After Winter Must Come Spring, Which Lasts About 2 Weeks.

  I'm leaving Winnipeg for a month this Monday. After making it through a particularly brutal winter in which I spent many (too many probably) hours trudging through ankle-to-knee-to-waist-high snow, it feels kind of counterintuitive to be leaving Winnipeg during what most would consider the best time of the year. It's the first time I've spent that much time out of the Heartland of Canada since an ill-conceived stint in the oil patch in 2006, so I've been thinking quite a bit lately about what exactly it will be like to be away from the comforts of home, and the much beloved people that surround it. Perhaps more unsettling is the fact that I'm going to a country that is completely alien to me (Thailand), where I don't speak the language, I'm not overly familiar with the culture, and it's going to be so hot that it's going to make me want to walk around naked (which I hear is somewhat frowned upon in Thailand). So I've thought about how I want to interact with this tension that has started to put down roots rather deep in my head, so I decided that it would probably be therapeutic to write about it. So here I am, getting ready to take off the other side of the world to immerse myself in a land of hot sauce, smiles, overly apologetic people, opiate addicts and a corrupt government that puts people in  for drug offences while turning a blind eye towards the exploitation of vulnerable individuals. So at least it's nice to know I'll feel at least a little at home while I'm there.
  So in an effort to really engage and attempt to unpack my experiences while I'm halfway around the world, I'm going to try and write something every couple of days. Obviously some days it's just not going to work out, travel life will get in the way, internet access might be spotty, maybe nothing especially awesome or thought provoking happened,¹ but ideally I'll knock one out every two or so sunsets. To start us off, I'll get one out about what leaving Winnipeg for August is doing to me psychologically. It's considerably more affecting than I would have thought. Actually I didn't think about it at all until a couple weeks ago, and hit hard right around the afternoon of Sunday the 14th.


¹That last one is pretty unlikely, based on the fact that while typing though, I typed through instead, twice. And almost did it again. So that's pretty interesting. And I can wax somewhat endlessly on pedantic little issues, like why my brain believes that through is a better option than though. Or perhaps why my left index finger feels the need to hit the "r" key every time I type through though.
² Winnipeg Folk Festival concert series just emailed me to let me know that Dwight Yoakam is coming through town soon(ish). My parent listened to him a lot when I was younger, and he's somehow settled in rather comfortably into my "I'm pretty sure this is good" centres of my brain. It's a good time. I'm not sure what exactly living in the Pocket of a Clown would be like, but I'm pretty certain that it's a real sad place to hang around. Although any time you have opportunity to hang out in a giant pocket seems like a pretty good time to me.
³ I'll post pictures too.