A casino! In Whistler? What a novel idea.
There has been absolutely no talk about it from town planners, at least not that the public has heard, and any time the topic comes up in conversation people are vehemently opposed to the idea.
The main argument is that it doesn't fit the image that Whistler has created for itself - but what about it doesn't fit?
Whistler is a tourist mill and if we want to keep the turnstiles active there needs to be every variety of experience attracting visitors. This needs to extend beyond just family experiences. As Las Vegas knows all too well, families don't bring in the dollars.
That's not to say Whistler should become Sin City North in order to thrive, but it needs to start thinking outside of family-friendly-only programming. Whistler at present does not provide a whole lot for adults to do after dinner, except for nightclubbing, an activity that, on the whole, loses its appeal a) after one or two nights in a row and b) once people turn 30. Whistler is actually kind of boring. If it wants to thrive, it needs to cast its net much wider.
A casino is a good place to start because it's not just a casino - it's a restaurant, it's a bar, it's a theatre. With a new venue will come increased programming and, depending on the success of the casino, that programming could be more world-class on a more regular basis than this town currently provides. A casino is, in short, is a people-attracting, entertainment-compounding moneymaker.
In British Columbia, host local governments earn 10 per cent of a casino's revenue. In the 2009/10 year, the provincial government distributed $81.9 million to these communities. Between July 1999 and March 31, 2011, Penticton earned over $21 million. Nanaimo earned over $32 million in that same period. Prince George - $24 million-plus. Richmond - $93 million. Fort St. John - over $2 million, and that's in a very remote location in B.C.'s north.
Now that Canada has approved destination status in China, Whistler has the opportunity to pull in - and profit from - a new type of tourist coming to Canada, but right now the town has very little to keep Chinese tourists in Whistler for more than a day. They get off the bus, they take some pictures, they get on the bus and go back to the city. And the Chinese - they love to gamble. Macau, located on the southern tip of China, is the biggest and most successful gambling destination in the world, pulling in revenues of $24 billion in 2010 - way above Las Vegas. Whistler, and indeed Canada, needs a very good reason for Chinese tourists to spend their coin across the ocean. Vancouver city council, in its rejection last month of a massive casino along False Creek, aborted a potentially massive cash cow.
Whistler's strongest appeal right now is the regional market, but it's completely missing the people who don't care about the great outdoors. Metro Vancouver residents have their own "great outdoors" to appreciate. They need other reasons to come up.
There would be a definite dark side. Casinos can bring out in a community a certain desperation that might not otherwise exist. The underbelly of Whistler may flop over topside. But try as we might, Whistler cannot stave the ugliness off forever. It's the nature of growing up. The hardships, they breed evils. Where there's a yin, there's a yang. How we confront and deal with those evils will determine what sort of presence it has in the community. Whistler is fortunate in that it's still very young in 2011, with over a century of mistakes in urban planning to learn from.
We can't have it both ways. If we want tourists to come, we need to give them every reason to make the hour and a half trek from Vancouver. The mountains are good enough for the people who live here but as we now know, they're not good enough for everyone else.
It's astonishing that, even in a global recession, Whistler has attracted millions of people based on its outdoor offerings alone. But it's not enough. It never has been enough and that's what the Cultural Tourism Development Strategy is about. Building a casino could be a part of that strategy. It's time to start thinking about what the town needs to maximize its financial successes.
Showing posts with label lifestyle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lifestyle. Show all posts
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
The purpose of death must be to live, or something similarly obvious
I was sucking on a quarter. It caught a ride with my saliva and sailed down my throat. I was nine, or something. Following the panic incited by my choking noises, my sitter's husband came to the rescue, hitting me square between the shoulder blades and ejecting the coin. I picked it up and probably spent it in some jellybeans. Later that week, I was sucking on a loony and the same thing happened.
The fact that I almost died twice within a week meant very little to me then. Death for us as children was an unidentifiable concept because we had a limited understanding of the nature of mortality. Once we grew older and more aware of our role in the universe, then the gravity of such matters began to settle. For a child, choking on quarters is the pinnacle of hilarity.
Mathew certainly found it funny. He'd use it as his go-to potshot for months afterward. We'd been best friends for a couple of years by then and so were taking the piss out of each on the regular. We lived 10 houses apart in those days and would spend most afternoons ignoring our homework and exploring the forests surrounding the neighbourhood instead.
We'd pretend we were a pair of gumshoeing movie stars named Joshua and Michael who wore earrings in our left lobes because in real life our parents wouldn't allow such fashion. No, in real life we were a pair of nine-year-old dweebs toiling in the fleeting heedlessness of pre-adolescence, united by a close proximity and a fondness for spandex bicycle shorts.
Mathew died when we were 12 and I still don't know how. My parents said it was an accident while the kids that knew him said and continue to say that the cause was more deliberate. The facts don't matter to me now and they certainly didn't then. He was gone, is gone, will be gone and that has always been enough for me to deal with.
Naturally, I cried myself to sleep every night for a week or so, maybe a month, while maintaining absolute composure during the day. Everything seemed the same on the surface - I was still ignoring my homework, still cultivating a deep love of music that may have been accelerated by the loss of a friend. It happened at a time when most kids are coming into awareness and the sudden death of someone so close and so young was a rude and sinister eye opener. Traumas like that are like a boulder splashing in a pond. The bigger the stone, the bigger the splash and the longer it takes for the ripples to settle before all is calm and the reflection is what it was.
It took about 15 years for the complexity of that event to be fully understood. I graduated from an almost crippling fear in my teens of other people dying, to a complete indifference toward my own mortality, to an absolute certainty in my early to mid-twenties that death was lurking around every corner.
But as the great sage Roseanne Barr once said, "If you spend all your time worrying about dying, living isn't going to be very much fun," and I spent a lot of effort between shifts and between classes finding ways to settle what had been a lengthy rippling in the pond. Eventually, over a series of trips both geographical and psychotropic, through the comforts of music and literature, through conversations with family and strangers alike, and eventually escaping the city life, I found the perspective I had been fighting for. Finding contentment is difficult work and don't let anyone tell you any different.
The final step, of course, happened while in Whistler, while chewing on a piece of over-cooked steak. The piece was a little too big but I'm careless by nature so I ate it anyway. The meat cube slid on a stream of saliva much like an incident 17 years previous, and into my throat. After pulling the lodged meat from throat with my left hand, I sat panting at the table, wondering what it would have looked like for my roommates to find my corpse on the floor and a steak on the table.
I laughed then - a short, refreshing laugh while contemplating for the first time without fear what it would have felt like if the steak had succeeded in killing me.
The fact that I almost died twice within a week meant very little to me then. Death for us as children was an unidentifiable concept because we had a limited understanding of the nature of mortality. Once we grew older and more aware of our role in the universe, then the gravity of such matters began to settle. For a child, choking on quarters is the pinnacle of hilarity.
Mathew certainly found it funny. He'd use it as his go-to potshot for months afterward. We'd been best friends for a couple of years by then and so were taking the piss out of each on the regular. We lived 10 houses apart in those days and would spend most afternoons ignoring our homework and exploring the forests surrounding the neighbourhood instead.
We'd pretend we were a pair of gumshoeing movie stars named Joshua and Michael who wore earrings in our left lobes because in real life our parents wouldn't allow such fashion. No, in real life we were a pair of nine-year-old dweebs toiling in the fleeting heedlessness of pre-adolescence, united by a close proximity and a fondness for spandex bicycle shorts.
Mathew died when we were 12 and I still don't know how. My parents said it was an accident while the kids that knew him said and continue to say that the cause was more deliberate. The facts don't matter to me now and they certainly didn't then. He was gone, is gone, will be gone and that has always been enough for me to deal with.
Naturally, I cried myself to sleep every night for a week or so, maybe a month, while maintaining absolute composure during the day. Everything seemed the same on the surface - I was still ignoring my homework, still cultivating a deep love of music that may have been accelerated by the loss of a friend. It happened at a time when most kids are coming into awareness and the sudden death of someone so close and so young was a rude and sinister eye opener. Traumas like that are like a boulder splashing in a pond. The bigger the stone, the bigger the splash and the longer it takes for the ripples to settle before all is calm and the reflection is what it was.
It took about 15 years for the complexity of that event to be fully understood. I graduated from an almost crippling fear in my teens of other people dying, to a complete indifference toward my own mortality, to an absolute certainty in my early to mid-twenties that death was lurking around every corner.
But as the great sage Roseanne Barr once said, "If you spend all your time worrying about dying, living isn't going to be very much fun," and I spent a lot of effort between shifts and between classes finding ways to settle what had been a lengthy rippling in the pond. Eventually, over a series of trips both geographical and psychotropic, through the comforts of music and literature, through conversations with family and strangers alike, and eventually escaping the city life, I found the perspective I had been fighting for. Finding contentment is difficult work and don't let anyone tell you any different.
The final step, of course, happened while in Whistler, while chewing on a piece of over-cooked steak. The piece was a little too big but I'm careless by nature so I ate it anyway. The meat cube slid on a stream of saliva much like an incident 17 years previous, and into my throat. After pulling the lodged meat from throat with my left hand, I sat panting at the table, wondering what it would have looked like for my roommates to find my corpse on the floor and a steak on the table.
I laughed then - a short, refreshing laugh while contemplating for the first time without fear what it would have felt like if the steak had succeeded in killing me.
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
The Valentine's Day love story you've been waiting for
My first kiss was a peck on the lips of the girl I had been in love with for four or five months. We kissed on a dare made by our mutual friend, Suzie. It was innocent enough, simple enough - a brief peck and that was it. Kaily was smiling about it. For her, it was not a big deal.
She had a husband, see, and had been kissing him and holding hands with him throughout the fall. She had been married the month before in a wedding ceremony at the school yard baseball diamond, where she and her fiancée, Edward, a four-foot Filipino with a lustrous crop of jet-black hair I could never live up to, exchanged rings made of twist ties.
Because I didn't have a date I was not welcome to the ceremony and had to watch my love given away to another man atop some monkey bars located across the field with the few other 12-year-old rejects barred from the celebration, listening as the wind carried the wedding party's giggles in our direction.
A month later, Kaily, Suzie and myself were playing truth or dare. I had smoked my very first cigarette an hour or so before and my mouth tasted like the insole of a running shoe. I was self-conscious about the smell but as Kaily leaned in closer I noticed she reeked like cigarettes, too. This was a little comforting but as she leaned her face toward mine, I became a radiator of human heat. My heart was beating too fast and I thought this is the end. My chest is going to explode in a bloody mess all over my love.
But I leaned ever closer, my left eye shut tight and my right eye open a crack to view with limited visibility Kaily's puckered, wrinkled mouth inch toward mine. And we pecked and it was done.
Soon after that, Suzie and Kaily fellated their boyfriends. Suzie had passed a note around the classroom about the incident and later threw it away in the class trashcan. For some reason, our teacher dug it out of the bin and a controversy was born upon discovering the debauched behaviour of cigarette-smoking seventh graders trading after-school sexual favours in family living rooms. It was a big deal around the classroom and I'm certain it shook the more innocent-minded students out of their naiveté. It certainly did mine. I had no concept of such behaviour, and the thought of having someone's mouth...y'know, down there was absurd and unappealing.
Because this was a Catholic elementary school, any indecent behaviour was magnified ten-fold and I'd find out later this was one of - if not the -first time St. Paul's Catholic Elementary School had to deal with issues of student sexuality.
I'd also find out later through some friends that during this same period, at a public elementary school across the road, oral sex was akin to eating peppermints. Seventh-graders were taking regular hits of LSD and having sex in the bushes lining the playground. Indecent behaviour was rampant around this part of Richmond, British Columbia, and was a vital sign that Canada's youth were learning the methods of grown-up fun at a far younger age than their parents.
It seems strange to me, even now, that anybody in the seventh grade was even contemplating sex. I had only a vague sense of what it implied and what it looked like. It was something dark and murky and sounded like sheets rustling from behind bedroom walls. I thought ejaculate was yellow, like urine, and the prospect of sexual intercourse seemed to me as ludicrous as navigating my own way across the Pacific Ocean.
But this single event had yanked me from my carefully coddled universe of toy cars and Goosebumps novels into a more carnal reality of human sexuality. There was suddenly a realm of experience that existed beyond what Saturday morning cartoons were describing. The muffled rustling behind bedroom walls now had some clear visuals. It was alluring yet alarming, and bewildering that I had remained so ignorant of these primal desires while kids that I knew - that I talked with and shared granola bars, traded baseball cards with - were acting out their hormonal urges after school while their parents were away at work.
The following year - the first year of high school, when sex was still perplexing but the rite of masturbation had clarified some of its mysteries -a girl from my old seventh grade class admitted she wanted me to be her boyfriend, so she could "do it" with me.
"Would you have said yes?" she said.
"Probably not," I said.
I made up some nonsense about being in love with someone else, but the truth was I was too awkward to think about even kissing a girl. It would take several more years before the buds of this hormonal human would blossom into something, um, more fully functioning, but at this moment I was still holding on to that single moment one year before when ignorant innocence was still my reality and a pair of puckered, shriveled lips were enough to make my head explode.
I left that conversation and walked on home, wondering if I could catch the last half of Animaniacs.
She had a husband, see, and had been kissing him and holding hands with him throughout the fall. She had been married the month before in a wedding ceremony at the school yard baseball diamond, where she and her fiancée, Edward, a four-foot Filipino with a lustrous crop of jet-black hair I could never live up to, exchanged rings made of twist ties.
Because I didn't have a date I was not welcome to the ceremony and had to watch my love given away to another man atop some monkey bars located across the field with the few other 12-year-old rejects barred from the celebration, listening as the wind carried the wedding party's giggles in our direction.
A month later, Kaily, Suzie and myself were playing truth or dare. I had smoked my very first cigarette an hour or so before and my mouth tasted like the insole of a running shoe. I was self-conscious about the smell but as Kaily leaned in closer I noticed she reeked like cigarettes, too. This was a little comforting but as she leaned her face toward mine, I became a radiator of human heat. My heart was beating too fast and I thought this is the end. My chest is going to explode in a bloody mess all over my love.
But I leaned ever closer, my left eye shut tight and my right eye open a crack to view with limited visibility Kaily's puckered, wrinkled mouth inch toward mine. And we pecked and it was done.
Soon after that, Suzie and Kaily fellated their boyfriends. Suzie had passed a note around the classroom about the incident and later threw it away in the class trashcan. For some reason, our teacher dug it out of the bin and a controversy was born upon discovering the debauched behaviour of cigarette-smoking seventh graders trading after-school sexual favours in family living rooms. It was a big deal around the classroom and I'm certain it shook the more innocent-minded students out of their naiveté. It certainly did mine. I had no concept of such behaviour, and the thought of having someone's mouth...y'know, down there was absurd and unappealing.
Because this was a Catholic elementary school, any indecent behaviour was magnified ten-fold and I'd find out later this was one of - if not the -first time St. Paul's Catholic Elementary School had to deal with issues of student sexuality.
I'd also find out later through some friends that during this same period, at a public elementary school across the road, oral sex was akin to eating peppermints. Seventh-graders were taking regular hits of LSD and having sex in the bushes lining the playground. Indecent behaviour was rampant around this part of Richmond, British Columbia, and was a vital sign that Canada's youth were learning the methods of grown-up fun at a far younger age than their parents.
It seems strange to me, even now, that anybody in the seventh grade was even contemplating sex. I had only a vague sense of what it implied and what it looked like. It was something dark and murky and sounded like sheets rustling from behind bedroom walls. I thought ejaculate was yellow, like urine, and the prospect of sexual intercourse seemed to me as ludicrous as navigating my own way across the Pacific Ocean.
But this single event had yanked me from my carefully coddled universe of toy cars and Goosebumps novels into a more carnal reality of human sexuality. There was suddenly a realm of experience that existed beyond what Saturday morning cartoons were describing. The muffled rustling behind bedroom walls now had some clear visuals. It was alluring yet alarming, and bewildering that I had remained so ignorant of these primal desires while kids that I knew - that I talked with and shared granola bars, traded baseball cards with - were acting out their hormonal urges after school while their parents were away at work.
The following year - the first year of high school, when sex was still perplexing but the rite of masturbation had clarified some of its mysteries -a girl from my old seventh grade class admitted she wanted me to be her boyfriend, so she could "do it" with me.
"Would you have said yes?" she said.
"Probably not," I said.
I made up some nonsense about being in love with someone else, but the truth was I was too awkward to think about even kissing a girl. It would take several more years before the buds of this hormonal human would blossom into something, um, more fully functioning, but at this moment I was still holding on to that single moment one year before when ignorant innocence was still my reality and a pair of puckered, shriveled lips were enough to make my head explode.
I left that conversation and walked on home, wondering if I could catch the last half of Animaniacs.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
Ten ways to a good roommate
By Stephen Smysnuik
Living with roommates is a bummer because it generally means having to live with people we can't sleep with. Few people will readily resign to the deficiencies humans are known for if sex isn't available as a reward for putting up with them.
So, yeah, living with people is a bummer. In order to ease the burden I've spent hours poring over ancient texts relating to home-sharing, from Mayan scheduling for taking out the garbage to Roman philosophies on how to deal with foul-smelling roommates. It's true.
This painstaking research has been to provide you, the Good People of Whistler, with 10 rules to live by that will make you not only a decent person to live with but, by extension, a decent human being.
1) Do the dishes: This is the cardinal rule. If there's one thing that breeds resentment in roommates, it's letting the dishes stack in the sink. They're crusted with
food, people! They attract flies in the summer and cause smells that no human
paying $775 per month should have to live with. Wash your dishes as soon as you're finished with them. If you're too lazy to do this one simple task, well, maybe you shouldn't exist.
2) No parties on a school night: We all like the occasional 2 a.m. living-room dance party but it's unfair to subject your roommates to this behaviour if they have to work in the morning. Friday nights/nights of mutual days off are fine - that's the cross we bear for having to live with people. But on a Tuesday night? With five to eight other people carrying on? With Kool and the Gang soundtracking the shenanigans? Not cool.
3) No loud sex: This will be a tough rule to follow for all the Don Juans in town but it's important to test pre-coitus just how thin your walls are. Sound will travel to other rooms and other people will be subjected to your impassioned noise making. This is awkward for everyone concerned, especially the lonely.
4) Respect the bathroom: It gets very crowded in there, meaning a lot of grit and grime (at the very least, if you're lucky) very quickly. This is typically an unpleasant experience for everyone concerned. Clean often and create a chart for who does what when, so everyone has equal opportunity to avoid the most unsavoury of tasks. And light a match once you've had your way with it, for chris'sake.
5) Share condiments BUT: only if you add to the condiment selection. Everything else in the fridge is off limits. Unless, of course, you bought it/made it, then you can eat it. But if it's growing fur, it's your responsibility to make sure it doesn't come back to life.
6) Clean up after yourself: It's essentially the same thing as doing your dishes.
No one wants to sit in a room decorated with your old socks or eat off a table peppered with your marijuana crumbs, however enthusiastic we may be about these assorted items. It's simple and decent to put your belongings in their appropriate places. It's easy, regardless of how stoned you might be.
7) Ask about having outsiders stay over: Note, it's uncool to have someone
stay over for longer than a week straight, even if it's in your room. It's off base to even ask. If you plan on having someone over for one night, no need to say anything (unless your roommate is a real stickler). If they plan on staying two, it's important to let everyone in the house know ahead of time. If more than one person is staying over, even for one night, the same rule applies. And ALWAYS inform your guests which door the bathroom is, lest some serious awkwardness should occur.
8) Communicate: Don't leave notes. Avoid passive aggressive anything. If you have a problem with someone, tell them, but don't be aggressive. It's easier said than done but if everyone lets their resentment fester, it compounds and explodes in typically dramatic and unappealing terms.
9) Wear clothing: You may think your abdominal muscles will weaken the knees of
all the ladies but they won't. It's actually an unseemly nuisance especially if you're hairy and spend most of your time in the kitchen.
10) Use common sense: Don't have any? Find some. It's readily available. Some examples: Buy paper towels when they're all done. Clean the counter if it's dirty. Take out the garbage if it's over-flowing with the week's Ramen noodle packages. Vacuum. Don't be the resident slob in the house because if you are, no one will love you. You'll be regarded with scowls and won't be invited to parties, even if they're thrown in your own home.
Living with roommates is a bummer because it generally means having to live with people we can't sleep with. Few people will readily resign to the deficiencies humans are known for if sex isn't available as a reward for putting up with them.
So, yeah, living with people is a bummer. In order to ease the burden I've spent hours poring over ancient texts relating to home-sharing, from Mayan scheduling for taking out the garbage to Roman philosophies on how to deal with foul-smelling roommates. It's true.
This painstaking research has been to provide you, the Good People of Whistler, with 10 rules to live by that will make you not only a decent person to live with but, by extension, a decent human being.
1) Do the dishes: This is the cardinal rule. If there's one thing that breeds resentment in roommates, it's letting the dishes stack in the sink. They're crusted with
food, people! They attract flies in the summer and cause smells that no human
paying $775 per month should have to live with. Wash your dishes as soon as you're finished with them. If you're too lazy to do this one simple task, well, maybe you shouldn't exist.
2) No parties on a school night: We all like the occasional 2 a.m. living-room dance party but it's unfair to subject your roommates to this behaviour if they have to work in the morning. Friday nights/nights of mutual days off are fine - that's the cross we bear for having to live with people. But on a Tuesday night? With five to eight other people carrying on? With Kool and the Gang soundtracking the shenanigans? Not cool.
3) No loud sex: This will be a tough rule to follow for all the Don Juans in town but it's important to test pre-coitus just how thin your walls are. Sound will travel to other rooms and other people will be subjected to your impassioned noise making. This is awkward for everyone concerned, especially the lonely.
4) Respect the bathroom: It gets very crowded in there, meaning a lot of grit and grime (at the very least, if you're lucky) very quickly. This is typically an unpleasant experience for everyone concerned. Clean often and create a chart for who does what when, so everyone has equal opportunity to avoid the most unsavoury of tasks. And light a match once you've had your way with it, for chris'sake.
5) Share condiments BUT: only if you add to the condiment selection. Everything else in the fridge is off limits. Unless, of course, you bought it/made it, then you can eat it. But if it's growing fur, it's your responsibility to make sure it doesn't come back to life.
6) Clean up after yourself: It's essentially the same thing as doing your dishes.
No one wants to sit in a room decorated with your old socks or eat off a table peppered with your marijuana crumbs, however enthusiastic we may be about these assorted items. It's simple and decent to put your belongings in their appropriate places. It's easy, regardless of how stoned you might be.
7) Ask about having outsiders stay over: Note, it's uncool to have someone
stay over for longer than a week straight, even if it's in your room. It's off base to even ask. If you plan on having someone over for one night, no need to say anything (unless your roommate is a real stickler). If they plan on staying two, it's important to let everyone in the house know ahead of time. If more than one person is staying over, even for one night, the same rule applies. And ALWAYS inform your guests which door the bathroom is, lest some serious awkwardness should occur.
8) Communicate: Don't leave notes. Avoid passive aggressive anything. If you have a problem with someone, tell them, but don't be aggressive. It's easier said than done but if everyone lets their resentment fester, it compounds and explodes in typically dramatic and unappealing terms.
9) Wear clothing: You may think your abdominal muscles will weaken the knees of
all the ladies but they won't. It's actually an unseemly nuisance especially if you're hairy and spend most of your time in the kitchen.
10) Use common sense: Don't have any? Find some. It's readily available. Some examples: Buy paper towels when they're all done. Clean the counter if it's dirty. Take out the garbage if it's over-flowing with the week's Ramen noodle packages. Vacuum. Don't be the resident slob in the house because if you are, no one will love you. You'll be regarded with scowls and won't be invited to parties, even if they're thrown in your own home.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
The Book Snob
The single life in a new town can be a lonely one.
I've spent some time sulking in the streets and wondering which of the faces I encounter I'll get to know one day. But I spend most of my time reading, partly to ward off tedium by engaging in the considerable drama of fictional characters. Regardless of how lonely I may sometimes feel, nothing is as dire as Billy Pilgrim coming unstuck in time, as Frodo protecting that problematic ring. These characters can be as engaging as real people but where real people will ignore me for lack of interest in what they see, book people haven't the capacity to do anything but ignore me. They're too tangled up in their own existence to look up and notice the giant human following their every move. Also, they're not real. This brings me enormous satisfaction.
But for the past few years I've used books as a device for meeting people, especially women. Great conversations can begin with the words, "Is that book any good?" Wonderful things can happen. I met a girl once in a New York bar while reading The Doors of Perception and yadda, yadda I haven't seen her since. It's a marvelous tool! They have proven effective conversation lubricant and, coupled with some red wine, you may find that a shared taste in books equates to similar personal philosophies. Chicks love that crap.
In cafes or on transit, I'll position my book in such way that other people will notice the cover and hopefully understand exactly the type of person I'm trying to be. Whether you realize it or not, the book that you choose to read in public will be used by people like me as signal of your internal character and we will use the dust jackets and author name to construct a definition of who you are. If you're reading Robinson Crusoe, you can't let go of the past. If you're reading Dan Brown, you haven't read another book before the one in your lap in 12 years. Fyodor Dostoevsky = melodramatic brooder. We can use this to gauge the depth of conversation should we start to use it. People should be impressed that I'm a quarter of the way through Gravity's Rainbow, though I have no idea what the bloody book is even about. These people will find me "hip," "cultured" and other adjectives prized by young people who have nothing better to think about.
Whistler's a different story all together. "Hip" is as meaningless a word as "blaffugla" and so it's no wonder that I'm single. There are some cultured people here but they tend not to use transit. The ones that do are usually more concerned about hurling their mortal selves over mountainsides than they are about Nabakov's wordplay. Very few people give a good goddamn what I'm reading except maybe my friends and even then interest passes quick. I'm desperate and frightened that I need to find a new gimmick to make people like me.
People have the tendency, and some more than others, to project onto complete strangers the qualities of ourselves we've experienced through works of art. Books in particular say wonders about who this person might be. The fantasies are endless but few Whistler people read in public and I find I have to construct back-stories for transit riders based solely on appearance. Everyone is from Australia, everyone is poor and I have no leeway into conversation.
So imagine my delight when I see a cute girl reading Tom Robbins on the bus. I imagine that she is the feminine version of myself. She reads Pitchfork obsessively and loves homemade perogies. I hold my own book up and lean against the window in such a way that she can see the front cover if she looks over. Maybe she'll like my face but this Michael Chabon dust jacket will surely win her over. I'll speak up, make a passing reference to Still Life With Woodpecker because she's reading it and, because we're identical in personality, she's absolutely smitten by it. The conversation will be smooth, insightful and as she gets off at her stop we promise to see each other again.
And before I've spoken a single word to this girl, we're eating popcorn together on my couch, shoulders touching and the loneliness that compelled the both of us to read in the first place will be locked away and hopefully forgotten for a little while at least.
I've spent some time sulking in the streets and wondering which of the faces I encounter I'll get to know one day. But I spend most of my time reading, partly to ward off tedium by engaging in the considerable drama of fictional characters. Regardless of how lonely I may sometimes feel, nothing is as dire as Billy Pilgrim coming unstuck in time, as Frodo protecting that problematic ring. These characters can be as engaging as real people but where real people will ignore me for lack of interest in what they see, book people haven't the capacity to do anything but ignore me. They're too tangled up in their own existence to look up and notice the giant human following their every move. Also, they're not real. This brings me enormous satisfaction.
But for the past few years I've used books as a device for meeting people, especially women. Great conversations can begin with the words, "Is that book any good?" Wonderful things can happen. I met a girl once in a New York bar while reading The Doors of Perception and yadda, yadda I haven't seen her since. It's a marvelous tool! They have proven effective conversation lubricant and, coupled with some red wine, you may find that a shared taste in books equates to similar personal philosophies. Chicks love that crap.
In cafes or on transit, I'll position my book in such way that other people will notice the cover and hopefully understand exactly the type of person I'm trying to be. Whether you realize it or not, the book that you choose to read in public will be used by people like me as signal of your internal character and we will use the dust jackets and author name to construct a definition of who you are. If you're reading Robinson Crusoe, you can't let go of the past. If you're reading Dan Brown, you haven't read another book before the one in your lap in 12 years. Fyodor Dostoevsky = melodramatic brooder. We can use this to gauge the depth of conversation should we start to use it. People should be impressed that I'm a quarter of the way through Gravity's Rainbow, though I have no idea what the bloody book is even about. These people will find me "hip," "cultured" and other adjectives prized by young people who have nothing better to think about.
Whistler's a different story all together. "Hip" is as meaningless a word as "blaffugla" and so it's no wonder that I'm single. There are some cultured people here but they tend not to use transit. The ones that do are usually more concerned about hurling their mortal selves over mountainsides than they are about Nabakov's wordplay. Very few people give a good goddamn what I'm reading except maybe my friends and even then interest passes quick. I'm desperate and frightened that I need to find a new gimmick to make people like me.
People have the tendency, and some more than others, to project onto complete strangers the qualities of ourselves we've experienced through works of art. Books in particular say wonders about who this person might be. The fantasies are endless but few Whistler people read in public and I find I have to construct back-stories for transit riders based solely on appearance. Everyone is from Australia, everyone is poor and I have no leeway into conversation.
So imagine my delight when I see a cute girl reading Tom Robbins on the bus. I imagine that she is the feminine version of myself. She reads Pitchfork obsessively and loves homemade perogies. I hold my own book up and lean against the window in such a way that she can see the front cover if she looks over. Maybe she'll like my face but this Michael Chabon dust jacket will surely win her over. I'll speak up, make a passing reference to Still Life With Woodpecker because she's reading it and, because we're identical in personality, she's absolutely smitten by it. The conversation will be smooth, insightful and as she gets off at her stop we promise to see each other again.
And before I've spoken a single word to this girl, we're eating popcorn together on my couch, shoulders touching and the loneliness that compelled the both of us to read in the first place will be locked away and hopefully forgotten for a little while at least.
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
The Dognapper
If you steal your roommate's dog, make sure it looks like a run-away scenario. It should go down like this:
Step 1: Ensure the roommate is out of the house at the time of the heist. Step 2: Leave all the dog's belongings behind, especially the kennel. Step 3: Leave the door ajar when you leave to create the illusion that the dog left of its own volition. Step 4: Buy a kennel on the way to the airport. Step 5: Check as luggage when you get there and fly far, far away.
I had this chance when I rescued my roommate's Chihuahua, Peanut, but I was so flustered by the prospect of taking the dog that, in the heat of the moment, I left a note instead. It read, Tabby*, I've taken your dog to the pound. It's better for everyone concerned. Don't bother trying to find him - you've neglected him for too long. I slid the note under her door, and boarded a bus to the Toronto airport.
On the plane to Vancouver, with Peanut's kennel stowed in the luggage compartment below, I developed the comprehensive system of dog-napping mentioned above, realizing that I should have developed it the day before. Oh well. I decided that I would change his name to Patrick Swayze, thereby altering his identity so he could live on the lam together forever. In a perfect world, Peanut and I would live peacefully by passing our days in the abundant British Columbian meadows under vibrant double rainbows while deer and squirrels marveled at our exquisite frolicking skills.
Instead, I returned home to find a series of frantic, caps-locked Facebook messages from Tabby stating that OH MY GAWD I LOVED THAT DOG SO MUCH HOW COULD YOU TAKE HIM U PSYKO!!!! and that she SERCHD ALL THE POUNDZ AND PEANUT ISNT THEIR!!!!
Here was a person who locked her dog in a kennel in the hallway for the first three days he lived with us, and then talked incessantly of getting rid of him every time she opened her mouth. But now that her eccentric former roommate had whisked away her beloved Peanut... well, I guess her reaction was understandable. As power-ballad powerhouses Cinderella philosophized in 1988, "You don't know what you got till it's gone."
Tabby and I got along fine at first, but she was the sort who liked little accessories that fit into her vast collection of purses - and that included Peanut. It was clear from the way she regarded her pet that all she wanted was something fluffy to hug on occasion, without any of the icky responsibilities that came with owning a dog.
What love he hath lost, this poor Peanut. He was no bigger than a Rottweiler's turd and about the same colour. He pissed wherever he pleased and didn't give a damn about it. While this was certainly a symptom of poor house-training on Tabby's part, it said to me he had that right idea about life. I loved him immediately.
He was smaller than most Chihuahua's, and because he pranced when he walked, I had trouble believing he was a man, but I assumed responsibility over him anyway. With Tabby out of the equation, he adopted me as his owner within the week. We'd go for walks - me, wearing lumberjack flannel and a full beard while an effeminate pooch attached to a Louis Vitton leash danced around my ankles. At night, he'd curl up like a furry Danish at the foot of my bed. It was love.
Yet I deferred the serious responsibilities to Tabby, like bathing him or buying him food. It was her dog after all. As a result, he wasn't eating much.
"You can't leave him here," my friend Lauren said one day. We were discussing my impending move to Vancouver and she was holding the dog on her lap, running her hands through his protruding rib cage. His coat had lost some of its sheen and he was shedding more than usual. "Does your roommate even feed him? She hasn't even had him neutered. What kind of cruelty is that? Look at how cute he is."
"Well what am I supposed to do? Just take him?"
It was an option. Lauren and I debated the ethics of the decision over the course of a week: on the one hand, he'd lead a miserable, neglected life if he stayed in Toronto. On the other, I'd be a criminal if I took him. I decided that morality trumped lawfulness in this case and only I could provide the life that Peanut deserved.
I questioned the sanity of this decision for days until I discovered that Tabby had gone away to visit family over the Easter Long Weekend without telling anyone, and had left Peanut behind.
"That's it!" I exclaimed. I looked down at the dog. He was at my feet, wagging his little tail in what was certainly anticipation for my bold declaration. "Dog! You're coming with me!"
It's no big deal, I kept telling myself, Tabby will probably be relieved!
But it seemed my rescue attempt was grossly underappreciated and I couldn't in good conscience keep the dog,.
Step 6: Fly the dog home once your theft is discovered.
*Name changed, for obvious reasons.
Step 1: Ensure the roommate is out of the house at the time of the heist. Step 2: Leave all the dog's belongings behind, especially the kennel. Step 3: Leave the door ajar when you leave to create the illusion that the dog left of its own volition. Step 4: Buy a kennel on the way to the airport. Step 5: Check as luggage when you get there and fly far, far away.
I had this chance when I rescued my roommate's Chihuahua, Peanut, but I was so flustered by the prospect of taking the dog that, in the heat of the moment, I left a note instead. It read, Tabby*, I've taken your dog to the pound. It's better for everyone concerned. Don't bother trying to find him - you've neglected him for too long. I slid the note under her door, and boarded a bus to the Toronto airport.
On the plane to Vancouver, with Peanut's kennel stowed in the luggage compartment below, I developed the comprehensive system of dog-napping mentioned above, realizing that I should have developed it the day before. Oh well. I decided that I would change his name to Patrick Swayze, thereby altering his identity so he could live on the lam together forever. In a perfect world, Peanut and I would live peacefully by passing our days in the abundant British Columbian meadows under vibrant double rainbows while deer and squirrels marveled at our exquisite frolicking skills.
Instead, I returned home to find a series of frantic, caps-locked Facebook messages from Tabby stating that OH MY GAWD I LOVED THAT DOG SO MUCH HOW COULD YOU TAKE HIM U PSYKO!!!! and that she SERCHD ALL THE POUNDZ AND PEANUT ISNT THEIR!!!!
Here was a person who locked her dog in a kennel in the hallway for the first three days he lived with us, and then talked incessantly of getting rid of him every time she opened her mouth. But now that her eccentric former roommate had whisked away her beloved Peanut... well, I guess her reaction was understandable. As power-ballad powerhouses Cinderella philosophized in 1988, "You don't know what you got till it's gone."
Tabby and I got along fine at first, but she was the sort who liked little accessories that fit into her vast collection of purses - and that included Peanut. It was clear from the way she regarded her pet that all she wanted was something fluffy to hug on occasion, without any of the icky responsibilities that came with owning a dog.
What love he hath lost, this poor Peanut. He was no bigger than a Rottweiler's turd and about the same colour. He pissed wherever he pleased and didn't give a damn about it. While this was certainly a symptom of poor house-training on Tabby's part, it said to me he had that right idea about life. I loved him immediately.
He was smaller than most Chihuahua's, and because he pranced when he walked, I had trouble believing he was a man, but I assumed responsibility over him anyway. With Tabby out of the equation, he adopted me as his owner within the week. We'd go for walks - me, wearing lumberjack flannel and a full beard while an effeminate pooch attached to a Louis Vitton leash danced around my ankles. At night, he'd curl up like a furry Danish at the foot of my bed. It was love.
Yet I deferred the serious responsibilities to Tabby, like bathing him or buying him food. It was her dog after all. As a result, he wasn't eating much.
"You can't leave him here," my friend Lauren said one day. We were discussing my impending move to Vancouver and she was holding the dog on her lap, running her hands through his protruding rib cage. His coat had lost some of its sheen and he was shedding more than usual. "Does your roommate even feed him? She hasn't even had him neutered. What kind of cruelty is that? Look at how cute he is."
"Well what am I supposed to do? Just take him?"
It was an option. Lauren and I debated the ethics of the decision over the course of a week: on the one hand, he'd lead a miserable, neglected life if he stayed in Toronto. On the other, I'd be a criminal if I took him. I decided that morality trumped lawfulness in this case and only I could provide the life that Peanut deserved.
I questioned the sanity of this decision for days until I discovered that Tabby had gone away to visit family over the Easter Long Weekend without telling anyone, and had left Peanut behind.
"That's it!" I exclaimed. I looked down at the dog. He was at my feet, wagging his little tail in what was certainly anticipation for my bold declaration. "Dog! You're coming with me!"
It's no big deal, I kept telling myself, Tabby will probably be relieved!
But it seemed my rescue attempt was grossly underappreciated and I couldn't in good conscience keep the dog,.
Step 6: Fly the dog home once your theft is discovered.
*Name changed, for obvious reasons.
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
One man's advice for surviving in a high-cost pizza world
I live in Whistler now and pizza prices here are completely absurd. They have inspired empty wallets on more drunken occasions than most of us would have liked. I find myself three dollars short for cab fare. I'm slapping the morning-after coffee on Visa. It's a frustrating situation that can't be rectified unless I drive to Vancouver to pay for, what I feel is, an acceptable price for a slice of pizza. But that wouldn't make any sense.
The pizza companies get away with it because in Whistler, a town brimming with 20-somethings with no discernable cooking skills beyond boiling Ramen noodles, pizza is the fail-safe for a quick and filling bite.
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid unloading a quarter of your paycheque. Dominos Pizza offers walk-in/take-away deals for large ($13.50) and medium ($11.50) pepperoni pizzas. It's hardly the best pizza in town, takes on the taste and texture of synthetic rubber following refrigeration but it will fill your belly, if not bloat it eternally.
Ramen-noodle connoisseurs are likely familiar with the assortment of frozen pizzas sold at their favourite grocery store. Of these, Delissio pies are the best deal for size and taste ($9.99 at all grocery stores in Whistler), although they are rife with preservatives and a high fat content that will add pudge to your midsection almost immediately and may take years off your life somewhere down the line.
Ultimately, your safest bet is to make it from scratch. That's right, kids, it's time to learn how to bake your own pizza. It's easy! and good for you for myriad reasons, not least of all for learning the complex and capricious nature of pizza dough. If it's not manipulated the right way, this dough will curl up on you like a frightened baby and sit stubbornly in a gooey lump until you learn the correct way to deal with it. Mastering pizza dough will teach you important life skills that will reveal themselves to you once the mastering is complete. I can't let you in on them - they're secrets.
Pasta Lupino sells such a lump for $3.25 that can make two-three medium pizzas. It also freezes and defrosts like you'd hope dough would: without incident.
Step 1: lightly flour your counter so... wait, no. Step 1 is to free your counter of beer bottles, noodle packages, apple cores, assorted crumbs and, yes, pizza boxes. Then lightly flour the counter top to keep the dough from sticking. Lightly flour your rolling pin and spread the dough out as flat as possible. If you're lacking a rolling pin, a wine bottle will do as well. A beer bottle might work but this is pure speculation.
Once the dough is flattened, you can try the Italian chef flip trick to stretch out the dough but at this beginner stage it's really not necessary. We're aiming for edible food here, nothing fancy.
It should be noted here that the first job I was hired for and subsequently fired from was a Little Caesar's. During my time as a pizza maker, there was a coincidental but dramatic increase in customer complaints over diminished crust-to-topping ratio and/or general absence of mozzarella cheese. I may not be the most qualified person for this particular topic, but since we've come this far I guess there's no turning back...
So anyway, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees, or something. Lightly grease your baking pan and push the dough to the ends. A square baking pan will work just as well as a round pan, so long as you can deal with quadrangle pizza slices.
From there, lay on whatever toppings you fancy. Remember the mozzarella cheese. Oil the crust to make it golden-crispy and delicious. Handle with care and affection. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Let stand for five. Eat. Enjoy.
Afterward, you can take it out with you to the club, kept snug in your purse or a girlfriend's purse. Hell, leave it in your back pocket to remind you that, at the end of the night, when all the drunks lurch toward the same line outside Fat Tony's, you have something cheaper and much quicker: your two home-made slices, wrapped in tin-foil. They'll be a little mushy, sure, but at least you made them yourself and that's better than anything a plump fellow named Tony can provide.
The pizza companies get away with it because in Whistler, a town brimming with 20-somethings with no discernable cooking skills beyond boiling Ramen noodles, pizza is the fail-safe for a quick and filling bite.
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid unloading a quarter of your paycheque. Dominos Pizza offers walk-in/take-away deals for large ($13.50) and medium ($11.50) pepperoni pizzas. It's hardly the best pizza in town, takes on the taste and texture of synthetic rubber following refrigeration but it will fill your belly, if not bloat it eternally.
Ramen-noodle connoisseurs are likely familiar with the assortment of frozen pizzas sold at their favourite grocery store. Of these, Delissio pies are the best deal for size and taste ($9.99 at all grocery stores in Whistler), although they are rife with preservatives and a high fat content that will add pudge to your midsection almost immediately and may take years off your life somewhere down the line.
Ultimately, your safest bet is to make it from scratch. That's right, kids, it's time to learn how to bake your own pizza. It's easy! and good for you for myriad reasons, not least of all for learning the complex and capricious nature of pizza dough. If it's not manipulated the right way, this dough will curl up on you like a frightened baby and sit stubbornly in a gooey lump until you learn the correct way to deal with it. Mastering pizza dough will teach you important life skills that will reveal themselves to you once the mastering is complete. I can't let you in on them - they're secrets.
Pasta Lupino sells such a lump for $3.25 that can make two-three medium pizzas. It also freezes and defrosts like you'd hope dough would: without incident.
Step 1: lightly flour your counter so... wait, no. Step 1 is to free your counter of beer bottles, noodle packages, apple cores, assorted crumbs and, yes, pizza boxes. Then lightly flour the counter top to keep the dough from sticking. Lightly flour your rolling pin and spread the dough out as flat as possible. If you're lacking a rolling pin, a wine bottle will do as well. A beer bottle might work but this is pure speculation.
Once the dough is flattened, you can try the Italian chef flip trick to stretch out the dough but at this beginner stage it's really not necessary. We're aiming for edible food here, nothing fancy.
It should be noted here that the first job I was hired for and subsequently fired from was a Little Caesar's. During my time as a pizza maker, there was a coincidental but dramatic increase in customer complaints over diminished crust-to-topping ratio and/or general absence of mozzarella cheese. I may not be the most qualified person for this particular topic, but since we've come this far I guess there's no turning back...
So anyway, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees, or something. Lightly grease your baking pan and push the dough to the ends. A square baking pan will work just as well as a round pan, so long as you can deal with quadrangle pizza slices.
From there, lay on whatever toppings you fancy. Remember the mozzarella cheese. Oil the crust to make it golden-crispy and delicious. Handle with care and affection. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Let stand for five. Eat. Enjoy.
Afterward, you can take it out with you to the club, kept snug in your purse or a girlfriend's purse. Hell, leave it in your back pocket to remind you that, at the end of the night, when all the drunks lurch toward the same line outside Fat Tony's, you have something cheaper and much quicker: your two home-made slices, wrapped in tin-foil. They'll be a little mushy, sure, but at least you made them yourself and that's better than anything a plump fellow named Tony can provide.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Long distance relationships might ruin your life
It ended like this: I was down on my knees by the door, tying my shoes and concentrated on them. She was leaning against a doorframe to the next room, arms folded across her chest. I was avoiding her gaze. It was easier that way.
She said: "I feel like we've been here so many times." An appropriate cliché.
I grunted. I shrugged. I finished with the other shoe and stood up. I smoothed out the wrinkles in my sweatshirt, took my keys and wallet from the foyer table. I scanned the room for the rest of my belongings and caught her eyes. They were tired. She wanted me out. If she was done, we were done. She held the power. That's how it rolled.
In my blacker moments I'll tell you that long distance relationships don't work. I can say with some authority that they are awful, wretched beasts and will leave you feeling withered and depressed. You'll spend more time than necessary pining away and you'll find that yearning is the emotional equivalent of narcotic withdrawal.
I knew from the start that unless I was patient enough, mature enough and desperate enough to make the distance between us work, it probably wouldn't. A one-time healthy and intimate relationship was quickly replaced with bi-weekly phone conversations. Just two voices passing each other through telephone wire. I soldiered on anyway but I wasn't a saint. I used her as a scapegoat for all the other nonsense that was going on in my life, as so many of us unfortunately do with our partners. My eyes kept wandering and while I never acted on it, I would often wonder what life would be like if I just cut her loose and asked out this beautiful stranger at the coffee shop trading smiles with me between sips of her macchiato.
But I'm selling us way too short. We were groovy once and I'll love her for that, that girl I knew. And anyway, there are great benefits to long distance relationships that are rarely talked about. We can learn to communicate with each other on a level that may not have been afforded before when we were lying in bed all day, wrapped up in each other's limbs.
Also, it can be difficult for people to strike a balance between personal growth and commitment in a relationship. Both are important but one tends to dominate the other. In a long distance relationship, we're forced into finding this balance. The situation will harden us and force us to mature, no matter what. We're afforded the time to reflect on what commitment in this relationship really means to us. Nothing tests the strength of a relationship more effectively than chronic separation.
If we can get through it, we may be more mature and self-assured about ourselves as individuals and as a couple because of the separation. If we're open, honest and there for each other whenever, wherever, it may work. It may, because in the end it all comes down to how much we're willing to put up with the gross hassle of a long distance relationship and all the drama it breeds.
We tried all of this. It didn't work and we gradually grew apart. It was a slow smothering of the beast. After a year apart and a country between us, we gave it one last jolt to save its life but it died anyway. We recognized the corpse for what it was, right there in the foyer.
I dropped my gaze to the floor. "Well that's it then," I said.
"I guess so."
She smiled. I offered something closer to a grimace and then bolted out the door without saying goodbye. I marched on down the steps toward some different kind of life. It was a weird moment, like when a bicycle is shifting gears and nothing's in its right place. There are no songs or sounds for limbo, only the thudding of your broken, agitated heart.
I stood at my car and thought seriously about storming back inside, waving my finger in the air and making some dramatic, all-encompassing statement. But there was really nothing to say. I had nothing. It had all been said and several times over. We haven't spoken since.
On another note...
...if you can't stand living in Whistler, don't hate on it. There's nothing wrong with it. It's all in your head, mate. So just leave.
It seems that people who can't get along in Whistler came of age in a town or city with a completely different personality. As a result, they too have a completely different personality than what might jive with what Whistler has to offer.
And then, in the process of the inevitable self-exploration and confusion that comes with being new to a setting they don't understand, these people project the ugly parts of their own personality onto the people and landscapes of the place they now blame for their misery.
It happened to me anyway. I moved from Vancouver to Toronto and found those people to be shallow, cold, soulless, etc. I hated it. But now, being away from it, I realize it wasn't the people or the place that made my experience so miserable. It was about me all along and only about me.
The city wasn't a right fit, just as Whistler might not be a fit for you. Whistler is tolerant. And it isn't. It's fun. And it isn't. Just like Toronto, or London, or anywhere really. It depends on what you've seen and how you choose to see it.
She said: "I feel like we've been here so many times." An appropriate cliché.
I grunted. I shrugged. I finished with the other shoe and stood up. I smoothed out the wrinkles in my sweatshirt, took my keys and wallet from the foyer table. I scanned the room for the rest of my belongings and caught her eyes. They were tired. She wanted me out. If she was done, we were done. She held the power. That's how it rolled.
In my blacker moments I'll tell you that long distance relationships don't work. I can say with some authority that they are awful, wretched beasts and will leave you feeling withered and depressed. You'll spend more time than necessary pining away and you'll find that yearning is the emotional equivalent of narcotic withdrawal.
I knew from the start that unless I was patient enough, mature enough and desperate enough to make the distance between us work, it probably wouldn't. A one-time healthy and intimate relationship was quickly replaced with bi-weekly phone conversations. Just two voices passing each other through telephone wire. I soldiered on anyway but I wasn't a saint. I used her as a scapegoat for all the other nonsense that was going on in my life, as so many of us unfortunately do with our partners. My eyes kept wandering and while I never acted on it, I would often wonder what life would be like if I just cut her loose and asked out this beautiful stranger at the coffee shop trading smiles with me between sips of her macchiato.
But I'm selling us way too short. We were groovy once and I'll love her for that, that girl I knew. And anyway, there are great benefits to long distance relationships that are rarely talked about. We can learn to communicate with each other on a level that may not have been afforded before when we were lying in bed all day, wrapped up in each other's limbs.
Also, it can be difficult for people to strike a balance between personal growth and commitment in a relationship. Both are important but one tends to dominate the other. In a long distance relationship, we're forced into finding this balance. The situation will harden us and force us to mature, no matter what. We're afforded the time to reflect on what commitment in this relationship really means to us. Nothing tests the strength of a relationship more effectively than chronic separation.
If we can get through it, we may be more mature and self-assured about ourselves as individuals and as a couple because of the separation. If we're open, honest and there for each other whenever, wherever, it may work. It may, because in the end it all comes down to how much we're willing to put up with the gross hassle of a long distance relationship and all the drama it breeds.
We tried all of this. It didn't work and we gradually grew apart. It was a slow smothering of the beast. After a year apart and a country between us, we gave it one last jolt to save its life but it died anyway. We recognized the corpse for what it was, right there in the foyer.
I dropped my gaze to the floor. "Well that's it then," I said.
"I guess so."
She smiled. I offered something closer to a grimace and then bolted out the door without saying goodbye. I marched on down the steps toward some different kind of life. It was a weird moment, like when a bicycle is shifting gears and nothing's in its right place. There are no songs or sounds for limbo, only the thudding of your broken, agitated heart.
I stood at my car and thought seriously about storming back inside, waving my finger in the air and making some dramatic, all-encompassing statement. But there was really nothing to say. I had nothing. It had all been said and several times over. We haven't spoken since.
On another note...
...if you can't stand living in Whistler, don't hate on it. There's nothing wrong with it. It's all in your head, mate. So just leave.
It seems that people who can't get along in Whistler came of age in a town or city with a completely different personality. As a result, they too have a completely different personality than what might jive with what Whistler has to offer.
And then, in the process of the inevitable self-exploration and confusion that comes with being new to a setting they don't understand, these people project the ugly parts of their own personality onto the people and landscapes of the place they now blame for their misery.
It happened to me anyway. I moved from Vancouver to Toronto and found those people to be shallow, cold, soulless, etc. I hated it. But now, being away from it, I realize it wasn't the people or the place that made my experience so miserable. It was about me all along and only about me.
The city wasn't a right fit, just as Whistler might not be a fit for you. Whistler is tolerant. And it isn't. It's fun. And it isn't. Just like Toronto, or London, or anywhere really. It depends on what you've seen and how you choose to see it.
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