Welcome to Plan B.

Dear Morris,

Apologies for not writing sooner. Lately, the days have been a haze of ceiling fans and thunderstorms. Cigar smoke and afternoon naps. I haven’t been sleeping much lately, choosing instead to while away the hours watching television and trying to remember to eat once in a while. Mental masturbation, all of it. I should be working. We’ve been on leave for the last three weeks, not that there’s anything to do around that dirty, old warehouse anyway. I suppose sitting around at home is better than hanging around the loading bays, waiting for something to happen.

I remember when I was 15, working at the movie theatre we used to have in town. Do you remember it? It used to be the place to go for a while, before all the high school kids lost interest and they opened that giant multiplex the next town over. Sometimes I miss working there. Well, I wouldn’t really want to be there now, at the age of 22, but I miss the mentality we all had.

It was a bunch of high school kids working there, for the most part. Bored, stupid, immature high school kids with nothing else to do. We didn’t have much in the way of responsibility, but nobody really paid much attention to us anyway. We’d hang out and talk about things like school and girls. We’d watch free movies and eat all the popcorn we could handle. When one round of shows finished, we’d quickly sweep up any obvious garbage, run the next group of customers through, and get back to being as unproductive as possible. The owner, an old guy with a disfigured right hand and missing a toe on his left foot, rarely left his office upstairs.

I learned how to work the projectors, the result of many a late night spent watching Paul, the projectionist, ply his craft with precision and skill. It’s a dying art form, movie projection. With the move to automated, self-threading machines, Paul was one of the few unionized projectionists left working in the country. By the time I left the theatre, at 16, he was long gone, replaced by fellow high school students. I miss the sound of the projectors at night, the machine-gun sound of 24 frames a second being beamed to the masses below. Upstairs in the darkness, surrounded by film, you could find peace.

After an evening spent eating birthday cake and swapping stories with Whitney and a few of her friends, I began the long trek home in the pouring rain. Realizing that it was almost 2:00am, I nipped into 7-11 for two cans of Rockstar. One for tonight and one for the morning. A quick trip down the highway and I turned down my street, only to see a car reversing down the street fairly quickly. Finding it odd, but nothing unusual for a Friday night, I continued down the road.

That’s when I spotted the car in the ditch. The back bumper was stuck on the back of the ditch, while the front was wedged into the rise on the other side, facing the road. Even with how slick the roads were, it’s hard to imagine the move the driver must have had to pull in order to end up in such a jam. Concerned that someone might have been injured, I pulled over, hit my blinker, and started walking back toward the car. Running through my first-aid and CPR courses in my head (information I haven’t used in almost four years, but always seems to come back to me in times of need), I prayed everyone was okay.

As I approached the car, I realized that the driver’s-side door was hanging open, the occupant nowhere to be found. A young couple pulled over and told me they had already called 911. It turned out they had witnessed the car driving on the wrong side of the road and saw it fly into the ditch. They had been the car I saw reversing down the road — they were looking for a street name. The driver, they said, was extremely intoxicated. Apparently, he had already tried to drive the car out of the ditch a number of times. Considering the location of the accident, right in front of a house where two small children live, I was shocked.

While waiting for the paramedics and police to arrive, we watched as the driver drunkenly stumbled out of someone’s backyard and climb back into the car. He seemed to be physically fine, up and walking around. The young lady waiting with us was concerned about our safety, so we kept a fair distance from the drunk. After a few more futile attempts to dislodge the car, he finally gave up.

The police and paramedics arrived in force. I later commented to one of the firefighters that they had “brought the cavalry out”. He informed me that any car accident automatically brings out two trucks, in case they have to peel someone out of the vehicle. Once the driver saw the flashing lights, he feebly tried to crawl behind some nearby trees. He was quickly retrieved by the paramedics. Unfortunately, my statement wasn’t all that helpful to the police, as I was unable to place him behind the wheel. So, thanking the young couple (I regret never asking their names) for stopping and making the call, I climbed into the van and headed for home.

It’s a shame that people still drink and drive, putting the lives of themselves and other at tremendous risk. Especially on a residential street where, at any time during the day, children are running about and riding bikes. It is only because of luck and circumstance that no one was hurt tonight. It gives me tremendous hope, however, to know that there are still people who will stop and do the right thing, even if it means standing in the pouring rain at 2:00am. So, to that young couple, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Opening with a thunderous rendition of Giant, Matthew Good put on one hell of a show at Le Skratch in Oshawa, last night. Joined by openers The Spades, Matt and company took to the stage with incredible energy. Flowing from one song to the next, mixing material from his previous albums with singles from Hospital Music, Matt spent very little time conversing with the audience — stopping only once to comment on the televisions that had been left on in the back of the bar. The new band, despite having so little time to rehearse, sounds great. They clearly have a passion for Matt’s material and that passion comes through in the live performance.

Personal favourites from the show include Weapon, Apparitions, Alert Status Red, Born Losers, Black Helicopter, and I’m a Window. I would’ve loved to hear songs like Song for the Girl and It’s Been a While Since I Was Your Man, but it’s impossible to play everything the fans might want to hear. I’m a huge fan of Matt’s work and, all told, it was an amazing show. Hopefully we’ll get to see him roll through our little town again sometime soon. Photos can be found, as always, on my Flickr account.

It’s all over. College, I mean. Sure, convocation isn’t for another few weeks, but as far as classes and placement are concerned, I’m all done. It all feels very anti-climatic. Here I am, at the tail end of four years of post-secondary education, and all I feel is panic. Okay, maybe not panic. That might be giving this feeling a little bit too much credit. Bewilderment, perhaps?

It dawned on me recently that this is the first time in my life that all options are open. Everything up to this point has been “the next step”. Elementary school turned into high school, which turned into two years of college, which turned into two more years of college. So, three diplomas later, I’m at a point where I can truly decide where my life goes from here. It’s all up to me. It’s an odd feeling, and I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to come to grips with it.

It’s not that I’m afraid of screwing it up, although I am a little. I guess I just don’t want to waste the opportunity. I don’t want to wake up one day to find myself in some job I hate, surrounded by a wife and kids, pushing 50, and feeling like I haven’t done anything with my life. Not that having a wife and kids and a job is a bad place to find yourself, it’s not. But all in due course. Call it whatever you like, but this definitely feels like some sort of quarter-life crisis. It’s time, I think, to get out some of the ideas that have been bouncing around my skull for the last four years. Time to travel a little bit. To focus on photography and writing and web development. To really give this life a fuckin’ go.

As always, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.