It's coming up on a year and a half that the family and I relocated From Vancouver B.C. Canada to Portland Oregon U.S.A. and i am often asked about it. Now I'm not really a believer in decisions so to say, I'm more of a reactor to circumstance, and i believe circumstance has done me well this time.
It was a hard thing to do, we have many good friends in Vancouver, and we were doing pretty good there by all accounts, but i have to say that it took less than a second to decide on the chance to escape my situation. It was King hell exciting to get a new lease on my identity and for that matter daily ritual.
I got out of walking up at 6 in the morning to race to work to try to deliver a mail route in time to pick up my eldest daughter from school and then do something fun with her before picking up the twins and then making dinner for the family, all while running some elements of the family household. I got the opportunity to sift my failing songwriting career to the background, and all of the ruesome conversations that come with that.
On January 9, 2012 i became a man with a normal name living in an awesome house in a fantastic neighbourhood a few blocks from my kids school. On the walks to school i met the neighbourhood... of course I'm a bit weirder than most, but remember this is the City who's motto is "keep it weird"... what was the Vancouver one... "world class city". Don't get we wrong, I love Vancouver, and I am Canadian on and on, those that know me and know my work would not disagree. The thing is that here in Portland the neighbourhood is filled with single family homes, people like us with kids like us... sure we are all patriots but i see very little difference between the key things our family views as important than the local families view as important. Ultimately the same thing in Vancouver, but the big difference is a by product of real estate prices... I believe there were 13 houses on our block in Vancouver and many of them were suited... there are probably 20 houses on our block in Portland and i bet you more people by far lived on our street in Vancouver. I know most of the people on our block here in Portland, i can't say the same in Vancouver, and remember i was the Mailman for that street.
So i move in and become (again) a stay home dad, and wouldn't you know it that there are more stay home dad's than squirrels in this hood. Everywhere you start swinging a dead squirrel you hit a stay home dad... most of them ain't to crazy about being walloped with a dead squirrel, but hey... never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I stayed home with the kids for 3 years in Vancouver and as i thought about writing a book about it the working title was going to be "me the grandmothers and the Nanny's". Truth be told there were a few stay home dads, but one moved to Europe, and the other had another Kid which put him back into the infant caring stage, which cut into our 3 year old's hanging out together easily without urgent incident.
I think i am a migrator, i move on without serious emotional feelings to claw me back to the pond i began in. I have noticed this as a pattern in my life.. i went to camp made great friends and left with wet eyes and moved on, i worked as a Jr. ranger and a tree planter... same deal tight knight group separate and move on, i moved across the country from family and never really considered moving back, but that's another novel.
The good part about moving away is that you find out who it is that really wants to keep in touch with you... when effort and money is involved the power of the heart comes through.
Truth be told however when i look at it now that the dust is settled, escaping my career (for the meantime) as a Mailman, cannot be under looked. Why am i all cheery and happy? A pound of abstinence is worth an ounce of cure... I mean i loved my job and i was real good at it for what it is worth, but working full time and caring for 3 kids, and dealing with my stubborn insanity about keeping a record company alive by doing a free show every week by being that "wacky guy" is quite a spot to be in... so if there was a way to get out of it nice and clean like i would take it in a second, and i did.
America is America and Canada is Canada, they are both run by the same corporations with the Governments bowing to the same corporate economic ideals. You could argue the the people running Canada are more in the pocket of big industry that destroys the planet, but it would be an ugly futile argument. They both are, and the smart citizens of both countries are outraged by this... the rich are concerned about their personal wealth, and the religious are decoyed by defined insanities. We are essentially a global community now... that's why we have to co-operate on a pipeline to ship oil from one place to another to process it and sell it, even though all logic dictates otherwise.
Sometimes i wish i could write a blog without slipping into this, but it always seems to happen... any tangent you take has a lead into this fiasco. I guess i t might be important, in the end we are survivalists, and nobody can survive on poisoned air and poisoned water no matter what the corporations tell us... the ads are slick, but they are hollow.
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