what’s bugging me.?

Everything. Heroism, Shared Vision Magazine, Vancouver, and my gut, to name a few.

I’ll start with heroism. The heroism, saving the planet, saving Africa, saving addicts, and poor people. The heroism, the saving, is the blind arrogance that conveniently ignores the circumstances that brought on the need for “saving”. If we stay unconscious about our role in the creation of the mess, devastation, death, exploitation, genocide, stealing, all the taking, if we don’t acknowledge that we all take part in this system everyday, then we and the people who are being exploited, taken from, brutalized, stripped, we will be doomed to more of the same. These heroes and heroines, includes stars(the human kind,) politicians, wristbands, and alot of options for the everyday consumer to feel good; your buying a smart car, an energy efficient light bulb, a red t-shirt that will generate sells to send pills to people with HIV in Africa, not so bad i guess, pretty good probably, but i can’t help but think how Africa would be different, if we didn’t steal their diamonds, their gold, made them our slaves, if we didn’t send First Nations kids to residential schools or create reserves in the first place, or strip them of their culture and their land, i also can’t help but wonder what condition our earth would be in if we didn’t feel like we needed to take everything to feel like we were worth something.

Shared Vision Magazine, well its just annoying, for reasons stated above, this months issue a shiny white couple running to save the planet, and then a host of hippies on the inside, telling me that if i just thought the right things then i wouldn’t feel so awful, or that some 7 year old kid wouldn’t have been stuck with such shit parents if it wasn’t part of their karma. I do believe that our thoughts affect our actions, but i also believe in being human, and lately , finding a way to go easier on myself, so Shared Vision, fuck off.

Vancouver, because it is obsessed with its own beauty, it is becoming deeply ugly, a place that destroys anything that resembles aging, and if its aging that provides character, just gut the interior and keep the facade. That is what it is doing with every neighborhood in the city, that is what it is doing to the neighborhood that has kept me here for 16 years. A neighborhood that i have lived in, volunteered and worked in, celebrated in, grieved in, stood up for myself and people i cared about, made friends, fell in love a few times, know better than any other place in the world, this neighborhood, the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, this place was where i felt like i fit, no matter what else was happening, i could just walk around for a while, and feel grounded again, it doesn’t really feel like that anymore, i feel separate now, and still tied. Not knowing if there is anything i can do to help, not save, but maybe that is what i want to do, even though i know its arrogant, egotistical and impossible.

The image above is of a place that used to exist, a place we tried to save, so people could enjoy it for years to come, it was demolished, trees cut, the cob house bulldozed and now their are faux heritage duplexes in its place. This act fuels my hate of this city and the departments and city councillors that are giving license to initatives that homogenize communities, and inevitably the enitre city, a city with grand claims of its greatness, its world classness, its diversity… My gut, well, my gut is flabby, my other gut, my instinct gut, tells me i need to get out of this city, at least for a little while, so i will. East, to my other home, where i was born, Montreal, where old is honoured and there are different problems. I miss it, i miss the smells, i miss what it looked like, and i want to see what it looks like now. I want to know if my missing will be sated by a visit or if it is deeper than that, if it means that i need to leave this place that has been my home for 16 years.