This may be a pathetic roll, but at least I am on it. Now, normally I don't finish one book until months after starting it and putting it down for something else. I can remember all of the books I have read this way. Put I am on to two in row read in this way, with my timely completion of The Corrections and Dispatches. Both I would classify in the top of their genre. Two books so different but both remind you that stories are merely metaphors for life.

I have always had an intense interest in the US involvement in Vietnam, ( I don't know what to use in the place of "involvement"), probably because I was taught by so many draft dodgers in junior college. Dispatches is the best representation of that time and that place; the mindless bureaucracy and corporate efficiency, the terror and its effects on young men, the escapism needed to survive, and the submission exchanged for endurance.

What I can never get over is that most soldiers there were only 19 or 20. People that age to me seem so young, babies almost, so little knowledge of the world. Michael writes how there was so much energy in young men invested in that country towards destroying it; if only that energy could have been to something creative.

With Anya away, my grim slide into bachelorhood begins. Unmade bed. Dirty dishes in sink. Euros in the afternoon.

Anya and I spent the weekend in Whistler, shacked up in the Summit Lodge. November was in full effect; fog, rain, and near freezing temperatures, so we stayed indoors most of the time.
Having lived in Whistler for 4 years, I recognized the look on many people's faces- the pale, expectant faces, numb from 2 months of rain and manual labour. Looking up at the clouds obscuring the mountains, hoping that the rain in the valley means snow above midstation. I saw myself in those faces, and I realized that I have travelled a million miles from their situation. I have become the person I hated when I was 22. A city-dwelling, career-minded married guy whose idea of a good time is a dinner party with enough red wine to last late into the night and who complains because the VW dealership screwed up and his wife does not have her new Passat Wagon. But at the time I cared only about getting my share of powdies. Everything else came secondary. It was great until I had achieved my goal of skiing everyday without having to work a full time job. Like the residents of the Beach it turned into hell.

So while most people ignored me and chalked me up as just another yuppie tourist, I kept my mouth shout about my past, and what many of these young punks may face in the future. Everyone's got to learn some things on their own I guess.

I have been helping Jim with his film over the weekend. He was shooting in a penthouse in the Waterfall Building. When I visited on Thursday night I was concerned, but the turnout of volunteers was truly amazing. Almost 20 people volunteered their whole weekend to work on this, for no money and little recognition.