Friday, October 21, 2005

This post is posted differently then the day it was written. It was written today (Saturday, October 22) but I just want to mention Rachel Tomalty. I knew it was her birthday the day before, and I wanted to wish her a happy birthday on her birthday, but I didn't remember until it was too late. Shoot. I thought maybe the thought might count, especially if I wasn't tying to tell her that the thought counted, so I decided to write it here, so that someone would know that I really had the thought. Happy Birthday Rachel.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Not much for such a long absence, but think of all the man-hours wasted at traffic lights. I sat at a light watching no one go through the intersection and felt the wasted hours. Not so much mine, but mine, plus the guy next to me, and the guy behind him, and the millions of others. If only I could get my hands on that.

Now that I’m a business man, I recognize the significance of an hour of work. If I could use all that wasted time for something, for anything, get them to make bead necklaces or stitch up shoes. Now all I have to do is figure out how to make everyone else understand how important it is that they devote their lives to working for me. Any ideas?

Saturay, October 15, 2005

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.
--Heisenberg, uncertainty paper, 1927

I really love the HUP, but I'm not sure that everyone has the same appreciation for it that I do.

So Peter and I have a business cell phone now, like real construction foremen always do. We had two for a bit thinking that we were getting a special deal, but it turns out we were just paying twice what we needed.

So the funny part was that we had two numbers, one that ended in N-A-I-L and one that ended in W-O-O-D which are obviously good numbers but one might wonder whether we were a framing business or something a little less reputable. When we went down to one number we figured NAIL might be the safer bet.

For the sake of an interactive sight,

NAIL vs. WOOD

what do you think?

Wednesday, October 12

Alright, I admit it, I’m not the typical construction worker. The thing I like the most about work are the people there. Today, we finished almost all the work they had for us, so we were given another house to work on while we wait for them to get the duplexes ready. That meant that all seven of us were working on one house again today, and it felt like Christmas! And when Ryan puts all those pretty red chalk lines accross the OSB I start counting down the days...

No, it wasn’t quite as fun, but it was really busy, with people bustling all over. And there is a similarity between relationships with fellow workers and with family, you always know where you stand. Each of us has our roles, you be Dad, and I’ll be the guy who nails together a new beam pocket.

It is late, I’ve got to go to bed. ‘Night all.

Jonny

Tuesday, October 11

I am watching a T.V. program, where one of the main characters is named Rory. Lots of people watch it, though I think they are mostly girls. I think Lindsay (don’t tell her I spelt her name right) is one of them. It is a bit stylized which allows bad actors to appear as just quirky people, and includes lots of name dropping of names that would not normally make it onto television (this episode included Nietszche, Marx, and Schopoenhour). I have only ever seen one episode before this one and Rory, the character whose name I know, had a poster of Derrida on her wall. Isn’t that amazing? Derrida!

Alright, I apologize. I know it is a stupid show, and I know I shouldn’t have to use exclamation marks to get my point across, and I know that it is stupid to use Derrida as an excuse to watch terrible T.V. and write like a youth pastor.

Today was a good day at work. It was kind of long, wearying, and frustrating in lots of ways, but both Tristan and I were a little sleep deprived; I got to work with him for a lot of the day. We built our house with one of the main support beams in the wrong place, and the rest of the house on top of it. So today, since Pete was busy, Tristan and I, with a total of 5 weeks of framing experience and 7 ½ hours of sleep between the two of us, set out to put up some posts to support the house, chop the floor out from under us, and make everything right.

Alright, I want to get some sleep.

Monday, October 10, 2005

I got into the car with my Dad and when he started the car music started. Normally we ride without music, having different taste in music and not enough time to talk about the multiple possible worlds there are to talk about. The thing is, that the music that started was Jack Johnson, and I didn’t know the song very well; it was Jack Johnson’s new album and I don’t own his new album.

It turns out, my Dad bought it on one of his impulse buys. He was in Costco and it Jack was available in one of their listening booths. My Dad had a listen, and he told me that he thought “This sounds like J music.” AND THEN HE BOUGHT IT! This is a very interesting event. It is an unlikely behaviour, and I need to figure out how I can encourage more of it.

Imagine, “Yeah, that new camera you wanted, I thought I’d pick it up. And I got that new lazy boy you liked, and the new Subaru WRX Empriza wagon in the driveway, I don’t know when I’ll use it, but it just looked like the kind of car you might like.”

I don’t want to go to work tomorrow, but I might only work eight more days, and that is not very many at all. Yipee!

Saturday, October 8, 2005

I am at my father’s house, in the room that I use as a bedroom when I am here. The sun is pouring in the window, glancing off a sidewall and hitting everything with its indirect light. The room looks like the very start of the day and is early morning bright.

This room is not bright on its own. It has walls that look white, but they are the darkest shade of white my father would let my sister use. The bedding is an only slightly darker color that I could name if I knew the names of colors that are as many as there are numbers. It is the color of white when it is dirty from an earthy dust. Sometimes I think it looks dirty, but not mostly, and when the sun is shining, I think they look white, only warmer. There are some light colored woods, a couple picture frames, a desk and two shelves, suspended on the wall. It is as you would find in a hot climate, with decorations that seem like they are conserving themselves, making use of negative space that is filled with hot air.

The decorations are almost entirely African: two tall, elegant dark wood figures, their elongated mahogany bodies graced with colorful golden beadwork. They used stand on two sides of a long wall, each on a tiny wooden shelf that clings to the corners by an unseen mechanism, but I put together. Separately they were too tall, skinny and plain to take up their space, but together they are striking, beautiful and in their one corner they make the whole room beautiful. The other corner now contains a pot patterned only by two colors in large plains, a rich fiery red and a darkest grey.

Next to it hangs a picture of an undetailed face painted with only black paint on a paper that looks tea stained. It is a wild looking face with one side entirely black from shadow and the other side mostly covered by dark and wild hair. It could be ominous, but it isn’t; it is the face of my father, painted by my mother. My father had a wild and crazy beard for the first seventeen and one half years of my life, and from old pictures I now realize that his hair was always as wild and silly as my father.

Next to that is a photograph of my mother with four little black boys. In the background is one of the worst examples of poverty I have ever seen. It was taken near the end of my grade three year; my whole family went on a trip to South Africa, but my mother’s ticket was paid for by the Alberta government on a grant for her to do research to write a book, which she wrote. This picture was taken after the family had gone home and my mother was doing whatever writers do to help them write books.

Underneath that is a hook for a picture that is leaned up against the wall on the floor. I think I know what picture it is (the one of the trees that look like birch trees in the golden dry grass) but I can’t tell because it is facing the wall.

The opposing wall has two shelves that contain more objects with a history of their own as well as childhood memories for me, except for one green stone face that I don’t know where it came from, how long we have had it, or whether it is African. It doesn’t match the room. It also has a dark wooden dresser toped by a grey pot full of tiny dried flowers. Wild, thick dead grass topped by many grey flowers with spiky petals that are too small to be measured by comparison to any common object.

This description threatens to suggest that the room is cluttered by decoration, but there are just enough to make one think that the empty space is full of African air, even if the sky outside looks like one that is made of blue ice, ready to drop snow on a fading fall.

I am in this room, and I am being here, but more so I am writing here. I am actively engaged in writing and I am now writing myself in. I should make my character doing something different from what I am doing; wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote myself in saying, ‘I am in this room, and I am taking delight in doing nothing, in letting mind go free’ or even, ‘I am concentrating on the light moving across the walls around the room as the fall sun, to lazy to climb too high, wanders, strolls, lazes with its hands in its pockets across the sky. As if looking at the ground, not straying too far from the horizon as it watches the fall leaves pass underneath.’ Now how could I be doing that if I am writing?

September 30

It is Friday. I have no work tomorrow and I am eating by myself in Sam Wok. I am eating “Diced Chicken in Szechwan Sauce,” chicken combined with mushrooms, celery, broccoli, onion, water chestnuts and cashews. The décor consists of an black pink and silver painting of slashes that was painted in the very womb that gave birth to the eighties, and a bare fish tank with overgrown gold fish. The whole place makes you think of linoleum, but it is clean, and the food is good and the ginger beef is very good. I love Friday.

The last two days of work have been great, and I am really excited about working with Ryan AND Tristan. Seriously, can you think of anybody better to work with? It is too bad we won’t get Jason Lyons now, but he’s a hoser anyway eh? There is more going on with lots of people working and it feels kind of exciting. I think it is getting harder for Peter because he has to keep up with all the mistakes that we make, everything happens so fast. Everything is also probably more fun because I am twice as good as I was at the beginning of the week.

Today our roof trusses showed up that we have been waiting for for two weeks. For those of you who don’t know what roof trusses are, they are these giant triangles of lumber where the bottom is longer then the whole house and then with a number of pieces filling in the triangle to brace it. So we have a pile of twelve of these joists, two of which are sheeted with OSB, which makes them about twice as heavy, and no crane, or zoom-boom in sight to help us get them up two stories to the roof of the house. But we needed to do the roof, and we needed to make room for our neighbor’s trusses that were coming, so the five of us figured we’d just hand-bomb them up. That’s what we do, us framers, we hand-bomb things. Even giant heavy joists up two stories to roofs without roofs so people are balancing at the same time as “hand-bombing” them up. It’s because we are so strong.

So the old man next to us said that we couldn’t get them up, and that someone was likely to get hurt, but it turns out that he was only half right. Peter almost got pushed off the side of the house, Ryan almost have 400 pounds of wood dropped on him like a piano on Wiley Coyote (you should have seen it, I was holding the bottom of the triangle, and Pete, thirty five odd feet away from me and 12 feet up was holding the other end with Ryan in the middle, underneath the OSB covered wall of wood when he slipped, the top end almost sliding of the side of the house and me hold my end up just enough so that when Ryan was squished his guts would probably spray out my side) and I almost strained my back. It was exciting. I am looking forward to more stories like that.

But seriously, one of our guys, Fraiser, is a behemoth of a man. He carries around walls I can barely wiggle, and readjusts the house with a swing of his hammer. I really don’t know how other crews are going to get their trusses up. We are talking about lending them Fraiser for $50 an hour, and really, he is probably worth more then that when he is working for us. Don’t worry, we are giving him a raise.

But even with all that, I am so glad it is the weekend. Finally fricken Friday if you know what I mean. I am so pumped.

Missed Events: I was in the entrance of an IGA, staring out the “EXIT” doors and waiting to be picked up, and as I am waiting a man outside begins to walk towards me. He is walking purposefully, as a large portion of the population seems to do, since they seem to have things they need to do, intending to enter the IGA. However, what I was immediately aware of was that he was trying to go in the out door.

I expected him to notice and to turn aside, but as the seconds past and he came closer and closer he still didn’t notice. You want to know if he will notice or if he will participate in a brilliant comedic act, but as he is getting too close, you are almost dissapointedly aware that you can save him and cross the censor to open the door. Closer and closer, and I’m sure he would have hit it, but I’ll never know, and I’ll never see because I stepped in and opened the door.

Thursday, September 29, 2005: 10:04

My Dad called me.

My Dad is so wonderful. Right now what seems best to me is for him to retire and then for the two of us to move somewhere remote into a little shack and to fish, sleep and read short stories for many years. Perhaps a lightly wooded area about half an hours hike to a beach where waves crash against big jagged rocks and it would be dangerous for anyone but good swimmers to swim. But there would be a sort of bay where the water was calm, protected from the waves by a buttress of rocks, and warmer, the lesser body of water being more easily influenced by the sun then the sea.

If you were to only see the landscape in the near vicinity of this small dwelling, one would think it was in Britain, but it isn’t. It is in Portugal, and the closest populous would speak mostly Arabic. Despite my best efforts I would never learn Arabic or Portuguese, understanding both their grammer and syntax but failing to hold on to the words that actually meant things. We would get by with just enough to let people know what we needed so we could purchase our basic needs and they could laugh at my attempts to communicate and then we would drive back home in our European version of a wood paneled station wagon. It might be a really ugly green color, but not the sort of ugly that actually seems cool.

The Muslim portion of the population would go to Mecca on their religious journeys that every good Muslim must make and my Dad and I would think about those trips often. Most of our books would be about stories of Muslim devotion and these journeys to the one place on earth that seems to almost touch heaven in a violent collision of man with God, stories about journeys closer to an unreachable God.

I can’t believe we would fish. It seems so stupid that I would keep eating fish even though I can never learn to like it. Often I would try a new recipe: with tomatoes, onions, a Turkish alchohol, more butter, more salt, but mostly I would just eat it as it should be, simply fried with whatever vegetables on the side, and think of how I should like it by now. But I would enjoy the fishing.

This is not how this entry was supposed to go. I had intended to write about the man I saw who walked towards the exit only automatic door from the outside. I was going to write about the funny messages we got about friends who wanted work and I still haven’t mentioned the talk from Sunday or how nice that hot tub that I mentioned earlier turned out to be, but a small, silly thing happened that made me sad, and then my dad called.

Thursday, September 29, 2005: 10:04

My Dad called me.

My Dad is so wonderful. Right now what seems best to me is for him to retire and then for the two of us to move somewhere remote into a little shack and to fish, sleep and read short stories for many years. Perhaps a lightly wooded area about half an hours hike to a beach where waves crash against big jagged rocks and it would be dangerous for anyone but good swimmers to swim. But there would be a sort of bay where the water was calm, protected from the waves by a buttress of rocks, and warmer, the lesser body of water being more easily influenced by the sun then the sea.

If you were to only see the landscape in the near vicinity of this small dwelling, one would think it was in Britain, but it isn’t. It is in Portugal, and the closest populous would speak mostly Arabic. Despite my best efforts I would never learn Arabic or Portuguese, understanding both their grammer and syntax but failing to hold on to the words that actually meant things. We would get by with just enough to let people know what we needed so we could purchase our basic needs and they could laugh at my attempts to communicate and then we would drive back home in our European version of a wood paneled station wagon. It might be a really ugly green color, but not the sort of ugly that actually seems cool.

The Muslim portion of the population would go to Mecca on their religious journeys that every good Muslim must make and my Dad and I would think about those trips often. Most of our books would be about stories of Muslim devotion and these journeys to the one place on earth that seems to almost touch heaven in a violent collision of man with God, stories about journeys closer to an unreachable God.

I can’t believe we would fish. It seems so stupid that I would keep eating fish even though I can never learn to like it. Often I would try a new recipe: with tomatoes, onions, a Turkish alchohol, more butter, more salt, but mostly I would just eat it as it should be, simply fried with whatever vegetables on the side, and think of how I should like it by now. But I would enjoy the fishing.

This is not how this entry was supposed to go. I had intended to write about the man I saw who walked towards the exit only automatic door from the outside. I was going to write about the funny messages we got about friends who wanted work and I still haven’t mentioned the talk from Sunday or how nice that hot tub that I mentioned earlier turned out to be, but a small, silly thing happened that made me sad, and then my dad called.