Alienated in Maple Ridge

Wake up at 4am. My dreams, insofar as I remember them, involved complicated paperwork, in the midst of which I found myself worried that I'd forgotten something - so I woke up to check. It's typical; after 6 hours, I seem to be dumped from the palace of sleep, like it or not. I could tell the time by the quality of light coming through my window, and the fact that there wasn't much of it, but after a short period of flopping about, I sighed and reached for my bedside lamp...

Here I am in Maple Ridge, then. Commuting every day to work and back, trying to come to terms with the suburban milieu. It hasn't gotten better. Overheard some dumpy locals talking in reverential tones about how "weird" the novels of Stephen King are on the train the other day - one of those approved social topics for light chitchat that apparently never grows old in this town, since I've been overhearing it for some thirty years... It's a fine place to let yourself go in, since standards are so much lower than in the city; the thinner population and the general lack of interest in anyone outside your own bubble - and the fact that almost anyone who has DONE anything with their life (other than produce children) has left town ages ago - means that you can just bloat up, fuck up, let your spirit wither and your waistband expand. Pretty much no one will care; this is why freaks like Jeffrey Dahmer flourish in the 'burbs - he'd have been caught in a minute in a decent-sized city. It's not that people aren't self-righteous or conservative or such in Maple Ridge - that they're any more approving of non-mainstream ways of living - as, say, any homosexuals growing up here would, I'm sure, eagerly concur with - it's just that they don't give a fuck, aren't paying enough attention to anything that doesn't come through on their TV screen. When the Subhumans sing, in "In Good Company," of a world where people "get their values from TV," it's my own hometown I think of first...

And the main problem, make no mistake, is that it's lonely here. It might be easier to survive here if I had a woman with me, but it seems like the women of the town are all either Moms, kids, or horrible white-trash mutilations of the spirit... I watched in awe the other week as two bimbos in short skirts and high heels, cussing and laughing and spitting, did the "walk of shame," still drunk at 7am, on the sidewalk across from me; even if I wanted to recap their conversation - a profanity-rich, profoundly vulgar, and utterly unfeminine diatribe on men, punctuated with harsh bursts of laughter and deep-chested smokers' coughs - it would be beyond me; I would need a tape recorder to be able to do it justice... Unlike living in Japan, the isolation of it stings a bit, because you feel like you SHOULD be able to do something about it - it's not just because you're a foreigner that you're alone in a town like this. But there's nothing to be done - you might as well be waiting for Godot. It was a horrible place to be a teenager in. At 42, I have more resources to combat the ugliness and mediocrity of it, more awareness that there are other options - it no longer feels like Maple Ridge is reality, forever and amen - but that's a double-edged sword; I can cope better here, maybe, but I know beyond a doubt that this is NOT where I want to be living.

But, like I say, here I am. I still feel guilt, failure, and loss in the wake of my father's death - he's been lingering close in my mind, lately. I still visit my mother almost every day and keep her company - the most important thing she needs of me is that, she can function elsewise but with few friends and little language ability she otherwise just sits and watches TV. She's never been that independent, anyhow - and any attempts on her part to become moreso, like a period some twenty years ago where she was talking about wanting to get a job outside the home, were kind of "put down" by my father, who didn't want her to work, to some extent because he felt it was his job to take care of her... which he did all too well... To the extent that she is independent, it means - the odd casino trip aside - that she rarely leaves her apartment, not even to talk to other people in the building, whom she mostly dismisses. She has no family locally, and I have no brothers or sisters, so I'm about it, for her. She says she is "content," but she complains that she is "bored" whenever I take the odd night off to work on my own stuff, which ultimately means she is content as long as I visit her daily... They're sweet, nice visits, mind you - we watch movies or sometimes play cards or work on jigsaws, or sometimes I take her out, to help her shop or do banking or for the odd special event (like an Irish Rovers concert I took her to). I sometimes wish I could bring her with me into the city - to move in with her into a west end apartment, say, so I could spend less time commuting and more time working - and live in an environment a bit more condusive to my identity - but with her language issues, it would be so difficult for her to form new relationships that it's hard to think of that as an acceptable option... I mean, she does have a few friends here. Not many, and she doesn't see them much, but... it's not ALL down to me. In the city, it would be...

So that's my life. Mostly it's devoted to just tryin' to keep my act afloat - pay my bills, keep my space from getting too messy, stay on top of my marking, don't miss the train... Someone pointed out today that it's kind of ironic that I spend my mornings with ESL students and my evenings with my Mom, who has aphasia. I actually DO spend less time than I ever have really talking with people. (I suppose I could join the leagues of the commuter-communicators, but I'd really rather just strap on my headphones and tune them out). On Saturday nights, I bullshit with a buddy in the building, but otherwise, it's tough, when most of the people I know get home from work after I've left the city for the day; plus often the relationships were largely attached to things I don't do much, anymore (like goin' to live music events or movies). It's easy to get a bit lost without people you can talk to, to lose a sense of yourself, to find things that used to be important sliding into the haze, to forget who you are, or at least who you tell the world you are...

Maybe it's not all bad, though. The less you talk to others, the less you can lie to yourself about who you are and what you're doing...

...unless you blog, I guess...