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.

written Dec 17th 2008

 I finished the term on Friday. The whole time I was there I felt like my face was changing, I was starting to look different and feel different. Right now I feel the same, lonely, with a possible case of pneumonia and depressed.  This time of year is always a painful reminder of the lack of love in my life. I have love, friend love, a lot I think. I mean family love, partner love.  My family love is my mother, and there is always the presence of dysfunction in our dynamic, with rare moments of something else that is lighter and more loving. My brother and his postcard family, sent me a postcard of themselves with a generic note about what has been going on for their family all year. He and his wife are all about efficiency. I have little to no contact with my sisters, one hasn’t talked to me in about 3 years. I had tried to be honest with her about something that had happened to her, and she felt I was blaming her. I wasn’t. I just knew what it was like to have a sign on my head that said  it was okay to violate me, and then I got so angry at a certain point and I  had to realize  to a certain extent, that  I had role in letting it happen, by putting myself in vunerable situations.  I apologized through phone and e-mail 4 times, with no responses. She doesn’t talk to my Mother either. I googled her and she works in administration at a private school. She looks well and she’s around money, which should make her happy.  I miss her a bit, mostly because we would laugh really hard together. We are very different, I don’t know what she believes in and she thinks i’m self righteous and used to think I was evil, until I redeemed myself in her eyes. I imagine I am still self righteous to her, which I am on occasion.

My other sister calls me rarely and it is painful when it happens. She wants us to be close, and I don’t think I can ever trust her. She takes from everyone around her.  In denial of the damage she has caused to her own child, and her self. She and her friends sexualized me as a child. I have blurry, but uncomfortable memories around her friends and parties she would have at the house. I have similar ones with her ex-husband. She is desperate and sad. She thinks we are the most similar, she wants us to be. I used to look up to her when I was young. I thought she was very cool. She was just messed up, and dealt with it in a more rebellious way.  My brother called me the other night to get my address and say hi. We haven’t spoken since I called him to say our Father died.  I told him I was in school and how excited I am by it. That it was the best thing I have done for myself in a long time. He seemed disinterested until we talk about him, and then i am disinterested.  I am actually angry at him, but I don’t say it. He tells me he loves me, i say nothing except good bye and hang up. It was not rude, it was just empty. I felt bad after, bad that I didn’t say I loved him back. Angry, because my mother was in the hospital for 2 months in the summer and he never replied to  e-mails I sent, and only called her twice the entire summer. I just wanted him to call to see how I was doing, how she was doing and nothing.  It gave me a painful sense of what it might be like if she was seriously ill, and the level of support he would give, any of them would give, and I felt very alone. We are blank from the photo walls in his home. We don’t fit, the broken family, with the family he has created, where it is all about what is efficient.  I talk to him about these things, how I think he tries to erase us. Maybe he hears me, but it doesn’t matter. Were still broken, all of us, from each other. I thought that when our father died, that maybe something would change. It didn’t, he just died, and we are broken by choice. We are in our respective dysfunctions, not able to be family.

So these holidays, are not the happiest times for me.  They aren’t for  a lot of people.  I have no partner, because I don’t think I can be with people sometimes. I react to so much, I have so many triggers. I want to be though, some part of me wants to be with someone. Feel at home, in the way i want to feel at home. Knowing where I come from, but not living there anymore. Living in a new place, where I am easier  on myself in the way that it matters. taking care of me. Really trusting that i can do a good job, that just because i come from a broken place and live in a broken world, it doesn’t mean that i’m broken.

Note to self- Leave me alone

I am full of it. It’s true. I sat in class today on the verge of tears as we were screening our first term project films, and i wanted to leave.  In my head it goes-”I am no good, I am no good, she is better, he is better, more funny, more creative, more interesting.” I say I’m tired of my doubt, but not tired enough, and it’s not even about doubt really. It’s something else, doubt has its place, it has value. What I’m doing to myself, and what i do to myself is the same thing my Mother does to herself, and every bitter, dramatic woman i know. We self annihilate to the point of total despair, and use our self righteousness to account for our lack of courage, and that is what I lack. I just choked on that. literally. I imagine its boring to read somebody else’s head spinning. Or maybe it’s makes people feel less fucked up.  I was thinking today that I wanted someone to tell me that I suck. So a friend of mine did, because I told her that. Every conversation I have had today and in the past few weeks has been filled with awkwardness, stilted. I feel phony, this phony person who cares about the world, and wants no part of it. Diss myself while everyone around me says otherwise. Eventually they will say nothing, or maybe they’ll diss back, maybe they already do when I’m not there. I don’t know. I am brutal. I am most brutal with me. I eat to the point of harm, i think to the point of tears, and headaches. I scold myself like the perfectionist Mother i never had. I am tired of fighting me, and I wish that meant I would stop.

Day 15

870 Palestinians dead, 200 of them, children. Thousands injured. Since the ground troops rolled in, 14 Israelis have died. All these numbers feel so random, and inevitably distorted depending on the news source. 1 is too many. I listen everyday and I feel like I understand less what is happening in Gaza.
Writing about this makes me feel like a child, looking at the violence unfolding in front of her and begging for it to stop. I heard someone on the CBC this morning saying that Palestinians and Israelis are being held hostage by their governments, that felt true. At the same time, we put them there, corporate interests put them there, and keep them there.

We protest in the streets at consulates to demand an end to the violence. I should be clear, I have not protested. I am conflicted about being there. I don’t know entirely why. I don’t attend alot of protests. Maybe it would help, but my experience has been that it is about taking sides, and people can get pretty ignorant with each other. The little wars opposing the war. Ultimately these protests are shaping public opinion of what is happening in Gaza, they are incredibly important as a place for people to voice their outrage, frustration and sadness. For now, this is my place.

The 8 day war

Over the last eight days  I have been listening and watching what has been unfolding in Gaza.  There are Facebook groups protesting Israel’s attacks, and almost daily I receive e-mails about protests and articles from Tikkun Magazine.  Tikkun is my only source of what feels like balanced journalism on the occupation.  One of the Facebook groups features  musician Brian Eno calling for an end to the attacks on the Palestinian people.  I looked at some of the photos posted on the group page. There is a brutal image of a boy; Palestinian I assume, with his leg blown off, blood and guts exposed.  There are a series of cartoons. Each cartoon has a Star of David in it, on the bombs, everything. I can’t help but think of  two things; the anti-Semitic propaganda cartoons that appeared  during 1933-1945 to support Hitler’s extermination of the jews, and the swastika. I think of how we use symbols to represent hate.  The Star of David is being portrayed as a symbol of hate.  A symbol I have worn around my neck, and one that my mother wears daily.   Ironically, it symbolized something peaceful for me.  

The Government of Israel, and the Israeli Army have, and are committing war crimes.  They have no choice apparently. They have to wipe out Hammas. Wiping out Hammas means killing over 400 people, and the number is rising, and will continue to do so on both sides as the ground troops roll in.  I grew up with one perspective on this war, Israel was right.  I always knew that it wasn’t the whole story, even when I was little.  My hebrew name was given to me as a result of the ending, and the “winning” of the Six Day War in 1967. My hebrew name means Peace and Blessing.  During Chanukah this year I was thinking about how Israel is like your fucked up cousin.  So tormented, that he has to wreak havoc on everyone around him, and because he has experienced so much trauma, people forgive him, and it’s the holidays, if we war during the holidays , no one will ever forget.  Forgetting, never forgetting.  The mantra of the Holocaust.   We forget every day. We forgot before.  There are genocides that predate World War II and many that have followed.  Israel is wiping out Palestine, no other option.   The cycle of oppression. How is it that one side is right and just to kill, and the other are radicals and extremists when they kill? 

I had this talk with my mom last week about Gaza.  It was the most reasonable we have had on the issue, she doesn’t call me a jew hater anymore. I am conscious that I am correcting her often , and reminding her of the suffering on both sides. Of the bullies on the top, and that it is not a fair fight.  Israel has the support of powerful nations and the media beside them.  Palestinians are darker, and we are racist, so we will side with the paler people.  The dominant-governments will side with the paler people.  The people who had 6 million of their own, exterminated while the world watched.  Guilt support. The extremely powerful Israel Lobby in the US and Canada pay politicians to never forget.  Never forget how we suffered, to the point that you can not see the suffering of anyone else. They are radicals, extremists, brown, poor, and powerless. They are bred to hate jews and we must get rid of them.  Look who they are appealing to; governments that exterminated,  and enslaved the indigenous populations of land they were wanting to conquer. They understand their plight. 

The mainstream media, as usual, has been complicit in the violence.  I am hard pressed to find any consistent information about the conflict, any seemingly accurate information about the origins of the land.   If  our blood is shed on the land does that make it ours?  If 6 million of our people are heaped like garbage and turned in to soap and carpets, starved to death and burned, does that mean we have a right to starve, maim and kill others?  We could just say it belongs to no one, that would be the truth. It is neither Israeli or Palestinian territory. We forget. It is the way our trauma seems to protect us, a bit of amnesia, so we don’t have to relive the horror every day.  Trauma is our permission slip to wreak havoc on the holidays.

I fear what is ahead, that all the acting out, the enabling of Israel to wreak havoc, will only bring more hatred upon jews. All the lives that will be lost, all the trauma that will be endured, on both sides, because no is willing to stop, no one is willing to stand up and take their weapons away, and say enough. No more, no more war. You have a place to be, a homeland, and so do Palestinians, a shared homeland.  My first name is translated in terms of Palestine and Israel.  Sharon of the Fertile Plains of Ancient Palestine, and the Sharon Valley in Israel. I have never stepped foot on the soil, and I don’t know that I ever will, but by name, I am bound to two homelands. I am privileged to write from the safety of my living room about these two places that have been a part of my consciousness since childhood. All I can think of right now is to pray.  Pray for some sanity and clarity. For boldness from Governments that have toed the line for far too long. I will pray that the weapons will be dropped. I will pray that no more lives will be lost. I will pray for healing of our collective trauma from the Holocaust.  I will pray for love.  I pray for a real peace, a peace that is based on open, challenging, and healing discussion. A peace that is active every day. A peace that is not based on the absence of weapons, but a peace that came from hearing each other,  and a recognition of both parties basic human right to exist. I pray because it is all I can do.  I have no resources or capacity to get on planes, to personally lobby a Government that will never hear me, but I can pray.

Great Obituary

Received this obituary through my school e-mail. Liked it, now it’s here. 

 

jan 2, 2009

Billy Little: October 14, 1943 – January 1, 2009

Jamie Reid writes

Our dear comrade and brother poet, Billy Little, slipped away from this life at about 5 AM on New Years Day. It almost seems to me as if he were imitating one of his idols, dada hero Tristan Tzara, who died on Christmas Day in 1963. For several days he had been telling his friends that each day might be his last, but he hung on and continued to breathe one day after another for several days, until finally he lost the ability to speak and passed away. Billy spent his last days on his beloved Hornby Island, surrounded by his friends.

He had been resigned to this final result since hearing from his doctors last January that the abdominal cancer through which he had endured several rounds of chemotherapy and surgery would finally take his life in a matter of months rather than years. He lived the months that were left to him with great courage and good humour, sometimes in tears, he told me once, that he should have to leave the world, the life and the people that he loved with such passion and devotion. The people at his bedside near the end, his son Matt Little, Gordon Payne and his caregiver, Colleen Work, confirmed that through his last hours, though he could not speak, he was clearly smiling.

Billy’s son, Matt, will be inviting friends to the Hornby Island ball park on Sunday, January 4. In commemoration of Billy’s life-long devoted attachment to books and ideas, Matt will be handing out items from Billy’s book collection.

Further notice of an expanded memorial event will be posted later.

Typically, Billy left his life with a jest, a protest, leaving behind his own obituary:

obituary

after decades of passion, dedication to world peace and justice, powerful frindships, recognition, being loved undeservedly by extraordinary women, a close and powerful relationship with a strong, handsome, capable, thoughtful son Matt, a never ending stream of amusing ideas, affections shared with a wide range of creative men and women, a long residence in the paradisical landscape of hornby island, sucess after sucess in the book trade, fabulous meals, unmeasurable inebriation, dancing beyond exhaustion, satori after satori,
billy little regrets he’s unable to schmooze today.
in lieu of flowers please send a humongous donation to the war resisters league.

I’d like my tombstone to read:

billy little
poet
hydro is too expensive

but I’d like my mortal remains to be set adrift on a flaming raft off chrome island