Places Where I've Lived: Mount Pleasant 13

I can't believe I have written so much already about this house where I spent nearly two years of my early twenties, but this was a watershed time in my life.  I was listening to the Ideas program on CBC and two episodes really grabbed my attention.  One was called "The Terror Of Consumerism", or something like that.  I just did a quick Google search and can't find anything.  This was a series of programs that I listened to on the radio at work in the cashier booth of the Hotel Vancouver parkade.  I already lived modestly which was really for me making necessity into a virtue.  However, the unique and multifaceted exploration about our consumerist culture and society and its impact on our lives and thinking, not to mention the way it paralysed our ability to think, more than assured me that I was living the right way.  It convinced me that poverty, as long as it was not grinding poverty, could be in itself a virtue.  I only needed what I needed: sufficient and good nutritious food, clean running water, a safe and cozy roof over my head, meaningful work, creative activity, a community, freedom and good friends.  It really did not take a lot to secure these things and I was happy to work for a low wage if all of the above could be the result.  This was also during an era when it was much easier to simply work for a living and actually live okay even at minimum wage.  Those days, in Vancouver anyway, are long gone.

This series of broadcasts was followed by another titled "Freebooter Treatises."  This was based on some writings of avant-garde Italian film-maker Petro Paulo Pasolini celebrating the bohemian life.  The theme of travelling and living lightly, of treating life and others as a gift and as a feast resonated powerfully with me, confirming much that I had already learned and experienced in my twenty-three years and inspiring me to remain on this path.

This all triangulated beautifully with my involvement with the Mennonite house church since these were the very values we together sought to incarnate in our daily lives and worship. I also made myself a promise which I think has turned out to be a kind of solemn vow: that as much as lay possible within me that I would resist and block out of my life all the consumerist influences of American pop culture, advertising and entertainment.  This proved not to be particularly difficult.  I didn't own, nor want to own, a TV and I was also a film snob.