It's been a couple of months since everybody was told mid-shift to empty lockers, pack up tools, clean out desks, park machines,

I'm not sure who's left there; a couple of security guards, feral cats, eagles looking for feral cats, rats, flying rats, eagles and hawks braving the thousands of flying rats rising en masse from rooftop nests to protect their mini-flying-rats like squadrons of Spitfires rising to protect London from long-ago flying rats -- whirling in elaborate maneuvers as they pick off the massive, clumsy Heinkels and Junkers tail-feather by tail-feather. The eagles have as much of a chance of picking off a chick and returning unscathed as did those earlier bombers.

I suppose the hundreds of sea-lions are still there if they haven't yet left for California, and the thousands of cormorants, and passing pods of killer whales, and celebrity and billionaire yachts longer than my unraveled, generations-removed, kiss-my-ass Royal Canadian DNA.

And feet. There's probably a severed right foot or many encased in size 12 Adidas that will go unnoticed midst the waterlogged booms and bankruptcy and absence and bloated deer and half-eaten seals.

But I'm getting used to this; this unemployment. It's rather pleasant. No obligations, no arguments, no too-early mornings, no too-late nights, no moments of terror, no endless ennui awaiting that terror.

I putter about the house and yard, I consider re-introducing myself to the raw musical talent which once won me a scholarship to UBC. I evaluate prospects north for obscenely high wages I don't really need, I look at options, and the best option seems comfortable, early retirement.

But I've still got the need for speed, or at least the need to slowly level mountains.

I'm lucky, I suppose. I was smart enough to take the considerable income afforded by this life-blood spewing company which seemed to attract goal-less liberal arts types like me and other ba's, ma's, the occasional phd, and invest some of it; many times unwisely but enough wisely to afford independence.
Many didn't, blew it as it came, expecting the teat to nurse forever.

But as I sniff the flowers, clean the property (actually, I hire people to do that, but still sometimes stand out in the yard and say "this here, that there, those to the dump" [no "farmer out-standing in his field" pun, Ducadmo], I think "go north, middle-aged man."

It's kinda like the urge to action demobilized veterans experience, I guess.