Day 6
The land of milk and potatoes.
I am an islander. An “Island Boy,” per se. I have a massive tattoo of two palm trees on a little sandy island that sits boldly over my heart.
A lot of guys like that location for a first tattoo, which is what I discovered in the days and months after getting it. I was 19 years old. I was in southern Cambodia doing another thing a lot of people like to do - go party in Southeast Asia after high school.
It’s amazing how many people can have parallel profound experiences. Maybe rather than making them less special or redundant, it’s something to be examined scientifically.
Perhaps the six-month backpacking trip is similar to a child’s first words? These moments are almost universal, but that doesn’t negate how important they are for a young person’s development.
Or maybe they’re nothing alike. I definitely have some regrets about this tattoo. For sure I do.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s great to be back on an island.
And what an island PEI is!
I remember as a child often getting Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking mixed up. A crime I imagine would land you a lengthy sentence out east, but was less frowned upon out west.
But being here now, experiencing the beauty of this land firsthand, I have a newfound respect for Anne, and promise never to make such a mistake again.
There’s something magical about this place. The soil is all red - from iron apparently. Apparently, it’s actually rusting because of the iron, thus it’s red color. This is crazy to me. And also makes me wonder if it was ever not rusting? I feel like rusting implies a beginning (no rust), a middle (rusting,) and a sort of end (full rust), but looking at this beautiful red soil has me reconsidering this hypothesis, or at least confused about the linear nature of time.
Regardless, there’s clearly something charged about this island, it’s metallic, it’s crystalline. The morning after arriving on the island, Elliott and I drive to Charlottetown to pick up groceries.
As we pull into the local Foodland grocery store, I am struck with something that is more lucid than deja vu. I feel like I’ve actually been to this place before. I’ve hung out in the parking lot of this Foodland in a dream.
This is crazy, I have never experienced a recall so vivid. And I’ve clearly never been to this part of the country, so it’s kind of got me wigging out. There are a few areas of the parking lot that have changed from my dream: there is a gas station to the right where I recall distinctly there being a wall, and the fence to the left was higher and wooden, but otherwise it was all very much the same.
Elliott has to call Morgan, so he sends me into the Foodland first, alone.
I am alone (and slightly hungover) in a disturbingly liminal experience for thirty minutes. I am too shocked to do anything. I push around a shopping cart aimlessly, eyes darting from Compliments apples to Compliments skim milk to Compliments low sodium bacon. In between panicked loops, I try and text the boys a grocery list. There is no service.
I begin to wonder if I will ever be able to escape this place, but I finally cross the longest yard, and a familiar buzz brings me back from the upside down. Elliott’s grocery list has come through, and now I see him walking towards me. He says goodbye and I love you to Morgan, and I have been saved from the catacombs of my own insanity.
After what seems like an eternity in the Foodland and a subsequent goose chase for alcohol, which it turns out works differently in Atlantic Canada (how quirky), we return home to our starving friends. Like Shackleton returning from Elephant Island, we emerge re-supplied, the lifeline restored.
Later that evening, I recall my uncanny dream-weave to the group, and Seb recalls an anecdote about a person he met in Nelson who told him she moved there because she ‘saw it in a dream’. I believe it. If I didn’t before, I sure do now.
Life is mysterious and amazing, and Liam’s house is sick.
We finished recording guitars for Take You to the City in the evening. It will eventually be the first single off our second EP. I really dig the track. And also Elliott notifies us that Annihilation has passed 1k streams. We celebrate with beers.
It’s fun out here.