What?
“Say hello. Remain close to me. No good-bye suicide mystery......We're stuck inside our own machine. Apparitions.”
Apparitions- Matthew Good
Ottawa is a big city, but not a big city. It has the big city feel at times, but not so large that you can never escape. You can even maintain some form of identity, in a city like Ottawa. It’s old and new, and affordable, more so than Toronto, or Montreal.
It was these factors, and well, just the fact that it seemed right that attracted Tracy to the city. At the brave age of 21, she was on her own and finding her way in life. She had picked Ottawa to begin the next fresh chapter in her otherwise stale life. Her old life, as young as it was, had become dull, and it was time to move on.
Tracy had been in that small town all her life. She had finished high school and watched the few friends she had had, move on and away. They had gone to university, to college, to Europe, just away. It was all they ever talked about at the small high school that was everything to them at the time, such a short time.
Tracy had stayed though, worked as a waitress in one of the three restaurants in town. Taken the odd trip to Toronto, to visit a friend, see a concert. She had paid her dues in that town, and had longed to get away. But she never had enough money, or her parents didn’t want her to go, or, well there was always some barrier for the longest time. So she lived at home with her mother and father, and younger brother, and passed the days with thoughts of going away, to see the world. And finally it seemed the right time, and Tracy had saved up enough money to get a place, and live on her own.
But her parents still didn’t think she was ready, didn’t think she could do it on her own. They urged her to move in with friend in Toronto, so she would have a familiar face to watch over her, guide her. To do the job they had done so well for 21 years.
What about a doctor, a dentist, all the things she had at home?? How would we she get them in Ottawa?
Tracy had done her research, she was if nothing else very thorough with these sort of things. She had taken a trip to Ottawa, the previous month, and spent a week scouting out the city, and knew it was the right place for her. She found a nice neighborhood, an old apartment building, that had a sense of character. She took a one room apartment on the third floor, overlooking a little park. She had found a medical and dental clinic, an area fitness group, and signed up for a cooking class to meet people at the local community centre.
Tracy presented her plan to her parents, said Ottawa was just the right size, and she needed to go. She researched jobs, mostly as a waitress and was sure she could find something. She also showed them the university and college in town, and told her parents that after a year or so, she wanted to go to school.
It was hard to find fault in her plan, and even harder to persuade her to stay. Her parents had to let her go, to succeed or fail, she had to go and be in charge of her destiny.
She was a reader, loved books, lost herself in them. Always looked for the meaning beyond what the English teachers had taught her. She read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ over and over, amongst others and really thought she got it.
But trying to explain it to her parents, well they never understood her.
“Don’t you get it? Holden Caulfield wasn’t insane. He was frustrated. He just had enough of the crap from other people’s ways. None of it made sense. I mean yeah, we don’t like this government, or the way we’re taxed, and the price of this and that, and the backroom deals to make war profitable, and the absolute insanity of everyone else. That’s what pushed him over the edge, not just the fact he didn’t fit in, but why would he want to? The entire planet is insane, not Holden, but those lost in their own insanity never see it, and we all don’t give a crap. We have our cable TV, and a meal, and bowl in the mixed league once a week, and before we know it, we’re 60, and time to shut it down. And that’s not life, it’s an illusion of a life, but everyone buys into it, and if you don’t, you’re considered a radical, a misfit and not one that should succeed or get ahead, cause you don’t toe the line. Look at the author, JD Salinger, he wrote those stories and shut down, shut out the world because it frustrated him. He WAS Holden Caulfield and had had enough, and lived away from everyone else, because the day to day dealings with the press and the people around drove him nuts. The pure frustration of hearing the lies from this political wing or the other, the constant bickering about how we can’t possibly get along for our own well being, frustrated him. And he did the smartest thing he could do, buy a house in a small town and shut them all out. You only have yourself to count on, to believe in, and disagree with.
