Whitehorse to Skagway
Having explored Whitehorse - or as much as the deadline would permit - we're off to Skagway. Alaska.
It's a short drive, and we break it up with light amusements. The Yukon Suspension Bridge, a trivial (and missable) tourist attraction on the highway.
I'm excited by the rocks - lots of hard rock, mica schist, the promise of more interesting minerals to come.
Now the drive - Whitehorse to Skagway - is short - perhaps 2 hours - but it's beautiful. The first hour flies - stop at the suspension bridge, wander, into car, but here the terrain changes.
We drive between increasingly high coastal mountains, beneath us a low valley, glacially carved from the granite, adorned with thousands of dwarf pines and tiny lakes. It's a surreal scene. And I take pictures, but none would do it justice.
A valley, between two giant mountains, filled with pine trees - (?) perhaps a foot high, "lakes" as small as a foot wide, thousands of them, you feel - as you look upon it - as a giant....
The road climbs into the mist and drizzle - the view vanishes, hopes for a grand photo vanish. over the White Pass - visibility - perhaps 50 feet, rain, drizzle, up, up, up, then finally down.
Out of the rain and mist and into Skagway.
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The Problem With You Is....
Now I've had this conversation before, a few times if memory serves, but she's not letting it go.
She's generous with her unsolicited criticism, inventorying my faults, some real, most imagined, her unending list of trivial complaints, when asked what she wants (more money perhaps?) she changes her tack.
She has vicious little oratories on the high road of the exemplary path she's taken, I should profit by her example, learn from her.
"THE PROBLEM WITH YOU IS..."
and she starts again, taking liberties with a friendship based soley on the mutual interest of our child, she lectures, prevaricates, I try to look interested, don't contradict her or point out the many blind alleys she roams down, it's mind numbing and tragic all at the same time.
I'm well aware my faults, both real and imagined, but to have to listen to the inventory of them by a vindictive ex, sometimes it's too much.
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The Nephew's Stream of Consciousness
When he's bored he just talks. He provokes you with his conversation, telling you things that - while true - he shouldn't be telling you.
Today it's about the "camping" trips in Italy when he was young. Perhaps 12 or so. Where he and his friends rode to an isolated spot in a forest and sat round in a circle and jacked off together.
A "Circle Jerk", as they say.
He brought it up his last trip to Italy, a group of his old friends and their new girlfriends and family, "remember when guys...." there was a discreet coughing and silence.
It just popped into his head.
Now the story doesn't offend me as much as the fact of it does, recalling once vigorous arguments I held with girlfriends about this exact same topic - girlfriends that believed that all men rode to the forest - together - and jacked off.
At this time I'd never heard of this, naive, and I denied it, certainly I knew nothing of it.
But since meeting the Nephew I know better.
***
He's back home on his lunch break, down in Sunalta, he's unable to return to work as the cops have effected a bust in the alley.
A car, 2 black guys, one white, native girl.
They've cordoned off the alley, there's no coming or going for the nephew, and so he sits on his balcony and watches.
The cops haul a dozen, 2 dozen, 50 empty mickeys of Alberta Vodka from the car, then finally one full one. "Is this yours" they ask in turn every member of the car. Everyone denies it.
They keep going through the car. A bag of pills, the nephew can describe it, no one in the car claims it. Same with some loose needles filled with what appears to be blood. Still they go through the car. They find a large rubber dildo - with balls. This pleases the cops endlessly. They start with the native girl ... "Is this yours?" .... she denies it. They move onto the black guys, ....." Is this yours? Are you sure? Look at it....I think it is...." They talk to the nephew..."You ever seen one like this? With balls? He hasn't.....
He's laughing so hard as he tells it to me, he knew some of the cops from his many domestic complaints, invited them in for a coffee but they couldn't, still, it was the funnies thing he's seen and I can well imagine....
***
He has a sympathy for the homeless that I don't possess. There's a native fellow in a wheelchair that pisses every morning on his window, he wakes to see the man's **ck streaming urine down the glass, he doesn't get upset. "Hey" he tells the guy "Could you please... stop...I mean..." he's explaining it to me..."I mean once, OK, twice, OK, three times, OK, but every day and it will start to stink...." He gives him money as a sort of bribe, I know who he's talking about, the wheelchair guy takes it as an invitation to spend the night, the Nephew has to quickly backpedal...."My girlfriend, she'd kill me..."
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Of a sudden...
And it's Autumn. Scarce has summer passed - arrived, even, then all the trees have turned and the leaves are rattling down the streets.
I notice it today, too many days in the restaurant, a week is all it takes here, and the seasons have changed, winter is in the air, the cats are no longer dying to go outside, in the air is winter. I don't care, my time is to be served serving people, while I'd love to enjoy the poetry and changing hues, to be going for coffee and tasting - however bitter - life outside, it's not going to be happening. Not this year. This is the year I wrap up every ounce, every last grain of Bad Karma I've accumulated this lifetime - every lifetime - and move on. Already the smile thins, I can in my mind's eye picture the sun setting from Nose Hill, picture walking thoughtfully along creeks and speculating on all that that went before, picture panning for gold (and even picture finding it, so vivid is my imagination).
It's only been 2 years, a light sentence, but when it's done it's done.
Outside, all of a sudden without notice or warning and it's Autumn.
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