Getting It Done

Today, Mr. Bedbug (not his real name) came in to spray my unit a second time.  Six weeks later.  After five weeks of complaining to my building managers that the bugs still weren`t gone, I was still getting bitten at night, I was still a human buffet for repulsive insects, and that Mr. Bedbug perhaps is not the best thing since sliced bread after all.

Even though I had done everything I could to go with Mr. Bedbug`s prior recommendations he still couldn`t seem to resist scolding me like I was a naughty child (it really does seem that when you live in a government subsidized building that a lot of people aren`t going to talk to you as though you are a responsible, working adult worthy of respect)  After several minutes of this kind of treatment I pushed back, telling him that by his tone it is easy for me to feel like he`s punishing the victim.  When the assistant building manager tried to intervene I mentioned that had Mr. Bedbug`s tone been gentle like hers then I likely wouldn`t be feeling defensive.  That was enough to shut everyone up before I left. And once again I was feeling grateful for the gift of the snappy comeback.

On Mr. Bedbug`s recommendation (or should I say, orders) I took all my bedding and other covers downstairs to put in the dryer for an hour.  He wanted me to wash everything but everything had already been washed four days ago (not five as he insisted) then went for a walk in the rain along the seawall.  When I returned, I retrieved the laundry and put the two bags full in my bathroom (the rest of the apartment, reeking with sickly sweet pesticide that I could smell once the elevator door opened, was in complete disarray) then went for another walk.  Two of my favourite places, Café Molli, Mexican, on Davie and Burrard, and Melriche`s café, funky old holdout on Davie between Bute and Jervis, were both full so I opted for a French bakery-café I had always walked by on Davie Street, the Baguette and Co.  I was pleasantly surprised and occupied a window table with a decaf Americano a fancy schmancy pastry and a glass of water while working on a new drawing.  Here is an image of the bird I am interpreting:




Nice birdie, eh?  It's called a Black-Collared Jay, from Colombia and Venezuela.

A rather streetwise looking couple were admiring my drawing from the sidewalk and came in to have a look.  They were so sweet. 

The Davie Street sidewalk is almost always an exercise in the fascinating.  There is always something going on, like it or not.  There was also the other street-ish fellow who was smoking just outside the open door.  Fortunately the wind wasn't blowing my way but the woman working in the hipster boutique next door came out to scold him and to ask him (or should I say, order him, to take his cigarette elsewhere) There was a bit of a yelling match.  She called him a loser and he swore at her and replied that she had no right calling people names like that and said he wasn't going to move.  (as much as I dislike second-hand smoke I felt by far the stronger sympathy for him instead of that horrible woman.  He did go away pretty soon, only to come back and light up a joint and now the smoke was blowing into the café.  Marijuana, Gentle Reader, I might remind you is somewhat more potent than it was when you and I were young and naughty.  I could already feel my brain chemistry start to alter.  Knowing not to confront the fellow I simply got the barista's permission to close the door till he went away again, which he did very shortly after I closed the door.  An act of courtesy, perhaps?

I then took a longer walk in the West End, under the rain and under my umbrella, psyching myself up for my eventual return to my apartment where I would have a huge mess to clean up.  I am truly exhausted from all of this, emotionally and physically.  I already know that I will not be able to do everything that Mr. Bedbug has told me I should have to do to help keep the bugs away for the simple reason that I do not have the energy.  I will do whatever I can and hopefully it will work and if it doesn`t I am not prepared to endure another one of his sanctimonious scoldings.

The mess is cleaned up.  My apartment is back to normal and I am exhausted.  I hope I never have to see Mr. Bedbug again, but if he did do his job right this time, I likely won't, and if not...well, let's just say that I might have a few choice words for him!

Consumed

I was just in the local Shopper's Drugmart buying milk and I noticed a rack smothered with gift cards.  Then I began to notice all the various candies and crackers and treats and goodies beguilingly displayed to snare a few impulse buyers and I thought, how behind the times I am when it comes to shopping.  I had never even noticed the gift cards by various checkout tills until someone recently pointed them out to me and it was only because I was asked by my supervisor to buy such a card to take one of our clients shopping.

I very rarely spend unnecessarily and it is probably so long since I last bought anything on impulse that I can't even remember.  I sometimes wonder just what is it that has spared me from the demon frenzy dance of Shop-Till-You-Drop.  I think there could be any number of good reasons.  For one thing I have never been a materialistic person.  But I think this has to do with some other active factors in my life.  I am a very strong Christian and I have long sought to align my values with those of the Gospels and the New Testament.  This includes eschewing wealth, riches and greed and using the money we have to share with those who are without and to also live modestly, knowing that our reward is in living in the reality of God's love and truth.  I have also been strongly influenced by alternative and countercultural values from the late Sixties and Seventies.  I read and cultivated friendships and liaisons from a very early age, fourteen, with persons and resources that taught me the importance of living with integrity and a sense of community responsibility.  At seventeen I was already an environmentalist, decades before it became fashionable.   In my early twenties I made up my mind to shield myself as much as possible from the false gods of consumerism and materialism and I have faithfully lived this way ever since.

I am also an artist.  Creative people tend not to be consumers.  People who shop a lot, unnecessarily, who binge shop, who rack up piles of debt are really not much different from or better than junkies and alcoholics.  They are spiritually and ethically empty and shopping and accruing unnecessary stuff helps satisfy that itch, if but for a few seconds and then they are hitting Amazon, eBay and the mall all over again.  It is axiomatic that we live in a culture of debt.

I can't really offer any solutions.  Perhaps I might learn to acquire a little more compassion for people I find too easy and too enjoyable to judge.  I do feel sad for all these sad, soulless drones who cram the sidewalks fixed on their little rectangles of plastic and metal, shopping, consuming, and isolating themselves from real contact with others.  As for myself, I simply look for whatever way I can reach out to others in a way that is possible, positive and non-threatening.  I also silently pray for those around me.  And for myself, given that I am not always in the mood for prayer.

The Blessing Of Mixed Blessings

I can't really say that this is much of a vacation.  This will be my second and last week off.  What have I done?  To begin with, I have been working from home.  I could of course use the income and the activity is of interest to me: I am researching for a series of art classes I will be facilitating in the fall about the Group of Seven painters, Canada's first definitive artists, for some of our clients in one of the mental health/addiction units I work in.  This takes up approximately three to four hours a day.  I generally work for an hour or two in the mornings, before and after breakfast, and two hours in the evening, before and after dinner.  On top of this I have been on the phone with various co-workers no less than six times and have received an email from a supervisor who either forgot or didn't realize that I'm on vacation.  Out in public I have had to inform two of our clients, when they wanted to engage with me, that I was not available for anything related to their health situation or therapy needs, and they have both taken care to respect and avoid me.

Ah....The Stay-cation.  Nothing like it, Gentle Reader.

I have also had to visit the passport office on three occasions and bother my guarantor (the fellow who signed my passport photo) twice.  The first time I was given the wrong form, as I didn't know at the time that my passport would be classified as damaged (it had been through the washer) and that therefore I had to reapply instead of simply renew my passport (I love you too, Federal Kafka Government of Canada!).  So after filling out the first form, after waiting in a longer line than I would care to talk about, I brought it back in, after waiting in yet another long line (but not as long as the last one), to be told that I would have to take home with me the proper and longer application form and do everything all over again.  My guarantor, also a good friend, was fortunately very good natured about it and we also got in a half decent coffee visit as part of the bargain).  This morning I stood in yet another line up in the passport office with all the material they needed.  It wasn`t very long this time, then I had to wait another hour and three quarters to see one of their workers to process my passport.  Fortunately I had the presence of mind to spend most of that time working on a drawing.  I also chatted briefly but pleasantly with a couple of other applicants.  One is a mother of a near newborn.  I asked her how old and she said six months and I instinctively smiled, no longer a grumpy old man who hates kids, and said that is so sweet.  I said that when we are very little and when we are very old we are the best.  She agreed, adding how much we come to resemble ourselves when we were babies once we become old.  Then I warmly thanked a man behind me for mentioning to someone that in some countries you have to wait five years for a passport so that a couple of hours in a Canadian passport office shouldn't be bad.  He did wonders for my sense of proportion.  I have also just been listening to a radio broadcast about that poster child of failed states, Haiti.  Boy, do I ever feel lucky to live in Canada.

On top of everything else, last week I had to run back and forth for a couple of days with my building managers as we got together all the documents needed for recalculating my rent.  Now we are dealing again with the bedbugs in my unit and finally they have contacted the exterminator who should be here in a couple of days.  Just when I was getting ready to go to CBC Go Public and publicly shame my housing providers for their slowness in helping me deal with the bugs. 

But this too shall pass.

In the meantime I am getting out for long enjoyable walks, despite the unsettled cool weather this early July, and getting a lot of art done.  I am reading a lot and sleeping a bit better.  Even though I feel almost as busy as I would be if I was at work right now there is something about the variety and the various creative challenges that really feeds my spirit.  Tomorrow they expect nicer weather and I plan to spend much of the day happily wandering.

If Life Is Not Fair...

Well Gentle Reader, when did any of us last complain bitterly either aloud or to whomever was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of our cold, dark whining, that life just isn't fair?  Well, hello Sunshine!  So, what else is new?  And really when has life ever been anything but a very dirty, nasty, rigged game of chance that only those who are strong and smart enough are going to survive and do well and the rest of us can be rendered as fertilizer for their rose gardens?  Twice today I found myself muttering this imprecation, life is not fair.  I said this while complaining about the bedbugs that still are hanging around in my apartment and the apparent lack of motivation on the part of my building manager to do anything about it.  Then I complained about the Kafkaesque bureaucracy (I had to consult Uncle Google because I had forgotten completely how to spell that word) involved in getting a passport.  I had been given the wrong form, and I had to go home and fill out the new form and then bring it back and wait in line again.  They are not kind.

I explored that theme of life being unfair this afternoon while enjoying a long walk in the wealthy and beautiful neighbourhood, Shaughnessy Heights.  I was talking in Spanish on my cell phone to my imaginary friend, Fulano, which I have found to be a particularly effective way of practicing the language of Cervantes.  So I talk on and on in my imperfect Spanish.  People nearby will think either that I am a native speaker (if they do not speak Spanish) or that I am on the phone with a Hispanic friend.  For me it is like keeping a spoken diary but in another language.  Today I was talking about the unfairness, the absolute unfair cruelness of life.  We are not born into a lovely welcoming Earth where it`s all things bright and beautiful.  We are born into a very harsh and bitter struggle to survive and without our human community we are simply not going to cut it.

Life isn`t fair and we, each one of us, has an obligation to do our part to make the world a little less unfair and a little more hospitable for one another and for the rest of the web of life of which we are integral members.  Whether through grand and sweeping projects of reform and human development on a massive scale, or through small individual acts of kindness we all have a role to play.  Many of us default on this high calling.  Sometimes when I hear on the news just how absolutely mean, horrible and evil human beings can be, I want to cry out and hide my head in despair and shame.  Tonight on the CBC I heard about this horrible white racist on a streetcar in Toronto berating a couple of black women and when one asked him to stop because he was upsetting her he became even nastier.  When a man of colour tried to, in the most civil way, intervene the young white piece of racist shit pepper sprayed him with mace and then the pale little coward ran off the streetcar.

There is so much garbage like this going on these days, especially in the US and in Europe where kneejerk right wing reactionary behaviour is making life an absolute hell for immigrants and people who belong to visible minorities.  I am not even going to try to square this horrible darkness with the idea of a loving, just and merciful God.  What I am going to suggest Gentle Reader is this: we are the presence of Christ in the world.  Our acts of love, mercy, justice and kindness alone are going to make a difference.  We need to do more, much more, but every time we perform a loving and kind act we are lighting a candle in the darkness. 

Today, a dear friend with whom I had coffee mentioned to me that he has to perform at least one act of kindness for someone every day if he is going to feel right.  I would like to second the motion.

We Are All Traumatized By Homelessness

Gentle Reader, I really don't know who much more I am going to have to write about this before there is any indication at all that I am being heeded by those who have the power to implement change, but someone's got to do it.  I am extremely grateful to those who do much more than me to raise awareness of our crisis of homelessness.  I only hope that my small effort can also bear fruit.

Today I saw downtown, as always, a lot of homeless people, sleeping on the sidewalk, in doorways.  One appeared to have shat himself.  I noticed people walking by, well dressed and well-fed, averting their gaze, or perhaps not even noticing their fellow humans languishing in a way that is so vulnerable and so humiliating.  I suppose one of the blessings of iPhones is they provide a very convenient excuse for not noticing that which is distressing to us.

I think that most of us are well aware of those who are suffering around us.  I am also aware of how helpless we all must feel and so we shrug, look away, or don't look or just stay focussed on our little plastic rectangles that we hold in our hands.  Worse, it has become very clear to me from conversations I've had that a lot of people believe that we have always had homelessness in Vancouver.    There just aren't as many people around who, like me, remember a time, thirty years ago, when homelessness was very rare in this city.  In a few short years this was to change drastically.

As governments were compelled by neoliberal interests to cut back on public health and social services spending we began to see the fallout.  There was a small but growing number of people begging on the street, and more were becoming homeless.  Welfare rates were either frozen or rolled back and rents were already beginning to rise disproportionately to people's incomes.  Economic restructuring shut down or scaled back some forms of employment, among others my own job as a home support worker.  Positions, contracts and work became increasingly hard to get.  The rise of temporary contract work made job security perilous and many of us ended up having to settle for earning a pittance.  Some of us became particularly impacted by the growing stress of income insecurity and a shrinking social safety net.  They kept cutting back.  Some of us began to lose our mental health.

The neoliberal government, the BC Liberal Party was elected in this province in 2001.   Even though it was already abundantly clear that we were suffering from lack of opportunities and resources it was declared that it was our fault, it was falsely claimed by our elected representatives that we were lazy, didn't want to work, and suddenly thousands were kicked off of social assistance in a few months.  Very few of those who lost assistance were work ready or even employable.  In that time our population of homeless people mushroomed by almost four hundred percent.  I remember this particularly well since during that time I was working front desk at a homeless shelter and, yes, we kept statistics.

In the meantime, housing costs went off the chart and even people with moderate incomes felt threatened with homelessness, one paycheque away from the street, and have since been leaving Vancouver in droves.  In the meantime the supply of accessible affordable housing remains tragically scarce.  New buildings and units have been built and there is more on the drawing board but it is still not keeping pace with the need.  It is very easy to blame it all on people moving here from out of province and ending up on the streets, but since this has been always true up to a point this is still evidence that we are not working hard, smart or fast enough to adequately address the housing needs of low income people in this city.  By all means tax the bejesus out of offshore millionaires, limit supply for foreign ownership and shut down on Air B and B.  But also, let's do even more to help close the gap of income inequality, make social assistance sufficiently generous and accessible to all who need it, and enshrine as an inalienable human right and act on it, access for all Canadians to safe, decent and affordable housing.

It appalls me that we have allowed things to spiral out of control for this long; for me it is absolutely offensive that small-minded and mean-spirited voters have successfully held our governments hostage through their hatred of the poor and their absolutely unjust and wrong-headed assumptions that we are poor and on welfare because we are too lazy to work and therefore deserve to be punished.  If BC enjoys the most robust economy in Canada it is partly because we have enriched ourselves on the backs of those we have kicked onto the street by reinvesting money that could have kept our poorest citizens alive and housed into our already bloated and very unequally distributed economy.

What the BC Liberal Party has done to the poor and homeless is in effect a crime against humanity and I hope I see the day when the architects of this pogrom against the poor have to appear before the International Criminal Court for how they have harmed even to the death our most impoverished citizens.  This spectacle of human suffering called homelessness dehumanizes all of us.  We are diminished and by extension we are made less by the suffering of our sisters and brothers who have to live out in the open on the pavement, vulnerable to all kinds of weather and all manner of abuse and mistreatment.  This traumatizes all of us, and it is time to make homelessness a much larger priority.  If we can find enough love in our hearts then we can do it.

I ask you please, Gentle Reader, to think of seven people who would benefit from reading this article and that you please send it on to them.  And yes, I do watch my stats. :-)

The Best Stats Are No Stats

I`m not presuming to speak for everyone, Gentle Reader, otherwise I would have no right to pontificate as I often do from in front of my creaky old laptop (five years and counting!) but generally speaking, I hate statutory holidays.  It isn`t that the working stiffs aren't entitled to a few paid days off a year to celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving etcetera.  It's more that I tend to lose out.  On all levels.  My cheapskate employer doesn't have to pay me for stats because I'm a contract worker.  On Thanksgiving Day I lose income.  I have no family, therefore I never get invited anywhere for Christmas.  Fortunately I still get paid, because I work Christmas Day, with my clients in a small psychiatric centre where I am employed.  I get something to do and people to see, they have a worker on hand to offer them support and we all get dinner thrown in together.  My various friends are generally missing in action during statutory holidays leaving me often alone and struggling against depression and self-pity.  It isn't fun, especially seeing so many other people out together apparently enjoying themselves.

I do manage to make the best of it.  It is still time off and I try to embrace it as such but really I more often than not find myself clenching my teeth and just waiting for the day to end so that normal life can resume again tomorrow.  I seem to have always lived my life walking against the crowd.

It isn`t easy, this often going against the flow, and I don't do it to be ornery.  I simply don't share a lot of the values of mainstream society and so I often find myself feeling socially isolated, which kind of sucks because I actually enjoy being with other people.  Within reason of course.  I had to leave early one of my favourite coffee shops today because I just couldn't really settle anywhere.  One area was dominated by a rather stupid looking German woman watching with her children and a bunch of their little friends the soccer game between Germany and Italy.  It wasn't on loud but she was and I really had to resist the temptation to tell her to shut up, since anyone who doesn't speak it knows that German is not an easy language for the ears (if Hell has an official language it must be German), unlike Spanish or French which are two of the most beautiful languages in the world.  The patio was occupied by noisy teenage boys.  When they left I moved outside only to see the next table, seconds later, taken over by yet more noisy teenage boys.

Now to cut everyone a little slack I have a full disclosure here: yesterday and today, because of the Canada Day holiday yesterday and my usual isolation, I was battling depression.  I feel much better now.  I simply left the café on the early side, went for a walk in the woods, stopped at Safeway to pick up some Dijon then went home where I cooked up some potatoes, broccoli and eggs for a dinner potato salad and while they were cooling relaxed with the weekend Globe and Mail and an intermittent nap.  I suddenly noticed that I was better, thanks to good old fashioned self-care and feel ready again to greet the day.

Here's how I made the potato salad:

six red skinned potatoes boiled with peel
two generous crowns of broccoli, boiled,
six hard boiled eggs
half a red onion, chopped
package of extra firm tofu
Dijon mustard to taste
full fat plain yogurt to taste
soy sauce to taste
wine vinegar to taste
blue cheese to taste
small sprinkle of garlic powder
small sprinkle of nutmeg
small sprinkle of allspice

Cook potatoes, broccoli and eggs.  Set aside for one hour to cool.  Chop potatoes and combine in a large serving bowl with broccoli, red onion, mix in one to two cups of yogurt, maybe two-three teaspoons Dijon and add a few generous dashes of vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, nutmeg and allspice and mix till everything is well integrated.  Add chopped tofu and chopped blue cheese, mix again.  Top with six hard boiled eggs, peeled and halved.

Provecho!

The Best Country In The World? Oh, Really?

That is my usual reaction when I hear fatuous Canadians blather about the True North Strong and Free.  I usually want to grab them by the collar and say something like "And how many countries have you lived in?"  I really have no patience with daft nationalism.  It is a reptilian brain based emotion that is immune to logic or reason.

This is not to say that I don't like my country.  It's just that I don't love it.  Happy Canada Day.  Does that make me a bad Canadian?  No, my hating hockey is what makes me a bad Canadian.  I was born here.  I suppose I have always taken living in this country for granted.  Now that I travel more I am always glad to come home.  I suppose this is a sign that I actually do like it here,  and that I am less inclined these days to take living here for granted.

There are times that I do come close to loving Canada: David Suzuki helps, given everything he has done to raise our awareness of our obligation to protect the environment out of consideration for other life forms and future generations.  When recent immigrants go all wide and teary eyed and gobsmacked about this beautiful new country they have landed in.  When I was in hospital last year for a week, remembering that in the US, even with Obama Care I would be in hock for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The way we do multiculturalism.  Here, we don't merely tolerate cultural diversity, we embrace and celebrate it.  We are the world's most successful nation at multiculturalism and every time I hear the dreadful voice of Donald Trump or the growing anti-immigrant right in Europe I get all warm and fuzzy about my beloved country.

We need to improve.  We need to work on our public health care system, particularly integrate dental treatment and pharmaceuticals into our national care plan so that no one, regardless of lack of funds, should have to go without dental care and medication.  We need to step up going off fossil fuels and accelerate the process at becoming completely renewable energy dependent.  And something needs to be done, fast, to address the growing gap between rich and poor.  That my city, Vancouver, has the most robust economy and also the greatest homelessness crisis in Canada should give us pause.  And there's our awful climate, and I mean winter, and no I don't think it's a good idea to wait for global warming to turn this country into a subtropical paradise.

I imagine that on a global scale we are doing pretty good.  We've recently been rated second after Germany by one of the UN think tanks as the best country in the world so we must be doing something right.  We only need to guard against complacency, work harder on our environment and on protecting the poor and we will be one step closer to heaven.