Dancing Shoes

 Today, in front of a store I saw an ad that says "More choice, less stress" or something similar.  Still laughing?  Yes, hilarious isn't it?  You know, I do a lot of my grocery shopping at No Frills, or as I like to call it, No Thrills.  One local columnist calls it a food bank with cash check outs.  It's actually better than that, a lot better.  I've heard someone say that No Frills doesn't have a huge selection.  I would care to differ.  They have lots of everything in my experience, please consider the source when I write things like this.  Twenty years ago No Frills as it is now would have been cutting edge,  You can buy miso there?  Great.. Uh, what the hell is miso?  And not just one type of tofu but more than I can count.  It would have been thought a foodie's paradise.  The yuppie marts that have sprung up over the last twenty years have always offered far greater selection than we need or might even benefit us, and No Frills and the other budget items have tried valiantly to try to keep pace, though not with great success, appearing rather like the plain, poor younger sister throwing together a second hand wardrobe to impress her beautiful and well heeled sister.  She will never be able to pull it off.  Had I time-travelled from 1990 to 2013 I would have been very impressed with No Frills.  If I landed in Whole Foods or Urban Fair instead I probably would have been so overwhelmed, baffled and confused by the unfathomable plethora, variety and sheer exotic grandeur and gourmet ecstasy  I would have gone into full throttle nervous collapse.

     Keeping pace with this explosion of choice we live in a time of unbridled global capitalism.  It could be argued that global capitalism, thanks to the free and liberalized international trade agreements has yielded as its sweet poison fruit these cornucopias of choice.  Globalized competition, or the race to the bottom has lowered wages in manufacturing service and retail jobs, thanks to the busting of unions as well as creating a moneyed class, the fabled one per cent.  This is a fancy way of saying the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Who now has the purchasing power for the inflated prices of all this choice?  And who works now harder than ever to maintain a standard of living that has been gradually eroding since the 80's, working longer hours, two or even three jobs to pay a mortgage or even rent?  It's all sped up, and is speeding up faster.  Our shops and markets overflow now with stuff, a variety of stuff, a selection of stuff such as we never saw when we were younger and still thought we were doing well.  In the meantime more of us have to struggle to maintain a roof over our heads and if you earn under 100 K a year you'd might as well forget about ever owning your own home.

     There is a slow exodus of people from Vancouver, Canada's most expensive city, people who earn middle and middle low incomes and can no longer live here.  They are closing schools in Vancouver because there are no longer enough children to fill them.  Their mothers and fathers have taken them away.  Condos and penthouses and mansions worth multiple millions have and still are being bought by off shore billionaires who leave them empty because they are investments.  Coal Harbour our new wealthy district of residential towers hugging Stanley Park is a ghost town as is the Olympic Village.  Shaughnessy Heights, famous for it's heritage palaces often feels strangely quiet and unoccupied.  It is really one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods in Vancouver and ideal for a quiet, and I mean quiet walk.  Take away the houses and you might be in a gigantic surreally silent garden of heaven.  Not that many people seem to live inside those mansions.

     Our governments are also struggling to find and build government subsidized housing for the very poor and street homeless.  Thank God they are finally doing this though it might be too little too late, maybe a last gasp of noblesse-oblige, or maybe a guilty sweep under the carpet of the visible homeless, the evident casualties of liberalized international free trade.  I am very fortunate to live in one of these apartments.  It isn't in the nicest neighbourhood, the Downtown South but it's central, my apartment is mostly quiet and the building is well managed by a wonderful Christian organization staffed by kind caring individuals.  I can live in this legendary city where I was born and raised (well, born in Vancouver General Hospital and raised in Richmond, if we must quibble)  unable to find work that pays a living wage I can still live in relative dignity employed at a job, mental health peer support, that I love and thrive on, where I can actively participate in other people's rehabilitation and healing with awesome co-workers and colleagues (guess who I'm sending this blog post to!).  I can even afford to travel, but I try not to broadcast this too far and wide for fear of inciting bitter envy in those who earn four times my salary and are still stuck in stay-cations (in a future post I will reveal my secret).

     I have successfully refused to wear the magic dancing shoes.  Remember the wicked stepmother in the Grimm fairy tale (I can't remember which one).  Her punishment was that she had to wear the magic frenzied dancing shoes that kept her dancing until she dropped dead.  Think of the great marathon dances of the Hungry Thirties, or the Raves of the 90's.  The drive, the absolute inevitable and unavoidable compulsion of having to enter and remain stranded in this dance of madness is such that we already see some of the fall out.  Mental health diagnoses, especially for depression and anxiety, have been going up noticeably and I don't believe this to be a coincidence.  While everyone is madly participating in this dance, struggling and rushing to do well in their profession, in their social lives, love lives and family lives, held hostage in this mobile prison of achievement as they scramble after the elusive and unattainable gold of perfection, they are all dancing off the edge of a cliff.  Before doing or seeing less than half of everything they must see or do before they die they will already be pushing up daisies.

     There must be alternatives to this madness.  I believe strongly in the gathering interest of living slow, of developing sustainable local food and agricultural practices, of people forming collectives of mutual support and encouragement and nurturing, fostering a climate of cooperation and care as opposed to the rabid kind of competitiveness that has poisoned us and is unravelling our society.  I think we will soon be seeing a revolution, not a revolution of violence but of love.  I want to be part of the vanguard.  No dancing shoes for me please and thank you.  I shall go barefoot.

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