9 April 2016

Nowhere In Sight



Back in Eddy for this year's federal NDP convention. I hear what is left of the media are already playing up a lack of unity within the social democratic ranks. There are some of us in the convention who wish the focus was on a political party that just had a bad fucking election looking for a better way to both express ourselves and the people we drink beer with on Friday nights.

First thing I saw as I made my way into town in the back of my Algierian taxi driver's cab was the increase of social decay since I was in the city 11 months ago. Economic peaks  and valleys are what you get in a Capitalist economy and there are few economies more Capitalist than Alberta's.

Yesterday as I walked from the convention to Freecloud records I got to see the two Albertas such an economic systems results in: glass towers of overfed suits looking down on the people of Desperation Ave. Both sides of the street knowing the bust, now a year old, is nowhere near the finish line.

This morning I sat down with three homeless guys in a crowded Tim Horton's. Been out of work for the most part for a year now. Spent their money drinking until the money ran out. Now all they have is their layers of clothes, their backpacks full of whatever else they have left in the world and their smartphones.

We talked about the good old days - drinking, doing drugs, fucking strange women. Before the good old days got on a horse and rode off into the sunset. Maybe if we keep looking the great horse of prosperity will ride over the horizon towards us again, raise us up from the gutter and dump us there again. It is all the hope being offered.

It is not enough.

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