Balancing Act, 22

Has anyone else been noticing lately how much more difficult it is in a city like Vancouver to find quiet public space, out in nature for example? As a friend pointed out to me we are getting greater and greater crowds of tourists each year, it seems, and they do impact on our space. Tourism of course is a highly lucrative industry, creates jobs (many badly-paid), and keep the economy growing, or that's the conventional wisdom. But we live in an economic system that remains resolutely divorced from the people it is purported to serve, and the lion's share of the pickings goes to the very wealthy and the rest of us have to scramble for crumbs. Or, I suppose we could be a bit Pollyanna about it and think of the crumbs as croutons and add them to our Caesar salad. If we can afford the rising price of romaine, that is. Do they still make Caesar salads, Gentle Reader? They are such a seventies and eighties concoction, but I still think they're wonderful. So, like it or not we have lots of tourists, as well as a growing population of well-off people who want to live here. And it's supposed to be good for us. Well, Gentle Reader, our homelessness statistics don't appear to be budging much these days, and our sidewalks are literally choked with beggars. One friend of mine who lives in Latin America who was here last winter did comment in a recent Skype visit that most of our beggars here in Vancouver are young and healthy. I had to explain to him that he's half-right. They are young. And of course, being young, they are going to look healthy: even if the majority of them are living with mental illness, trauma from child abuse, addictions, brain injuries, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and autism or Asperger's, attention deficit and hyper-active attention deficit disorder, not to mention that from subsisting on a street diet there are also going to be issues of malnutrion as well as other health concerns that come due to chronic lack of sleep and chronic stress from trying to survive outside every day. Oh, and did I also mention that some of them also work for a living? But on minimum wage, try finding a place to live in this city. And if you're not really work ready because of all the concerns I have already mentioned, then let's just see how long you can keep a job. Even though our cheap labour market is being hollowed out because life has become too expensive in this city, employers remain fussier than ever and no one is just going to hire a panhandler off the street. They would rather invite foreign workers from the Philippines to do the work instead, and they are not as likely to complain about low pay and bad work conditions since things are still a lot worse back home for those people, especially now that they have Rodrigo Duterte (Duterte the Dirty) at the helm. So for those of you poorly educated folks on the right wing, our jobs are not being stolen by foreigners. It is Canadian employers who are stealing them from us because they want compliant and obedient workers who aren't going to talk back. I know a bit about homelessness, having been there myself, and later on having spent more than a year working in a homeless shelter. There is always going to be more than what meets the eye, so to anyone who would care to ask, please refrain from judging and just try to imagine what it might be like to walk a mile in our shoes. Meanwhile, this city continues getting sold off, piece by piece, though there are indications that this is slowing down now and maybe one day some real change will begin to happen. In the meantime, I search desperately for quiet space, away from people yapping on their phones, away from testosterone charged joggers and cyclists and other narcissistic mouth-breathers whose absolute lack of courtesy or etiquette has made a quiet walk in the forest increasingly impossible to some of us. It is because this frantic consumerist capitalism that has swallowed us alive gives no quarter to contemplation, to quiet, to the cultivation of the spirit and soul, to the appreciation of nature and beauty, that is, unless they can slap a price tag on it. It is all about money, things, escape and thrill, and drugging yourselves on alcohol and sex. I am seeing this everywhere. I saw this downtown last night, early evening, following a coffee visit with a friend. The bars, pubs and sidewalks were all packed with regular folk out for a good time. It looked so scary and so ugly, so sad and angry, all of it and all of them. What has become of us, so that for so many of us, this kind of mass self-destruction has become our idea of having a good time? But it's good for the economy.