The pathetic young male roommate didn't last longer than five months and became very sick of our hectoring and expectations and moved out in a huff. He left his bedroom in a foul smelling mess. The stench was incredible (it took ten days to dissipate) and appeared to be coming from all of Dopey's missing bath towels. There they were, almost ten of them, festering in the closet. He must have masturbated an awful lot. Can't say I'm surprised.
The very nice young man soon replaced him, a young fellow of just under thirty we knew from St. James. He was clean, considerate, liked us, and wanted to participate with us. We quite liked him. He also helped take care of Dopey, though only enough to offer support. She was still my responsibility. This was the year when I changed my name.
I was still painting and still showing my art: sometimes garden landscapes featuring rhododendrons and azaleas in full bloom, often clusters of highly coloured and plumaged birds with backgrounds of iridescent gold and flames of fire raging against the darkness and light springing from the silent depths. I sold perhaps one painting during that year, to a friend with whom I had always had a nervous and fragile relationship. It was a huge composition of several golden pheasants in an endless green field with three little trees on the horizon. I did actually very well finding places, usually salons and cafes, where I could show my work.
Dopey informed us that she would be moving in a few months, just a few days after my name change became legal. The community was dying its natural sputtering death. The very nice young man left, then Dopey and a day or two later so did I. The timing couldn't have been worse. My hours at work had been cut back and paralyzed and I really didn't know if I would be able to survive on my own even in a cheap East Side bachelor apartment.
Monday 30 November 2015
Sunday 29 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: The Bungalow in East Van 2
Life went on . We were Dippy-less and now the full burden of Dopey fell upon my shoulders. She was a very territorial woman and simply assumed that by living in the house that it was really hers and hers alone. Even if I asked her to delay turning on the washing machine (which made a huge racket) by ten minutes so I could finish working on a painting nearby before scuttling off to work she would ignore me claiming that I had to let her do her thing. She also wanted to hang her laundry outside to dry. She really wanted to feel as though she was a youngish housewife again, queen of the roost in her tidy little bungalow. Sometimes she even called me by her deceased husband's name (creepy!). I turned off the machine myself, painted for another five minutes, then turned it back on as I prepared to leave for work. Dopey tried to make herself look big, tall and menacing (she looked both pathetic and comical) and she told me in a petulant whiney voice intended to sound formidable "You are a great big bully!) I nearly threw one of my paintings in her face, called her a controlling bitch and replied "One day my art will be feeding you." I had some cause to this boast given that I had already done well on some art sales and that Dopey was of course benefitting from the largesse.
Of course she was also paying the rent. My job did not give me a lot of hours and I ended up paying for all the groceries, so if anyone thinks I was sponging off her then you'd better think again. We still professed to be a Christian community and still prayed together and tried to seek God for his provision and guidance. And we were still provided for by generous helpers who would always appear when we were needing extra assistance and then disappear again.
A very sad and pathetic young man moved in to replace Dippy. He was depressed, from a privileged background and simply carried his wallow of self pity around the way a tortoise carries its shell on its back. We at first liked each other but as he showed himself to be incredibly self-centred, lazy and self-absorbed Dopey and I came both to quite despise the wanker (though we of course still professed for him Christian love.
I worked, took care of my clients, took care of Dopey (house work, shopping, laundry etc.), painted, hung out in hip cafes on Commercial Drive and made a whole array of new exciting hip friends, visited art galleries, attended openings and coped.
I wanted to break out of this prison of my own making at the soonest possible opportunity. I felt I should wait since I knew I wasn't yet ready. In the meantime I began preparations to legally change my name.
Of course she was also paying the rent. My job did not give me a lot of hours and I ended up paying for all the groceries, so if anyone thinks I was sponging off her then you'd better think again. We still professed to be a Christian community and still prayed together and tried to seek God for his provision and guidance. And we were still provided for by generous helpers who would always appear when we were needing extra assistance and then disappear again.
A very sad and pathetic young man moved in to replace Dippy. He was depressed, from a privileged background and simply carried his wallow of self pity around the way a tortoise carries its shell on its back. We at first liked each other but as he showed himself to be incredibly self-centred, lazy and self-absorbed Dopey and I came both to quite despise the wanker (though we of course still professed for him Christian love.
I worked, took care of my clients, took care of Dopey (house work, shopping, laundry etc.), painted, hung out in hip cafes on Commercial Drive and made a whole array of new exciting hip friends, visited art galleries, attended openings and coped.
I wanted to break out of this prison of my own making at the soonest possible opportunity. I felt I should wait since I knew I wasn't yet ready. In the meantime I began preparations to legally change my name.
Saturday 28 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: The Bungalow In East Van 1
We were given two months notice to move at the end of September 1993. I was thirty-seven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0NxhFn0szc (If I have a list of twenty favourite songs, this will be one of them. Fodder for some future posts?) Dippy and Dopey and I all naively assumed that we were together in this dysfunctional Christian community for life no matter how much we hated one another, but there were already faults forming. Dippy was rapidly morphing into a strident anti-gay fundamentalist and was attending fundamentalist and charismatic churches that only encouraged these traits. Unable and unwilling to apologize for the harm she had already brought upon us she simply blamed Dopey and I as jaded Christians, cold and hard hearted, whenever we tried to rein her in. It was really like having a superannuated rebellious teenage daughter.
Dopey's health concerns and her natural attachment to her family became another growing obstacle, as well as her horrible and vicious cat. She was not ageing well and became increasingly frail and in need of support and care, more than what Dippy and I could reasonably provide. Her family was scattered all over the world and her daughter and very well-off son-in-law frequently paid her airfare to visit them in England, the Netherlands and Australia. Her lovely family and in-laws could do no harm and no wrong as far as she was concerned and the concerns of the community and ministry were soon always taking a back seat. Understandable this but not conducive to growing a healthy intentional Christian community.
I had respectively become an artist and vegetarian and became increasingly involved and connected with the underground and alternative communities. Also not conducive to developing community. I felt so consistently stymied and embarrassed by the old ladies that I was also going through my own brand of delayed adolescent rebellion and increasingly distancing myself from them.
Dianne gave Doreen (oops! there real names. So sue me Dippy!) and I carte blanche to look for a house and promised she would be satisfied with what we came up with. She was not satisfied. It was too far from downtown and she didn't like the design. Truth was, we were a five minute walk from the Skytrain station and the train would get us downtown easily in ten minutes. She still wasn't happy.
We managed. I had a semi-contained suite in the basement though I still had to share cooking facilities upstairs. I had lots of room in the basement to set up an art studio, my room was big, I had my own bathroom and really revelled in having time and space away from them. Dopey still wouldn't leave me alone. Every time Dippy did something stupid and seemed ready to again bring Divine wrath upon us Dopey would come running to me for advice about what to do with her.
I gladly took off to Costa Rica. When I returned Dippy was in the process of trying to move her fat Ukrainian ex-boyfriend into the house. Dopey and I formed a united front and kyboshed her efforts. Again she resumed her rant that we were jaded Christians, cold and hard hearted.
Then occurred the miraculous. Dippy announced her intention to move out on her own. She vacillated and procrastinated. We told her to get off the pot. She left in late August and Dopey and I, relieved and glad to see the back of Dippy, went out to celebrate.
Dopey's health concerns and her natural attachment to her family became another growing obstacle, as well as her horrible and vicious cat. She was not ageing well and became increasingly frail and in need of support and care, more than what Dippy and I could reasonably provide. Her family was scattered all over the world and her daughter and very well-off son-in-law frequently paid her airfare to visit them in England, the Netherlands and Australia. Her lovely family and in-laws could do no harm and no wrong as far as she was concerned and the concerns of the community and ministry were soon always taking a back seat. Understandable this but not conducive to growing a healthy intentional Christian community.
I had respectively become an artist and vegetarian and became increasingly involved and connected with the underground and alternative communities. Also not conducive to developing community. I felt so consistently stymied and embarrassed by the old ladies that I was also going through my own brand of delayed adolescent rebellion and increasingly distancing myself from them.
Dianne gave Doreen (oops! there real names. So sue me Dippy!) and I carte blanche to look for a house and promised she would be satisfied with what we came up with. She was not satisfied. It was too far from downtown and she didn't like the design. Truth was, we were a five minute walk from the Skytrain station and the train would get us downtown easily in ten minutes. She still wasn't happy.
We managed. I had a semi-contained suite in the basement though I still had to share cooking facilities upstairs. I had lots of room in the basement to set up an art studio, my room was big, I had my own bathroom and really revelled in having time and space away from them. Dopey still wouldn't leave me alone. Every time Dippy did something stupid and seemed ready to again bring Divine wrath upon us Dopey would come running to me for advice about what to do with her.
I gladly took off to Costa Rica. When I returned Dippy was in the process of trying to move her fat Ukrainian ex-boyfriend into the house. Dopey and I formed a united front and kyboshed her efforts. Again she resumed her rant that we were jaded Christians, cold and hard hearted.
Then occurred the miraculous. Dippy announced her intention to move out on her own. She vacillated and procrastinated. We told her to get off the pot. She left in late August and Dopey and I, relieved and glad to see the back of Dippy, went out to celebrate.
Friday 27 November 2015
Places Where I've lived: Ferndale 16 and the Bungalow in East Van.
I became an artist January 1993. I was thirty-six years old, soon to turn thirty-seven. I had been working on a series of abstract drawings with felt pens, highly coloured and showing an interesting strength and sophistication. I wanted to continue with this but wasn't sure what direction to take. I didn't yet think myself an artist. In late January I had a chat on Davie Street with a local artist whose paintings were already locally known. He looked at my drawings and told me to start painting. He was emphatic about this and I obeyed. I started with small pieces of canvas board and whatever cheap acrylic paints I could purchase. I started with a triptych of small moonscapes. One seemed particularly good though I couldn't vouch for the others. I continued painting, all abstract, until I painted my first birds, two hyacinth macaws. Then I bought stretched canvases and continued to experiment with ideas: abstract renditions of the human iris, bird paintings, abstract renditions of the Jerusalem Cross. I was suddenly obsessed with painting. I worked at it, visited art galleries, openings and talked to artists. I finished twelve large canvases of bird paintings: four by three feet in size, ten interpretations of the human iris, and half dozen Jerusalem crosses. They looked okay, but not great, rather like the work of a promising beginner, in a tenuous and nervous novice artist sense of course. In the fall I did my first exhibition: a café on the Sunshine Coast. Then I showed at a couple of cafes in Vancouver, downtown, in West Point Grey, then later in the West End where I met my agent. She, it turned out was the girlfriend of the artist who got me started just over a year ago.
The young woman helped me find a client, an architect who commissioned three huge parrot paintings plus a large canvas of hyacinth macaws for a hotel he had designed. The paintings were finished after a lot of work with a looming deadline and suddenly I had enough money for my first trip to Costa Rica.
I was gone for twelve days. The Rwanda genocide was underway, and while eight hundred thousand plus Tutsis and a small population of Hutus were being slaughtered I explored the cloud forest in a country I had long dreamed of but never thought I would succeed in visiting. Except for my two plus month excursion in Europe in 1991 I assumed that I would always be too poor to travel to anywhere further than Vancouver Island. I saw birds that previously had existed for me only in library field guides and picture books. I hiked mountainous trails hugging cliffs and precipices shaded by a canopy of palms and tropical hardwoods. I met people, amazing people seeking the elusive satisfaction that lures the restless traveller. I celebrated twelve glorious days away from Dippy and Dopey and their often self-inflicted problems and drama.
I didn't want to leave but I had to leave. I had to go home again, not to Ferndale but to the house in South East Vancouver we had to move to the previous Halloween night when Dippy and I almost killed each other, the moving day from hell.
The young woman helped me find a client, an architect who commissioned three huge parrot paintings plus a large canvas of hyacinth macaws for a hotel he had designed. The paintings were finished after a lot of work with a looming deadline and suddenly I had enough money for my first trip to Costa Rica.
I was gone for twelve days. The Rwanda genocide was underway, and while eight hundred thousand plus Tutsis and a small population of Hutus were being slaughtered I explored the cloud forest in a country I had long dreamed of but never thought I would succeed in visiting. Except for my two plus month excursion in Europe in 1991 I assumed that I would always be too poor to travel to anywhere further than Vancouver Island. I saw birds that previously had existed for me only in library field guides and picture books. I hiked mountainous trails hugging cliffs and precipices shaded by a canopy of palms and tropical hardwoods. I met people, amazing people seeking the elusive satisfaction that lures the restless traveller. I celebrated twelve glorious days away from Dippy and Dopey and their often self-inflicted problems and drama.
I didn't want to leave but I had to leave. I had to go home again, not to Ferndale but to the house in South East Vancouver we had to move to the previous Halloween night when Dippy and I almost killed each other, the moving day from hell.
Thursday 26 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 15
In May 1992 my father and I went to visit my brother on the occasion of the birth of his daughter. I was given the box containing our mother's ashes, why I do not know but my brother was clearly uncomfortable having them in his house and had been procrastinating their scattering. I put the ashes in my bedroom. For some reason this did not feel morbid but it did feel as though Mom was there with me. I found this comforting, perhaps because I had a positive and healthy attitude towards death and dying.
As time drew on I felt that it would soon be necessary to scatter my mother's ashes. I often held the box in my lap, or shook the contents. It sounded rather like the contents for a jigsaw puzzle. I began to draw, nothing special, just vibrantly colourful abstract renderings with coloured felt pens. They seemed beautiful and to somehow work artistically. I tried to enlist my brother and my maternal uncle to help me scatter Mom's ashes over the waters of the Salish Sea (or, the Strait of Georgia) in respect of her wishes. Both vacillated and made excuses.
Labour Day I went on a BC Ferry bound for Nanaimo I made my way outside to the stern, undetected, opened the box, then took out the plastic bag full of my mother's ashes. I opened the bag and held it aloft over the ocean. The velocity of the wind sucked the ashes with a fierce rapidity unexpected and I felt a strange, delirious and joyous release. On the boat going back I ran into a man near my age whom first had befriended me when I lived at Dilaram, fourteen years ago, when I was a tender twenty-two. Our lives had taken quite distinct directions. He was a stage director and producer. When he learned of the purpose of my trip he was immediately concerned and sympathetic for my wellbeing, which I found touching but not really necessary. It was largely through his accidental agency that I was kicked out of Dilaram. It was he who invited me for a daytrip with him up to Whistler, which became Dan Gardener's available excuse (the charge being insubordination) for getting rid of me fast, that same night I returned.
Life went on an usual. At the house the old ladies and I prayed together, discussed things, fought. I worked taking care of AIDS sufferers until my supervisors decided to demote me since I had not the financial resources for the further training they had just made obligatory. I hung out in the West End and downtown, with the old ladies and by myself, being present for the local people whom one by one were dropping dead from AIDS, suicide, alcoholism, drug overdoses, homicide...It was a very dark time. In the midst of the darkness I saw threads of silver and gold that I clung on to, knowing that I would eventually return to the glorious light that had already become darkness for me.
As time drew on I felt that it would soon be necessary to scatter my mother's ashes. I often held the box in my lap, or shook the contents. It sounded rather like the contents for a jigsaw puzzle. I began to draw, nothing special, just vibrantly colourful abstract renderings with coloured felt pens. They seemed beautiful and to somehow work artistically. I tried to enlist my brother and my maternal uncle to help me scatter Mom's ashes over the waters of the Salish Sea (or, the Strait of Georgia) in respect of her wishes. Both vacillated and made excuses.
Labour Day I went on a BC Ferry bound for Nanaimo I made my way outside to the stern, undetected, opened the box, then took out the plastic bag full of my mother's ashes. I opened the bag and held it aloft over the ocean. The velocity of the wind sucked the ashes with a fierce rapidity unexpected and I felt a strange, delirious and joyous release. On the boat going back I ran into a man near my age whom first had befriended me when I lived at Dilaram, fourteen years ago, when I was a tender twenty-two. Our lives had taken quite distinct directions. He was a stage director and producer. When he learned of the purpose of my trip he was immediately concerned and sympathetic for my wellbeing, which I found touching but not really necessary. It was largely through his accidental agency that I was kicked out of Dilaram. It was he who invited me for a daytrip with him up to Whistler, which became Dan Gardener's available excuse (the charge being insubordination) for getting rid of me fast, that same night I returned.
Life went on an usual. At the house the old ladies and I prayed together, discussed things, fought. I worked taking care of AIDS sufferers until my supervisors decided to demote me since I had not the financial resources for the further training they had just made obligatory. I hung out in the West End and downtown, with the old ladies and by myself, being present for the local people whom one by one were dropping dead from AIDS, suicide, alcoholism, drug overdoses, homicide...It was a very dark time. In the midst of the darkness I saw threads of silver and gold that I clung on to, knowing that I would eventually return to the glorious light that had already become darkness for me.
Wednesday 25 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 14
With all three of us living together now under the same roof we changed the lease again and put it in all of our names. This was to keep Dippy quiet. She was shamed, angry and defensive, following a stern talking to we gave her about appropriate conduct with persons we profess to help. In vintage Dippy style she tried to put the blame on us for not being there to help her minister to her poor little darling and played deaf when we tried to persuade her that maybe moving someone like that into our home was not the most constructive way of giving him support. She blamed, made excuses, prevaricated. She didn't apologize. "I'm sorry" are two words I never heard proceed out of the mouth of Dippy. She was sacrosanct, the non-virgin Mary, beyond criticism, beyond reproach. Miss Piss-Perfect, as I knew her. To give her credit she did have a phenomenal and often inspiring care and compassion for others. It is sad that this was largely poisoned by her incredible self-righteousness and lack of humility.
I rented another apartment, again in the building on Burnaby Street where I lived in 1987. It was to be our community base downtown though I did tend to stay there frequently to have time on my own and away from the two old women. I found life with them both suffocating and often felt targeted by their own hatred of men, largely fuelled by their own lousy marriages.
As our funds would be soon running out I found employment as a home support worker. This was useful in many ways. The income was nice as was the opportunity to do something that was mine and not somehow wrapped up and made useless and ineffective by Dippy's and Dopey's agency. They worked well together but they also had a kind of mutual understanding that I didn't share with them. Oil and water, I suppose.
We still met every morning for prayer and dialogue. It wasn't always pleasant. We were all lateral thinkers so we would chat and discuss things ad infinitum. Now that I had a job to go to we had to start making things short and simple. Sometimes we had major battles, usually between Dippy and us. She was great for holding grudges and came to resent us both as her mean and unmerciful keepers preventing her from living her life and having any fun. Truth be told, she had no idea how chaotic and destructive she could be. Now that I work in the mental health field I am aware that Dippy carried many of the traits of a borderline personality disorder. She would scream and weep at us for being jaded Christians, cold and hard-hearted while clinging to us both, especially to Dopey in the desperate dependency of a drowning child.
I rented another apartment, again in the building on Burnaby Street where I lived in 1987. It was to be our community base downtown though I did tend to stay there frequently to have time on my own and away from the two old women. I found life with them both suffocating and often felt targeted by their own hatred of men, largely fuelled by their own lousy marriages.
As our funds would be soon running out I found employment as a home support worker. This was useful in many ways. The income was nice as was the opportunity to do something that was mine and not somehow wrapped up and made useless and ineffective by Dippy's and Dopey's agency. They worked well together but they also had a kind of mutual understanding that I didn't share with them. Oil and water, I suppose.
We still met every morning for prayer and dialogue. It wasn't always pleasant. We were all lateral thinkers so we would chat and discuss things ad infinitum. Now that I had a job to go to we had to start making things short and simple. Sometimes we had major battles, usually between Dippy and us. She was great for holding grudges and came to resent us both as her mean and unmerciful keepers preventing her from living her life and having any fun. Truth be told, she had no idea how chaotic and destructive she could be. Now that I work in the mental health field I am aware that Dippy carried many of the traits of a borderline personality disorder. She would scream and weep at us for being jaded Christians, cold and hard-hearted while clinging to us both, especially to Dopey in the desperate dependency of a drowning child.
Tuesday 24 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 13
Dopey was surprised to see me when I arrived home from the airport. I did give the lease over to her since I didn't know if I'd be returning to Vancouver from England and she wanted some legal protection from Dippy trying to take over things and create her customary havoc, chaos and destruction. That night Dopey sprained her ankle just as we were on our way home. She tripped in a hollow in the ground just outside our front yard. Being old, a bit overweight and rather frail she didn't take it well and insisted on being taken to the hospital immediately. I called 911 and felt whatever vestige of freedom I had enjoyed while in Europe shrivel like a blade of grass in the Sahara desert. The prospect of being a live-in caregiver to an old woman horrified me. It wasn't that I was unwilling, but rather just as I felt that I was getting a life it was suddenly snatched away from me.
Dopey was territorial and clearly wanted the Ferndale house to herself. Instead of being honest (like almost all Anglicans I have ever known she was a cowardly, mealy-mouthed liar who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouth full of it) she expressed concern for poor idiot Dippy having to fend for herself at Shiloh House. I must move in there to support her. I caved and went to stay with Dippy, her care-taker and custodian.
It wasn't that bad. We actually got along well and really tried to cooperate. She disclosed that her relationship with the mentally ill drug addict (now in a transition house) had not been platonic, felt brutally ashamed and of course I did everything I could to support her especially given the fierceness of her own self-reproach. We continued with regular prayer and street ministry. Her young boyfriend left the transition house and twice tried to move back into Shiloh House, leaving quite the trail of devastation. Finally I had to call police from a pay phone, he was breaking things, making threats and had torn the phone off its cord (cell phones were still in their infancy in 1991). He had so destroyed the house as to render it unliveable. We bundled together as many of our personal possessions as we could fit in a cab, cat included, and all moved together into the house on Ferndale.
Dopey was territorial and clearly wanted the Ferndale house to herself. Instead of being honest (like almost all Anglicans I have ever known she was a cowardly, mealy-mouthed liar who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouth full of it) she expressed concern for poor idiot Dippy having to fend for herself at Shiloh House. I must move in there to support her. I caved and went to stay with Dippy, her care-taker and custodian.
It wasn't that bad. We actually got along well and really tried to cooperate. She disclosed that her relationship with the mentally ill drug addict (now in a transition house) had not been platonic, felt brutally ashamed and of course I did everything I could to support her especially given the fierceness of her own self-reproach. We continued with regular prayer and street ministry. Her young boyfriend left the transition house and twice tried to move back into Shiloh House, leaving quite the trail of devastation. Finally I had to call police from a pay phone, he was breaking things, making threats and had torn the phone off its cord (cell phones were still in their infancy in 1991). He had so destroyed the house as to render it unliveable. We bundled together as many of our personal possessions as we could fit in a cab, cat included, and all moved together into the house on Ferndale.
Monday 23 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 12
Flippy of course also used the house at Ferndale for his own "retreats". It was when I discovered a cryptic note in his handwriting about what he should chose to do, covered with fingernail clippings, then later finding that there were fingernail clippings on top of the cairn in the cedar grove that I realized he was a likely Satanist. I could be wrong, but I have my doubts.
Suffice it to say that he was finally gone and good riddance.
Dippy was driving Dopey crazy and Dopey came to live with me at the house to get away from her and the young mentally ill drug addict she had fallen in love with and invited to live with them. Then I got messed up with the Wannabe Rock Star. I came into some money from my mother's death and was intent on leaving my old life behind. We went to London together. I paid his way then got rid of him in Edinburgh after realizing what a hideous error I'd made.
I was in London, alone and for the first time really, really free. I planned to live there if I could. I met people, only the wrong ones, and gradually came to the conclusion that I would be eventually returning to Canada. Dopey and I corresponded in the days before there was email and she made to me a very convincing case that I had to return. Dippy was destroying everything with her crazy drugged-up boyfriend who had taken up residence with her in Shiloh House. And yes they were shagging each other if you really have to know, Gentle Reader. Dopey invoked the two magic words, "you're needed" and that's all it took. I hope now that I'm older and hopefully wiser that if I ever hear again those two insidious powerful words "you're needed" that I will have the good common sense to run the other way fast.
I did have a ton of money with me in Europe, some of which the Wannabe Rock Star had extorted from me, and some which was stolen from me at knifepoint in Amsterdam. I knew it wouldn't last, and I knew also that this intoxicatingly delicious freedom would soon come to an end. I could only live from bed and breakfast to pension to hotel room for so long without going slowly and steadily crazy from this lack of feeling grounded for too long. But it was summer, I was free, and the long walks from museum to park to café, to pub to restaurant to wherever my restless legs would carry me was a joy unbridled and I had no intention of losing this freedom again.
I didn't so much lose the new freedom as reluctantly give it up. I could not in good conscience let either of those two pathetic naïfs, Dippy and Dopey, come to harm because I had somehow lured them into this bizarre and thankless work of Christian ministry. I also knew that I really had no prospects waiting for me in London nor anywhere in Europe. My place was Vancouver, doing my share to help mop up a mess I had helped create.
Don't weep that it's over...Smile because it happened!
Suffice it to say that he was finally gone and good riddance.
Dippy was driving Dopey crazy and Dopey came to live with me at the house to get away from her and the young mentally ill drug addict she had fallen in love with and invited to live with them. Then I got messed up with the Wannabe Rock Star. I came into some money from my mother's death and was intent on leaving my old life behind. We went to London together. I paid his way then got rid of him in Edinburgh after realizing what a hideous error I'd made.
I was in London, alone and for the first time really, really free. I planned to live there if I could. I met people, only the wrong ones, and gradually came to the conclusion that I would be eventually returning to Canada. Dopey and I corresponded in the days before there was email and she made to me a very convincing case that I had to return. Dippy was destroying everything with her crazy drugged-up boyfriend who had taken up residence with her in Shiloh House. And yes they were shagging each other if you really have to know, Gentle Reader. Dopey invoked the two magic words, "you're needed" and that's all it took. I hope now that I'm older and hopefully wiser that if I ever hear again those two insidious powerful words "you're needed" that I will have the good common sense to run the other way fast.
I did have a ton of money with me in Europe, some of which the Wannabe Rock Star had extorted from me, and some which was stolen from me at knifepoint in Amsterdam. I knew it wouldn't last, and I knew also that this intoxicatingly delicious freedom would soon come to an end. I could only live from bed and breakfast to pension to hotel room for so long without going slowly and steadily crazy from this lack of feeling grounded for too long. But it was summer, I was free, and the long walks from museum to park to café, to pub to restaurant to wherever my restless legs would carry me was a joy unbridled and I had no intention of losing this freedom again.
I didn't so much lose the new freedom as reluctantly give it up. I could not in good conscience let either of those two pathetic naïfs, Dippy and Dopey, come to harm because I had somehow lured them into this bizarre and thankless work of Christian ministry. I also knew that I really had no prospects waiting for me in London nor anywhere in Europe. My place was Vancouver, doing my share to help mop up a mess I had helped create.
Don't weep that it's over...Smile because it happened!
Sunday 22 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 11, The Apartment
The blessing of having seemingly unlimited funds to play with meant that I could have a decent one bedroom apartment to live in in the West End while keeping the house in the country. Dopey's generous largess was not going to last forever but we were all focussed on the present and our understanding of the Gospel forbade us from saving or investing money for the future. We were sure that God was directing us to use it all in the immediate.
With this idea in mind I sensed very strongly that God was directing me to rent an apartment in the West End on Haro Street between Jervis and Barclay-Great View Manor. The building was a medium rise, perhaps of a 1950's vintage. The apartment was on the fifth floor. Having this place covered several bases at once: I could be relatively close to the hospital where my mother lay waiting to die. I could also have direct access to our ministry downtown and invite people back for a cup of coffee or a meal and a chat. It also further distanced me from Flippy, whom I was determined to wedge out of my life by what ever means possible. Flippy in the meantime had taken a room in a fleabag hotel in the Downtown Eastside, since he was certain God had called him there. Dippy and Dopey were preoccupied with Shiloh House where they continued to welcome and shelter abusers of their hospitality.
We each took turns taking retreats at the house on Ferndale. This was for me a welcome respite and yet more time away from the others, especially Flippy. I did foolishly give keys to the apartment to the others, the expected trade-off for renting this place with community funds. We frequently met together for prayer and they did want to offer me support with what I was going through though often I would have preferred to be left alone. Some of the meetings got very intense and Flippy became at times particularly verbally abusive towards me and made every effort to humiliate me in front of the others.
My mother got steadily worse. She died January 9, 1991, just when they were beginning to bomb Kuwait during the first Gulf War. People were supportive, Flippy tried to make nice. I tried, uncharitably, to brush him off. In the spring the apartment appeared to have outlived its usefulness. Flippy had left our community, finally. I moved out the apartment and returned to the house on Ferndale.
With this idea in mind I sensed very strongly that God was directing me to rent an apartment in the West End on Haro Street between Jervis and Barclay-Great View Manor. The building was a medium rise, perhaps of a 1950's vintage. The apartment was on the fifth floor. Having this place covered several bases at once: I could be relatively close to the hospital where my mother lay waiting to die. I could also have direct access to our ministry downtown and invite people back for a cup of coffee or a meal and a chat. It also further distanced me from Flippy, whom I was determined to wedge out of my life by what ever means possible. Flippy in the meantime had taken a room in a fleabag hotel in the Downtown Eastside, since he was certain God had called him there. Dippy and Dopey were preoccupied with Shiloh House where they continued to welcome and shelter abusers of their hospitality.
We each took turns taking retreats at the house on Ferndale. This was for me a welcome respite and yet more time away from the others, especially Flippy. I did foolishly give keys to the apartment to the others, the expected trade-off for renting this place with community funds. We frequently met together for prayer and they did want to offer me support with what I was going through though often I would have preferred to be left alone. Some of the meetings got very intense and Flippy became at times particularly verbally abusive towards me and made every effort to humiliate me in front of the others.
My mother got steadily worse. She died January 9, 1991, just when they were beginning to bomb Kuwait during the first Gulf War. People were supportive, Flippy tried to make nice. I tried, uncharitably, to brush him off. In the spring the apartment appeared to have outlived its usefulness. Flippy had left our community, finally. I moved out the apartment and returned to the house on Ferndale.
Saturday 21 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 10
It is hard seeing your own mother as sick, vulnerable and dying. While she languished inside her apartment for several months I would come over to see her every day, to clean, cook something, coax her to eat. She had no appetite. She would mention that she would often sit quietly for hours, looking at the various patterns in her living room carpet. She had grown frail and very thin, this once robust, confident woman who seemed undaunted by any challenge that life might fling in her face. Now she was bowed down by cancer. I often had a vision of her as tiny, like a helpless little bug or mouse, trying to dodge a ruthlessly stomping booted foot.
These times together were precious for both of us. Flippy at first wanted to be in on the act. It was his assumption that we had to do absolutely everything together. I resented this but he was stronger than I and always had his way. Mom was particularly indignant and she told him in very clear terms that she did not want to see him. She neither liked nor approved of him and saw him as a malicious, manipulative, vacuous airhead. Mom was an astute judge of character. He yelled at her and we both left. He ignored me when I told him what I thought of his way of talking to a sick and dying woman, especially my mother. But Flippy was a sociopath. He hated and resented his own family. His younger brother had once given him a hand made Christmas card. Flippy's expression of gratitude? He tore it up right in front of his brother's face.
Despite Flippy's resentment I did the right thing. Thanks to the largess of Dopey's generous donation of the equity from the sale of her condo to the community I didn't have to work and could spend my days caring for Mom always followed by excruciatingly long walks that would take me through the cemetery (where I would go every day to prepare for her passing), then through Queen Elizabeth Park then off to Shaughnessy Heights for a long walk among the palatial homes. I would end up downtown visiting the various street people I knew. Even though I was supposedly ministering to them they also became friends and were in their way very supportive to me about my mom.
When she fell and broke her hip in October I rushed to the hospital. Her bed was surrounded by four of her siblings, all in their sixties, and me. She lay there, medicated and comatose and we were sure she would be dying that same day. She somehow rallied but she would never see again her apartment. The hospital would be her home now till she passed away four months later.
Then began another vision that repeated itself on me about Mom: a field of brilliant green grass surrounded by trees and the sun shining bright on the grass till it became like a field of blazing green fire.
These times together were precious for both of us. Flippy at first wanted to be in on the act. It was his assumption that we had to do absolutely everything together. I resented this but he was stronger than I and always had his way. Mom was particularly indignant and she told him in very clear terms that she did not want to see him. She neither liked nor approved of him and saw him as a malicious, manipulative, vacuous airhead. Mom was an astute judge of character. He yelled at her and we both left. He ignored me when I told him what I thought of his way of talking to a sick and dying woman, especially my mother. But Flippy was a sociopath. He hated and resented his own family. His younger brother had once given him a hand made Christmas card. Flippy's expression of gratitude? He tore it up right in front of his brother's face.
Despite Flippy's resentment I did the right thing. Thanks to the largess of Dopey's generous donation of the equity from the sale of her condo to the community I didn't have to work and could spend my days caring for Mom always followed by excruciatingly long walks that would take me through the cemetery (where I would go every day to prepare for her passing), then through Queen Elizabeth Park then off to Shaughnessy Heights for a long walk among the palatial homes. I would end up downtown visiting the various street people I knew. Even though I was supposedly ministering to them they also became friends and were in their way very supportive to me about my mom.
When she fell and broke her hip in October I rushed to the hospital. Her bed was surrounded by four of her siblings, all in their sixties, and me. She lay there, medicated and comatose and we were sure she would be dying that same day. She somehow rallied but she would never see again her apartment. The hospital would be her home now till she passed away four months later.
Then began another vision that repeated itself on me about Mom: a field of brilliant green grass surrounded by trees and the sun shining bright on the grass till it became like a field of blazing green fire.
Friday 20 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 9
Nineteen Ninety was a very strange transitional kind of year. The hippies were suddenly back, with a vengeance. Peace and love and wonderful drugs and guys with long hair and hand drumming circles and tie-dye T shirts and folk music and everyone was high and everyone loved...everyone? The cold, metallic, nasty and selfish eighties were a burnt-out shell. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transpeople were flexing their master and demanding equal rights and freedom from persecution. The Gay Games came to Vancouver. All the fundamentalist Christians protested and tried to stop them. I alone in our little community was in favour, or at least not not in favour of the Games. This further alienated me from Flippy, Dippy and Dopey. Global capitalism was being recognized for the menacing dragon that would swallow the earth and everyone wanted to save the planet. I welcomed and embraced it, though Flippy was too stupid and dense and Dippy and Dopey too preoccupied with the many abusers of their kindness and hospitality to care or notice.
I began to care for my dying mother. The others in the community, especially Flippy, saw me as a turncoat and that I had no business making my family more important than the Lord's work. I retorted that my mother in her condition was for me the Lord's work and proceeded to ignore him. Already I was slowly breaking free from him. My final and most brutal beating from him killed anything that still tied me to him. Since he would not permit me to kick him out, and I was really too weak and compromised to do anything, I gradually froze him out of my life.
I flew to Ottawa at the end of May. There was a lot going on there, with Gorbachev's visit followed by the newly freed and exonerated Nelson Mandela. I felt called to pray for the nations and what better place than the nation's capital. I wandered around the city, visited museums and the National Gallery. After three hours spent in the gallery I knew that I was an artist in preparation. I saw and watched birds I had never seen before: Baltimore orioles, a scarlet tanager, a pair of blue jays. I took a bus to Toronto where I stayed a day and a night then mistakenly boarded a train to Vancouver. I had foolishly booked coach, was unable to sleep and finally left the train in Winnipeg where I spent the night in a hotel, then flew back to Vancouver the next day.
When I returned home I noted that Flippy decided that God was telling him to plant a bunch of flowers in the shape of a cross on the patch of soil where I had been planning a herb garden. I had already told him my plans, he said nothing about it. This was typical of his style of undermining. He was also resentful that I'd gone on this trip, leaving him all alone with those two dreadful old women. Poor little misogynist, I feel so sorry for you!
I had already spent other time away from the house. In early April during a warm spell I spent the night in a vintage hotel downtown, and the following day and night in retreat in a convent in Shaughnessy. I spent part of the Easter week in Victoria, alone. I was detaching from Flippy, he knew it, resented it, and I simply hated him and wanted him gone.
In October I sensed very strongly that I would have to get my own apartment, away from Flippy. away from Dippy and Dopey, where I could safely live alone while caring for my dying mother. That night she fell and broke her hip and was admitted to hospital. We thought she would die in a day. She held on.
I began to care for my dying mother. The others in the community, especially Flippy, saw me as a turncoat and that I had no business making my family more important than the Lord's work. I retorted that my mother in her condition was for me the Lord's work and proceeded to ignore him. Already I was slowly breaking free from him. My final and most brutal beating from him killed anything that still tied me to him. Since he would not permit me to kick him out, and I was really too weak and compromised to do anything, I gradually froze him out of my life.
I flew to Ottawa at the end of May. There was a lot going on there, with Gorbachev's visit followed by the newly freed and exonerated Nelson Mandela. I felt called to pray for the nations and what better place than the nation's capital. I wandered around the city, visited museums and the National Gallery. After three hours spent in the gallery I knew that I was an artist in preparation. I saw and watched birds I had never seen before: Baltimore orioles, a scarlet tanager, a pair of blue jays. I took a bus to Toronto where I stayed a day and a night then mistakenly boarded a train to Vancouver. I had foolishly booked coach, was unable to sleep and finally left the train in Winnipeg where I spent the night in a hotel, then flew back to Vancouver the next day.
When I returned home I noted that Flippy decided that God was telling him to plant a bunch of flowers in the shape of a cross on the patch of soil where I had been planning a herb garden. I had already told him my plans, he said nothing about it. This was typical of his style of undermining. He was also resentful that I'd gone on this trip, leaving him all alone with those two dreadful old women. Poor little misogynist, I feel so sorry for you!
I had already spent other time away from the house. In early April during a warm spell I spent the night in a vintage hotel downtown, and the following day and night in retreat in a convent in Shaughnessy. I spent part of the Easter week in Victoria, alone. I was detaching from Flippy, he knew it, resented it, and I simply hated him and wanted him gone.
In October I sensed very strongly that I would have to get my own apartment, away from Flippy. away from Dippy and Dopey, where I could safely live alone while caring for my dying mother. That night she fell and broke her hip and was admitted to hospital. We thought she would die in a day. She held on.
Thursday 19 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 8
When Dippy and Dopey became interested in us we threw a huge garden party and called it a Salad-bration especially for the local parishioners. It was well and beautifully attended and only one nose got put out of joint, belonging to a tall ungainly woman known to be hugely spiritual (hugely a few other things, too!) but with an incredibly thin skin. When I saw a number of guests lining up for thirds I teased them and called them piggies. She stormed off to her husband's car where she steamed and sulked until her equally offended hubby drove them both home. It was otherwise a success with a wonderful melding of hugely diverse persons including some of our friends from downtown.
Dippy and Dopey, especially Dopey, began to bankroll our operation. We were being bought. We were about to be evicted when Dopey gave us a cheque for all but thirty-six dollars of what we owed. When asked why not the whole amount Dopey lamely replied that this was what the Lord was telling her. Dopey was one of these absurd emotionally led charismatics who insisted that God always spoke to her though the evidence often suggested someone else was doing the speaking. Dippy quickly forked over the remaining money. Our rent was paid, we were not homeless, and now we were owned by two, needy and desperate aging women.
They began meeting with us almost daily for prayer and worship. They began accompanying us downtown where they were eagerly welcomed and loved. especially in the cocktail lounge of a gay owned and operated hotel in the Downtown Eastside near the gate to Chinatown. Flippy resented their presence. He had a weird possessive and proprietary sense concerning me. I wanted them there to help keep Flippy's excesses in line and to also balance our nascent Christian community.
Dippy left her fat Ukrainian perogy (her boyfriend) and moved in with Dopey whom she consistently drove insane. Then Dopey got the brilliant idea of selling her condo and renting an old house with Dippy in East Vancouver. The equity from the condo sale was invested into our community, now called the Community of the Transfiguration. After an intense and near fruitless search they found a house in January 1990 in the Mount Pleasant area. We were all richer and our financial issues were, for a while anyway, resolved. Dippy and Dopey named their old bungalow with basement Shiloh House and invited everyone they met to visit, dine, breakfast, live there. It was so painful seeing these two naïfs getting exploited and taken advantage of, lied to and stolen from day after day by the people they were trying to help. I was living in a place beyond burnout. I was recently recovering from a particularly savage beating inflicted by Flippy, my mother was getting progressively sicker and it was now clear that she would soon be dying. I was traumatized, knew it, and no one seemed to give a shit. They had expected me to mentor and lead them, then disregarded every single recommendation and suggestion I had to offer out of my years of experience of street ministry, then resented me for being unavailable. There was no winning with those people. The help I was needing was nowhere to be found.
Dippy and Dopey, especially Dopey, began to bankroll our operation. We were being bought. We were about to be evicted when Dopey gave us a cheque for all but thirty-six dollars of what we owed. When asked why not the whole amount Dopey lamely replied that this was what the Lord was telling her. Dopey was one of these absurd emotionally led charismatics who insisted that God always spoke to her though the evidence often suggested someone else was doing the speaking. Dippy quickly forked over the remaining money. Our rent was paid, we were not homeless, and now we were owned by two, needy and desperate aging women.
They began meeting with us almost daily for prayer and worship. They began accompanying us downtown where they were eagerly welcomed and loved. especially in the cocktail lounge of a gay owned and operated hotel in the Downtown Eastside near the gate to Chinatown. Flippy resented their presence. He had a weird possessive and proprietary sense concerning me. I wanted them there to help keep Flippy's excesses in line and to also balance our nascent Christian community.
Dippy left her fat Ukrainian perogy (her boyfriend) and moved in with Dopey whom she consistently drove insane. Then Dopey got the brilliant idea of selling her condo and renting an old house with Dippy in East Vancouver. The equity from the condo sale was invested into our community, now called the Community of the Transfiguration. After an intense and near fruitless search they found a house in January 1990 in the Mount Pleasant area. We were all richer and our financial issues were, for a while anyway, resolved. Dippy and Dopey named their old bungalow with basement Shiloh House and invited everyone they met to visit, dine, breakfast, live there. It was so painful seeing these two naïfs getting exploited and taken advantage of, lied to and stolen from day after day by the people they were trying to help. I was living in a place beyond burnout. I was recently recovering from a particularly savage beating inflicted by Flippy, my mother was getting progressively sicker and it was now clear that she would soon be dying. I was traumatized, knew it, and no one seemed to give a shit. They had expected me to mentor and lead them, then disregarded every single recommendation and suggestion I had to offer out of my years of experience of street ministry, then resented me for being unavailable. There was no winning with those people. The help I was needing was nowhere to be found.
Wednesday 18 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 7
Dippy and Dopey came on board with us in August 1989. We met them both at the local Anglican parish. Dippy was a youngish forty-five with thick wild iron coloured hair that flew and grasped in every direction. She was kind of like a left-over hippy but she wasn't really. For all her lovey-dovey aren't I the nicest, sweetest, kindest, most loving and self-sacrificing angel claptrap she really was a damaged, anxious and controlling harpy. She was messy, undisciplined, erratic and had absolutely no sense of boundaries. She actually put her arms around Flippy and me during a potluck following a special church service and started to sing to us. It didn't take too long, nor a genius, to figure out that what she really wanted was to get laid. Safe target us: Flippy was gay and I asexual!
She lived with her fat, socially inept and poorly educated Ukrainian boyfriend in a basement apartment in southeast Vancouver. She had a young adult daughter and was divorced from a Japanese-Canadian husband who used to beat the crap out of her. As much as I find spousal abuse to be heinous, horrible and impossible to justify I still to this day regret that I never heard her ex's side of the story, of just what it must have been like living with darling Dippy.
Dippy was also incredibly gifted in the crafts sense and made exquisite Ukrainian Easter eggs, a craft learned from her Ukrainian boyfriend's aged Ukrainian Mama. She also made using a wheat flour base a wonderfully done Nativity scene. She talked nonstop, often sounded breathless and weak, and had a stainless steel will that would challenge the most stubborn donkey.
Dippy decided that God was calling her to join our little community. One morning she appeared at the crack of dawn at our doorstep. We were only just waking up. I asked her if she could please come back in an hour or two. She was indignant and insulted. And the idea of going somewhere for a coffee was something she had simply never heard of. We decided to accept her, given that her nurturing and maternal energy might be just what some of our friends downtown would be needing.
Dopey, was a bourgeois matron of sixty-one. She was the parish secretary and hankering for adventure. It turned out that she was one of those flakey charismatics who hated order unless she was instituting it. She lived alone in her lovely garden apartment pining for her absentee daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters who lived far away in England's green and pleasant land. Dopey was short, verging on plump, clearly once a rather pretty young woman. She believed that God gave her a vision that she would have a Christian community cottage in the country and when she laid eyes on the house on Ferndale decided that this was her vision, tailor made.
I was so weakened and exhausted and burned out from grief about my mother and grief about the many accumulating deaths of people dear to me, and of chronic extreme poverty, and of coping with Dippy's violence and manipulation that I no longer had the will to say no.
What a nightmare!
She lived with her fat, socially inept and poorly educated Ukrainian boyfriend in a basement apartment in southeast Vancouver. She had a young adult daughter and was divorced from a Japanese-Canadian husband who used to beat the crap out of her. As much as I find spousal abuse to be heinous, horrible and impossible to justify I still to this day regret that I never heard her ex's side of the story, of just what it must have been like living with darling Dippy.
Dippy was also incredibly gifted in the crafts sense and made exquisite Ukrainian Easter eggs, a craft learned from her Ukrainian boyfriend's aged Ukrainian Mama. She also made using a wheat flour base a wonderfully done Nativity scene. She talked nonstop, often sounded breathless and weak, and had a stainless steel will that would challenge the most stubborn donkey.
Dippy decided that God was calling her to join our little community. One morning she appeared at the crack of dawn at our doorstep. We were only just waking up. I asked her if she could please come back in an hour or two. She was indignant and insulted. And the idea of going somewhere for a coffee was something she had simply never heard of. We decided to accept her, given that her nurturing and maternal energy might be just what some of our friends downtown would be needing.
Dopey, was a bourgeois matron of sixty-one. She was the parish secretary and hankering for adventure. It turned out that she was one of those flakey charismatics who hated order unless she was instituting it. She lived alone in her lovely garden apartment pining for her absentee daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters who lived far away in England's green and pleasant land. Dopey was short, verging on plump, clearly once a rather pretty young woman. She believed that God gave her a vision that she would have a Christian community cottage in the country and when she laid eyes on the house on Ferndale decided that this was her vision, tailor made.
I was so weakened and exhausted and burned out from grief about my mother and grief about the many accumulating deaths of people dear to me, and of chronic extreme poverty, and of coping with Dippy's violence and manipulation that I no longer had the will to say no.
What a nightmare!
Tuesday 17 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 6
We quickly ran out of money. The pittance I was getting in Unemployment Insurance Benefits was hardly enough to keep one person alive. Flippy (Tarzan's "real" identity) as well as refusing to get a job, wouldn't even apply for welfare. God would provide everything we were needing in the form of my UI benefits and a few generous suckers at church. He would not listen to reason and I didn't know at the time that as lease holder I could legally evict him. But Flippy had a near diabolical power over me and he seemed to revel in it. We fell behind almost three months with the rent. Food was scarce and as the spring brought forth new greenery I was often harvesting wild herbs and plants for the dinner pot. I was fortunately very good at budgeting and making food stretch otherwise we surely would have been lining up at the food bank. We couldn't even afford the laundromat so we hand washed our clothes and hung them up to dry.
As funds dried up we could no longer afford bus fare. We often walked the ten miles downtown or eleven to St. James (Snooty Church) for early mass. We simply had to leave at four in the morning in order to arrive in time for morning mass at 7:15. We would spend the balance of the day in ministry, often in the Persons With Aids drop-in centre where we charmed and befriended some while alienating and pissing off others. We did hospital visits, usually appreciated. If we had enough change for a couple of coffees we would pass a few hours in a local café where we also met and talked and offered support to various local people. We prayed constantly.
My friend the Buddhist was getting increasingly frail. As I recorded in an earlier post I missed my brother's wedding when he invited Flippy and I for dinner. I suspected this might be our last visit, given how ill he was becoming and to this day I still don't care that my brother has never forgiven me. He visited us one last time out at the house on Ferndale. He was so weak and fragile it amazed us that he could drive the distance from Vancouver. It was a touching, painful and joy-filled visit. It was also the last time we saw him.
About six weeks later two things happened that particularly distressed me. My mother's cancer returned with a vengeance from remission and the Buddhist, sequestered in a gulf island ashram, passed away to his eternal rest. I was inconsolable and Flippy, ever possessive and controlling, confessed to resenting me for pouring out so much care and grief for two individuals whom I obviously loved more than him.
As funds dried up we could no longer afford bus fare. We often walked the ten miles downtown or eleven to St. James (Snooty Church) for early mass. We simply had to leave at four in the morning in order to arrive in time for morning mass at 7:15. We would spend the balance of the day in ministry, often in the Persons With Aids drop-in centre where we charmed and befriended some while alienating and pissing off others. We did hospital visits, usually appreciated. If we had enough change for a couple of coffees we would pass a few hours in a local café where we also met and talked and offered support to various local people. We prayed constantly.
My friend the Buddhist was getting increasingly frail. As I recorded in an earlier post I missed my brother's wedding when he invited Flippy and I for dinner. I suspected this might be our last visit, given how ill he was becoming and to this day I still don't care that my brother has never forgiven me. He visited us one last time out at the house on Ferndale. He was so weak and fragile it amazed us that he could drive the distance from Vancouver. It was a touching, painful and joy-filled visit. It was also the last time we saw him.
About six weeks later two things happened that particularly distressed me. My mother's cancer returned with a vengeance from remission and the Buddhist, sequestered in a gulf island ashram, passed away to his eternal rest. I was inconsolable and Flippy, ever possessive and controlling, confessed to resenting me for pouring out so much care and grief for two individuals whom I obviously loved more than him.
Monday 16 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 5
Tarzan moved in with me in late July 1988. He was a recovering coke addict and dealer and a former body builder. He wanted to turn his life around and claimed to have had some rather weird dreams or visions about me before we met. I foolishly accepted his proposal of moving in, given the need for extra help and financial support for the house. My hours at work were less than generous and I was barely making ends meet. He had money, a generous savings account thanks to his previous, er, career and wanted to share it all with me.
He did undergo from all appearances a dramatic conversion. He also became needy and codependent and it was very difficult for me to get breathing space with him in the house. He was soon accompanying me downtown as I was still doing street ministry. He seemed very effective, also friendly, attractive and charismatic. He also had a violent streak and a very controlling nature. I cut him all kinds of slack but nothing I did seemed good enough for him and he very quickly tried to turn himself into my master.
He would not get a job, even though the money was running out. He said that we were already doing the Lord's work and that we must trust God for our provision. God did provide, always at fifty-nine minutes past the eleventh hour. We were regularly attending the Anglican parish church in the area where many befriended us. The priest, a chain smoker and alcoholic, was particularly supportive of us as were the members of the church council. I had to quit my job because of burnout and did not leave on good terms. With all my energy going into supporting Tarzan in his recovery and in his growing walk with God, along with the ministry downtown and coping with my mother's battle with cancer, I had nothing left for my already stressful and demanding job. This happened in February 1989.
My friend, the Buddhist, was in the advanced stages of AIDS, likely contracted in a notorious New York City bath house called the Mine Shaft. He took a strong interest in Tarzan and me and in our ministry and made us auxiliary members of the Vancouver Persons With Aids Society. We made many friends there and a few enemies. Our apparently fundamentalist version of Christianity put quite a few members off, especially given that we were, not exactly anti-gay, but strongly viewed it as a lifestyle to be rescued from by God. Looking back, I marvel that we had any friends there at all.
In January 1989 we had a huge lunch party for our friends living with AIDS. This was before the huge advances in Anti Retro Viral treatment had been made, so AIDS was still a death sentence. We immersed ourselves into the brutally truncated lives of our friends, knowing we would soon be losing every single one of them to the grave.
Meanwhile I left my job, received a pittance from Unemployment Insurance, and Tarzan still refused to get a job. Things could only get interesting...
He did undergo from all appearances a dramatic conversion. He also became needy and codependent and it was very difficult for me to get breathing space with him in the house. He was soon accompanying me downtown as I was still doing street ministry. He seemed very effective, also friendly, attractive and charismatic. He also had a violent streak and a very controlling nature. I cut him all kinds of slack but nothing I did seemed good enough for him and he very quickly tried to turn himself into my master.
He would not get a job, even though the money was running out. He said that we were already doing the Lord's work and that we must trust God for our provision. God did provide, always at fifty-nine minutes past the eleventh hour. We were regularly attending the Anglican parish church in the area where many befriended us. The priest, a chain smoker and alcoholic, was particularly supportive of us as were the members of the church council. I had to quit my job because of burnout and did not leave on good terms. With all my energy going into supporting Tarzan in his recovery and in his growing walk with God, along with the ministry downtown and coping with my mother's battle with cancer, I had nothing left for my already stressful and demanding job. This happened in February 1989.
My friend, the Buddhist, was in the advanced stages of AIDS, likely contracted in a notorious New York City bath house called the Mine Shaft. He took a strong interest in Tarzan and me and in our ministry and made us auxiliary members of the Vancouver Persons With Aids Society. We made many friends there and a few enemies. Our apparently fundamentalist version of Christianity put quite a few members off, especially given that we were, not exactly anti-gay, but strongly viewed it as a lifestyle to be rescued from by God. Looking back, I marvel that we had any friends there at all.
In January 1989 we had a huge lunch party for our friends living with AIDS. This was before the huge advances in Anti Retro Viral treatment had been made, so AIDS was still a death sentence. We immersed ourselves into the brutally truncated lives of our friends, knowing we would soon be losing every single one of them to the grave.
Meanwhile I left my job, received a pittance from Unemployment Insurance, and Tarzan still refused to get a job. Things could only get interesting...
Sunday 15 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 4
My mother's cancer diagnosis hit me all the harder when I learned of the then very slim survival rate for sufferers of lung cancer: between five and ten percent. The grief was mixed with a certain anger. She had long been a heavy smoker. I remember when I was as young as nine years old being sent to the corner store at night, after dark, to buy her cigarettes because she couldn't be bothered to make the effort. Naturally I would also get bread or tomatoes or lettuce or whatever she told me to get in order to justify purchasing her cigarettes for her, and sometimes I was even allowed to get a chocolate bar or a box of Smarties. I remember this time as a kind of early initiation to young adulthood. I learned at an early age how to shop and how to buy cigarettes. Mommy's little enabler. I also recall the moon at its various phases from new to full and waning. The moon appeared to walk with me. When I stopped the moon stopped. When I moved forward it went with me. So began my friendship with our planet's satellite. When I turned twelve I drew the line. I had already heard and read about the cigarette-lung cancer connection. I told Mom I didn't want her to die, I did not want her to get sick. She ordered me to buy her cigarettes. I replied no way. She accused me of being disobedient. I said too bad. One evening after dinner she put in the usual order: bread, milk, cigarettes. I did not buy the cigarettes. She was not amused. I told her I was never supporting her addiction again.
I was devastated by the news of her lung cancer and I think selfishly since it was really my mother's tragedy and not mine. Simply I did not want to lose her. Even though I had lived almost entirely on my own since the tender age of eighteen I was still, like most young adults, more dependent emotionally on mother and on her unconditional love than I would care or dare to admit. I remember taking a long walk on the first evening that I knew and wandering onto English Bay Beach and throughout the West End. I tried to solicit the help of various friends but they were mostly used to me looking after their emotional needs and not vice-versa and quickly became very scarce. Given that I also had, unlike them, experience of caring for the dying it was naturally assumed that I would be able to take care of myself. But it was my mother.
Mom went in for radiation therapy and I joined a support group for relatives of cancer sufferers. I focussed intensely on my work though my emotions were already running rather thin and I met with some minor disasters but all the same disasters with certain particularly difficult clients. I took some time off. I continued the block walks and continued to fight off vicious dogs (both coincidentally black labs), I continued my prayer walks in the bush labyrinth where I continued to find suspiciously dead desiccated birds positioned strategically on the trails. I began to regularly attend the midday Eucharist at the local Anglican parish church. I cooked, I ate, I worked on the house. I supported Mom whom I talked to regularly, almost daily on the phone. She began to feel better, stronger. She began spending Saturdays visiting with me, hanging out together. I came down with a nasty case of hemorrhoids due to the stress. She insisted on driving me down to the local London Drugs where I bought with her (she paid for it actually) a tube of Preparation H. I mentioned sarcastically to the girl at the checkout: "Nothing more heart-warming than a mother and son buying Preparation H together."
Her courage, determination, and matter-of-fact approach to her cancer diagnosis and treatment I found nonetheless inspiring and I reckoned that I was having a worse time of it than she was, but isn't the way it often happens?
Her behaviour during this time, was on occasion, nonetheless strange. One night at precisely eleven something she phoned simply to tell me how completely in favour she was of universal access to abortion for all women, no questions asked. I didn't know how to get across to her how utterly weird this was, given that I'm her son, it was late at night, and she wanted discuss abortion with me. To this day I still don't know if that was a segway to something else she wanted to tell me but never quite worked up the courage. She did, shortly before her death, declare that she would be bringing a lot of secrets to the grave with her.
I was devastated by the news of her lung cancer and I think selfishly since it was really my mother's tragedy and not mine. Simply I did not want to lose her. Even though I had lived almost entirely on my own since the tender age of eighteen I was still, like most young adults, more dependent emotionally on mother and on her unconditional love than I would care or dare to admit. I remember taking a long walk on the first evening that I knew and wandering onto English Bay Beach and throughout the West End. I tried to solicit the help of various friends but they were mostly used to me looking after their emotional needs and not vice-versa and quickly became very scarce. Given that I also had, unlike them, experience of caring for the dying it was naturally assumed that I would be able to take care of myself. But it was my mother.
Mom went in for radiation therapy and I joined a support group for relatives of cancer sufferers. I focussed intensely on my work though my emotions were already running rather thin and I met with some minor disasters but all the same disasters with certain particularly difficult clients. I took some time off. I continued the block walks and continued to fight off vicious dogs (both coincidentally black labs), I continued my prayer walks in the bush labyrinth where I continued to find suspiciously dead desiccated birds positioned strategically on the trails. I began to regularly attend the midday Eucharist at the local Anglican parish church. I cooked, I ate, I worked on the house. I supported Mom whom I talked to regularly, almost daily on the phone. She began to feel better, stronger. She began spending Saturdays visiting with me, hanging out together. I came down with a nasty case of hemorrhoids due to the stress. She insisted on driving me down to the local London Drugs where I bought with her (she paid for it actually) a tube of Preparation H. I mentioned sarcastically to the girl at the checkout: "Nothing more heart-warming than a mother and son buying Preparation H together."
Her courage, determination, and matter-of-fact approach to her cancer diagnosis and treatment I found nonetheless inspiring and I reckoned that I was having a worse time of it than she was, but isn't the way it often happens?
Her behaviour during this time, was on occasion, nonetheless strange. One night at precisely eleven something she phoned simply to tell me how completely in favour she was of universal access to abortion for all women, no questions asked. I didn't know how to get across to her how utterly weird this was, given that I'm her son, it was late at night, and she wanted discuss abortion with me. To this day I still don't know if that was a segway to something else she wanted to tell me but never quite worked up the courage. She did, shortly before her death, declare that she would be bringing a lot of secrets to the grave with her.
Saturday 14 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 3
It was lovely living on Ferndale at first if a bit of a challenge. I had to do everything myself since this was an old house on a piece of land. There were only thirty amps of power and the coffee maker would be enough to blow a fuse if the toaster also happened to be on, or a space heater. As I mentioned, the fuse box was outside in the front of the house above one of the bedroom windows. In all kinds of weather day or night I would find myself climbing a ladder to change the fuse. I "religiously" did a block walk twice a day, in the early morning and in the evening, despite the vicious dogs. I never got bitten, but it was nonetheless terrifying.
I woke early every morning at dawn, to the music of crowing roosters. I would lie awake before getting up listening to them and to some of the local songbirds singing antiphonally. It was rather like being audience to a weird bird oratorio.
The house itself was rather small and the rooms were cramped. Altogether it was around seven hundred fifty square feet: there was a spacious dining area, kitchen, living room and four (potential) bedrooms. I had never had so much space to myself. I felt rich and privileged. I ignored the horrible neighbours and revelled in wandering the trails of the labyrinth I'd made in the birch and salal forest. Getting to work every day was a bit of a commute. I took one bus over two bridges and indulged in discreet people watching.
I washed my clothes in one of the local laundromats and took long walks, often including the two neighbourhoods where I grew up. It felt odd but very good to be living so close to where I spent my childhood. It was a kind of coming home in order to leave home.
One day in January I took a long walk of some four or five miles on the dike as far as Steveston. I was pleasantly surprised by an elegant Great White Egret in the canal, the first and only such bird I have ever seen here and on such a chilly day. He must have straggled north on a strong wind.
On February 29 1988 I turned thirty-two. It was my eighth real birthday, given that I'm a Leap Year baby. My long divorced parents took me to a fancy restaurant for dinner, joined by my somewhat dotty paternal grandmother, already well in her eighties. Naturally my brother wasn't present. It was the first time my mother actually seemed to enjoy being with her ex-mother-in-law and I was moved by the care and affection between the two women.
Just a few days later my mother phoned me to tell me she had lung cancer. Thus began the ordeal.
I woke early every morning at dawn, to the music of crowing roosters. I would lie awake before getting up listening to them and to some of the local songbirds singing antiphonally. It was rather like being audience to a weird bird oratorio.
The house itself was rather small and the rooms were cramped. Altogether it was around seven hundred fifty square feet: there was a spacious dining area, kitchen, living room and four (potential) bedrooms. I had never had so much space to myself. I felt rich and privileged. I ignored the horrible neighbours and revelled in wandering the trails of the labyrinth I'd made in the birch and salal forest. Getting to work every day was a bit of a commute. I took one bus over two bridges and indulged in discreet people watching.
I washed my clothes in one of the local laundromats and took long walks, often including the two neighbourhoods where I grew up. It felt odd but very good to be living so close to where I spent my childhood. It was a kind of coming home in order to leave home.
One day in January I took a long walk of some four or five miles on the dike as far as Steveston. I was pleasantly surprised by an elegant Great White Egret in the canal, the first and only such bird I have ever seen here and on such a chilly day. He must have straggled north on a strong wind.
On February 29 1988 I turned thirty-two. It was my eighth real birthday, given that I'm a Leap Year baby. My long divorced parents took me to a fancy restaurant for dinner, joined by my somewhat dotty paternal grandmother, already well in her eighties. Naturally my brother wasn't present. It was the first time my mother actually seemed to enjoy being with her ex-mother-in-law and I was moved by the care and affection between the two women.
Just a few days later my mother phoned me to tell me she had lung cancer. Thus began the ordeal.
Friday 13 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale 2
I call this place Ferndale because it was on Ferndale Road, a bit of a semirural outpost in Richmond, but not too far away, being walking distance to the mall. The road runs east-west between Garden City Road and Number Four Road, a distance of a half mile or just under one kilometre. The properties in those days were all long one acre lots that met in the middle of a huge rectangle framed by four roads. The houses were mostly modest looking bungalows or bungalows with above ground basements (Richmond is at or below sea level), built mostly between 1920 and 1960. Now it is all spanking new condos and townhouses.
My own backyard was part of a birch forest that stretched right across the rectangle. I made trails in the back, cutting through the salal and Himalayan blackberry. The trails were roughly circular or oval in shape and gently snaked through the bush. It became a precious sanctuary and daily I walked around in this outdoor labyrinth in prayer and meditation. I also took walks around the block, a distance of nearly two miles every morning as a kind of daily prayer walk. This was often complicated by untethered and vicious dogs that lived on both ends of the street and would frequently come charging out barking to threaten and harass me. I have always known not to back down from an aggressive dog and I think this little survival skill many times kept me from getting bitten or worse. Still it was bothersome and I think in the long term traumatizing.
I did not have friendly neighbours. The fellow next door to me, on my first or second day of occupancy was using a power drill on his house. I was experiencing a power failure and had not yet discovered the location of the fuse box (on the exterior of the house above one of the bedroom windows). I wondered if he had also been having power troubles or might be able to advise me on what to do so I approached him and politely asked if he had any power troubles. He began to yell and swear and accused me of accusing him of putting out the power in my house because of his drill and he told me to go away and never bother him again. I apologized, walked away, and we never said another word to each other, civil or uncivil for the several years we were next door to each other. I hesitate here to suggest that we were neighbours since there was absolutely nothing neighbourly about this poor miserable and angry little man.
The fellow living next door to him on the other side was a particularly odd man, old and Dutch. One day he cut across the property between us and stood by the fence while I was taking a walk in the new trails in the back and started to scold me for not buying the property where I was living. He kept a brace of beautiful white pigeons. He would periodically let them fly around the neighbourhood. Given that I almost always felt a peculiar strong intense and angry tension in the air that would break just when the white pigeons went flying I became strongly persuaded that he might himself be involved in some weird kind of witchcraft or dark practice and that he was using his birds for divination and auguries. I came to know him as Witchie-Poo and I really began to wonder about him when periodically I would notice white feathers strewn around in the trails I had made for a prayer labyrinth, often particularly concentrated on the wooden cross I had made at the far corner.
Another strange feature was the desiccated carcasses and half-carcasses of dead birds, previously dried that I would find laid on the trails of the labyrinth, beginning with one that I discovered within my first week of occupancy underneath a board next to the house. When I told my landlord about it he admitted to having placed it there, saying he thought it was ugly and wanted to conceal it. So, I also began to suspect my landlords of some kind of dark or occult practice. To this day I suspect them still.
My new life was not without its charms. For the first time in my life I had an entire house (four bedrooms) to myself. It was unfortunately a bit under furnished but I still did well. I had two beds of my own for two of the bedrooms plus two more that were given to me by my father as well as some carpeting. I bought other carpeting second hand and soon had floors with mock oriental carpets of red and blue and other carpets of gold, white and moss green. Two of my armchairs helped fill the living room along with a divan made of bricks, wood and cushions. The walls I covered with woven cabana mats and strategically arranged art prints of bird and nature themes. It was a small humble rambling house that I had somehow succeeded, with my very limited skills to make habitable and beautiful.
For heat I relied on the two oil stoves: in the kitchen a cook stove and in the living room a heating stove. The fuel was a bit expensive but the rent was incredibly cheap. I didn't get phone service until February, two and a months after I moved in. The solitude and silence were wonderful but I was beginning to yearn again for more human contact. I would soon be getting more than I bargained for.
My own backyard was part of a birch forest that stretched right across the rectangle. I made trails in the back, cutting through the salal and Himalayan blackberry. The trails were roughly circular or oval in shape and gently snaked through the bush. It became a precious sanctuary and daily I walked around in this outdoor labyrinth in prayer and meditation. I also took walks around the block, a distance of nearly two miles every morning as a kind of daily prayer walk. This was often complicated by untethered and vicious dogs that lived on both ends of the street and would frequently come charging out barking to threaten and harass me. I have always known not to back down from an aggressive dog and I think this little survival skill many times kept me from getting bitten or worse. Still it was bothersome and I think in the long term traumatizing.
I did not have friendly neighbours. The fellow next door to me, on my first or second day of occupancy was using a power drill on his house. I was experiencing a power failure and had not yet discovered the location of the fuse box (on the exterior of the house above one of the bedroom windows). I wondered if he had also been having power troubles or might be able to advise me on what to do so I approached him and politely asked if he had any power troubles. He began to yell and swear and accused me of accusing him of putting out the power in my house because of his drill and he told me to go away and never bother him again. I apologized, walked away, and we never said another word to each other, civil or uncivil for the several years we were next door to each other. I hesitate here to suggest that we were neighbours since there was absolutely nothing neighbourly about this poor miserable and angry little man.
The fellow living next door to him on the other side was a particularly odd man, old and Dutch. One day he cut across the property between us and stood by the fence while I was taking a walk in the new trails in the back and started to scold me for not buying the property where I was living. He kept a brace of beautiful white pigeons. He would periodically let them fly around the neighbourhood. Given that I almost always felt a peculiar strong intense and angry tension in the air that would break just when the white pigeons went flying I became strongly persuaded that he might himself be involved in some weird kind of witchcraft or dark practice and that he was using his birds for divination and auguries. I came to know him as Witchie-Poo and I really began to wonder about him when periodically I would notice white feathers strewn around in the trails I had made for a prayer labyrinth, often particularly concentrated on the wooden cross I had made at the far corner.
Another strange feature was the desiccated carcasses and half-carcasses of dead birds, previously dried that I would find laid on the trails of the labyrinth, beginning with one that I discovered within my first week of occupancy underneath a board next to the house. When I told my landlord about it he admitted to having placed it there, saying he thought it was ugly and wanted to conceal it. So, I also began to suspect my landlords of some kind of dark or occult practice. To this day I suspect them still.
My new life was not without its charms. For the first time in my life I had an entire house (four bedrooms) to myself. It was unfortunately a bit under furnished but I still did well. I had two beds of my own for two of the bedrooms plus two more that were given to me by my father as well as some carpeting. I bought other carpeting second hand and soon had floors with mock oriental carpets of red and blue and other carpets of gold, white and moss green. Two of my armchairs helped fill the living room along with a divan made of bricks, wood and cushions. The walls I covered with woven cabana mats and strategically arranged art prints of bird and nature themes. It was a small humble rambling house that I had somehow succeeded, with my very limited skills to make habitable and beautiful.
For heat I relied on the two oil stoves: in the kitchen a cook stove and in the living room a heating stove. The fuel was a bit expensive but the rent was incredibly cheap. I didn't get phone service until February, two and a months after I moved in. The solitude and silence were wonderful but I was beginning to yearn again for more human contact. I would soon be getting more than I bargained for.
Thursday 12 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale, 1
It was D who told me about this place, just after moving in with me October, 1987. He said that his sister knew some people who were looking for a tenant for a rundown farmhouse on an acre they had bought in Richmond. I was cool to the notion, not wanting to work my fingers to the bone making a shack liveable and having to clear and cultivate land. I did want to move. I more than wanted to move. I was feeling called out of where I was living. I also had a strong desire to work hard with my hands. I couldn't dismiss the thought.
A couple of weeks later I took the bait and D gave me the landlords' contact info. They were a married couple. The husband I knew when we were both teenagers, but not very well. I was in a couple of classes in grade eight with his best friend. He was just in his early thirties, like me, but had changed a lot. There was something now vaguely unpleasant about him but I was still glad to take on the challenge.
My first visit to the house occurred in mid-November. It was a very sad, ugly and forsaken place. The house itself was completely disheveled. I could only see it from outside but it looked tragic. Still, there was a hidden beauty or charm there and I felt a growing desire to see if I could summon it forth. The property was a huge overgrown mess, a long acre with trees and meadows and many piles of rubbish and crumbling sheds and outbuildings.
Less than a week later I met the owners and we had a tour of the interior of the house. It was a rambling one storey farmhouse, perhaps built in the Twenties or Thirties. There were some remnant sticks of furniture and makeshift shelves everywhere. It was full of dust. I began to come every day, tearing out wood and shelving and pounding nails and cleaning. I also tackled the grounds, clearing wherever I could and making trails in the back. This felt like a labour of love. I crowbarred, hammered, nailed and painted and cut and pruned and cleared. I felt often exhausted. I felt wonderful.
By mid-December it was ready for occupancy. So began one of the most bizarre chapters of my life.
A couple of weeks later I took the bait and D gave me the landlords' contact info. They were a married couple. The husband I knew when we were both teenagers, but not very well. I was in a couple of classes in grade eight with his best friend. He was just in his early thirties, like me, but had changed a lot. There was something now vaguely unpleasant about him but I was still glad to take on the challenge.
My first visit to the house occurred in mid-November. It was a very sad, ugly and forsaken place. The house itself was completely disheveled. I could only see it from outside but it looked tragic. Still, there was a hidden beauty or charm there and I felt a growing desire to see if I could summon it forth. The property was a huge overgrown mess, a long acre with trees and meadows and many piles of rubbish and crumbling sheds and outbuildings.
Less than a week later I met the owners and we had a tour of the interior of the house. It was a rambling one storey farmhouse, perhaps built in the Twenties or Thirties. There were some remnant sticks of furniture and makeshift shelves everywhere. It was full of dust. I began to come every day, tearing out wood and shelving and pounding nails and cleaning. I also tackled the grounds, clearing wherever I could and making trails in the back. This felt like a labour of love. I crowbarred, hammered, nailed and painted and cut and pruned and cleared. I felt often exhausted. I felt wonderful.
By mid-December it was ready for occupancy. So began one of the most bizarre chapters of my life.
Wednesday 11 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Burnaby Street 3
I was burnt out by the time I got to this apartment but seemed unaware of it. Or rather I was too aware of it and claimed, or bragged, that I was in a place beyond burnout. I was still busy with the usual ministry and work but things were becoming familiar, commonplace, banal. Even comfortable. I was getting sluggish though I continued with the long walks. I was seeing Satanists in every shadow, underneath every tree, at every bus stop. I was traumatized and didn't know it.
I continued working in the Downtown Eastside, chasing cockroaches, cleaning up shit, running errands for often pathologically ungrateful losers. I remained present in the clubs and coffee shops downtown. I was developing solid friendships in many cases and some were seeking me out as a counselor. One young man, who seemed a little too interested in me but still respectful of boundaries was psychic and told me a number of very interesting things about myself, among other things that I would one day be travelling internationally. I also continued at St. James, where one of the associated priests enlisted me to be his spiritual director. I knew he greatly needed to lighten up and enjoy the absurd, he did not seem prepared to do this, and one day I told him to stop reading Meister Erkhardt and maybe pick up a copy of the National Enquirer instead
My friend D moved back to Vancouver during the late summer. He joined AA and I let him move in with me. Our friendship flourished. Given that we were two adult men sharing the same room in a bachelor apartment we got on amazingly well and were very respectful of each other's space. It was one of those rare instances when the balance between being together and being apart maintained itself beautifully and without our help. We talked about things every night before going to sleep. We talked easily, well, beautifully, eloquently and with outrageous wit and humour. We were two very bright and very curious young men in our early thirties with an incredible thirst for knowledge and understanding. And we laughed, we made each other laugh almost like none other.
D saw me as part of his healing and recovery. I felt honoured. I also knew that I would soon be moving again. Little did either one of us know that D was to be the one who held the key.
I continued working in the Downtown Eastside, chasing cockroaches, cleaning up shit, running errands for often pathologically ungrateful losers. I remained present in the clubs and coffee shops downtown. I was developing solid friendships in many cases and some were seeking me out as a counselor. One young man, who seemed a little too interested in me but still respectful of boundaries was psychic and told me a number of very interesting things about myself, among other things that I would one day be travelling internationally. I also continued at St. James, where one of the associated priests enlisted me to be his spiritual director. I knew he greatly needed to lighten up and enjoy the absurd, he did not seem prepared to do this, and one day I told him to stop reading Meister Erkhardt and maybe pick up a copy of the National Enquirer instead
My friend D moved back to Vancouver during the late summer. He joined AA and I let him move in with me. Our friendship flourished. Given that we were two adult men sharing the same room in a bachelor apartment we got on amazingly well and were very respectful of each other's space. It was one of those rare instances when the balance between being together and being apart maintained itself beautifully and without our help. We talked about things every night before going to sleep. We talked easily, well, beautifully, eloquently and with outrageous wit and humour. We were two very bright and very curious young men in our early thirties with an incredible thirst for knowledge and understanding. And we laughed, we made each other laugh almost like none other.
D saw me as part of his healing and recovery. I felt honoured. I also knew that I would soon be moving again. Little did either one of us know that D was to be the one who held the key.
Tuesday 10 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Burnaby Street 2
Despite the peaceful setting of my new apartment the interior noise was something to write home about. On one side lived a rather large verging on fat performing drag queen and his male partner. He liked to rehearse to loudly played Broadway tunes and I was of course a captive audience. On the other side a rather crass young woman who brayed like a jackass. In the small hours of the morning I was often woken by her conversations with her boyfriend. Thank heavens that all I heard was talking! She was succeeded by a young man who was not quite as loud with his overnight girlfriend. We did become friends, sort of, and he also agreed successfully to lower the noise. Upstairs was a young woman with a cat who stomped around like an elephant--the woman not the cat. She and I did become friends and I even hung out a bit with her and her boyfriend. She moved out, to my dismay, and was succeeded by a rather pathetic chap with very creaky bedsprings and I will let you, Gentle Reader, fill in the blanks. In those days I did not know anything about earplugs.
I quickly got in the habit of having guests over for dinner, coffee, tea, chats, sometimes to sleep overnight--and ONLY to sleep. I also did this in the previous apartment. I liked the idea of people finding refuge with me and felt deeply honoured to be in a position to provide it. This got a bit uncomfortable at times. One was a waiter at Benjamin's, not gay himself, who would sleep in the nude and then coyly ask if I wanted to sleep with him. I replied no and I suppose that got us both off the hook. He stayed for twelve days, was in between places, and became such a selfish and self-absorbed presence that I had to ask him to leave and he quickly moved in with his girlfriend who lived nearby. There was another waiter from Benjamin's, also not gay, who came over for dinner and a visit, complained that it was too far for him to go home so I invited him to occupy the spare bed. In his skimpy underwear he offered to give me a massage. I roundly refused and to my relief he returned to his bed without arguing.
Despite the inconveniences this apartment was very much a respite following my nearly two years on Robson Street. For a few weeks members of Ed and Louise's Satanic coven appeared to be trailing me, leaving odd looking markers in front of the building and in front of my apartment but they soon gave up the chase. The beaches and Stanley Park were nearby and I enjoyed long solitary walks, especially by the water's edge in the early morning and at night near bedtime.
I quickly got in the habit of having guests over for dinner, coffee, tea, chats, sometimes to sleep overnight--and ONLY to sleep. I also did this in the previous apartment. I liked the idea of people finding refuge with me and felt deeply honoured to be in a position to provide it. This got a bit uncomfortable at times. One was a waiter at Benjamin's, not gay himself, who would sleep in the nude and then coyly ask if I wanted to sleep with him. I replied no and I suppose that got us both off the hook. He stayed for twelve days, was in between places, and became such a selfish and self-absorbed presence that I had to ask him to leave and he quickly moved in with his girlfriend who lived nearby. There was another waiter from Benjamin's, also not gay, who came over for dinner and a visit, complained that it was too far for him to go home so I invited him to occupy the spare bed. In his skimpy underwear he offered to give me a massage. I roundly refused and to my relief he returned to his bed without arguing.
Despite the inconveniences this apartment was very much a respite following my nearly two years on Robson Street. For a few weeks members of Ed and Louise's Satanic coven appeared to be trailing me, leaving odd looking markers in front of the building and in front of my apartment but they soon gave up the chase. The beaches and Stanley Park were nearby and I enjoyed long solitary walks, especially by the water's edge in the early morning and at night near bedtime.
Monday 9 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Burnaby Street 1
Have you ever noticed how every ten years or so there are new varieties of apples in the markets? I grew up munching on Macs, Delicious and Golden Delicious. We had two different types of Transparent apple trees growing on our property when I was a young child growing up in Richmond. Mom treasured those apples for pies and apple sauce. Then appeared the Granny Smiths, followed by the Spartans and the Rome Beauties. These were eclipsed by the Newton apples which is where this post begins, January, 1987.
I found an apartment on Burnaby Street, one block south of Davie, near the water. It was a spacious bachelor unit in a Post-War era low rise walk up (or, no elevator). It was on the second floor, facing Davie Street, sandwiched neatly between two units. With the manager's permission I moved in gradually, between mid December and mid January. Every day I moved a few things into my new place. I found spare shopping buggies which I absconded for this work of incremental moving.
In the middle of the apartment I set up a standing tray on which I placed the beautiful handmade pottery fruit bowl that Famous Canadian Artist gave me for Christmas seven years earlier. There was, and still is, a produce market on Bute and Davie. There was an abundance of apples, Newtons, Delicious and Golden Delicious. Each day I stopped to buy three, only three apples, Newton, Delicious and Golden Delicious: red, gold and green, not because of the colours from Karma Chameleon, but in reference to the Holy Trinity. Six times I did this, red gold and green, red gold and green, red gold and green, and went to the new apartment where I deposited the new apples into the fruit bowl. This was during the final week before moving in.
Moving day came and I hired a truck to take care of the furniture and big pieces. I was greeted by that bowl of apples in the middle of the room, red gold and green, eighteen apples, the number of the Trinity and the number of the Angelus because eighteen times the bell tolls every day at St. James proclaiming the Annunciation of the Birth of Our Lord.
I arranged all my furniture, unpacked the boxes and put everything away. I have seldom been one to procrastinate the necessary and inevitable. Then I picked up the top apple on the beautiful pyramid and ate it. It was lovely. I cannot remember its colour.
I found an apartment on Burnaby Street, one block south of Davie, near the water. It was a spacious bachelor unit in a Post-War era low rise walk up (or, no elevator). It was on the second floor, facing Davie Street, sandwiched neatly between two units. With the manager's permission I moved in gradually, between mid December and mid January. Every day I moved a few things into my new place. I found spare shopping buggies which I absconded for this work of incremental moving.
In the middle of the apartment I set up a standing tray on which I placed the beautiful handmade pottery fruit bowl that Famous Canadian Artist gave me for Christmas seven years earlier. There was, and still is, a produce market on Bute and Davie. There was an abundance of apples, Newtons, Delicious and Golden Delicious. Each day I stopped to buy three, only three apples, Newton, Delicious and Golden Delicious: red, gold and green, not because of the colours from Karma Chameleon, but in reference to the Holy Trinity. Six times I did this, red gold and green, red gold and green, red gold and green, and went to the new apartment where I deposited the new apples into the fruit bowl. This was during the final week before moving in.
Moving day came and I hired a truck to take care of the furniture and big pieces. I was greeted by that bowl of apples in the middle of the room, red gold and green, eighteen apples, the number of the Trinity and the number of the Angelus because eighteen times the bell tolls every day at St. James proclaiming the Annunciation of the Birth of Our Lord.
I arranged all my furniture, unpacked the boxes and put everything away. I have seldom been one to procrastinate the necessary and inevitable. Then I picked up the top apple on the beautiful pyramid and ate it. It was lovely. I cannot remember its colour.
Sunday 8 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Robson Street 5
In October 1986 began my Thirteen Year Nightmare, or the worst years of my life. It began while I was kneeling at the altar rail at St. James (or, Snooty Church) at the high altar waiting to receive communion. I had a vision of a crown of thorns dripping with blood hovering over me and distinctly heard (in my mind) the words, "Are you prepared to suffer as I have suffered?" I, perhaps foolishly, replied, yes Lord.
The following day at work I was informed that one of my clients was accusing me, falsely, of sexually molesting him. I was of course exonerated but it was nonetheless traumatic and ugly and after that I always felt under suspicion at work. Then Ed and Louise moved in upstairs (their real names, or, SO SUE ME, ASSHOLES!) They were the worst neighbours I have ever had or hopefully ever will have. They were noisy, foot stomping, stereo blasting, yelling friends and visitors noisy and not even our horrible Hong Kong Chinese landlords willing to do anything about it. After a whole series of accidents and health concerns it also occurred to me that they were Satanists and had put a curse on me. My body broke into rather odd blisters, one under my lower lip, one on my tail bone and one on the back of my foot, all oozing a kind of yellow pus that I never saw on my body before or since.
I foolishly allowed a young fellow to stay with me for a few weeks, on his request. It turned out he was a friend of Ed and Louise. He also got very pissy when I turned down his sexual advances and threatened to get ugly about it (his words: "Remember when you told me 'the cuter they think they are, the nastier they get when you turn them down?" Well I'm going to make sure that you never forget that you said that." He began to hang out with Ed and Louise and later admitted to me that they were Satanists. I will not go into detail with the telltale evidences or "calling cards" they were leaving me, but that was when I gave my month's notice to move and began seeking another apartment. In mid-January 1987 I moved to a roomy bachelor apartment on Burnaby Street in Vancouver's West End. To my pleasure I never saw any of those people again.
The following day at work I was informed that one of my clients was accusing me, falsely, of sexually molesting him. I was of course exonerated but it was nonetheless traumatic and ugly and after that I always felt under suspicion at work. Then Ed and Louise moved in upstairs (their real names, or, SO SUE ME, ASSHOLES!) They were the worst neighbours I have ever had or hopefully ever will have. They were noisy, foot stomping, stereo blasting, yelling friends and visitors noisy and not even our horrible Hong Kong Chinese landlords willing to do anything about it. After a whole series of accidents and health concerns it also occurred to me that they were Satanists and had put a curse on me. My body broke into rather odd blisters, one under my lower lip, one on my tail bone and one on the back of my foot, all oozing a kind of yellow pus that I never saw on my body before or since.
I foolishly allowed a young fellow to stay with me for a few weeks, on his request. It turned out he was a friend of Ed and Louise. He also got very pissy when I turned down his sexual advances and threatened to get ugly about it (his words: "Remember when you told me 'the cuter they think they are, the nastier they get when you turn them down?" Well I'm going to make sure that you never forget that you said that." He began to hang out with Ed and Louise and later admitted to me that they were Satanists. I will not go into detail with the telltale evidences or "calling cards" they were leaving me, but that was when I gave my month's notice to move and began seeking another apartment. In mid-January 1987 I moved to a roomy bachelor apartment on Burnaby Street in Vancouver's West End. To my pleasure I never saw any of those people again.
Saturday 7 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Robson Street 4
I read amply and copiously during my tenancy on Robson Street. But what I kept returning to were the Four Quartets by TS Eliot and the writings of Carl Jung. Here's the link if you have time to read it: http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/. Eliot and Jung complemented each other well and I found myself living in an odd sense of time meaning no time. The intense rhythm of life, the contact with death and danger and the sense of living while straddling extremes made it necessary for me to find and maintain a still calm centre. The sense of eternity evoked in the Four Quartets and the Jungian analysis of dreams, the anima and animus, the shadow, archetypes, the collective unconscious and mandalas all synthesised into a grand mystical poem that I was inhabiting without ceasing. It was madness, yes, but a delicious invigorating madness. I was inhaling the air of Heaven while languishing in Purgatory.
I was always visiting the library, just less than a half block away, taking out various volumes of Jung. During the summer I would read his essays and studies while lying on the grass in the rose garden at Stanley Park, feeling strangely transported into another dimension, where the crimson or yellow rose petal shone always and perpetually in the light of the forever midsummer sun. The stillness was in itself an unbearable beauty that I could not sustain, but simply lie back and allow to consume me in its golden flame.
Here is some of the poetic prose I began writing then, dated 18 August, 1986:
"A damp forehead and the cool morning yields quickly, though not eagerly, to the desperate heat of the dying summer. The chopper with its stealthily rotating blades atop the roof of the city police building promised a day of supervised mayhem. Joy, a golden thread guided by a silver needle weaves and stitches its sometimes futile though inevitably triumphant pattern across a ragged, drab and gaudy garment of urban misery. The people who see each other, who pass each other in the street, who chat interminably in restaurants, coffee shops and cellar bistros, who meet clandestinely, though by accident, in the parks, near public fountains and along public causeways--people without joy, too stifled to have sorrow, they speak reasonably, with caution but without passion. The sirens have already begun to rip across this obdurate false calm, but each of us remaining steadfast, unmoved, banal, perhaps seeing too little, with sleep-encrusted Monday morning eyes, to be blinded momentarily by midmorning light casting its frenzied brilliance against a white tiled wall. But there is too much work, or not enough, too many appointments, or not enough, and responsibility upon responsibility or no responsibility at all to make possible, to render delectable the seeing of that wall, too blindingly bright to behold. There is nothing to see, we are unseeing, and we are being seen, being watched. The eyes are everywhere, beholding, and soon the light becomes tolerable for our capacity, for seeing anything of value becomes quickly diminished, left behind with the already forgotten cool of the morning. The summer is dying and the rest of us have yet to live."
That's all I'll bore you with today, Gentle Reader.
I was always visiting the library, just less than a half block away, taking out various volumes of Jung. During the summer I would read his essays and studies while lying on the grass in the rose garden at Stanley Park, feeling strangely transported into another dimension, where the crimson or yellow rose petal shone always and perpetually in the light of the forever midsummer sun. The stillness was in itself an unbearable beauty that I could not sustain, but simply lie back and allow to consume me in its golden flame.
Here is some of the poetic prose I began writing then, dated 18 August, 1986:
"A damp forehead and the cool morning yields quickly, though not eagerly, to the desperate heat of the dying summer. The chopper with its stealthily rotating blades atop the roof of the city police building promised a day of supervised mayhem. Joy, a golden thread guided by a silver needle weaves and stitches its sometimes futile though inevitably triumphant pattern across a ragged, drab and gaudy garment of urban misery. The people who see each other, who pass each other in the street, who chat interminably in restaurants, coffee shops and cellar bistros, who meet clandestinely, though by accident, in the parks, near public fountains and along public causeways--people without joy, too stifled to have sorrow, they speak reasonably, with caution but without passion. The sirens have already begun to rip across this obdurate false calm, but each of us remaining steadfast, unmoved, banal, perhaps seeing too little, with sleep-encrusted Monday morning eyes, to be blinded momentarily by midmorning light casting its frenzied brilliance against a white tiled wall. But there is too much work, or not enough, too many appointments, or not enough, and responsibility upon responsibility or no responsibility at all to make possible, to render delectable the seeing of that wall, too blindingly bright to behold. There is nothing to see, we are unseeing, and we are being seen, being watched. The eyes are everywhere, beholding, and soon the light becomes tolerable for our capacity, for seeing anything of value becomes quickly diminished, left behind with the already forgotten cool of the morning. The summer is dying and the rest of us have yet to live."
That's all I'll bore you with today, Gentle Reader.
Friday 6 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Robson Street 3
My life took on a certain frenzied rhythm. I had to move quickly and nimbly from situation to situation to situation, knowing well that one single misstep could be deadly. I soon misstepped. Several times. The stress and constant frenzy and spiritual and emotional intensity I was living under had become a vindictive flame and it would soon devour me. While D. stayed with me and drank and caroused and generally made life difficult and unpleasant for both of us I was caring for an elderly man sinking into the final stages of cancer. In June 1986 my life became swallowed up in death as I worked twelve to sixteen hour days, with minimal support, caring for this man. We became close with the strong fierce intimacy with which death binds strangers to each other. He died soon after and D. left in a few days, claiming ironically that I was hard to live with.
Expo opened in May and I saw it as an affront against all I held sacred. I still bought a three day pass in order to see what the fuss was about. The planted areas were lovely but none of the pavilions were appealing to me except for the Ramses exhibit and this to me seemed to have brought with it all the dark spiritual baggage of Ancient Egypt. I think Expo traumatized us. It was overwhelming, all these visitors trampling underfoot our virgin city, the many poor people displaced by hotel upgrades for tourists and the nightly fireworks. I could hear them exploding nearby from my apartment, like a nightly air raid.
I began to write poetry: strange and intense poetic prose in a blank page diary I had. I will copy something here that I wrote August 16, 1986. This should give an unedited view of the crazy and strange intensity I was living:
"I am very tired. Something has indeed broken loose. D. came over last night and we went to Benjamin's. He ate, I didn't. I must fast while involved in spiritual warfare. D. and S. seemed quite taken by each other. So far so good. D. confirmed much of what I discerned of him. He doesn't belong, yet he is needed here-a healer perhaps? We went to Stanley Park. First to Lees Trail, where two cairns were repaired and rededicated: the first in intercession for Benjamin's-notably S., T, and M; the second for St. James, for D., myself, D, J, L and others. Afterward, we went to the place of the desecration I had already had a presentiment of where it would be, and I knew the place immediately, for I had been led to pray over the place a few weeks ago. The sense of spiritual darkness was very heavy and oppressive. We came across evidence of occult activity-strange placings of stones, singly or in pairs, and semi-circles and partial circles in the ground with cedar branches and suchlike. Probably a coven has been meeting there. I poured consecrated salt over the area as a rite of cleansing, followed by consecrated water as a rite of baptism and consecration. Finally I took consecrated oil, and poured it out onto the ground as a symbol of healing and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We returned to Benjamin's so I could eat. S. was still there. It was a very good visit. I walked with D. up Granville and went into the C. Later I ran into M. with whom I returned to Benjamin's. She spoke in lurid detail about two of her more bizarre tricks. I am very concerned for her, yet feel she will be okay. I sense a deep and precious bond forming between us. I afterward went to N., where I saw S. It was very good talking to him. I hope to see him soon. D. was there as well. The Spirit led me to B where I ran into R. Next Wednesday for getting together with L and I is fine with him. Probably it will be at my place. I saw B (pink hair) there as well. At N I also saw J again, and F-both of whom I feel a certain concern for, especially James. He is nineteen and claims to be straight. While I'm taking him at his word it concerns me that he is spending so much time in a gay establishment as he has been and there may be some things he has yet to come to terms with. I also saw T. More to come with him, much more.
"On my way home from B I ran into a very handsome young black man named B who tried to pick me up. Perceiving that he was suffering I asked him if he'd just broken up with someone. He had and was on the verge of tears. We talked for a little while. I never know till some time after whether or not I've been any help in such situations. Thank God that he makes good of all our puny little efforts."
Expo opened in May and I saw it as an affront against all I held sacred. I still bought a three day pass in order to see what the fuss was about. The planted areas were lovely but none of the pavilions were appealing to me except for the Ramses exhibit and this to me seemed to have brought with it all the dark spiritual baggage of Ancient Egypt. I think Expo traumatized us. It was overwhelming, all these visitors trampling underfoot our virgin city, the many poor people displaced by hotel upgrades for tourists and the nightly fireworks. I could hear them exploding nearby from my apartment, like a nightly air raid.
I began to write poetry: strange and intense poetic prose in a blank page diary I had. I will copy something here that I wrote August 16, 1986. This should give an unedited view of the crazy and strange intensity I was living:
"I am very tired. Something has indeed broken loose. D. came over last night and we went to Benjamin's. He ate, I didn't. I must fast while involved in spiritual warfare. D. and S. seemed quite taken by each other. So far so good. D. confirmed much of what I discerned of him. He doesn't belong, yet he is needed here-a healer perhaps? We went to Stanley Park. First to Lees Trail, where two cairns were repaired and rededicated: the first in intercession for Benjamin's-notably S., T, and M; the second for St. James, for D., myself, D, J, L and others. Afterward, we went to the place of the desecration I had already had a presentiment of where it would be, and I knew the place immediately, for I had been led to pray over the place a few weeks ago. The sense of spiritual darkness was very heavy and oppressive. We came across evidence of occult activity-strange placings of stones, singly or in pairs, and semi-circles and partial circles in the ground with cedar branches and suchlike. Probably a coven has been meeting there. I poured consecrated salt over the area as a rite of cleansing, followed by consecrated water as a rite of baptism and consecration. Finally I took consecrated oil, and poured it out onto the ground as a symbol of healing and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We returned to Benjamin's so I could eat. S. was still there. It was a very good visit. I walked with D. up Granville and went into the C. Later I ran into M. with whom I returned to Benjamin's. She spoke in lurid detail about two of her more bizarre tricks. I am very concerned for her, yet feel she will be okay. I sense a deep and precious bond forming between us. I afterward went to N., where I saw S. It was very good talking to him. I hope to see him soon. D. was there as well. The Spirit led me to B where I ran into R. Next Wednesday for getting together with L and I is fine with him. Probably it will be at my place. I saw B (pink hair) there as well. At N I also saw J again, and F-both of whom I feel a certain concern for, especially James. He is nineteen and claims to be straight. While I'm taking him at his word it concerns me that he is spending so much time in a gay establishment as he has been and there may be some things he has yet to come to terms with. I also saw T. More to come with him, much more.
"On my way home from B I ran into a very handsome young black man named B who tried to pick me up. Perceiving that he was suffering I asked him if he'd just broken up with someone. He had and was on the verge of tears. We talked for a little while. I never know till some time after whether or not I've been any help in such situations. Thank God that he makes good of all our puny little efforts."
Thursday 5 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Robson Street 2
My first night in the apartment I had a nightmare: I was suddenly living like a pigeon on a very narrow building ledge. I mentioned my apartment was narrow. The dream was also an apt metaphor for the tenuous grip I felt that I had on my life. I had emptied myself out as much as possible in deference to the calling I believed that God had on my life. I felt rather like a prophetic Elijah figure which naturally carries with it a huge risk of hubris. I certainly didn't identify myself as the great prophet nor as his successor. I did feel towards him a certain affinity and often felt his support and encouragement. I often read the accounts about him in the First Book of Kings, of his time in the wilderness being sustained by ravens, of his sacrifice on the mountain, of his vision of God as a Still Small Voice. When I was tending the cairns (situated in the trails of Stanley Park, Second Beach, Jericho Beach, Wreck Beach in the Downtown Eastside and near the site for Expo 86 as well as other strategic locations) I felt that something significant and powerful was happening: a work of intercession for the city of Vancouver, the people who lived here and for the nations. I sensed that I was partaking in a huge spiritual battle, holding back and containing the works of darkness in protection of the fragile beginnings of the work of God and the Holy Spirit. I sometimes had visions of towering shining beings garbed in multi-coloured robes with great long staffs in their hands that they would rhythmically pound against the ground as a declaration of authority and power. This activity of prayer and cairns hugely complemented my work with my clients, the poorest of the poor in the Downtown Eastside, and of my work of ministry with gays, lesbians, transgender people and sex workers of all genders. This all dovetailed powerfully as well with my daily presence at Snooty Church (aka St. James Anglican, or so-sue-me!) for the daily mass.
I also felt well situated in the cultural sense. Almost across the street was the downtown branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Two blocks away the Vancouver Art Gallery. Two blocks in another direction a Cineplex that specialized in foreign, indie and art-house films. Tuesday became for me Cheap Culture Day. The art gallery had free admission on that day and the art-house film houses offered a weekly admission discount. In the library I became particularly interested in their complete collection of the writings of Carl Jung. I became interested in Jung to the point of obsession and was borrowing volume after volume.
In the meantime I cultivated a restrained friendship with a young international terrorist. He was involved with the liberation movements in Europe and in Palestine and frequently travelled there for various direct actions and activism. He worked in the international food store downstairs from my apartment. We clearly liked each other. He was younger than me, twenty-four and impossibly idealistic as well as apparently oblivious to the blood on his hands. For some time he skirted the issue with me, understandably reluctant to give himself away. Then, one day, I called him on it. I told him that as a Christian I could in no way shape or form countenance the spilling of human blood, innocent or otherwise; that however lofty his ideal and vision for humanity and the international community that he would have to one day reckon with the violence he was espousing and enabling and that eventually he would have to taste of the bitter fruit of violence. To my surprise he did not cancel me out. His respect for me appeared to grow and even though we didn't see a lot of each other our friendship mysteriously was enriched and lasted till the last time I saw him many years later.
I also felt well situated in the cultural sense. Almost across the street was the downtown branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Two blocks away the Vancouver Art Gallery. Two blocks in another direction a Cineplex that specialized in foreign, indie and art-house films. Tuesday became for me Cheap Culture Day. The art gallery had free admission on that day and the art-house film houses offered a weekly admission discount. In the library I became particularly interested in their complete collection of the writings of Carl Jung. I became interested in Jung to the point of obsession and was borrowing volume after volume.
In the meantime I cultivated a restrained friendship with a young international terrorist. He was involved with the liberation movements in Europe and in Palestine and frequently travelled there for various direct actions and activism. He worked in the international food store downstairs from my apartment. We clearly liked each other. He was younger than me, twenty-four and impossibly idealistic as well as apparently oblivious to the blood on his hands. For some time he skirted the issue with me, understandably reluctant to give himself away. Then, one day, I called him on it. I told him that as a Christian I could in no way shape or form countenance the spilling of human blood, innocent or otherwise; that however lofty his ideal and vision for humanity and the international community that he would have to one day reckon with the violence he was espousing and enabling and that eventually he would have to taste of the bitter fruit of violence. To my surprise he did not cancel me out. His respect for me appeared to grow and even though we didn't see a lot of each other our friendship mysteriously was enriched and lasted till the last time I saw him many years later.
Wednesday 4 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Robson Street 1
Moving day was relatively painless. It was the third Saturday of October, 1985. I was twenty-nine. The weather was mild, partly sunny. I did not like my new landlords. They were well-off Hong Kong Chinese who didn't live in the building. Which made it like an unsupervised playground. Ouch.
The apartment was near Burrard Street on Robson in a refurbished old building upstairs from the stores and shops. It was a long narrow one bedroom apartment and I suspect the apartments had once been offices. I was not used to living downtown, with the noise, the activity and the occasional crime. I opted to live there because of my ministry downtown. I felt called to live, pray and intercede in the heart of the belly of the beast, as I tended to visualize the downtown core of my city. I was dedicated and devoted to a life of prayer and intercession, of servanthood and of actively caring for others. When I wasn't at work I was walking and praying in the neighbourhood, developing friendships with locals in the bars and often landing in very awkward situations.
I took prayer walks, often circumnavigating on foot Granville, Davie, Denman and Robson Streets, or walking on the beaches and seawall, or in the forest of Stanley Park where I constructed a series of stone cairns. I frequently visited the cairns, to pray over them, restore the ones that had been destroyed and to pray for the wellbeing and healing of all who passed by them.
Meanwhile I prayed, I worked, I walked, I visited people. Daily mass was still a reality. Looking back at it all I marvel how I coped with the stress and danger I was often flirting with. in my paid employment of caregiving in the Downtown Eastside and ministry in the West End, and I also wonder why I didn't do anything to have what I could call a life. But my life was so fully dedicated to living my faith I couldn't imagine having any other interest or activity. Apart from reading. I read voraciously. And kept a journal.
The apartment was near Burrard Street on Robson in a refurbished old building upstairs from the stores and shops. It was a long narrow one bedroom apartment and I suspect the apartments had once been offices. I was not used to living downtown, with the noise, the activity and the occasional crime. I opted to live there because of my ministry downtown. I felt called to live, pray and intercede in the heart of the belly of the beast, as I tended to visualize the downtown core of my city. I was dedicated and devoted to a life of prayer and intercession, of servanthood and of actively caring for others. When I wasn't at work I was walking and praying in the neighbourhood, developing friendships with locals in the bars and often landing in very awkward situations.
I took prayer walks, often circumnavigating on foot Granville, Davie, Denman and Robson Streets, or walking on the beaches and seawall, or in the forest of Stanley Park where I constructed a series of stone cairns. I frequently visited the cairns, to pray over them, restore the ones that had been destroyed and to pray for the wellbeing and healing of all who passed by them.
Meanwhile I prayed, I worked, I walked, I visited people. Daily mass was still a reality. Looking back at it all I marvel how I coped with the stress and danger I was often flirting with. in my paid employment of caregiving in the Downtown Eastside and ministry in the West End, and I also wonder why I didn't do anything to have what I could call a life. But my life was so fully dedicated to living my faith I couldn't imagine having any other interest or activity. Apart from reading. I read voraciously. And kept a journal.
Tuesday 3 November 2015
Places Where I Haved Lived: Basement Suite 7
My last year, 1985, in the basement apartment was my most intense and most difficult and most challenging. I started the year desperately poor. Then, as I was preparing to train for my new job at the Snooty Church Social Services Society the first of March I was hit by the most intense toothaches. I had to pay out of my own pocket for a series of extractions of wisdom teeth. I was kept awake the whole night before my first training day, resulting in less than two hours sleep. To my amazement I got through the training okay and for the first few months it was the honeymoon. They loved me. Following work I would often go straight downtown, though sometimes I went home instead. I simply integrated my work life into my ministry. I also landed into some rather intense friendships with needy and very attractive persons seeking in me spiritual mentorship.
I portioned myself off like thick slices of bread to everyone. I walked everywhere, attended daily mass and entered into an intense spiritual reality that brought together the visible and the invisible. I acquired an intense spirituality such as drew some and frightened others, often both. Then I met a rather charming fellow, chronic alcoholic and drug user with mental health issues, who became quite obsessed with me. He seemed to be following me, I challenged him about it and soon he was staying with me. I was woken one night by his weeping (he was sleeping in the living room). He was morning the loss of his lover who had the same name as me. He disappeared then returned four days later. I took him to detox where he stayed a week, then lived with me a few days longer till he seemed better. Then he returned to the part of Canada he came from.
In the meantime my neighbour upstairs acquired a lover, a man, who moved in with her along with his young daughter. The dynamic of the house changed noticeably. He acquired a fast and intense jealous hatred of me and life soon became intolerable. With some drama I gave my notice, found an apartment downtown and left forever.
No turning back.
I portioned myself off like thick slices of bread to everyone. I walked everywhere, attended daily mass and entered into an intense spiritual reality that brought together the visible and the invisible. I acquired an intense spirituality such as drew some and frightened others, often both. Then I met a rather charming fellow, chronic alcoholic and drug user with mental health issues, who became quite obsessed with me. He seemed to be following me, I challenged him about it and soon he was staying with me. I was woken one night by his weeping (he was sleeping in the living room). He was morning the loss of his lover who had the same name as me. He disappeared then returned four days later. I took him to detox where he stayed a week, then lived with me a few days longer till he seemed better. Then he returned to the part of Canada he came from.
In the meantime my neighbour upstairs acquired a lover, a man, who moved in with her along with his young daughter. The dynamic of the house changed noticeably. He acquired a fast and intense jealous hatred of me and life soon became intolerable. With some drama I gave my notice, found an apartment downtown and left forever.
No turning back.
Monday 2 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Basement Suite 6
When I left the market research position in the summer of 1984 I devoted all my time and energy to street ministry and writing my novel. Survival was precious and very difficult. Even though I quit my job under doctor's orders (stress and a strained larynx) the good people at welfare and at Unemployment Insurance were being royal douche bags and I ran several months unable to pay my rent on time. I bought and ate very carefully on one of the strictest budgets I had ever devised. Money arrived for me in the mail, four times in the course of two or three months. One hundred dollars three times and sixty dollars once. I did not know from whom the money came. On each envelope was written my name, but nothing else, always in a different hand. There was no stamp or postmark and certainly no return address. Everyone I knew firmly denied having anything to do with it. God provided. This was particularly amazing for my neighbour upstairs who as well as being my friend was also my acting landlady. She conceded that there was little doubt that God was seeing to my needs.
The novel was itself a huge undertaking such as I had never embarked on before. It has since been extensively revised and rewritten and it can now be read and, hopefully, enjoyed in serialized form on this blog, under the title "Thirteen Crucifixions."
I continued with daily mass. The free breakfast with clergy every day helped soften my food budget. I sold a few batiks to various interested friends, all with bird themes, of course. I really tried to channel God's love as faithfully as I could. I was becoming something of a legend in the local gay clubs, as one who neither partook in the lifestyle nor preached against it nor judged those who were in it but sought to be a presence of supportive love to any who would receive me. I developed some deep friendships there. Others feared and ridiculed me. And there were still those who looked at me from a safe distance, almost reaching out, but fearing that the holy flame they would touch would also burn them. I had been told many times that I carried a sacred presence that both attracted and scared the bejesus out of people.
It was all too intense and I often feared for my mental health. Somehow I stayed grounded but this was taking a toll on my health. My fault because I didn't know when to stay still. I did go to a monastery in the Fraser Valley twice a year for a budget retreat. Even though I wasn't Catholic I was welcome there and these times away I found helpful.
In November I got very sick for a few days. This wasn't flu, but exhaustion. In March I resumed my career in home support, this time under the auspices of the social services agency from Snooty Church. The work was intense and demanding as I cleaned crumbling single room occupancies, befriended lonely old men and offered support to clients bedevilled by any variety of addictions and mental health disturbances. It was an endless battle with filth and cockroaches. I still recall fondly when I was orienting a student worker. She was a nicely turned out working class matron wearing inadequate shoes, in her case, open toed high heels. We visited the hotel room of one of our clients. I was giving her a discursive talk about the various unpleasant surprises that we run across in this kind of work, among other things, (here I opened the oven door showing a teaming cockroach colony). Oh, the look on her face!
The novel was itself a huge undertaking such as I had never embarked on before. It has since been extensively revised and rewritten and it can now be read and, hopefully, enjoyed in serialized form on this blog, under the title "Thirteen Crucifixions."
I continued with daily mass. The free breakfast with clergy every day helped soften my food budget. I sold a few batiks to various interested friends, all with bird themes, of course. I really tried to channel God's love as faithfully as I could. I was becoming something of a legend in the local gay clubs, as one who neither partook in the lifestyle nor preached against it nor judged those who were in it but sought to be a presence of supportive love to any who would receive me. I developed some deep friendships there. Others feared and ridiculed me. And there were still those who looked at me from a safe distance, almost reaching out, but fearing that the holy flame they would touch would also burn them. I had been told many times that I carried a sacred presence that both attracted and scared the bejesus out of people.
It was all too intense and I often feared for my mental health. Somehow I stayed grounded but this was taking a toll on my health. My fault because I didn't know when to stay still. I did go to a monastery in the Fraser Valley twice a year for a budget retreat. Even though I wasn't Catholic I was welcome there and these times away I found helpful.
In November I got very sick for a few days. This wasn't flu, but exhaustion. In March I resumed my career in home support, this time under the auspices of the social services agency from Snooty Church. The work was intense and demanding as I cleaned crumbling single room occupancies, befriended lonely old men and offered support to clients bedevilled by any variety of addictions and mental health disturbances. It was an endless battle with filth and cockroaches. I still recall fondly when I was orienting a student worker. She was a nicely turned out working class matron wearing inadequate shoes, in her case, open toed high heels. We visited the hotel room of one of our clients. I was giving her a discursive talk about the various unpleasant surprises that we run across in this kind of work, among other things, (here I opened the oven door showing a teaming cockroach colony). Oh, the look on her face!
Sunday 1 November 2015
Places Where I've Lived: Basement Suite 5
My day would begin at around 5:45 am. The clock radio, set to CBC Radio 2, would come on usually with some of the most outlandish or obscure new music or new wave seeping into my fading dream, just before the beginning of Stereo Morning, the early morning classical music program. Regardless the day of the week or the season or the weather I would walk two and a half miles to early mass at Snooty Church. The walks were always tranquil and meditative and during half the year rather dark. The houses were sleepy with no lights as I glided under the streetlights to church. Sometimes I arrived early, in time for Matins. It was a very special time. I was sometimes the first to arrive. I would be on my knees, eschewing the cushion in front of me and opting to kneel unprotected on the flagstones for a more authentic experience of humble submission before the Throne of Grace. I have since come to regret this ascetic indulgence and now before boarding the bus I often have to ask the driver to lower the stoop in deference to my mildly arthritic knees.
One of the clergy would come in, sombre in black cassock, and another, each kneeling in his particular corner of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the back part of the church. Rarely did other parishioners make it in time for Matins and the shared liturgy, readings, prayers and responses drew us into a mystic reverie, making us one with all the saints who had lived before us.
Matins lasted fifteen minutes followed by fifteen minutes of silence while I digested the words of the Te Deum Laudamus, the Benedictus and the recited psalm and scripture readings. The server was the only distraction to the stillness in the chapel as he came in and out setting up the altar. Mass began with generally a half dozen, often less, in attendance. Following the final blessing we continued to kneel in silent contemplation waiting for the server to snuff out the two altar candles.
We then filed to the back door of the clergy house where lived the rector and the two other priests, an elegant post Edwardian house attached to the church. We sat around the table for coffee, tea, cereal and toast. The jam was homemade by the housekeeper, an extremely unpleasant Ukrainian-Canadian woman in her fifties. She hated me and I have to confess that I have found her one of the most difficult people in my life to not detest. Just recently I learned that she received the New Westminster award, which is kind of like an Anglican version of the Order of Canada. What she did to deserve this, given all her surly rudeness, poor-bashing, and ill treatment of the neighbourhood poor will always be beyond me.
The conversation was generally polite and restrained but sometimes not. No one mentioned anything really about their personal experience of God during the Eucharist. Not done in Anglican circles, and don't even think it in High Anglican society. I gradually developed friendships with a circle of people, mostly older than me by a generation or more that had been previously closed to me: well-educated upper middle class Anglicans who seemed to respect and appreciate me, my fervent charismatic Christianity, my work with the aged and suffering and my desire for social justice. There were also clashes and I had little patience with brainless society matrons pretending they were attending a garden party for upper aristocracy when really at our doorstep languished all manner of human misery imaginable and unimaginable. One Saturday morning the rector asked one of the old dears about the state of her garden. She replied rhapsodizing about her early lilacs and rhododendrons. Following a brief silence I replied calmly "so much depends on early lilacs and rhododendrons." There was a prolonged silence, then I said, well we might consider just how significant your lovely garden might be to some of the local poor on our doorstep here (I have already said that Snooty Church was in the heart of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, aka, the poorest postal code in Canada. The ultra conservative rector was particularly problematic, along with some of his handservants and handmaids but we did develop a mutual respect and even a mutual fondness, despite his flippant remarks about the antinuclear movement and unemployment and despite my at times following after him trying to yell some common sense into his little dinosaur-size brain.
I often walked home again after breakfast, after I was fired from my job, and would go back to sleep for two or three hours. Then I would have lunch, make coffee, and work on a batik. Sometimes friends would come by to visit, or I would visit them, or we would meet in coffee shops. Then I would walk downtown following supper, an early meal during the seven months I worked evenings as a market research interviewer. After work I would meet other friends in Benjamin's Café where we would chat and accept and hospitably entertain many local people at our table, some of them sex workers (of all genders), drug dealers, drag queens and rather regular folk as well. This was my ministry. I would later check out some of the bars and clubs, often just walking through them in silent prayer, sometimes stopping to talk to someone. We developed friendships and I simply offered what nonjudgmental support to those who sought me out. I was often the object of unwanted attention, but generally felt flattered while questioning the judgment of anyone who would find me appealing (Looking Better Every Beer?)
It was often past midnight when I got home. My cat would be there waiting for me. If it had been a particularly difficult day for me she would sit next to me on the armrest of the chair until she was assured I felt better. Such as the night I saw one poor fellow being beaten up in a parking lot. Someone was jumping up and down on his head. I tried to get staff in a local hotel to call police. They refused. I would be surprised if the poor bugger, likely victim of a drug deal gone sour, survived his beating, which was more likely an execution. Or when one sex worker I knew, a woman, told me she had just put a contract on the life of another sex worker I knew, a male, because being gay he was not inclined to reciprocate her love.
I would usually get to sleep by one or two, then wake up four hours later to the esoteric music on the radio and repeat the daily routine.
It was exhausting.
One of the clergy would come in, sombre in black cassock, and another, each kneeling in his particular corner of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the back part of the church. Rarely did other parishioners make it in time for Matins and the shared liturgy, readings, prayers and responses drew us into a mystic reverie, making us one with all the saints who had lived before us.
Matins lasted fifteen minutes followed by fifteen minutes of silence while I digested the words of the Te Deum Laudamus, the Benedictus and the recited psalm and scripture readings. The server was the only distraction to the stillness in the chapel as he came in and out setting up the altar. Mass began with generally a half dozen, often less, in attendance. Following the final blessing we continued to kneel in silent contemplation waiting for the server to snuff out the two altar candles.
We then filed to the back door of the clergy house where lived the rector and the two other priests, an elegant post Edwardian house attached to the church. We sat around the table for coffee, tea, cereal and toast. The jam was homemade by the housekeeper, an extremely unpleasant Ukrainian-Canadian woman in her fifties. She hated me and I have to confess that I have found her one of the most difficult people in my life to not detest. Just recently I learned that she received the New Westminster award, which is kind of like an Anglican version of the Order of Canada. What she did to deserve this, given all her surly rudeness, poor-bashing, and ill treatment of the neighbourhood poor will always be beyond me.
The conversation was generally polite and restrained but sometimes not. No one mentioned anything really about their personal experience of God during the Eucharist. Not done in Anglican circles, and don't even think it in High Anglican society. I gradually developed friendships with a circle of people, mostly older than me by a generation or more that had been previously closed to me: well-educated upper middle class Anglicans who seemed to respect and appreciate me, my fervent charismatic Christianity, my work with the aged and suffering and my desire for social justice. There were also clashes and I had little patience with brainless society matrons pretending they were attending a garden party for upper aristocracy when really at our doorstep languished all manner of human misery imaginable and unimaginable. One Saturday morning the rector asked one of the old dears about the state of her garden. She replied rhapsodizing about her early lilacs and rhododendrons. Following a brief silence I replied calmly "so much depends on early lilacs and rhododendrons." There was a prolonged silence, then I said, well we might consider just how significant your lovely garden might be to some of the local poor on our doorstep here (I have already said that Snooty Church was in the heart of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, aka, the poorest postal code in Canada. The ultra conservative rector was particularly problematic, along with some of his handservants and handmaids but we did develop a mutual respect and even a mutual fondness, despite his flippant remarks about the antinuclear movement and unemployment and despite my at times following after him trying to yell some common sense into his little dinosaur-size brain.
I often walked home again after breakfast, after I was fired from my job, and would go back to sleep for two or three hours. Then I would have lunch, make coffee, and work on a batik. Sometimes friends would come by to visit, or I would visit them, or we would meet in coffee shops. Then I would walk downtown following supper, an early meal during the seven months I worked evenings as a market research interviewer. After work I would meet other friends in Benjamin's Café where we would chat and accept and hospitably entertain many local people at our table, some of them sex workers (of all genders), drug dealers, drag queens and rather regular folk as well. This was my ministry. I would later check out some of the bars and clubs, often just walking through them in silent prayer, sometimes stopping to talk to someone. We developed friendships and I simply offered what nonjudgmental support to those who sought me out. I was often the object of unwanted attention, but generally felt flattered while questioning the judgment of anyone who would find me appealing (Looking Better Every Beer?)
It was often past midnight when I got home. My cat would be there waiting for me. If it had been a particularly difficult day for me she would sit next to me on the armrest of the chair until she was assured I felt better. Such as the night I saw one poor fellow being beaten up in a parking lot. Someone was jumping up and down on his head. I tried to get staff in a local hotel to call police. They refused. I would be surprised if the poor bugger, likely victim of a drug deal gone sour, survived his beating, which was more likely an execution. Or when one sex worker I knew, a woman, told me she had just put a contract on the life of another sex worker I knew, a male, because being gay he was not inclined to reciprocate her love.
I would usually get to sleep by one or two, then wake up four hours later to the esoteric music on the radio and repeat the daily routine.
It was exhausting.
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