For some reason I have warm memories of my university days from this time of year. Certainly it resonates, but darkly: all roads narrowing, the end of pretending that certain issues could still be resolved, that certain causes could still be rescued, the desperate blankness of summer employment, the realization like falling lightning that money was needed and had to come from SOMEWHERE. Jesus. And that pale sun emerging like a sick joke, flaring on the survivors staggering down the hill, shining on their no-hope-of-rescue. In fact: no money, no ideas, no exemptions, no anti-depressants, not a single vitamin to be found anywhere in the bloodstream. All those skipped classes, all those cheap noodles, all that ambition left to sour on the counter.
Oh God we were so broken and willing to debase ourselves. In fact, an entire tree planting industry was floated on this, carelessly, on the economic model of press-ganging stupid white kids into the incinerator of predatory employment. Work like a back-breaking maniac and make a couple of grand maybe. Brilliant. Too bad about the scurvy and the skin infections and the way your poo turned green for six weeks.
In fact: I was planting trees in northern Ontario when a provincial police car appeared to take me to the local station. A cinder block bunker with chipped desks. A phone dialed and handed to me. And on that phone was my mom, telling me about some generic application I'd put in with the government, and how it landed a summer job at a mental hospital. Steady, decent money. Like a small lottery win. All I had to do was come up with a lie to my boss in order get the deposit back on my tree-planting tools (no problem), hitchhike into Thunder Bay (interesting), get to a money transfer joint to pluck the $100 my mom had wired me (okay), and then use $97 of that princely sum to buy a 24-hour bus ride back to Saskatoon (see the least interesting one-third of the country! talk to maniacs with fiddles! starve!). So I did.
There will be no Tinyletter next week. I will be in Cuba. It's the vacation we can afford, and the beaches are glorious.
I will talk to you soon,
djb
Draw things, paint things, write things, make things. Always.
p.s:
HOT TRACK TAKEAWAYS
GET THE CUT THAT SUITS YOU
LAST DAYS OF THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE
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