SAINTS PRESERVE US

Wake Me Up When September Ends

We know them; we know who they are. In my working life I was fortunate enough to possess the wherewithal to engineer a transition from blue collar to white collar. While I wasn’t cleaning toilets or mopping floors any more, I learned that less physically strenuous labour came with its own form of hell, and hell was other people (not a shock) but dressed in cleaner, nicer clothing: the caffeine-free herbal tea drinker who complains the only office perk is free coffee; the frail, pale moppet who messes with the thermostat in August; the rah-rah team-builder nuking butter-flavoured popcorn for all in the tiny common kitchen.

When I was transferred to Calgary from Edmonton almost 20 years ago, my employer’s ad hoc advertising department was graced with a minor miracle – we all agreed on what radio station to listen to in our space. AM1060 was a captivating mix of punk, post-punk, new wave and current releases in that spirit. It was too good to last for corporate radio and I can only assume its current format is news, talk, Christian or yacht rock. That station was my first sonic exposure to Green Day. I heard echoes of the Clash, in the same way I couldn’t glibly dismiss the Black Crowes for regurgitating Faces and Stones. There was something else there.

Ten years later I was in a Piccadilly tourist shop with my older brother. He was shopping for souvenirs for my nephews. He pointed at a Green Day t-shirt: “(My son) likes them.” I said, “I do too, great band.” He said, “I don’t think I know them.” I said, “You watched Seinfeld, you know ‘Good Riddance,’ time of your life? Anyways, they’re American, you can get that stuff anywhere.”

I never liked Motley Crue. I thought they were as cartoonish as Kiss, the Monkees and the Archies. Yet, there’s that theory of monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare and so one good song isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. If I still recorded mix tapes, I’d segue “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” into Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” This was the state of affairs in Alberta and Canada on the last long, lost weekend before a bitter Thanksgiving.

There are still 12 days left on the calendar before the advent of autumn, but Labour Day is the last melancholy gasp of summer. For Ann, a retired schoolteacher, the holiday Monday might as well be New Year’s Day. These first days don’t bode well. An unneeded federal election is underway, a campaign nobody wants. But Ottawa is governed by opinion polls, popularity. While opinion polls allow for a margin of error, they are not static: they’re a lot like life; things can change in a hurry. Protesters protesting various imaginary personal slights to their perceived rights have taken to throwing fistfuls of gravel at the prime minister at outdoor rallies. Many Canadians will recall his father not flinching at the rocks thrown at him by Quebec separatists. Perhaps the analogy of gravel and rocks and two dynastic prime ministers describes the chasm between their respective intellects. Anyway, somebody’s going to be at the helm of another minority government and the electorate may reasonably expect and project another annoying sense of déjà vu. Election day is one day before the fall.

Meanwhile, within the confines of the Crooked 9, my relationship with Ann is fraught. Though we agree that we’re both embarrassed to be Albertans, we’re at wellheads as to whether the mistaken state of affairs in our province has descended into tragedy or farce. Our immense slab of western Canada exists as visions of Jonathan Swift, H.G. Wells and George Romero: satire, science fiction and horror.

Premier Kenney promised Albertans “the best summer ever.” Only God and his confessor know what constitutes his idea of a good time. All pandemic restrictions were lifted in the province on Canada Day. This curiously libertarian and laissez-faire attitude to public health was based on British data. Alas, Alberta’s health authority did not account for that country’s spectacularly high rate of vaccination when it felt the time was ripe just to get on with things. Oddly, covid’s Delta variant has surged here and hospitals are again in the red zone.

As the leaves turn from green to burgundy and gold, I can imagine a drought stricken, pre-apocalyptic wasteland populated by Us, the vaccinated, and Them, those who must be shunned. I can smell the Alberta government’s desperation through my mask. Restrictions have been reintroduced. There’s an alcohol sales curfew for instance, although, weirdly, rodeos are exempt; they get a free ride. Anti-vaxxers are being bribed with $100 to dredge up some primordial form of common sense, to get a jab instead of a dose of livestock de-worming medicine. Gee, hot water with lemon, and bleach didn’t work nor did an earlier upped ante endeavour of three million-dollar vaccine lottery prizes.

There will be a civic election here next month. My hibernation might run 61 days – wake me when October ends. The slogan of one of Edmonton’s mayoral candidates is: YOUR TURN TO GET AHEAD. It’s pithy and populist, an absurdist plagiarism from der Trumpenfuhrer’s teleprompter. Boorishness American-style, that rhetoric is everywhere, another wedge between the jabs and the jab-nots. Civic politics are not terribly high-falutin’ – crumbling infrastructure and the costs of basic public services predominate, sewage disposal and treatment among them. Here we are now, Them and Us angrily at odds in a wasteland of confused stasis.

Perhaps despair knows no nadir because nadir knows no depths. Way back when I used to fret over the sequencing of my mix tapes, usually 11 songs per side for a 90, I recorded a “Suicide Cassette,” 22 of the most depressing songs in my collection. The Band’s “It Makes No Difference” constituted the precipice of the blues abyss. The twin reels were great, but I had to be in the mood. And now, I wish I still had it. Beyond this month and October, November lurks like one of those smug, smirking HOLD MY BEER social media memes: the insufferably saccharine Swedish pop group ABBA is going to release its first album of new material in 40 years. Certain people I used to work with loved ABBA. Fuck. Fuck them. Fuck it all.          

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of head shaking since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is out now. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.