Dropping Like Flies

31 March - Morning ablutions were particularly difficult today as they involved not only the usual shower but washing of hair, shaving and preparation of my pre surgery breakfast, all of which ar rather dfficult with only one hand. Pulled Ashu out of bed to come downtown to see Inside Man with me. I love a good bank robbery film and I love a good thriller ;and sometimes they can be worked in to make a great fillum, which this was. Spike Lee can make an epic out of anything, except maybe New York cereal killers (though why anyone would let a dog tell them to kill a bowl of coco pops I don’t know). I assisted Ashu in the purchasing of some courier weed and he was amazed by the revealing of the courier subculture and how they completely infest downtown, something which has until now completely slipped under his radar. Bumped into Owen outside the art gallery who informed me that hed walked off the job a few hours previously leaving Novex with a sum total of two full time bikers (jason and stu) and two part timers (Reno comes in after 1 and Flowers only works Fridays). Did see Jason for a few seconds but he was bouncing before we even could have a proper blether - apparently he broke my record today which is kind of disappointing but the circumstances in which he did it was pretty exceptional and he's really fast when he needs to be. On the way back we stopped in at the Amsterdam Café (which really wasnot on the way home but we made it so regardless). I’m sure all the proprietors say that its just like a café in amsterdam and the locals probably say that its nothing like a café in amsterdam but in my opinion it was exactly like a café in the red light district of amsterdam except it had better coffee. The haze of pot smoke obscured the far wall and the clientele were all red eyed and puffing away on immaculately constructed joints ranging from tiny twists to giant Cincinnati carrots. They weren't selling dope there (at least the sign said that they didnt) but everyone was smoking and rolling completely openly and smoke was pouring out into the street. I can’t understand how I could never have noticed it before - i've heard of the place and passed by it a thousand times while working but have never gone in. The smoke was killing my eyes so i couldn’t stay in there for very long so we soon trundled home where I watched On the waterfront and tried to tend to the creeping bird flu. Today also marked the end of rene's tenure at 1949. I've very mixed feeling about his departure although for the most part they are reasonably positive - I don't want to live with someone who has the capacity to explode like he does and his fuse s very short and unpredictable. We never had any real beefs but I don't think it would take much to ignite him. If I see him around great but I don't think i'll be doing the seeking.
My native friend Puh-La-Neeks is off to Vancouver Island tomorrow and from twill be heading off to the Dominican Rpublic so will not be seeing her again for the foreseeable future. She invited me over to watch a native themed (surprise, surprise) road movie called 'Pow Wow Highway' which was not the worst movie i've ever seen but ... Well, it wasn’t the worst movie i've ever seen. It did star the two stalwarts of the Indian actingworl, Grahame Green and the always incredible Wes Studi (although not so incredible in this one). It was the third full length movie I’d watched that day so perhaps I’d just reached my limit of movie watching or maybe it was just a pretty awful movie. Puh-la-neeks is a very interesting girl but we really do not have anything in common. She's completely one track about her native people which is important but I find it difficult to agree with the way she sees the world. The plight of natives in this country is terrrible - there ar so many parallels with Australian aborigines that its scary. Stolen generation, alcohol problems, land issues, children growingup in neglect etc but there ar lots of people who ar working to fix these problems but when she tells me about the methods I fail to see how they can be effective. She's a leader in a youth group who teaches others to advocate to resolve problems and this involves discussing issues and making people awar of those problems. There seems to be very little action actually taken to fix the problems - everyone is aware of what is wrong, the problems have been identified, what needs to happen now is actio. It's just talking and discussing and talking and discussing. But, i've no real experience in this kind of world so I’m not reallyone to talk. The other thing bout her ius that she is a profoundly optimistic and spiritual person and ... i'm not. She believes literally in the mythology of her ancestors, which is something I can never give any credence too - i'm not a complete disbeliever - I think there ar a lot of things in tis world that we don’t understand and I think there might be some fom of an afterlife but I think just about everything will eventually be explained by science. I don’t know what is out there but I can categorically state that any person who tries to describe specifically what happens will be wrong. There ar no pearly gates, no reincarnation, no pit of fire or lake of ice. All of these things ar constructoins of people and they were people who had a very limited knowledge of the world. Whatever is out there is almost certainly beyond description in material terms.