Surviving The Fall, 17

Gentle Reader, today, my journals from early July 2002 will do all the talking for me. I wrote this when I had just transitioned into subsidized housing. I had a lot of free time which allowed me to explore a number of personal themes from my life, among them, my time spent in London in the summer of 1991 shortly after my mother's death. "I was often visiting the British Museum of Natural History in South Kensington. I would arrive at four, since admission was free then until closing time at five. Likewise with the National Art Gallery. In the natural history section I was particularly intrigued by the hummingbird display. Also appalled because the poor birds had been killed for this. They were all predominantly iridescent green tropical species and they were arranged in a full-frontal assault of some thirty or forty birds or so. Upstairs in the geology section, certain brilliantly coloured (especially in shades of green and turquoise) minerals kept catching my attention. Thus many future paintings of mine were being nurtured in utero. Even though I still considered myself a writer, I was far more interested in seeing art, and anything of beauty that would visually stimulate me. In London I was often meeting street people, feeding them, hanging out etc. I otherwise found the English elusive, impossible to reach. Except for Liza, who was outrageous. She thought me the first Canadian she’d met whom she didn’t find boring. NEWSFLASH: I see my psychiatrist on 16 July, 11:00am. I am nervous about this, even though it’s two weeks away. I ate lots of pistachios while in London. Almost every night I’d bring back to my hotel room a bag of pistachios, a half-pint of milk and a bar of Toblerone, and have myself a feast. Then I’d read myself to sleep, only to wake at 6 am or so to the intense morning light gleaming on the ancient slate and terracotta roofs of London. I would take a lengthy prayer walk through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park and slowly wander while seeking to know the will of God, Then I’d go for breakfast, sometimes at Hyper-Hyper (a collective of boutiques. I used to hang out in the café in the back, an antique converted rail car, where I met a lot of intriguing local folk), but oftener at a cafe where I’d have two eggs deep fried in oil, with rather horrid bacon or sausage, and dry white toast and coffee, while reading the Times of London I had just bought. After this I would either return to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, or, I’d go straight to Holland Park after which I’d do a prayer walk through Notting Hill, to Champion’s, then up through Kensington Palace Gardens and back to Hyper-Hyper, stopping at each (please) place to write or read. Then I’d spend the afternoon wandering and sightseeing, eating sporadically, as I felt like it, trying to get all my nutritional needs met. I would often, but not always return to my hotel room around dinner time to rest and pray. Then I would go out again, from Champion’s (a pub), back through Hyde Park, Green Park and James Park, to Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Piccadilly and Leicester Square, up through Soho, then along Oxford back to my room. Except for the constant novelty and diversion of being in a city so new to me and so fascinating as London, I think I would have found the solitude and monotony intolerable. Prayer also helped. But I had no friends, no community and no grounding there, which, I think, is why I was constantly writing letters to Doreen, Dianne (two women who joined our community), Jonn and Duff, as well as frequently calling Doreen. Sure, I was worried about them, and legitimately so, but I was also terribly and desperately lonely having just been abandoned by Jeff (a nasty and pathetic drug user with AIDS who I brought with me because Scotland Yard wanted him for questioning about a murder he was connected to. I felt sorry for this failed rock star who didn't forgive me for refusing to go bed with him and ended up scamming me for thousands of dollars, most of which went up his nose!), and before him Doug, and just processing my mother’s death, while experiencing emotional exhaustion from three years of trying to look after her, just when I was recovering from two years of living downtown--the noise as well as the intense spiritual warfare, while trying to nurture and care for a huge succession of lost street kids and alcoholic gay men, while trying to minister to Duff (a failed and very bright ex ballet dancer who became a close friend) and his drinking binges and erratic and selfish behaviour, while working for St. James Social Services and all the sad, tragic lives I had to work with, including two weeks of overtime giving palliative care to Bud Wilmot and looking after people who were mentally ill and cleaning up their filth and coping with cockroaches, lice, scabies and shit and urine incontinence, and then Doug (we were in intentional Christian community and street ministry) and his manipulative demands and controlling personality and violent behavior and the intense grinding poverty he dragged me through and all those people dropping dead from AIDS and other causes and the lack of support from the churches, then came Doreen and Dianne with their baggage and problems and then feeling put in a position of responsibility by them for mentoring neophyte Christians who refused stubbornly to listen to the wisdom of my experience, making it unfortunately necessary for me to suffer from the fallout of the stupid choices they were making, since they said they wanted to err on the side of compassion (I told you so, I told you so, and I told you so) and then came more betrayals from some of the very people I was trying to help, while feeling totally lost and stranded myself without being able to recognize or admit it. And this was what I was recovering from while wandering alone in a foreign country, trying to stay close and faithful to God, lest my feet should slip." When I was in London I was thirty-five. While writing this journal entry I was forty-six.