Ground Grunting

 August 6, 2024

    I be in Montreal, Quebec, Canada at the moment. I’m here for about four more days. The weather has finally improved. 

    We had a brutal heat wave for about a week. It was extremely humid. Now it’s much cooler. It’s the perfect weather. It’s much easier to sleep at night.

    Today I finished reading The Plague. It’s one of those books that I don’t necessarily enjoy reading, but really leaves me thinking about it throughout the day. David Foster Wallace was like that for me as well.

    I think it's those train of thought books. Mami was telling me that James Joyce was famous for that. 

    I find them pretty boring. Afterwards it’s as if their thoughts have become mine. Their memories are mine. I can feel the way it buries itself into my subconscious. 

    It was the kind of book I think I’ll need to read a few more times in my life. There’s lots of books like that, just like movies. Even albums. 

    The more you engage with them the more you see. I want to read A Clockwork Orange again, as well as Fight Club. 

    Mami and I rode the REM today. It’s Montreal’s new light-rail service. It’s only about 6 stations at the moment. 

    We could only travel to one of the stations without having to pay extra. The Metro card only covers Montreal. You have to pay extra once you pass into other towns. 

    We travelled to Nun’s Island. The train was driverless. It felt really modern. It was all above ground. It sorta reminds me of the train in Melbourne. 

    We walked around Nun’s Island for a bit. It’s an island with apartments and condos. It didn’t feel very pedestrian friendly. 

    I wanted to walk to the end of the island to check out the park. It was supposed to be 35 minutes from the REM. Mami got tired of walking. We headed back to the train.

    We rode back into the city. We stood at the very front of the train and looked out the window. It was a nice ride. 

    Then we transferred onto the subway and went to Valu-Village. Afterwards we went for dinner at a restaurant. It was delicious. 

    Mami paid for all the clothes and all of the food. It was so nice of her. She got a thirty percent discount at Valu-Village because she’s a senior. She was so excited about that. 

    Mom was here for a few days. It was really fun hanging out with her. I much preferred our time together here, compared to Australia. It was much more comfortable here. 

    She only stayed for about three nights. She was also quite tired because she was readjusting to the new time zone. 

    We watched some movies and walked around the neighbourhood. We checked out the green alleys and walked to the park.

    She helped me with some York stuff, which was nice. She’s starting her Masters degree at U of T the same week that I start at York. She’ll be in Toronto for the first week of September.

    We talked to Liam for the first time since the fire. He sounded good, but I could tell that he was going through a lot. He just sounded slightly dazed and tired. 

    I can’t comprehend what it must be like. I was so upset when he said that he lost all his photos and videos. 

    He had just transferred them from his SD Cards onto his hard drive. The hard drive was lost in the fire.  He didn’t have anything stored in the cloud. 

   That would’ve been catastrophic for me. I still don’t know if I’ve lost 80% of my photos and videos. 

    I’m not sure where all of the Salt Spring and and early-Toronto photos are. I know that I was accessing them in 2022, when I was working on my website. I wonder if they’re on dad’s OneDrive.

    I have a hard drive under the stairs in Toronto. I need to transfer everything from there onto my new hard drive as well as the cloud.

    The blue hard drive stopped working in around 2022. There was a lot of stuff on there. All of my film photos. Luckily I have all of those photos in physical form as well. It just means scanning everything. 

    I’m hoping that my transition back into Toronto will go smoothly. I reached out to Kristal the other day. She said that they’re pretty heavily staffed, but that she’d love to have me back. That’s good news. 

    I also hope that I can move into El Pueblo with pretty cheap rent. From there I’d love to move to another part of the city. I just hope that I can get oriented in the Beaches.

A Massive Collapse

 Aug 1, 2024

    Dreams

    I was at work in The Beaches. Kristal was my boss. My shift had ended. 

    Kristal said I could go home, since there wasn’t much to do. I said that I could stay until the end of my shift, which was in about 30 minutes. She asked if I would take out some garbage.

    There was a pile of stuff in the corner. I picked it up and went onto the street. I had to walk a block to the east. There was some compost site over there.

    It was on the block with St. Dennis Catholic School. All the shops facing Queen were gone. It was just a big field of dirt, like a construction site. 

    I was placing the waste into a compost bin when I suddenly felt shaking beneath my feet. I figured that it must be an earthquake. It was quite strong. I figured that I must really be feeling it since I was standing on soft ground from all the compost. 

The earthquake stopped and I continued throwing my waste into the bin. I began to hear a soft rumbling. It was quiet at first. It became louder and louder until it roared like a train. I looked up. 

    To my right was a massive pile of dirt. It looked like it had been placed there for construction reasons. It seemed to be the size of a mountain. 

    The dirt at the top was cascading down, presumably from the earthquake. An enormous avalanche had begun, and I was right in its path. 

    I started running back West. A woman was near me. She was speaking on the phone and couldn’t hear the noise. I yelled at her, pointing towards the avalanche.

    I kept running. I made it to the street. A massive cloud of dust was already behind me. It was snaking through the streets. People were running and screaming. 

    I ran past the shop where I was working. Kristal and my coworkers were already outside running. I tried to get their attention but they ignored me for some reason. I became frustrated and stopped trying to get people’s attention. I was only worrying about myself now.

    At this point the street became more like an indoor mall. Everyone was trying to exit through doors on the left. I went through one with a few other people. We had to make our way through a maze of hallways and stairs. 

    We arrived at some sort of tiny bus station. They were shuttling people down the side of the building. We rode it down and arrived to what seemed like Bali. It was beautiful and warm.

    Later in the dream I was telling people at a bar about my escape. I was telling them about how I had been right next the pile of dirt when the avalanche began. They were interested, but not amazed. I was hoping they’d be more impressed with my story.

    My crush was in my dream. I kept seeing her at the place she worked. I think she had invited me to meet up with her at her job. 

    I found where she was. She was in a room. The door was closed. I was waiting for her to come out so that I could speak to her. I was waiting for a long time. She finally came out.

    I went up to her and waited for her to notice me. She turned around and looked at me. She had completely changed. She looked more like a man now. She had almost no hair. She was a big guy with big arms. She looked dirty and disheveled. 

    She said hi. I also said hi, but nothing else. She walked away. She was carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in the other. It started me. 

    Mom will be here today. She’s arriving around 10 pm. The change in timezones will probably be hard for her. The humidity as well. I think she’s here for a couple of days. 

    It’s been really humid lately. The other day I went downtown alone. I was going to take the subway but I ended up walking all the way into the city. I walked along the canal and then turned up onto the street.

    Some of the parks have little hoses that spray water. It’s really nice to walk through. I walked around the city and shot a lot of videos. I got some really cool shots. 

    I checked out the ring by Place Ville Marie. I saw the hotel where John and Yoko did their bed-in for peace. 

    I went to the weed store and bought a joint. I wanted to hang out at the park on the plateau. The one where I took molly with April and Brian. 

    I wasn’t sure where the park was. I just walked towards the mountain. I couldn’t find the place. I kept walking and walking. I started going up the stairs. I kept expecting to find the park. 

    I realized that I must be going the wrong way. I suddenly found myself at the top of the mountain. I was at the look out. I could see the whole city below me. I was super confused. 

    I walked around for a really long time. I ended up going all the way to the bottom. I should’ve turned left when I reached the street. I turned right. 

    I eventually found another entrance that brought me to a nice pond. I decided to hang out there instead. I smoked the joint and just hung out. It wasn’t that fun. It never really is. 

    After that it got dark. I walked through Westmount. The mansions were huge. I got pretty lost. I was trying to find the park where I went with Mami.

    It started to get late and I realized I hand’t set up my bed back at Mami’s place. I didn’t want to make her do it for me. I started looking for the subway. It took me a while to find it, but I got home at a reasonable time.

    The next day I went out again. I still had half the joint left. I found the park I had intended to go to. I smoked and tried to do some editing on my laptop. Then I did some walking around the mountain. 

    I got home earlier that day. I had dinner with Mami. I had a tiny bit more of the joint. I went for a walk and smoked it before bed. Then I was up until like 2:30 am. I was exhausted the next day.

    Mami and I have been doing a lot of shopping. I’ve got alot of nice stuff. I also want to print my own t-shirts at some point. I want to use designs I’ve made in photoshop. 

    I found out that I have enough money in my school savings for my first semester of York. I’m pretty happy about that.