Social Rendering

A History

There has been media coverage on the Downtown Eastside's (DTES) activist community proclaiming the business community is the gentrifier of their community. But, originally Hastings Street and Gastown constituted the main business hub of Vancouver and 'old' office buildings were converted into residences in response to the social housing shortages created by Expo 1986. The City pushed the poor off Davie Street into DTES. Business always demands the transient subculture off its door step. It is the choice of the people elected to run the municipality on how that demand is met that results in the culture of their new neighbourhood.

It is unfortunate the present culture of the DTES still rallies divisiveness: Us v Them.  It has been this way for as long as I've known the neighbourhood. In 1994 there was DERA's internal fighting with who was the Executive Director, Jim Green or Barb Daniels. The latter won out, but the former was given a mid-management position in the provincial government. The divisiveness continued to flourish due to all the players, named and their supporters, behaving within the realm of corruption. The manifestations remain in every crook and cranny, and those bred to it knowing nothing different, and it is nurtured by the whole City, itself.  The corrupt include those with the blinders of not-in-my-backyard.

The corrupt deny there are choices. It has to be this way for the paradigm of victim to exist: For every victim there must be a perpetrator. A parallel paradigm exists with every emancipator there is a collaborator, and they embrace the realms of choice.

Choice requires an acknowledgement of Us v Them, but only from the perspective of defining the parts of the whole. Choice also reveres the responsibilities of its processes and results. It proclaims openly when it wears the blinders, for choice is the voice of creation.

A Revolution

Is it possible for the corrupt to take up the mantel of choice?  Of course, for that is the purpose of creation: the more invocation of choice results in an expansion of creation. Even the corrupt exist within creation, the difference is theirs is short lived.

The collective is on the verge of a rendering the awareness of choice.

Hastings Street is meeting the needs of the new demands with the influx of creative individuals gathering within its population. The area's growth is for naught. It is change due to choice, and with that choice there comes more choice.

My Choice

I have lived this homeless existence with the question of how to break the juggernaut of the Us v Them paradigm, so that I can have the survival tool thus enabling an expansion of my thriving needs. Without shelter (one of three sacred survival requirements) my choices of activity is restricted to shortening my life.  It is the juggernaut of the corrupt, the outside force that has invaded my space and needs lancing.

The lancing can only be done when light is used to define the dark images of ourselves, the communities. I choose to give you a light.

The Episode

Yesterday, amid the deep slushy streets on the south side of Victory Park I saw this man taking

advantage of the emptiness to create. 

On the northeast corner there was another man and his creation required a shovel.

This is Wes Regan. He was cleaning away the snow from the drainage grate so that the melting water would not pool. When this happens there is no safe place for pedestrians to cross the streets, and the cars splash the water up to the sidewalks. The only solution is to clear the grates of the heavy snow, and this requires man power the City couldn't possibly arrange efficiently or economically.

Wes probably recognizes the need more than most because he's the Executive Director of Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association.  All in all, it took him about an hour to do a couple of blocks worth of shoveling. In that time he was given tea from one cafe and a breakfast muffin from another, and said, "They would have done the same for anyone (else), I'm sure".

I told Wes that I had just concluded a tour of western cities to see what poverty and homelessness was like in them, and it had inspired me to share the moments of kindness to create a better society.  Wes and I share the belief we can have a kinder community and easier life when we each do something to help another.  It is these moments of choice when collaboration blossoms into the recognition we are all part of the whole.

We all belong, including the corrupt.  Our purpose and need is to have a balance between the dark and light.

En garde, Magnat.

1994 was a naive time.

There were groups of us sitting around the tables believing we were there to make a difference in our lives. In this belief many of us saw government employees as being partners, ergo democracy in direct action: and, again, Vancouver leads the country with an innovative Canadianism!

We were diligent in our meetings, keeping the decisions on course with how we saw the medical system would best meet the needs of everyone. We studied our communities, met as citizens of the city and province, learned the communication skills the bureaucracy had been learning, wrote and shared our reports, and gave our hearts to what we knew would have the best outcomes. It was to be the final, not beginning stages of the Vancouver Health Board.

Quickly it came from the government the service boundaries had to be divided differently. They knew the money flow, so we posed no argument and continued to make plans as to how we include the new neighbourhoods into our plan for the Vancouver/Richmond Health Board. In quick succession the names and boundaries kept changing and every neighbourhood across the Lower Mainland (22 municipalities surrounding the Fraser River delta) no longer had input to any plan's implementation.

Fast forward through the Drunken-Campbell-BC, where addictions developed into big business for the province. In fact, along with cannabis, the continent's pharmaceutical industry found another group of subjects to test and sell their new found mood-altering concoction, methadone. The Downtown Eastside in Vancouver and Whalley in Surrey are the Lower Mainland's focus to find test subjects, and methadone-only pharmacies have popped up like daisies. One Surrey pharmacist plied flyers for his delivery service ($80. per prescription) to his strongest client base's residential complex. (photo to come)

Many of the generational homeless are raised or migrate to these two areas: It is much easier for the urban poor to make a camp in park-filled Surrey, or have a floor mat in Vancouver than any where else in Canada. Besides, the Lotus lands are always found in the port cities, or those that longshoremen reside in, because that's where the pirates, aka gangsters, have historically plied their trade.

1912 Vancouver businessmen successfully lobbied the provincial government to have the merchant-class ships unload in their port.  Originally the plan was Prince Rupert, because it was a 55-hour shorter route from Singapore, but the Vancouverites were better sleeping partners. A century later Jim Pattison has changed this - and he's been a BC pirate since his infamous 1970's pornographic smuggling - back to Prince Rupert, and that lovely, little coastal community is about to be the hub of ugly; The pirates are sure to moor and leave a wake of destruction up and down the eastern Pacific coast and along the hunting grounds of the Yellowhead Highway, aka Highway 16, right into Edmonton. Pattison has the two western provinces tied into a juggernaut of pig farm proportions, and the psychopaths are salivating.

The State of Addiction

There is a nasty cocktail brewing in Vancouver under the auspices of Mental Health care. The most recent document outlining the new care model is pure plagiarism from the 1990's studies commissioned for the BC Ministry of Health and the City of Vancouver. (How do I know? I was involved in the community and co-wrote some of those studies and had the others in my possession as reference to our recommendations of health care in the neighbourhood.)

The difference is the new document "Improving Health Services for Individuals with Severe Addiction and Mental Illness" (November 15, 2013, Ministry of Health Report to the Honourable Terry Lake) is full of language to describe the estimated 130,000 people as if they are totally incapable of anything, and all their rights are stripped. The revolving door of incarceration-to-the-street is assured.

These people are being video-monitored while they stay in the shelters, because they have no home, and teams of so-called professionals will bound them off to the hospital to be forced to take "treatment" of anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, methadone and electric shock therapy.  Their diet in and out of hospital is predominately refined starches, little in the way of fresh vegetables and fruit, and heavy fat proteins.

These authors have actually used the homeless population numbers and assigned them to their definition of severe addictions and mental health to validate their intended treatment program. Instead of solving homelessness, they're keeping it alive so they have their subjects to torture.

10 days to go

Early to bed...

I've done everything needed to be doing and the space is closed for production.  Damn, time on my hands.

No creative outlet only results in one thing, the letter writing campaign against Bad Dog about their service. I have the confirmation, I need, that a breach happened with their last upgrade and they haven't got the guts to admit it, let alone the other infractions of CRTC regs.

I have the spare time only because the project was solely in my hands and I didn't have to account to anyone a timeline or explain part way through the how's and why's of any of it. I just got on with the tasks at hand.

I'm in no one's Army. I don't have time.

http://www.belkinhouse.ca/

The 12 days of...

Yeeeeeeeeehaw!

I'll be ready for display as of the 16th.

Every single thing is satisfactory and I'm proud of accomplishing what I have done: Three beaded-stain glass works; one triptych and four separate wall pieces; and, six art boxes.  This whole experience is exhilarating against the backdrop of being homeless.

BC Housing and everyone else who has been actively trying to destroy the beautiful life I can make will be wearing egg on their faces come the 26th. You all failed.  Your denial of your mental health status is the root of your failure to yourselves.

16 Days to Go.

This shot is from the Sally Ann's window, today.

My sixth and last box art project will be complete for the show. Next week I have to get my outfit ready. 

In the last two days I've hit the pavement with the postcards and have invited nearly 200. I've got some more time next week, since we're shutting the studio down on the 19th, to pound the pavement in another section of downtown. Easy work, but my lower limbs scream at me. Ain't easy being arthritic, let alone green ;)

September 8, 2013

Daily Observation

Another day in Vancouver. It's changed, this city. Far more people in a smaller place and, thankfully, far more polite than Surrey.

It always felt like too much attention was directed towards me by the majority's choice to hunt for a target .-  And, who is more vulnerable than a single, white, non-parental female in this day and age?  Talk about being a visible minority! - Surrey's citizens interact under the auspices of vindictiveness.  It needs more honest RCMP members, imho.

At first the idea of returning to live in Vancouver didn't appeal, but having been here for more than a week there is a symbiosis of the un and familiar.

...I"m still homeless. November 15, 2013 to now?  I'm impecunious.

As of today...

I am living on the streets. It will be filled with trying to find a bed in an emergency shelter somewhere.

Would someone care to take over my life? Maybe you can find someone who really cares, because every person I've approached either walks way or takes the opportunity to add more difficulties onto this already stressful existence.

Homelessness continued...

Unenviable, or not?

None of us escape the dichotomy of choice. Tis the way of life. So, is it more enviable to have many choices or fewer?

The situation...

I have a monthly disability income of $940. The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in this area is $700, add the average cost of utilities (phone, hydro, internet or cable TV) to be $150. I have the added expense of paying $125 per month for a loan I had to take out nearly two years ago. The rest is to buy food with...

I could rent in the cheapest city in this area (average $550 for rent), but it is the city that has caused me the greatest grief and where gangsters roam without any societal containment. My life could be in danger if I were to roam the same streets, as rumor has it, the so-called-contract that was out on me last November is still active.

To use the emergency shelters throughout the Lower Mainland is to sleep beside the same people connected to the gang that put that contract out on me. It is the same as the Transition Houses, where women from prison and the violence of addiction go.  I would pay $375, at least, for a bed for a month.


I have applied to numerous non-profit housing and remain on a waiting list for each. The Salvation Army was oh-so-diabolical and managed to put me from the very top of the A-list for housing to the bottom of the B-list with BC Housing. I have been on this waiting list since January 2000.

A few days ago I turned 55 years of age, and this is suppose to qualify me to use the services of Senior Services Society, in New Westminster. About two months ago I met with Denise Wells there who once worked for a non-profit organization in Surrey and she was part and parcel of a group who tried to steal my artwork. She pawned me off, with prejudice, to a co-worker and Phillip turned out to be "too busy" to help me. I spoke with his acting supervisor, Anna, yesterday and her view is that I don't need their services. She suggested I go to a place in Surrey, which is where Wells worked before and in the heart of the gangster territory.


I could use the bed I have been using the last month, but one of the people has chosen to view my bike as his way to excise his anger. He has destroyed the derailer and it will cost me about $75 to have it repaired. His reasoning for changing the gears abusively is the bike is "a piece of shit".  But, it isn't his responsibility to fix it, or pay for the repairs. His girlfriend has nothing to say, except to pretend nothing is wrong.  (The bike is not just a bike: I have severe arthritis in my lower limbs, and wear a knee brace for support. I cannot stand for more than a few minutes with the brace and the bike allows me to carry groceries as well as exercise to control my weight and diabetes.)

The rains have returned, but there is always a sleeping bag and tarp.

13900 92 Ave

This was the beginning of the sky turning deep pink last night.  Ice cream.

Back to the studio...

... today. It turned out okay. I'm satisfied with one painting and started another, to which I will paint over. The last few weeks need to ferment in layers of plastic.

There is unfinished business in this neck of the woods. I have returned for a reason and I can feel the bubble of anger sitting in my ribs. A reckoning? It sure is my desire to bring to light exactly how a single woman (who refused to give birth by choice) is considered by certain religious groups to be a less-than-citizen.

I've been around more blocks than anyone else can imagine and I'm still standing strong. In fact, the focus is much more intense, to the point of dauntlessness and even I can see why I'm scarey.

It was good to be in the studio.

Seymour Street, between Davie and Helmcken Streets.

 

In 1984...

... I had been in Ontario for two years, and got to watch Pierre Eliot Trudeau's last week as Prime Minister, live. Mr Flamboyant had reached the pinnacle of his working life and gracefully bowed out while there was still fire in his belly to pursue something else.


The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was law and my lifestyle choice of independent woman was sacrosanct. The naivety of being a young adult idealist. It took 30 years to figure out none, or the vast majority, of us (humans, et al) were given the tools to behave like adults by the previous generations. We inherited the shame-based behaviours that won't allow an awareness of Self, and it has been a long, blinding history. The baby-boomers declared a change was desired and science responded by naming the behaviours of the previous generations.

The majority of the younger baby-boomers, and those born 15 years after, have the 'escapism' imprint. The desire to deny anything is wrong and jump into some form of escapism. Most turned to drugs and alcohol. Few, like me, turned to creativity and meditation, but we all lived in a wax of confusion.

It has been my time in Surrey that cleared my head of the dynamic of the toxic-shamed culture. I always thought of all the religious organizations the Catholics were the masters of shaming children - just look at the Middle Ages! - but, Sikhism, in my book, takes the lead by a notch. Absolutely diabolical the way their mothers belittle their sons and disown their daughters.

In the 30 years I have studied what makes humans tick, I conclude the only way to make the Charter of Rights and Freedoms work is to force people, immigrants especially, into mental health programing. From Grade 8 onward psychology needs to be an integral part of the curriculum. There are enough educated Social Workers in BC to start this school year... But, herein lies the crucible:

The majority of people controlling the education system are choosing to remain in the shame-base dynamic, and too afraid of their own shadows to go beyond "THOU SHALL NOT BE AWARE" (by Alice Miller).

99 Ave at 120A St

On the 33rd day it rained...

104 Ave at 140 St, Surrey, BC, 11:00 AM

I can't believe I'm in the city where it all began in the summer of 2007 and ended in the autumn of 2012.

The last half decade is full of experiences that would tear many to shreds, and often I want to believe it was all a fantasy I wrote.  I can only view it as more pearls on a string woven into a ball to be tossed around; otherwise, I'd go mad trying to place the details into some logical context.

Psycho-analyst, Alice Miller, and Jungian, Marion Woodman's work helps to bridge some of the motifs my life has spun in and out of. What I have done with the experiences of the last 55 years certainly isn't the norm: I've always been destined to have that proverbial Chinese "interesting life".

55 years of of roaming in the gloaming has taught that as long as I breathe it will be impossible for me to "shut the fuck up and sit down", so I may as well stop trying to put an edit button between my mind and mouth. It's time to let her rip -

I am a Canadian.

I am whatever it is I decide to be and no one can use it against me. But, not everyone born or immigrated to Canada understands what it means to be a Canadian. The last half decade has shown me this to be so true; and, it brings to mind a line out of BBC's "I Claudius" when a Senator, about to undergo Lucius Aelius Sejanus's, torture describes the coming violence as "the putrefaction Rome [had] become".  I feel the same about Canada because of my generation's input, or lack thereof, into the direction of this country.

We have had so many immigrants from violent, war torn countries without bothering to monitor their mental and emotional health.  We now have the whole world living within our borders and not one lick of work has been done by my generation to make sure they know what it means to live under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

It means you're not allowed to use my choices against me.

I am a single, white, female artist with an independent streak longer and wider than the Milky Way. You cannot kill me or do me physical harm and everyone knows this.  I'm here to set a longer standard of life-span for the generations after me.  This means I am different.

In the time I have lived in Surrey BC I have had seven landlords who have done their best to violate my rights and make me cower to their omnipotent shame-based behaviours as they got their friends, in and out of law enforcement, to gang up on me. It didn't work. It won't.  I'm still here, alive and well, and I'm sure much to many's chagrin, stronger.

They put me in jail - maximum security! - twice for a total of 13 days and it still didn't instill any fear in me. I was then able to use law enforcement to protect myself from the minions of the drug world, to which many of the Sikh extraction will say I 'deserved'.

I learned at age 11 what it means to say "no" to an abuser. The word "no" has more power than any other human concept. It means the power of free will. The power to know what it feels like to say it and make another stop. The power of fearlessness. The power of responsibility.  And, this power gives me the right to say "Fuck off and drop dead" to anyone I choose.

  

First of Three

Yesterday I completed the first of three Baby Princess dresses for the Langley Arts Council.  It is a great achievement considering my homeless status;

The Salvation Army is kicking me out under false pretenses. I am, once again, being scapegoated by a psychopath. It is with great pleasure Karen Hofer, my so-called-adviser gave me till July 31, 2013 to be out of the room.  She knows this is a big hardship for me, and she's thrilled to be causing harm to another. My experiences match her reputation.

Last night I attended an opening for a new gallery in Fort Langley and the young owners want to see more of my textile work to show.  I am becoming an overnight success after 53 years of working with needles ;)

When to Draw the Line

Other's demands:

I have been living in the Gateway of Hoipe transition house, in Langley BC. It is run by the Salvation Army.

These people say they have a "program" and it is there to help one find a permanent home.One gets approved to live in this place (and one pays rent) by having a plan of action regarding finding appropriate housing and possibly work.

I was approved because I am on a disability pension and working towards making a living as an artist. Not an easy path with the greatest of supports.  But, since the beginning the women who claims to be my 'advisor' has tried to get me to look for work and take housing that is not appropriate for me. She's made things worse with her meddling with the government and is now expecting me to give my input to build a workshop with a local credit union.

In return I get her entering my private space without notice and for no reason.

I emailed the contact person at the credit union and told her I would not be giving any more of my time and energy to build a new workshop because of my advisor's disrespectful behaviour.

The line is drawn. No more of my time is going to help anyone else when my needs are not being met.

Platitudes

This is what I envision the mental state of the people employed by the province of  British Columbia.  They speak of 'caring' but really there is an enormous empty space between their words and intention.

The last one I spoke with said she took the job because she "...wanted to help people". I replied, "So, the excellent wage, benefits and pension package had nothing to your accepting employment?" She remained silent.

Box Art 01

Any thing can be made into a piece of art: Boxes have been used for more than a hundred years as a 'canvas'.

This September the studio I work out of is doing a collection of box art as part of the show, and we will have boxes with any subject matter, shape or size one can imagine.

Here is one of the mini boxes I've done.

Living the Homeless Life, Part 1

For those who don't know...

On November 15, 2013 the police pulled me out of the apartment I was living in to protect my life from the numb-nut criminals in the complex.(Had I been informed that the landlord is associated with gangsters I would not have moved into the place in the first place.  Because I know me and me always calls the police upon witnessing a crime, and living in a den of thieves is not conducive to my well being.)

Since then I have been in the homeless state of sharing a transition house run by the Salvation Army.  I have no say on who my roommates will be, and army life is not something I have ever needed. For more than 50 years I have learned self-discipline by engaging in the arts. Artists are masters, and masters create something from nothing. Simple as that. Do these Army folk understand this? No.

The majority of the people who work and live within the Salvation Army are people who need to be told what to do and how to do it. A case in point:

This morning I had a discussion with one of my roommates about the effects of drugs and alcohol on the human mind. She has not used crack cocaine for the last eight months after 15 years of using. She was saying the addiction is a disease, and I said it is a lifestyle choice. I backed my statement up with the fact that drugs and alcohol suppress the mind's inhibitors, allowing for the user to express whatever emotion they feel or think about in the moment; and, that it takes a great deal of practice to control one's emotions. She ended the conversation with stating she needed to get ready to go to church. 

She needs the structure of basic rules because she has spent a great deal of her adult life in the state of being out of control. For her, the daily church attendance is an absolute need, because it is the comfort zone where she does not have to take responsibility for controlling herself. Someone else is in control, she's obedient to her faith instead of a substance.

What I know...

In more than 50 years of engaging in one art form or another I have discovered self control. Each art form is a skill, and those skills require practice to achieve proficiency, and the practice demands self control.

Irish Crochet - Baby Princess Dress

Irish Crochet is one of the youngest of the domestic handcrafts, and developed in response to the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840's. The women who were making lace for the aristocrats upgraded their work to more complicated motifs, thereby assuring their income to save their homes and families. By 1890 the motifs had become even more complicated and wonderful.

Traditional Irish crochet uses size 30 thread, which is about the size of heavy machine thread, and is usually cotton or silk.

I used size 10 thread in this baby princess dress. It is very simple in design, predominately using the half-double crochet stitch, a bit of filet and the ruffles a combination of half-double and double crochet stitches. The buttons and picot-edge (dark purple) are the only truly traditional Irish crochet in the work.