starting again and changing my ways

I slept in mad late for work this morning so I told myself I'd get to bed by 11 tonight. Meaning I'll only have a couple minutes to blog left. Today, because I took the day off (accidentally) I spent most of the day laying around, but at about 3:30 I went up and did some Christmas shopping and didn't buy any Christmas presents and then went over to the bread garden and had a double shot espresso and read my Bible and settled down to the filling of the epic notebook/sketchbook I have recently acquired. So far it's pretty rough around the edges (it always is when I don't write or sketch for a while), but I suppose I might transcribe some awesomeness. Here's a rough rap verse that could be put with another verse I have in the book.

like a drop on a leaky faucet I lost it builds up too soon here's the line and I crossed it I was stalling for time forsaking the rhyme no rythm or timing it stopped my climbing no progress but regress if this is test then I just failed but the worst bit about it is I just bailed mailed out my resignation from this race digital eyes taking its place but if there's time left for me to retrace I'm starting again I'm changing my ways

It's not in a good format and there's a word misspelled among other problems, but I'll fix that as soon as I can (thus making this sentence irrelevant)

pipe smoking professor

BfME2

So I never wrote anything the other night. It sucks, I know. Last night was pretty bad too, when I went into my room in the evening I was determined that i was going to shut down my computer and spend my time writing, but when I turned on my computer I realized that I was halfway through an epic Battle for Middle Earth II campaign so I pretty much had to finish it. Unfortunately finishing it took me well through the night and into the morning and I only got a couple of hours of sleep and no writing done. I will though. It's going to happen.

fool sitting here typing

sufficient awesomeness

We got an awesome tree this year, probably the best yet. We went up to Aunt Leah's Tree Farm, a charity tree farm, and bought a noble Douglas fir for eighty something dollars. It's insanely full and rich (and expensive), but I don't feel bad one bit about having such a costly tree in my house, purely for our enjoyment/amusement because the money is going to a great charity (Aunt Leah's works with mostly troubled youth, halfway homes, and unwanted pregnancies). I really feel like I should write something now. it's been a few days since i last wrote anything and i feel "ripe" to write. I feel like a drop of water that's been building on a slightly leaky tap for a long time and it's been swelling to the point where it can't stay on the tap and it'll fall in another second. I definitely will write whatever it is that i need to write tonight and I may post it on here if it is sufficiently awesome. speaking of awesomeness, I just thought of a great word... awesomeless... which is like the opposite of awesomeness in every way, lacking in awesomeness I guess.

pipe smoking professor

folk-rap awesomeness

Right now I am rocking out to the awesomely talented Josh Garrels. We went to the "Spirit of Christmas" at TWU and he was playing a live set in the Atrium and he definitely outclassed the Western Fiddlers who played before him. In fact he pretty much not only destroyed them, but he also blew minds, mine included. The man is a mix of folk music and folk rap, which is awesome. Last year when I got my first K-os album I became fascinated by the concept of melodic rap and especially folk rap (artists like Matt Kearney), but then that kind of faded out of view until the other night when I heard Josh Garrels and the man is pretty much the embodiment of the folk-rap genre. go check him out and prepare to have your mind blown. Also check out the folk-rap genre because although it is madly underrepresented, it is one of the hardcore sweetest genres out there. because folk music rocks, and melodic rap rocks, and together they rock madly.

zen master

The Park Ranger Strikes Back

The other day I realized that I say the word 'epic' much too much so I went to thesaurus.com and looked up some synonyms. I think the best results I could find were 'Homeric' and 'Herculean' so from now on I will replace 'epic' with one or the other, depending on the situation. This will be an exercise in broadening my vocabulary because words or phrases like 'epic' tend to temporarily take over everything I say.
I actually looked the word up when I was down in Bellingham last week for American Thanksgiving. I went down with Josh Burdick and a whole crew of people (Jenny, Toshi, Jackie, Anne, Justin, Phil) going to his house for the dinner and the shopping. Americans are hardcore about celebrating thanksgiving and a Homeric weekend was had by all. The morning after the herculean dinner, however, I spotted an ancient typewriter in the Burdick house and Mrs. Burdick grabbed a piece of paper and said I could type on it. It was definitely a pretty Homeric experience and the following is the awesomecore poetry of the morning that I typed out.

beeswax daytime wakes me from my repose
while sunlight filters through the window frame
it's no surprise the nighttime went so fast
so soft the daylight came so soon
I've not yet woken from my moonlit dream

I dreamt a golden tear was falling from his face
while all around the ocean waves kept pace
with the beating of my own familiar heart
and though it captivated in me every part
I could not hold it from the break of day
I woke to golden tears in place of sunlit rays

and all around me happiness is in my ear
the sight of day has brought my heart to tears
the birdsong, the dog bark, the beeswax daytime
the clear sky, the warm hearts beating next to mine

Later in the morning I wrote more awesomecore (I can't use Homeric or herculean in this situation, although I would have used epic) poetry on a scrap of paper and the day before I was writing a sweetness punk song so I have been pretty busy, but my basic routine doesn't really encourage time for writing. Basically I get up and go to work, work for eight hours, and come home and entertain myself with movies and games. I feel like I'm amusing myself to death. The only real time when I get anything done is right now, in the morning before i leave for work, but usually I work at the Victoria Drive location of Surplus Sam's so that doesn't leave me much time. Hopefully I'll be working at the Burnaby location for a while and I can write a sweet series of morning poems. That would be Homeric.

Park Ranger

A New Smoke

I got a great new book today, it's a comprehensive collection of Robert Frost's poetry. So far I've only read the first two poems, but he starts off with crazy crazy awesomeness. Although Robert Frost is the man, I would also like to get hold of some of T.S. Elliot's poetry because I read "The Hollow Men" ages ago and it's pretty much my favorite poem ever, but I've never read anything else by Elliot.
On the epic journey i missed out on Michigan and Detroit and I was sorely disappointed by this. However, everyone says that I missed nothing, that Detroit is the worst city in America, but they don't realize that out of the worst conditions comes the best poetry and music. I think that's why, when musicians get famous and make a lot of money, their music tends to lose much of its awesomeness. It's because now they are living the good life and they have nothing to sing about except how happy and boring their lives are. The poetry of T.S. Elliot and Robert Frost is not about how happy and boring their lives are. It is good poetry. I look forward with eager anticipation to reading them both.

Pipe Smoking Professor

The Return of the Pipe Smoking Professor

I am definitely back in Canada now and it's good to be sleeping in a real bed and eating real food, my last meal before coming home on Tuesday was a can of "Chef Boyardee ChiliMac". Trust me, Chef Boyardee is good, chili is good, and macaroni is good, but together and cold they taste pretty disgusting. Sorry for not updating for the past couple of weeks, for the las two weeks of my trip I didn't stay in any hostels because I was rushing around so much on the train so I didn't have ready access to the internet. The only times I stayed overnight in a city in the last two weeks were Sacramento and Kansas city and I just stayed up all night. Sacramento was pretty good, but at about 3:00am at Denny's I realized I had lost my ticket and pass and had to run back through the city and retrace my steps. Eventually I ended up at the train station around when it opened and one of the employees had found the ticket and given it to the ticket counter people where I found it. I did write an epic song about Sacramento though, but it's really epic and therefore would take a while to type out so I'm not putting it on here. Kansas city was the least welcoming place on my travels, I just don't think people liked other people there, it was like the antithesis to Halifax. Also there was at least one bumbling security guard who made my life miserable, another who was doing his job, his job being keeping people out of a public park, a criminal purse thief, a 24 hour bail bonds place, a burning sewer vent, many many drunk people, a non-24-hour Denny's, a homeless man, another homeless man, music screamed in the middle of the night, chunks of ice for toes, the book of Lamentations, and an epic journey. The epic journey was the journey from Missouri to Kansas. Kansas city falls on the state line between Missouri and Kansas and unfortunately the train stops in the Missouri half of the city. I had to make it to Kansas so I had about 3 or 4 miles to trek across the city to get to Kansas proper. It was an epic journey and I documented it on film, but I want to get this entry out there so I will put the videos in another entry. Later on in the non-24hr Denny's I documented the results of my entire epic journey (the whole thing) in a poem:

It's been so long, been on the road
cause Kansas winds were in my bones
I've searched the high and Northern shores
I've stood and knocked at strangers doors
I've walked alone on broken streets
I've nursed my cold and broken feet
I've drunk my fill on golden draughts
but never once i have forgot
the sacred song, the silent night
the ancient dream, eternal sight
the yellow sun on Kansas fields
the great expanse, the boundful yields
for this I've searched for countless years
for every mile, another tear
but now it seems they're shed in vain
as darkened skies turn into rain
this is Kansas
a streetcorner
this is Kansas
a neon sign
this is Kansas
a black mourner
this is Kansas
a yellow line
this is Kansas
a chainlink fence
this is Kansas
a dying dance
if this is Kansas
why does it look like the Kingdom of God?

That last line is an epic line for its multiple awesome meanings and although I don't really like explaining my poetry, I feel this line could easily be twisted so I will clarify its meaning. It refers to both the fact that I am sorely disappointed in the real Kansas (it was not what I expected), and the fact that the Kingdom of God is at hand and these streets and these broken and dying people in this broken and dying city are what the Kingdom of God is made up of and because of this I'm not really disappointed, but happy. The Kingdom of God isn't made up of rolling hills and fields of golden wheat, but out of broken and hurting people who have nothing to give, least of all beauty. It's a pretty epic realization.