Release The Hounds

I’m staying with friends in Victoria, British Columbia, and I’m walking their dog. I take him out in the mornings and we head into the park then to the coast where we watch ships sail towards snow capped mountains in America. The dog attracts a lot of attention. People smile, they stop and say hello, mainly to him although I take it upon myself to answer. Frisco doesn’t mind, or if he does he hasn’t said anything to me.
It reminds me of when I would take my little niece out in London. She would draw all sorts of attention, especially from women, they would smile, stop and say hello too. If a conversation started, I would strike an avuncular poise and throw in ‘I’m actually her uncle’ just in case, you know, said woman was single. Although said woman never usually said much after that.
So I’m walking Frisco -or he’s walking me, it’s not clear between us- and it’s another clear, crisp morning. I expound on the theory of Plato’s Cave, he expounds a steaming turd which I gingerly gather up in a bag. Frisco’s more the empiricist to my rationalist. We look at ducks, he bends his front paw at squirrels, people say hello. Then we pass an attractive woman.
She looks at me and says, ‘Beautiful dog.’
I blink and blurt out, ‘I’m actually his uncle.’
On the way home I expound to Frisco on the theory of how difficult it is to meet women.

The Value Of Doing Nothing

‘And what do you do?’
I think about this. I am asked this question a lot on my trip. Either because they are bad conversationalists asking the standard boring question or because they are really curious as to how I can be travelling for months on end.
‘I don’t do anything anymore,’ I usually say. Then I qualify this by saying what I used to do. By qualify I mean justify and explain, which I hate myself for doing, as if my present state is wrong.
‘So what are you going to do?’
I look at them.
‘What does it matter? A business card doesn’t define a person. It’s not what you do but how you do it that is the question.’
That's what I feel like saying. Or
‘What does it matter? Whatever I do, children will be starving in Africa.’
Or
‘What does it matter? I’ll doubtless have to smother any sense of purpose and do whatever it takes to pay the bills.’
But I usually just say ‘I don’t know’ and change the topic to a standard boring conversation about the weather.

The Society Of The Spectacle

‘Hey, so how you liking Vancouver?‘ I asked me.
‘It’s a fun city,’ I answered me. ‘I can’t believe they have beaches just off downtown.’
‘You been swimming or are you still swimming in your head?’
‘Actually, I have been wondering if not being true to yourself means that you are just faking a life. And then follows how you even can be true in this media saturated society of manufactured desires in which we are alienated from our essential nature.’
‘Water too cold was it?’
‘But then I met this guy who told me how he found out that his wife was having an affair, how she said that she didn’t love him anymore, how he was worried that he would lose his kids… He was in fucking tears.’
I stared at me.
‘The concrete took over the abstract, you know. What was I supposed to say to him: Sorry, mate, but your life in the suburbs was just a marketing man’s concept of a life anyway, now you can be true to yourself?’
‘Hm. So what did you say?’
‘Nothing. We drank beer.’
‘Glad to see your thinking is proving useful.’
‘Screw you.’

The Girl On The Greyhound

‘I’m visiting my boyfriend,’ she said. ‘We’ve never met, just spoken on the internet.’
I was on a Greyhound bus. I was heading north.
‘I had my second miscarriage on a bus,’ she said.
The girl was sitting two rows behind me. She had started talking to the guy next to her soon after we set off. She had a loud voice.
‘I write to prisoners,’ she said.
I had seen her in the terminal. She was young and dressed in black. She was reading a book called God is Awesome.
‘I love sex,’ she said. ‘I think about it 24-7.’
The bus turned a corner and hit a parked car. The driver stopped to examine the damage.
She called up her boyfriend. ‘The car just flew into us,’ she said.
I smiled to myself. God was awesome for not making her sit next to me.

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
I studied this sonnet by Wordsworth when I was at school. I didn’t understand it back then, but I’m beginning to understand it now.
I woke up the other day and there was a deer outside my window. It was in a field of long grass, walking cautiously. A breeze shook the trees and made the grass sway like waves. For a moment, it looked like the deer was swimming. I gazed and gazed as it swam in the waves, and it reminded me of Wordsworth. But then I got bored and watched a Lady Gaga video on YouTube.

The Edge Of The World

‘Hey, you’re back,’ I said.
‘I am,’ I answered.
‘Er, and where exactly is it you are?’
‘I’m in the Pacific Northwest, on the San Juan Islands, on the edge of the Canadian border.’
‘What the hell are you doing there?’
‘I was invited. I’m glad I came. It’s so isolated and beautiful, it feels like the edge of the world…’
I stared at me. ‘You know, I wasn’t sure from your last post if you were travelling onwards or inwards. I pictured you missing the scenery as you examined your navel. So what happened to your digital detox?’
‘Well, being on the road I’ve been thinking about what it means to belong somewhere...’
‘I think you belong in an asylum.’
‘…and I think it’s the feeling that you matter and that people care.’
‘Yawn. So?’
‘So it isn’t just given, it’s a two way street, it needs attention from both sides. I looked at the last reader comments on here: some people read this and, whether I know them or not, they care. My invitation up here even came from this.’
‘So you’re saying enough with the selfish I want to be alone dramatics?’
‘So I’m just saying that finding belonging is hard in the modern world and shouldn’t be taken for granted.’
‘Who are you suddenly, the Dalai Lama?’
‘Screw you.’ I flicked myself the finger as my other me gave me the V sign.