Life As Performance Art 87

I really wonder sometimes about all this progress nonsense, Gentle Reader. You know what I mean, all this drivel about how we are all getting better, more enlightened, the world is getting better, we are all getting smarter and more clever, living longer,and all this lovely modernism and liberalism, and how it is shaping us all into evolving into little deities, minor gods and goddesses and oh aren't we all so privileged and lucky to live in these times? Yes, we have the Internet, smart phones, laptops, advanced medicine, same gender marriage, we are well on our way to winning the war on racism, we have legalised cannabis and practice harm reduction, though we are nowhere near as good at it as the folks in Portugal or Switzerland, everyone has at least one gay best friend, and aren't we all ready to just throw up right now? On the other hand, we have the rise of the alt right, the dark web, populist morons hungry for power and fueled and propped up by hordes of angry, frightened and ignorant citizens in countries all over the world, while our planet is nearing its shelf life and we are just on the cusp of massive environmental collapse, while there is an unprecedented rise in hate crimes against homosexuals and trans people, Jews, Muslims, people of colour, and anyone else whom dumb and fearful right wing mouthbreathers typically love to hate. Are you done hurling yet, my little ducks? Those are the two sides, the two faces of this lovely global construct we are all living in. And unfettered capitalism, rather than saving the day, has simply done more to destroy the environment, while making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Except, and here is one little ray of good news, that the poor are not quite so desperately poor as they were, say, forty years ago. But we still have nothing to crow about, with plenty of global and climate instability and now something like, 70.8 million refugees throughout the world (thanks, Uncle Google!) It's all getting better. And it's all getting worse. It really has become a crapshoot, and never have the stakes been higher. I can't exactly complain, by the way. I really cannot think of a time in my life when I've had it this good. Following a rather sound sleep with fascinating dreams about Colombians, I am sitting here in my little subsidized apartment enjoying the first touches of golden light splashing on the buildings across the way, while sipping a cup of Cuban dark roast coffee, and soon I will be having breakfast, likely a cheese omelette, with whole grain bread and peanut butter and jam. It is a quiet early summer morning, not yet 6 am. But for my pesky sneezing allergies, I am enjoying good health. I have friends, I have a church community, I have meaningful work, and much as I love to complain about the crappy pay, with good financial stewardship, this coming winter I will be returning to Costa Rica, for a month, and also with the likelihood of side trips to Colombia and Mexico. I really don't want for anything, though a higher wage would be helpful for cushioning things a bit, but my rent is scandalously low, because it's subsidized, and, as a senior, it is now even lower. I could go on, but I don't want to bore you. Back to this thing about history and progress. It really is going to be anyone's guess how things are going to turn out. Humanity appears to be weltering under the grip of one vast collective paroxysm of fear, and this is really making our day difficult. I do not have a crystal ball, and I cannot foretell the future. I only can say that more of us have really got to start working better with what we have, and to really stop hating and fearing each other This goes for our neighbourhoods, our cities, our country, the world. But it's not going to all happen in one rousing chorus of Kumbaya. I cannot think of a time, since the Second World War, where it will have become so incumbent on so many to work and think so much harder and pull together and work together so much harder, and to really start facing down our fear and the imaginary threats that fuel our fears and simply learn to stop hating, to start caring for others, to stop othering others, and I only wish this was going to happen, but it isn't. We have never been this polarised, even here in Canada with people being more scared of losing their jobs than cleaning up the environment. Nobody is going to suffer from mass unemployment should our political leaders actually get religion and switch overnight to green renewable technologies, and really this is going to have to happen overnight, because we have maybe ten years left before it all goes Kablooie. Sad, that so many are still caving to the fearmongering and lies from Big Oil and other beasts. But right now, I am privileged to think and write all this down as this new day begins and as one more time we search for (and might even find!) even the faintest excuse for hope. Now I am going to have breakfast.

Life As Performance Art 86

I'm going to get some of you mad, today, Gentle Reader. Too bad. I'm a bit mad myself right now, and likely in both senses of the word. I did have a chat on the phone yesterday with a friend who is also a faithful and regular reader of this blog. Perhaps after reading this, this person will suddenly be neither. I am not going to go into a lot of detail, because publicly embarrassing others is usually not the purpose of this blog, not even to those who really deserve it, except perhaps as a desperate and final measure. I am thinking today about gender, and of how some of us choose to be identified by others. No, it isn't just about how they want to identify themselves. That is something personal, and of course to be respected. However, when this sense of respect or recognition becomes expected, or should I say, demanded and coerced, from others, then I begin to get a bit uncomfortable. If you haven't guessed, already, Gentle Reader, I am referring here to gender. This is a very complex and controversial issue, these days, especially with all the new definitions and categories that are being bestowed on gender. We are no longer simply men and women, female and male. There are the cis binary gender men and women, whom are the usual and the regular and the majority. There are transwomen and transmen, or men who have always identified as female and women as men. There are intersex people who are more or less hermaphrodites, carrying both male and female sexual characteristics. Then there comes this subtler but deadlier category, of which I am myself a member. We are the gender nonconforming, basically speaking. Bodily, we are clearly male or female. Our sexual orientations tend to be diverse, though I would say that same-sex attraction and asexuality still tend to dominate this group. In my case, I don't really relate to the socially defined roles of gender. I feel and experience life not as both and, but as neither nor. I simply do not relate to gender. On the other hand, I have no big problems with pronouns. There does not exist in the English language a gender neutral pronoun other than "it," and that word is used generally for non-living objects, plants, and non-human animals. To call someone an it is to demean, disparage and dehumanise them. There is rather a strident insistence that gender-nonconforming people should be referred to as "they" and "them", but this is also problematic, since it works fine when you are referring to others in the plural, but in the singular, it simply does not work. It is an abuse of the English language, and for any wordsmith or writer, such as myself, Gentle Reader, the language must be respected, honoured and maintained in its grammatical purity and integrity. Some people feel insulted when they are identified with their biologically assigned genitalia. To me it's irrelevant. On the other hand, I also have an identity that does not gravitate around my gender identity. I would like to think of humans as being more complex than the presence or absence of the letter X to their chromosomes. I am thinking here of young university students who have become so angry and shrill at absolutely everything they do not agree with, that they will simply shut or shout down anyone with a different or opposing view, rather than show the good manners of participating in a rational and courteous conversation. This has been made abundantly clear with the absolute hatred that has been spewed all over a certain prominent Toronto professor of psychology, whom, simply for refusing to use nongendred pronouns for non gender conforming people, or for trans people their preferred pronoun of gender, has been particularly and egregiously targeted and vilified. What is even more tragic is the way the alt right has also hijacked his narrative, claiming him as their ally, even after he has several times publicly denounced them and everything they stand for. I did see a documentary about this man. It was a sympathetic portrayal, and to me, he came across as a reasonable, kind and open-minded sort. That he is a straight white cis binary male does nothing to help his position, unfortunately. Nor, when he has spoken publicly, has it been helpful, that the non-gender conforming students who hate him so much have done everything they could to silence him, shout him down, even unplug his amps and microphone while he is speaking. I feel sorry for the man, both for the abusive treatment he has received by students whose brains are still not fully developed enough to process things rationally, and the way he has been co opted by members of the alt right, who don't appear to have any functioning brain at all. Where do I stand with all this? Well, I respect people's right to self-identify in the way that they are most comfortable. I also want respected my right to disagree and not buy into their demands that I should have to somehow abuse the English language in order to keep them quiet. I do not have any trouble at all with the male pronouns as ascribed to me. I was born, biologically, a male. I have no trouble with that. Neither do I feel trapped or confined within my gender, since to me, our identity as humans is far more than our gender. I will accept and welcome those who self-identify in whatever way they choose. They also have to accept that the world is not necessarily going to buy into their little fantasy. I think that on all sides there is room for kindness, but we also have to be prepared for and be gracious about it, when others forget, neglect, or refuse to call us by the gender to which we self-identify. And those of us who don't buy into it have to accept that their expression of themselves is to be respected. And by the same token, that not everyone has to agree with them. I really like to think we have more important things to focus on and that these little hissy fits are but distractions that shield some of us from having to face some of the bigger issues and problems of life. Or it could also indicate how terribly, comically and tragically seriously a lot of people still take themselves. Call yourself whatever you want for all I care. Just don't scream and cry when some of us don't call you what you want to be called. There are also much worse things we could call some of you. Or maybe we just won't call you at all.

Life As Performance Art 85

Here is one of my short stories, Gentle Reader. Pardon the bad formatting, which is the fault of Blogger, and not me. Here also is the link to my other stories, should you care to purchase (four bucks, Canadian. A deal) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tigresa-Negra-Black-Tigress-Stories-ebook/dp/B07NF3JRFV LA TIGRESA NEGRA This city is for Anne a most pleasant surprise. None of the stories of crime and danger and murder seem true. Six days already she has been staying in this bed and breakfast in the heart of the world’s largest city and she still feels safe here. In the cold mornings she walks the oval Avenida Amsterdam, a distance of two kilometres, surrounded by trees and lovely and brightly-coloured art deco houses that suggest to her freshly iced birthday cakes. It is a boulevard with a broad sidewalk and green wrought-iron benches in the middle and hibiscus bushes blooming everywhere in an embarrassing abundance of red, orange and yellow flowers. From time to time there is a square with a fountain, and tiles of white, blue and golden-yellow shimmering beneath the cool undulating water. There are lovely little native doves of brownish grey plumage being frightened from the sidewalk by workers wielding brooms composed of branches tied to sticks. Their wings flash red when they fly away, as though showing their indignation. They make her think of witches' brooms, such as the Wicked Witch of the West rode through the sky across the TV screen in the Wizard of Oz. They wear uniforms, and she imagines them to be from the campos outside of the city, having come to Mexico City in search of employment, or they live in poor barrios where they were born, and likely will die. They are never going to travel outside of Mexico and maybe not even beyond this famous megalopolis. She wonders if the garbage collectors are paid at least a little better than the sweepers, for doing equally thankless work. None of them could ever afford to live in this lovely neighbourhood where she is seated idly with her smartphone and a trashy novel at a patio table, and certainly none of the muchachas who cook and clean for her daily in the hotel could ever live here. Anne never before was in the habit of thinking of people less fortunate than her, outside of their utility as providers of services and goods. But this is her first time ever travelling by herself, and she has had nearly a week to reflect on life in general and her own in particular, and she has already become downright introspective. To her surprise, this is not making her feel at all nervous or anxious. Even though this colonia, this neighbourhood, is relatively well-off, there are still beggars everywhere, just as in her own comfortable Canadian city of Vancouver. In the many cafes lining this elliptical avenue she at first tried to ignore them, or if they persisted, which they often did, wave them away like so many annoying fruit flies: the itinerant organ grinders, dignified in their caps and beige uniforms, accordionists and child beggars seeking alms among the tables on the sidewalk. There are also singers with guitars, some of them so good that she is surprised that they are not already famous and still have to busk for a living. Just yesterday there was a woman, perhaps a little older than Anne, her long black hair showing a little grey, and suggesting a younger Mercedes Sosa, with a guitar, singing folk songs and ballads nearby in front of a sidewalk café, in such a pure contralto voice so laden with pathos and passion as to break even the hardest and most obdurate heart. The patrons became a rapt audience, applauding enthusiastically between songs. She is looking for this singer again, because it has taken this much to melt her habitual resistance to life, as her sister tends to call it. Now her resistance is eroding. First World guilt is finally winning the war over her soul and yesterday, for the first time, she gave an old woman a ten peso coin. Her sister, Vanessa, would be very proud of her. All the cafes open onto the street because of the mild climate, leaving ambiguous the division between inside and out. Her scant Spanish is beginning to improve, and Gustavo, the silly but handsome and kind manager of the hotel, gives her thirty minutes of Spanish practice every morning after breakfast. He is rather flamboyant and fastidious and she is almost certain that he is gay. She appears to be moving into the intermediate level, and already at times, feels almost fluent in the language of Cervantes. Anne is done with beach resorts and all-inclusives. She blames this on her age. She hates, now, being around drunk, loud and obnoxious tourists, as much for the lack of privacy, as the lack of freedom to go where and when she pleases. Such has been her experience in the resorts, where she visited other parts of Mexico: the Mayan Riviera with her husband, later with her Venezuelan boyfriend, Puerto Vallarta. She couldn't go anywhere alone and the lack of quiet often left her wanting to scream out in rage and frustration. Now she has three weeks alone to spend with the ordinary people of Mexico. To breathe their air, to eat their food and to walk on their pavement. She is also wanting to improve her Spanish. Three years living with Juan, her Venezuelan, had been enough to give her some foundation in the language, which eventually became the language of their lovemaking. Even now, more or less celibate, she wants to build on her skills, and despite her bland disappointment in Juan's lacklustre performance in bed, or as a lover, she wants to return to that place of joy and pure bliss that was the dense sweet air of new love she inhabited with him for maybe just a little less than their first three days together. He has another girlfriend now, a surgically-enhanced Colombian who took him in when she kicked him out of her condo after less than three years together. It turned out they had been seeing each other since before Anne had first met Juan. In fact, they had even enjoyed a few trysts in Bogotá, where he lived for a few months before emigrating to Canada. She only found this out later, though knowing of that woman’s existence during their time together had still been for her one of the many irritants in their relationship. Anne wants to live again in that atmosphere of fresh-off-the-shelf love and romance, and she wants to live there forever and her passport will be the language of that magical country. Her twin sister, Vanessa, has challenged Anne to try to get off her privilege on this vacation. She hopes that she can without having to sacrifice too much comfort. Anne has heard many horror stories about Mexico City: violent crime, kidnappings, drug-wars and rapes. She finds all this rather sexy and exciting, even if she has known nothing but peace and tranquility since she got off the plane. She has even entertained fantasies of being abducted and held for ransom by a handsome Mexican drug lord who ends up falling ass over teakettle for her...Even though she keeps this nonsense to herself, Anne is red-faced with embarrassment about entertaining such garbage, and tries to blame it on her diet of soap operas in her teenage years, and since divorcing her husband, her proclivity for shallow and short-lived affairs with very useless young men indeed. Here she is in the heart of this city of alleged danger and infamy, every day, being perpetually spoiled by the incredible kindness of hosts who couldn’t do enough to guarantee her comfort and happiness, from Spanish conversation, to anything she wants for breakfast and good wine and craft beer on the house while chatting on comfy sofas with other guests in the evenings. She does scan the breakfast table and the sofas every day for any eligible young, or not so young men, and so far she has drawn nothing but blanks. Almost all of them are in couples, and the rare single man seems either gay or otherwise inadequate to the challenge. Perhaps she has become too fussy in her middle age, but she thinks there might be another reason. She simply just doesn't want to anymore and is still struggling to adjust to this new phase in her life, since she has always thrived on being desirable to men. So different from Vanessa who is her identical twin, who since her early twenties has always been with Roy, her husband, with whom she is raising three teenagers. She can walk anywhere she wants and feel relatively safe, every bit as safe as she does in Vancouver, alone and unaccompanied. Apart from the beggars pleading for handouts (and finally she does willingly part with handfuls of change), apart from the kind strangers who have been offering her directions or assistance as she navigates the Metro, she is usually left alone, which she doesn’t always seem to mind. She likes riding the Metro. It isn't exactly comfortable, and the trains of ten bright orange cars with lime-green hard plastic seats inside seem rather old and out of date. Usually she has to stand, jostled and crowded by the real people of Mexico, workers, students, families, poor and middle class, all on their way to whatever they have to do in order to get through their day and get by in life. She has managed to subvert her Canadian preference for personal space and zero physical contact with strangers, and actually enjoys being touched and rubbed up against by the bodies of indifferent strangers. It isn't quite erotic, but she receives it as a loving maternal embrace from this city where she finds herself feeling strangely and preternaturally at home. Sybil, her best girlfriend since university, would suggest that she had probably lived in Mexico City before, in a previous life. She would almost believe her. Even the itinerant vendors, as they come on hawking CD's and chocolate bars or notebooks or pens or whatever, have caught her affection. Some of them are small children who should be in school. Sellers of CD's carry ghetto blasters concealed in their backpacks from which the latest rap, reggaeton, dance or mariachi tunes can blast throughout the car. Sometimes a busker, usually almost as good as the young Mercedes Sosa, will entertain them till the next station. Not once has anyone inappropriately touched her so far. Each time she leaves the train she feels strangely and supernaturally cleansed. She is sipping hot chocolate laced with cinnamon, a Mexican specialty, her chair positioned insecurely on the margin between the interior of the café and the sidewalk. To her surprise, all her food indulgences so far haven't increased her weight, and neither, even more to her surprise, does she particularly care. She has gladly relaxed her usual strict regimen of daily exercise, and now can't even be bothered with going out for a jog in the mornings. She has found that she prefers walking, that it helps her relax, she can see, observe, listen, absorb everything around her, she can this way, by walking as opposed to running, actually feel at one with her surroundings...She has bought a sandwich for a ten year old boy. He is gaunt, and tired-looking, with the eyes of an old man. He reminds her of Juan, from some family photos he showed her, even if he knew neither hunger nor privation growing up in his native Caracas, enjoying the privilege of an upper-middle class upbringing. It is the eyes that are the same, that same look of tiredness, wariness, hunger and cunning. Quietly he devours the sandwich, like a young Aztec god swallowing as a votive offering a still-beating human heart. In five minutes the child is gone, not even a word of gracias. She squelches her annoyance - she has no tolerance for ingratitude - then distracts herself with the young waiter who moves dancer-like among the tables of the half-occupied cafe. He is lean and graceful but there is also something of the forward aggression of a futbolista or professional soccer-player in his movements. He looks familiar and she rakes her memory to recall where she has seen him. He slips past her and suddenly she knows him. Several times she has seen him at the bed and breakfast, sometimes working the front desk, or searching his laptop at the dining room table. Gustavo’s brother. Remembering his name, she pronounces awkwardly, “Buenos días, Arturo.” He flashes a smile and in equally awkward English says, “You are from the hotel.” This is her first time in this café. For a couple of minutes he hovers over her table, practicing his English with comments about the weather and how to be safe when riding the Metro, the same smile never once leaving his face. She has never seen him smile in the hotel: this is why she didn’t recognize him? Arturo is four years younger than his brother and they share an apartment in nearby Colonia Roma along with their sister. She chooses not to mention that she has a twin sister, with whom she shared an apartment only briefly after they both moved out on their own, when Vanessa decided to get married and Anne went off and satisfied her wanderlust by travelling and working her way across Europe, Southeast Asia, and a half dozen or so short term relationships with rather feckless and unremarkable young male backpackers and locals, then ending up in Australia where she lived in Melbourne for more than a year, and met her future husband, a transplanted Canadian. Arturo offers her a postre, la torta de tres leches, on the house (cortesía de la casa) and tells her to look for him in the afternoon at the bed and breakfast. The cake is excessively sweet but the bitter sips of her black coffee make it tolerable as she continues to observe from the corner of her eye Gustavo's little brother, flirting with equal skill and finesse with both female patrons and male patrons alike. She picks up her trashy novel, but cannot focus on the steamy sex scene and, feeling embarrassed reading something so sordid and lurid in a public place, shoves the book into her backpack where no one can see it and stares out onto the sidewalk and the park across the street. Anne has spent the day walking. She isn’t much of a walker in Vancouver, where she doesn’t have time between running her business and caring for her aging parents, even if her sister spends more time with them than she does. The fitness spa in Yaletown looks after itself, since Juan, who started the business with her, now basically runs the place. Having left Venezuela as one of the privileged class immigrants now being courted by Canada, he found that the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chavez was not going to be particularly kind to his lucrative cosmetic surgery practice. It was he who had to strong-arm Anne into going on this holiday, not because she was overworked, she suspects, but because he feels he can operate the place better without her interference. It was their chronic inability to agree on how best to balance the books that eventually eroded and corroded their relationship, making it totally impossible for Anne to tolerate any further the looming existence of the surgically-enhanced Colombian into whose arms she finally drove him. He never did anything that she could exactly call illegal, but she soon found herself getting hopelessly weary of his indelible skill at finding loopholes. She had never in her life known anyone so opportunistic, even if he wasn’t quite totally lacking in business ethics. Still, despite her masters’ in business administration, Juan always managed to kick her butt for business savvy and had this incredible talent for generating profit. She still doesn’t think she can quite admire him for this. He also feels safer, he has told her, illegally practicing plastic surgery in the back of the clinic without her incriminating presence. No matter how many assurances she has tried to give him that her lips are sealed, that she would never rat him out to the authorities, no matter how much gratitude she has expressed for the work he has done on her own face and body. She owes her youthful appearance to her ex-lover’s skill and handiwork. He once called her his own personal work of art, his masterpiece. She just narrowly avoided throwing her drink in his face. He could not afford to retrain in Canada, and for Juan, the show must always go on. Today she walked the entire length of the gigantic Chapultepec Park. Visiting the zoo and the castle on the hill and walking in places unknown to tourists where she came out onto a broad pedestrian causeway empty for its half kilometre or so but for herself, paved with bricks and lined with fountains. It was like being in a dream, or a surreal altered state of consciousness, this strange walkway of golden- brown brickwork with benches and fountains where she walked, and walked, and continued to walk without encountering another human soul. She is almost sure that she has seen this place in a few dreams, or perhaps she was really just dreaming today while walking this causeway alone, away from the crowds, not even one solitary other to occupy a bench, stand by a fountain, or walk ahead or behind her. All shrouded in silence, with a shimmering silent light causing each brick to glow like molten copper underneath the Mexican sun. She is tired now, and wants to rest before dinner, which she will be eating early, just as they do in Vancouver. She cannot adjust to the late-hour hora de la cena mexicana, which would have her eating a full meal of enchilada and mole at ten pm She lies on her broad double bed, her entire aching body finally sinking into a delirious slumber, splayed spread-eagle near the right edge by the window, her black hoodie crumpled next to her in a heap like a sleeping cat. She has always slept in double beds, but never in the centre, as though side by side with an invisible husband or a phantom lover. She doesn’t feel quite tired enough to actually sleep, and the cheerful voices of the muchachas who clean and cook breakfast are still ringing out across the courtyard. She wonders about the women who work, cook and clean here. She has been told they are members of Gustavo and Arturo`s extended family, and therefore must live a little bit better than others who do their kind of work. Or so she would hope. The light in the room is soft and suffused and clearly the light of the short Mexican day is beginning to wane a little. She glances at the little clock radio on the dresser. It is 5:15. The muchachas have all gone back to their homes now, wherever they might happen to live, and the courtyard, but for the splashing fountain is quiet and still, which is fine with her. Occasionally there will be other guests, their voices heightened by just a little too much alcohol, holding court outside her window. She is really coming to dislike unwanted noise. It must be a feature of aging, she imagines. Just as Anne is about to drift into another dream state, there is a soft knock on the door. She pulls herself grudgingly from the bed, smoothes the counterpane, then quickly smoothes back her tousled hair, puts on the black hoodie and approaches the door. Deftly lifting the edge of the muslin curtain from the glass she sees Arturo. She opens the door slowly, reluctantly, a little wider than a crack. The splashing of the fountain is louder, almost musical downstairs where she notices the dark blue ceramic tiles that surround it. “Excuse me, Anne,” he says in slow, carefully thought-out English. “Would you like to join me for drinks?” “When?” It hasn’t occurred to her to formally say hi to him, as though she had been expecting his coming, and naturally had spent the past hour of her nap considering all sorts of possible places they could visit together. The truth is, Anne has not thought even once of Arturo, nor of any other man today, except for Juan who still squats in the back of her mind like a fetid and lingering shadow. “Meet me downstairs in the sala and we will go from there?” “Fifteen minutes?” she says noticing that his eyes are a lovely shade of golden brown and that he has perfect even white teeth. She closes the door quickly. Only after she has heard him go down the stairs does she pull open the curtain. There is a vague whiff of the cologne he is wearing. She pushes open the door as though to remove the invading aroma. In the bathroom mirror she sees that she doesn’t need to retouch her light makeup. She has naturally dark eyelashes and perfectly formed eyebrows, a blessing of nature. She decides not to change out of her black tank top and khaki green jeans. She wonders about wearing her new sandals, sexy with delicately-laced black leather thread, then decides to go in her usual walking shoes. The Botox that Juan injected last year is beginning to give out as the little vague lines on her forehead and underneath her eyes have started to show again. That little sag under her chin is something new. She will be in this city long enough to make an appointment with the surgical clinic she read about online. She could get it from Juan again for free, but decides not to, perhaps because she has long feared that he is really trying to reinvent her in his own image. It was her best friend, Sybil, who mentioned that recently over a pumpkin-spiced latte in her local Starbucks. Sometimes, and just sometimes, she takes her friend's advice seriously. Or she might forget about it altogether and just live with the consequences. She still hasn't made up her mind. Her body could belong to a woman twenty years younger. Her careful diet, the Pilates, and her daily fitness regimen have not failed her, but neither has Juan’s deftly maneuvered scalpel with all the minor, with all his deftly executed subtle enhancements to various parts of her body. She appears lithe, with an illusion of gracefulness belied by the increasing stiffness in her knees. She is forty-five and fears arthritis. It is almost too late for a child. Every test and every fertility treatment has failed her. For ten years Anne has not been married, and having a child was never part of the agenda when Juan and she were together. Definitely not father material. She descends the stairs, bracing against the chill wind that sweeps across the courtyard and she holds down her hair as though it were a sunhat. The friendly yellow lab that lives in this house rises up from her resting place near the dining room entrance, wagging her tail for a pat. Behind, seated at the table, Arturo is studying his laptop. He doesn’t look up to see her, and only when she has said his name twice does he appear to notice her. A vase full of supernaturally tall calla lilies stands between them on the huge mahogany breakfast table. Only when she sits down at the other end does he begin to smile. He did not come into her room with her afterward and she knew that she should have kept her mouth shut about her age. Arturo’s English, while not polished, was sufficient for them to communicate. He took her to a bookstore with a café inside on three levels, called “El Pendulo" on calle Nuevo Leon. Over glasses of red wine he wanted to hear the story of Anne’s life, and she gave him the facts: graduating from university more than twenty years ago then setting up her own accounting firm after two years of travel and working in Europe, Asia, and Australia where she met her future husband, a Canadian like her. She mentioned casually her divorce, and the fitness spa she helps run, while saying nothing about Juan. He seemed sad when she said she doesn't have children. He mentioned his young son and daughter, who live with their mother and her parents. They are not married. He tries to see them every week. He is no longer seeing the mother of his children, he said. He has never been outside of Mexico. All through the four or five hours they were together she examined, assessed and evaluated …she couldn’t put what she was feeling into words. Not as a couple, and certainly not as a one-night stand, though even now as she sits on the edge of the bed staring at her aging reflection she still has to quell her floating disappointment. He insisted on buying her drinks and food, even while they both knew that she earned nearly as much money in a single month as he would expect to see in almost a year. She wants a child, a baby, and she couldn’t bring herself to mention this, and she even wondered if even in this last year or two that nature would still be granting her, just a little more time, if... she could not fully form this thought, much less put it into words. Maybe had she offered him money… She wants a baby. Not a dog, not a cat. She wants a child. She is not interested in adopting. She wants her own…her own flesh, blood and bone, her own genes replicated in a new and hopefully improved form. This she has always wanted and even now, as the clock moves inexorably on, she can hear her belly screaming, the weeping echo of her uninhabited womb. Only after her divorce from Nathan did Anne begin to feel this loss, this emptiness, and with each year relentlessly and without pity drawing her nearer and nearer still to the cold and grey inevitability of her encroaching cronehood, the yearning has grown. Even though the doctor never diagnosed infertility, she did warn Anne that her chances of ever conceiving normally would always be remote. She could live with that, being too busy, as she was with her career, too busy falling out of love with her husband, too busy making the divorce as tolerable and endurable as possible, even swallowing and being swallowed alive by the popular lie of the amicable closure to the postmodern marriage, and she found herself too busy yet again managing her relationship with Juan while knowing full well that any possibility of having a child with him would also be a non-negotiable, and not just because she was practically infertile. She would not tolerate having a child fathered by...a child, and particularly not by a boy-man so without ethics, so lacking in a basic moral compass as to bring him dangerously close to the shadow realm of psychopathy. In the bar with Arturo she felt compelled by his perfect amber eyes and his perfect white teeth, and repelled by the slightly receding chin, fleshy lips and…she cannot put her finger on it, not as though it was a pulse she could read and measure. But there was no pulse. She sat across the small table from this handsome, yet not quite handsome, young Mexican, yearning naturally and irrationally for a baby, yet feeling prepared to walk away at the slightest... indiscretion?. Even if she was nearly infertile. She didn't feel done with trying. He walked with her back to the hotel and lingered to talk with the night staff. She sat in the living room nearby, not knowing what she was waiting for. Then he walked into the room, and sat not next to her on the couch but in the adjoining chair. They were the only people in the dimly lit room and Anne could feel her head spinning from alcohol and tiredness. He said good night and left. He did not kiss her, only lightly touching her on the shoulder Now she sits quietly in the semi-dark, waiting for her head to settle. She could log onto her laptop, but can’t think of anyone to send an email or a text to, nor anything to search for on Google. She wants only distraction. She has already watched a telenovela in Spanish on the TV in her room, but the language in TV dialogue is perfidiously hard for her to follow and she wants to give her ears a rest from Spanish, if only for the night, and she feels exhausted from the operatic dimensions of the melodrama and emotions. Probably she will check her Facebook status, then watch a couple of crazy cat videos on YouTube before knocking off for the night... but she also wants to send her sister a text. She struggles against the gravitational pull of the broad and empty bed. She is writing an e-mail to her sister, Vanessa. They are identical twins and live very different lives. In high school no one could tell them apart. They would exploit this, covering for each other in class if one wanted to skip for the day. Two perfectly blonde, blue eyed roses and cream little girls. Vanessa has been married for twenty years to a husband who still loves her and they have three teenage children. Vanessa, unlike Anne, is no longer pretty. She has never taken Botox, her face and body have never been enhanced by a surgeon’s skill. She has never dyed or coloured her hair, which went naturally dark and now is already showing grey. She has never lost the weight she gained from her three pregnancies, has bags under her eyes, lines on her forehead, and her breasts are already drooping. Last month they were having lunch together near her fitness spa and the waitress innocently assumed that Vanessa was her mother. Vanessa laughed, thoroughly reveling in the joke and Anne just wanted to sink into a very deep and bottomless pit. She works as a psychiatric nurse and has long ceased to care much about her appearance. She appears proud of looking like a frump. Anne used to privately despise her for this, but now she is starting to feel almost envious. Her sister, her identical twin, who even as a beautiful young girl, equal to Anne, cared not a damn about beauty or glamour, and seemed, instead, always focussed on,art and poetry, and involving herself in social and political causes. She never once said anything to or judged Anne about her preoccupation with clothes, fashion, make-up, glamour or boys or men. Vanessa was the first to emerge out of the womb, and she must have been touched by some angelic hand to make her so saintly and kind and given to good works and religious faith, while Anne, following just on her heels, should end up a shallow and now surgically made-over little tart, more secular than Quebec, with very little of a soul, and now rapidly diminishing sex appeal. Next year, Anne wants her sister to come back here to Mexico City with her, to stay with her in this lovely pension. They have done so little together in recent years but now her children are older. She has a little more time. They are still close. But there is also the care of their parents. Their mother is showing early stage dementia and their father is still recovering from heart-surgery. She reminds herself that Vanessa lives much closer to them than she does, even if she has three teenagers to manage, even if she works in a pitiless and demanding occupation. It is four am and Arturo is driving her to the airport. Despite her poor and brief sleep she feels strangely alert and aware of every detail of the passing moments. For the first time in her life, Anne has slept the whole night that she could sleep, lying right in the middle of the bed. She didn't move once from the centre. Arturo appears tired, slow, but jovial if quiet. He asks her if she has enjoyed her time here. “My time in the bed and breakfast, or in Mexico City?” “I was thinking both.” “They are different. But yes, both.” “What did you like best?” “About the hotel?” “Sure.” “The artist.” Staying in the bed and breakfast was a fellow Canadian and Vancouverite who left ten days following her arrival. He was a bit older, in his fifties, balding, greying and not at all glamourous or handsome. Frumpy and a bit overweight with his baggy white shirt and faded and fraying blue jeans. Just now, she realises, he seemed almost like a male version of her twin sister, a parallel self. He looked rather down on his luck, for which reason she really wondered how he could afford to travel, and especially how he was able to stay in a boutique bed and breakfast such as where he was with Anne and other fortunately-incomed guests. He was rather on the quiet side, but very friendly and seemed to engage well with everyone at the breakfast table where he appeared to hold court in the mornings. He also remembered everyone’s name. Even though he lives less than a ten minute walk from her condo in a government-subsidized apartment, she is sure she has never seen him before. In fact, when he first introduced himself, she really felt tempted to tell him that she lived not in Vancouver but in Toronto. She decided not to lie, and she owes this to whatever reform or personal transformation this vacation appears to have been having on her. When she saw the small sketchbook drawings of tropical birds and flowers he was executing in the courtyard Anne knew that she had to have one. He was going to give it to her, a brilliant green, black and violet hummingbird hovering over an orange hibiscus on a background of intense turquoise and sapphire blue. She insisted on paying him for it. He tried to refuse, but she laid down on his table five American twenties and told him not to argue any further with her as she walked away from him with her booty. That was the only thing she bought in Mexico City. While visiting the pyramids at Teotihuacan she had left nearly all her money in the safe in her room, and so she was prevented from purchasing from the many irritating vendors swarming the site some items of jewelry and a beautifully coloured bedspread that caught her eye. Of course they were annoying. They were desperate, and what else would they do to survive? Sell drugs? Many did. “The other Canadian?” “Yes. We live in the same city. I bought one of his drawings. “True souvenir of Mexico City”, he said smiling. “Well, it was done here, anyway.” “He is very good. His work looks authentically Mexican.” She was going to say that she was disappointed he didn’t stay longer. She had grown rather fond of him. She said nothing. “And what did you like about the city?” “The zoo.” “The zoo?” In the huge park she went several times to the big zoo, on the artist’s recommendation. Like the artist she disapproved of zoos on principal, but for this one she would make allowance. She could not figure out why. She remembered the birds, which reminded her of his drawings, but particularly the black jaguar. El tigre negro lived behind a glass window in a rather dark looking chamber. On her last visit he seemed restless. He kept pacing back and forth, from the back to the window, his green beryl eyes never once looking in her direction but past her, as though seeking a route of escape. The size and muscular grace of the huge cat left her dizzy with awe, and later she thought that she might have felt honoured had he pounced on her, killed and devoured her from head to foot. The beautiful huge cat reminded her of the black panther she saw in a zoo in Germany once, when she was travelling across the world. It too paced nervously, leaping back and forth in its glass enclosure, like every bit the trapped animal that it was. She recalled also a rancid stench of freshly rotting meat, and wondered how often the big cat’s cage was cleaned.. Through the quiet dark streets they drive, closer and closer to the air terminal. She feels disappointed that they have spoken only in English, but she is tired from poor sleep and has enough trouble focussing on English. She will be home before noon. She might get a pet after all. Perhaps a dog, maybe a cat. A big black tom with green beryl eyes. Or perhaps a cocker spaniel. Anne doesn’t want a pet. She wants children and now as she slips Arturo some money for the ride and steps out of the car she thinks of the barrenness that awaits her and the barrenness that she will be carrying home with her. Even now she has resolved to spend more time with her sister, and, if they’ll have her, with her nephew and nieces. Even if they are teenagers, they do love her as their cool aunt, or so she has always assumed. She has never permitted herself the luxury of envy, and she knows that she is on the threshold of deciding that she is going to stop colouring her hair, and never again is she going to see a surgeon, not even Juan, for anything that is not life-endangering. She wants to look more like Vanessa, her twin sister. For years she had tried to separate herself, unable to really drive her away, since the two women have always loved each other too much, at times, way too much. For years they communicated only sporadically, then, during the divorce, there was only one person there for Anne. Vanessa. Her doppleganger, as she used to call her. Even if she wanted to pull away from her again, this time she couldn’t. She knew it in Mexico City, and now that she is on her way home, she knows better than ever. They look different now. Their distinct life vocations and paths have shaped and formed them as two very unique, two very individual women, though formed from the same ovum: different vocations, different politics, different lives. Vanessa is still a lefty, still attends demonstrations, and now her big thing is saving the world from climate disaster. She couldn’t seem to fathom her sister’s lover’s desire to flee from Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolution, given all he was doing for the poor of his country, even if it meant well-heeled burgueses, or bourgeoisie, such as Juan, finally having to pay their share. But now Juan is having the last laugh, however bitter, with Victor Maduro at the helm and rapidly destroying his country and more than three million Venezuelans now leaving as refugees because there is no more food to eat. The twins no longer discuss politics. They simply want to be together again. And Anne wants to look like her twin sister again. It is just past noon when she arrives home in her small condominium. She welcomes the cool grey weather of a Vancouver December day and revels in the wet, oxygen-drenched air and the quiet streets and the calm traffic. She also misses all of a sudden the heavy acrid reek of cornmeal tortillas being cooked on sidewalk griddles in the barrio by the loving hands of the señoras. She never bothered to eat from any of the sidewalk taco stands, fearing food-poisoning, and preferring to stick to some of the better restaurants and cafés. After more than two weeks of dodging twelve lanes of traffic in a city notorious for its horrible drivers she is happy to be home again. As soon as she puts down her luggage she pours a tall cold glass of water from the kitchen faucet. Here she can drink water from the tap and she is celebrating this, savouring the pure bliss of clean Canadian tap water like it was vintage French champagne. The quiet emptiness of her place, rather than frightening her, seems to enfold her in a welcoming embrace as she puts her feet up on the couch and studies her mail. Vanessa has been kind to retrieve her mail for her during her trip. Juan said he'd be too busy, and didn't mention that he still couldn't bring himself to visit the home from which she had nearly bodily hurled him. She has also agreed to returning with Anne to Mexico City next year, if they are able to make arrangements for their parents. On the plane were two crying children: a baby and a toddler. She had to wear earplugs during the entire flight. Now, in her home, forgetting even to switch on the TV, she relaxes against the cushions, and closes her eyes. She’s still sort of fond of Juan, though she can’t say that she ever loved him and despite his shallowness, despite his lack of ethics, and despite that pneumatically-enhanced Colombian girl who will never let him go. Tomorrow, in the cold grey December rain, she will keep an eye out for the artist. She forgot to ask him for his card. Like her sister he is religious. She feels strangely okay with this. She would really like this man for a friend, someone to have coffee with from time to time, if he will see her. Anne really has very few people in her life whom she could honestly call her friends. She wonders how anyone so evidently poor could afford a trip like that. She reaches for her laptop, opens it, and begins an email to Arturo, who wanted her to let him know that she arrived safely. She doesn’t know what she is going to say to Juan. But why tell him anything? She just might even sell him the entire business and go work somewhere else, perhaps even move to Mexico. She might even turn him into the police. He has only to piss her off one time too many. She wonders what to say to Arturo. She pulls out the drawing she bought from the Canadian artist. It is still beautiful, and the colours shine jewel-like in the dim light of her living room. She will first get it properly mounted and framed, then she will hang it to the left of the window, right above the bromelia. She picks up her smartphone and begins a text to Arturo, but still doesn't know if she should try writing him in Spanish. She might not be ready to.

Life As Performance art 84

We do not make ourselves. Even the direction that our lives take, we still have to negotiate with forces beyond our control, more powerful than ourselves, and at best we have to agree to compromise. A friend of mine, who once remarked to me that really, anyone could make it through university if they really wanted to. however, I am not a privileged white guy, born into a comfortable bourgeois existence, who made it through university thanks to the Bank of Mom and Dad and being able to continue living in Chateau Familia while going on to graduate studies, and who has never had to do without in all of his privileged life. (by the way, Gentle Reader, not all white guys are privileged. White Privilege is a very selective goddess, and not a particularly benevolent deity) After I explained a thing or to to him, he did have the good sense and kindness to retract his comment. But these things linger, and they hurt and fester, because when you are poor and living on the margins you are always going to be unfairly and unjustly judged by the successful. It is their way of keeping us down and feeling safe and comfortable about our existence. Blame us for our failure. It's all our fault. We deserve what we get. Et cetera. We are their shadow, their poor, unwanted and unsuccessful shadow. Our existence reveals, not that we are lazy, undisciplined, or unmotivated, but that life is almost never fair or equal, and really, only the strong and lucky and well-connected are going to thrive, or at least survive. I am not complaining. Even though it has been insinuated that I was never a successful artist, I can reply that I have sold at least one hundred of my original paintings. The sticking point is, that with the visual and plastic arts, even more than in any other life or vocational discipline, the success rate is going to be very thin and narrow. Those who make it to the top are going to be very few, indeed. I am currently reading Malcolm Gladwell's famous book, Outliers. What is really standing out to me is his argument that personal ambition and hard work really have very little to do with making it in life. It has to do with birthdate and birth order, family and social environment,and how much support and encouragement to succeed one had in their formative years. It also has an awful lot to do with money, and with family stability. Talent plays a significant but not a huge role in this. In my own case, had my father not sexually molested me and otherwise demeaned, belittled and rejected me when I was a child; had my mother not beat the crap out of me every time she couldn't manage her anger; had my brother not beat the crap out of me every day because of his inborn hatred and resentment of me and my existence; had my father not been an alcoholic; had he and my mother been well-educated, and had my father especially valued and respected the importance of university education; had my parents not divorced, which is to say had my father kept his zipper up and had my mother been a little more forgiving, and had they gone in for good marriage counselling; had there been a sound spiritual, religious, ethical and moral foundation and rudder to our life as a family; had my mother not gone off to live with an abusive alcoholic with criminal tendencies when I was still in grade eleven, and had my father made a real effort to not hate me when I had to live with him for a little while (four months later, he kicked me out. I was seventeen); had other variables ween in place. No kid going through what I had to endure should be reasonably expected to do well in life. I could not finish postsecondary education for the simple reason that I was already emotionally exhausted from childhood and adolescent turmoil and trauma by the time I was a young adult struggling to keep a roof over my head, and I was working in an emotionally demanding and low paying occupation as a caregiver, making it impossible for me to have enough mental energy leftover to cope with night school. I know this, because I tried it, and it didn't work. Does this make me a failure? Not in the least. During that time, with all the variables against me, I still forged ahead in Christian street ministry and started an intentional Christian community, and we were living and working among a despised and unwanted population of street people, AIDS sufferers, queers and survival sex workers. I wrote a novel, and even if I couldn't get it published, at least it is now written and complete and available to be read on this blog under the serial title Thirteen Crucifixions, if you care to look at it Gentle Reader. I have published on Kindle my first collection of short stories. Here is the link, if you care to purchase https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tigresa-Negra-Black-Tigress-Stories-ebook/dp/B07NF3JRFV. Heck I'll even throw in a story for free, if you want to read that too. it will be in a separate post. I have also drawn and painted hundreds if not thousands of original compositions, more than one hundred have been sold, I have found affordable social housing and an occupation as a mental health worker that is rewarding and gratifying. I am still poor and I am still able to do a lot with my life despite everything. Perhaps I have not succeeded on society's terms. Big deal. On my terms, with the crap I have had to deal with, I think i have done pretty darn good, Gentle Reader.

Life As Performance Art 83

I live in social housing, which is to say that my rent is subsidized by government funding. By living in, and requiring this help, it is like making a public admission that I have somehow failed in life. There is a certain stigma interwoven in this process. This is a particularly cruel and unjust standard by which we measure ourselves and others, and it is the bitter fruit of capitalism. By becoming poor and in need of these government supports I have already said that I have failed, I have lost at life, and that somehow I am always going to have to be dependent on others in order to get by and survive in life. Never mind that even the most successful people owe their success as much to the support of others and good luck and timing as to their own hard work, perseverance an ingenuity. But they enjoy all the outward signs of success. They are the ones who complain bitterly about having to pay high taxes for keeping alive the likes of people like me. They also adorn their luxury homes and properties with huge angry red and black lawn signs protesting the recent luxury home taxes. Poor dears. I do not know why my neighbours have to live here in this building. I know my reasons. And as far as I'm concerned, I haven't lost at anything. Like anyone else, I have had to navigate my own unique set of circumstances and obstacles. Not everyone is going to survive a highly dysfunctional family in order to go on to thrive. I certainly didn't. But I coped. I coped so well, that I have been able to carve out a rather decent existence where I can bring home a small paycheque from a profession that is loaded with stigma, and still have enough money leftover in the bank to take off every year on a month-long vacation in Costa Rica or Mexico or Colombia. When I moved here to Candela Place, it was with the understanding that that was where I would be living for a long time, perhaps even for the rest of my life. It has become completely impossible for anyone on a low income to live in this city, unless we are receiving generous government supports. This has become the way of this current era. I had to reckon with this reality in 2002, at the age of 46. I knew that without university education, without competitive credentialed skills, and with unions being completely gutted, that I could only hope for an income that would be a little bit above minimum wage. Unfair? Of course it's unfair. There is nothing fair about capitalism. At least now I can relax a little, even if I am living off the taxpayers' "generosity" (but I am also a taxpayer). What this has made me is a refugee in my own city, in my own country. In order to survive for the long term, I have had to barter off my dignity, but it hasn't been a huge sacrifice. My dignity doesn't consist in the size of my paycheque, nor my mortgage, nor my possessions, nor my social network. My success as a person is that I have not sold out on my most precious and cherished values. This is not going to gain me much recognition or popularity, and frankly, I really do not care. There are people who will not be my friends because I have zero snob appeal. My circumstances are too humble for their thin little nostrils. I don't care. I don't need shallow people for friends. I also have something they are all lacking. It's called integrity, which apparently is what attracts those imbeciles to me in the first place, but in the end it is also a huge deal-killer for long term friendships. The moral high ground can be a very lonely place, and one must really take care that they are going to be able to withstand the social isolation that often results from putting principals ahead of personal advantage. It does make us better people. It also turns us into complete outsiders, and unfortunately people are still going to need us in just that kind of condition, for their own spiritual nourishment and survival. In the meantime, I live like a refugee in my own country. And every day of my life, I am going to have to cope with this. It isn't really that difficult.

Life As Performance Art 82

Writing this blog has been a therapeutic discipline, to say the least. I have seldom missed a single day, these past five and a half years, where I haven't had something to offer. Sometimes, as today, I feel like I am running out of ideas. But they always seem to come back, often with renewed force and vigor. I am trying to think of life post-blog, but I can't really imagine staying away from this disciplined exercise. Not even for twenty-four hours. This is akin to breathing, this exhalation of air and noise and fury, but in text on a fictional virtual page. This is the true power of never shutting up. I never know who is going to read this, sometimes I have had as few as six readers, sometimes hundreds. I think there have been people from almost every nation on earth, except for North Korea, reading this blog. What an honour! It is very interesting trying to write knowledgeably about things of which I know almost nothing. But I try to admit this. These are simply ideas, speculations, different and shifting frameworks for how we perceive, consider and embrace life. But life is what we embrace. We'd might as well, since it is always going to embrace us. We have little choice in the matter. We are alive because God breathed life into us, and by extension, we are the product of his breath. We are part of his message of the universe, incarnate. Even those who don't believe, or don't want to believe. It doesn't matter. And here, we have this power, this capacity, to think of, envision and conceptualize the universe. A tiny, insignificant animal is the human being, but oh how long and how wide our reach, even if it will never meet our grasp. It is something amazing and wonderful that a kind of half-formed, large brained ape such as our progenitors, could actually migrate from their ancestral African continent and to wander throughout in order to fill all the earth with our presence. We still are not biologically designed for many of the climates we inhabit. We remain a tropical or subtropical animal. Only in those kinds of climates do people wear little or no clothing. Everywhere else, we need clothes, (a mercy, this!). We have not evolved the body fat, fur or circulation in order to cope with most of the climates we now live in. Not even the indigenous people of Canada, whose myths insist that they were created in this region, have evolved the biological necessities for being able to live here without clothing and fuel for fire and heat. I suppose I want to emphasize this a bit, because I recently read half of a rather fatuous little book, titled First Nations 101, at the behest of my parish priest, since the Anglican Church has made indigenous people their flavour of the month for tokenism. The book is largely okay, informative, but the university'educated author, an indigenous woman, seems to expect us to swallow all the aboriginal myths as though they are equal in credibility to scientific fact and this is where we part company. The postmodernist style of education has really pushed cultural relativism to such an extreme where no one can think or speak rationally and get away with it. The whole scientific standard of inquiry, research, observation and experimentation is essentially an invention of Western Europe, though I do understand that the Muslim Middle East of the Middle Ages and ancient China, not to mention the Maya, are also worthy contenders for this honour. I am simply not going to even begin to accept that the myths and legends of a pre-literate people are going to be credibly considered in the face of tons of scientific evidence to the contrary. Yes, aboriginal voices must be heard and respected. However, they have no right to hijack the narrative, and I do hope that Anglicans and other well-meaning but rather dumb, guilt-ridden politically correct folk will not completely wipe their behinds with their common sense till there is nothing left fit for common use. On the other hand, we have a lot to learn from the First Nations people: about respecting our Mother Earth, living in the environment, treating others with dignity and respect, and true democracy and social justice. We don't have to agree on everything. And we are not going to be equal in all things. But respectfully, we must learn from one another, and perhaps this is finally, in faltering small steps, beginning to happen.

Life As Performance Art 81

This afternoon I will be having coffee with a young Chilean for language exchange. This will be our first meeting. One never knows what to expect on first meetings. I suppose that he will show up, perhaps a bit late, but who knows? Not all Latinos are tarde, or, I mean to write tardy, but the Spanish has so colonized my brain that it often overlaps with my native English. Some Latin Americans are very punctual. So punctual that they make Canadians look careless and sloppy. This Chilean knows that I am old enough to be his father. It says so on the webpage, with my profile. Aaron. Age 63. I find this annoyingly ageist. We are meeting together for language exchange, and not for bodily fluid exchange. This is not a dating, mating or hookup site, though I think there is legitimate concern, for a lot of women who use this page anyway, that there are plenty of dumbass males around who don't know how to think with their brains and will jump at any excuse for a cheap date. There was even one idiot in Panama, age 24 who sent me an image of a naked man. I gave him a good scolding and told him that we can only proceed if he promises to respect boundaries and not try anything like that with me again. It turns out that he is gay, has to live in the closet, and lives in a very homophobic culture and lives with depression. After several months of texting back and forth, we did manage one video call on Skype. He stayed in the dark and I could hardly make out his face. Even if his manners were civil and above the belt, I still felt creeped out around this guy. NEXT! It can be really difficult negotiating around sex and sexual orientation with a lot of Latinos. The older ones are usually very conservative and homophobic, and the first question they usually ask is if you're married. This could be for them an ice-breaker, or it could be a screening process. If you are a mature male and unmarried in a lot of those countries, it is assumed that you are likely going to be gay. And a lot of those Hispanic homophobes simply are not going to give you the time of day unless you can assure them that you are, shall we say, as totally normal as they are. With the young ones it can be a bit dicey. They tend to be a lot more progressive than their parents, but for a lot of them it's still a matter of don't ask, don't tell. Some, perhaps a lot, are still going to be severely homophobic, and I have had to deal with some of those idiots. One young man from Bogotá simply wouldn't talk to me again because I had mentioned spending time in areas of his precious city known to be gay. Others are curious, closeted, or looking for opportunities. There was one nineteen year old (with a girlfriend) from elsewhere in Colombia who seemed to enjoy Skyping with me while wearing nothing but a bed sheet wrapped around his waist as he lay supine across his bed.. Of course, I didn't bite. I didn't even nibble. It was for me, just embarrassing and nothing else. Some of them seem to like older white guys (like, HUH???!!). On the whole, I really don't care. I no longer answer questions about my marital status because I am Canadian and for Canadians that is considered a nosy and intrusive question, and if they don't like it, then they can just go away, because they are not going to be worth my time. If they are quite blatant about being attracted, I play coy and dumb, redirect and keep the focus on language. If it turns out that we really, genuinely like each other, regardless of attraction, then none of that really matters. We usually end up dropping enough of our guard to start really trusting each other and we actually end up becoming friends, and this is also occurring with a couple of individuals, anyway. We stay focussed on language. We might even be attracted to each other. But first we are friends helping each other learn or improve in our respective languages. If anything else is going to happen, it can wait till later, if it's going to happen at all. But in the long run, it really doesn't matter if anything happens are not. We have each found a new friend, and our language skills are improving. Nothing else should matter. And usually, it doesn't.

Life As Performance Art 80

I suppose that to some, perhaps even to many, my life must seem pretty dull and lacklustre. Yesterday, as with all or almost all my Sundays, I went to church. Went for a walk. Bought eggs. Came home. Made cocoa. Rested. Read. Did art. Had dinner. Talked to my Colombian friend on Skype, in Spanish, then in English. We are reading together an online novel in English. Did more art. Read. Then went to bed. However, I also walked ten miles yesterday, taking a long circuitous route through the wealthy neighbourhoods en route to church. The trees are fresh with green and birds are singing and appearing everywhere. The gardens are a splendour. I waited at the bus stop while chatting in Spanish to one of my neighbours, a lady from Honduras of African heritage, who is also well-educated and well-travelled. We were on our way to our respective churches. While walking to church (I got off the bus after the first two miles, then, taking labyrinth-like detours, walk another four and a half), I was singing hymns and anthems of praise to my God, and also later praying in Spanish and listening for his voice. I actually believe that God does speak to us, not in an audible voice, but in the silence of our hearts. Neither do I believe this to be a special gift reserved for a privileged elite. I believe that he does speak to all of us, but few of us hear because we don't believe, we don't want to believe, and we would rather live our own lives on our own terms (no matter how much we hurt ourselves in the process) instead of joyously abandoning ourselves to the one who created and sustains us. (We are so awfully foolish!) At church there was talk about the torturous path to reconciliation with indigenous peoples in this country, and the importance of recognizing the pain of all who are marginalized. Later, downstairs, there was coffee, birthday cake (leftover from the priest's elderly father-in-law), interesting chats with others in the parish, and evidence of growing and developing friendships. I helped bring tables and chairs upstairs to the sanctuary for a special service that was to be held in the afternoon, called a Feather Dance. Our priest gave me a bunch of bay leaves from her garden, to take home and garnish my fruit bowl, (the lovely aroma also repels fruit flies, along with the dried lavender I have put in my fruit bowl). Right now it contains bananas and ripening apricots, gleaming like sweet golden eggs. The walk home was long, meandering and labyrinthine. Again to enjoy the lovely huge homes festooned by gardens and trees and kilometres of quiet space in the mild air of late June. The beauty of having an ordered life is in the strength it helps us gather. I mentioned to a lady at church that I'm not really an introvert, but that these long solitary walks help me focus in prayer and prepare me for my times with people, be they clients and colleagues, or friends, and fellow parishioners. The cocoa I made at home was delicious, and I had most of it iced, Mexican style. Throughout the world there are so many awful things happening. There are also many good things, that somehow usually don't seem to reach our ears, since the news media loves to keep us in a sustained state of anxious alarm. I it bleeds, it leads. Yes, the planet is in trouble. And, yes, we are going to have to pull a lot harder together if we hope to survive these times of upheaval and transition. In the meantime, we will enjoy the beauty and the calm and the discipline of the ordered life.

Life As Performance Art 79

I think I have already mentioned on these pages that I am part of a web-page called Conversation Exchange, where I can meet native Spanish speakers and we will meet up, one to one, to help each other in our languages. It is a great service. It is free. And I have met a lot of interesting and great people here. Not everything has gone well. Some have turned into complete disasters. Others have more or less become friends for the long term, if rather hard to stay in touch with at times. I have had to learn a lot about negotiating cultural differences. Sometimes to cut lots of slack. Other times, to reinforce that certain habits of behaviour might be acceptable in Panama, but that is not how you are going to make friends in Canada. Especially around matters of sexuality and punctuality. Now, not all Latinos are incurable homophobes and not all Latino men are reprobate misogynists, though quite a few still are. Those idiots are quickly filtred out, when they find out that I am simply not going to tolerate this idiocy, since they are in Canada where, at least in theory, queers are safe and equal and women are respected. I will not get annoyed if they are no more than fifteen minutes late for our meeting. Then I tell them. Again, if they don't like it, they can go back to Mexico for all I care. We are in Canada and here we are punctual and respectful of other people's time and schedules. If I am stood up even once without apology or explanation, that ends the arrangement, unless there is a clear show of genuine repentance. They can otherwise take their Hispanic pride back to Colombia with them and happily fester, for all I care. Fortunately, most of my respondents have been a lot better than this. Usually quite punctual and respectful, and fortunately, if they are younger, they are usually more progressive about women and queers and other things. The ones I have had the most trouble from are those from upper middle class and wealthy families, who come here to major in business administration, or similar. Their sense of entitlement I find always offensive. They are also the most likely to be poor-bashers, and I cut no slack for people from privileged families who come here and badmouth some of our most vulnerable citizens. I have given a few Latinos short-shrift over this, and if they don't like it, well, go back to your gated community in Lima, for all I care! My Spanish is almost always better than your English, so you need me more than I need you. I lasted three and a half years with one of those idiots: a very spoiled and entitled individual, extremely self-centred. I am both sad and happy to announce that we are no longer friends. Likewise, the idiot who came here from Spain with his Mexican wife. He spoke very rudely to me when I confided to him about some problems in my family, then later completely lied and denied that he even said such things to me. For now, I am usually on Skype, these days with a new friend in Colombia, and more recently with a fellow who lives in Spain. I like these guys, and especially the Colombian seems to have become a particularly good friend, whom I hope to visit next year. I also have some Mexican friends, both here and in Mexico, with whom the contact is more off and on, but they remain for me very dear friends. Respect and patience are every bit as important as maintaining realistic standards. Not everyone can commit for the long-term, because of work and family concerns. Some simply lose interest, or find new people whom they are going to like better. I generally contact only other males, and for one simple reason. This kind of web-page can easily turn into a site for stalkers, and Latina women are especially sensitive and vulnerable to male idiocy. I will only meet up with a female Spanish speaker if she contacts me first, and often the arrangements have gone very well and very respectful. Once we get past the cultural differences and baggage, it is often easy to forget about them altogether as we acquire in these relationships a sense of flow and ease. Sometimes things can get jolted a bit, because culture also runs very deep in the human psyche, though we are always still going to be more than our culture and history. We must be. We are, after all, living human beings. However, and this seems universal in the Spanish-speaking world, family is always going to come first. if Mama wants, Mama gets, and all the world is just going to have to stop for a while until Mama gets what she wants and feels good and ready to let her hijo or hija (son or daughter), return to their regular social life. This is never to be taken personally, always with grace and good humour, and for this reason my Latino friends are more likely to love me forever. Even if these meetings and interactions have not always gone smoothly, they are still worth it. I have learned much, and been much enriched by these interactions and friendships, and I hope to continue in these interesting arrangements of language and friendship for the rest of my (hopefully!) long life on this earth.

Life As Performance Art 78

Wow, it's the second day of summer and the weather is still kind of springlike, which is rather nice, and they are forecasting a bit of rain over the next few days, and that should help make everything green again. Already in some places the grass is getting yellow and brown and I am sure that a lot of people won't mind maybe three or four days of summer precipitation just to green everything up again. Oh, but they will all get upset and complain like it's the end of the world, because we are such simple and rather stupid creatures, despite our big fat brains. A friend of mine mentioned recently that the problem with all our extra grey matter and neuro synapsis and everything is it just makes us more neurotic. I couldn't agree more. I am feeling fully recovered from my health issues of the other day, and the dizziness is completely gone. I am one hundred percent certain that my body was reacting to all the stress of the last several weeks, and that there is no point in talking to any of the doctors in the clinic about any of this because they still are totally clued out about the mind and body connection when it comes to illness, and I simply avoid them now unless I need a prescription renewal, or should I become gravely ill. I also find their ageism problematic and offensive. It is as though that by being over sixty, I am automatically frail with one foot in the grave, and that no matter how well I seem to be doing, they simply are not going to notice as they go on pathologizing me for being older. And it isn't just the doctors. Yesterday, following a long hike into and through Stanley Park and pausing to do some grocery shopping on the way back I sat in one of two perpendicular black iron chairs on the corner of Comox and Nicola, where I rested a bit and enjoyed looking at the gardens. A fellow not much younger than me came along, using the chair to support his bag of whatever while he pulled a tissue out of his pocket to blow his nose. I mentioned how I like these chairs and he replied that one appreciates being able to sit down when older. I said that actually, I had just hiked seven miles. I didn't say anything about recovering from a brief illness. So, he looked quite embarrassed, said something along the lines of that's really good, then quickly got away from me. A lot of us don't easily forgive ourselves when caught putting our foot in our mouths. A bit later, on the Granville Bridge, I was passed by a couple not much younger than me, American visitors, I think, and she wore a T shirt that said "Not All Who Wander Are Lost". I told her how much I like the message and they both seemed appreciative. As I mentioned to the young barista at the coffee shop where I later stopped to work in my sketchbook, that message has long been the story of my life. The message seemed also to twig with him as he explained it to meaning that we're not simply wandering. We are also exploring. And this is how we discover...everything, Gentle Reader. One foot in front of the other.

Life As Performance Art 77

Good morning, Gentle Reader! And welcome to summer! It is the solstice today, the longest day, and after that it's all downhill again until Christmas. Now, doesn't that make you feel better? I have a friend in Colombia with whom I Skype on a regular basis. He is quite intrigued that we have daylight here after six in the evening. On the other hand he has also taken note that in December the sun goes down just after four. This week, one of our best building managers is going on to another position, and we will have new management. Hers are going to be big shoes to fill. It often works this way. The best ones almost never stay. I have met the new management staff. One of them, well, I seem to have to remind him at times that I am old enough to be his father (hell, I don't even enjoy reminding myself of that!). We were having a celebration reception for the exiting management, and it was advertised by a notice in the elevator. The biggest words on said notice? FREE FOOD. Naturally, I felt insulted, as I am sure that some other tenants must have felt. So, I thought up a little strategy, not to get even, but to simply let them know that here at More Than A Roof Housing, we the tenants just happen to be more than our stomachs. A lot more. So, early this week, I left a snappy little message on the office voice mail. I thanked the assistant manager for the notice, and for this invitation to a free food event, which incidentally will also be attended by our outgoing manager. I also thanked him for having such a high opinion of the tenants who live here in Candela Place. I don't ordinarily attend tenant events in my building, by the way, and I will eventually tell you why. But I did get downstairs to see everyone, to express a warm appreciation to our outgoing manager, and to meet and chat with her successor (who looks pretty good, so far, but time will tell!). The assistant manager was cordial, otherwise he didn't bat an eye. Several people, tenants among them, fairly insisted that I have something to eat. I graciously declined, saying, quite truthfully, that I have lots of food in my apartment, and that I do not attend these events for the FREE FOOD, and I made a very visible point of not partaking. And now, Gentle Reader, this is why I do not attend these events. First of all, there is always going to be, between landlords and tenants, a power imbalance that weighs on the side of management. In a social housing situation that power imbalance is often going to be huge. We, the tenants, are going to be poor and low income, many of us are going to have psychological and emotional issues, trauma, mental health diagnosis and other forms of disability. In many ways, we are at the mercy of our housing providers and the staff they employ. It is very kind of them to want to feed us, and to do their due diligence to see that we are taken care of. But charity never addresses a power imbalance, and in the long run only reinforces it. My modus operandi, since moving into Candela Place seventeen years ago as one of their first tenants, was to get my life moving forward again. For me, this meant complete independence. In exchange for incredibly low rent, I resolved to be and remain a good, responsible and loyal tenant, and I believe that I have held up my end of the bargain. However, in order to fully empower myself, I have had to turn down my housing providers' offers of kindness and charity, not out of scorn, and not simply out of stubborn pride, but because for me that would just be yet another obstacle on the way. I have opted instead to live as an equal, and to address as equals, my housing providers. I believe this has actually helped us get along in the long term. I am still, actually, glad that they provide these goodies to tenants, since not all of us are going to be in the same place in our lives, and some are so financially hobbled from the crappy low social assistance and pension incomes they receive, that it is good that they have this bit of extra to help keep them alive. I only hope and trust that for many of my neighbours here, this is not going to end up meaning that they have bartered off their dignity for a morsel of pizza.

Life As Performance Art 76

I will open this post, Gentle Reader, with a redacted version of an email I sent this morning to a friend with whom I sometimes fall into useless arguments: "The etiquette I am thinking of here has more to do with simply being open to people in a spirit of goodwill and graciousness, that doesn't treat others like strangers, which is sadly lacking in the spirit of the times we are living in. (and they wonder why so many people in Vancouver are lonely) But I do find troubling this trend in the past couple of decades that leads to a further disintegration of the little community that still exists among people. I am not referring here to a strict code of etiquette but what might be referred to as an organic graciousness and goodwill towards others. And willingness to trust others. People are so much more standoffish than they used to be. But I think it also behooves one to accept that not everyone is going to be there, since this is not the spirit of the age we are living in. (and this has nothing at all to do with being from Richmond, North Van, Holland, New York, Brazil or wherever) .... I just find this whole thing very sad.... " I have been noticing for sometime this downward spiral we all seem to be living in. Globally, we are all more connected than ever before, but locally there is a sad hollowing out that leaves people isolated and lonely. I have found it increasingly difficult to connect people. There was a time when it seemed so easy to simply introduce my friends to each other, and my friends would introduce me to their friends, and people seemed to actually want to spend time together. They weren't always sure to become friends with each other, nor even to get along or like each other, but at least there was that willingness and openness to the other that seems sadly nonexistent now. I have found that it can take years now to persuade my friends to want to meet each other. The results are often sad. They don't seem to connect, or to even want to connect, and often seem relieved to end the visit, and conveniently forget each other's names later on. I have particularly noticed this with significant others, be they spouses or girlfriends or boyfriends. They simply don't want me or their other friends to know such a significant part of their lives. There is almost a shame or embarrassment implicit here. Or, so it seems. I think this is also the bitter and toxic fruit of capitalism and consumerism. There is such an ethos of narcissistic selfishness at work here because we for the most part have permitted ourselves to be reduced to mercantile units. And this also feeds into our relationships. We want to fulfil ourselves, of course, and others exist primarily for that purpose. Friendship has become very user-friendly to a lot of people and this is problematic, because we are heading into some very rough times, globally and locally. We are going to need to get our heads out of our heinies and start focussing more on what we can offer to others, rather than what we can get. Unfortunately, with so many people numbing themselves with alcohol, pot and other substances, I don't think there is going to be much of a collective willingness among us to grow as whole and complete human beings. This is why I make an effort with people. This is also why I try to nurture my friendships. And this is why I am always reaching out to strangers. We have to put an end to this fictional nonsense of the "Other", and if we are going to survive and thrive in the challenging times that are coming then so much the more we are going to need to hang together, or we are simply going to end up just hanging ourselves.

Life As Performance Art 75

Yesterday I spoke with the two archdeacons, with the support of a friend being present. I told them my story, of the misunderstandings, the abusive and exploitative treatment, the lies, the cover-ups. No, this was not as grave or as damaging as being diddled by a priest, but the emotional fallout has still been considerable, and I have just taken a major step towards healing. They heard me with compassion and interest and I felt among friends. I have enough hope to balance the distrust that I naturally feel towards clergy, as I could see, hear, and sense the real human beings behind the clerical collars. This is important. My sleep is still suffering, but it was a bit better last night. Since writing those sentences I have had breakfast and gone down for a two and a half hour nap. Now it is 7:23 am. There isn't much further guarantee, but I do hope I can actually confront face to face the persons who made my life difficult, but that might not be as important as I once thought. I am not in this for vengeance, though it would still be nice to hear from their own lips their side of the story, even if they are likely to tell lies, and even better, the words of apology. Perhaps better for now to let those asses graze in their pasture. As for financial compensation, that remains to be seen, though that isn't the reason I am doing this. Now there remains the day to day, the everyday, and getting on with daily life. This morning is bright and full of colour. It remains to be seen how this day is going to unfold, but first I have to begin by putting one foot in front of the other. Life can be very dull and routine and gray. Or life can be full of drama, theatre and colour. If it was all kaleidoscopic pageantry, we wouldn't be able to cope. It would become for most of us an uninterrupted manic fiesta that we would soon tire from, then we would be able to find no way out of the loud, noisy and joyous gaiety, all the fireworks, dancing, music and cacophonous singing, and this would quickly become hell. But throughout the day, across the day, there are moments and quick little insights and spontaneous encounters, that can glisten like jewels in the mud, if we are ready to find them, cherish them and celebrate them. My own day today will consist of a client to see in East Vancouver this morning, followed by a meeting with a supervisor in the afternoon, and time before and between to walk, enjoy the exercise and the weather, to pause somewhere, likely in a coffee shop, with my sketchbook. There will likely be trials and obstacles along the way. Our days are also filled with unhappy, lost and desperate souls. Or people simply too selfish and lost in their own self-importance to even notice that other people exist, and that they are standing right next to them. They are part of the mosaic, just as are you and I, Gentle Reader.

Life As Performance Art 74

It is hard to believe that it is just halfway through June, plus three days, I think, because we have been enjoying summer weather, more or less, since early May. It hasn't been consistently summer, but the warmer and drier days far outnumber the chilly and wet. Of course, this is climate change. It is undeniably and irrefutably climate change. It will stay dry and hot through August and September. The wildfires will return, probably in July and in August the smoke will block out the sun and choke our lungs for much of August. Now, when people from other countries ask me about when to visit my city, I tell them not to come in August, unless they want to go home with a chronic respiratory condition. This is sad, but this is our current reality. How times have changed, with our climate, and vice-versa, and things are going to continue and go on changing, more and more and faster and faster, because the horse is now out of the barn and we can only try to keep pace with him as he continues to run amok. I am still in my low sleep cycle, which means that it is now 3:45 am and I have been up for at least an hour. There are always interesting documentaries on the radio at these early hours, about a hot food program for children in India, about how aging changes the human voice, about environmentally-conscious fashion, about what birds are really communicating through their songs. Nothing about that dumb basketball team in Toronto, that otherwise dominates the CBC programming. Maybe just this week and then they'll shut up about it.... It is now 7:55. I was asleep for about three hours, and now I am almost a functioning human being again. I am in the middle of two stressors today: church and work. Today I will be speaking with two archdeacons about my problems with their institution. I have already written extensively about these outrages that were inflicted on me, and perhaps I shall write further, a bit later. At work, right now, the less said, the better, but I am taking care to not get a sympathetic colleague in trouble while communicating with the higher echelons about the importance of paying us better. I did have a cancellation this morning at work, which gives me more paid time to rest as I prepare for my meeting at the diocesan office this afternoon. The stress is affecting my sleep and I have to work with this. In 622 days I will be collecting my full pension and will never again have to rely on a mean-spirited and stingy employer to help keep me alive. I hope. In the meantime, it is a beautiful day. I will be leaving early for a long walk in our toniest and leafiest neighbourhood before meeting with my two clients today. There will always be, among the ruins, those many rare jewels of gratitude.

Life As performance Art 73

I have slept approximately four and a half hours. It is almost 4 am and I have been up for nearly an hour. I have showered, groomed myself, tidied my apartment (quietly. I have neighbours, you know), done my devotional readings, made coffee, half dark Cuban roast, fair trade and organic, and half dark French Colombian decaf. Delicious, and not too much caffeine. This way I can easily get back to sleep after breakfast. I am likely sleeping less from the stress while preparing for my hearing tomorrow with two Anglican archdeacons, whom I have never previously met. I have no idea if I can trust them to be impartial and compassionate. Neither do I have any certainty that they are not just going to defend and protect the status quo. I will be speaking to them about the injustices and outrages that I suffered from clergy and others connected to their church over the last twenty to thirty years, how these people were instrumental in traumatizing me, how no one accepted responsibility or accountability for what they did to me, and I am going to demand reparations from the diocese, since nothing was done to provide any kind of oversight, support or protection, or pastoral care for me when and after this all happened. In fact, any time I tried to address the issue with clergy, during the last twenty years since the problems occurred, it was swept under the carpet. No one wanted to talk to me. They would bail, become suddenly unavailable, or simply change the subject or not want to do anything to help me move forward on this. they were afraid to, and likely because I had powerful enemies with very carefully crafted public images. This time I am expecting a full vindication. There is still in the Anglican bureaucracy a culture of secrecy where no one wants to face the music, and everyone does everything they can in order to cover each other's ass. It is, indeed, very touching, how much care the Anglican clergy take at covering each other's backsides. They really are no better than the Catholics as they keep trying to shuffle, protect or make lame excuses for pedophile priests. Even my parish priest seems reluctant to offer more than a token of support. There really seems to be an intricate pattern of smokescreens, smoke and mirrors in this particular religious hierarchy. No one, it seems, can be trusted. No one wants to be transparent. I am still willing to be proven wrong. I am aware that I am undergoing this process of truth-telling at great risk. I am going to have to trust the Anglican institution to investigate itself, and there are going to be no guarantees. This same climate of secrecy and intrigue in the church sent me over the edge in 1997, and this had better not happen again. I still hold out in hope that they are not all deceitful cowards, though to this day I remain unconvinced. The outcome of this investigation may be just the thing to help change my opinion a little, if the outcome is positive. If I am heard. If I receive an apology. If no lame excuses are made. If no lies are told. If I am paid compensation for the harms that occurred. If the harms are recognized. If there is contrition. A lot of ifs. Being poor sometimes is not a very nice experience. There is no way I could pursue any of this in a civil case, and for the simple reason that I cannot afford legal counsel. I am hoping that the good arch deacons and the archbishop who are about to hear my case, will be able to factor in just what a monstrous thing was done to me by their colleague clergy. This shameless taking advantage of an individual who is poor and vulnerable in order to vent their hostility at all those who oppose them, and hiding behind their own smokescreens of privilege in order to get away with it. I am about to find out if anything has changed. I am hoping. Optimistic? Maybe. the drums are rolling...

Life As Performance Art 72

This morning, Gentle Reader, I am going to write here a little bit about empowerment. This was for a while a very popular word in the mental health profession. And it is a word that I still use to describe my particular model of work. My goal, with my clients, is to help them see that they are the ones in charge of their recovery. That they are not victims. That they are not at the mercy of their illness and symptoms. They are not at the mercy of the mental health system. They are not at the mercy of their psychiatrists, case managers, rehab therapists, or peer support workers. They are not at the mercy of their medications. They are not at the mercy of the government ministries. They are not at the mercy of their families. It may seem a bit ironic that I would be doing this, given that in more than just one category, I could be said to be part of a disempowered population. I am on a low-income. I am queer-asexual. And I am a trauma survivor. I also live in low-cost government-housing, and work in a profession that is riddled with systemic stigma. As a peer-support worker, I am expected to put up and shut up about being inadequately remunerated and patronized as a mental health survivor who ought to feel grateful that he has a job, especially with said august organization who pays us so poorly for our services rendered. And yes, I do try to remind myself of this, every time I am taking home my paycheque from my stingy employer (well, it is electronically deposited. This is the twenty-first century, Gentle Reader!). So, how can I not feel disempowered! Well, I don't feel disempowered. First of all, I do not stay quiet about things. I simply tell them, um, you guys, we are underpaid, this is totally unfair and you are exploiting us. This hasn't gotten me fired, so far, but only because I say these things as nicely as possible, without diluting or watering down the impact of my outrage. Likewise, living in social housing. When something isn't working, I say something or do something. Management respects me, after several false starts, because I know what I am entitled to as a human being, and this has nothing to do with having a sense of entitlement, since rights are not the same thing as entitlements. In terms of dealing with homophobic assholes, I simply tell them they are homophobic assholes, unworthy of my friendship, and go back to your caves and stay there till you've evolved a little. Maybe I cannot change all my circumstances, but I can negotiate with them, and make them work to my favour. Perspective has a lot to do with it, using it as a token of empowerment. As an example, I am thinking of some Muslim women who prefer to veil their faces in public. I used to be concerned that they are victims of patriarchy and male oppression, until, after reading and listening a bit, I realized that here in Canada, anyway, if a woman goes around in public with her face covered, it is her choice, and usually for very good reason. Partly, this is her way of honouring her God. Also, this is how she wishes to address the male gaze. This is tantamount to taking a symbol of oppression, turning it around and using it as a token of empowerment. This is a Muslim woman's way of telling men that she is not there at their pleasure or lust, and that if anyone is going to look on her face, it will be their privilege and her choice as to whether to unveil or not. Knowing this has inspired in me a deep respect for women who veil themselves in public, even if they don't have to, nor shouldn't have to. But they choose to. Respect it. That is empowerment, when we confront the forces that oppress us and we declare that it is still going to happen, not on their terms but on our own terms. I really don't expect that a lot is going to change for me in my work or my housing, nor do I think that a lot of the knuckle-draggers around me are ready to evolve yet. But they still have to reckon with an assertive and punchy individual who is not going to take it lying down. Someone who is even better at giving than getting. This is empowerment. It is also called self-respect and integrity and dignity, and these are things that no one can take from us without our permission. Even as a recipient of abuse and exploitation, I have had to learn to face down my oppressors and reclaim the dignity that they stole from me. This has meant in some cases confrontation. Where confrontation has not been possible, this has simply involved coming to actually believe that even in the midst of the abuse, that I was and I am better than that, and therefore better than they. I may never see any of those losers again, and really, I don't care to. But now I can live my life refusing to repeat the treatment that I was subjected to, and seizing each day and each moment in a spirit of joy and humour as I move on in this gift of life.