Constant...Chaos

There are quite a few constants in life. Like my landlady never making the connection between the exterior light shorting out and the overnight door security system. Or the flow of Neil Young coming through my neighbor's window when he's stoned; That's guaranteed. Oh, and why is there always someone drinking and/or smoking up in a school yard after dark? What is that? Is there some deeply embedded psychological connection there? Sandboxes are just one big ashtray and burial plot. And kids always want to eat the sand, like a bear getting ready for hibernation. No wonder kids get so cranky at night.

However, our own lives are not a constant. You live, you work, you die of course, but everything in between is something like the Yellowhead in a snowstorm. The road never moves, but your car sometimes does. Sometimes at extraordinary high speeds. Unless you drive a Ford Focus like me, then you just sit there and enjoy the heat because that's about the only thing that works on that car. But you have to read the signs. One little turn in the road or test to the eardrum of say, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, MICHAEL JACKSON, you could find yourself being scraped off the pavement. Unless you catch yourself in time, and then everything seems so much easier after that. But the ringing in your head of those last few lyrics will stay forever, "I'm bad, I'm bad...". The bleeding in your ears may also never stop.

Basically what I'm trying to say is, Michael Jackson is NOT the king of pop. And the little turns in the road are like changes in your life. Changes that make you think better on your feet, although a little chaotic and unnerving in even the most ideal conditions. You just have to drive the car given to you as best as you know how. Sometimes you end up with a Ford Focus. Sometimes you end up with a Porsche (can't stop talking about the Porsche dammit, the most amazing mode of transportation on this planet yet to date...the second degree burns are healing quite nicely, thanks for asking). Alternatively, you could just drive head first into a brick wall to stop the pain of "Young man....Y...M...C...A" but there is not always someone there to scrape you off the pavement. I was lucky my D Day was covered by my mom and my roommate. I'm pure titanium now. And slightly deaf.

I AM capable of playing this game of life now (although if I don't get either of these jobs that interviewed me today, I am seriously considering a brain transplant). And it is a game, a game that inevitably has to be played in order to survive a rather cruel social world - our world in a nutshell. We are definitely not instinctive animals; We do survive on society and if that is ever substantially proven wrong, I will burn my degree and move to the woods and eat squirrels and bugs. So let the game of chess begin...or build me a tree-house.

I do have to point out one last thing. I may have stopped driving this chaotic road for the last month, but my life was put on hold as a result and the temptation to stay in Ontario became enormous (there is no place like home). However, the job calls were coming in from Edmonton, not Toronto. If that is not a neon sign bedazzled by a five-year-old yelling, "hey stupid, over here", then I don't really know what is. It is good to take a pee break during that long stretch of nothingness (Manitoba, Saskatchewan) but you can only really pee (and text) on a pee break. Turning around to go back to where you came from is also completely unreasonable and worse than just stopping because you will be filled with self-doubt for the rest of your life. I'm glad I only sold off my bed before I left Edmonton (mind you, I didn't have much else other than shoes). The best thing you can do is finish the drive, get a so-called life, share the joy, and reinvent your idea of home because at some point, you might have to be the one out there scraping someone else off the pavement. My shovel is ready.