Collective Trauma: The Fallout 14

There has been an awful lot going on this long weekend, Gentle Reader: we had the last of the fireworks Saturday night. I of course didn't attend because it was late, I'm an early riser and I don't like standing in big crowds (there were almost half a million out that night). I simply put in my earplugs, turned on the kitchen exhaust fan and slept through it all, I did actually enjoy the fireworks during my first couple of years living downtown, but my increasing sleep needs and being an early riser did put the kibosh on everything. Plus, I don't like feeling beholden to a corporate funded and government approved spectacle. There is something a little bit creepy about this, all of us gape jawed and mouth-breathing consumers being led along like compliant little sheepies. Not for me. For the longest time, when they were sponsored by a cigarette company (the brand that killed my mother), I simply boycotted the fireworks outright. The noise and the chaos are also problematic, and as I said to one city staff on the phone, those of us who live downtown are always going to have a rather different take on the fireworks than other people, unless, of course, they get moved to a different neighbourhood, which is not very likely to happen. Sunday was the annual Gay Pride parade and festival, attended by anywhere between 600,000 and 800,000. Like fireworks without the bang. Or different kind of bang. I generally don't attend the parade. It isn't really on principal, I just enjoy peace and quiet on a Sunday. As a rather conservative Christian on matters of sexual morality (I am in favour of same sex marriage and adoption and transgender rights, etc., so please put your judgements away) I have never felt overly comfortable with the sexualized element not the inherent endorsement of promiscuity and the sexual objectification of others, but for some reason that feels like less of an issue now. Opening my mouth about these things got me into some real hot water in the past, especially in the gay-dominant Anglican parish I was attending in the West End. I simply noted to some that we re on the same page about equal rights for queers, etc., but I was not comfortable about the church participating in an activity that was concerned with sex. This won me no friends and my name became a byword in that church. I still appreciate how interwoven sex in all its expressions is with the rights of LGBTQ people and especially their right to be fully included in society, their right not to be bullied or harmed, their right to be fully respected and accepted. But I also have to own that my views on sex are quite antiquated, and that it is totally unfair to impute on those who do not believe as I believe a code of behaviour that not even that many Christians are able to live up to. I did not attend the parade this year. I got home following a super long walk after church, ate lunch, read, did artwork and rested. A Mexican language exchange respondent stood me up so I went for a walk in the West End, said hi and Happy Pride to various participants leaving the parade and outrageously costumed, and rather enjoyed the vibe. I sat at a window table in a French bakery-café on Davie Street with my sketchbook while throngs of outrageously dressed, or almost completely undressed people paraded by to throbbing sounds of dance music. This is more my style of parade attendance, even if the parade was over and now it was a big fat street party. To be in the crowd, but not of it. I feel total solidarity with the people there, even if my way of life could be described as bordering on the monastic. We all belong to the same God, who loves us and who as Jesus laid down his life and died for us and this is what has come to inform, however imperfectly, my approach and perspective. When I arrived home, the Mexican guy still made lame excuses for not keeping our appointment, so I chewed him out in a text, calling him immature and that if he isn't prepared to be an adult then maybe we should wait for a few years (he is 29, likely well-off and living with his parents, and like many young Latino men living with their parents, a case of arrested adolescence. After we cut each other off from Skype, I had regrets about my harsh approach with him, though I still think he deserved the ass-kicking, contacted him gain through the conversation exchange Page and explained that in English-speaking countries, especially where people like me are already very busy, we make appointments with one another and if an appointment is broken without valid cause, it is considered an offence. But also knowing how difficult it would be for him to find a decent English language partner with his attitude, I have offered to reopen contact with him, should he so wish, even though I don't really need the Spanish practice, being already fluent and having lots of Spanish speaking friends to practice with. Outside my building, meanwhile, there was a woman screaming. twice I went out to try to find her and see if she was okay, but didn't see anyone until I realized that she likely lives in the hard-to-house building next door, so I phoned the staff there and was assured that they would see how they could help her. Today is the seventy-third anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It is appalling that the US never had to face international justice over that genocidal massacre, but so it is with victor's justice. Happy Monday, Gentle Reader. Comments welcome today.