Prodigal Sun

This goes on and on.  It never ends. The sun just never sets.  I can’t tell if I’ve been here one day, or one hundred.

(actually, I’m at day sixteen of sixteen weeks.  not that I’m counting. ohgodohgodohgod.)

Everybody likes the idea of coming to visit during the period of 24 hour daylight, but once you’ve been up for 72 hours with ATVs on a constant parade loop outside your window and children throwing rocks on your tin roof from midnight to 5 am, the novelty kind of wears off.  Like a 4 year old mangling a joke.

Knock Knock.

Who’s there?

The sun!

The sun, who?

The sun blazing through your windows at 3am!

(Har har.)

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

SUN!

Sun, who?

SUUUUN!!

Knock knock….

(Nooooooo!)

The Inuit articulate chronology in a way that makes particular sense this time of year.  Everything is counted backwards or forwards from the moment you’re in.  When talking about an event three days in the past, they say ‘today, yesterday, the day before, the day before that.’ Seamless, and somehow separate.  It probably explains why I just listen to the same albums over and over again, and am perpetually déjà-vuing my way through the days. I can’t begin to count the days until my break: five weeks and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that…

Every fall, the roads are sprayed with Calcium Chloride for dust suppression purposes.  The by-product of this process is that every spring, every inch of this town (and every soul in it) ends up covered with silky red mud. Keeping clean is impossible, so everyone just wears an outfit until it smells, itches, or becomes sentient.  I suspect that with a few more days' wear, my fur hat will fuse itself to my skull and start giving unsolicited relationship advice.  "He was a BASTARD to you! More coffee, more coffee!*" Or something.  And as helpful as my hat might be, I still look like crap.  Ugh.

And yet...I feel better than I have felt in a very, very long time.   Look at me, with the optimism and smiling and crap.  

I’ll find you in Hell after the Rapture, at the combo Tim Horton’s/Wendy’s/Esso.  I’ll grab the Double Doubles and the Dutchies. You get the napkins.  We’ll need a lot.  It’ll get sweaty in Hell, I reckon.


*kids in the hall reference.  there will be a test.