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.