#002: Adventures in solitude

After a car, a van, a minibus, a plane, and a cab ride, I’m sittin’ here in a province I’ve never even seen before today wondering what the hell to do next. For the past four years, all of my unpackings have been hustled along by someone to go meet or mealtimes or video games with my little brother, or something. I’m right and proper back at square one. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Do not want.

I’ve taken up in an okay-sized pale pink old-folks-home-lookin’ rez room (drywall - not cinderblock –  walls, which is a luxury I should be grateful for) filled with two suitcases’ worth of clothes, a big patchwork blanket my Oma knitted me, and not a whole lot else. Those who have been in any of the dwelling spaces I’ve inhabited for the last few years know I’m rather attached to my crap and enjoy surrounding myself with various useless accoutrements, but the two-suitcase rule (and needing things to wear for four months) means I, unfortunately, had to leave my plastic bust of Bach and framed print of the Prince Of All Cosmos at home. I’m going to come back to Windsor in four months to find that all of my stuff has been relocated to the family storage unit (yes, packratism is in the blood).
I kind of feel naked without my DVDs and book collection (or at least without the complete works of Chuck Klosterman), but it feels oddly freeing to not be surrounded by the same old stuff. Ask me again in a week, though. I’ll be sick of watching the same eight movies I have on my laptop over and over again.

First impressions: there are lots of trees.  Piles. The SJ airport is small enough that they let you off on the tarmac instead of hooking up one of those walkways to the plane, so when I got off I was surrounded by any of number of things to stare at: a vast plane of trees, a gigantic jet looming overhead, and the afternoon sun reflecting off the glass panes of the (comparatively) tiny airport. Wanting to make the most of a first impression, I wandered off across the tarmac in my bewildered “gee whiz, isn’t nature grand?” state. I turned  back towards the plane, and one of the airline personnel was looking at me and pointing toward the airport building, mouthing “that way” past whatever was on my headphones. I gave her an eyebrow raise and a thumbs up. Thanks, girlie, for making sure I walked toward the only sign of civilization. I was going to go and ask the conifers for a ride to the campus, otherwise.

There’s no surrounding campus-leeching businesses around here, from what I can see, either; just the trees. Maybe I should go try to befriend one, or eat one. I would kick a tree in the face for some pizza right now.

As an aside, I should mention that this campus’ athletic teams are the Seawolves. I was a little psyched about this considering the sort of loose indie-rock connotations it has as a result of the band Sea Wolf. What most people fail to understand about Sea Wolf is that their (or his, depending on who you ask) name wasn’t an attempt to cash in on a recent rock trend of naming bands after wolves (see: parading wolf eye AIDS), but rather an actual, butt-ugly fish.

Being Maritimers and therefore well-versed in the ways of marine life, I figured the good people of the UNBSJ would use this meaning for the name. Not so.

But at least they know how to pluralize a team name.

Currently listening: Of Montreal – Dirty Dustin Hoffman Needs A Bath