tim’s thought property

As I had posted a few days ago, the city has had a culminated two weeks of light snow dumped on it, putting us to where we should be in snowy yards, shovelling, and adjustment to the season. Sure, the snow may be later than it normally arrives, but it’s made itself at home once again.
Having said this, many of my fellow citizens have not realized that winter is now here for good. Or perhaps they have and have forgotten how to handle it. Tuesday morning I awoke to drive to work with forty-five minutes of time to get there. I had not thought that shovelling would take priority. It turns out my dad had been shovelling that morning from 6:30, and expected me to help. I shovelled the last part of the driveway and left for work, with less time than I’d wanted.
When I arrived on the main thoroughfare to the downtown from my end (Henderson Highway) I was instantly plugged into an on-going, late-started rush hour. The traffic inched along at 5km/h, when we actually were moving. I kid you not. The road had been plowed once, but it was still less than ideal to drive on. It seems that every finicky and un-confident driver in the city had convened that morning on Henderson Hwy to drive at a speed slower than most parades and funeral motorcades. For one hour I was stuck on that road. (In any normal day, it is a ten minute drive to the downtown bridge, the Disreilli) I was in traffic for an hour! Then, since all the traffic was still hindered, driving 40km/h felt like speeding down the rest of the streets to work. I got to work an hour late, but I had spent a grand total of an hour and thirty-five minutes in traffic. For those who aren’t aware, I am deeply frustrated at being in traffic, since I don’t have the patience for being in a car using my time and gas, and really just putting me in a place where I do not want to be.
That day, Chapters closed early due to lack of customers, as most of the shoppers ended up coming to Starbucks. Even with that, we weren’t very busy at all.

Yesterday, Wednesday, I had another fun escapade on the way to work.
I was condemned to drive the Passat, a car with which I have never quite taken to, and have a frosty relationship with. I have posted about it a few times, with it’s many malfunctions. It’s like the Village Idiot whom you at first feel sorry for, since not all of the problems are it’s fault, but after the repeated and continual problems persist, with no signs of change (even by taking it to the shop numerous times), you can’t help but quietly and openly resent it.
So, I got up extra early to avoid the mini-van stalling drivers of the suburbs, and I made it to the Exchange District in fairly good time. Yet, when I was driving the last half of my trip to work, with a half hour in my pocket, I had found a new problem. I felt the steering keep pulling to the left, so I had to really overcompensate. This car has had alignment problems as long as we’ve had it. Only, after a few more blocks, I looked at the tire at a stop light, only to see the many punctures on the tire, like a systematic stabbing of the wheel. I pulled in to the parking lot of the local seedy hotel and strip club (the Balmoral, if you’re curious), not too surprised to see three cop cars in the parking lot, no doubt on some kind of stake-out.
I phoned my dad, then CAA, who informed me that due to a backup in the services, the earliest tow-truck would arrive at 12:30. Dad came to give me a ride to work, but we ended up cancelling the tow-truck, and instead putting the tiny spare tire on the back, and switching the back tire for the demised front tire.
He took the Passat, I took the van, and arrived an hour late, again.

And again, I was given the generous grace of my boss, to let me stay an hour longer to make up for my arrival; and again, this was another piece in the stew of my frustration. With all of these dealings in the last two days, my nights were severely augmented. I had an appointment cancelled on Tuesday, as well as a Toastmaster’s Meeting. Yesterday, another get-together was nixed, due to the weather, lack of working vehicle, and energy.
Today I was expecting an explosion or a car accident to happen, you know, to finish up the scale of my traffic troubles. It turned out that only long rush hour was in store. A little anti-climactic, but much more safe, I suppose. And that is how my days have unfolded this week.

Tune in next week when I raise an abandoned polar bear cub and tame a team of huskies for the annual Great Trek dog-sled tournament from Iqaluit to Whitehorse. Oh, and my impending story of sticking my tongue to a metal pole. It should be riveting.

We now have snow.
The snow is steadily falling outside, making it’s new home on the lawns and streets, as November finally gets dressed. For the longest time, there seemed to be a distilled tension in the air. The leaves were all fallen, and the sky was a continual roiling grey, just slowly generating the snow that would eventually drift down this evening. And however much I may have romanticized the winter months, I still believe this time of year to be one of the most beautiful of seasons.

In the midst of sorting through various negatives of the last year, and somewhat sorting through my clean clothes; I had decided that enough was enough and I should go for a walk. Confirming my suspicions, I peeked outside to see that the snow was gently piling up all along the roads. I went downstairs to find some sort of winter boots, only to be left with the less-than-ideal steel-toed Dakotas that I had worn as a factory worker. They, sadly, had such a poor sole, that I would slip on the slightest patch of ice, many times nearly falling flat on my back. So, with nothing else, I put them on, and trudged away at the prairie tundra.

It was enjoyable being the only person out walking in the neighbourhood. The snow gleamed in the yellow streetlights, the wind blowing it from the north. I walked along, on the route that I used to go running, and just had time to savour. The wind was cold, yes; but there was not a chill in it yet. I walked along, smoking my pipe, and pondering the immediate.
Walking into the wind was a bit of a chore, until I turned around. I saw the swerving nature of my footsteps, the only ones on the sidewalk, and made an effort to straighten them out. I found it easy to do so, looking back on my steps, to keep them straight in line. But with my back to the direction I was heading, I could see no obstacle in my path, nor could I see the sights of the field filling up with snow. I knew there was an analogy in that, but I didn’t go searching for it.

At one point, I kept my eyes on a streetlight, looking at the illuminated flakes. For a moment, it was only me in the world, the rest of the population was nowhere in sight. I, smoking my pipe, like a young C.S. Lewis, feeling the draw of a snowy night, lit up by the giant suspended light. And not unlike Lewis, I could easily see how such a simple but elegant thing could lead to the eventual creation of a whole epic story. I keep finding that I am drawn in by light and colour, and this moment reminded me of that.

I passed by the Catholic church, and down the street connecting to my part of the bay. My boots found a couple of ice patches without any problems. Upon approaching my driveway, I found that the drifts had already mounted higher since I left. I saw the three snow shovels lined up alongside the house, and realized that what I had to do. Now, if I had entered the house, I would have been told to shovel. If it were up to me, I’d rather not do so. But, being outside and of sound enough mind, I decided to start the first shoveling of the season.

Now perhaps it was my inherent Catholic sense of duty or my inherent Mennonite sense of humility that led me to do so. But in all honesty it was selfishness. I decided that instead of being asked, I’d do the work myself, so as to avoid the usual father/son defiance of doing the chores of the house. If I had done so on my own, then outside of me using twenty minutes doing some heavy lifting, I would have avoided the angering and inevitable command to shovel the driveway. And I did. I don’t even think my dad knows that the driveway has been cleaned.
Being so used to cleaning the driveway at the middle of a snowfall (as to avoid the heavier lifting at the end of one), it was no problem to still be the only one on the street outdoors. Tomorrow morning will no doubt bring the scraping and noise of many neighbours rising earlier than desired to clean their driveways. I’m not a morning person by any stretch, and growing up it was always dad rising before he went to work to do the heavy labour. Being one of the “three boys” or “indentured servants” always meant that Saturdays and weekday afternoons were the designated cleaning times.

Inside all of the surroundings and bustle, I had found much more deeply, the beauty of things. Now being raised in a Christian home has lent itself to my spiritual development, sure; but stopping my busyness and just being, and observing, led me to see an aspect of GOD. There is so much that has been but in front of us, so much depth to each day. Each season is something so much more than we think it to be. There is something so deeply imbued inside these things, light reflecting on snow; the illuminated sky from the cloud canopy and city lights; the wind drawing in and moving around of snow; all of these things to me reflect such a deeper beauty.
People always seem to complain that GOD is not evident in the world and point to all the suffering to prove that point. I don’t think he had ever intended to control everything like a highly detailed machine. On the same stretch, I don’t think that he made the world to sit by and idly observe, and watch how us humans can make a mess of things. Like a parent watching a infant take in all that’s around him, I believe that GOD reacts the same to us. We can be in awe of so many small things, or even larger objects of beauty and wonder; and we can also have a very painful and hard time in the process. A infant can be fascinated by the jingling of car keys, and will undoubtedly cry in pain at the process of teething. It is necessary to go through such things, the pain and joy of life; and like the parent is to help along the infant, so GOD seems to help us along in our growth.

Regardless, I have now been brought back to the realities of winter. The utter beauty of it all, to be admired from afar, or the sore reality of the work involved; both have given a sense of realism to this season. In my last two years, I’ve been absent from the bulk of these Prairie Winters, and now it’s the first time, in a seemingly long time, that I can experience it from start to finish.

I’ve been told that some of the best work is produced in some of the worst environments.
Bill Peet once said that “The atmosphere of poverty” helped produce some of the best early Disney work. The composting of old and decaying materials brings forth the new life of many plants. Even the mythical Phoenix is born from the ashes of its former self. Wow, I’m getting deep after only four lines.

Well, I’ve been somewhat stagnant and unable to create as of late. Ideas are running around my head, thriving and alive, but not fully alive, since they have not yet left my mind. I have found that with free time, my mind gets overloaded with what I can or am able to do, but does not do any of it. When I am in a routine or structured lifestyle, then I fume at the lack of “free time” in which I’d rather have, so I can let loose my creativity. There is no easy balance that I can find.

As it so happens, I have so many things on various burners, with the heat on very low. From the functional such as cleaning my room; to the desirable, such as compiling a photo portfolio; I have yet to complete these sorts of tasks. I have put off reading certain books, or stopped all together in the process of them. I have been floating from idea to idea, never seeing any all the way to completion, for whatever reason.
Looking back to high school, I find that all my work, (best and otherwise) was done last minute. Some of my best art was created while rushed. Some of my best essays were written in class, during the short forty-five minute time frame. I don’t have that confined environment in which to operate any more. Sure, if I return to University, there it will be, with a much greater significance attached to it. But I need to find something to keep me going on a daily basis. How does one cultivate motivation? How do I create a confinement in which my only means of escape is through artistic expression? That’s the question now, isn’t it? How do I create again?