Long train to absence and fondness and all that crap...

It's funny, Canadians think that we're soooo nice, so polite, and so tolerant, etc...We're not, or at least, we aren't always that way. I'm on a train to Toronto ($100CDN round trip from Sarnia...good to know Kev and Aim) and I'm tortured by the middle aged woman behind me who is rambling on and on about herself and her travels like she's some CBC travel writer. I wanna punch her in the face. That's not very Canadian is it? That's because we're just as obnoxious and entitled as anyone. In fact, I think I hate a Canadian blabberturd more because they're pretending that they aren't blabberturds when really ones nationality has little more to do with it than perhaps tendancies and demographics...My god, if you're a white, anglo-saxon, fifty-something, relatively well-to-do, Canadian woman taking the early train to Toronto there's a 60% chance that you're a turd. Sorry, I have a bar graph that proves it, maybe even a pie chart. It's a true statistic I just made up for this story.

The sky is still grey, nearer to black at this ungodly hour. Call me soft but 6:40 am train departures are early enough for me. I've never been the 5 am riser, the night urchin or early morning apologist. I hate being awake when I know that the good portion of the rest of my particular slice of hemisphere is still sleeping...hate it. I used to loathe the midnight shift during those summers in high school when I was stupid enough to take a factory job. Even then 3 am could make me cry. I hate the pseudo-isolation of the early morning. I feel...lonely.

I don't mind 7 am...in fact, I love it. Many, but not all, of the world's most annoying people are still asleep, or at least washing the annoyance off of themselves in filthy showers all across North America. I enjoy the semi-solitude of that hour, but 6 am is another matter entirely. I don't like feeling as though the jokes on me. Literally millions of people are still asleep and I'm up and wandering, semi-lucid...semi-disgusted with myself. You don't want to see me at 5 or 6 am. I'm much less than I can be. I'm sure most people are.

This is a nice trip...the train, I mean. It rolls through farmland and forest, past old dirt roads and empty, long neglected stations in long neglected towns. The train whistles and everyone from students to businessmen stumble on and off. There are much worse ways to see Southwestern Ontario but there are few better. It's easy, it's relatively inexpensive, and only occasionally do you end up with white, anglo-saxon, fifty-something, relatively well-to-do, Canadian woman turding up your trip with blabber.

I'm off to Toronto for four days...a delegate at North America's most esteemed Gang Summit and conference. The event is heavy with the most prominent of social researchers, law enforcement, and those strange people they call "gang practitioners." Every major American city is represented here, with added weight coming from the left side of the continent in Los Angeles. Every Canadian city is represented here too, as well as First Nation groups, ethnic special interest groups, drug and immigration officials, and less prominently, guys like me. It will be exciting, if not occasionally depressing and thought provoking...not the kind of thoughts that balance out gang related issues, but the kind of thoughts that make me wonder what I'm doing here and how I got to this place. I really just gave a @#$t about people, and turned out to be pretty good at giving a #$%t about people, and before I knew it BLAM...hangin' with Hoover Crips. Yeah, I know, it barely makes sense to me

I'm excited about the week ahead but I'm more than a little upset that I won't see June until Friday, and I won't see Zo until Saturday. I realized yesterday that June and I haven't been apart for more than one night in a long time. The last time was when I was in NYC, and the only other time before that might have been when June slipped back to Japan to visit family. That was at least six or seven years ago. Before that it might have been another four or five years. We've maybe been apart for more than thirty-something hours on just two occasions in the past decade and that fact makes me smile. We could have been apart on any number of occasions but weren't, mostly because we didn't want to be. I like my wife...I like being around her...I like hanging out with her...I like talking to her. I even like being silent around her...you know, just being. It's nice.

What might be more of an issue is that I've never spent much time away from Zoey. She's been away for no more than 48 hours herself on only one occasion. This week is going to be hard, much harder than I ever imagined when the conference came calling. I won't get to feed her breakfast. I won't get to see her excited face when I get home after work (or her indifference when I leave). I won't get to bath her, or play with her and all her stuffed friends at bedtime. I won't get to read with her, and draw with her. I won't get dragged around the house by an audacious and excitable little girl who just wants her Dad to share in everything she discovers. That's become her thing..."Look Dad. Look at this." I'm going to miss all of that stuff.

I wish that white, anglo-saxon, fifty-something, relatively well-to-do, Canadian woman would start blabbering again. I need a distraction. We're only in London and I miss le Zed already. She was sleeping when I left, and so I didn't want to wake her. I should have least ducked my head in her door. No, that might have made it worse.

Hmmmf...didn't expect to feel like this.