Day 211

i went to the tea house to read and chill. the old brick building is on a street corner downtown and looks heavy and content- like a distant relative on the couch after christmas dinner; familiar but fresh. i don't know if that's legal punctuation but those ideas needed to stick together.

from inside of the big windows, i admire the front bay and fireplace. no gig today. christmas music fills the atmosphere and i wonder to myself if people really like these classics as much as they seem to say they do. to be honest, i've noticed seasonal songs see a decrease for myself in overall pleasantry each year and bring less fulfillment of a 'christmas spirit', whatever that means, once the tunes have been played for more than two weeks. i remember the tiny, singing shoney bear tree ornament. i did like that music from his plush stomach.

i feel fortunate to know and have a good relationship with the owners of the tea house. today they bring coffee to where i've got bob dylan's chronicles on the table. an internal monologue starts to flow and i scorn the awareness of crafted words that i always fear will never be recovered. 'i pour cream and watch it chase its silky tails into the murk, tripping and rolling over its creamy momentum until all wisps have mysteriously pulled any straggling color beneath the dark surface. then, with a flick of the spoon, the heavy white expands up and i, like an eye in the cosmos, watch the smokey explosion of the liquid mushroom cloud in my cup.'

at the age of twenty-one, i'm sure some friends from high school have company cell phones or starched, tie-requiring internships. others probably work at grocery stores. most are writing papers and studying and taking big tests to sum up their last few months. a semester has vicariously flown by. i'm sitting in canada and describing what it looks like to prepare coffee and reading books about the music that's inspired me to play in this very building and also making a different attempt at faith while wondering what 'moving mountains' really means. maybe that's a little imbalanced, but maybe it isn't. maybe craig kelley was right in that documentary last week when he talked about breaking into the life you're alive in instead of viewing it as an escape from the one you didn't. maybe this is my internship- except with no human boss and a beard instead of a tie. and this blog.

i'm seeing that it's kind of hard to be an individual in the picture of our crew's relationship to the rest of this small town. we have a cool group of foreigners/non-locals in a good location. this isn't a bad thing at all but there's definitely less individuality in overall greater community consideration. that's probably a good thing.

still, that isn't easy for me. it's becoming more natural to be comfortable and attentive in this bigger picture but i know myself and have to take time to wander on my own. sometimes for a season. sometimes for an afternoon. sometimes for a few moments to stir words into coffee and sometimes by trying to remember these thoughts with scribbles in the back leaves of a national bestseller.

Day 92

hello children. the final week of junior high camp began today leaving one more juniors camp before the youth camp finale. i walked the beach this morning and noticed more pale, fallen leaves had collected at the corners of rock faces and along tide marks. i took the back path up, walking through the place that i'd seen a bear many weeks ago. i was looking for blackberries and wondered if he might be back for the same, but he wasn't. even if he had been, there's now enough blackberries for the both of us. and for the whole camp. and maybe a small army, but this is canada. army?

there are a ton of blackberries bleeding among the green thorns. a fresh, cool breeze floated down the mountain and through the trees. there's still three weeks of camp but summer is starting to slow itself down. the final crew of junior highers are here.


on a complete side note, i've been thinking about the sixties and its music lately. beatles, dylan, cash, hendrix, elvis, etc, etc. what a big decade.

Day 69

the third week of camp ended in routine fashion. the q-town camp songs are so stuck in my head now that i felt a little stir crazy as they were being blasted across the field of departing campers.

the camp directors organize a weekly bus that goes into town for staff to take to get supplies. tonight they were going to see the new batman movie as well, but the thought of riding with a bunch of talking people to pay money to experience a formulated evening was not exciting to me at all.

jen's brother was playing at a coffee shop in nearby nanaimo. the music didn't start until 7ish, so we took off to the canadian version of borders. 'chapters' was filled with the smell of new books and a built-in starbucks. after some coffee and a scan through the fly fusion magazine, i found my place in the music/photography section. they're always together in whatever bookstore i've ever gone to and i think this is great.

i stood alone in front of the shelves of band and artist biographies and realized it would take about twelve years to be satisfied in this section, so i picked up the scrapbook of john lennon. this is an amazing recreation of mementos and copies of original song scribbles. i'd read the bob dylan one back at borders in the usa. i bought a new edition of a music magazine since it was cheaper. we stopped at a sporting goods store where i found some sweet clearance shirts that not only were needed but helped to fix yesterday's issues. the recognition of the smell of left shoes all pointing one direction on a sales wall was a scary and sudden reminder of the terms like over-pronation and motion control and adidiprene and gel. we got out of there soon after this.

the bands were playing at a place called the buzz and was laid out in a J pattern. the door was at the bottom left tip of this shape, the counter was on the inside left of the curve, and black wooden tables and leather seats and folding chairs scattered the long stalk that lead to the brick-backgrounded stage. the musicians often bounced on and off stage after songs as they played covers and some originals. i had a so-called 'canada moment' in this shop.

outside, on the right side of the stalk, there was a patio where people congregated at a wooden picnic table to talk over the music. someone had a couple small puppies and a little girl in a sundress and two small boys dressed in p.j.s chased the little animals around the concrete. across the median and street was a suburban subdivision where a canadian flag flapped on a pole in some backyard. back inside, most of the girls wore sundresses and many guys had beards or dreads or plastic-framed glasses. after walking in and standing around a bit, a barista came from behind the counter and offered me a free latte. the people i was with thought she was hitting on me, but i think they'd pry just made an extra on accident. free is free and i like free. anyways, this canada moment revealed a truly vagabonded utopia.

i'm back at camp now, sitting next to a piano keyboard on a dimly lit stage. the bus rolled in a few minutes ago. it's been a good day. tomorrow is 'staff development day' and sunday starts the next junior high camp and a new week of teaching video editing and shooting and such. i'm ready.

Day 59

the number of days is starting to get up there. for the first real time in semi-adult life, i can say that i really like my job and life combination and everything. i'm not going to go into a melodramatic monologue or anything, but i'm glad to be able to say that at least once while still being able to realize the same ideas and philosophies of past pursuit.

exactly a year ago today, i was at an airport and had begun a long flight to australia. i've been in touch with a handful of the seventeen team members lately and its been good to remember and be remembered. hey guys.

this day of camp has been going well although it's only half over. this is the earliest post ever. it was 'wide-eyed and liquified' in the morning so i got the camera housing again and played in the water and went down the huge slip-n-slide with the kids. the juniors don't slide as fast as junior highers, but their enthusiasm is unmatched. the afternoon was spent at the beach getting the remaining shots we need to be able to start to edit the week's dvd.

after deciding to stop by the lodge to drop some stuff off in my room, i ran into the head paramedic, tim. he had just come back from town and had made good on an incredible promise. i went to my room and unwrapped the dairy queen cheeseburger and had a mini thanksgiving atop my bedside cajon. i've saved the second burger for later tonight. camp food is okay but gets old when you're eating the same thing with 300 plus other people.

one of the counselors had a package sent in from her mom. included was the book 'into the wild' which she lent to me while she finishes her week counseling. this reunion of tangible text and the smell of full pages has been sorely missed. i agreed to share any inspiring quotes from the book or from any other searches.


"whoever waits for time to pass loses time" sicilian proverb

"he not busy being born is busy dying" bob dylan

"life is either a daring adventure or nothing" helen keller

"you feel like life is always leading up to something, but it isn't. i mean life is just life. it's all happening right now, and we aren't going to be any more complete a month from now than we are now. i only say this because i am trying to appreciate everything tonight. i will be leaving soon, and i want to feel this, really understand that it is happening because God breathed some spark into some mud that became us, and He did it for a reason, and i want to feel that reason, not some false explaination." --don miller "through painted deserts"