Berry Foraging, My Pemmican Project, and Ugly Fish

I have no shame in saying that the constant daily influx of being mindful of the presence of lockdowns, the masking up, the event postponements, the extra measures for social distancing, the death tolls on the news, concern for family and friends, the ineptitude of some leaders and governments, and some of the willful ignorance of the public in general, to deal with this matter responsibly and seriously, are all making it harder for me to avoid a depressed state. Today is Day 2 of a 4-Day weekend for me. There’s offerings and opportunities for overtime abound coming to me, but I am not tempted at all to take any right now. I poked into work to take OT during my last 4-day weekend, and it did me no good at all in retrospect. A four day weekend happening every six weeks is the only positive trade-off I have after my schedule had been jumbled around as it has since the Covid-19 measures took effect. It’s (allegedly) summer, and I should be using these days off wisely.

However, yesterday was a day that I felt I didn’t play out so well in being wise, at least in the beginning of it. I had absolutely no energy or motivation to do anything constructive for much of it, but I did force myself to move. I thought of going fishing, but the prospect of facing a stampede of ticks charging at me through the rushes and grass along the river shore near my favoured spots wasn’t anything I wanted to contend with right then. Mid-July is the beginning of canning season for me typically. I did brew up some Watermelon Rind Pickles, but there was no heart in that task: it felt more like a job of being stringent to stop household wastage rather than an act of pride of creating a homemade culinary pleasure. Something reduced to a menial cleaning duty, like mopping a floor, or scouring a toilet.

Mid-July here is also Saskatoon berry season, and, even though again my energies and instincts didn’t feel right, I forced myself to try a bit foraging around some spots where I correctly guessed that there would be an abundance of bushes - to at least feel a little more useful and productive. However, it wasn’t very fruitful - literally. I also correctly guessed that they would have also had been picked over already by other foragers, since shutdowns have made it more likely that some of those without work were more resourceful in using the extra time to snoop around for free seasonal food. Surprisingly, I managed not to invoke furious swarms of mosquitoes as I rustled through the bushes, being so close to the river, but an hour or so in the oppressive humidity was enough, and I tapped out. The few odd good berries that were left were sparse, some were already becoming desiccated, and amidst puny immature ones that only birds would take interest in. I combed the area, working along for at least a kilometre southward, to only get a yield of about 400 grams of berries of mediocre quality.

I tried not to allow all this effort to become another senseless waste of time. These saskatoons were not of any size or quality to be usable for dessert fare like pies; too miniscule of quantity to use for jam. I found the thought of working an hour to make what would amount to a couple of fruit smoothies ridiculous.

The thought of another possible use for them struck me as ridiculous: making pemmican. The ridiculous part being that I lived all my life here in this province, and I have never once sampled any sort of pemmican. It’s now considered to be an archaic foodstuff, heading down the road of dietary obsolescence, like many other food traditions that have become obscured and extinguished since the advent of modern refrigeration, and food preservation science. I can forgive myself, and I won’t be too self-critical about that kind of ignorance on my part. Very few people here, in fact, even amongst those who are of native ancestry or Métis, from which it originated, have ever sampled pemmican in this modern age. When I shared this idea with my girlfriend, she looked at me with the expression like she saw the needle on my weird-o-meter flip over into the red zone, that mirrored a conclusion that the Covid situation is turning her poor boyfriend into some sort of crazy, paranoid, doomsday prepper*. That seems to be the only isolated subculture remaining that is taking a serious interest in making pemmican; if not eating it, then storing it in some bunker somewhere, where it awaits them for Armageddon. That is really kind of a shame, because it’s something that would be an honestly true local Canadian/Saskatchewan food: a meat preservation technique that has been used to sustain the indigenous people here for centuries, if not millennia, but not readily adopted for our modern culture here in Western Canada. I’d like to see it be given some more due respect as a food with some historical significance and cultural identity for this province. I’m not saying that it has to be made popular again, but the technique for making it should be at least given some honour, and be preserved for posterity, like the rest of those so-called pioneer recipes that were collected for the sake of the history of the communities of our province. 

So, out of my own scientific and anthropological curiosity, I decided to commit to this project. It comes as a disappointment to my girlfriend, who I’m sure would have rather preferred that I try make her some scones with those few saskatoons I found.

Making pemmican merges techniques of preservation that intersect the making of sausage and jerky. It’s simply made of lean, dried meat; mixed with mashed, dried berries, maybe with salt if it was available; blended and coated with melted tallow. After that, it is then pressed, formed, wrapped, and when packed in an air-tight container, it’s one of these foods that can last nearly forever (if kept dry) without further need of resources to preserve it (hence why preppers really dig this stuff). It is a food that’s energy-dense (without any carbs/added sugar) and protein-rich, and also readily portable and easy to cache without refrigeration, or other sophisticated method of storage. That was the appeal of it to the indigenous peoples, and later to the traders, trappers, and frontiersmen in the early days of settling in this territory. It’s as perfect a food that can be made for the practical purpose of enduring the rigours of outdoor living and/or a hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyle: be it grunting along portaging canoes, chasing down your next meal in the bush or on the plain, or just for plainly and simply surviving in an uninsulated, flimsy walled, collapsible, portable shelter during the worst of weather inclemency. As a diet food, you can’t get more Paleo than something that was actually crafted since the Stone Age.

I have actually tried to make pemmican once before in my lifetime. It was back when I was in the sixth grade in school. Making “pemmican” was part of our social studies class project when we were learning a bit of the aboriginal culture and history of our province. We used hamburger and saskatoon berries mashed together the “traditional way”, by using rocks, but the drying process failed completely. I remember afterward, as a result, we had containers full of horrible, maggot-festered, slimy, rotting mush; with a gag reflex-triggering stench. It was definitely a moment where that could have dissuaded me forever from ever being curious about it again.

Traditional forms of pemmican aren’t just restricted to bison and other wild meat - but can also made of something that required more of an acquired taste. I was made aware more recently of a sort of fish pemmican made by the northern Dene people of this province. The substance in question, if I remember right, is something called “losh”. When first told about this, I was uncertain if it referred to the fish used, or the recipe for its preparation. The Dene method of making this stuff involves taking the big, fatty liver from fish we call a mariah (pronounced the same as the first name of the singer Mariah Carrey). It’s also known by the other names, varying regionally, of burbot, or ling)**. I’ve always known it being called by the first name I mentioned. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a freshwater relative to cod, with a fat, flat, frog-like looking head with a lower barbel on it, and an eel-like tail. As far as native species of fish in this province go, this one isn’t likely ever going win any beauty contests. It’s an icky dull brownish colour, and it’s about as ugly looking as a pail full of smashed assholes. Anyway, this creature’s liver is mixed and mashed together with dried cranberries, and perhaps some parts of its pulverized flesh. The rest of the process and details of preparing it is of no interest or consequence to me because I’m quite sure that I would never fucking ever eat such a thing anyway. I won’t knock its possible nutritional benefits though. It’s probably a very potent and practical nutritional powerhouse, loaded with all the same vitamins that cod-liver oil supplements have. Sensible to eat in a Northern area where plant-based vitamins are lacking most of the year. The point is that its preparation/composition has the common elements as that of pemmican: basically some sort of mix of flesh, dried berries, and animal fat. Apart from that, I imagine and assume that the traditional way of adding some seasoning and flavouring to food in the pre-colonial times for the aboriginal people was pretty much limited to just using salt or wood smoke.

Getting back on track. I decided to start this project today. There was no set method amid any of the recipes and techniques I reviewed online, so I’m jury-rigging my own from the bits and pieces found that accord to the materials I have in my kitchen.

Meat, salt, and saskatoons

I originally thought I was going to make my first pemmican trial as authentic as possible and use bison meat. However, even a modest quantity of bison meat costs a mint, and it would be a shame to have a possible failure result with such a great expense. So, I opted for the leanest beef I could find: some trimmed eye of round, using about two kilograms worth, accounting for the fact that the weight will shrink to about half or more once I dry it. The melted tallow component is actually beef suet. If you are already feeling repulsed, and going “Ewww!”, and are of British ancestry, I remind you that there is such a thing as suet pudding in the English gastronomical circle. The butcher I visited told me that there is little difference between the two, and process of rendering it would probably be easier. I got myself a kilogram of that to render down (using my slow-cooker). That, plus my 400 grams of berries, mashed and muddled with about 2 tablespoons of salt were my total ingredients. I sliced the beef pieces to about a 5 millimetre thickness. I coated them with the mashed and salted saskatoon berries. I placed some on an even single layer on a mesh drying rack in the oven at 225 degrees F (107 degrees C) for several hours. The rest of the slices that would not fit on that rack were put in my food dehydrator. 

I dried the pieces until they were about half their original volume, and quite rigid and no longer sticking to the rack surface. Using my hand meat grinder, I then ground down that stuff and got a yield of about 750 grams of berry/meat component. I rendered off enough suet for about an equal weight of it to make a 1:1 mixture. I blended it together while the liquified suet was still warm. I got a consistency in the mixture that looked like a thick lumpy pudding. I lined rectangular containers with wax paper, poured it in these molds, and allowed the mix to set and cool. I used a paper towel to blot off some excess grease from the surface of my cooling pemmican bricks.

Suet added to the mix.
The bowl on the right is the
remaining cracklings from the
rendered suet. They won't be
wasted. I'll add them as filler for
my next sausage-making project.

Rectangular containers lined with
wax paper to form my "bricks".
It makes this operation look
somewhat illicit!

The finished product all set and wrapped up.
One innovation I used for forming (not exactly
traditional) was a homemade wooden press used
for making sushi.

If you are as crazy or adventurous to copy what I’ve been doing, know this. Beef fat hardens quickly and is more waxy than it is oily/greasy. Never dispose of hot beef fat down your sink! Unless you want a visit from your plumber. I haven’t done this myself, but I felt compelled to warn people who might be silly enough to try to do that. Wipe and scrape off as much of the splatters and excess residues from your surfaces, bowls, and utensils and dispose in the garbage before you wash them.

My Verdict: The process was a lot more labour intensive than just making straight up jerky or even making sausage. I found it to be a bit messier than those processes. The texture after it finished setting was kind of waxy, as could be expected. I have not actually tasted it yet; I’m waiting for a bit of biochemical magic to happen first. I stored most of the bars in my freezer except for one. That one is the smallest of them which I kept out in room temperature that will be used as sort of a sacrificial scientific assay, to see and monitor if, or when, any decomposition does occur. If so, how long will it take place? I’m also curious, given that there are sugars in the berries trapped in an anaerobic environment, if any sort of secondary fermentation process will happen, as like when dextrose is added to salamis that are hung to air dry and be preserved that way by sort of being pickled in the residual alcohol internally, which also gives them a signature flavour.

If I dare myself to make this stuff again, I think my next berry ingredient will be some further reduction of a blueberry jam that I made that did not set and was thence rebranded “blueberry syrup” to recover from my failure. I also have dried juniper berries which could be interesting. I saw a version with honey added, another forever food, which may help with its conservation.

I’m now curious as to how to use it culinarily, apart from just whittling away at a bar of it and eating it off the knife while camping in the bush somewhere, or while ice fishing, or keeping a bar of it packed in a winter roadside emergency kit in your car’s trunk. I imagine it could be used the same way as being set on a charcuterie platter, or the same way Ukrainians (from the old country) traditionally eat salo (smoked/salted raw pork lard), i.e. with bread, pickles, and vodka. Who knows? Avenues of further innovations could start from here.

*- Not so, I just need to pull myself out of my blue funk with something novel to do.

**-Taxonomical Name: Lota lota. That seems fitting for a fish that’s a whole lota ugly. Whatever you chose to call it, it is one of the more disgusting living things you could ever pull out of a lake in Saskatchewan aside from leeches. My problem with this fish isn’t really with some prejudice against its appearance, but rather after having caught a few these from several winters of ice fishing, I’ve too often seen many come up through the ice riddled with little gray-white parasitic worms that are clinging to their bodies. A consequence of its habit of occasionally burrowing in the silt and muck of a lake or river bottom. It certainly thus doesn’t make the thought of willingly eating one of these things any more appealing, although some who are bold enough to eat these things swear and claim that there is a bit of a lobster-like flavour to them.

The Samosa Synchronicity

It has been a crazy ride through this year since early March: the last time I posted an entry in this blog. We are now, from this entry, four days away from reaching the halfway point of 2020. I could not muster up any energy or wits to make any effort to write since then. It has been a year that I really don’t wish to put into any chronicle or commit to written memory for posterity. It’s bizarre that I’ve taken time to try writing now because, for one thing, I’m completely exhausted. I’m at the mercy of having to routinely readjust the circadian rhythms again to doing rotations. I really shouldn’t find it so bad, as I’ve had six weeks already to acclimate to it. However, this week overlaps and phases into a period of an unrelentingly loud construction project happening along my street, moving progressively closer to my building since it started four days ago. Enough said about that. On the one hand, I am scared of the realm of alternate thinking and surreal cognitions I get after prolonged sleeplessness and exhaustion, and at the same time, I yet can’t help but to be intrigued and curious about them as well.

Throughout this malaise, I’ve found one strange pattern of coincidental connections that I felt compelled to write out. Last night, while I was in tranced-out stupor, flipping through channels on the television, I came across the movie Pi, a black and white, late-90’s cult film. It was a movie that I had mentioned and explained to one of the people I serve just a few days ago.  I stopped flipping channels, and started re-watching this movie, which is centred on an eccentric, introverted, mathematical genius loner, who is burning out rapidly from doing his research, and suffering from migraines and various other mental afflictions, mostly anxiety disorders, later on including hallucinations and paranoia. Apart from having the genius level for maths, and the hallucinations and paranoia, I found everything else about him quite relatable at this time. It was the mission of the character to find mathematical connections, correlations, and causalities with pi and the stock market. He incidentally finds a mysterious number in his results which sets him on his adventure involving him and his various antagonists. In one scene in the movie, the character (Max) is greeted, (he reacted like he was cornered and accosted), by a lovely South Asian neighbour in his apartment building who was kind enough to offer him some samosas. I then yielded to my own exhaustion and soon managed to fall asleep in front of the TV right after that scene. I recalled as I watched that show that the last entry I wrote here was related to the subject of Pi. I reviewed it because I had nothing else to do. Shortly after doing that this afternoon, out of the blue, one of my neighbours, who is originally from India, approached me and kindly offered me, of all the possible foods she could have offered me, samosas. I think I reacted being quite weirded out by this wild moment of synchronicity, perhaps shocking her a bit by such an expression I’m sure my face had, freaking out in the inside of me at the realization of this coincidence, falling short of reacting the way Max Cohen did when his neighbour approached him.. The samosas were delicious by the way. The strange and fateful way at which they seemed to have miraculously manifested themselves to me made me appreciate them even more.  

It’s perhaps not as enthralling and fortunate as a story akin to dreaming of winning a lottery, and then finding oneself holding the prize ticket the next day, but delightfully strange and surprising, nonetheless. I debate to myself if this is an actual genuine instance of the so-called Law of Attraction, or if it is something else viewed through a more cynical lens. Through this huge onslaught of life being put on hold due to isolation, people being over-saturated in solitude, and with everything else of interest beyond our homes being postponed or cancelled, the modality of some people is to desperately find some means of creating some sort of connections through more unconventional instances and applying meaning to them, no matter how non sequitur they are. Maybe I’ve just become desperate to find some better examples of humanity apart from the constant barrage of social ignorance and political idiocy from the news each day; trying hard to find such a thing . . . looking to find it even if it comes as a currency of  little golden treasures of triangular crispy tidbits of yumminess. Four months is a long time to be forced to be isolating oneself, and then when you do engage with people, you’re most likely forced to be confronted and contending with the obvious dissatisfaction, boredom, negativity, anxiety/depression they are burdened with, on top of trying to manage your own. A simple kind gesture like this throws a brick through the mirrors and windows of negativity, especially to someone who is an essential worker who is risking themselves and who is giving all the time, and getting very little back during times like these.
  
Better days are coming I’m sure; I’m not completely pessimistic. My spirits lifted a bit seeing a project successfully completed and meeting up with my family last weekend, even though there was some pain to endure. Whatever comes as betterment during these times, I’m open to it arriving as some semblance of it feeling like the realm normalcy, and not just uncanny, but welcome, spontaneous manifestations of deep-fried savory pastries.

Pi Day Ponderings in Self-Isolation

I write this with a strange mixture of feelings and reckonings. Since my last post, and watching the ever more graver state of the news broadcasts, I am thankful that we squeaked under the wire for leaving and returning from our flyaway holiday just in time before the travel advisories and restrictions are starting to come effect for international travel. I’m also feeling utterly hapless with the fact that just because I did international travel, and then soon after started showing symptoms of sinus congestion and sore throat, that I’m relegated to self-isolate for a long while as a precaution. I have indeed been sick, most likely with some form the common cold. I dutifully reported my symptoms, after several attempts to contact the government health line, and I am still waiting for a response about any future action I may need to take. I’m certain that it is just the same old gross, phlegmy/snotty mess of a cold bug that I get almost every year during late February and early March, when the temperatures begin to wildly fluctuate as spring thaw approaches. I’m quite certain that it’s not Covid-19 (no shortness of breath or fever); just other stuff that coincides with all the remaining other Corona virus symptoms. However, given that I’m in a slightly weakened state, and my immune system is now compromised trying to manage this current bunch of junk, I don’t need to go wandering around and being pounced on by the Corona virus as well. If I do put myself in a place of sharing this wretched cold to a person in my circle of friends and work, who may be already even more immune-suppressed than I am, I further increase their chances for the actual acquisition of the Covid-19 thing while they are battling the same cold.

Sure, this virus can be potential fatal, for a select, vulnerable, cross-section of the population; just like the flu always was, is, and most likely continue to be. Last season, influenza killed more people worldwide than Covid-19 currently has now, a disease which is now on the decline according to some reports. However, for the flu, no one went crazy then and cleared out all the shelves in grocery shops. The thing that bothers me most about it is the absurd amount of hype, the fearmongering, and irrational panicking, because it is so novel as a disease; not as well-established historically as the flu is. The same way that terrorist attacks are over-reported when there are a relatively small number of casualties compared to the other types of tragic mortalities happening in the world that are set in a less dramatic framework. I'm grateful that this nation isn't yet so inundated with active cases compared to some others. We may not be much better as a population here in Canada in avoiding a full-blown epidemic, but we at least have a government that is more willing to put aside partisan issues to face this thing, who are more willing to listen to medical science, and are willing to work on the problem more rationally. We at least had a bill passed to secure the first stages of getting universal Pharmacare in place before this before parliament recessed in response to this outbreak. As far as this government's response, I'm at least thankful that we can perhaps respond better to all this because we don't have an Antichrist to science, like the Americans have who is leading their political shit show. I'm proud to say that Canadian researchers have been amongst the first to get successful steps for vaccine development for this thing. I’m not getting fearful or panicky, but I’m not going to be so stupid as to slough off prudence either. Given what I got to deal with, prudence demands that I have to self-isolate for a while as a precaution. I’m over the hump of it now, and I have been getting increasingly better. As much as I feel that that I’m getting touched in the head with some boredom, and feel that this is ultimately may be a squandering of my accumulated sick time, I’ll play the game right, and at least have a clearer conscience for doing so. Decongestants, drinking hot fluids, and some extra sleep have helped the most.

With all the extra time off, the mind tends to wander to far away strange places, in lieu of not allowing my physical self to veer far from home. My self-isolation phases into Pi (π) Day. I slapped down some random thoughts and observations to entertain myself mathematically whilst I’m here alone, doing my part to flatten the curve. In honour of this day, and since I’m stuck inside and have SFA else to do, I decided to apply pi (π) in a practical manner with respect to this latest pandemic.

·      They say now that generally the minimal safe zone for oneself out in public, to avoid contracting this new pestilence, is about a two-metre radius. With π in the equation, that means that there is a personal space circle around you that is about 12.6 m² of circular area around you that is your buffer zone. I have an easier, less abstract, and more convenient and discreet method of measuring to use for keeping people at their distance away from me. It is called a dog on a leash. The full extension of my dog’s leash is two metres long. I’m safer from everyone, as they are them from me, if they are beyond the range of the dog’s nose while I’m walking her.

·        The hoarding behaviour people are resorting to is ridiculous and getting out of hand. Over-supplying for yourself means under-supplying for everyone else of critical needs. You don’t have to be a Game Theory mathematician to figure this out. The real notable idiocy happening now being the hoarding of toilet paper. If you are guilty of doing this, here’s an equation (simplified)¹ with a practical use of π that might help you smarten up a bit:  N (1 – (πR₁^{2 /}πR₀²))/ [Δt] = S. With N being the number of squares in fresh new roll of toilet paper (usually listed on the package, you shouldn’t have to count), R₀ being the initial measured radius before usage, R₁ being the final radius measurement of your TP roll and Δt being the increment of time (let’s just call it a day) between initial and final radius measurement of the roll. That’s it! You’ve just computed your actual toilet paper consumption in squares of toilet paper per day in your household (S). Calculating S/N(14) equals the number of rolls of toilet paper you’ll likely be using for a 14 day quarantine period (Q). Subtract Q from all the surplus rolls of toilet you have bought and have in extra stock: E for excess. Divide that difference by Q: (E-Q)/Q =A. Assuming that you are within the realm of average as everyone else in terms of bathroom usage, that final quotient (A) then is roughly the number of people you’ve basically deprived of toilet paper, screwing them over and pissing them off with your irrational panic-driven stupidity for the 14 day quarantine period. The higher the number, the higher the likelihood that you are indeed a stupid prick with absolutely no sense of practical rationing, nor any concern for your fellow citizens. If you’ve hoarded toilet paper during this time, congratulations! Through π, you now have been assigned an ascending ranking numerical value of how much of an asshole (A) you are by creating more chaos and crisis by doing so. It somehow comforts me to know that there are quantifiable numbers with which to calibrate and apply to people on specific degrees of stupidity they exhibit instead of just using a fuzzy vague judgement or a glib opinion. Please note that if you are using more than one roll of toilet paper per day for yourself, you probably got a more serious problem going on than risking contracting Covid-19. If your number is negative, you do indeed have a shortage problem, and I’d then suggest that you definitely lay off the spicy food for the next while!

·       I can’t help but to notice that the shape and form of the Corona virus itself is a testament to the geometrical intricacies of π. If there were vertices attached to the outer protruding crown ends of the viral body, it would very much take the shape of a geodesic sphere, a structure intensively governed by the ratios of π.  If it weren’t so potentially deadly I’d find it rather beautiful in its unique sort of symmetry.

·      The number π is also used for studying population dynamics in various ways, used in weird and wild esoteric equations which I don’t have all day to study or explain here. It’s a constant in the bell shaped curve in statistics. No doubt it is now being used intensively to track the spread, and to factor in environmental conditions that prevent it from spreading. I would be interested in knowing if it could be useful in predicting any correlation between the likelihood of increased disease presence in a sample population where there are overt instances of hoarding behaviour in a particular sector. I would like to think that there would be a divine justice in store for those who are overly competitive and less cooperative.

I have a few more days to go before I can head back to work, and I’m sure I’ll be having to review and follow newer procedures for hygiene and prevention once I return. Pi might be less relevant in adjusting to the long lapse. I’m having less stress about this stuff with just living day to day, one moment at a time. It helps to avoid the news too; if it ever becomes worse, I’m sure it will find me somehow. As for now, I extend a wish for everyone else to stay well as we go through this course of enduring both of what is the dreamt up hype and what the actual consequential havoc is of this matter together, with hopes that this all transpires as smoothly and peaceful as possible; hoping it passes us all by sooner than later, with minimal troubles, grief, and suffering to my friends and family at risk of being directly and indirectly afflicted and affected. I’m confident that we’ll get through this ok. If I wasn’t my last entry wouldn’t have so much mentioned about toilet paper rolls.

If being penned up inside alone with nothing to do but clean my place, ration my foodstuffs to avoid shopping, binge watch TV, read, play music, catch up on TED talks, tile together jigsaw puzzles, and play with equations involving transcendental numbers for entertainment's sake and writing about it all is the worst it gets for me through this phase of clearing myself of pathogens, I'll consider myself lucky and be thankful for it, and use the time to work on myself for a change.

1 When determining the usable circular area cross-section area of a roll of toilet paper, you have to account for the interior hollow circle of the subtracted from the area of the usable part of the roll, radius dimension for that designated “r”. Thus, πR₀² – πr² is the true cross-section of material area of the initial whole roll, and πR₁² - πr² for the final measurement of the day. Conveniently, in the division, - πr² cancels out for simplicity. The equation is then converted to represent for proportional relation of a unit roll of toilet paper. I recommend measuring in centimetres, decimalized metric is easier to calculate and more precise. A square of toilet paper is roughly 10 cm x 10 cm if you want to test yourself with volume formulas. You’re on your own if you want to figure out your consumption per use by cm². I can’t say that I’m that bloody curious as to know that myself.

Travelogue: Cuba (Varadero and Havana)

Last year’s winter, by the time around late February, was so brutal; it was like having three winters’ worth of misery packed into one. With both of us at the time coming to our wits’ end after six weeks of temperatures not rising above -20 Celsius, my girlfriend did something that was both a prudent and lovely gesture. On our designated 1st anniversary date, she gifted me (us) a piggybank for which to start scraping up savings together, to fly away to someplace for a reprieve from another potentially freezing, blizzardy hell for this year of 2020, to some warmer holiday destination. By the end of November, our savings, spare change, loonies, toonies, and bills amounted to a fair enough sum to start the next step of booking something. We were still both clueless though as where to go at this time, but we eventually then settled on Cuba, as we both have never been there before, it would then prove be a mutually novel experience for both of us that we could both share together as a getaway. We just opted for a safer trip for just staying warm on a beach with a drink and relaxing to satisfy our introverted selves. The adventure and intrigue part of it for me is that Cuba wouldn’t be just yet another Latin American country. Given of course its communist system in place, it would certainly be culturally different and unique in ways compared to all the other neighbouring countries in the region. It was something worth exploring anthropologically, given that I have some more special privilege and freedom to do so as a Canadian traveler than some other foreign nationals. It’s now five days since I’ve returned from there. I posted a few of our pictures already on social media. I’m now taking the time to verbally capture and express my impressions of those experiences during that trip.


I must admit that I had some expectations of Cuba, which thankfully have been erased from my

One revolutionary monumental art piece, a notable one

dedicated to Ernesto "Che" Guevara, on the side of a
building facing the Revolutionary Square in Havana.

mental blackboard as groundless imaginings. When I think of communist cultures, my brain automatically leads me to imagine an imposing military regime that’s omnipresent, all Stalin-esque, with uniformed soldiers parading everywhere, with everything around reflective a super-inflated totalitarian esprit de corps, and nothing around indicative of any sort of art/culture scene, or joie de vivre. This would be reflective of a place like North Korea today as an example. If all that same said stuff was indeed there in Cuba, it was all very well hidden. Cuba had little around that depicted anything so overpoweringly Orwellian, in fact the spectrum slid on both scales of esprit de corps and joie de vivre towards the opposite directions. Sure, there were political billboards and monuments with the images, proclamations, and quotes from Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others who were their so-called revolutionary heroes all around, but not to the degree at which I initially anticipated. Cuba is honestly quite peaceful compared to some other places around that same latitude. I only saw one person during our Havana excursion, and nowhere else, who was recognizable as a uniformed soldier; he was completely unarmed. Quite unlike the way the super-militant and heavily armed municipal and state police are in Mexico, ever ready for a clash with the drug cartels. I saw less civil police presence in a four-block radius in Havana than I would see in my own city. The only military hardware I saw were purely commemorative museum pieces and were non-functional: like one Russian T-34 tank I saw used this way in Havana. I remind myself that I’ve also seen an old Sherman Tank set up and displayed the same way in downtown Vancouver near their City Hall. Does that mean Canada is a super-militant society? So then, we are neither better, nor worse, nor any different than the Cubans in this respect. The need for them to mark and commemorate various historical conflicts is kind of significant for them. They would have more right to so than most other nations, because ever since this place was discovered more than five centuries ago it has always been marked as a token island to be seized, colonized, and controlled by several competing imperial powers with colonial expeditions with motives for expansion. It was a massive base for which to control the rest of the West Indies and other territories within and ashore of the Caribbean Sea. It was a Mecca for piracy. The British Empire was even in control of it briefly for 11 months during the age of colonialism. It just about became territory/state of The United States were it not the fact that after the Spanish- American War, the prize of Cuba was swapped for Florida with Spain in some diplomatic chess game in ceasing hostilities.


I honestly didn’t get a chance to engage with the Cubans on a deeper social level. I sure shocked a few: me being a person who is the same shade as any of the whitest Northern Europeans, and yet one who readily made some effort to converse with them in Castilian Spanish. As a general observation though, the Cuban people almost looked too relaxed and comfortably socially gregarious to give me any outward hint that they were somehow, or in some way, being oppressed. I would guess, at least for those who have no beef with communism, that they have resigned themselves to the attitude of taking life as it comes, or else they have it engrained in themselves to keeping what is good about their communities and relationships good, even with being taxed and challenged with some limited means to do so. The Latin American predilection of greeting each other with hugs and cheek kisses still holds strong there. Their culture is so lively with music, and there is a great art scene there; at least they have a great respect for the arts given by the large number of museums, parks, and monuments there dedicated to different artists, writers, and musicians from all corners of the world, not just strictly in Cuba. Certainly, there were signs of what we would term as poverty, and sure, many of them have some side hustles going on to help make ends meet. However, at the same time, along with that there seemed to be less people seated in the trappings and stresses of propagating and maintaining materialism, elitism, and classism. I really found myself wondering about what the consensus is in Cuba about thoughts, ideas or perceptions related to meritocracy, given that their doctors make close to the same salary as their bus drivers. Yes, there were people pitching and hocking wares in the street, magnetically attracting themselves to groups of tourists, but at least they were offering goods and services in some form. I only met one person who was actively begging/panhandling for money. In that instant, it was a young man who was afflicted with cerebral palsy, to a degree at which he was just barely ambulatory; not there struggling to nurse some sort of continual addiction. If this system was failing him somehow, or if there is some less enlightened treatment or acceptance of the disabled there, he certainly could have used the spare change.

If these people are poor in material wealth, they more than make up for it in being rich in personal character. I witnessed them being genuinely kind and helpful to each other, as well as to us as visiting foreigners. As I said, I took some initiative to speak Spanish with them (often to their surprise) as often as I could, despite risking some embarrassing errors, in trying to break the ice. I was hoping the effort would at the very least stave off any undue or unhelpful animosity, if there was any was directed at us, although that never seemed to be the case. This may have helped in a small way to smooth things over and open doors in creating some positive first impressions. However, I would like to think that they are just naturally hospitable to begin with, no matter what the state of our fluency was with their language. We never had any unpleasant interactions with any of them, except maybe with one shady-looking character trying to hustle us to buy some counterfeit cigars. After a three-minute engagement, and us repeatedly refusing, he wised up enough to know to stop persisting, and he moved on his way. It was rather benign compared to some other cases I’ve seen elsewhere. The Cubans we met, for the most part, were very down to earth people who did their best to resolve things. Being offered and given hugs by staff who have served you, as like what happened with us, is not a norm in any other country I’m aware of. The common people, the politics aside, are the ones who give this place it’s heart and the better vibe to it, which sadly is being ignored, unrecognized, and under-represented to most of the rest of the globe. It’s kind of the same thing that’s happening to those of the less ignorant, and more thoughtful and socially conscientious ilk of the American population now, who are unfortunately dealing with Trump being at the helm there.


The questions of feelings of personal safety will be put before me. Let me put it this way . . . I felt a lot safer in Cuba than I did in Venezuela, especially in western Venezuela, where the threat of me becoming kidnapped and made a hostage for ransom was an ever-present and very real danger. I would probably feel safer in Cuba than I would ever feel in the streets outside of the resorts in Mexico or other places in Central America, or in any town in the increasingly trigger-happy U.S.A. where the lines seem to be becoming blurred about where the bad-side-of-town actually is. Statistically, even walking by one of their high schools increases your odds sharply in becoming collateral damage from a mass shooting nowadays down there.* Hell, I would probably feel safer in Cuba than in some of the neighbourhoods in my own city at night.

The rest of what made the holiday notable is condensed to the list topics below:


Best Feature about Our Hotel (Varadero): I would say that it was its location relative to the rest of the rooms in the resort. We were assigned a room that was conveniently close to the beach, and far away from the noisier grandstand pavilion where the evening entertainment could have been too loud for us introverted sorts. I do have to recommend though that when searching for a hotel in Cuba, research the power outlet set up in the rooms of the place. You may need to bring an adapter to convert to 110V power if you are a Canadian traveler. We were initially assured that it we would have 110 voltage for our electronics but since the hotel we booked was part of a company from Spain, their power outlet format was actually 220V.  I neglected to be prudent enough to bring a voltage converter, but fortunately, we were accommodated and allowed to charge power supplies and cellphone batteries at the front desk, which luckily was equipped with a 110 V outlet.


Best Thing about Havana: The colonial Baroque architecture in the places surrounding the Capitol building was amazing to me, it all definitely exuded lots of charm and reflected the rich history of the city. The old part of the city of Havana is most definitely a UNESCO site; it probably was the first of the cities of the Americas to be designated as one. The more panoramic view of the city from the fortress of Tres Reyes was a bit occluded by grey skies on the day we toured, but still quite spectacular. If you dig the classic cars before the year 1959, you’ll love checking out the machines putting or roaring around Havana. Our only disappointment was not really getting enough time to stray away from the tour group and to explore the city a little more independently.

A stately looking capitol building . . .

Some old beaters that are chock full of vibrant colours.

Best Cuban Food: I’m a big fan of sausages, and I’m one of those freaky people who finds something like morcilla delightful. That’s the Spanish version of black pudding, or blood sausage. I also enjoyed the grilled chorizo they served as well. The fresh grilled fish they had available was also great. Some basic stuff was also very good, like the local cheese, and if you are lucky enough to get fresh Cuban bread before it rapidly goes stale in the humidity, that was a real treat as well. I will admit and warn others though that Cuban food doesn’t typically have that zesty piquancy and punch that Mexican food has. Cuba isn’t what I would call a culinary paradise if your tastes veer towards the spicy and exotic. It in fact leans a lot toward the bland side. We can say that it was at least safe to eat at the hotel we stayed at. I’ll be forgiving, and reason and speculate that years of shortages for staples and other basics, never mind spices, haven’t done any favours in letting the food scene grow, evolve, and flourish in this nation.


Best Cuban Drinks: The Cristal beer never disappointed. My sweetheart delighted herself with the piña coladas. We were taken on a horse-drawn carriage trip around the streets of Varadero, which pulled along side an outside bar in a park. The gentleman proprietor, obviously in cahoots with the tourist-drawing carriage guy, offered me the “best Mojito in Cuba”. He brought the drink, and I pulled out my money to pay him. “No, no”, he abruptly told me, “You don’t pay me unless you do really think that is the best Mojito in Cuba!” A sampled it, and breathed in its fresh minty aroma . . . I even could not lie for a free drink. It was indeed not just the best mojito in Cuba; it was the best mojito I ever had in my life, and I humbly forked over my money in gratitude.

Similar to the carriage we used; thankfully not an actual

car rental like the sign in the background denotes.

There were also “worst of” moments too about our trip that can’t be ignored; thankfully those were few, circumstantial, not really stemming from Cuba or its people, and can be summarized in singular topics. They go as such:

The Cold Front: Halfway through our stay there was a downturn in weather conditions. Do realize that the resort hotels of Varadero are situated on a peninsula that is jutting out directly into the Atlantic, where the sea water is a few degrees colder than that along the Southern Caribbean shore of Cuba. When the cold front arrived, it became rather cloudy at times, and the wind picked up in speed something nasty, and the surf was far too strong and choppy to swim in. We would have otherwise considered a snorkeling expedition or catamaran tour had that not happened.
  
Some Fellow Canadian Tourists: We are introverted people; we came for a peaceful reprieve from life. When we witness scenes of others of our own nationality becoming way too drunkenly boisterous and rudely loud, and too disinhibited with being disrespectful and obnoxious, always seemingly in a place where the sound carries too well, we absolutely hate it, as the mission for the peace we’ve been seeking vanishes. Not too many examples of this fortunately, but the instances of this happening that did occur were so pathetically outlandish on a singular level that it became something that made us feel ashamed to be from the same country as them. When I travel someplace, I want to tune into what life is like for the typical locals who dwell there: that is at least novel and potentially educational and interesting. I don’t want to know how much of a drunken, gluttonous asshole one of my fellow countrymen can devolve into in an all-inclusive resort.

The nice things that I can say about this lizard we found there: 

it was quiet and considerate enough to stay out of our happy

 place and has nice skin. Some qualities it had over the drunk
 old beeyatch from Toronto who sang loudly in the 
buffet hall on the first night we arrived.

The Russians: These guys are a special topic all on their own. I have met, and do know some Russians, but from only encountering ones who have moved here to Canada though to escape that place. Those ones have kind of settled and adapted to the vibe of our land, and after having had a long spell of living here, some of them have indeed learned to accommodate for a sense of humour and some cheerfulness. However, I have never met any Russians who have come straight fresh from the old motherland, after more than 14 hours of flying. Two or three lingering around together may have been intense enough, judging by the group ahead of us, but we sure as hell weren’t prepared for an onslaught of an entire jet liner full of them arriving at the same time as we did: all crowded and crammed up with us in the arrival terminal at Varadero Airport, waiting to get through passport inspection, which was already very chaotic and disorderly as it was. I don’t like to stereotype, but I couldn’t help but to think that I truly discovered just who the rudest people in the world are regarding queuing etiquette and behaviour. If their butting in line, not quieting down and paying attention to PA announcements (even ones in their own language), and not keeping pace with the flow of the line wasn’t bothersome and irritating enough, just for extra entertainment, a couple of Russian men, one being super-drunk, started actually brawling each other with fisticuffs in that very tightly packed space, totally oblivious to the crowded surroundings. Cuba is probably one of the few places left on the planet where Russians have some freedom to travel as vacationers**, and I got the sense that they don’t even seem to know how to do this very well.  The Russians around our hotel, despite having the wonderful weather to enjoy and the amazing ocean vista, seemed to all have their faces still frozen in some default stony expression of joyless stoic harshness. It was so prevalent that I could instantly identify them as Russians by their look on their faces before they even spoke. I don’t know whether it’s strangely comical, or pathetically sad: to see someone dressed up in a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts on a tour bus with a look on his face with all the thrill and exuberance of someone next in line waiting for a colonoscopy exam. I gathered no real positive vibe coming from any of them at all; few, if any, made any effort at all to smile. To see a Russian smile. . .  I was convinced that the only way I was going to see a Russian’s smile was totally by accident: and in that case it would be like some instant when his back was turned to me, and his water-logged swimming trunks fell off as he was wading out of the surf. Not exactly jovial people those Russians. We met Germans there, who greeted us genially enough when I spoke to them. I could hear a group of Swedes on the beach, discussing in an almost organized, business-like manner their plans for the rest of the day, being somewhat anal about arranging times and scheduled events for some group consensus as I listened to them discuss all that stuff in Swedish, but at least they still looked relatively content, relaxed and joyful. No one could mistake or accuse the Quebecois folks there that they weren’t having a great time. The Russians though didn’t give me any hint that they were actually there to enjoy the place at all. In fact, they looked like they were quite unwilling to exchange greetings or engage with even their own countrymen/countrywomen. The families and couples there just seemed to stay isolated to themselves. I tried even to use some polite Russian words/phrases I know for greeting and passing around them (good morning, excuse me, please, thank you). All of them just seemed to react with either being taken aback and then becoming as instantly dismissive, or else they trudged right by me with no similar attempt at politeness, like I wasn’t to be acknowledged at all.  We luckily had a great mixture of other company, speaking as two people who weren’t really geared to engage with a lot of people to begin with. However, if we ended up being the only two Canadians planted amidst a resort totally full of nobody but Russians***, it would have been the most depressing tropical vacation I think anyone could possibly ever have.    

I veer back into dwelling on the positives again . . . 


Best Moment of Self-Discovery: One shouldn’t bother traveling unless one is willing to let it change oneself in some way for the better. I was grateful that I was still able to navigate around using Spanish with some competence, and relieved that I did not completely let it rust away in my head. I suppose also that knowing the inconveniences the average Cuban goes through daily, and yet still find it in themselves to have the fortitude be helpful to others gives them an admirable resilience. In knowing that, I’ll have this example to reflect on before I ever go on some tirade of complaints about social injustice and political things in this country, or else be more thankful that I have the freedom to do so if I ever do. It would be embarrassing, after that experience, to complain about any other minor inconvenience I have here and now in this land of freedom and abundance, that are really rather trivial in comparison to some of the things I’m sure which an average Cuban has to cope with frequently. Despite seeing all the snow from a recent blizzard that occurred and passed just before we arrived home, I came back feeling refreshed and thankful to call this place home. I’m very happy I got to spend our 2^nd anniversary together there during this time. 

I had to add this point latently. We should feel especially lucky that we managed to get away and return from this trip before any more inconveniences had arisen due to the Corvid-19 threat, which may hinder and restrict international travel from this point onward.


*None of the cities of Cuba appear on one list I found of the 50 Most Dangerous Cities in the World, most of which are situated in Latin America, in so-called democratic countries. The U.S.A. and its territories have 5 cities with this infamous distinction ranked on this list.


** ”Freedom to travel” doesn’t necessarily mean “being welcomed with open arms”. I was chatting with a guy who originally came from Poland, who was raised there during the Warsaw Pact Years, but now lives in Canada, who frequently holidays in Cuba and keeps his ear to the ground since he understands some Russian and has a good rapport with the Cubans. He has a good idea about how the Cubans and Russians interact. “The Cubans kind of hate and resent the Russians!”, he told me. “They [Russians] come to Cuba with some attitude of superiority and constantly treat the Cubans like some sort of underlings”. I didn’t see any of the Cuban staff actively hugging the Russians; that’s the only truthful input I have about my experience of watching these two peoples interact.

*** Maybe the Russians appeared so strangely dour to me in demeanor because we seem to be a world apart in actually feeling happy. According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, Canada ranks on this index as the 9th happiest nation on Earth, whereas Russia ranks in the much gloomier number 68 spot. The nations with lower rankings than that were usually extremely impoverished, or conflict zones, or both. This same report had neither any ranking, nor any data, for Cuba.   

BuJo Initiate

It’s the Ex week again, and like for the past few years now, I’ve taken it as holiday time. It has also been the habit to use the time to do practical economical household craft projects each year during this time, as sort of an advanced preparation for making winter a bit cozier. This time around is no exception. Last year, it was some carpentry to reclaim storage space; other years, it has been canning preserves. This year, I’ve minimized and simplified things even more for a multi-day project.

Over the past couple years or so, one positive habit I have been cultivating for myself is carrying

One template format I'm exploring . . .

around a pocketbook and pen. Sure, a note taking app on the phone is quite handy, but when in a pressured dash or impulse to record, capture, and recover something more instantly and accurately while it is on the tip of my brain, the pen and notebook beats the cellphone. I have been finding my old-fashioned pocketbook to be as indispensable to me as carrying my keys, wallet, and my cellphone. It has helped save me a lot of time, money, and energy, especially in spots when the phone had little to no battery power left.

I like technical innovation a lot, but honestly, only up to a certain point. We think we are doing well for ourselves by organizing our lives with apps on our phones and computers, but this is illusory on some levels. It is ultimately making us comply to a complex system that suits tech companies in finding new ways to control us with ones and zeros, and for them to glean more of our money and personal data from us. In this sense, apps can tend to cheapen the quality of your life, or they at least make the data of it more valuable to everyone except yourself. There is a point where we lose sight of being able to create a very personalized, customized, and more organic system that allows us to stage things better for our own organizational needs, our unique learning modalities, our own personal goals; one that accommodates for recording through our more private and practical eccentricities. Those ones are not for sharing, the non-bloggables: thoughts and ideas best left on a page of paper, with the privacy assured.

One of the things I regret about my formal education, from childhood on through to my early university years, in the days before academic computer use, and before the internet was available, is that I never had any teacher at any time of my life who put any effort at all on teaching me how to do the very essential and elemental thing for excelling in true higher learning. That is, really teaching me on how to organize myself with the practical skill of efficient written planning/journaling, and effective note taking. It seems absurd, but it’s true. Sure, I of course learned literacy, but only mastering merely the taking in and absorbing of information part of it. I always had substandard teachers and mentors for helping me exploit my strongest learning modalities to transpose, and express, what was going on in my head in the way I sensed it, and frame it in the best organized and condensed manner on to a page that was most memorable and comprehensive to me. My willingness to write, or “show my work”, as was always demanded of me, just wasn’t there, and from that I think I suffered greatly in such a way that I was always reticent, reluctant, reserved, made to feel embarrassed, about expressing any form of creativity at all through the written word or graphics for the longest time. I was no dullard, there was lots of thinking going on; but I was always embarrassed with my poor organizational ability of trying to sort it out on paper. Capturing thoughts through note taking was like trying to catch wriggling live fish with soapy hands. I improved a lot over the years, but my journey to get better at it has been a very independent and solitary one, and I missed the most critical of years of when what I know now would have served me better at an earlier time. I’m trying to actively compensate for that even today.

This all brings me now to making a concerted effort at learning something that encompasses serving me as a means of approaching efficient minimalism, enhancing my productivity, and being a creative pastime. Currently, I’m immersing myself in the craft of bullet journaling (or BuJo* for short)¹. Like most of my hobbies and pastimes, it is nerdy thing that is a nice blend of aesthetics that pleases the senses, and orderly precision that gets mathematical, scientific, and data oriented. What I gain from doing it is a clearer snapshot of how my mind works while figuring out goal-oriented objectives. One thing I’m noticing is that there is a great and drastic schism in the quality in my handwriting between the floodlight mind (cursive, observing and fervent collecting a vast array of thoughts instantaneously) and my spotlight mind (block printed, mindfully focusing and methodically organizing them on paper, without the pressure of time and other stressful distractions). Comparing the two is seeing my brain operating and functioning in two different levels, or existing on two entirely different worlds, for each process. I wonder if there is name for the weird psychological anomaly to describe this huge difference between each modality. Examples provided.

My manic, brain-on-fire,
"conspitated looking" as one
of my friends once called it,

cursive writing vs.

My relaxed and focused self

block printing

My goal with this pastime is to get a journal formatted and formulated with templates for the

One template I designed that I may 

use for seasonal tasks. I couldn't

 find anything like this in a stationary 

store. Custom made is the way to go!

remainder of this year and the entire coming new year. What will I do with it all? Well, to automate some plans without the actual need for technical automation; to make cybernetic changes and adjustments without the cyberspace. I’m not trying to think like a machine, but I am trying to enhance my own recording and processing of stuff in much the same way that computers do: more effort to taking a small codified, point/mark, or bit of info to record and ramming it through a formatted program or function to filter out a result. Pixilating points (or customized bullets) to track data is a simple and effective way to record progress. The gist of this being investing in time to structure a perfect (for me) format now so that I can waste very little time and material for recording stuff later. Minimal effort through simple coding that can lead to big results. There is stuff to enter that is not as simple as purely numerical, or a yes/no, true/false, 0/1,

kinds of data. Some stuff, of course, is trackable and traceable only on a spectrum, or layers of spectra, or else needs a full out verbal explanation. The modular nature of this system allows for this too. I’m most interested see what kind of artistic infographics I’ll be able to create and incorporate as well. I want to see if I can progress from being crude to making the great leap ahead of being . . . slightly less crude with my graphical talents. Most of the detailed subjects that I will be recording, and tracking, are too personal to post here. However, I will disclose the broader general reasons for this new objective:

• Shifting from Day to Night Mode – Someday, I hope not too soon yet, I will be transitioning to doing night shifts. It will be a major upheaval for my body and mind to adapt to, with phases of insomnia assured to come; my working memory being the worse off casualty due to that. Hence, I’ll have to get into the habit of writing things down more often to not lose track of things. Also, having lists of things to work through eliminates the burdensome and torturous task of having to make decisions in such a state (or suffering consequences of making bad decisions in that way, read further below).
  
• Total Schedule Reorganization - There then must be a major reorganization of my schedule for my daily activity, have a productive rhythm to my day; to conserve my energy, and my social life and relationships outside of work. 
  
• Monitoring Health – Another offshoot of switching to nights is needing to actively check myself over for signs of physical deterioration due to the odd hours and unnatural rhythm of wakefulness. Knowing and marking the ideal time to exercise, and what and when to eat during this (mal)adjustment period is critical also, since “breakfast” kind of doesn’t work (doesn’t feel right) as a meal option in mid-afternoon. Alcohol consumption periods are things to be mindfully reckoning with too. What gets measured gets mastered.
  
• Impulse Grounding – One of the things I have noticed after long bouts of insomnia is the poor ability to make sound decisions. The likelihood of acting on impulse rather than think things through rises significantly. For example, this is especially bad when I want to commit to a minimalist lifestyle, but then act on a reckless spending spree for impractical things after too little sleep. BuJo is a way to do a brain dump and check your thoughts outside yourself, with some frame of order, to analyze and weigh pros and cons. At the very least, the very act of doing this is a much cheaper alternative of using one’s time rather than falling into an impulsive habit of mindless consumption of whatever it is that one could possibly become addicted to.
  
• Cheap Hobby – It only needs: a writing instrument of your preference, and a good quality dot

  

  My entire Bullet Journaling kit.

  (or grid) paged journal for the basics. For refined line forming for edging and bordering and such, a cheap geometry set from a dollar store works. Additional lettering stencils and templates can be found cheap in an arts and craft shop, or even in a dollar store. Just engage the imagination, and that’s it. A minimalist’s dream come true! Very portable, and it doesn’t need a battery for power (except maybe just a good source of caffeine). It’s a big step upward from an adult colouring book anyway, and far more practical to use as well.
  
• Veering Away from Toxic Social/News Media – Simply substituting a bad use of time for a better, more constructive, one. I will have a genuinely more enriching time working on a means to sort my own life’s issues, and creating my own viable solutions for approaching problems and goals than thinking and believing, that during these turbulent politically charged times of the election season, that any government or other social institution, is going to be genuinely interested in doing that for me. It’s my time to opt out of indiscriminately spending too much time and attention on negative news and social media during these times of waiting for our nation’s federal election coming this October, and the bloody ridiculous circus of the still 454 remaining days of campaigning until the American election. Working on my own betterment through my journals will be a nice retreat away from all this.

The most satisfying and enriching thing about using BuJo as an analogue system of note taking and calligraphy²: purposely taking a plain word and page space and embellishing it such as to make it so strikingly elegant and distinctly vivid enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Imagine then how much more powerful it would look when it is applied to a whole written thought or idea. Goals are made to appear to have an esteemed meaning, as truly worthy goals should. It somehow makes your own ideas and listed tasks and duties appear more alive/animated. Even the duller things on a to do list can then look like they could be integral parts of some overall grand adventure.

A potential syllabus list

with flipped open pages

to record book titles

journaling is the chance and choice to be liberally creative and expressive with stylish lettering and artwork in one’s journal, thus further stimulating and empowering one to use the entire brain; not just the analytical and logical left hemisphere. I really believe there is some weight to this as a benefit, adding artful flourishes through doodles, and calligraphy.

I’m coming closer to understanding why monks in the medieval era were charged with the tasks of illuminating pages, making copies of calligraphic manuscripts, and other such scrivenery. Apart from being just merely literate, to do such a job well very much requires and demands a deeply focused, disciplined, and meditative mind. It can be very relaxing. However, I’m certainly not a monk. The best advice I could give as a novice for starting a page template is just to dive right into it. It is 100% guaranteed that it will be imperfect at the start, making lots of mistakes in your initial formatting, lettering, and page section alignment. So, once that is all done, set it aside for a long while, have a drink or two, then come back and review it, and then be totally relentless, ruthless, and absolutely merciless with editing it, and redo it until you get the right design and style that really satisfies you. You are allowed be your own harshest critic since you are going to be the only one interacting with this material; you have no one to please but yourself by taking such a measure.

The first mess . . .

. . . then the final product. Custom made and adapted for a coding 

matrix system unique and personal to me, and again, 

it can't be found in any regular stationers shop.

I have nothing more to include with this entry, except for this last thought from a quote by the author of my guidebook:

“Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you've learned to change the narrative in the next volume.”
― Ryder Carroll, The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future

*- I like Bujo because sounds more to me like some unique, Zen-based, Japanese term for some sort of work ethic discipline, like kaizen.

1. The initial resource I used was The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll. I solidified the reason why I decided to undertake this; after that though, I’ve been finding a multitude of ideas for personalization on Pinterest.

2. I’m not ashamed to say, as a guy, that I love the artform of calligraphy. Before you scoff and think by default that it’s a sissy craft to do, consider this: the most instrumental class that Steve Jobs said he ever took (before he dropped out of college) which he said had been the most influential one for the inception of the Mac computer wasn’t a software programming class, wasn’t a computer science or engineering class; it was a calligraphy class. In a roundabout way, the practice of it forced him to see things differently through the elegance of design, and natural forms and ease of interface that made one want to engage with using a computer. Proper design is powerful stuff!

5Q5A: A Spark of Minimalism

The inspiration for writing this morning came from yesterday evening. It has been a busy, yet generally a peaceful, weekend. I took a break from my practical rush-about errands; dealing with irritating surprise fix-up projects, and other personal chores, and made some time to socialize a bit with my family who came in from out of town. My sweetheart and I joined my mother and one of my aunts for a bite to eat at a stop north of town as they were making their way back home after visiting one of my other relatives who was recently hospitalized. This place was a fringe-of-town truck stop: geared more for serving fuel to large transports, or being some convenient pit stop to truckers bypassing the city than establishing itself for any kind of fine dining. My mom, generally having less of a sense for navigating by street addresses, chose going there because it just was a familiar landmark to her coming in and out of Saskatoon, and because it was practical and time-saving: being on a more direct route heading back to the highway to home. It was also perhaps probably the easier decision for her to make for a rendezvous after the intensity of a hospital visit.


After our meal and visit and upon saying our goodbyes and getting up to leave the place, I glanced over the convenience store section on the way to the exit. Amongst the bric-a-brac of merchandise there, in the racks of sundries apart from the confectionary shelves, was a display of folksy door signs (most of them of the tacky, man-cave, kind of trailer park chic quality). They were crafted with little sayings reflective of those with the kind of mentality and humour of cruder cultured sorts who spend much more of their lives being vagabonds on the road, criss-crossing this province and country than being in a secure permanent dwelling, and using their energies less in trying to make and model their living space to something akin for candidacy for Better Homes and Gardens, obviously. One of the signs did catch my both attention and appeal. It said something simple like “Collect moments; not things”. It was reflective of the suppertime conversation we just had, which at one point briefly touched on the topic of minimalism. It also prompted me to write down some answers to some questions that entertained me afterward. 

Q1. If there was a kit of things or gear (aside from clothes, meds, and hygiene essentials) that I would have for a prolonged road trip travel minimalist style, what would they be? (10 items or less)


A1. The stuff would most likely be:

• Wallet
• Cellphone (charger and earbuds)
• My Swiss Army Knife (mostly for the bottle opener and corkscrew)
• Leuchtturm 1917 Medium (200 mm X 150 mm) notebook, dot formatted, enabled for use with Whitelines Link® app, with small clear plastic ruler in the back cover pocket.
• Pen (black ink, fine tip)
• Travel Mug
• A Deck of Playing Cards (or set of dice)
• My dog (collar, leash, feeding bowl)
•          If I get strangely get some urge to cross the US border during these crazy and troubled times down there, my passport

Q2. What was the best minimalist activity done today?


A2. Apart from reading, writing this, and spending time with my girlfriend: it was the commitment to do some walking and jogging around the Meewasin Trail. I only needed my shoes and some good music to keep my pace and rhythm going. Even after hurting from doing it today, it wasn’t ever a wrong thing to do. It has been four weeks since I got my new orthotics, and my feet and legs are finally starting to feel like they are now screwed on straight. There was no mental inclination to “train”, or to plan steps ahead for making or beating some records, or pressured thinking/calculating of how much of this I must do to lose the more-than-just-residual amount of bodyfat accumulated from last winter’s miserable and energy-sapping indolence. It was enough just to try to re-discover and adapt to a new stride, pace, form, and posture for enduring the 10 km circuit of mixed walking/running. It was just the simple and pure enjoyment of being outside and present in nature on a peaceful Sunday morning; breathing the sweet morning air, and seeing others walking and running along the trails enjoying it with me. It costs me nothing, and yet the moments gained from doing it are priceless.


Q3. What is the appeal of minimalism, and how could one sell it to others?


A3. The appeal is that I’m left just to work for the things that really matter to the genuine core of me, instead of for the sake of putting on some ridiculous false front to impress others. The latter hyper-competitive measure, which only fosters hyper-consumerism, is a really stupid way to use not only one’s money, but time and energy, especially with technology going obsolete at a dramatic pace. The best progression through technological advancement is etherealization: being able to do more with less actual material. Having more stuff is just building up more expense and need to store and secure it all. For me, owning less clears my head of a thousand extra senseless worries that I just don’t need. To have breathing room, and not be tripping around over clutter is another bonus.


Q4. What are most valuable things that every minimalist-minded person should have?


A4. My list of these things would be:

·         A valid library card, or alternatively

·         Access to the Internet

·         The simple fundamental of maintaining good health, and having a valid provincial Health Card (access to free health care is something we take for granted). Keeping abreast of one’s health leads to better . . .

·         Functioning senses (consumerism teaches us to buy and do things that feed the senses, but what good is it all if the very senses you are trying to stimulate aren’t working?)

·         Physical mobility (you’d find out how valuable that is if you ever become, or work with someone, confined to using a wheelchair), which makes one better able to have . . .

·         Access to nature and greenspace: one of the worst things that we are doing to psychologically and spiritually impoverish ourselves (no matter how much money one has, or enabled one is) is increasingly denying ourselves contact and interaction with nature: being complacent and indifferent to its absence, destruction, and disappearance, and missing out on its splendour and our sense of connection with it. Without that, we then instead typically opt to retreat into mindless cycles of consumption simply for self-stimulation

·         Having a minimally sized pastime that can be enjoyed on a park bench or picnic blanket

·         A good memory for organisation; an ability to use one’s mental faculties to the fullest. People buy duplicates of stuff because they often forget that they’ve had bought that targeted thing earlier on to begin with

·         A good system of expanding floor space, and effective use of storage and wall space.

·         Ultimately, the knowledge and sense to know when you have enough stuff

Q5. What insights have I gained through my own attempts at living a minimalist lifestyle?


A5. The major one is that of all my possessions that are just strictly for my entertainment and leisure, about 80% of them are in printed word, shiny disks, or further reduced to coded ones and zeros. I learned what kind of space I value most. My most valuable space, during summer, is the deck (it’s not a large space), where I have direct contact I have with the outdoors with the sunshine and fresh air*. If I collect anything at all with tendencies that verge onto the frivolous and superfluous, it would have to be board games and puzzles. I have a lot of books that I could liberate too.

Noting all this now. I see something in A1 that I really want to seize, and making better use of, but I need to make some refinements for the idea first. More on this in another entry later.

*- Any act of taking away any precious summer leisure time away from Canadians is one that would incite riots.