How much did you know about Iceland before the volcano erupted?  Be honest.  I’m guessing most knew little to nothing, or maybe just that it was the first European country to announce bankruptcy after the global financial crisis.  That’s what I thought.  It doesn’t make international press too frequently.  I’m sure most people still don’t know very much about Iceland…including myself.  But this will soon change.

Long before any of this volcano business started last week, I had been planning a trip to Iceland on a super cheap flight via Icelandair, as the first stop in my trans-Eurasian odyssey.   Maybe for some people the eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull (say that five times fast) would put a damper on their eagerness to visit this North Atlantic island, but not for me.  I am as excited as ever.  I just hope they lift the air traffic restrictions soon, which as far as I’ve read, will hopefully happen at any time now.   It’s pretty amazing that this volcano has kicked up so much sediment and vapourized glass shards to immobilize all of Western Europe’s air traffic.  I am eager to witness the raw force of nature again.   I haven’t felt as vulnerable as when I was trapped in the dark in a Catholic Church dormitory on the southernmost tip of Taiwan as a typhoon raged outside my window.  I am strangely drawn to the mysterious and primeval forces that churn above and below the earth’s crust.  It’s easy to forget about how temperamental nature can be when you live in Canada, a land devoid of many of the worst natural disasters.

There sure have been some amazing pictures coming out Iceland from this natural disaster.  Be sure to check out the National Geographic website for some mesmerizing photographs.

This reminds me of a simple little poem by Robert Frost that always made me smile.

In other news:

I just got my super camera and now it’s only a matter of time before I disappear and put it to good use in Europe.  I have less than 20 days left in Canada.  I feel a little happy/nauseous just thinking about it.

I have my French examinations next week, and then I’m home for a week and off to New York before flying (with luck) to Iceland.  I keep making more and more connections from people willing to host me on their floor or couches in far flung places across Europe.   If any of you people have friends in any country in Europe who would be willing to host a silly boy from Canada whose got the wanderlust, please message me or put me in contact with whomever you know.  It would be greatly appreciated.

Starting now, I hope to make more regular contributions to this site, including videos, pictures and stories.

Stay tuned for more hilarity, sorrow, camaraderie and joy.

Also, this is a cool video

• To drive from Whitby to Montreal takes 6 hours.

By no stretch of the imagination can this be considered a long geographical distance, but after living here for the last two months, it feels likes its oceans away from the banality of Whitby.   Don’t get me wrong, Whitby has been good to me, and I am especially grateful to have been reared in such an beautiful area of the city, but Montreal just oozes character and charm like few to no other Canadian cities can.  I can’t help but feel like I’m in Europe already, with the different languages, different foods, architecture, fashion, music and lifestyles.  Montreal is just a delightful city and it has far surpassed my expectations.  I don’t foresee myself living in Canada for extended periods of time in the next 5 or more years, but if I do, I know where I’ll be.   Montreal has entranced me with her siren song.  She’s got me hooked.

I’m working out the final details for my next excursion.  I can’t help feeling giddy with anticipation.  My job is not the greatest, but I can’t complain too much, I have a job, and I was employed within a week of setting foot in this city by nothing more than luck.   I’ve heard innumerable stories from Anglophones who moved to Montreal looking for work and after 4 or more years found nothing or little more than part-time work for minimum wage.  My job isn’t flattering, but the hours are constant and the tips are decent.   Besides, every time I need to bus a sticky table for an ungrateful server, or listen to the grotesquely rich and arrogant brag about the fortunes while devouring their medium rare sirloins, I just think about the twisted corridors and alleyways, winding canals of a medieval city that I’m soon to explore, or the forgotten shorelines hidden on the Mediterranean or the ice cold beers to be served to me in the same fashion as has been the custom for hundreds of years.  I think of festivals and fireworks.  Fjords and siestas.   Glaciers and open-air markers.   No matter what stresses my job or school bring me, if I let my mind wander the path my legs will soon walk I can’t stay bitter very long.  Daydreaming has a way at alleviating my every worry.

Also, one another note...

My blog has a analystical stats recording feature.  It tells me the traffic on my site.  What search engines and keywords people use to find my website.   This is what the top three are…

1. RED LIGHT DISTRICT GWANGJU

1. KOREAN RED LIGHT DISTRICT

1. KOREAN SEXY BARBERSHOP MASSAGE

Man, there must be a lot of really lonely and perverted guys hanging in an around Gwangju.   Let me be clear about this…I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT RED LIGHT DISTRICTS IN KOREA.  I posted one lousy thing about how strangely translucent the sex trade was in Korea and now my website appears on the headlines of google searches by sex-crazed foreigners.  Hey fellas, from now on, search elsewhere for your jollies.

On yet another note…check out this beautiful video below.

Life in Haiti-Canon 5D MKII & Glidetrack from Leclerc Brothers Motion Pictures on Vimeo.

I haven’t found myself writing on this blog for quite a while.  I figure I should devote a few minutes and write where I am and what I’m currently doing.

I am living in Montreal with my girlfriend.  Starting next week I will be studying French in an intensive program, and today, I start my job at the Keg.  I’m planning my future misadventures and trying to enjoy my life and my short time in this charming city.

I have been reading like its my job to do so.  Mostly Hemmingway and Steinbeck.  There is something so captivating about the lives of these two authors, and of course, their brilliant works.  I’m unsure why the Lost Generation writers speak to me on such a personal level.  Maybe it’s because they write stories about the triumphs of the human spirit over the adversities of the world, the dignity in degradation, the struggle to overcome ones demons, or maybe it’s the authors’ biographies that stir me.  Hemmingway lived a life of mythos, and though it was short (he committed suicide on his Idaho ranch at the age of 61), he lived more experiences and survived more death-defying exploits than most could even imagine.   For me, the sympathies that those of the Lost Generation captured with their words have never ended.  I feel more at home perusing the pages of these books than the city of my birth.  They evoke weird sensations in me.  I want to sell all my worldly belongings and see how far I can get on my empty stomach and my calculated wits.  I want to get punched in the face for my principles.  I want to get arrested.  I want to be exiled.  I want to write something dangerous and compelling.

Here's just a taste of what I'm ranting about:

Afterward I went to bed and when they were all asleep and she was sure they would not call she came in.  I loved to take her hair down ans she sat on the bed and kept very still, except suddenly she would dip down and kiss me while I was doing it, and I would take out the pins and lay them on the sheet and it would be loose and I would watch her while she kept very still and then take out the last two pins and it would all come down and she would drop her head and we would both be inside of it, and it was the feeling of inside a tent or behind a falls.

Ernest Hemmingway – A Farewell to Arms – p.114.

and…

…Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among the ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe.  But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

John Steinbeck – East of Eden – p.280

and finally…

Names are a great mystery.  I’ve never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name.  But you can be sure of this–whenever a human has a nickname it is proof that the name given him was wrong…

John Steinbeck – East of Eden – p. 261

I will try to write more often…I promise.