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.

  

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.