Moon Trail

    July 28, 2024

    I’ve been hanging out in Montreal the last few days. I really love this city, especially in the summer. It’s so warm and humid. I’m really appreciating the heat. I think because I was cold for so long. 

    I remember being in my room in Christchurch and constantly being under the covers. All of that seems so long ago. It’s so weird. Really weird. Really hard to describe. 

    I also don’t feel like I’m back in the same Canada. I feel different. I see everything with new eyes. I can’t help it. It’s really nice. 

    I’m excited to be alive. I feel really grateful recently. I just feel so fortunate. I feel like I just completed some giant task by travelling. It’s like I’ve levelled up in some way. The world doesn’t seem as big. It also seems bigger. 

    Geographically it seems smaller than I thought. The fact that I was just in Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina is so strange. Now I’m in Canada. 

    It doesn’t take long to get to these places. I guess because we have these amazing planes. They really bring the world closer together.

    The world also seems bigger. I truly realize just how many people are living their life at this very moment. We’re all just here doing our thing. 

    And each country is slightly different. We all have different cultures with different foods and clothing and music. There’s so much variety. And it’s all happening now. That part blows my mind. 

    And yet all of these places feel like they’re in my backyard. Before travelling, these places felt so distant. Now they feel close.

    Mami and I have done a lot of shopping. I have a list of all the things I need. 

    I arrived to Canada with three t-shirts, and two of them had holes. So we’ve bought shirts, pants, a jacket, two knapsacks and shoes. 

Mami bought the shoes. I was gonna buy a cheap pair of running shoes but she insisted on buying me something nice. 

    It was so kind of her! She got me a pair of New Balance shoes that were nearly $200.

    On Friday we went to Shakespeare in the Park. It was alright. I found it pretty boring, although it did make me interested in reading Shakespeare. 

There was a part where they read some writing but in modern English. I could suddenly understand how philosophical it was. 

    The writing always sounded like poetry to me, I guess because of the old English. I didn’t comprehend that it was saying something deep.

    The rest of it was in Old English, and so I didn’t really understand what any of it was saying. 

    I wonder if it’s like the Bible, in that people interpret the meanings differently and write different translations. 

We’ve also been having some delicious foods. Today we went for Ramen downtown. It was good, but still not as good as the one in the Beaches. 

We also bought a bunch of cheeses and meats. I have those in the evening when we watch movies. 

We went to Atwater Market on the first day. We got those Lobster things were they put lobster in the bread buns. It’s not hotdog buns, it’s way better. 

    It was delicious. We bought some lobster and buns and Mami is going to make some at home. 

Today we went to a church downtown. We listened to someone play the church organ. It was pretty cool. My favourite song was the last one, which turned out to be one that he had written. 

The Paris Olympics have started. We watched the opening ceremony on TV. They do skateboarding in the Olympics now. I’d like to watch that. 

A large part of Jasper burned down. We saw it all over the news. That’s where Liam has lived for the last five years.

     He’s been there since he graduated high school. The whole town was evacuated because of forest fires. 

We found out later that Liam’s house and street burned down. The place that he worked is also gone. It’s pretty surreal. 

    I never visited him there. Mom was just there. I don’t know what he and Gabby are going to do now. His whole life was there. I hope they can transition smoothly to their new life, whatever that might be. I hope something positive can come from this. 

    Mom will be here in a couple days. I think August 1st. She’s only here for one or two nights. Then she goes back to Chisasibi. 

    I think she really liked Australia. She been talking about going back after her Masters. 

Sky Dome

 July 25, 2024

    I’m in Montreal. It’s my first morning here. I arrived yesterday about abut 1 pm. The train left from Union Station just before 7 am. I had to set my alarm for 5 am. I rode the streetcar into the city and then got on the Via Rail. 

    My seat was facing backwards. I was exhausted and I wasn’t feeling well. I slept for quite a bit of the ride. 

 

    I had been up sorta late the night before. I went to the Sky Dome to see a baseball game. I went with Carter, Tyler, Will, and his nephew. It was s nice thing for us to do together. The timing of it was perfect. That was my last night with Carter. He’s moving out in a few days. He’s going to Victoria. 

    It’s nice to know that I have a friend in B.C. now. I have an excuse to go out there. 

    I hadn’t been to the Sky Dome since we moved back from Salt Spring. We had gone to see Manchester United play during our first few days back, I think. 

    Carter, Tyler and I took the Go Train from Danforth. It made me realize how behind we are compared to somewhere like Melbourne. The station felt pretty basic, especially considering how cold it gets here. It’s just a narrow strip of concrete with hardly any shelter. The train was also delayed by about 15 minutes.

    The trip was smooth once we finally departed. Unfortunately the train sat out front of Union for almost ten minutes. 

    I think those types of things will improve over the next few years. It sounds like the Go service wants to be more like what Melbourne has. 

    So we walked to the stadium and met up with Will and his nephew. The weather was perfect. 

    The lines for food were massive. Carter was really excited about hotdogs. They’re $1 each. We started by getting four for each of us. 

    Our seats were pretty high up but it wasn’t bad at all. I actually felt that the stadium was smaller than I thought. The players still felt like they were really close to us.

    The Jays got two home runs during the game. The whole crowd erupted. Those were fun moments. 

    We ended up losing, unfortunately. I think we were playing the Rays. 

    We left the stadium and walked up into the city. We took the streetcar home. I said my goodbyes to Carter before bed. 

    I went to sleep around 12:30, so I only slept for maybe four hours. 

    I felt like I might throw up at one point on the Via Rail. I don’t know why. Maybe from being tired. Maybe from the hot dogs and pop the night before. 

    So I met Mami at the station. We took the subway back to her place. We went and got poutine for lunch! It was amazing. 

    Later on we went for a walk to the park. We walked past her old school. 

    It started to pour rain while we were out. We hurried home, but we got completely soaked. There was a huge thunderstorm. I saw that the DVP in Toronto got flooded again. 

    For dinner we had a plate of strawberries, mango, olives, and blue and Gouda cheeses. It was so nice, but my stomach hurt afterwards. 

    I didn’t sleep too well. My stomach was really upset. Tonight I’m going to put the mattress in the living room where it might be quieter.

The Beaches Drunkard

 July 22, 2024

    I got back to Toronto and I don’t remember much. It’s sad in a way. I just got drunk and high. Maybe not sad. That’s not the right word. 

    I’ve obviously been anticipation that moment for months. I’ve been writing endlessly about being back in Toronto and smoking a joint along the water. 

    Well I did. I did it over and over again. And it wasn’t really that fun. Certain moments were nice. It’s just that I don’t remember anything. 

    That’s the weird thing. It just feels a bit pointless. What’s the point in doing something if it costs so much money and I can’t even remember it?

    It’s a tricky thing. I would love to be sober again. I miss that life. I don’t mean being sober and wishing I was wasted. I mean being sober and being high on being sober. I’ve experienced it before. 

    I even felt a bit bad about seeing Nana. We had looked forwards to seeing each other for almost two years. 

    I was fairly hung over when I saw her. I was exhausted. I wanted to just roll over and sleep. I wasn’t myself. 

    I couldn’t appreciate being back. I couldn’t absorb anything because I was basically asleep. 

    I want to recognize the good moments, however. My first night with Carter and Tyler was pretty fun. 

    We hung out on the patio for a while. I remember that I kept hugging them. I was just so happy to be with them. 

    I was barely even listening to what they were saying. I was just happy to be there. I was also getting more and more drunk.

    We went to Castro’s after. I remember having interesting conversations with Carter. The kinda stuff we used to talk about around 2018-2019 when I was drinking a lot. 

    I also had a good night with Carter on the 22nd. We hung out by the beach. We were drinking and talking about super interesting things. I never wanted it to end. That’s sometimes my downfall.

    We went to Castro’s after. I don’t remember much about that. 

    Then we went to the beach and smoked a joint. That was fun. We played each other music we’ve made from our phones.