This Crazy Life

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Geo: 51.2947, -116.963

One thing I love about Canada - driving by kilometers. They go by so much more quickly than miles! A roadside sign informs you that you still have 120km to go, your gut drops, but before you know it - you're there! I feel bad for those who must experience the opposite when traveling in the US as the miles drag on and on...

I had a very interesting experience in Kelowna. I was sitting in City Park playing guitar a bit. My meter was about to expire so I packed up and was walking back to my truck when I heard "excuse me sir!" behind me. I turned to see a woman jogging toward me waving her arms. I checked behind me - not a soul - she was definitely talking to me. I stopped and she approached. "Do you know Bravery, by James Blunt?" she asked. "No,but I could probably learn it," not sure where she was going with it. "Great, so I'll see you here next week!" Turns out she is helping organize a rally for the victim of unnecessary police brutality, and I guess was looking for people to join and participate. I regretfully informed her that I was on the road and wouldn't be in the area long. She gave me her website and email, and told me that she just felt like she needed to make a connection with me, and said something along the lines of how this will be the beginning of my fame. Huh. I went back to my truck and was about to leave when I felt like I needed to pick her brain a little more. I went back and found her sitting on a bench where she was waiting for a friend. Quick background story: Shari, from the Fig Jam, later told me that when I first came out the door and walked by her she saw this really white light around me, and a very free energy that she said she doesn't see much. She also said that for the first few minutes were talking she was kind of shocked, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me! Back to the lady in the park: I told her that some weird things had been happening to me lately (thinking of the free white light Shari saw) and asked if there was a specific reason she chased me down. She told me that when she walked by me, though I wasn't actually playing at the moment, she felt this incredible heat coming from me. She went on to where she was meeting her friend, thinking she would just come talk to me after, but when she looked back a few minutes later I had packed up and was walking off, which is when she chased me down. She told me that I am a beautiful soul and that I will be famous.

Perhaps I'm going a little crazy and drawing other crazy people to me, but hey, at least we're all crazy together.

Back up highway 97 through lush valleys that almost make me want to be a farmer and back up to highway 1, the Trans-Canada Highway, weaving through the toes and feet of the mountains, which made me want to be am eagle or a mountain goat. 350km later I was in Golden, a town that sits in the middle of a large gash that continues the entire length of the Canadian Rockies, like a giant butterknife was used to carve out a laceration in the earth's crust from Prince George, BC, all the way down to Whitefish, Montana. First stop: burger. I ordered the Loaded Canadian - a huge patty with all the normal fixins, plus sauteed mushrooms and bacon, and sides of caesar salad and fries. A fine introduction to this fine little town!

After a nap in my truck, I put on my boots and jacket (it was quite chilly!) and took my guitar to go play by the river. A group of 6 or 7 people were sitting on the back patio of a bar. A girl's voice yelled "Hey, you gonna come play guitar for us?!" I looked around, a little confused, still not quite recovered from my nap. One of the men sitting in the group followed, "Yeah, you! Free drinks as long as we're sitting here if you come play!" Now, my momma didn't raise no dummy, and I sure wasn't going to pass up that opportunity! Introductions. They were mostly from Alberta, in town to go on a raft trip in the morning. One of the girls, about my age, was the chef for the rafting company. "What's your poison?" Asked the same man. "Whiskey," i answered, of course. All right, what kind would you like? I told him Crown would be great, if they had it. "With a little coke?" he inquired. "No way, straight up, maybe a couple rocks." Between that and my boots, I had them in the palm of my hand already.

They were awesome, great people, but quite noisy! I quietly played guitar for a while, waiting for a break, until the chef spoke up, practically as a challenge, "Well, let's hear you sing - that's what makes a guitar player!" I went into Broken Wings, one of my favorite songs. About midway through the second line, she saw that I met her challenge, and sincerely said, "wow, you have a really nice voice." They were all listening pretty intently until the line "I wish you would always look at me how you do when you've been drinkin," when the chef loudly laughed declared for the entire patio to hear, "I want that to be my wedding song!" And she didn't stop talking, er, yelling, for the rest of the night. Mark, the gentleman who provided me the Crown, kept sushing her, unsuccessfully. Pretty quickly the entire group was in conversation again. But, as I've learned to do when playing open mics, I just kept playing. I play for me. Because I love to play. That's it. If someone is listening - awesome. If they have a connection with the song - fantastic! But the second I start playing for somebody else, I have put my value and worth into their hands, which will always leave me unsatisfied.

I continued to play. I would often see someone break from the loud conversation and point their attention to the music, seemingly quite drawn in. A couple times the chef would, in the midst of her yelling bouts, pause and say, "you have a very nice voice." I kind of wanted to say "well then why don't you stop yelling so that someone else can hear it!?"

A Budweiser and another 3-finger pour of Crown would eventually found their way in front of me. Brenda, the woman sitting to my other side, almost out of nowhere asked me, "So why are you doing what you're doing? What's your drive? Did you have an oppressive father? Was it a girl?" "Isn't it always about a girl?" I answered and grinned. "If all of this is just from one girl, that must have been something pretty intense." I quickly recapped to her how I got to the mountains of Colorado and about the most recent breakup, the ski season, and thus the beginning of my travels. I told her that after that breakup, I realized that I have lost three amazing relationships with three amazing women basically because of the same reason. I love very intensely, but I lose myself in someone. I am drawn to strong women, and I have always lacked a very strong sense of self-identity, and would allow myself to just become identified by the relationship. And now that I have suffered this great loss three times, and have cause someone else pain each time, I have learned that until I make this journey, really give myself space and time and freedom, that I will continue to repeat the same routine over and over again. This is the longest I've been single for practically a decade, but I know it's what I need. "Finding yourself" is such a bad phrase for it. I prefer "creating myself". I think it's one of those things that the soul deeply comprehends and communicates, and we simply do not have the language to properly express it.

Brenda and I talked for a long time. She had many interesting views and things to say. She believes that a soul will not leave this world until they see everyone they need to. She gave the example of her father, who had been somehow staying alive with a quarter of a lung, his body failing, the doctors unable to comprehend how he was still alive. All of his children made it to his room in the hospital. Unable to talk, and practically lifeless for the previous weeks, he opened his eyes, looked at his family, closed his eyes, and was gone. She believes this to the point that, if someone was on their way to the hospital and the person they were going to see died before they got there, that they should not feel bad or guilty - it's simply that the dying person didn't need to see them before they left.

She believes that our souls come back to this earth again and again in different lives in order to learn new things and learn new lessons and that a soul is not complete, or ready to move on to the next stage (whatever that may be - perhaps angels, she suggested), they will return again and again. She said there are old souls and there are young souls, and said that she sees me to be a very old soul. Maybe that's why I am so angelic all the time. :-P

She believes everything happens for a reason. Every person in our life is meant to teach us something. She believes that our souls choose what life they want to go in to before they are born in a human body, and that when we experience deja vu, it was a sneak peak, the soul seeing again what it had seen so long before and chose to experience. She believes that at the end of our lives, we actually experience all of the intentional harm that we ever imparted on another person.

Some of her thoughts I agree with, others I have begun to explore, others are completely foreign. Whatever the case, I would like to believe that she, like Shari, and like the woman in the park, was put in my path for a reason and is part of this crazy and incredible journey that I am on.

The chef stayed behind, but the rest of us went to a couple other bars (the only other ones in town), witnessed a DJ that spins about as well as a turtle on its back, but ended up listening to a great, small cover band with just a handful of other patrons. I had asked the chef, a local, earlier in the night where a safe place to park would be: ie, somewhere I won't get accosted by the police. She said the cops there were ridiculous, and even though I'd only had one drink at the time, recommended to just leave my truck where it was and not even chance it. "So, that means keep drinking, right?!" I passed by the original patio on the walk back to my truck, the chef still out there, yelling, still. I swear I could still hear her back at my truck, just 20 feet away from a NO OVERNIGHT PARKING sign, as I drifted to sleep to the noise of the crowds and the music and the river. The cops never bugged me.

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