It has been over a week since I began using this blog to reflect on the letter that I have now sent to the two pastors of First Presbyterian Church of Savannah – Stephen Williams and Will Shelburne. I sent the letter today. It had a few modifications from the text in the last four postings. I ended up concentrating more on invisibility and less on being an enemy.
In one sense I feel directionless and in another I feel quite the opposite. It is clear that the next five or six months will be focused on Laser Eagles, the ROM art exhibit, shifting my staff team and my physical realities in order to accommodate the upcoming trip to Oregon, Arizona and the Conference for Global Transformation in San Francisco. The purpose of much of this trip is to nail down an opportunity to research the BMX Model and to demonstrate the inclusive video game at the conference.
So the direction is set in that sense. It is not set in a more personal and specific sense. Questions such as “Do I need a different kind of staff person so I can travel more easily?” or “How do I make sure that I’m making enough money that I can let go of ODSP if/when I need to?” – these questions remain vague and uncertain. Of course, their vagueness will disappear as necessity demands I take action. For example, I currently only have three weeks of staff time scheduled and my staff will soon be questioning me about what shifts they will have and how many hours and when am I going away and all that sort of thing. In other words, life will give me a direction if I haven’t already chosen one myself.
I am battling with myself. The question looks something like “I thought you were going to retire?” My circle is meeting on Sunday and I can already hear them protesting the intensity of life which faces me from end of April until end of August.
It is not hard to see how this all emerged. A few months ago I was lying on my back in my comfy bed recovering from near-terminal illness. Two forces conspired to shift all that. First, I was intrigued by the gigantic toys playing blocks outside my window at night only to discover that a prison is being assembled in my neighbourhood. Secondly, a colleague from the Book of Judith play went to a party because we couldn’t go to Edinburgh in November because I was sick. This set off a chain of events leading to my having an Inclusion art exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum. Add to these main themes that I actually did recover and that Laser Eagles was revitalized this fall by the combined efforts of Kimberly Fu and the CAVE board, and rather suddenly I’m pushing to create THE art exhibit about the journey of Inclusion that will – one hopes – convict people with the desire to embrace diversity.
There are other factors such as Mike Skubic and the video game. It all runs together at this point. I am on the road again and compelled again.
I have a great sense of fatigue just thinking about it all. Of course, the thinking about it is way more tiring than the doing of it, but that’s where I’m at right now. I have been learning in many ways, and particularly through the course on achieving a lasting impact that a sense of fatigue and hopelessness is really no more than confronting the perception that “the tiger is not dead but asleep”. You can drag it out of the path but as soon as it wakes up it is going to walk right back to the road and lay back down on it again. Trying to bring about Inclusion has been like trying to drag this sleeping tiger out of the road.
The course has been very interesting and instructive. It has pulled up virtually every occasion where I have felt like I got close to making a powerful impact on building Inclusion only to be driven back into obscurity. Whether it was Al Etmanski firing me in 2000 or Tom Kohler crossing his arms and emphatically saying that people with disabilities are not invited to Citizen Advocate training or Jack Pearpoint or Marsha Forest not including me in Inclusion Press. No matter how great and inspiring my own journey has been or my ideas may be I am not seen as having the practicality that is required to put a real organizational strategy together and to bring it to fruition.
So now we (mainly Mike and I) envision a well resourced organization that will foster Inclusion. Now I am preparing to put my energy on the line to get the necessary steps in place. I cannot know of course if I am just dragging another sleeping tiger to the culvert from whence it will shortly return, wet and hungry.
Showing posts with label cranes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cranes. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
February 3, 2011
It looks like Kimberly is back playing Farmville. Yay!
The crane was dancing this morning again. During the night sometime several more cubes arrived and all of them were rearranged. In the further distance one can now see that a whole new layer of cubes has been added to the prison, a little southwest of the rest of the building. Perhaps there is an entire new section going up. How big are sixteen hundred cubes when they are stacked up!?!
The bits and pieces for the Savannah trip are beginning to take shape. Mike and I are getting down to the wire, which means organizing things like travel insurance, lodging down and back, scheduling the nights that I will do workshops for Chatham Savannah Citizen Advocacy. On Tuesday I “acquired” two small painting kits with brushes and mini tubes of all the basic colours. These kits came inside of canvases that Laser Eagles had bought at a dollar store. They were going to be discarded because we use 2-litre size bottles of paint. I get a chuckle when I think about how often I have found significant resources by just such acquisition – from picking up garbaged furniture, to taking other people’s leftovers after a restaurant meal, to sorting through clothes that others are about to recycle. I wonder if I will post notices in the ROM exhibit of all the paintings that were created out of scrap materials. It might very well fit the theme!
Part of the kit that I was assembling today for Savannah is my medications for diabetes, pain support and nutrition (chewable vitamins and calcium). It’s kind of like gathering my armour for a battle. These create my sense of security and safety as much as knowing that there will be enough money. The last important $500 came in this morning with a commitment from Peter Block to hire me for one morning on the way down. It is like putting the last brick in the wall and I bless his generousity.
I believe this will be the sixth time that I have journeyed to Savannah. It forms a kind of rhythm in my life. Savannah is the place I go to to warm up, to eat well, to feel great with good friends, to see the Spanish moss and the pelicans and, perhaps most importantly, to become clear on what slavery does to human relationships and creativity. It was in Savannah that I learned that I am a slave. I learned this listening to a man present his book about how slavery has been recreated in the United States. The fundamental element of slavery is the buying and selling of a person’s body¸ especially without the permission of that person. Of course, people who are labelled with disability are bought and sold constantly and most often have very limited or no choice about their location. I myself cannot leave Ontario for more than five weeks in a year. This would not be considered a huge problem to most people who are labelled disabled, but since the majority of work I have been doing in my life has been outside of Canada, I have frequently been an outlaw. It used to be that people turned a blind eye on my behalf but that ended just before Gabor, Erin and I left for the Tour in 2008. Now I must be careful!
It is paradoxically refreshing to be in a place where people are polite but very explicit about the intention to keep racism and slavery alive and well. The clarity of the experience allows for genuine dialogue. It also allows for grounding reflection on the personal experience. This, of course, gives me a solid base to become more creative. The wishy washy soft talk of Canadians about economic imprisonment can leave me and others quite befuddled.
Anyway, it is almost time and I can feel so strongly the urge to leave!
The crane was dancing this morning again. During the night sometime several more cubes arrived and all of them were rearranged. In the further distance one can now see that a whole new layer of cubes has been added to the prison, a little southwest of the rest of the building. Perhaps there is an entire new section going up. How big are sixteen hundred cubes when they are stacked up!?!
The bits and pieces for the Savannah trip are beginning to take shape. Mike and I are getting down to the wire, which means organizing things like travel insurance, lodging down and back, scheduling the nights that I will do workshops for Chatham Savannah Citizen Advocacy. On Tuesday I “acquired” two small painting kits with brushes and mini tubes of all the basic colours. These kits came inside of canvases that Laser Eagles had bought at a dollar store. They were going to be discarded because we use 2-litre size bottles of paint. I get a chuckle when I think about how often I have found significant resources by just such acquisition – from picking up garbaged furniture, to taking other people’s leftovers after a restaurant meal, to sorting through clothes that others are about to recycle. I wonder if I will post notices in the ROM exhibit of all the paintings that were created out of scrap materials. It might very well fit the theme!
Part of the kit that I was assembling today for Savannah is my medications for diabetes, pain support and nutrition (chewable vitamins and calcium). It’s kind of like gathering my armour for a battle. These create my sense of security and safety as much as knowing that there will be enough money. The last important $500 came in this morning with a commitment from Peter Block to hire me for one morning on the way down. It is like putting the last brick in the wall and I bless his generousity.
I believe this will be the sixth time that I have journeyed to Savannah. It forms a kind of rhythm in my life. Savannah is the place I go to to warm up, to eat well, to feel great with good friends, to see the Spanish moss and the pelicans and, perhaps most importantly, to become clear on what slavery does to human relationships and creativity. It was in Savannah that I learned that I am a slave. I learned this listening to a man present his book about how slavery has been recreated in the United States. The fundamental element of slavery is the buying and selling of a person’s body¸ especially without the permission of that person. Of course, people who are labelled with disability are bought and sold constantly and most often have very limited or no choice about their location. I myself cannot leave Ontario for more than five weeks in a year. This would not be considered a huge problem to most people who are labelled disabled, but since the majority of work I have been doing in my life has been outside of Canada, I have frequently been an outlaw. It used to be that people turned a blind eye on my behalf but that ended just before Gabor, Erin and I left for the Tour in 2008. Now I must be careful!
It is paradoxically refreshing to be in a place where people are polite but very explicit about the intention to keep racism and slavery alive and well. The clarity of the experience allows for genuine dialogue. It also allows for grounding reflection on the personal experience. This, of course, gives me a solid base to become more creative. The wishy washy soft talk of Canadians about economic imprisonment can leave me and others quite befuddled.
Anyway, it is almost time and I can feel so strongly the urge to leave!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
January 29, 2011
Gloria had a fabulous idea today. She suggests that I take all the entries I have made about the cranes, cubes and the prison which is rising before me and make them into one article and publish it – somewhere like The Globe and Mail.
I will do this, but not tonight.
The doing of this is related in a number of ways. First on my mind is to develop the capacity to be calm, courageous and to celebrate life in the midst of all that is life destroying, horrible and disgusting. My automatic response is to ignore or run away. Truly I want to do neither. I want to be able to continue to look out my window, to be a watcher as my Mother was, and to celebrate the fabulous variety of insignificant events that continue to emerge moment by moment just outside my bedroom window. I want to continue to love living in this odd neighbourhood, so close to the lake, so “underdeveloped”, so human. I want to paint the emergence of life around me. I do not want to stop seeing and I do not want to have to go away. These are ways of the past that I have been able to rise above. This is my personal legacy – to be able to be where I am and be who I am whether or not I am afraid.
From another perspective it is too simplistic and fundamentally not true to say that this prison building is wrong. It is very much not what I would choose, but this is not the same thing as being wrong. There are many dynamics that bring about the global economy that result in Texan prisoners building cubes for Ontario prisoners to assemble and live in. I would prefer that people make different choices, and organize themselves differently in the awesome, largely unconscious, effort to work together around the planet. Just the same, although the results of this effort seem so contrary to life and its affirmation, still it is life and living people that are bringing it about. I do not understand and perhaps understanding is not an adequate response or approach. However, in my not understanding I can still appreciate the awesomeness of what is beyond me and my capacity to understand.
I have spent most of my life in a conscious choice to make a difference that I call Inclusion. I feel that this choice, this calling, is in some kind of coordination with the eternal impulse that brings life to the world – often called God. The rising presence of a massive prison in my backyard – rising night by night as I sleep or don’t sleep in my bed – can it be accidental? And even if it is accidental is it not something to which I can respond? What is before me at this time is to discover the response that I can make that forwards the conversation called Inclusion because that is who I am.
If I write my life with a large brush then it seems that Camphill fell through and my finances fell apart so that I might end up in this bedroom looking out this window at the very time when this prison is being assembled. Of course, I could say the same thing about other elements of my life – for example, that Gabor turned against me so that Mike would come to fill the empty position, or that I would have to turn to ODSP so that I would be in a clear position to choose powerfully how I accept or do not accept the next plan from ACF, or that I would contract a life threatening infection and have five doctors deal with it ineffectively so that I might end up lying and looking out this window for nine weeks. I am sure that many would say that I am far too full of myself to write such a major role into my life script.
On another topic, tomorrow is the day that I set to choose if I am leaving for Savannah, or not, on February 12. It seems that we are about $4000 short of what it would take to pay Mike and another assistant separately from the CILT based fund for my personal assistance. The value of doing it this way, besides keeping the peace among myself, CILT and the Ministry of Health, is that I would recoup a large part of the overspending of this account that has happened in the last seven months.
Unfortunately, no such amount of money is forthcoming for all the usual reasons. It is certainly not for lack of looking for it, although I’m sure there are sources that I have not discovered or touched. For the last six weeks I have kept a chart with happy faces and stars to reinforce my efforts to find money. The chart has helped. I am now more than likely going to earn enough money each month this year to be able to pay back some of the ongoing debt I am in, and to travel to some important engagements like the Conference for Global Transformation in May. Just the same, the money for Savannah is not there today. Of course, it may show up tomorrow. It would be awesome!
What would I do in Savannah? Paint “Dirty Window” and have it ready for the ROM exhibit. (This is the painting of the rising prison.) Catch up on what’s been happening with people who are struggling to be economically included in the most racist place I have ever been. Re-immerse myself in an explicitly Christian environment that somehow moves me deeply. Hang out with pelicans during the month before all the tourists invade. Speak to people about what I have learned and questioned in the two years since I last spent time with them. Enjoy the car ride down and back – a time that always allows me to pull my thoughts together. Eat fabulous southern grits and BBQ and other foods rarely encountered in the cooler north. There is so much more that I can hardly imagine that three or even five weeks wouldn’t pass by in a flash.
But it seems, at least tonight, that I am not meant to go. Seemings can be wrong. I sure hope this one is!
I will do this, but not tonight.
The doing of this is related in a number of ways. First on my mind is to develop the capacity to be calm, courageous and to celebrate life in the midst of all that is life destroying, horrible and disgusting. My automatic response is to ignore or run away. Truly I want to do neither. I want to be able to continue to look out my window, to be a watcher as my Mother was, and to celebrate the fabulous variety of insignificant events that continue to emerge moment by moment just outside my bedroom window. I want to continue to love living in this odd neighbourhood, so close to the lake, so “underdeveloped”, so human. I want to paint the emergence of life around me. I do not want to stop seeing and I do not want to have to go away. These are ways of the past that I have been able to rise above. This is my personal legacy – to be able to be where I am and be who I am whether or not I am afraid.
From another perspective it is too simplistic and fundamentally not true to say that this prison building is wrong. It is very much not what I would choose, but this is not the same thing as being wrong. There are many dynamics that bring about the global economy that result in Texan prisoners building cubes for Ontario prisoners to assemble and live in. I would prefer that people make different choices, and organize themselves differently in the awesome, largely unconscious, effort to work together around the planet. Just the same, although the results of this effort seem so contrary to life and its affirmation, still it is life and living people that are bringing it about. I do not understand and perhaps understanding is not an adequate response or approach. However, in my not understanding I can still appreciate the awesomeness of what is beyond me and my capacity to understand.
I have spent most of my life in a conscious choice to make a difference that I call Inclusion. I feel that this choice, this calling, is in some kind of coordination with the eternal impulse that brings life to the world – often called God. The rising presence of a massive prison in my backyard – rising night by night as I sleep or don’t sleep in my bed – can it be accidental? And even if it is accidental is it not something to which I can respond? What is before me at this time is to discover the response that I can make that forwards the conversation called Inclusion because that is who I am.
If I write my life with a large brush then it seems that Camphill fell through and my finances fell apart so that I might end up in this bedroom looking out this window at the very time when this prison is being assembled. Of course, I could say the same thing about other elements of my life – for example, that Gabor turned against me so that Mike would come to fill the empty position, or that I would have to turn to ODSP so that I would be in a clear position to choose powerfully how I accept or do not accept the next plan from ACF, or that I would contract a life threatening infection and have five doctors deal with it ineffectively so that I might end up lying and looking out this window for nine weeks. I am sure that many would say that I am far too full of myself to write such a major role into my life script.
On another topic, tomorrow is the day that I set to choose if I am leaving for Savannah, or not, on February 12. It seems that we are about $4000 short of what it would take to pay Mike and another assistant separately from the CILT based fund for my personal assistance. The value of doing it this way, besides keeping the peace among myself, CILT and the Ministry of Health, is that I would recoup a large part of the overspending of this account that has happened in the last seven months.
Unfortunately, no such amount of money is forthcoming for all the usual reasons. It is certainly not for lack of looking for it, although I’m sure there are sources that I have not discovered or touched. For the last six weeks I have kept a chart with happy faces and stars to reinforce my efforts to find money. The chart has helped. I am now more than likely going to earn enough money each month this year to be able to pay back some of the ongoing debt I am in, and to travel to some important engagements like the Conference for Global Transformation in May. Just the same, the money for Savannah is not there today. Of course, it may show up tomorrow. It would be awesome!
What would I do in Savannah? Paint “Dirty Window” and have it ready for the ROM exhibit. (This is the painting of the rising prison.) Catch up on what’s been happening with people who are struggling to be economically included in the most racist place I have ever been. Re-immerse myself in an explicitly Christian environment that somehow moves me deeply. Hang out with pelicans during the month before all the tourists invade. Speak to people about what I have learned and questioned in the two years since I last spent time with them. Enjoy the car ride down and back – a time that always allows me to pull my thoughts together. Eat fabulous southern grits and BBQ and other foods rarely encountered in the cooler north. There is so much more that I can hardly imagine that three or even five weeks wouldn’t pass by in a flash.
But it seems, at least tonight, that I am not meant to go. Seemings can be wrong. I sure hope this one is!
Friday, January 28, 2011
January 28, 2011
Well, I plugged away today, mostly while lying in bed, at finding the $5000 I still need to go to Savannah in two weeks. Some in my circle would say that this is my very problem – it is in my mind to look, not to have it come to me, and subtly I am pushing it away.
I listened to Trey Anthony’s Ted Toronto talk tonight. Her name has come up in my world a lot lately – we are both in the Second Story agenda. In the Degree of Freedom world we are separated by only two relationships – Helen to Jen to Trey. She has done a Ted talk. Do they pay people to do those talks I wondered?!?
I battle sometimes with my own reluctance to “push” myself. However, I have no reluctance to push Inclusion and apparently I am my own best example. So be it!
So I looked it up, found the Speaker’s Nomination form and applied. I got the e-mail back that says they received it. We’ll see.
The prison cube crane has been active – slowly – night and day for a few days now. The article in the Toronto Star seems to have sped things up. I wonder out loud with Helen how to stop the prison. I wonder to myself if I can return to just peacefully watching out my window, with no concern for the “value” of what I see – nonattachment. This “perfect” apartment has lost some of it’s sublimeness since I discovered the real nature of the gigantic blocks. I don’t want to have that rising feeling that I will have to move on to search again for my perfect home.
Of course the perfection or lack thereof are all inside of my own evaluation. The prison was always there – there have always been guns and drugs and crazed tenants in this building. The world is what it is! And so this is once again a great opportunity to create a gift out of this potential obstacle that has suddenly appeared before me.
I am so far behind on my e-mail it isn’t funny. Boredom and fundraising are the reasons. I want an adventure – a fun one – to legitimately be able to set up an automatic e-mail message that says: “I am out of town and will not be responding to my e-mail until… “
There has been nothing from the ROM or from ACF. Perhaps they will disappear – perhaps not. It wouldn’t be the first time that something or somebody occupied the depth of focus and energy that they have for roughly ten weeks only to vanish from centre stage. I feel like I am steeling myself for disappointment in several areas of my life.
Enthusiasm gone! Not the first time for that either. Fatigue. The doldrums. Apparently, according to a short video I saw today, it is a relatively new phenomenon to call such a state “depression” and to treat it medically. Others might call a shaman and do a ceremony for the whole “family” – me, Mike, Kimberley, Helen, Peter, Bill and Bill, Adlon, etc. Sounds like a mid-winter party to me!
I am making a promise to myself and my readers that I:
- will have something worth writing about by Monday – today is Friday;
- will catch up on e-mail by Monday.
I listened to Trey Anthony’s Ted Toronto talk tonight. Her name has come up in my world a lot lately – we are both in the Second Story agenda. In the Degree of Freedom world we are separated by only two relationships – Helen to Jen to Trey. She has done a Ted talk. Do they pay people to do those talks I wondered?!?
I battle sometimes with my own reluctance to “push” myself. However, I have no reluctance to push Inclusion and apparently I am my own best example. So be it!
So I looked it up, found the Speaker’s Nomination form and applied. I got the e-mail back that says they received it. We’ll see.
The prison cube crane has been active – slowly – night and day for a few days now. The article in the Toronto Star seems to have sped things up. I wonder out loud with Helen how to stop the prison. I wonder to myself if I can return to just peacefully watching out my window, with no concern for the “value” of what I see – nonattachment. This “perfect” apartment has lost some of it’s sublimeness since I discovered the real nature of the gigantic blocks. I don’t want to have that rising feeling that I will have to move on to search again for my perfect home.
Of course the perfection or lack thereof are all inside of my own evaluation. The prison was always there – there have always been guns and drugs and crazed tenants in this building. The world is what it is! And so this is once again a great opportunity to create a gift out of this potential obstacle that has suddenly appeared before me.
I am so far behind on my e-mail it isn’t funny. Boredom and fundraising are the reasons. I want an adventure – a fun one – to legitimately be able to set up an automatic e-mail message that says: “I am out of town and will not be responding to my e-mail until… “
There has been nothing from the ROM or from ACF. Perhaps they will disappear – perhaps not. It wouldn’t be the first time that something or somebody occupied the depth of focus and energy that they have for roughly ten weeks only to vanish from centre stage. I feel like I am steeling myself for disappointment in several areas of my life.
Enthusiasm gone! Not the first time for that either. Fatigue. The doldrums. Apparently, according to a short video I saw today, it is a relatively new phenomenon to call such a state “depression” and to treat it medically. Others might call a shaman and do a ceremony for the whole “family” – me, Mike, Kimberley, Helen, Peter, Bill and Bill, Adlon, etc. Sounds like a mid-winter party to me!
I am making a promise to myself and my readers that I:
- will have something worth writing about by Monday – today is Friday;
- will catch up on e-mail by Monday.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
January 23, 2011
A picture of the crane and the cubes that I have been describing to you appeared in The Toronto Star today. Here it is:
They are indeed modular parts of a building. A prision. The night-time, secretive play of giants turns out to be the reconstruction of the infamous Don Jail in downtown Toronto. The cubes are manufactured in Texas, trained to Toronto, and trucked downtown. The cubes are sturdy enough to be stacked several stories high, yet each is self sufficient, down to the plumbing. The ultimate assembly will hold over 1600 prisoners.
When I was about eight my younger brother and I reveled in stuffing our kitten into a cardboard box and trapping it there for hours. It died of the stress.
Ivan Illich said the only authentic response to pure evil is silence, because any other response sets up a dynamic that lends the evil a defined presence in our culture. I am not sure I believe that, because, as Marsha used to quote: "They came for the Jews, and I wasn't a Jew, so I kept silent, ... , and when they came for me there was no one left to save me."
I am stunned that this intriquing, enormous, slow dance of the gigantic cubes that has been unfolding under my bedroom window since mid-October - this large nightly activity is the deliberately plotted internation activity with an intended outcome of increasing our local prison population and to do so in as cheaply managed, most inhumane way as possible. Rob Ford, our vigorously right-wing Mayor must be gleeful indeed!
Suddenly, the view from my bedroom window has a sinister cast. My dreams will not be so peaceful.
They are indeed modular parts of a building. A prision. The night-time, secretive play of giants turns out to be the reconstruction of the infamous Don Jail in downtown Toronto. The cubes are manufactured in Texas, trained to Toronto, and trucked downtown. The cubes are sturdy enough to be stacked several stories high, yet each is self sufficient, down to the plumbing. The ultimate assembly will hold over 1600 prisoners.
When I was about eight my younger brother and I reveled in stuffing our kitten into a cardboard box and trapping it there for hours. It died of the stress.
Ivan Illich said the only authentic response to pure evil is silence, because any other response sets up a dynamic that lends the evil a defined presence in our culture. I am not sure I believe that, because, as Marsha used to quote: "They came for the Jews, and I wasn't a Jew, so I kept silent, ... , and when they came for me there was no one left to save me."
I am stunned that this intriquing, enormous, slow dance of the gigantic cubes that has been unfolding under my bedroom window since mid-October - this large nightly activity is the deliberately plotted internation activity with an intended outcome of increasing our local prison population and to do so in as cheaply managed, most inhumane way as possible. Rob Ford, our vigorously right-wing Mayor must be gleeful indeed!
Suddenly, the view from my bedroom window has a sinister cast. My dreams will not be so peaceful.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
January 11, 2011
Well there are days when the ball just won’t go between the posts! I was running late pretty well all day. Mike and I went to a consignment store this morning and there were some really great things but nothing in quite the right size. I got an email back from someone who had been asking good questions about WPIT but he declined to donate. I called some more people to be guests at the Wisdom Completion Evening this Thursday but just got message machines. Blah blah blah.
Perhaps the truly concerning “failure” was my need to use Morphine two days in a row. Jen did say there would be major shifts, and there have been. I do recognize it as one of those plateaus before a great step forward. Just the same, I am tired and sore, and kind of wishing I hadn’t booked myself such a busy week! But so it goes and I’m just venting, not really worried or complaining.
It is interesting how the quality of the questions and comments about WPIT as an organization and our projects are taking on a very more rich and serious (in a good sense) quality. I was Skyping with a colleague this evening and she completely bought into our need for a $6 million dollar foundation so that we can do our projects without constantly having our hands in somebody else’s pocket. She also was thinking about who, at the university level, might take on the kind of social/economic research that inclusion deserves. In a sense she is a “nobody” in the world of big money and research but life doesn’t work that way. Talking to her tonight makes it easier for me to talk to the Executive Director of ACF tomorrow, and on the other hand I have no idea who she knows or who knows who she knows. The message is travelling out and getting stronger as it goes.
In Wisdom we talk about fail, fail, failing your way to success. It very much feels like that is where I am at this time. It kind of makes it easier in a way because if lots of failure is the way to success then bring it on, bring it on, bring it on!
Of course, I hope that the failures are getting smarter as we go!
I feel like it’s been a very long time since I worked hard. I did not work hard at my jobs in the early and mid 90’s. The international travel was fun. The paid office stuff was excruciatingly boring and useless but not at all hard. The intense schedule and consistent phoning, writing, speaking that I’m doing now is considerably more difficult in the sense of leaving no room for fooling around, but it’s making a lot of sense and building a network and proving that I can be worthy of a team working with me. It is a very different life than Cycle 2.
Oh yes, I painted today. Well I didn’t actually paint. Mike and I spent about an hour preparing to paint. I am about to attempt reproducing a photograph of a scene outside my window – one of the scenes of the industrial and railway view outside my bedroom. It is a picture that I took during the last week that I spent most of my time in bed. It is very inclusive of all the elements that intrigue me about this view – the cranes, the trains and the sandbox quality of the scene.
At one point this morning I thought that I might not be able to paint today and keep up with all the other things I said I would do. I realized, though, that painting is once again going to disappear as a regular activity unless I stick to it in my schedule. Actually it’s amazing how much disappears when I (or anyone else!) doesn’t stick to the schedule. We talk about freedom of choice etc. But I chose all these things that are in my life and I chose them freely so having them disappear because I don’t keep my schedule is just some sort of insanity. I am free. I just have to remember that!
It’s been a long day. Tomorrow may be a big day if the meeting with Atkinson goes as well as it could! Time to pack it in!
Perhaps the truly concerning “failure” was my need to use Morphine two days in a row. Jen did say there would be major shifts, and there have been. I do recognize it as one of those plateaus before a great step forward. Just the same, I am tired and sore, and kind of wishing I hadn’t booked myself such a busy week! But so it goes and I’m just venting, not really worried or complaining.
It is interesting how the quality of the questions and comments about WPIT as an organization and our projects are taking on a very more rich and serious (in a good sense) quality. I was Skyping with a colleague this evening and she completely bought into our need for a $6 million dollar foundation so that we can do our projects without constantly having our hands in somebody else’s pocket. She also was thinking about who, at the university level, might take on the kind of social/economic research that inclusion deserves. In a sense she is a “nobody” in the world of big money and research but life doesn’t work that way. Talking to her tonight makes it easier for me to talk to the Executive Director of ACF tomorrow, and on the other hand I have no idea who she knows or who knows who she knows. The message is travelling out and getting stronger as it goes.
In Wisdom we talk about fail, fail, failing your way to success. It very much feels like that is where I am at this time. It kind of makes it easier in a way because if lots of failure is the way to success then bring it on, bring it on, bring it on!
Of course, I hope that the failures are getting smarter as we go!
I feel like it’s been a very long time since I worked hard. I did not work hard at my jobs in the early and mid 90’s. The international travel was fun. The paid office stuff was excruciatingly boring and useless but not at all hard. The intense schedule and consistent phoning, writing, speaking that I’m doing now is considerably more difficult in the sense of leaving no room for fooling around, but it’s making a lot of sense and building a network and proving that I can be worthy of a team working with me. It is a very different life than Cycle 2.
Oh yes, I painted today. Well I didn’t actually paint. Mike and I spent about an hour preparing to paint. I am about to attempt reproducing a photograph of a scene outside my window – one of the scenes of the industrial and railway view outside my bedroom. It is a picture that I took during the last week that I spent most of my time in bed. It is very inclusive of all the elements that intrigue me about this view – the cranes, the trains and the sandbox quality of the scene.
At one point this morning I thought that I might not be able to paint today and keep up with all the other things I said I would do. I realized, though, that painting is once again going to disappear as a regular activity unless I stick to it in my schedule. Actually it’s amazing how much disappears when I (or anyone else!) doesn’t stick to the schedule. We talk about freedom of choice etc. But I chose all these things that are in my life and I chose them freely so having them disappear because I don’t keep my schedule is just some sort of insanity. I am free. I just have to remember that!
It’s been a long day. Tomorrow may be a big day if the meeting with Atkinson goes as well as it could! Time to pack it in!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
January 9, 2011
As I was going to bed last night, Mike assisting, after staying up a little late to blog, I thought that the day had been so fulfilling, so replete with authentic experience, that I could happily die with no regrets. Well, I didn’t die. I awoke to a day of more video taping in my winter coat under camera lights, more Farmville, more apple pie, and beautiful sunshine. The vision out of my lake facing window was just like so many of those Christmas card scenes with brilliant sun shining on neat and even tiny houses with perfectly snow covered roof tops!
I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.
At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.
Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!
A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?
So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.
Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.
Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.
Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.
I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!
I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.
At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.
Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!
A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?
So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.
Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.
Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.
Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.
I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
January 8, 2011
There was no crane action today.
Today was very much a day of sitting still and being bathed in the profound. This is particularly hard on my back – the sitting still part I mean – and I actually lay on my bed for part of the late afternoon.
In the morning ‘til late afternoon I was being taped for the Book of Judith. Sarah and Michael want a different sort of ending for the play for those performances where I cannot show up. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone else can’t just play me. Instead they want to have a video of me make the icon of me appear to come alive, rescue Mathew from the part where he is left naked not knowing what to do next, and end the play.
So there I was wrapped in the same winter weight poncho which I am wearing in the iconographic picture already used in the play. I was interviewed in this coat under intense video lights with the apartment windows shut to cut down the background noise. I was to stay still for the most part so the video, when edited, would fit into the icon background, and thus I will seem appear in the wall to the audience
What did I say? I don’t remember much of it, but most of it was serious in tone and some was profound, or close to it.
I remember sharing what I have recently learnt about my failure to notice people’s boundaries and how the gift of intimacy without proper limitations can bring people into difficult situations. I am certain that if Caleb and I had better appreciation of boundaries at that time I would not have asked him to help me find a lover. But then there would have been no Book of Judith. The paradox of life!
The rest of today’s sitting still had to do with going to the movie – The King’s Speech – with Gloria, Peter and Mike. I need to sleep and so it’s difficult right now to say fully its impact on me. I was struck by how obvious it is that a good personal assistant, and the one who is supported, will love each other. I wonder when the world will realize how utterly authentic this is.
The other depiction that struck me was how the prince, and then the King George VI, up until he gave his great war speech, had to struggle to assert, even discover, himself both inside of being seen as defective AND inside of the utter imposition of being royal. As afraid as he was of being king he really could only be himself when he was crowned and when he mastered being able to use his voice. This moves me because I can only be myself inside of bringing Inclusion into view for others. Everything that has occurred in my life prepares me for this, even being seen as disabled. And so, I can sit for hours, overheated and in growing pain and stiffness, speaking words whose depth and insight seem to me to be strangely not entirely my own. It is who I am and who I am meant to be even if it wasn’t me who decided this was the theme of my life. My role is not to craft it so much as it is to choose it, and make from it its own authentic fulfillment.
Such an egotistical, yet natural, thing it is to feel that one has a mission – inspiring yet corny, dangerous and fulfilling.
The Prince walks with his therapist openly in the streets, unrecognized – maybe because who could fathom that the Prince would keep the company of such a lowly man. I wonder if there is a way that I can step outside of myself to see me as others do?
Today was very much a day of sitting still and being bathed in the profound. This is particularly hard on my back – the sitting still part I mean – and I actually lay on my bed for part of the late afternoon.
In the morning ‘til late afternoon I was being taped for the Book of Judith. Sarah and Michael want a different sort of ending for the play for those performances where I cannot show up. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone else can’t just play me. Instead they want to have a video of me make the icon of me appear to come alive, rescue Mathew from the part where he is left naked not knowing what to do next, and end the play.
So there I was wrapped in the same winter weight poncho which I am wearing in the iconographic picture already used in the play. I was interviewed in this coat under intense video lights with the apartment windows shut to cut down the background noise. I was to stay still for the most part so the video, when edited, would fit into the icon background, and thus I will seem appear in the wall to the audience
What did I say? I don’t remember much of it, but most of it was serious in tone and some was profound, or close to it.
I remember sharing what I have recently learnt about my failure to notice people’s boundaries and how the gift of intimacy without proper limitations can bring people into difficult situations. I am certain that if Caleb and I had better appreciation of boundaries at that time I would not have asked him to help me find a lover. But then there would have been no Book of Judith. The paradox of life!
The rest of today’s sitting still had to do with going to the movie – The King’s Speech – with Gloria, Peter and Mike. I need to sleep and so it’s difficult right now to say fully its impact on me. I was struck by how obvious it is that a good personal assistant, and the one who is supported, will love each other. I wonder when the world will realize how utterly authentic this is.
The other depiction that struck me was how the prince, and then the King George VI, up until he gave his great war speech, had to struggle to assert, even discover, himself both inside of being seen as defective AND inside of the utter imposition of being royal. As afraid as he was of being king he really could only be himself when he was crowned and when he mastered being able to use his voice. This moves me because I can only be myself inside of bringing Inclusion into view for others. Everything that has occurred in my life prepares me for this, even being seen as disabled. And so, I can sit for hours, overheated and in growing pain and stiffness, speaking words whose depth and insight seem to me to be strangely not entirely my own. It is who I am and who I am meant to be even if it wasn’t me who decided this was the theme of my life. My role is not to craft it so much as it is to choose it, and make from it its own authentic fulfillment.
Such an egotistical, yet natural, thing it is to feel that one has a mission – inspiring yet corny, dangerous and fulfilling.
The Prince walks with his therapist openly in the streets, unrecognized – maybe because who could fathom that the Prince would keep the company of such a lowly man. I wonder if there is a way that I can step outside of myself to see me as others do?
Friday, January 7, 2011
January 7, 2011
Today I awoke to realize, in the barely beginning dawn, that the crane at the railway near the modular concrete boxes had disappeared out of view. I fell asleep again. Perhaps twenty minutes later I opened my eyes again and there was the crane. It had moved back into view. The sun was far from up and peering at the giant thing hurt my eyes. The many street lights, highway lamp posts and security systems on the local warehouses were mostly still on and intensely bright.
Perhaps three hours later the crane was rotating back and forth with such velocity that the hanging chain and clasps were bouncing around. Was it dancing?
Another hour and it was gliding almost imperceptively along and some twenty minutes later hovering above the larger grey boxes. Then I noticed a train of flatbeds, each with two grey cubes neatly placed. I thought for sure that the crane was unloading the flatbeds, but, no, another hour or so later when I visited my window again – this time the crane was harnessed to a cube, but looking like it was loading the train!
Which is it – loading or unloading? Who is playing this glacially slow game?
It was a beautifully sunny day and the new accountant had taken all the blank payroll cheques as well as miswriting one for this payroll. I urgently needed an alternative way to pay Mike. In my mailbox was a notice of a parcel to pick up. I was out of decaf coffee. In all this the invitation to take a walk and take frequent stops in my exceptionally accessible neighbourhood was strong. Helen and I went out.
Well –5 C (or -7 perhaps) is pretty cold, though I was doubly covered up. About a block before we reached the bank Helen was having to intermittently hold down my upper lip so I could make the speed changes necessary to get over bad curb cuts and avoid pedestrians.
I warmed up in the bank and the teller was efficiently helpful. I came away with a money order to fix the payroll problem after having ordered a new batch of cheques. The post office and decaf are only a block from the bank and we reached them without incident.
The package was not my new passport as I expected, but was from Second Story Press.
I longed for a coffee and snack at Yalla Café and to hear Michel’s stories of his New Year’s encounter with his son’s fiancée’s family at their year end party. So, thinking that I was now sufficiently warmed up, we set out to traverse the ten blocks.
Wrong! Not only did my lip get too cold but even the sip and puff pipe started to freeze up. We limped in to the café. Michel wasn’t there but his wife – Helene, warmly greeted us.
I opened my package. It contained three copies of an agenda published by Second Story Press. It features contemporary Canadian women who have made exceptional contributions. I am November!
I showed it to Helene. When she realized it was about me, she started to read it. Her English is weak and she called in another woman from the back – seemingly a cousin or friend.
The women shared one pair of reading glasses, and soon recruited the assistance of a man (the cousin’s husband it turned out) who used an I-Pod or Blackberry with a Lebanese/English translation application.
Both Helen and I, sitting quietly with our coffees, observed my story and words emerged in Lebanese. Inclusion took a leap into yet another culture. I was awe struck!
The cousins departed and Helene struggled to express her thoughts. She apologized and said she was fluent in French but not English. I still have a smattering of school French and I asked her to say it in that language. She said “fier” and I said “proud”. She clapped.
For me the connection was electric.
As we left Helene ducked into the basement and brought up a blanket to wrap me up. I rolled home a happy pink bundle.
Perhaps three hours later the crane was rotating back and forth with such velocity that the hanging chain and clasps were bouncing around. Was it dancing?
Another hour and it was gliding almost imperceptively along and some twenty minutes later hovering above the larger grey boxes. Then I noticed a train of flatbeds, each with two grey cubes neatly placed. I thought for sure that the crane was unloading the flatbeds, but, no, another hour or so later when I visited my window again – this time the crane was harnessed to a cube, but looking like it was loading the train!
Which is it – loading or unloading? Who is playing this glacially slow game?
It was a beautifully sunny day and the new accountant had taken all the blank payroll cheques as well as miswriting one for this payroll. I urgently needed an alternative way to pay Mike. In my mailbox was a notice of a parcel to pick up. I was out of decaf coffee. In all this the invitation to take a walk and take frequent stops in my exceptionally accessible neighbourhood was strong. Helen and I went out.
Well –5 C (or -7 perhaps) is pretty cold, though I was doubly covered up. About a block before we reached the bank Helen was having to intermittently hold down my upper lip so I could make the speed changes necessary to get over bad curb cuts and avoid pedestrians.
I warmed up in the bank and the teller was efficiently helpful. I came away with a money order to fix the payroll problem after having ordered a new batch of cheques. The post office and decaf are only a block from the bank and we reached them without incident.
The package was not my new passport as I expected, but was from Second Story Press.
I longed for a coffee and snack at Yalla Café and to hear Michel’s stories of his New Year’s encounter with his son’s fiancée’s family at their year end party. So, thinking that I was now sufficiently warmed up, we set out to traverse the ten blocks.
Wrong! Not only did my lip get too cold but even the sip and puff pipe started to freeze up. We limped in to the café. Michel wasn’t there but his wife – Helene, warmly greeted us.
I opened my package. It contained three copies of an agenda published by Second Story Press. It features contemporary Canadian women who have made exceptional contributions. I am November!
I showed it to Helene. When she realized it was about me, she started to read it. Her English is weak and she called in another woman from the back – seemingly a cousin or friend.
The women shared one pair of reading glasses, and soon recruited the assistance of a man (the cousin’s husband it turned out) who used an I-Pod or Blackberry with a Lebanese/English translation application.
Both Helen and I, sitting quietly with our coffees, observed my story and words emerged in Lebanese. Inclusion took a leap into yet another culture. I was awe struck!
The cousins departed and Helene struggled to express her thoughts. She apologized and said she was fluent in French but not English. I still have a smattering of school French and I asked her to say it in that language. She said “fier” and I said “proud”. She clapped.
For me the connection was electric.
As we left Helene ducked into the basement and brought up a blanket to wrap me up. I rolled home a happy pink bundle.
Friday, December 17, 2010
December 17, 2010
I made $375 today. Tomorrow I will make $500.
I hope I have made enough to offset the cost of fixing the flat tire I discovered as I set out tonight to shop for Christmas!
As I lay awake this morning before Helen came to get me up I watched in the early dawn light while the crane by the “boxes” inside the railway yard fence drew up its cable. I watched for a few more minutes but it did not move again. The boxes had been rearranged a little overnight and there are new gaps between them. Beyond these alterations, and that the crane is facing the opposite way from yesterday, there is no change in the goings on of the marshalling yard.
I wondered – again – what is going on that must mainly happen at night.
Soon after I got up I counted the construction cranes visible to me from my bedroom window. There are six. Each one is distinct from the others in size, shape and colour.
Nearly always they stand motionless. One in particular has a motion of bobbing like a long-necked bird dropping its beak into a stream for fish. It has stood “beak down” for a few days now, looking very weird indeed. Together, when they stand still all day, they remind me of the dinosaur exhibit at the ROM.
Since I was in a counting mood I counted the different types of rail car visible in the yard. Again six. The large double decker orange/white/yellow passenger car belongs to a train called “Rocky Mountaineer”. (I drove closer mid-morning to read the indistinct words.) The remainder of its cars are black and white. This giant train has been here, motionless, for about a week.
Eighty percent of the cars on or moving through the yard are “Go Train” vehicles. These double decker conveyances are big, but not nearly as tall as the three or four cars of “Rocky”. The seven “Go Train” engine cars that are lined up in a flying wedge formation have not moved for about a week either!
The single story passenger cars of the “Via Rail” seem miniscule in comparison. However, they don’t hang around!
The rest of the train cars are flat beds – part of a freight train. Occasionally one will see the other sorts of freight car, but not today.
It is something of a mystery to me that so much valuable stuff – gigantic construction cranes, passenger cars, each with the capacity of a movie theatre, huge prefab buildings, sleek and fast engines – can sit idle for such long time periods. Certainly we are given to believe that the economy is run as efficiently as possible and that there’s an elaborate plan behind it all. But from the vantage point of my bedroom window I have a very different impression.
Have I stumbled across a train set that has been abandoned while some bored child of a giant takes an afternoon’s nap? Why does this huge child play only at night, or is it his father who secretly moves the blocks, cars and cranes around while his son sleeps?
I can only exercise my imagination – likely I will never know what is behind this great idleness. However, I am very pleased that I am a spectator to it all.
I hope I have made enough to offset the cost of fixing the flat tire I discovered as I set out tonight to shop for Christmas!
As I lay awake this morning before Helen came to get me up I watched in the early dawn light while the crane by the “boxes” inside the railway yard fence drew up its cable. I watched for a few more minutes but it did not move again. The boxes had been rearranged a little overnight and there are new gaps between them. Beyond these alterations, and that the crane is facing the opposite way from yesterday, there is no change in the goings on of the marshalling yard.
I wondered – again – what is going on that must mainly happen at night.
Soon after I got up I counted the construction cranes visible to me from my bedroom window. There are six. Each one is distinct from the others in size, shape and colour.
Nearly always they stand motionless. One in particular has a motion of bobbing like a long-necked bird dropping its beak into a stream for fish. It has stood “beak down” for a few days now, looking very weird indeed. Together, when they stand still all day, they remind me of the dinosaur exhibit at the ROM.
Since I was in a counting mood I counted the different types of rail car visible in the yard. Again six. The large double decker orange/white/yellow passenger car belongs to a train called “Rocky Mountaineer”. (I drove closer mid-morning to read the indistinct words.) The remainder of its cars are black and white. This giant train has been here, motionless, for about a week.
Eighty percent of the cars on or moving through the yard are “Go Train” vehicles. These double decker conveyances are big, but not nearly as tall as the three or four cars of “Rocky”. The seven “Go Train” engine cars that are lined up in a flying wedge formation have not moved for about a week either!
The single story passenger cars of the “Via Rail” seem miniscule in comparison. However, they don’t hang around!
The rest of the train cars are flat beds – part of a freight train. Occasionally one will see the other sorts of freight car, but not today.
It is something of a mystery to me that so much valuable stuff – gigantic construction cranes, passenger cars, each with the capacity of a movie theatre, huge prefab buildings, sleek and fast engines – can sit idle for such long time periods. Certainly we are given to believe that the economy is run as efficiently as possible and that there’s an elaborate plan behind it all. But from the vantage point of my bedroom window I have a very different impression.
Have I stumbled across a train set that has been abandoned while some bored child of a giant takes an afternoon’s nap? Why does this huge child play only at night, or is it his father who secretly moves the blocks, cars and cranes around while his son sleeps?
I can only exercise my imagination – likely I will never know what is behind this great idleness. However, I am very pleased that I am a spectator to it all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)