this one is all about awkward feelings…

Some lines just feel to obvious to write, like “I had so many thoughts running through my head”, of course I do, that’s why I do this, so I can feel a little less crazy. I went to see this film a few weeks ago, which made no sense since I don’t have money for rent or food, but I’ll go see a documentary about a monk that was imprisoned for 33 years, just in case I run in to this person. The 2nd to last person I had any serious physical contact with in the last 4 years, we made out, we didn’t play sports. I try and sound so careful and I just sound weird. I get ready to go see this film. I put on my yellow pillowcase skirt with the blossoms and branches on it that I just sewed, needs a slit, because I can’t bike in it, and I wanted to bike there, didn’t happen, couldn’t ride, and didn’t feel like I had the time to change clothes, and the outfit seemed more important. I get on the bus, and It’s the usual hell. Some drunk guy leering at me, talking to himself, people guzzling their beverages, and this one woman who was practically yelling on her cell-phone. I get off, finally. I figure if there are no seats, it’s fine I wasn’t meant to see it. I got there, plenty of seats, no sign of the 2nd to last person I made out with 4 years ago. Not a big surprise.

The theatre is filled with mostly white people, and some young Tibetan musicians performing on stage. I am feeling extra weird, like I shouldn’t be there, and then feeling like I needed to get something from this. I listen to the story of this man, Palden Gyatso who endured 33 years of torture for the right to pray, amongst other things, but quite simply to practice his faith, and he did. Even while he was having electric prods shoved in his mouth that destroyed all his teeth, or being forced to crawl on his knees over glass and small stones, being hung naked upside down, and beaten with a series of brutal instruments. He practiced his faith while he was starving and thirsty. He no longer had family, his father and brother had been beaten to death, and his step-mother had also endured beatings, his mother died the day after he was born. I kept wondering what was the matter with me, why wasn’t I feeling any strong emotions for him and why was I critiquing this film? That’s not what I was there to do, but I felt it happening while I was watching every scene. From the lisping European torture expert, to the overly dramatic music telling me when I was supposed to feel fear, terror or sadness. He had me twice, when he spoke of his first meeting with the Dalai Lama and telling him his story, and the soft breath he took in when his suffering was acknowledge by his spiritual leader. The other is when told the story of licking his teeth to gather saliva and giving that saliva to his good friend Lobsang and feeding him like a parent feeding a child. I see him cry for the first time, I get a small sense of the weight of his sadness in this moment. There were confusing parts for me. The Dalai Lama doesn’t come across as a clearly sympathetic figure. I have heard him at public talks and he has been much more effective, for me anyway, when he’s not speaking in English, his meaning seems to get lost otherwise, not uncommon, we often express ourselves best in our own language.

I felt like this man Palden Gyatso didn’t get the telling he deserved. Something didn’t sit right with me when I was watching it. Like if the story was told in a different way would more people see it? Would it have made a difference to the situation in Tibet? Could it have been more healing for him? and why didn’t I like him more, I wanted to. I wanted to appreciate this film, because it is an important story. The title Fire under the Snow is a powerful image in my mind. The title is based on Palden Gyatso’s book. I think the problem was that I didn’t have faith. I didn’t have faith that anything is going to really change. The other part that I had trouble with was the demonizing of China, it felt too simple. Virtuous and peaceful Tibetans facing down the G-dless Chinese.

What I appreciate about buddhism is that asking questions, seeking deep truths are a great part of the practice. Questions of ourselves, and each other. I often feel like there is no room to question when there has been severe trauma and suffering, like somehow it would take away or deny the suffering or the trauma to question it. I see it in situations where there is poverty and abuse. We don’t question the wealth, because they earned it apparently, and if there poor, well, bad shit happened. There is not tidy end here, so It ends here. With more questions.

Morton Rosen

My mother has loved 3 men in her life. Her father, her boyfriend from high school and Morton Rosen. They are friends, they have been for the last 10 years. He turned 91 on May 17th and died yesterday June 20th. He has been like family, the kind of family that you like other people to meet. He laughed easy, he teased my mom regularly and lovingly, never taking her too seriously, or himself. Morton never married or had any kids. Not completely sure why, but he never seemed like someone who is full of regrets. He had a pretty good time while he was here. Always full of great stories about gold panning, battling a bear, living close to avocado trees, travelling, and doing all kinds of work, meeting all kinds of people, and making himself laugh as much as anyone, more of a snicker actually. In the last 10 years he was spending time with my Mom, I had never seen her so comfortable with anyone, maybe because for the first time in her adult life, she felt accepted and safe with a man.

My friends that have met Morton, love him, he was hard not to love. I think I aspire, as do many people I know, to be more like Morton, to shrug things off, to laugh easy, and to still be flirting in to my 90’s. When he went in to the hospital a few months ago, his walls were bare and there were no flowers, so I brought him some photos to put on the bulletin board in front of his bed, so he could see me, my friend Marge and my Mom. I hadn’t gone to see him since they moved him to the Louis Brier Hospital. I felt bad. I said I would come by the weekend after his birthday and I never did. I will miss him, very much. I will miss him more than my own father, because he gave us a great gift, late in our lives, my mom and me.

Dear Mayor and Council,

I came to council chambers this morning, not completely sure why. I think I wanted to look at all your faces, and those of your staff. I’ve spent the last few years projecting my hate on to this city as if it were an ex-lover that had “done me wrong”. I was hating it for a number of reasons. The 16 years I’ve spent watching people die and suffer in the Downtown Eastside while more feasibility studies, conferences and reports were produced, and the rest of the city whined about how the neighbourhood makes Vancouver look bad. I started to hate you because of this beautiful place that I along with 1600 other people signed a petition to save, and a smaller group of us fought through court systems, bureaucracy and finally bulldozers and lost in favour of 4 beige faux heritage duplexes that look like all the rest of the junk out there that’s supposed to make us look like we appreciate old things.

Speaking of old things, there is also the Pantages, another reason why I’m pissed. Maybe it’s that no one actually knew what do with a developer that genuinely wanted to do a good thing, and not have to have his ass kissed for it. Maybe he was just decent and a business man, that wanted to find a way to make it work. They put together business plans did community outreach that would rival any effort City staff has made in years. They wanted to give jobs to people, and I know this is a hard one for people to believe, but poor people want work, not more studies or reports. It was about the density in the beginning, it wouldn’t have cost you a dime. Instead, your controlling, destructive and uninspired staff, put them through 38 months of hoops and basically screwed them around to the point that theatre will be coming down shortly.

Today, I came down to hear about Woodwards. I was part of the first protest around the building on May 6 1995 and have maintained a connection to the project through campaigns for affordable housing, protests with each new developer that wanted to take it on, Woodsquat, and various community art projects I was asked to do, by the community, the City and finally from Westbank. I came today, because I wanted to bare witness to the bullshit once again. Always trying to do the right thing, or think were doing the right thing. Woodwards has been flawed from the beginning. There was alot of optimism in the early days, but because the community could never buy it on its own, they would always be dealing with you, your staff, and developers that like to have their ass kissed and act like there doing the community some big favour. While they make all the sweet agreements at the beginning, they eventually found their way along with your help to squeeze out of just about every commitment they made to the project; grocery stores and affordability to non-profits for example. So now we have W2. Trying to find a way to cover their costs by running a cafe, sounds good. No, why don’t we have JJ Bean instead, let W2 sink and leave the space open for people who can pay. Why not, we seem to do this frequently, put people through the City of Vancouver bureaucracy torture test, and see if they survive, or if they cry Uncle.

I am angry because I care about the city I live in, and the people I know and love who are trying to survive here, trying to make it a better place, a truly livable place, and they are being quashed at every turn. I gave up on Council changing very much over the last few years, left, right, middle, doesn’t seem to matter, you all seem to lose your will, your sense of honesty, and your ability to say what’s in your heart. Maybe because you have so many people to please. You along with your staff have turned this city into a passionless marriage, where we are polite, things seem safe, but we all know they aren’t. It is only getting worse here. More violent, more addiction of all kinds, most expensive rents in the Country, more homelessness, and an abominably low level of support for its artists. I’ve spent the last 720 words telling you what makes mad, what I think is wrong with the city, it’s staff, and you, our elected council. Were not much better as citizens, but we do try, as I imagine you do, to make this place work. I think If I wanted to ask you anything, I would want you to learn how to listen again, to be good for your word, like in the case of the Pantages and Woodwards. Just because we elected you it doesn’t mean you know what is best, nor does your staff, and when they are messing up like they have repeatedly, they need to be called on it, and fired if necessary. I want you to fight for us; as hard as we are willing to fight to make Vancouver truly livable, to make it a real passionate marriage where we’re not afraid to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done, because we know the marriage is worth it.

small town mayor

Written after the November 14th 2008 election
Not sure why I wanted to post it other than it was sitting in drafts for this long and didn’t feel like deleting it. Our new council has proven to be a mixed bag of some bold choices, safe ones, and some disturbing ones. They aren’t as lousy as the last council, but that’s not saying much. I did have some hope for this crew, as seen below. They inevitably are trying to please a whole city, or maybe just developers. I guess I just don’t really believe that this system works, because it doesn’t work for everybody, and we should have a system that works for everybody, it can be done, I know it can, it’s just way harder to do. Read on if you still feel like it. Have a good day.

In the last year I have thought alot about what it would take to make Vancouver less fucked up. Two things- a kick in the head, and  bold, creative leadership from our City Council.  It seems as if we might be getting one of those.   I have described Vancouver as a small town in conflict with the part of herself that is a social-climbing, hedonistic, gold-digging, pathetic, pushing 40, party girl. Well maybe not quite like that. I am 41 after all.  Gregor Robertson is a farmer, and a Mayor.  He makes juice, rides his bike, has hippy activist roots.  He is our small town Mayor.  He looks like this city, or how it used to look, before it abandoned it’s tie-dye for beige( although he does wear alot of beige).  I’m not being sentimental, i’m just conscious that there was a time in this city where people seemed to have more fun, inspiring movements were growing, and there was some boldness being shown. We have been devastatingly complacent about the issues of dying women at the hands of serial killers, overdose deaths, homelessness and our epidemic HIV infection rates. We have been because we have moralized their deaths and their life situations.  The tie- dye set believed in peace and love, and freedom.  Not about confining people to socially appropriate boxes. Yeah, they were flakey, and there were problems with the movements that grew out of the 60’s, they were human, of course there will be problems. Regardless, their intention was to change the messed up world they were seeing around them. A world that valued power over love, war over peace, money over humanity. I can only hope that our small town mayor and his friends still believe the reverse to be true.

Dear Blog,

Thank you. Thank you for helping me clear my head. Thank you for becoming a place I like to visit, and write things down every once in a while when I need to figure something out, or I just want to share something with the 5 people who read this blog and the occasional guests. You have helped me get unstuck, and I am eternally grateful. I wasn’t sure it would happen, but you renewed my faith in me, and the people around me.

Pray for me…

I think I lost my tape. The tape from yesterday where I interviewed Rika, granted wishes to new agers, tourists, rumi lovers and a guy in a navy pinstripe suit on Burrard and Robson street. Took shots of toy dogs and running shoes spinning like a mobile in a cherry tree. An interview with myself about why I dress up in a wedding dress with flowers on it, stick glitter on my face, and flowers in my hair. I remembered why I loved you yesterday, why I love Vancouver, because my mind and heart get changed all the time. I had that on tape, this tape. I think I didn’t change the tape at the Beach, I just remembered, and my sweet mom just went down to look in the sand for me, because she lives in the West End, close to the Beach. I’m so out of it. It still may be gone. I have this yellow raincoat with holes everywhere, and there is a perfect tape size hole in my pocket. I still might need some extra praying, but I probably just need to sleep, and finish this thing, see my Mom, and give her a very big hug.

Living

written July 16th 2008

I am kind of shy. Part of me not shy, the part of me that was doing a little groin to groin dancing with one of the break dancers in Penn Station the other day, not shy. Dirty Doris Day, that’s me. Kind of prim, doesn’t like it when people make jokes or talk about sex , likes things kind of old school, wants to meet someone in a random and romantic way, be brought flowers, danced with to great old music, hand holder, doesn’t like it when people grope each other in public, particularly white heterosexuals, unless their old. Any groping really, its just that white heterosexuals have most of the privelidge in the world, they can contain themselves just this once. So Dirty Doris Day, she likes girls, bald guys with tattoos, hairy, and a few piercings. She’s not with any of them though, getting sexy is scary, more than she feels comfortable with. I have this fear that i will become and that i am a version of Maggie Smith’s Aunt Charlotte in Room with a View and Lumi Cavazos Tita from Like Water for Chocolate. They don’t really get to have their own lives, either of them, they suffer, quietly and not so quietly in service to others, living sexless repressed lives, until of course, when Tita and Pedro are in their sixties and they finally get to be with each other. They combust and die from 50 years of stored love and passion for each other.

People ask me for relationship advice all the time, I find it a little shocking, but maybe its part of the spinsters role, she is a keen observer of the dynamics of human relationships( that’s why she isn’t in them i guess) so she can give some objective advice. I don’t want to write about sex, honestly, its personal. This is more than an issue of sex, its about being comfortable walking in my body in the world, comfort with who i’m attracted to without feeling trapped by a label, the lesbian label, the bi label, or as many people assume, the straight label. Its about letting myself feel alive.

Dreams

I’m sitting at the computer in my fairy dress. Triggered, anxious, and calm. My hands feel cautious on the keys. I am raw. I am in this dress looking pretty, glitter on my cheeks, and flowers in my hair. I am the human sacrifice in a wedding dress. I am going to grant wishes today on the corner of Main and Hastings. A corner that I have spent more time on than any corner in the world. I learned a lot about loving here. I am filming the end of my film project today. I still have some of the middle to complete, but I have been clear for a while about how I wanted to finish my story about Vancouver. I wanted to give wishes to people who might have stopped dreaming, to people I love, to people I don’t know. I wanted to inspire people to think beyond what we accept as normal;poverty, addiction, violence. These normal things have infected our entire city, the entire planet; spiritual poverty, shopping addiction, psychological violence, and we can mix them all around, there are as many combinations as there are acts of violence and types of addiction. I want today to be about dreaming of something beyond this. Beyond offering yourself up as a human sacrifice to your father so he wouldn’t hurt the rest of your family. I want to go beyond this place, and even for a moment, even if it’s just dreaming, to give people, myself included, the space to vision a world without addiction, poverty, and violence, and what it would take to make that happen, even if It doesn’t exist in our lifetimes. Then I think I’m done with the human sacrifice stuff. My dream-To stay open, but safe, to love and be loved back, to do work I care about, to live in a world where people have enough, and feel they are enough. For me to have enough, and feel I am enough.

Us and them

I looked at the cover of the Vancouver Sun yesterday and the photo on the cover is of President Barack Obama and Governor General Michaelle Jean. They are laughing, and the caption above reads” I love this country”. Us, he loves us. I believe him too. I realized after looking at this headline, that possibly for this first time in history, Canada has a bigger asshole in Government than the US. What are we going to do now? What will happen to our passive-aggressive smugness? They’re the stupid rich kid that doesn’t get how they hurt people, and we’re the smarter working class kid, who’s always mocking them.  Maybe this was all coming, we get our turn with an asshole that doesn’t let 16 year old girls from Hong Kong in to the Country, or dance troupes from Guyana.  Cuts the arts budgets in half, wants to sell off our resources, take away human rights, further pollute the planet, moralize about addiction, let drug addicts die alone in alleys, and make us war mongers, make us like them.  I know we’re feeling bad right now, their guy is cooler, better looking, potentially smarter, maybe not, our guy may be an asshole, but he’s a smart asshole.  Our humility has always had a false ring to it. Were not really humble, were self deprecating, but in a liberal, superior kind of way. Maybe we need to come to terms with the fact that were related, that our rich stupid cousin, may not be so stupid. Maybe we can be more honest with ourselves. We have a lot in common, but were also very different.  We don’t have to compete with them, it was part of our charm that we weren’t the same. When I look at this photo, I feel happy. Like maybe we can be friends, or maybe they’ll just be friends, and we can continue whining about our asshole and why we don’t have inaugurations as big as theirs.

Forgiveness

I think that’s what happened this week, i started to forgive Vancouver. Forgive it for letting me down. I started off on this blog looking for some clarity. My first post was about my lack of faith and my doubt in my own ability or the world around me, to change. I talked about my memory of the first time i remember thinking that the world wasn’t a fair place, and being about six years old, it was probably earlier, but this day i remember well, the day in the lunch room, watching the CARE commercial on the TV and seeing this young child from Africa, bloated belly and flies on their face, and image many of us have scene in the western world. I felt sick, couldn’t eat, didn’t understand how we lived in the same world, and I had food and they didn’t. All the years that followed, and all the nightmares of the home i grew up in may have been as much as i could handle, speaking up, being politically active, that was for other people.

I moved here in 1992 and my world changed. I fell in love with Vancouver. I could try things here. I met my friend Kim when we were working at Bridges Restaurant and she brought me to volunteer at Adbusters Magazine, i loved it. I think the subversiveness appealed to me. I imagine my lifelong efforts to that point, of trying not to make anybody mad, and the 6 year old in me that wanted to respond, but didn’t know how, felt a kind of homecoming, and it continued for years. When I arrived at Carnegie i remember the feeling i had the first night i was in the building, the first time i saw the building. I had a strong sense that this was a place i was meant to be. So much happened. I tried all kinds of things. I raised money to go to Italy to take singing lessons, i filed a Human Rights complaint against my racist boss and won. I came to Carnegie Centre, stood on the corner and  invited people  to draw and write in chalk on the sidewalk which unfolded in to community mural projects, and the Carnegie Street Outreach program, where i scrubbed feet, blew bubbles to break up fights, revived people, and asked dealers to stop selling drugs for a moment of silence when we had a memorial service. I have stood in crowds of traumatized faces year after year to mourn missing and murdered women, a field of a thousand crosses for overdose victims, thousands of meetings about projects, how things could be better, funding, everything. Then I moved to Salsbury and Napier, and I fell in love with this beautiful garden with a cob cottage in the back. We fought hard to save it. I worked meticulously on a scale model of the garden to present to the Board of Variance. Sat at a table with my neighbour, a long table filled with mostly men,  gave a passionate plea, and at the end of the long hot night, they told us we could keep our garden, the developer couldn’t build there. It lasted 5 minutes. The Board of Variance was fired and sued, along with us, and evicted. The cob house was smashed, 100 year old trees demolished, thousands of species of plants along with it, to be replaced by beige duplexes. I hated Vancouver, i hated how full of shit it was. How it professed compassion, but let people die on its streets, and demolished sacred community spaces. I hated it for letting me down.

I read another version of my film about the city in class the other day. It was dramatic, and filled with hateful analogies of the city I used to love, a city drained of colour, soulless, greedy and narcisstic. Not untrue, but not a place i want to stay, metaphorically anyways. I had this thought a while ago about what I would do differently If i was Mayor, or If i had the power to make things better. That’s where I want to go. I want to love you again, and even if its just on film, i want to know what it feels like to dream again, and imagine a better place, and what i would do to make it happen.