Life As Performance Art 61

A couple of moments ago, as I was sitting quietly in my little subsidized apartment, I was thinking and reflecting on how much the place where you live can help define you and form your character. Living in government subsidized housing, for example. In one of the scuzzier and very impersonal neighbourhoods of downtown. In a building run by a socially conservative Christian organization that doesn't accept same-sex marriage and where by extension I am going to always feel like a little bit of a pariah. Where forty percent of my neighbouring tenants are members of a support network for people living with a mental illness, and some of them are at times quite ill. Where management takes a charity approach, often treating their tenants like the Other. Where your apartment is just big enough to be able to accommodate you, but too small to facilitate hospitality. Where you are stranded with noisy neighbours in a building full of hard to house tenants. Where it often feels unsafe stepping out of your own front door. Where it is a waste of time communicating these concerns to management because their attitude seems to be of the old school conservative beggars can't be choosers and just be grateful that I don't have to sleep out on the sidewalk or under a bridge. This is the kind of low level stress I have been living with these past seventeen years that I have lived in Candela Place. I think my age also plays a factor. I was forty-six years old and unemployed when I moved in here. Well, I was self-employed, marketing my art and cleaning homes and offices, but I didn't really get a real job until after I had been living here for five months. And I have remained steadily and remuneratively employed ever since. I have been off of welfare now for going on seventeen years. The low rent that I pay has balanced off my ridiculously low wage, enabling me to save money and enjoy every year at least one month of international travel. I have become tougher, stronger and more self-reliant. Knowing that I will likely always be at loggerheads with management here, I have worked hard at cutting my own path while living here, and this has actually toughened me and made me more creative and resilient. Especially when dealing with noise from next door. I have come to make good use of earplugs and indoor ventilation from fans in order to simulate for myself a living environment that is relatively comfortable and liveable. This also comes at a cost, because I am never able to fully relax while living here, knowing that this environment is neither particularly safe or healthy, and that the support of management and staff is going to be at least somewhat indexed to compatibility of our belief systems. For them, it is not enough that I am a Christian, as they are. Given that I attend one of those liberal and progressive apostate Anglican churches must also stick in their craw. Particularly given that, to some of them anyway, I am a purported homeosexual who refuses to come out to any of them (since it's none of their goddamn business), but that also, while professing their religious faith, I will also come out (pardon the Freudian) in full support of marriage equality and adoption rights for gay, lesbian and transgendered persons. And all this while worshiping and loving God as the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, this is how living here has helped shape me. I have become more wary and less trusting of others. I have become tougher, more creative and self-reliant. I am more resilient than ever before. Plus, I am a little bit wiser about people, and more astute at examining and discerning the impact of power on other people and of the power dynamics in relationships where there are clear imbalances of power. Such as the dynamics that circulate and ebb and flow between tenants and management right here in Candela Place. This is not an ideal living situation. But it is certainly better than nothing, and far better than some of the alternatives. Plus, living here has provided me with just that right balance of safety and stress to enable be to grow stronger without turning into a complete basket case. In the meantime, my housing providers are going to have to satisfy themselves with me as a tenant for paying my rent early or on time, keeping my place clean, not making noise and being a good neighbour. Any other expectations they would presume to make on me will be considered unfair, unreasonable and will be immediately discarded. Live with it!