lifestyle – establish your morning routine amongst the presence of greatness in the Zephyr café.

Sunny days, rainy days; in balance so it seems. The Chief tends to safekeeping, drinking the cleansing rain and I spot him out my window in meditation, alone now. And I realized, my last night there, his presence. Alive. The rock is special and there is an enchanted forest below him? Beyond, Skypilot out my window. Across the Howe Sound and snow on the tops and so much snow on Brohm Ridge and then there was the Black Tusk.

Different frequency of positive vibrations one must listen to hear. Being pretty much happy all the time. A man on my own – almost.

Surival Cookies

From

This batch includes a bit of butterscotch – everything else stayed the same. They are best shared with others.

I made these for the volunteers up in the Whistler Games Service Center (WGC) to send back some of the love they have all given me – my supervisor, the other volunteers, people, so welcoming.

The cookies are framed by my daily existence. The mug is full of a fresh batch of stovetop espresso, finely ground Western Family blend as I await my Peace Coffee from the States. We use it every day, no more weak French Press, goodbye, ushering in a near-Americano strength drink but without the crema, sadly.

The cookies turned out well – survival cookies truly, one or two a day and a grown man lives just fine. A Canadian version – no vanilla so a bit of maple syrup does the trick.

Baking them binds me to memories of giving them to others; that is the most important part.

Lifestyle: Adventuring into the City –

A finite film on the windows of the car, we depart at 17:30 from Squamish – it is three women and myself, heading to Vancouver. Naturally as a member of this type of party I hear some gossip, attempt to resolve some issues they are facing with men, and generally attempt humor whenever it is necessary with careful wording.

There are goals of seeing Wilco perform for free in Yaletown. Other than that it is an excuse to get out of little Squamish and into the big city – to learn its streets, geography and flavor.

I’m wearing a misleading “OBS/Host Broadcasting Service” jacket as we stand in line having finally found a free, close (but slightly leery) place to park – right next to the impound lot and behind a tow-truck. On the way we stopped in a ramp that was demanding $34.50 for six hours of parking – not happening – so we too off down Richards Street, past the Hudson Bay Company (at one point earlier in the day protestors had broken a window or two and glass repair was in progress) and the red and white – no blue – of the Canadian hockey jerseys in the street, filing out after a women’s lopsided 18-0 victory over Slovakia, or maybe Slovenia.

Definitely Slovakia, the notes say. All sorts of people near David Lam Park – a girl from Greece (Kalamata), young people, the line moves forward, we go through metal detectors, the C21 bus goes by…

Observations for those afar, mostly.

Once inside, as it rains on those gathered to watch the medal’s presentation on the giant Panasonic screens to the right and left of the LiveCity stage, we (they) grab food from “Taste of India” (instead of “ Canada/Jamaica/China/Italy/Greece), all I ask for is a copy of their menus but they look at me funny.

Wilco goes on promptly at 21:00; I’m losing interest by 21:50 so I wander to the Panasonic, Acer, and Samsung tents – a few of the Worldwide Olympic Partners. Panasonic does the television aspect, Samsung has the phones, Acer – the computers. All three are a step into a techno-music-bumping futuristic world of what the latest technology is, and what will be, I guess, but phrases like “Your tomorrow – delivered today” make me a bit ill.

Wilco wraps up their performance, no encore.

The fireworks rock, and make up for the Wilco songs I don’t know, and for those few that I did.

Canada 2010: Travel: British Columbia (2)

I’ve been in Canada for one month.

My true travels are coming to an end, with this post, even as the train is in motion, bringing us closer to our destination. As we pass a murky lake and more commuter traffic this morning, JR announces that there is approximately one hour and fifteen minutes left on our journey across Canada.

It almost looks British, this part of BC, or that which in my mind is British – green pastures in January, overcast skies, no snow, farms, tight row houses on a hill not far in the distance. All around, things are covered in a thick ivy – ducks are sitting in muddy ponds not more than 30 centimeters deep where drainage is not achieved.

It is low hills, framed by overhanging mists of white clouds doffed by evergreens and peaks rising with snow in the background. The foreground is either a river or an inlet, someplace near Michan, or Maple Ridge, maybe Coquitlam, not quite Burnaby – the suburbs of Vancouver.

Vancouver is becoming more of a reality. Kitsilano becomes a place – undergoing gentrification with “yuppies,” as Susan says, who is the woman formerly described as in the printed dress back a few provinces ago.

She likes active art and conscious being, tells me about a book, The Four Agreements.

(In case you don’t know), maybe more on their meanings later.

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word 2. Don't Take Anything Personally 3. Don't Make Assumptions 4. Always Do Your Best

What has this journey done to my perspective?

I see wood I’ve worked with my hands, a different color here. Logs I see as lumber are floating in the river. New observations of the beginning of things in the West Coast, mostly of sawmills, woodchips, Georgia Pacific, industry that people don’t often see, things my father would see and observe much the same.

We’re finally to Vancouver – anti-climactic. There is finality in this leg of travels. We arrive at the station about 09:30, the bus for Squamish departs at 10:00, no chance though I run out with three heavy bags, attempting to catch it. I must miss it for a reason.

So I wait in the station, moving back and forth across the train station, slowly eating a lunch, reading, talking with Shaun, a galley cook from Victoria.

The bus boards, I take meaningless notes on the Greyhound as water pours down the rocks onto Highway 99; for those who’ve been, think a 20-40% more spectacular drive than what already is of Minnesota’s Highway 61.

Shannon Falls is roaring today – no climbers in the parking lot, full in July.

I’m finally here.

Lifestyle begins.

Canada 2010: Torch Relay

Music blares and drums can be heard as the procession slowly makes its way down Guildford. With a police escort, the Coca-Cola, RBC, and Official Vehicle make up the convoy.

Cars stream by, some with streamers or Canadian flags flowing past them.

Squamish, it seems, is on lock down. Cars line Guildford from the stop sign all the way to Highway 99. It reminds me of the Fourth of July – a flash of traffic and then it all moves forward; some anxiety among the drivers who are forced to wait for five minutes in their cars as the procession does the loop around my new neighborhood.

Jason Mraz, "I'm Your's," perhaps ironically, plays out of the vehicles; I keep walking down to the bridge. A brief conversation with Windels back in Minnesota, informing someone of this madness sweeping northbound on Highway 99.

Mark is torch bearer 129, Laura; 130. Mark is from Victoria and has done multiple legs of this journey – Laura thanks Panasonic profusely, telling me she entered a contest by writing an essay on the Environment/Culture and Sport of the Games.

“I cried when I heard,” she says, claiming that she will likely cry again as she passes off the torch to its final bearer for the night, Squamish local Kristen McBride. She passes the torch off to a few of us behind the barricade on the streets – it felt like about five pounds in my hand.

“Oh my God!” she exclaims; she’s very excited for this moment. We can see the procession getting closer now – Mark is preceeded by a man on a bike, telling Laura the final instructions.

“Turn this way and hold it high!” he says.

Mark follows shortly with the burning flame – cars are lined up behind him all the way from Cleveland Avenue to Valleycliffe. Laura takes off.

Security is crazy – but I’m thrown a bottle of Coke Zero, given one that is glows, and I’m quite pleased at my position for capturing all of this. Mark (129) takes a quick break -- he's breathing hard, so he waits a bit and hops on the bus of Torch Bearers (the white bus behind him, where Laura hopped off of).

More on the Canadian National Anthem and “pep fest” held at the Brennan Park area later – where an estimated eight to ten thousand Squamish residents make an appearance.

Lifestyle: Canada 2010: Australia Day

Tuesday was a little bit of Australia Day in Whistler. Longhorn’s Saloon and Grill attracts the yellow and green facepaint crowd, the special yellow and green jackets reserved for this one occasion on the mountain; those who fear no fall are in their swimsuits and fly with Australian flags draped around their necks. Most of them are quite drunk by now – the lifts have closed, some take pictures, many pretty girls in the patio chairs talking amongst themselves.

Sunday was America’s day, in my first “expatriate” experience of watching the Vikings play while being a minority caring much about it. Minnesotans (a Target Corporate guy, two CPA-types and another sitting around in Longhorns with their jerseys, believed to be all different, drinking what would normally be cheap beer, expensively. The guys offer me up a spot, I eat some celery, chat about my writing and post college “plan.”

But today is not a good one to mention being an American to these people. Rowdy (one punches another – two Aussies – and the one guy gets escorted away for medical attention with a bloody tooth – “Woman,” Wolfmother’s classic, blares on the P.A system, the security guard kicks two men out sitting on a ledge not far from me, waiting for friends.

The only journalism I attempt is with two girls, I introduce myself, ask if they are Aussies, one acknowledges to be, the other is British, so I ask them what they think of the scene in front of us. They are observers, not drinkers, and tell me that they’re slightly ashamed of it all, not really proud of it – so I ask them about what people in Australia are doing right now back home.

“At the bars, probably the same thing,” meaning causing trouble. “What is Australia Day all about?” I ask one of the girls.

The Aussie cannot really come up with a good answer, she mumbles something about Captain Kirk, feels dumb not knowing what it is all about, their friend arrives to take the focus off of this lack of patriotic knowledge.

But it brings into good question what days like this are for – simply an excuse to get drunk on a Tuesday? A sense of bonding in a place dominated by fellow countrymen, for once, a concentration of likeminded people as a mutual majority while the American journalists scribble away on pieces of scratch paper, trying to get at least one of these cultural events about the things he sees, trying to avoid a confrontation so maybe I’ll live to see another?

It is nice to see things from the outside, to think on them, make poor conjectures; but, at the very least, I’m not the one waking up with the wicked hangover --

Canada 2010: Alberta

I wake up in Ryley, SK. The conductors announce we’re about two hours from Edmonton. They also tell me I could have died sleeping underneath the seats; it was the first time the conductor had seen someone wedged underneath there in fourteen years? The first skinny Yank to try it, I presume. Something about becoming decapitated, I play dumb. I doubt it could have killed me; I think it was just because they don’t want people to have a way to slide around paying for sleeping, versus sitting, accommodations.

Barely awake to really care, I cave in, buy a coffee, two dollars; my second expense of the trip, the first on the train. We pass Roundhill, SK; there are two other riders and myself in the observation car. One is a worldly Canadian from Liverpool, riding the VIA from Halifax, asking me about what teams I follow in hockey, and after I mention to him that my plans after the Olympics aren’t set and may head to Alaska, probably hitched to a freight train, he tells me about Hyder, a lawless town where one must be wise to picking fights. No police. Just bars and Alaskans…

The other rider gets off in Edmonton but entertained us in a morning conversation as we slowly roll into Edmonton; we’re three hours late – waiting for freight at night, making no time, not my problem, but such is the VIA. The industrial part of the city comes first, as most towns have along the Canadian Northern tracks thusfar, when we hit downtown off to our left it looks about like Minneapolis in terms of size, but back in Minnesota there is no Wayne Gretzky Drive…

Dirty, dirty snow along the Yellowhead Highway Trail, (16) running parallel to the train tracks towards the station. Catching a glimpse of the LRT, I’m awake, trying to take Alberta in, Edmonton comes second; not much time to know Saskatchewan, so what is this province? Saskatchewan must be drawn on an odd scale, taller than it is longer.

Alberta and Edmonton are one in the same I write, the furthest North I have been in North America, I think. Every vehicle here has a fine layer of grime on it, more than normal, I perceive, somehow. Loads of West Fraser Lumber, 2x6, 2x8, noted in the record. This town doesn’t really evoke much in terms of emotion from me, the externals make up most of it, I’m hoping this changes further West in the land of splendor.

With our arrival at Edmonton Station we’re given a twenty-minute break to stretch the legs, people getting off are mad that their rides are fouled up, I realize that I’ve planned this whole operation out fairly well, things are going according to the new plan. Writing madly to finish Chapter six, I occasionally peak up to breathe or adjust posture; it is these times I switch to the other notebook (this one) and record what is happening, now, some smokestacks over a large lake I’ll never know the name of, oil refineries, out of Edmonton and into the bush again. Snowmobile tracks and a lot of beavers working alders along this lake.

Another ice rink as part of a shoveled lake. Next stop, Edson, AB. Trees and trees and most of it virgin spruce bogs? As we enter hillier terrain, the grades become more noticeable, the streams are getting larger, the mountains are becoming evident in the distance…people on the train are doing crossword puzzles…computer stuff…watching…sleeping…few people talk, we all become friends in Jasper.

Travel: Canada 2010: Ontario

Border crossing goes well; Canada's Immigration and Customs gets my documentation from VANOC, stamps my visa until April 1st, 2010. Sunday afternoon, arriving in Dryden, ON after catching burbot (no lake trout) on the Stretch Friday and Saturday and listening to the announcers give excited play-by-play of the Dryden Ice Dogs, the town's Junior (A) Hockey Team. $38.77 for a few groceries, exiting Dryden's grocery store, the town's mill looms in front of us beyond the parking lot -- it is a presence for guests, a lifestyle for the residents who hear the steady hum.

The first Vancouver 2010 signs are spotted: banners actually, flying from the lamp posts. A newspaper article headlined, “Dryden catches the Olympic Fever” is the frontpage story of the Dryden Observer as the Torch goes through. We listen to Jimmy T on the CT-20, telling my father that Cascada's "Evacuate the Dancefloor" sounds much better in a club –

Past the woodstove and laundry/telephone area (laundry machines new, energy efficient but requiring a new transformer in the generator house to run the more sensitive electricity) is a shower for me, my first in three or four days; Luke’s bedroom is to the immediate right. At dinner, the epiphany of foreign relations, viewed in a Canadian context, (“Do you believe the hype of real politique or accept the fact that people on the ground in different places probably know what kind of government they want) -- and also on what the baby-boomer’s children, our generation, how does it understand itself?

I tell the host, paraphrasing now, that “I’ve set out to understand if we're really headed down a technological path to madness,” more or less, "and if making judgments on things I know, but don’t, (via the “learned abstractly and (at best), intellectualized”) model is adequate, how about the "going out and living it (and others vicariously through you)" method? Is it better to understand, to meet more of ourselves, to create a generation formed by what we want, to understand our strengths and weaknesses?

Laughing, though, as maybe it is just best to read books.Back in the house, two dogs sleep by the stove; one is fifteen years old, his sleepiness makes us the same, we tire from politics and brandy-filled chocolates, wine, and a few Molsons. It is time for a quick nap, even at this hour, to fall asleep and wake up before midnight.

WAKE UP (abruptly) after a quick nap from 21:00 to 23:15, a quick cup of coffee (Brad coffee - maybe stronger than espresso?) as we head up the #72 towards the Sioux Lookout…

Destiny approaches, this is the moment. I have been waiting for this exact moment for four months, to leave, to be gone, to be myself, or to be someone completely whomever I want each day, I must work on the Australian accent, how profound, these words of departure, for me, at last and at least. The train pulls up, there are eight or so people milling about though, it is 01:15; I get a seat after the baggage is loaded, Brad and Don come on the train, give me a hand with the carry on, 26 liters packed full, weighing maybe 50 pounds; nothing for the big diesel engines of the VIA, my immediate thoughts wait until I give my Dad a hug, slips me money, a quarter, says “you’re on your own, now,” I shake Brad’s hand. I get a quick view from the seat of the town of the Sioux Lookout: a bank, BMO, Bank of Montreal and a drug store sign complete the sleepy panorama.

Sortie, exit, learn this, polished stainless steel interior and exterior, moving quickly now, perhaps 90 kilometers an hour; I'm facing forward on the righthand side of the train, so far, no attendant has looked at the ticket. How many Americans are on this train? It feels beautiful to have a sense of minority. As the train begins to roll, one single light, mounted on the front of the Train, leads us into the darkness - a man cannot find his phone, it rings, rings, hello, I can’t find my phone," there is confusion; 01:15 CST, not many stars out, good light for writing though, somehow. Claudette and Ryan, the conductor team, Claudette is a hurried speaker, nervous almost, likely French-Canadian. “This is just to say where you’re going” as she places a small slip above my head, and the Rule(s): “Keep your shoes on moving from train to train." They get off in Winnipeg after the first leg of the journey from Toronto.

There is too much to try and see in the dark without getting sick...