Author: Patrick

Hello, 2017. Welcome.

Odd year? Don’t worry. Even numbers are for squares. You’re in good company here. And you’re prime, too. I like you more and more. Though I know it’s not possible—if you were irrational… I’d be in love. But what sort of sense would an irrational year make?

You already know—not much.

True—and the last few years have not been prime either.

Any more math puns in there?

No, I’ve reached my limit.

…

Okay—I’m done.

Work has slowed right down. Distributing local food means there is not a whole lot to distribute in the winter aside from dairy, dry goods, and squashes—I’ve learned so much about squashes! What it also means is I’m taking a vacation because my last actual vacation, aside from camping each year at the end of summer, was ten years ago. It was Cuba then—an all‐inclusive resort for a week in early March of 2006. It was fun to be somewhere warm while it was cold back home, but this time I’m going in the opposite direction.

At the end of the month I’m flying to Iceland to spend a few days in and around Reykjavík. Then I’m continuing on to Berlin for two weeks. I have no words other than how excited I am to be going to these places I have wanted to visit ever since I found out they were places.

In Berlin I’ll be staying with my sister while she completes a writing residency project with a fellow actor and playwright. I’m bringing some of my own stuff to work on as well, so it’ll be a mixed play/work vacation. But in Iceland it will be just me, just for a few days, just wandering around this amazing island where they generate power using the heat of the Earth itself. I’ll be able to walk from the North American to the Eurasian tectonic plate, and I’ll be able to see the northern lights.

So excited!

I’m not sure what it is about my gravity, but I’ve got another nut‐job in orbit: the owner of the house I live in.

He eats coffee and cigarettes for breakfast, donuts with forceps, and raw sugar cubes stirred into giant bowls of plain yogourt. He’s constantly vocal about how busy he is despite never leaving the house, constantly commenting on how tight money is despite making what I estimate is at least $4500 renting out the rooms in the house, likes to speak French because he thinks I don’t understand it, and one day shared his unsolicited views on the races of the world in descending order of perceived politeness before ripping into Kathleen Wynne for her environmental policy. He’s political, but in an uncomfortable sort of way, like when you’re around someone who uses the word oriental and they’re talking about a person.

Then the notes started…

What is it they say about life and art?

That’s from today—so I decided to document the rest, starting with the kitchen, the most noted area of the house.

I keep a rotating number of clean glasses in my room each week to throw his count off.

It’s a ceramic cooktop—I don’t like ceramic cooktops because I like to cook and ceramic cooktops are bought by people who like to clean more than they like to cook because someone who likes to cook knows ceramic cooktops are terrible for cooking. The only way to easily keep them clean, like any cooktop, is to never use them—and you won’t because you don’t cook—but if you do, and you burn something on the surface—and you will because you don’t cook—you can’t just scour it off like on a normal stove. You have to get special cleaners and cloths or else you ruin the entire thing. On a normal stove you can boil a pot dry and just ruin a pot. On a ceramic cooktop you also melt the glass onto the underside of the pot and—surprise surprise—ruin the entire thing. I know this to be true having ruined exactly one ceramic cooktop in my life. As far as I can tell all a ceramic cooktop is supposed to do is look a certain way and nothing else, otherwise you risk its destruction. Useless!

Much like these plates…

…since everything in this house—including wood, tooth brushes, sponges, and razors—is run through the dishwasher.

Thank you—I know how a fridge works.

Seriously—what is it they say about life and art?

Innocuous at first, the tone of the notes became more condescending and passive‐aggressive as they appeared.

You have made it clear what a sophisticated European you are, but despite being a backwater hick from the sticks of Canada, I also know how a window works.

And now the pièce de résistance, the following exercise in patronizing assery disguised as wit.

I never wear my outside shoes, particularly during sloppy weather, around inside a house—but some people do. I get it…

Yes—point previously made and understood. My shoes are off. I’m carrying them.

Fuck you. I’m putting them back on now.

-huffs-

Okay—now to end on a positive note. The best part about living here is this guy:

This is Freddy, and he comes to my room to hang out before and after work. He sleeps at the end of the bed. He purrs loudly and I feed him clam snacks and brush his fur. He rolls on his back and stretches out to get tummy rubs. I thought he was a black cat at first, but his coat in the bright daylight is a rich chocolate filled with tabby echoes. He’s sitting in my lap right now reminding me it’s time for more snacks.

But before I go, one more neat thing I discovered. What colour is heat? Red, right?

Nope! Purple.

For those of you who’ve seen Pixar’s Inside Out you may remember the concept of the islands of personality introduced in the beginning of the movie—and then watched later as each one slid off into the abyss, breaking apart as they fell. If you’ve not seen this movie, do. I’ve yet to come across anything so beautifully and compassionately illustrating of what it means to be emotionally stuck, to be so stuck you forget who you are—or were. I know I sank a good many of my islands over the last few years. And the rest felt like they were bombed—Massive Attack on Heligoland.

I see what you did there.

You always do. But…

I’m happy to be rebuilding my islands: cars, computers, photography, writing, reading, music, cooking—it’s all coming back. I’m having fun again. And it’s my fun—no encroachment by colonial powers, so to speak. No disclaimers. No having to hide my happiness from jealousy or envy. No more high school mean girls shit. Who knew some gay guys could be worse than some straight girls?

You’re going to get into trouble for that one.

Nope! I experienced both, it felt the same, and as Grimes says: Now I don’t care anymore.

But… the title?

I know—it took coming to a place where I don’t care anymore to start caring again.

So this is you?

When I’m bashing crates off my knees for the third time in the evening and the second time in the week, when I’m ripping apart a skid in a refrigerated truck at midnight looking for the beans, or the onions, or the whatever it is I need to fix so the order goes out right, when I’m wrapping cheese in bubble pack or counting all the blueberries in a deep freezer, or when I just want to punch everything, I sometimes see myself as a big pink care were with lots of teeth and a giant heart—and then things are okay. I snarl inside, think of the ridiculous smiley face sun, and then things are okay. I don’t punch anything. I keep counting the blueberries, keep wrapping the cheese. I find the onions and the beans. The order will go out right, the skid is back together, I’m warm in my coat, and my knees will be fine. Yes—this is me.

Last weekend I rebuilt my computer using some second hand parts and software I got from my family—and with all the trouble I’ve had with my computers this summer, I hope they know how grateful I am. The last PC I built was in 2002, and I’ve been keeping it going since then over many years with the odd part here and there, but as I was beginning to realize as more and more software slowed to a crawl, or stopped working all together, I was running a CPU just under a decade old with less memory than some phones today on a version of Windows Microsoft stopped supporting two years ago. The main hard drives were from 2004, and they connected to the fifteen year old mother board using an interface long since replaced in modern machines.

Yes—those are a small pile of hard drives in the bottom of the case. They just sat there because there was no room anywhere else for any more drives despite me needing more storage. It’s a jumbled mess of cables and equipment, a tribute to my own attitude of not really caring about having a computer or looking after it—just keep it going, do whatever you need to do to keep it going. It’s actually something I’m quite good at—keeping things like a computer going—but I forgot to enjoy the act. I’d forgotten to care that I could. Most of my computers I’ve built from bits, and it seems fitting my newest machine is just more of the same.

This is the new CPU—an Intel Core2 Duo. It’s still an old chip, but it’s a big improvement over the Pentium 4 I’ve been using.

And this is my new graphics card—basically an entire little computer in its own right, complete with its own fan and heat pipes. Plus—with its HDMI connection I can use my TV as a 46″ monitor.

I’ve reduced the number of hard drives in the system from five to three: a 500GB system drive and a 1TB RAID made up of the two drives from my old (and failed) network storage device.

Here’s the completed system assembled into the old case—neat and tidy. Now—I’d thought about getting one of those new modern cases with the gills and the lights and everything. And maybe one day I will, but the case is now the only thing left from the 2002 machine, and my sense of continuity is telling me to keep it all in there for now. It was in 2002, after all, where my computer adventure really started, where I understood what it meant to be digital without realizing it until only recently—the consequences and effect of digitality—this binary universe—it from bit.

All that from a computer you built to a price coming up on fifteen years ago?

It’s been a good machine. Three cheers for Koinu! You ran near‐continuously for years, and though you exploded your original power supply in a shower of sparks, you never let me down, never lost a bit of data, and even in your advancing years, the only thing you sometimes forget was the time when you were left unplugged.

And, yes—I name my computers. Koinu—my old computer—is Japanese for puppy, and it was from my puppy days, when everything I named had something to do with pup stuff. If you have one of my email addresses you might notice the domain name—chiot—is the French word for puppy.

I’ve named the new machine Lundehund—after the Norwegian Puffin Dog, a nibble, six‐toed Spitz from Scandinavia. It’s a rare breed, with less than 1000 dogs in the world today, but the line is ancient, going back to what’s thought to be the primeval dog, Canis forus, rather than the more domesticated Canis familiaris we know today. It’s incredibly flexible, able to bend its head back and rest it on the top of its own spine. It can seal its ears shut by folding them forward or backward. And—what tugged at my heart the most—was the bizarre digestive disorder plaguing the breed—an inability to absorb enough nutrients no matter how much the dog eats, leading to malnutrition if diet isn’t properly managed.

A little freak dog from the north older than time with a rubber spine, bendy ears, and a tricky gut? Sounds like the perfect digital companion for a big, pink‐furred care were…

So let’s raise the flag up high on the new and improved computer island. Let it fly in the wonderful wind! This one’s mine again.

Rawr!