Canadians: humans or impostors?
Errors Alert: maybe you’ll find non-existent words. I apologize for that.
A little rest, finally! Last weekend I covered 560 Km hitchhiking from Canmore to this retreat centre in British Columbia. Rainbows, statues of the goddess Kwan Yin and gratitude notes are everywhere. My jobs of the week are repairing a Volkswagen Rabbit older than me while listening to Led Zeppeling-the early days, and helping with delicious vegetarian meals while discussing about “manifesting” the life we are supposed to live.
It’s a very remote area of Canada, I came here hitching 4 rides in total, meeting a couple of young forests-lovers, a depressed french canadian fisherman whose Rottweiler recently died, a 50 years old very feminine new father, and a blue eyed snowboarder from Seattle. That day the weather switched from snow to pouring rain and it’s raining ever since, transforming this gorgeous surrounding in a huge mud ditch. Everyone’s skiis are still standing on the porch, hopelessly observing the snow melting in mud.
In this remote place I’m with another Italian volunteer, who came from Trento with a trumpet he cannot play and he ended up at the centre through a connection he cannot recall. After dinner, me and this italian climb the stairs to isolate in our rooms, and I can hear cursing and swearing through the wooden wall, until I fall asleep. It feels homy to me, it’s one of the typical italian behaviour. We like to be pointlessly agressive.
Italians’ agressiveness is not only expressed by swearing to God: in our Country, we passively get at least one news a day about someone killed or raped or robbed, even if we try to avoid news. Here I NEVER hear any of this happening. am I in lalaland or what?
I’ve been taught that killing and raping is a natural behaviour of humans, and gossiping about killing and raping gives us thanatos pleasure. That’s how it goes, sweety, humans are animals after all!
So? Are canadians not humans?
I have a theory. There’s a big amount of nothing here, a human being can be wiped out in many exciting ways: as an animal’s meal, under avalanches or getting lost in this big nothing, just to name a few. So I thought, maybe being really, phisically in danger takes out the thanatos bullshit from human psyche. A person on the Canadian Rockies subconsciously knows that, alone, his/her life would end quickly and horribly; so, he/she will behave to deserve a spot in the community. They’re also very active and outdoorsy, and there’s not so much energy left to be agressive with each other. My fellow Italian here and his hanger towards God are making me feel like back in Italy, but I’m a natural pacifist, I don’t miss all that violence.
I also enjoy being protected from Christian believes, which I was forced to follow for my entire italian childhood. The highest peaks of the Italian Alps have a huge cross on the top, visible from the valley, because as we felt the devine power of nature up there we decided to stab it and label it. Here not one cross is reflecting sunbeams from the skyline. Nature has power over everything and no human believe can dominate it. At least, this is how I see it.
I do miss the Alps sometimes: hiking the rockies by myself, between tracks of wolves and cougars, has been quite creepy, even carrying the “bear spray” -a pepper spray in north-american size. You also don’t want to bring lunch with you, because the smell will call predators, and there’s no hut with german beer and sausages on the way. There’s nothing human on the way, except for the naked trail; since spaces are so large, even other hikers are rare. It feels neat, but dangerous.
Anyway, I’ve been just on the rockies, a tiny portion of BC and Alberta. I wrote in the title “Canadians”, but obviously I’m talking about these particular Canadians here.
—
Your act of kindness: did you enjoy the reading? Hit the little heart below, or buy me a coffee!
—
