Colombia 13

I am in Medellin right now.  We only had internet service installed this morning, so I haven't had internet access in a couple of days.  I haven't missed it.  We arrived late Thursday afternoon, a nine hour drive from Bogotá.  The drive took us through some of the mountainous areas in Colombia.  This is an astonishingly beautiful country.

I can't really say what my impression is so far of  Medellin, as I haven't been here long enough to get a feel of the place.  Decidedly different from Bogotá.  A lot more trees, in the "nice" neighbourhoods, anyway, and people seem friendlier here.  Also tremendous social and economic inequality, which I always find troubling when I'm in Latin America.  This also feels a bit hypocritical, given our many social problems in Vancouver.  But somehow this seems particularly entrenched in Colombia.  And, really, we do tend to see other peoples' problems better than we can see our own, and especially if they happen to be the same problems.  Of course, in Colombia, as in Vancouver, if you are not already wealthy, or at least comfortable, then you are really going to have to struggle  in order to survive.

There are tons of itinerant vendors here, selling everything and sometimes getting in your face if you happen to standing or sitting still anywhere for longer than two minutes.  When someone really gets in your face it can be hard not to be rude to them, especially if they are aggressive.  After one mishap yesterday, today I made an extra effort to be kind while declining an offer from a street shoe-shiner, and this time it went a bit better.  He was complaining bitterly about how hard it is to make a living, especially at his age and all I could do was sympathize and apologize.  But I have also noticed that some Colombians can be very insistent and persuasive, and it can be a challenge balancing tact with firmness with some of them.

Medellin itself is the second largest city in Colombia. after Bogotá, with a population of two and a half million.  It is set in a basin surrounded by mountains.  This also tends to trap air pollution which is quite a problem here. The very poor neighbourhoods climb up the mountains on the north and the rich neighbourhoods climb up the mountains on the south.  Worlds apart.  We did spend time in a fancy mall in the rich area yesterday and at times it felt like I hadn't even left Canada.  Later we were walking in an area that was not really poor, but working class.  We stopped in a store for cold drinks at a sidewalk table and suddenly it felt like I was really in  Colombia, with the local music, and folks hanging out together and, of course the dogs, off leash dogs everywhere.  I don't know why, but a lot of well-off Colombians seem to me to be particularly arrogant.  It could be because of their legacy as a very socially hierarchical, casteist kind of society, and I think that people in this country are still developing the kind of social conscience that we have long taken for granted here in Canada.  I think also that because Colombia is a republic that got it's start with a revolutionary war, that you are going to find here some of the same kind of knee jerk patriotism for which the US is notorious.  These kinds of democracies are always particularly vulnerable to militarism and to attaining fascist tendencies.  Or to put it another way, Canadians respect their national flag while Americans, and maybe Colombians, too, seem to worship theirs.

Alonso and I are staying in an apartment that he owns here in Medellin.  We have had to be innovative about furniture, etc, and next week he is moving here from Madrid, and all going well, we expect that I'll be visiting him here again next year, and that will give me a much better opportunity to get a sense of this strange city.

Colombia 12

Tomorrow we are driving to Medellín for three days.  We will return here to Madrid, then on Monday morning, early, I fly to Costa Rica.  Alonso is also in the process of moving to Medellin early in the week, so this is a transition time for both of us.  I haven't done a lot today, mostly hanging out with Alonso and trying to give hm support while he's getting everything organized.  We went for a walk this afternoon, then ended up going for coffee, then walked back, later going in the car to fuel up with death fuel for the eight and a half hour drive to Medellín tomorrow.

While we were at the service station I went to use the washroom.  It was locked and I asked the first person nearby if I needed a key.  He ignored me and it turned out to be one of two security guards driving an armoured truck with money in it.  They were of course carrying guns, but I didn't feel nervous or intimidated, just annoyed at their rudeness,  I rather see them as awkward little boys full of fear and self-importance, maybe why they are doing this kind of job? 

As we were driving back I noticed a highway sign that read, Encienda Luces.  Now Spanish has a reputation as a language that is beautiful, poetic, musical, sexy, but I'm less than convinced.  As much as I enjoy speaking it, and plan to keep learning and improving, for me it is just another language.  Perhaps familiarity has bred some contempt here.  But anyway, how many of you reading this page, who have no knowledge of Spanish, could actually guess what the words Encienda Luces would mean?  Perhaps it's the name of a magical colonial town.  Or maybe it's a heritage park, or an archeological site.  It might be the name of a restaurant, or a traditional dance.  Well, sorry to disappoint, but Encienda Luces means nothing else but turn on your headlights

We did have an interesting chat about this, and I mentioned to my friend that Colombia and Latin America in generaal, lost their charm for me many years ago.  But I still keep going back, and if you are wondering why, then it is for one simple reason: the people who live in these parts matter more to me than the places themselves.  In fact, I will go even a step further with this train of thought.  The people are the places.  And they are really no different from Canadians nor from other people who live elsewhere in the world.  Same problems, same virtues, same hopes, same fears..

If that's the case, then why even bother leaving home, you might ask.  For one simple reason: I only really began to appreciate, understand, value and really truly and rationally criticize my own dear little Canada after I began to travel a little.  There is something uniquely humanizing about getting out of your home environment, even if it means making yourself vulnerable, and that is exactly what has been happening for me.

Colombia 11

So far, not a hugely eventful day here in Madrid Cundinamarca.  Which is rather nice.  Can't have every day buzzing with excitement and magic realism intensity, now, can we, Gentle Reader?  All that overstimulation can be bad for the skin.  Not great for the digestion, either.  Nor one's sense of everyday reality.

Alonso's at work today, so I hung out here in the apartment live streaming CBC, to stay in touch with all the excitement in Vancouver, while developing a new drawing, then I headed out for a walk.  First I stopped in the local internet store to thank the young man who sold me the new charger cable and to assure him that it's all working lovely.  I did this partly because I was a bit of a hardass with him (and he deserved it!). then I stopped at the local pharmacy because I'd run out of band aids and
Alonso didn't have any (thanks to me, he has some now).   It turns out that I didn't know the correct word in Spanish for band aid and the pharmacist brought out some rolls of bandages, so, I had to take off my shoe and pull down my sock to show him the bandage on my blister.  So, now I have band aids.  I also cut my thumb last night while cooking dinner, and in the old part of town, I was seated in a cafe the cut started bleeding slightly, so as discreetly as possible, with my hands under the table, I disinfected the wound with hand sanitizer, then applied one of the band aids I'd just bought and Bob's your uncle. 

While in the same café, three gentlemen came in, and suddenly ther4 were three sets of admiring eyes fixed on my artwork.  I have to admit that while this was flattering, I also felt a bit disconcerted.  Here's an image of the bird I am working on.  It´s called a fairy bluebird and they live in Southeast Asia.



I was also wandering on some of the side streets of Madrid, which are very quiet.  There is hardly any traffic anywhere, and there is a certain charm about the many ramshackle looking buildings, especially the brightly painted ones.

https://www.google.com/maps/@4.735757,-74.2591658,3a,75y,278.2h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seBz3ExYqU-cnN8qB5v18hA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!12b1?rapsrc=apiv3

https://www.google.com/maps/@4.7359571,-74.2592503,3a,75y,278.2h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sszGovKyNyaDIrshim_M0Jg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!12b1?rapsrc=apiv3

https://www.google.com/maps/@4.7362991,-74.2595605,3a,75y,278.2h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sr4dapPAq76OdhA5w66MzXA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!12b1?rapsrc=apiv3

People seem to be and feel very safe in these neighbourhoods.  I noticed a little girl of about five or six in a school uniform walking alone and singing.

On my way to the mall I ended up chatting and walking with a gentleman around my age.  His name is Orlando and he owns a cake shop and bakery nearby that he invited me to visit.  I told him I would try to check it out tomorrow.  Now that I'm home (and Alonso's apartment has come to feel very much like home), I had a good nap, ate and am basically relaxing.  See you later.

Colombia 10

Yesterday, Sunday, I spent with Alonso and his brother, who stayed over for the night.  We hung out in the apartment over an extended breakfast, but were basically moving in slow motion.  We were all sore and tired from our hike the previous day, but enjoyably sore and tired.  Since Alonso's brother speaks only Spanish, that has been the dominant language this weekend.  For me excellent language practice, but now that his brother is gone, I'm going to try to give Alonso more English practice with me.

We all went in the car to do a major grocery shopping excursion in the neighbouring town, Mosquera, in a supermarket in the mall.  It is called Exito, and is kind of like a cross between No Frills and Superstore.  I covered the full cost of groceries, since Alonso has been paying my way almost everywhere else.  Then we spent a couple of hours in a cafe that reminded me rather of Boston Pizza.  I've noticed that often when people find out that I'm from Canada,  they end up asking me about
French language and Quebec.  So once again I spent a lot of time explaining in Spanish about some of our many  cultural and political complexities.

By the time we got home it was after four.  I had been planning on going for a walk since breakfast, but either it was raining or visiting and conversing with the two brothers would get too interesting.  I was determined to get back outside on my own once the groceries were put away, but Alonso tempted me with grilled cheese sandwiches so I stayed another forty minutes.  You could say I feel like a beloved hostage.  Not complaining.  And I finally did get out, but no solitude because the sidewalk was crammed with people.  One fellow, about fifty, and I ended up walking and talking together for almost a kilometre.  His name is Mauricio and he works for an import company.  He says he'd like to learn English but doesn't think he has the time.  He also appears very well-known and connected here in Madrid where he's lived all his life, saying hi to dozens of people along the way.  I stopped in the church to hear part of the sermon.  Some of it sounded okay but the priest seemed a little bit on the zealous side for pushing the Catholic agenda.  They are not allowed to think outside the box.

On the way back I stopped in a market for some produce items.  As I was selecting broccoli I tried to engage two of the workers in Spanish, but they just stared at me with the most godawful stupid look on their faces.  The two young women at the cash were a lot friendlier.   As I continued on my way I ended up talking to a young Venezuelan guy in front of a meat store.  His name is Enrique, very warm and friendly.

Today I did a shopping excursion at a supermarket called Olympica.  The lady behind me was carrying quite a load of stuff in her arms and the second time she bumped me I said in Spanish, Excuse me, please, and she just gave me a frightened look and otherwise didn't respond.  But I have noticed that a lot of women here seem to fear men, and I really don't blame them, sad as this is.  I was just holding two small items, so I invited her to put her things down on the conveyor belt, but I did have to ask the gentleman in front to please make some room for the poor woman, and he was very obliging.

In the afternoon I took a walk in the old part of town.  I came across a Venezuelan family selling candy on the sidewalk where they were huddled.  I tried to give them all my change, except for the two Canadian toonies Icarry with me.  The husband asked if he could have one of my toonies as a remembrance, and then he rushed back to give me a Venezuelan  fifty Bolivar note, also for remembrance, which I will treasure even if it has practically no monetary value.  Later, on the way back, I asked them for their names.  They are Leo and Malexa and their little boy is Moises.  Please pray for them and the many other Venezuelan refugees here.  And I have written their names on the fifty Bolivar note.

Something else happened that I am interpreting as a kind of sign or omen.  I was taking a different route and was crossing a pedestrian bridge over the Subachoque River.  I heard a little girl announce to her uninterested  companions, Mira, garzas, or look, egrets.  I would not have noticed the two egrets wading in the water had the child not said something, and I thanked her.  I stood and looked, as another egret, and another, and yet another joined them, till there were six.  I thought that there ought to be seven egrets, and then a seventh one came flying in, refused to land, then flew away and around and three or four times nearly landed in the water with its companions, but then it flew right over my head, and I knew that I had been there long enough.  I am interpreting this as a kind of blessing, though for the life of me I still cannot understand it.

Colombia 9

Gentle Reader, I have travellers' insomnia, and I really have not had a decent night's sleep since I arrived here.  I think there are a few factors at play here.  First of all, I have long been a light sleeper, and in the last few years I often do not sleep a full night.  In order to arrive here in Colombia, I had to endure a red eye flight from Vancouver to Toronto, then spend nine hours trying to divert myself in the Toronto Pearson International Airport on the very little sleep I got on the plane.  Ever since, it has been a bit of a roller coaster ride.  Of course, my good host and I have been adjusting to each other, only to see our friendship deepen from this experiment of cohabiting, which is rather nice following a year and a half of twice-weekly Skype visits.  The building we are in does get very noisy at times, sometimes at night and the early morning.  I am also, in my walkabouts, often meeting different and interesting and sometimes challenging people.  There is also that strange kind of sacrificial isolation that comes with total cultural immersion.  To this day, I have not encountered one single person who isn't Colombian, or who speaks fluent English.  Plus, my head is like a beehive that has just come out of hibernation, as I observe, absorb and digest the many strange and interesting things and people that just keep coming my way, and coming my way, and coming my way.  It is small wonder that my sleep is compromised.

Last night was particularly bad, and Alonso's brother was coming over at 7 am to join us on a drive to Villeta (pronounced  Bee-YAY-tah).  I couldn't get to sleep till late and managed just three hours or so of deep sleep before I was up again at shortly past 4 am.  I had some breakfast and went back to bed, though I warned Alonso in an email, who was at the moment sleeping quite soundly, that if I couldn't get any more sleep by 9 am, then I wasn't about to make promises about joining them on the trip.

I lay awake, dozing intermittently, till just after 8, then got up anyway, in rather a foul humour.  His brother had arrived and I warned them both that I was going to join them but look out because I was fixin' to kill someone.  Fortunately, we all knew not to take it very seriously, and I decided to play with my bad mood, turn it into a theatrical farce,  and give us all a bit of fun with it, which I think really helped me get over it pretty fast.

So we took a long drive of around 80 kilometers to Villeta, an interesting and beautiful town nestled in the mountains. We stopped at a roadside diner, outdoor, covered with a roof, for breakfast and enjoyed the exquisite fragrances of flowers wafting our way on the breeze while brilliant orange butterflies flitted back and forth.  This area has high rugged mountains covered in green, and I distinctly remember seeing this place in past dreams.  We continued the long ride through this otherworldly splendour till we arrived in Villeta, where the elevation is a bit lower, so it was quite hot and humid for us as we got out of the car.   As we passed through the central square, which is large and full of trees and people and all kinds of activity, I again had a distinct sense that I was revisiting a place I had seen in a dream.

Now it is Sunday, Gentle Reader, and to our most pleasant surprise, I had a good sleep last night.  It must have been the physical exhaustion from the hike we did yesterday, and lack of sleep.  We started from Villeta, and our objective was to walk about three or four miles along an abandoned railway to a small factory where panela is made. 

Click this link to learn more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panela

The heat and humidity in Villeta at first struck us rather hard and, coming from the cooler temperatures in the higher elevations, the two brothers were wearing two layers of shirts and I was wearing a rather heavy black pullover.  The central square in Villeta is quite huge with very tall trees and full of colour, life and people.  This is another place that I saw previously in some dreams  I was having around ten years ago, and the impact for me was rather surreal and disorienting.  We got through it okay and when we reached the abandoned railroad it seemed a bit cooler.   We were surrounded by lush jungle and the most incredible green everywhere, with small farms and houses along the way, from where periodically we could hear various strains of traditional Colombian music, and it really felt like we were in a movie.  Colourful birds and butterflies everywhere.  We passed through a village with chickens running around, then went down to a grotto by the river where there was a shrine to the Virgin Mary.  Alonso's brother refilled our water bottles from a trickle coming through the rocks.

There was no one present at the tiny panela factory but it was open and we went inside for a look.  There was the big extractor machine for getting the juice from the sugar cane. and a series of troughs and basins where the juice is cooked and boiled down to a thick syrup, rather like the process for making maple syrup, and the syrup is poured into square or rectangular molds where it dries and solidifies.  There was a lot of residual panela in the troughs, so we liberally helped ourselves.  Delicious.  Some of the local dogs got a bit neurotic, and ran towards us barking, then kind of got over it and left.  One came back to make friends and stayed to enjoy being petted.

We stopped at a local outdoor cantina to rest with bottles of a local beverage that is like a combination of cola and beer, two percent alcohol, and very refreshing.  We sat in the shade and another local dog came over to befriend us,  The lady who runs the cantina seemed very kind and cheerful.  We walked back to town by a different route, a regular road, and sat in a patio cafe on the square for cold drinks before we returned to the car for the drive home.  We were pretty tired when we got home.  I went to bed early while the two brothers stayed up to watch a movie.  Alonso's brother spent the night, but just got up.  I think Alonso is still in bed, enjoying his well-earned sleep.  ano, he's up now and just asked me to contribute my bedsheets for the morning wash load.

Colombia 8

Another interesting day here in Madrid, Cundinamarca.   It all started innocently enough.  The repairman came in to fix the washing machine, and Alonso and I sat around and talked and did some English practice, and he good naturedly accepted my teasing in two languages.  Later, as part of his English practice and to help me stay in touch with what's happening at home, we live streamed the Early Edition, the morning program on CBC, and this also gives Alonso an idea of what's going on in Vancouver.

He took off for work, and I took off for Madrid, walking on side streets again before ending up in the central plaza where I sat on a bench for a while.  Then I sat in a café for a while with my art, chatting intermittently with the owner, who also seemed to enjoy singing with the music she was playing.  Like so many who live here she says that she's never travelled outside of Colombia, and what for anyway when there's so much to see and do in Colombia.  I have heard Canadians say similar about Canada.  She also admitted that travel is expensive.

I did a walkabout in the area, then went into the wealthy, green and quiet side of town.  Isn't it interesting, Gentle Reader, just how often those three little words seem to get uttered in the same breath: wealthy, green and quiet?  I had a walk on the riverside path, taking care to avoid stepping in dogshit, which here in Madrid, is almost as plentiful as the blades of grass that it adorns.  Then I went onto a boulevard walkway full of trees and benches.  I came out on a circle and the one bench with shade was partly occupied by a security guard and his bicycle.  I approached him and politely asked if I could share the bench with him, given that the sum doesn't really agree with my pallid complexion. He was good humoured about it, then we had a pleasant chat in Spanish.  His two sons came over on a bike they were doubling on, one about seventeen, the other, maybe eleven. It was a pleasant visit, then they all went off for lunch somewhere.

I remained on the bench, then a lady of around sixty or so came and sat with me along with her grandson, who seemed about ten, and their little dog too.  She asked if they could practice their English with me, so we did a pleasant language exchange for around half an hour or so.  It came out that she is a strong Christian, herself, and the conversation got very interesting for a while.  We did agree that love and forgiveness are the most key words in the Christian life.  It only got a bit awkward when she asked me if I know where I'm going to spend eternity after I die.  I told her that that is something I don't worry about.  When she asked why, I replied that fear is not a good motive for following Christ, but love instead, and I also added that God is already very real and present for me, and that's how I base my life, and that really, our eternal destiny always begins here and now, with where we are and what we are doing with our lives, and how we treat others..  She couldn't argue with that.

I stopped in the grocery store in the big mall to buy som M and M's to replenish the white bowl on the table at home.  Once again the line up was stalled by an old woman fussing about all sorts of details about her purchase.  The cashier semed kind of irritated, and she and I exchanged rather sharp and knowing smiles once I made my purchase.  It turned out that I had exactly enough money left to purchase the chocolate with just one coin worth one Canadian dime left over, as I had forgotten to replenish my wallet before going out today.

On the way home I was harassed by yet another off-leash dog, a pit bull, thankfully wearing a muzzle.  He was dragging his leash behind him and his owners seemed really indifferent and oblivious as I told him to get lost, then told them to put him on a leash.  I think people like that often get a kind of sadistic thrill out of frightening strangers with their vicious dogs, which is probably why they have dogs like that in the first place.  They deserve each other.

I think I have already mentioned that I am staying in a gated community with several security guards on staff.  One of them, a rather miserable looking fellow around my age seems to have it in for me, and again tried to screen me with the third degree.  I tersely replied that I am staying with Alonso, suite 601, Tower 11, I am not a criminal, and I am from Canada, a peaceful and tranquil country, as I walked  away from him.  Then I was stopped by another guard who is friendly and already knows and likes me, and he just wanted to engage in some chit chat.  He mentioned a desire to improve his English, so I invited him to stop me anytime on the way if he wants to practice with me.  Then a different, older guard, who is also very kind stopped with us and joined the conversation, and thought of talking with me about tips for picking up women. Oops, wrong guy, so I politely backed out of that one and wished them a pleasant day.

Colombia 7

This has to be my most thorough experience ever in my life so far of total cultural immersion.  I see only Colombians here, no tourists, no other visitors.  There is that big fancy mall, called Casa Blanca, if I want to see something that seems to resemble Canada.  And it's all in Spanish.  I don't talk to many people here, outside of Alonso, my host, and just with random strangers that I meet along the way.  So, this is also a bit isolating, but part of a necessary tradeoff.  I've been on a couple of walks today, the second one with Alonso, mostly along the same route that I already described yesterday.

There are no chain stores anywhere, outside of local or Latin American.  This place has a decidedly small town feel, perhaps even a bit frozen in time in some ways.  This could easily be part of a setting from a Gabriel García Márquez novel, except the fashions are sixty years ahead and everyone carries a smartphone.   I tell you, Gentle Reader, that everyone in this country appears to be every bit as addicted to their little tech toys as the are in Canada.

I went out on my own for a couple of hours.  I thought of exploring some unknown streets in Madrid and ended up in yet one more of the ubiquitous bakery cafes that are to be found here.  Here is an image of one of the streets I was walking on:

https://www.google.com/maps/@4.7359123,-74.2554351,3a,75y,163.29h,100.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjW1AHzryQiDQyQ4r1-c1UA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!12b1?rapsrc=apiv3

This is a typically Colombian street in all it's unpretentious and hardscrabble glory


I eventually found my way to the central plaza.  The church was open so I went in.  There was a ceremony taking place near the front with people gathered round something with the priest.  As I drew closer I saw that it was a funeral gathering, so I left out of respect, and went to sit on a bench in the plaza.

 (right now, Gentle Reader we will pause for an annoyance break  as one of the many annoying mobile commercial messages drives its way down the road and out of earshot. 
This is a frequent public annoyance that appears to be quite tolerated in Latin American countries)

It's gone now and things are quiet again, or as quiet as they get around here, we are in Colombia, you know.

So, as I was saying, I was seated on a bench just across from the church, and there was another fellow on a bench with a friend, and he was playing a recorder.  He played very well and was dancing around in the square while playing. just as the funeral procession was making its way towards the door of the church.  Just then, two of the pigeons in the square were copulating.  It was a very surreal kind of setting, the funeral procession exiting the church to load the coffin in the hearse waiting outside.  A man playing the recorder while giddily dancing around, and two pigeons mating.  Another (presumably male) pigeon tried his luck, but she had already had her fill and wasn't about to put out again.  The coffin, containing the earthly remains of some random beloved dead Colombian, was loaded like cargo into the hearse which drove away so quickly that no one would have known it had ever been parked there.  The flautist with the recorder paused as a few random strangers applauded his performance and we ended up having a conversation.  His name is Alejandro.  He insisted that I pause so he could play me a couple more of his compositions, one of which is titled "El Policía es la Mierda", or, The Police Are Shit."  But the music was far lovelier than it's sardonic title and one series of notes seemed to be saying "No te preocupes, no te preocupes, no te preocupes..." which means, do not worry, do not worry, do not worry...  He was a very warm, charismatic and kind sort of man, and gave me a big hug before I left, to return to my home in Colombia.

Colombia 6

This afternoon at ten to six, local time, I woke up from a nap of less than one hour.  I didn't know where I was, nor what day it is.  I had to lie still for a minute in order to figure out that
 I am in my friend's apartment in Colombia, and the date.   I have never felt so disoriented.  This hasn't been my easiest or most enjoyable day in Colombia.  Here I will explain, Gentle Reader:

Today I went for rather a long walk to a neighbouring town, Mosquera.  I think it might have taken me just a bit over an hour, and I was walking along the highway.  Not a pleasant route, given the traffic, and the huge trucks that sometimes seemed ready to take me out, but I  arrived there okay, nonetheless.

It was a cloudy day, and as I was getting close to the town a little bit of rain began to spit.  Nothing serious, and even though I don't have an umbrella, I wasn't really bothered about it.  I soon arrived at the lovely and clean looking central plaza.  It is larger and better appointed than the one in Madrid.  The church was open so I stopped in for a couple of minutes.  Nothing special, really, with thick greenish coloured Corinthian columns, the tops covered in gold.  The founding Roman Catholics here, a few centuries ago, likely believed that God likes ostentation.  Who knew?

I stopped in a cafe nearby where I mostly worked on a drawing and tried to eavesdrop on Spanish conversations, but no one was seated that close to me.  A bit later I was given the cheque, and to my bewilderment, I was charged in American dollars, in this case one dollar for a cup of coffee.  Less than half what we pay in Vancouver.  I still felt a bit flustered and annoyed because, in these countries, if you are visibly caucasian, you are assumed to be an American, or you're American until proven innocent.  So, I explained to the staff (they were all wearing medical masks, probably under orders from their employers, given the coronavirus panic), that having white skin doesn't automatically make me American, any more than looking like Latinas makes any of them Mexican.  We were all fortunately good humoured about it, and I also mentioned how during the current administration, there are a number of Canadians who are not very fond of things American these days.

I tried to walk toward a shopping mall where Alonso and I visited on my first trip with him to Mosquera, but there was this enormous swarm of hundreds of local school kids in blue and grey uniforms completely mobbing the sidewalks on their lunch break, so I turned back.  It was also starting to rain rather harder, so I went into a bakery cafe for a cold drink and piece of cake where I continued to work on my art while waiting for the rain to stop. One of those humble establishments you see all over Colombia, and absolutely groaning with the most incredible looking baked goods, bread, buns, cookies, cakes, squares, and everything and more than you could ask or imagine.  I sat by the window.  The staff were super nice.  And they charged me in Colombian pesos.

On my way back to the highway, the sidewalk was blocked by a lineup into a place I couldn't quite identify.  Some of them were young black men, tall, muscular and with quite an intimidating vibe. I politely said excuse me in Spanish, and thanked them with a muy amable, or that's very kind, and one of them said to the other regarding me, Argentino, or Argentinian, given that Argentinians tend to be mostly white.  I replied, Canadiense, qué habla bien español, or Canadian who speaks good Spanish.  They looked at me poker faced, and I sensed some hostility, and was quite glad to get away.  I often get nervous in situations where race is a factor, because I know how justifiably pissed people of colour often are at white people, but I still don't like feeling like a target or an available skapegoat for venting their hostility.  I was glad to get away.  but this and other encounters today really help remind me of what a visible target I am in this area.  Especially given that I haven't seen anyone who doesn't seem Colombian in the entre week and a day I have been here.  Not complaining, by the way, just sayin', Gentle Reader.

I decided to walk back to Madrid.  There is an interesting local road that turns off the highway.  I was kind of sick of the traffic, so I checked it out.  It was pretty rural with fields and cows and dotted with houses and soon there were more houses and stores and stuff, all in the old Colombian style.  I could tell by a mountain and later by other landmarks that this route would still take me home.  I got growled at by a dog, then went into a butcher shop to buy some of the local cheese, and had a pleasant chat in Spanish with the kid who was serving me.  Like many in this area, it looks like it's family run and owned, and they appear to live upstairs.

As I walked on, I could tell by other landmarks that I was going  in the right direction.  This is always for me a gratifying experience when I travel, this learning on my own efforts and risk, to find my way around.   Even if I do get lost and nervous, or maybe even scared for a while.  I decided to go to the big mall in Madrid to finish my shopping at the supermarked there.  On my way I was almost attacked by an off leash pit bull cross in a work yard.  The people there were completely ignoring what was happening, so as I got away I gave them supreme shit in Spanish, ordering them to tie up their dog, and they should be ashamed of themselves and that they were utter imbeciles.  They didn't seem to care, really.  Because I am so clearly an outsider and their little doggy was must doing its job.

When I got back from the mall I was still shaken from the ordeal with the dog, and I think also with some of the weird racial undercurrents that were  happening to me today.  This could be why I felt disoriented upon waking from my nap.  I'm feeling a lot better now, and expecting there will be more interesting news to report in the coming days.  Ta-ta, darlings.

Colombia 5

We often hear or speak these days about filtres, about those who have no filtres, and about the necessity, the sheer inevitability of having to live with filtres.  In fact, it would seem that no one could properly cope or survive living without some kind of filtres.  Especially with such a hyper-connected world where everything seems to threaten to overwhelm, engulf us or swallow us alive.

I think that travel, when it's done right, among other things, is going to force us to reckon with our filtres as we have to give up the comfort, routine and predictability of home.  This has to be done because by consenting to visit distant or unfamiliar lands we are voluntarily accepting the strange, the unfamiliar, the new.  And if you are going to learn anything at all that is of value while travelling, then you are also going to have to be open to the possibility of your life being transformed by the experience.  But for that to happen, we first have to make ourselves a little more vulnerable, which means we are going to have to give up at least some of our filtres.   Unless you happen to be a consumer traveller or tourist.  Like you never left home.  Because there is an entire industry out there to cater to your needs while enabling you to visit popular tourist destinations where you will hardly ever feel as if you ever left home.  Especially if you have money.

Consumers seem to want it both ways.  They want the thrill or the pleasure of novelty, of sampling this country, or that city, or that park, or this monument or shrine or cathedral or art gallery.  Like the Discovery Channel, live.  A tasting menu, as opposed to a banquet. With all the comforts of home in a posh resort or hotel or cabanas, you will never once have to disgust yourself with local food that hasn't been prepared up to our ridiculously high standards, and neither will you have to ever once mix with or talk with any of the locals, all the better since you do not and never will speak their language, on any level.  You can see and enjoy all the greatest pleasures of some poor foreign country from inside your own protected tourist's bubble.

There are those among you, Gentle Reader who are going to object, and I do understand that there are those who because of age, infirmity or safety concerns should never be expected to visit another country vulnerable and unprotected.  We are not all made of the same kind of stuff, and that is perfectly okay.  It would also be foolish and tantamount to suicide abandoning all kinds of protective filtres just to have that ultimate traveller's high, which also just might be another word for death wish.

I, for example, never travel without earplugs, especially in Colombia, because people in this country are simply noisy.   They are lovely people.  Salt of the earth.  Noisy salt.  Except some, like my host, who is very quiet and easy going.  A Colombian who is easy on the nerves. But otherwise, the children, the adults and the dogs.  Music is played loud without consideration for neighbours, and we are simply expected to just put up or shut up.  Or get used to it.  While writing this, I did take a twenty minute nap, and because of the children outside yelling and squealing like little pigs getting slaughtered, and thanks to the loud music being played in one unit, as well as the poor neglected dog howling like the hound of hell in another unit, I had to put in my ear plugs, just to get a little much needed shuteye and rest.  But I have decided to otherwise use them, the earplugs, but sparingly, which is to say if I want to sleep, or take a nap, or if I am alone in the apartment and I simply want to give my nerves a little respite.    But something else is also at play here, Gentle Reader.  Otherwise, while I am here, little by little this ambient noise is becoming more tolerable and less annoying.  I am not yet completely okay with it, but I think it is getting better, and who only knows, maybe when I get back to Vancouver in April I will find it easier to put up with some of the racket where I live, or at least cope with it with a little more grace.  Especially given that my little apartment downtown is still a quieter place than this otherwise fine apartment where I am staying in Colombia.

It has been a fine day. We did a walkabout throughout Madrid and stopped in a couple of cute little coffee shops, with enjoyable chance encounters and little chats with people along the way.  And now I have my computer back, and I am glad, oh so glad, Gentle Reader.  My PRECIOUSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

Colombia 4

Today I did a walkabout in Madrid (I am not in Spain, Gentle Reader.  Madrid is the name of the town where I' m staying just outside of Bogotà..)  I sat again in the square, which is pleasant enough but not really overflowing with flowers.  l basically repeated the route that Alonso and I took together the other day, but roamed around a bit more  All over the place there are stray dogs.  One smallish little mutt in the square seems to like couples, and will not approach anyone sitting alone, only male and female couples,  but even if she's wagging her tail, no one seems interested in petting her.  They don't seem to have the kind of dog culture here that has been wagging Vancouver by the tail for the last few years, though I understand that middle-class folk in Bogotà are also lavishing all the attention due to a spoiled child on their little pedigreed darlings.   I also saw a lot of people on bikes.  One young man was peddling with his grandma riding on the handlebars.  Seriously!

I have found how important it is to ask strangers for help or directions. The municipal buildings are around the town square so I asked a security guard, a mature gentleman in a wheelchair, for directions to a washroom.  He directed me to the municipal office across the way, where I was directed again to another department around the corner and the security man was very kind and accommodating.  Then I sat on a cafe patio with just two tables, sipping a very strong and delicious Colombian dark roast while working on my current drawing.  From there, l repeated the previous route where I ended up at the mall to sit again in the food court with my drawing, do some grocery shopping, then head back to the apartment. so I could find out what is happening with my laptop.  The charger cable is not functioning and the young man working there was giving me a bit of a runaround so he could sell me an expensive battery that my computer is not needing.  I happen to know this because one of the technicians who helps repair my laptop in Vancouver told me just last month that there is nothing wrong with my battery.  Alonso is being super supportive by the way.   He went with me this morning to take in my laptop and explained on my behalf to the young staff person what the problem was.   I was told to return at three, which I did.  I was asked to come back at five,  I came back at five.   That was when the young guy tried to sell me the expensive battery.   It turned out that his own Spanish pronunciation is quite sloppy, as is often the case with young people speaking their language, and he figured out that my Spanish was stronger than he assumed and that I was not about to be taken for a fool.   We agreed that I give them another twenty minutes.   When I came back     I was asked to return before closing time at nine.  Alonso came home from work and said he'd come with me, so we arrived around seven.  It turns out they can't get the cable back till tomorrow morning sometime, likely at eleven.  I am cutting them slack for the delay, since Alonso has mentioned to me how bad and slow the traffic has been today in Bogota.  And he is kindly lending me his own laptop right now so I can go on thrilling everyone about my travels here in Colombia.

Yesterday, Alonso`s brother came to visit and we all toured around together in the car, first to a town called Facatativà (go ahead, try repeating it three times fast!).  We visited an archaeological site, called Las Piedras de Tunjo, a large natural area full of interesting rock formations and ancient rock paintings from pre-Columbian times.  Even though it is an interesting site, there were too many people, this being Sunday, and few seemed interested or engaged about the historical significance of the place and instead were rock climbing, playing soccer with their kids or picnicking  It felt rather like a desecration since this is a sacred site, and I rather found it difficult not to feel annoyed.  Then we came across this gigantic stone disc, maybe about forty metres circumference which was apparently an ancient site for rituals of sun worship.  Then it all began to make sense to me.  This place was the key, the energy centre of this site.  And Alonso and I both talked afterwards about how the spiritual energy of a place like that tends to keep people away because it was the only place that people seemed to actually be avoiding.   

Colombia 3

My host and I have been having interesting conversations around two themes in particular: the difference between niceness and kindness, and the way that everyone seems to have to live and experience life through filtres.  I think I have already covered the first topic elsewhere in these pages, but here we go again, Gentle Reader.

As I mentioned to Alonso, niceness is something anyone can lie their way through, but kindness, in order to not be mere niceness, has to come from the heart, from a genuine place, and I would say from the realest part of oneself.  Kindness also seems to have been trending lately as a kind of feelgood buzzword, and I often wonder if a lot of people mistake kindness for niceness, and vice-versa.  I also haven't been shy about shaming my own dear little Canada on the topic of niceness versus kindness, and for the simple reason that we are such a nation of hypocrites.  People, or Canadians, anyway, often have time to be nice.  It usually doesn't cost them anything.  They're usually too busy to be kind.  It's like people in church who tell me that they enjoy my singing (though I often wonder if they are lying), but a lot of them are usually less than likely to want to have coffee with me after the service.  They say they're too busy.  Uh-huh.

Of course, this is a trap we all fall in.  And I sometimes wonder if it has even more to do with our feeling too powerless and overwhelmed to be able to reach out meaningfully to others.  This seemed to be happening in Bogotá yesterday, as Alonso and I were driving through that city of ten million.  twice, while stalled in traffic, a father carrying in his arms  his young child approached the car, from my side, asking for money so they could feed their kid.  We both tried to help with a small bit of cash.  It hit me rather hard, and I was struggling to not let Alonso see that I was crying just afterward.  Then I said something about the huge problem of need, inequality, hardship and misery is so overwhelming, in both our cities, Vancouver as well as Bogotá, that really all we can do is take small steps of kindness in the way we interact with others.  Later, I also mentioned that in order to have a better world, we first have to become better people.  But the million dollar question, of course, is going to be, how do we become better people?

Entering Bogotá for the first time in four years yesterday was itself an experience.  First, the traffic.  Bumper to bumper, with cyclists trying to wend their way among the cars.  Very dangerous.  Then there were some bikes that had two occupants, one balancing on the handlebars, and sometimes three including a small child, usually.  There is an infrastructure of bike paths in Bogotá but as in Vancouver, there never seem to be enough.  We did drive through some poor and very hardscrabble neighbourhoods for a while, but the cars and the traffic were the most overwhelming presence.  Then loomed the other Bogotá with the tall and gleaming office towers that looked like a memorial to Ayn Rand (she was an American writer with apparently no conscience or moral compass at all, famous for novels glorifying ruthless capitalism and vilifying all those who get hurt by the rich.This theme really came alive for me again while Alonso and I were visiting a cafe in an upscale neighbourhood.  Everyone was of course well dressed, but I couldn't help but sense the kind of hard and cruel arrogance that has made some Colombians, and Canadians, very wealthy, while keeping the rest of us more or less in a state of perpetual disenfranchisement.   The feeling I was left with, is one of their laughing in the face of same poor that they are trampling underfoot.

There is also the matter of how inaccessible to the public are the green spaces in Bogotá.  It seems that almost all of that land is privately owned.  For example, the beautiful forested mountains on the eastern edge of Bogotá are largely inaccessible to the public, because a lot of that land is privately owned.

This is my third time in Colombia.  And my first time here in four years.  I guess this is why I am feeling so strongly the impact from witnessing the huge social inequality here.  And also, because I am not in Canada, where I am more used to living among our own style of homelessness and marginalization, it's going to look all the more stark and ugly when I am seeing it in a different form.  I had a conversation about this with a young man, I think maybe eighteen years old, yesterday.  I was in a café working on a new drawing while waiting for Alonso who was in a meeting nearby.   So, the kid took interest in my art, and we had a chat in both languages, since he also wanted to practice his English with me.  He seemed very surprised when I told him that Canada isn't  quite exactly the paradise we purport ourselves to be, and I alluded to some of our social problems and other  state secrets that he was quite shocked to hear.

It'll never be a perfect world.  And we should never be let off the hook for not trying.

Colombia 2

There are so many features about being here that tell me that I am no longer in Canada.  Perhaps in a big city such as Bogotá the difference wouldn't seem so dramatic, given that all major cities tend to be alike, but in the smaller towns the people often appear to be much truer to their cultural roots, whether they intend to be or not.  This isn't to say that they are necessarily going to be more conservative, politically or socially, but usually they are.   Here in the smaller towns and cities, people are going to be closer to their agricultural roots.   There is something very elemental and visceral about the way the land connects people to their sense of identity and  heritage.  Ask any indigenous person in Canada, or in the United States, or in Colombia.  I have also noticed in the smaller cities and towns that there are proportionately more workers, which is to say, people who work with their hands and muscles for a living.    People who are not as likely to have graduated from university.  The family unit is likely to be stronger, perhaps a lot stronger, but that also depends on the country or culture.  For example, the family unit in Canada is not particularly strong as it is in Latin American countries, where siblings  and even cousins often remain best friends well into their adult years and no one is going to look at you funny if you happen to be a man in your thirties and still living with your mother, or that you talk with her on the phone every day.

When I visit Colombia or other places in Latin America, I am sometimes reminded of what many older people might think of as a kinder and gentler era in Canada, when I was still a child.  There was that similar lack of general sophistication, or should I say lack of pretension, given that if there is a line between being sophisticated and being pretentious, it is going to be very thin and blurry.  Families were stronger in those days, but this often also meant that women, and occasionally men, would remain trapped inside hostile and abusive marriages because it was simply harder to get a divorce in those days.

There was also more publicly acknowledged religious faith, and everyone looked more or less the same.  Which still is the case for many Colombians, given that the majority are still observant Catholics and they do not enjoy the kind of cultural diversity that has long been taken for granted in Canada.   I have no personal nostalgia for those days, by the way, given that there was also such  rampant ignorance, intolerance and hostility towards anyone who was different.  People of colour were still being shamelessly and relentlessly discriminated against (and we still have a long way to go) and it could be almost as dangerous being an openly gay man anywhere in Canada during the fifties and sixties, as being a Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe .  I am also under the impression that even small town Colombians are going to be often more progressive than people were in Canada before both Kennedys were shot and before there was publicly-funded health care in Canada.  But even if there are still racism, homophobia and a tendency towards holding more conservative values and beliefs in Colombia, I am also assured and persuaded that there are also many progressive and open-minded Colombians, and I can say this with certainty because I happen to know some of them.  And by the same token, we still have plenty of Canadians who are backward and die-hard conservatives.

My time here in Colombia is still pleasantly uneventful.  I did my own walkabouts yesterday, and had some pleasant conversations with friendly strangers.  A lot of people here seem curious about outsiders and it can be fun having conversations in Spanish with those approachable locals where we can learn a bit about each other's countries and lives.  One fellow, who works in one of the bare-bones and unpretentious cafes here, seemed curious about what I was drawing, and came out to talk to me as I was seated at a sidewalk table.

Today, Alonso, who is my host, and I did a long walkabout through the town of Madrid.  Much of the city looks rather like East Hastings and Main, but the occupants are just ordinary working Colombians getting on with their lives.  Everything and everyone tends to spill out onto the sidewalks, and everywhere there is merchandise on display, or piles of fruits and vegetables, or sidewalk vendors selling almost everything you could ask or imagine.  And there are people everywhere, and all kinds of Latin music blaring from different storefronts.  One very serious and stone-face woman of a certain age was handing out little pamphlets, so I accepted one.  It turned out to be some kind of scam invoking the Virgin Mary to help cure male impotence.  Hmm, rather like all those old men who wear long white dresses and presume to teach women against the evils of birth control and abortion, methinks..  I kind of understand now why the lady didn't smile or acknowledge me when I thanked her for the pamphlet.  I almost said "sorry",  good Canadian that I am.

We sat in the town square for a while, taking in the sights and people watching.  It is a beautiful place, full of plants and flowers and trees and surrounded by heritage buildings that date back more than 200 years.  One of the local native doves was perched in the small tree just above where I was going to sit in the shade.  Alonso pointed  it out to me by way of warning me, given what birds are often famous for doing to people that are dumb enough to sit under them, so I sat on the stone wall instead, till the coast was clear.  There is a river that runs through Madrid and some of it is public green space that makes for an enjoyable walk.  We then visited the big shopping mall, where there was a book fair, so I bought a couple of books in Spanish.  When I was washing my hands in the men's washroom, a female security guard came in to have a quick look.  Maybe she wanted to check and make sure I was washing my hands.  Her face had the same look as the lady with the pamphlets about asking the Virgin Mary to cure male impotence.



So far, so good, Gentle Reader.

Colombia 1

This begins my second full day here.  Not really a lot to report.  The weather is pleasant, sunny and just over twenty degrees, I think.  Spending a lot of time with my host when he's not working, especially giving him support in English.  He is very kind and is spoiling me.   He lives in a small six story apartment in a brick building, one of sixteen small towers in a fairly new complex by the highway.  The guest room is pleasant, quiet and bright.  Yesterday he took me on a tour of Madrid, which is the name of the town where he lives.  It is a satellite city to Bogotá, which is about twenty miles away.  It looks pretty hardscrabble, and the people look like they really have to struggle.  But it looks worth exploring, I think particularly because it is so basic and unpretentious, which I think also describes a lot of Colombians.  I would say that of the many people I have known from all over Latin America and Spain, my most positive experience has been with  Colombians.  They are warm, open, generous, have little patience for bullshit, and their word is as good as gold.  And they live out loud.  Bring earplugs!  Of course, they're not all like that, and I have  had some negative experiences with Colombians but those are the exception.

We also visited a town that is very close, called Mosquera. It seems more upscale, and very attractive with lots of old architecture.  We did some grocery shopping in a supermarket in a mall, did some walking, and stopped for a cold drink in one of the many bakery cafes that are so quintessentially Colombian.  People here don't seem to be in a great hurry, have time for each other, and people watching can be something amazing here.

When we returned home I got to work on cooking dinner, since my host isn't very huge on cooking, so I prepared something basic, but good and nutritious and tasty too.  I took two cups of the dry red lentils we bought, cooked them in a big pot, and added garlic and onion that we had also bought, sauteed in butter.  Then I put in a lot of soy sauce and a good chunk of extra old cheddar.  I steamed some broccoli, and baked potatoes in the microwave.  We had the lentil and cheese mixture served over the broccoli and potatoes.  It was pretty good, not my best effort but my friend loved it and had seconds.  Which reminds me of how much I miss cooking for people, since it is very difficult having guests over in my tiny apartment.

After dinner, just after sunset, we did a super long walk, of about an hour or so, and ended up in rather a large mall where we had Jamaica to drink in a food court.  Jamaica is a popular beverage in many Latin American countries and it is basically chilled hibiscus tea, sweetened and it is wonderful.  I told my friend about how I used to make something similar, brewing red zinger tea then cooling it in the fridge and having it on ice.  Very refreshing.

Today, while my friend is at work, I'm just laying low, resting and finally catching up on my sleep.  I will do a couple of walks in the area, but mostly I'm going to stay close to home and get oriented to the neighbourhood.

It's All Performance Art 107

Airports are ugly places.  Especially if you're stranded in the Toronto Pearson International for eight hours, waiting for your connecting flight.  Well, it could be worse.  I could be stuck here for nine hours.  Or for eight hours and thirty minutes.  Or eight hours and ten minutes.  It isn't just the crowding and the screaming kids, it's the sense of being stranded in some megamall where all your food options are going to be scandalously overpriced.  I just became thirty dollars poorer and all I had to show for it  was an omelette, cut rate fried potatoes, a small hunk or two of toast and orange juice and coffee.  Nothing at all special.  Just costly.  But they can get away with shafting the customers because we really have few options in these places.  The passengers, if they are travelling alone, usually look miserable and harried, and if you so much as smile at anyone you get answered with a scowl, as in, how dare you be friendly or even just a little bit happy, we are in an airport, after all, where I am supposed to be isolated and miserable.

At least the passenger sitting next to me overnight was friendly.  I don't think she got any sleep, she was busy looking at movies and suchlike (oh, a little commentary here about the movie selections.  Some of it is really suitable for adults only.  Like the image I caught on a screen in a seat in front of me of a man and woman having sex inside a porta potty, and yes the toilet was a shakin'.  I am still trying to unsee that, by the way.)  Anyway, she was a bit restless, the woman next to me, I mean, not the one making whoopie in a plastic outhouse,  and I was frequently getting poked in the ribs, etc, but she really wasn't that annoying, and besides, she was friendly and warm, and it turns out that she is also a flight attendant taking some time off (great place to take a break if you already work for an airline, the same one even).  When I told her of my travel itinerary, she joked that when I get home I'll be as brown as she is (she is from Trinidad).  Well, she was nice, and that's what can happen when you're pleasant with people on a flight.  When I woke up I even said good morning to both her, and to the white woman on my right, who wasn't really that friendly, but go figure, eh?

Really, my one big complaint about that flight was that I couldn't even put my shoes back on my feet until I was getting off the plane.  Fortunately,one of the fight attendants directed me to an empty seat in business class so I could sit comfortably while properly tying them, etc.  So, at last I get to say that I got to sit in business class!

I really do resent this kind of harsh bigass capitalism that gets foisted on us in airports, but I suppose it can't be helped.  This is an international scourge and airports are international places, if ever there ever were any, so I am going to conclude here that at least I can get to where I want to go in the world, amd even the sore legs and sore knee from trying to sleep in a cramped economy seat while flying Air Houdini is still a worthy tradeoff.   And even the random smiles from strangers who, like me, often probably wish we could all be better and maybe just do a little better by one another.  Over and out, Gentle Reader.  Now, I am going to spend a bankroll on a Toblerone, just after signing off from this little screed de jour, or in Spanish ¡despotricado al día!

It's All Performance Art 106

I heard something interesting on the CBC yesterday, an interview with George Steiner, the recently deceased Jewish-French-American intellectual with Eleanor Wachtel on the program Writers and Company.  He mentioned that there appears to be a fundamental incompatibility between the arts and ordinary human life.  Everything he was saying made sense to me.  He stated that neither Mother Teresa nor anyone in Medicin Sans Frontiers would ever have made it as artists, not because of a lack of talent, but because of a difference of calling.   It is to suggest that arts and culture provide a kind of a bulwark or an insulation against the vicissitudes of real, ordinary life. 

I wonder if this could be why there is a strong trend with some prominent visual artists to portray and glorify in their artwork the ordinary.  They have to do it in order to feel grounded.  They are never going to do much that is really useful to humanity, outside of their lovely or challenging works of art.  So, this is like second best.  The beauty of the ordinary.  But those artists are not, and never are going to be, ordinary people. 

I suppose I already had my kick at the can.  But nothing happened.  Sour grapes, perhaps?  I don't think so.  I was told that I had the talent and the ability to do really well in the art world, but there were obstacles, some that I couldn't surmount, some that I didn't want to surmount.  I really worked, hours every day, at paining, seeking to grow, improve, develop a vision, technical finesse, and I was doing very well.  But there were two little things in my way.  For one, I was on my own, and had to work at a day job in order to pay the rent.  It was also really difficult to find a good and reliable agent or gallery who would represent me, since such entities prefer to take their chances only on already proven stock.  And I simply didn't have the extra time or energy for being all things that I was going to be needing from others in order to progress from being  an emergingl to an established artist.

But there was something else at play.  I was, and am a Christian.  I felt, and even more keenly still feel, a strong call to serve others in Christ's love.  There is no way I could give my all to the muse and still justify myself as a Christian.  I have seen others try, and they have done very well as artists.  I wouldn't say they have really gone anywhere as servants of Christ. 

The two worlds, art and service to others, are incompatible.  It is serving two masters.  I am happy to go on making art, to go on littering the world with my drawings and paintings.  But to become famous, or simply just well-known,  as I mentioned to a friend yesterday, I could only do this by sacrificing what for me is the most important part of my soul, which is humility and joy in serving.  I will never be known for anything, and I am happy with this.  As long as my life has been useful for helping others find joy and meaning, to learn to see God, and to love more strongly and more purely.  I can't think of anything that would honour me more, than sacrificing such honours to the glory of God.

It's All Performance Art 105

Last night I dreamed about a mentally unbalanced man, named Ray, who broke into my mother's apartment and decided to squat there.  He was aggressive and dangerous and I could not persuade him to leave.  I kept waking up then returning to the dream's sequels, and then finally he was gone, just leaving the keys in a wedge in the wall that I was able to pick up.   Later, once it was clear he was gone, I was being interviewed by a young woman journalist, and I was describing to her the various influences of different kinds of Christianity on my life.  I mentioned at first that I am not an evangelical, but then mentioned that this of course is a default statement that simply defines me by defining what I am not.  So, I went on to mention that I had a lot of grounding in justice and peace through my connections with Mennonites and Quakers, but I had also spent time in the Charismatic and Pentecostal churches, giving me a grounding in spiritual life and gifts, and some time also with evangelicals, but more consistently with the Anglican and high Anglican traditions.

In other words, I'm quite a mess, eh?

So, here I am in a traditional Anglican parish where the people simply refuse to change and grow.  I will not be surprised to see this church closed within the next five years, unless people really begin to embrace change.  And they don't want to.  Many live in lovely expensive homes.  With tons of empty bedrooms.  This is my message to those  Anglican  bourgeois householders: invite homeless people to sleep in your spare rooms, or sell your houses and move into something more modest.  Right now, as things stand, you are disgracing the Gospel of Christ by living so selfishly when we have such a crisis of homelessness and housing in this city.  And you call yourselves Christians!  What a lot of nerve!

I know some of these people.  Very nice and lovely people.  Also very selfish and brainwashed by bourgeois values.

In my parish church they are talking about doing things to make our church more inviting to the changing demographic in the neighbourhood.  This is a congregation made up largely of well-off white people  Now we are surrounded by a lot of well-off Asians.  Of course we want some of those well-off Asians to feel comfortable in our church.  They could also be well-off blacks or Latinos, but they will still be well-off, so they will be able to contribute plenty of moolah to the church coffers.  We will have token diversity, Asians and others mixed in with the usual white fold.  And everyone will still be financially well-off.  Diversity Anglican style.

It isn't that poor people aren't welcome in my church.  I am poor, and have been made very welcome, and I am grateful for this.  But I have it on authority that no one really wants to cross certain lines or boundaries in order to make us flexible and viable enough to actually grow as a Christian community.  Apparently, very few people in the church actually see or visit each other socially. We only see one another on Sundays, usually, in the church.  Which leaves us very little sense of what we are really like in the community, in our homes, families, careers,  etc. 

We have to start pulling together more as a community if we are going to survive this time of transition  We are going to have to review and re-order our priorities, making Christ and his people more important than they have been.  For those who chirp and protest that they still want time to see their families, well and good.  By the same token, we are purporting to follow the same Christ who became very poor for us, and commands us to forsake, parents, children and spouses in order to follow him, as well as to forsake all, including our lovely hones and follow him.

Start sharing more, or lose everything.  All of us!.

It's All Performance Art 104

It is lovely to see sunshine this morning.  Perhaps a bit on the cool side, the temperature right now is 3 degrees.  How easy Google makes our lives.  Just look it up and the information is one click away.  Vancouver temperature right now, 3 degrees.  Could it get easier?  The internet and IT do almost everything for us.  Or potentially anyway.  It is tragic and pathetic to see how completely dependent we have already become.  No one, it seems, could think of even living without their little Precious.  Sad.  And inevitable.  People are so lazy, you know.  If there was an app that would wipe our asses for us, I'm sure there would be at least a few takers.

For me the alarm first went off when I began to notice how many apparently able bodied people, men as well as women, were coming to rely on pressing disability buttons in order to electronically open doors in public spaces. For example, the public library downtown.   For a while, I was doing it myself, but then I began to wonder.  I don't have a disability, so that button, this convenience is not really for me.  Almost the moral equivalent of parking your car in the disability parking space when outside of your lazy and selfish attitude, there is really nothing wrong with you.

So, I thought, what is it about people who are reasonably fit, especially younger people, that makes them want to take the easiest, most convenient route?  Well, human laziness, for one thing.  A lot of us won't lift so much as a manicured finger, if we don't have to.  Which leaves me wondering how this reflects on our character.  Old-fashioned word, character, and a lot of folks are really more interested in having personality, or charisma, or sex appeal.  But character?  That suggests eating oatmeal porridge flavoured with salt and without even a modest sprinkle of skim milk to make it palatable. 

So, now, unless the weather is horrible and I am carrying heavy objects, I just pull or push open those doors, the old-fashioned way.  It's good exercise.  And it keeps me at least a little more independent, and less likely to rely on dubious supports.  I try to think of this as living like an adult.  Or becoming an adult, since we are always becoming adults, never really arriving there.

I think this is why I prefer to walk everywhere.  I don't drive a vehicle, or ride a bike, so my options are public transit or my legs.   Even though it's work, it always feels better doing it myself.  Sometimes I get a bit sore and tired, but really, our bodies have been engineered over the last five hundred thousand years plus to move independently, and excessive reliance on technological supports that deprive us of effort are in a subtle and insidious way dehumanizing. 

Get off your ass, darlings!

It's All Performance Art 103

Gentle Reader, this is an anecdotal account about race in my city of Vancouver.  This is a completely unscientific model I am employing but still worth a read, I would say, even if I might be happening to write it.

I was finishing up work in East Vancouver, seeing that my client would experience a smooth and fairly enjoyable transition between me and the colleague who will be substituting for me while I am away for the next couple of months.  Then I decided to take a slightly different route getting home, thinking of walking an extra ten minutes or so to catch the rapid bus.  Well, it turned out that traffic was closed because of a protest and I would have to devise a different bus route.  The resulting traffic jam made it necessary that I get off the bus and walk.   So, I had to change my route again.  I passed part of the protest, which was for the homeless people camping out in Oppenheimer Park.  (I have mixed feelings about protests that disrupt other people's lives, no matter how passionately I support the cause.)

This took me into Chinatown, giving me one last opportunity to enjoy a couple of botsi, the Chinese dim sum treat that is also called sesame balls, or tennis ball size deep fried dumplings made of glutinous rice flour and filled with sweet bean paste and coated in toasted sesame seeds.  Yes, they sound decidedly weird but they are exquisite!  I got on a different bus, since the usual routes were totally disrupted and delayed and eventually I found my way home.

Now, it was my random interactions with strangers on this reroute home that to me made all the difference.  On the first bus, there was a mature Filipino gentleman near my age seated next to me, and he seemed a bit confused about how to get to where he was going, so, I checked in with him about how he was doing.   We had a short but pleasant and friendly conversation.  Later at the Chinese bakery where I bought the botsi, I was served by two warm and friendly Chinese ladies.  When I got on the next bus, I found myself seated next to a friendly and warm aboriginal man , perhaps a bit older than me, poor, and he was telling me about some of his experiences as a fisherman.

On the last bus, I ran into potential trouble just as I was about to get off.  It was crowded and there was a white,man, well dressed, perhaps about thirty-five, caucasian, blond, and quite big.  I asked him politely if I could get past him.  He said, in a minute.  Then I asked if he was also getting off, and this I asked so I would be assured that I could just walk behind him.  Then he said in a rude and sharp tone that there wasn't enough room for him to let me go past him.  There was, actually, but I could tell he was an arrogant and entitled white guy not used to the humiliation of public transit.  I replied, "Please do not take that kind of tone with me.  We are all in the same boat, on the same bus."  He shrank into his large body, rather like a tortoise under siege, as I squeezed past him and got off the  bus.

Privilege really blinds those who are privileged.  They don't even know they are privileged, especially straight white men.  They are not all like that, thank heavens, but too many are, and we have a lot of work to do if we want to get past that, rather like getting past that entitled little Lord Fauntleroy on the bus yesterday.

It's All Performance Art 102

Here I am, four days away from my flight to Colombia and I still don't feel quite ready, but this too shall pass.  Right now, our official Canadian propaganda organ, the CBC is waxing all smarmy and nauseating about the tenth anniversary of the Winter Olympics that were held here in this city ten years ago.  Of course, they are going to give scant or no attention to the Olympics resistance network, which I was part of, demonstrating, marching and resisting on opening night, this corporate incursion that did only more to trample on the poorest of the poor in my city and to help make Vancouver unliveable to all but the super wealthy.

I remember, still, like it happened yesterday, the huge several thousand strong march downtown, with singing as well as we showed the city and the world that not everyone had swallowed the Olympic Kool Aid, and that there were at least a few people who believe that giving adequate support to the poor and upholding human rights is more important than adulating a bunch of young competitive jocks.  I was also on the front lines, confronting police on horseback near the entrance to the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic games here.  It was a bit scary, and fortunately none of the less than stable hotheads among us could successfully provoke the police into charging into us on their steeds.

Still, the legacy of the Olympic games has simply been to turn Vancouver into a city of broken dreams.  Now everyone who is wealthy wants to live here, and this has made even a modest apartment unaffordable to a lot of folks who have lived in Vancouver all their lives.  This is pure economic and social injustice.

Leaving is often an uneven process.  There are still some situations I wish were only a bit better before I am gone.  I have one friendship in suspension and there are people in my church I am legitimately annoyed with, but perhaps being away for two months will give us all a therapeutic rest, and we will be able to see things with more perspective.  Time will tell.  It's hard to say.  I am also moving into the new.  A new friendship in Colombia and possibly even more new and undiscovered friends both there and in Costa Rica.

I am always glad to leave behind me for a while every year the Canadian reality.  We really do not have much of a profile internationally and if I want news of my homeland when I'm away, then I usually have to go to CBC online.  Otherwise, we and our many small little parochial Canadian problems don't really have existence elsewhere.  This is equally humbling, annoying, and gratifying.  Humbling because we are not the great white north eagle scouts we like to believe ourselves to be.  annoying because it's a bit of a blow to the ego.  And gratifying because we really don't have to live up to any high-falutin world class status.

All for now, darlings!

It's All Performance Art 101

Getting ready for a trip of nearly two months takes a lot of careful planning.  Even down to such small details as what am I going to do with the leftover eggs in the fridge, since they will likely not be safe to eat by the time I am back, but already I am thinking of a couple of escape hatches.  By the way, being vegetarian, but not vegan, I eat eggs every day, and since I don't eat meat, I can get away with it, more or less.  But I especially eat eggs for the protein and the B 12, since it is otherwise hard to find in other non meat sources, and the supplements tend to give me a rash.

This just in, Gentle Reader: eggs can be frozen for up to a year.  Thanks Uncle Google!

I hate wasting food.  And I try not to, and very little gets thrown away in my household.  I shop carefully because I plan carefully and I try to buy only what I am going to eat, which also means no impulse shopping.  I have to be strict, being on a low income, and wanting to be sure there is a steady reserve of emergency savings in the bank, as well as enough money to go on these trips every year.

I just heard on the radio this morning that online grocery shopping is starting to catch on more in my city.  This is disturbing news, as I think that people for the most part have become far too used to depending on technology to do everything for them.  Trust me when I say this, but if they ever develop an app that will wipe our ass for us, people will click it.  We are that pathetic. 

So, how does this make us look or function as a community when eventually we never leave our homes because electronic Big Brother is doing everything for us?  Quite simply we will shrink almost to nothing as human beings.  We will become more intolerant of people that are different from us, because we no longer have to interact in public, we will become more xenophobic and racist and there will simply be no remaining social infrastructure left.  This is part of the nightmarish outcome of high tech capitalism.  Those who are too poor to pay for the technology get nothing, and will eventually just die from hunger or hypothermia on the streets and sidewalks.  And no one else is going to even know or care they exist, because the single remaining ethic is going to be the Ethos of Me.  Natural Selection at your service.

I am not against high tech.  Otherwise I would not be writing this blog, writing emails or watching cool stuff on Youtube.  Nor would I be practicing Spanish with two friends I have made in Colombia.  We see each other on skype, a couple of times a week.  I spend more time with my Colombians than I do with my friends here in my own city.  They have become, by default, better friends than my friends here in Vancouver.  Because everyone else is too busy.  And they don't have to be too busy, but slavery to technology really seems to rob people of their independence and also their social connection, and we end up living as strangers surrounded by strangers.  This is why I like public transit.  It forces us to coexist and cooperate.  Which is also why I like shopping in grocery stores. And this is also why I don't believe that we will ever sink to that nadir of the promised dystopian future.  Somehow, I believe that a lot of us do know better.  I also believe that our natural need to communicate and connect meaningfully with people around us is going to surface again and in ways that will hopefully help us move forward again as communities within a larger community.

I wish.

It's All Performance Art 100

By the way, Gentle Reader, I am not going to feel sorry for myself.  Yes, life has handed me some rather limited options, being queer, Christian, poor, ageing and having had to shuck off the stigma of a mental health diagnosis.  I am also socially isolated, having no family, and often not knowing just how secure these friendships are.  I am not the only person who lives with this.    On the other hand, I am healthy, strong, and I would say brave, and creative, as well as intelligent.  I am doing okay.  It's the idiots that surround me, especially in church, that concern me, but then, I really need to know when to stop letting others be my concern.  Perhaps as an act of therapeutic selfishness.

The challenge with living with limited options is how to maximize the little we have.  I have been told that I am talented in this area.   I mean, how many people in this country, earning less than twenty thousand a year can actually afford to travel every year, and for one or two months at a stretch?  On the other hand, I pay scandalously low subsidized rent, don't drive or have a car, don't drink alcohol, or smoke or take drugs, and I don't go to movies or restaurants.  I also don't have a smartphone or TV, just an old fashioned landline phone and a laptop computer.  And I think that I have enough.  I feel very rich.  There must be something wrong with me.

I really cannot understand how the people in my church remain so hobbled by and addicted to their privilege.  They are soft.  And corrupt.  Really corrupt, at least by the standards of the Gospels, but that tends to be the story with Anglicans.  I feel sorry for them, but with a couple of exceptions (and these are really good people), it seems to be a waste of time trying to befriend any of them, so I have decided to not bother any more.  I consider these people to be beyond hope.  They will never really know the riches of Christ as long as they are holding onto their worldly wealth and privilege and what is really sad is that few of them seem to even appreciate how good they have it.  Maybe that's why they become so elusive when I approach them in friendship.  They don't want to know me, perhaps because they don't want to be reminded and challenged.  I don't have to say anything or bat an eye. They are still going to feel judged around me.  Well, too bad for them, I guess.

Of course I am going to go on attending this church, because I have come to love those people, though we have little in common.  And I have made two good friendships there that I would like to nurture and sustain.  Anybody who has the humility to want me for a friend must be either crazy, or incredibly good, perhaps both.  To the others, I have a sense of pastoral concern, so I am not going to abandon them either.  The clergy?  I don't trust clergy.  I know better than to trust Anglican clergy.  I suspect that they might need me at least as much as I need them.  They probably need me even more.  But I have dropped all expectations towards those people.  I am going to be away for the next two months.  Then, when I'm back, well...time will tell, I guess.

It's All Performance Art 99

It is not quite 4:30 am and I am waiting for my clothes to finish their wash cycle before I throw them in the dryer.  Meanwhile, I am sipping decaf coffee here in front of my desk, while nursing a mild but persistent and annoying toothache.  I have had to close the window because there is a man in the neighbouring building with his window wide open and he is talking quite loudly.  I think he is alone, and likely talking to himself, as the rhythm of his voice doesn't indicate a phone conversation.  I cannot tell what he is saying, and with the window closed I can no longer hear him.  It isn't anything personal, but there are sounds I would rather not have to listen to first thing in the morning, especially when I have not had adequate sleep.  I do feel a certain compassion for this person, because he is likely alone, isolated and suffering from mental illness.  See the order, Gentle Reader?  Alone.  Isolated.  Mental illness.

I myself am considered vulnerable.  I have no family.  I live alone.  I am older and live on a low income.  And my gender on my birth certificate says I am male, whatever that's supposed to mean.  I have successfully overturned one bogus mental health diagnosis.  Even if I actually ever did have PTSD, I am recovered now, and I will not let a diagnosis, nor the resulting stigma, define me or the way that I live.  But I am still isolated.  Somewhat.  I have friends, even if some of them could, and I think, ought to, be a little more available, but we live in a narcissistic age dominated by the ethos of Me, and I think we have all been really corrupted by this.

I am attending a church, Anglican, that is full of selfish Anglicans who would like to be Christians (or to be thought of as Christians), and some even bust their asses doing things for and around the church.  But to be really accessible as friends, well, I have had to tailor and cut back on my needs and expectations.  I seem to be the only one there who doesn't have any family and this makes me particularly vulnerable.  I live in a state of perpetual imbalance with these people, because they always have the ballast, responsibility, blessing and frustration of their own spouses, parents, kids and siblings to keep them busy and distracted.  When your life has none of that filler you can find yourself confronting quite the bottomless abyss.  And no one even knows this, nor seems interested in knowing it, since everyone is going to assume, often erroneously, that everyone else is just like them, with all the supports and advantages and privilege in place that they have always taken for granted.

People like me, are in a certain way, doomed.  We are always going to be at a disadvantage.  We are always going to be vulnerable to social rejection, isolation, self-harm and suicide.  When we try to assert ourselves we are seen as a nuisance, except by the rare person who is so enlightened by the love of God that it isn't a problem for them to reach across the abyss to people like me.  People who are not going to tell you to go to hospital emergency if you are feeling lonely.  Someone who is not going to expect you to look into getting assisted medical suicide, now that they are broadening  the category of those who can apply.

I do continue to reach out to others, people with and without privilege and social and family support, because as one who wants to reflect Christ in my life, that is what I am going to do.  I do not want to end up like my neighbour who can be as annoying as a barking dog, who like a barking dog, behaves this way because he is lonely and unwanted.  This isn't going to be easy, but I am going to keep trying, and to keep addressing, accepting, and sometimes rejecting trade offs.  I only wish that people at church would pay attention to what I am trying to tell them.

Or maybe I need to pay attention to what they are trying to tell me: they don't care and please could I stop bothering them.

In order to grow we have to become less selfish.  There is no alternative.

It's All Performance Art 98

Gentle Reader, today's offering might be a bit of a dog's breakfast, so, ¡provecho!  Enjoy it.  But this random performance art that we call life is rather like that, eh?  I will begin with an email I sent last night to the Anglican archbishop for this diocese:

 "I am writing you out of my heartfelt concern about St. Faith's.  After having been there for almost two years now, I have come to the conclusion that this parish should not stay open.  I say this because you have here, affluent, or at least comfortably off parishioners occupying huge multimillion dollar homes, while Vancouver is in a crisis of housing and homelessness.  I am quite assured that if I were to become suddenly homeless, none of those people would probably take me in to stay even a few nights in one of their many spare bedrooms, as I have already experienced first hand how selfish these people are in other things.  I have experienced couch-surfing homelessness, have and still work with vulnerable populations, and many of these people are homeless or housing insecure.  Any Christian gathering worth its salt and light, at this time in this city, has to somehow address and pull out all stops to help relieve the misery of the many who are suffering on our streets and sidewalks.  Community meals and giving to the foodbank are not enough, by the way.  I do not plan to leave 

st. Faith's, but this situation causes me a lot of anguish, especially given how obtuse and uninterested people have been when I have very gently raised the subject.  I do seek your prayers.  But I also hope that you will consider putting in motion the closure of this parish, unless we begin fulfilling our obligation to the Lord who became so very poor for us."

Of course she is not likely to dignify this with a reply, being of that class of persons herself, but I feel that I have to do my duty.  

Here is the latest from my memorization attempt of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Sánish, with English translation

"Ustedes han oído que se dijo, ojo por ojo y diente por diente.  Pero yo les digo, no resistan al que les hagan mal.  Si alguien te da una bofetada en la mejilla derecha, vuélvele también la otra.  Si alguien te pone pleito para quitar tu capa, déjele también tu camisa.  Si alguien te obliga llevarle la carga un kilómetro, llévasela dos. Al que te pida dale, y al que quiera tomar de ti prestado, no vuelvas la espalda."

In English:

You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  But I am telling you, don't resist those who cause you harm.  If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn him the other as well.  If someone tries to defraud you of your coat, give him your shirt, as well.  If someone forces you to carry a load for him for a mile, go with him two miles.  Give to the one who asks, and if someone wants to borrow from you, don't turn your back on them.

The message here is also my reason for not abandoning my church.  Even if I feel personally insulted or excluded by some people there, I still feel a strong Christian obligation to be there, to befriend those who are open, and to take care not to judge too harshly.  I am also quite aware that my ethical standards are very high, especially for other people, though I also try to keep them high for myself.  (please, I do hope you are laughing right now, Gentle Reader!)  It could well be that I might have a kind of death watch mission at St. Faith's, that this could be a dying parish and that I had might as well help make it as gentle and pleasant a demise as possible. 

Yesterday, in the coffee shop, a woman said hi to me, as I was colouring something in my sketchbook, mentioning that she remembered me by my pencil sharpener.  And I was hoping she was remembering my wonderful art instead.   As long as I am not forgotten, I suppose.  I think we all want to be remembered for something.  We all have a legacy to leave, and if not my art, and if not for my blog, at least someone will retrain a memory of me by the kind of pencil sharperner that use.  It is better than not being remembered at all.