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.
