The Fourteen Day Daze

I’m living in a daze of days, each one like the next. I’m floating through long periods of dreaming, punctuated by sudden moments of lucidity. Time becomes pliable; it stretches out and contracts. The future is a long rubber tunnel, and the present moment is solid and unmoving.

My life without John is like that.

Noticing time seems to arrest it, so I ignore it as much as possible. Although, when you try to ignore a thing it can hound you.

I’m afraid I’ve become rather antisocial. I love solitude, and I can quite easily spend all of my time alone, looking into novels and flipping through channels, cooking and tidying up, watching films and browsing through the library, and I don’t speak to a single soul for days. Then, when I go back to work, it’s an effort to rouse myself and talk to strangers. It’s as though I’ve forgotten how.

John has always been the one to make me feel social and outgoing. It’s strange: it’s easier to be confident when he’s around. Who cares what other people think, when I’ve already won the regard of the only person who really matters?

We’ve been together now for five years, and until now, the longest we’d been apart was a weekend. Literally every day now for five years, we’ve eaten the same food, slept in the same bed, and breathed the same air; we’ve spent hours in comfortable silence, and hours in long conversation. Don’t get me wrong – we’ve always had our own lives, our own interests and our own friends. But at the end of the day, we were always bound to be together. For this past year in New Zealand, we’ve spent nearly all day, every day with each other: we’ve slept and woken up together, worked, cooked, eaten, partied, hiked, shopped, and traveled together.

Who knew that I would love spending so much time in one person’s company? I’m not sure what it is about John’s personality that makes him so easy to live with.

In that context, six weeks seems like an awfully long time to be apart. But at least it’s an opportunity to reflect on ourselves, to remember what it’s like to be alone, and to miss each other, to appreciate those things that we love about each other.

After a month apart, here is a list of the top 10 things I miss about John.

1.       His presence, especially when we’re in the same room doing different things, and I look over at him and he doesn’t notice.

2.       His smell and taste. It’s a mystery of human chemistry and I don’t understand it, but some people just have a pheromonal attraction. As far as my senses are concerned, he’s home.

3.       The way he makes me laugh. He’s just so damn entertaining.

4.       When I walk into a room and he says “There she is,” like he’s been waiting for me.

5.       Little details, like the laugh-lines under his left eye and the smudge of amber on his iris.

6.       Unlimited, fascinating, profound and pointless conversation. I really miss hearing the stories of his day, and being able to tell him random things whenever I think of them.

7.       The fact that he’s always on top of practical things, like the laundry, turning the oven off and remembering the door key. I’m extremely absent-minded, so I appreciate how he takes care.

8.       The look on his face when he’s concentrating.

9.       The way he always tries to share my pillow even though he has his own.

10.   Sometimes in the middle of the night, he’ll do this thing where he rolls over and wakes up and mumbles something to me, but if I answer he’s already asleep again. It just kills me.

We’ve spent a month apart, but strangely enough, when I think back, it doesn’t seem that long – not really. The only unbearable part is being away from him right now, this moment. No: the really unbearable thing is facing ahead, into the long tunnel, the next two weeks without him, all of those accumulated moments when I will miss him and feel his absence.

And yet, when he is here, it will seem as though no time at all has passed.

When we’re together, I will realize that six weeks, in retrospect, is nothing. It will have seemed easy. It will have seemed short.

Time is like that. Like a house of mirrors. When you look ahead of you, into the future, the room looks endless, a wind-tunnel stretching to convex proportions; and when you look at your reflection, in that moment, it seems solid; and when you look behind you, all of the reflections accumulate into a single retrospect that is concave, strangely small, and surprisingly close.

Fourteen days left and counting.

Eating Animals

Recently, I have begun to take an interest in what I eat.

I don’t just mean what I put in my body, in terms how much sugar, how much salt; but also, where my food comes from, how it is created, and what effect it might have on my body and on the environment.

I’ve become interested because, in my lifetime, the grocery store has evolved into something unfathomable and complex. There are so many choices, and so many conflicted interests, that I’m starting to feel confused about what to buy, about what is ethical and what is healthy.

For example, is it worthwhile to buy organic, or should I just buy whatever is cheap? Is it healthier to buy Diet or Low-fat? “Free-range” or “cage-free”? What is the “process” of processed foods? What is a preservative, and what exactly does “natural flavour” mean?

The popular opinion on the topic is that we, as a culture, consume too much sugar, too much fat, and too many empty calories. We all know that North America’s “fast-food” mindset has resulted in a crippling obesity epidemic, ridden with early-onset diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

Delicious, cheap, and highly processed foods (oily, salty, sweet) bathe our brains in pleasure chemicals, but also contain more fat, sugar, and calories than could ever occur naturally. How much do we understand about how these foods are made?

Since processed foods are, by their very nature, jam-packed with more fat and calories than any natural food could be, we consume more calories, even if we don’t actually consume more food. (They don’t make us fuller, just fatter.) Even though we know these foods are bad for us, they are also inexpensive and convenient, not to mention tasty; and, thanks to the think-tanks at the top (and also our animalistic desires), instead of curbing our fast-food habits, we are collectively consuming more processed foods and more calories every day than ever before, at a record low cost.

There are a lot of lecturers out there. We are advised to stay away from carbohydrates, and to eat less saturated fat. But if you look at the nutritional information on products like yogurt, mayonnaise, and peanut butter, you will find that the “low-fat” versions contain more sugar, and therefore more overall calories. On the other hand, while “diet” sodas contain no calories at all, they do contain synthetic sugar replacements which have unknown consequences for human health.

And organic foods – while they are produced without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and are therefore inarguably better for the environment and for our health – can still be genetically modified and chemically processed, and can still burn up astounding amounts of fossil fuels when they’re shipped in refrigerated trucks from Central America to Canada.

I’m starting to get the idea that food technology has reached a monumental (and incomprehensible) level. 

In the interest of feeding the world (and, let’s be realistic, pure profit), the food industry has pushed the bounds of science, engineering our foods to grow faster and more efficiently, and at a fraction of the cost; taking these foods apart molecule by molecule, and then recreating them in different ways so they taste better (and contain more calories); synthetically creating flavours and even entire foods, and then adding supplements and preservatives for an unnaturally long shelf-life. The majority of what we eat today is this kind of food: inexpensive, genetically modified, highly processed, and synthetically flavoured. What is it doing to our bodies?

For example, the same technological advances that provide us with cheap poultry, beef, pork, and fish also create the nightmare of human epidemic diseases. That’s because the vast majority of our meat is factory farmed, where animals live in crowded “cities” beside enormous manure lakes. They’re fed daily antibiotics as a precaution – unfortunately raising the immunity of bacteria, creating “super bugs”. Viruses, too, have evolved: H1N1, Swine Flu, SARS, and Bird Flu have all originated in factory farms in North America.

Besides the fact that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trains, planes, and boats on earth combined, environmentalists (and humane and empathetic people) should be aware of the enormous suffering of the animals that live and die in these conditions.

Thanks to industry standards, it turns out that chickens living in “cage-free” or “free range” environments are not arguably better off than their caged counterparts. They still spend the majority of their short lives in windowless, overcrowded environments where they are fed, among other things, antibiotics, and blood plasma from previously slaughtered chickens. Factory-farmed birds account for 99% of all the chicken we consume, and all of them, regardless of whether they are raised for meat or eggs, have been genetically modified to such an extent that they can no longer reproduce naturally. They have their beaks removed in their first days of life; and, since their Frankenstein genetics force them to grow much faster than their bones possibly can, their legs can no longer hold them upright.  

On the other hand, high-protein crops, such as soybeans, devastate the environment when they are grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, leaching nutrients out of the earth year after year, polluting ground water and releasing methane into the atmosphere. Soy has also been found to mimic estrogen in the human body, and can cause hormonal imbalances in women. Also, meat replacements, like veggie dogs, for example, contain long lists of unpronounceable synthetic additives, processes, flavours, colours, and preservatives. 

So where does this leave us?

I mean – no wonder we’re confused.

I finally read Michael Pollan’s iconic book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, hoping that he would clarify some important points for me. (The book is an unsurpassed introduction to this topic if you are interested.)

And, while the book was my “gateway drug” into the world of food production, it left me with more questions than answers. My research has accumulated over the past year toward what is, for me, a revolutionary lifestyle change.

Now that I’m fully aware of where meat comes from, how it’s produced, and at what cost, I can no longer eat it. The good taste of meat cannot justify, for me, the participating in, and the contributing to, an industry that I recognize as evil in a multitude of ways. I’m saying that, in the same way that animal desires, like lust, cannot justify the raping and killing of animals, nor can my sense of taste continue to justify killing and eating them.

And, in the same way that I would never torture and kill a dog, I cannot justify the torture and inhumane termination of other sensible animals that can feel pain, horror, panic, and loss.

Inhumane and without conscience, the meat industry – operating factory farms that cause needless and horrendous animal suffering, that devastate the environment, and that cause the rapid decline of human health – the industry can no longer be tolerated by those of us who demand better.

That being said, I intend to embark on a vegetarian journey from here on out.

De Bier Haus Nights, Continued

At De Bier Haus, each staff member is entitled to one free drink per shift, called a Staffie.

So after work one Friday, about eight o’clock, I was sitting at the bar, having my Staffie – a glass of Lake Chalice Syrah – when Laurie pulled up a chair. Laurie is a nursing student with a sarcastic edge. She ordered a glass of Lake Chalice Sauvignon Blanc, and asked me my plans for the night.

“It’s Canada Day,” I explained, raising my glass. “And it’s Friday.”

“So,” she replied, “you’re drinking with me?”

We laughed, and talked for a few minutes, watching the after-work happy hour crowd, before Sam suddenly came by with another glass of wine each. “From the man at the other end of the bar,” he explained, gesturing toward a man with a mustache. “He says you girls work hard and deserve it.” As we looked, the man with the mustache raised his glass of beer, drained it, and left.

Laurie and I shrugged, and started on our second glass, moving to the fireplace.

We talked about everything from relationships to life plans to bras and traveling. She told me about her boyfriend and her classes at school. I told her about my life in Canada and how much I miss John. When our glasses were empty, we ordered the beer on special, but Laurie surprised me by insisting on picking up the tab. When I went to the bathroom, I came back to the table to find a glass of cider in front of my chair.

Needless to say, by the time Alley and Kylie got off work, Laurie and I had had four or five drinks each, and I hadn’t spent a dime. I had also had a little more to drink than I had intended. Alley put some David Bowie on the stereo just for me, and everyone wished me a Happy Canada Day. The other girls had their Staffies, but they wanted to buy me a drink too. At the end of the night, I’m told that I was dancing, and that everyone found me hysterically funny. Alley put me in a cab home in the wee hours.

How embarrassing.

I had a fun Canada Day that Friday, but when I showed up for work on Saturday morning, I could have felt better. My memory of the previous evening was hazy. My head was quite floaty and my stomach was a little sick. But, I knew I had to pull it together. I had a long day ahead of me – Saturday was our busiest day.

Then, to make matters worse, Matt, the 32-year-old pub owner (who had unfortunately witnessed our revelry the night before), asked me to work a double shift. His main bartender had called in sick, and he was in a real bind. I wasn’t really up for working twelve or fifteen hours, but I needed the money, and besides, I didn’t exactly feel like I had a choice. So, I agreed – reluctantly.

I was about to work the bar for the late night Saturday shift, when the pub became a night club.

Unable to eat, and without much sleep the night before, I took a break and went to Starbucks to caffeine-fuel myself for the long night ahead. I drank a black double Americano and read my book, steeling my nerves.

When I got back to work, most of the tables had been moved, to make room for the dance floor. The DJ was setting up, and everyone was having a last-minute break.

I felt terrible. I’d been at work for ten hours, I was exhausted, I was hung over, and I knew that the night had not even begun.

Ryan, the other bartender on shift, advised me to drink a Red Bull, or he said I’d never make it. He could tell that I was flagging, and it was just getting busy.

I took his advice. The Red Bull gave me wings (actually just temporarily restored my alertness).

For the next two hours, I actually felt pretty good. The caffeine kept me awake. Ryan had a habit of dancing to the loud music, and he completely had my back, showing me short cuts on the tills and pouring the more difficult drinks, like blended cocktails and layered shots. His energy was infectious, and soon I was having a pretty good time. Besides, the DJ was playing good club music, like Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga.

It was really hard to understand what people wanted half of the time, though. When they wanted Rye, they said CC, and when they wanted ginger ale, they said Dry. I poured a lot of Jager Bombs and a lot of Vodka Redbulls, a lot of tequila shots and a lot of beer. In fact, I made 150 drinks in three hours: about a drink a minute, and well over a thousand dollars. 

However, this being New Zealand, I wasn’t tipped a dime.

I was shouted several drinks, but considering the state of my hangover, I politely declined.

The place didn’t close until 3:00 a.m., and after all the clean-up, it was closer to 4 when I actually got off work. By then, I’d been at work for sixteen hours and I was on the caffeine crash. My face was practically melting off, I was so tired, and I could barely keep from drooling.

It was the time of night when crowds of drunken youths wander on the sidewalks, the guys play-fighting, and the girls hugging themselves in small dresses and gossiping dramatically. Getting a cab home was hard work. Four or five turned me down although they were empty, saying they had been called for someone else. 

Finally, a nice Indian man picked me up, and on the way, he chatted about his childhood in Punjab and his move to New Zealand eight years ago. He said that living in New Zealand was a better life, but that he missed his family. I made appreciative sounds and tried not to fall asleep.

Unlike my kiwi counterparts, I tipped the man.

I fell into bed sometime after 4. The loud club music had damaged my eardrums, and yet the sound of traffic still kept me awake. Or maybe it was the Red Bull. Behind my eyelids I saw a kaleidoscope of ice, tumblers, straws, limes, shots poured, bottles opened, cash exchanged, and drumbeats in the distance.I fell fitfully asleep, dreaming that I was still tending the bar.

Life Without John

When John left town and caught a bus to Wellington, I stayed behind. We agreed that it would be best to work separately, and to make up as much money as we could before embarking on our final journey, in a month's time, into the Pacific.

I immediately began to see his absence everywhere.

There was his empty bed when I left for work, and the empty house when I returned in the evening. No rosy light, no fire in the stove, no dinner smells, and no arms awaiting me. 

My only company that night was Ken, the hostel owner, who dropped by to let me know that he was going to move me into a different house. The season was over, he explained, so the house I was currently living in was closing down for the year. I had my choice of rooms, but I'd be moving the following morning. 

I cooked myself dinner and, after an appropriate segment of Downton Abbey, put myself to bed.

I was in no hurry to get ready the next day. Ken may have his plans, I thought, but it was my day off, and I was going to take my time. So, after a leisurely breakfast and a long shower, I said goodbye to the cozy house before packing yet again, taking several trips down the hill to the new house (John had left some of his stuff behind).

When I saw my new room though, I cheered up considerably. My roommate was a girl from Korea called Sunny, and she kept the room clean – while maintaining a good level of girlish bottles, bags, and shoes everywhere. I had a closet and several drawers, a bedside table (with a reading lamp!), two pillows, extra blankets, and a lollipop to welcome me home. The entire house was sunny and cozy, with an enormous kitchen, two bathrooms, free laundry, Freeview TV, and a DVD player that actually worked. 

I felt that I was going to like it here.

Since it was sunny out, I put the laundry on, and popped in a DVD in while waiting for the wash – a cheesy kid’s movie, and one that no one else would ever have watched with me (okay, okay. It was Karate Kid). I made myself a cucumber and cheese sandwich (my brother’s favourite, I couldn’t help remembering), and after lunch, hung up my clothes to dry in the sun. 

If John were home, I thought, he’d probably have done the laundry by now. It’s strange – by the time I think of doing laundry, nine times out of ten, he’s already done it. And, I couldn’t help but feel he would have disapproved of my sandwich – particularly its lack of beetroot and lettuce, or anything resembling a stack of nutrition. For some reason, the simplest things – watching that movie, making that very enjoyable plain little sandwich, and doing my own laundry – gave me a weird sense of power. I was in control of my own life.

Stupid, right?

No matter. In a spirit of independence, I walked to town, through sunshine and fallen leaves. 

At the library, I borrowed Margaret Atwood’s new novel. I also picked up a mystery called The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and a knitting book. I ducked into an internet café for half an hour and downloaded all of the second season of Glee, and all of the Harry Potter movies. Then, by pure happenstance, I found a yarn store. Perfect! After browsing the walls of brightly coloured yarns, I felt creatively inspired and bought 5mm needles and some cheerful yellow wool. I put everything into my backpack and strode on. Then, on the way to the grocery store, I went into a specialty cheese deli and bought $5 worth of goat Gouda on a whim.

Living dangerously, right?

Well, still. Baby steps.

I made a deal with myself that (after the cheese) I would only buy healthy food – that way, I’d have to eat it all or else waste it. I therefore bought lots of vegetables, and lots of fruit, soy milk, eggs, corn flakes, muesli, and yogurt for breakfast. I bought rice crackers to go with the cheese, and chicken to roast with the vegetables; also, some salmon, and finally, two chorizo sausages and a can of tomatoes (I love to eat them together).

It was going to be a good week. I had some delicious meals planned, a lot of television to watch, books to read, knitting to start, and a healthy dose of work on the side. My idea was to keep myself busy, so that my time apart from John would go by quickly.

My roommate moved out the next day, as it turned out. So, I had the room (and the closet!) to myself. 

Far from being lonely, I began to really enjoy myself.

Every night, I made myself dinner, then heated up the hot water bottle and curled up with a book or a movie. I walked to and from work, except when I worked later than 10:00 at night, when I took a taxi home. I gradually got better at serving tables, and as my confidence improved, so did my power to charm the guests. The girls at work took a decided interest in making me feel welcome, and began to invite me out. The following Tuesday, I took myself out for pasta and a movie, and had some laughs over popcorn while watching Bridesmaids by myself.

John and I spoke on the phone every night, and sent each other text messages if anything funny or interesting happened during the day. Last week, we even talked on Skype. It was really nice to see him, even if it was just the Star-Trek screen version.

Somehow, two weeks have gone by.

If there is anything that these two weeks without John has taught me, it’s how to take care of myself, and how to enjoy my own company. 

As a matter of pride, I make my bed every day, and keep my room clean - no clothes on the floor. I do my laundry and shopping on my days off. I visit the library more often than I really need to, and I tend to take myself out for coffee, just to enjoy my book in public, where I can watch people, and feel comforted by the company of strangers. I am always on time for work, and I’m also happy to come in a few hours early, or even on my day off, if they ever need me to (which they often do). After all, I’m here to work and make money.

If this is loneliness, then maybe I actually like being lonely. I don’t know anyone in this town, and even the hostel I live in is almost empty; and yet I don’t really miss anyone’s company. I feel fine with the company of the characters in books and in movies, and with my own thoughts. I relish it even, because I always know that I’m not really alone. John is just a phone call away. 

Life without John has not been altogether unhappy – in fact, I’ve made myself very comfortable. Don’t get me wrong: I miss John, and he means everything to me. This is the longest we’ve been apart in five years, and it’s definitely strange. But it isn’t too hard, because I know that in our hearts, we are close. I think living alone has been good for me. I will certainly get my fill of independence and solitude.

John hopes to come back to Tauranga in a few weeks (or maybe longer). And as much as I am comfortable and happy, and as quickly as this month will pass, the fact is, it’s still a few weeks too long to live without John. He is the very best part of my life, and, no matter how content I am at the moment, I still know that, in the long run, all of these other little entertainments in my daily life can never fill the gap he leaves behind.

I can picture that boy stepping down off the bus, and it puts a smile on my face every time.

The truth is, even when he is far away, I carry him with me always. For me, there is no life without John.