March 3, 2011

I am restarting this blog while I’m feeling somewhat intimidated. I have never decided for how long I was going to keep up writing these posts. I started this blog out of a desire to express myself in an unfettered way while I recovered physically and while I got oriented to a new phase of life. Basically these accomplishments have been met.

Certainly there is value in keeping a daily journal. It is valuable in keeping me from unconsciously looping over the same thoughts and worries. Of course, it’s not that I don’t loop. Rather I can see the loops more quickly and have a go at saying something new more readily when I am writing everyday. As I engage in writing and thinking new (to me) things my world gains possibilities.

As for others, there are 17 followers of this blog, which is truly amazing to me! It certainly seems that a slowly growing circle of people are engaged with me in a dialogue about Inclusion. Of course this is not a typical dialogue but there is definitely an element of conversation. This element mostly shows up when people talk to me in real life situations about what they have recently read here. This is perhaps the most valuable aspect of this blog for me as I have many more moments when I am able to talk about things that I’m interested in with people where I don’t have to start at “square one”.

The intention of writing these postings daily has broken down a number of times. Some gaps happened when I ran out of things to say, but usually, at these times the daily discipline has been valuable because pushing through the gap gets me to a deeper level of understanding of myself and what I think. More of the gaps have happened when there was just more going on than I could physically and socially keep up with. In Savannah it was just more than I could fit into my energy level and time frame. It was important to focus on making sure that the painting happened. And it did happen!

On Friday night of last week I did a presentation at The Sentient Bean in Savannah – a community and social justice oriented coffee shop. I included in my talk the six pictures of the work that Mike and I did over eleven days at Imlay House.

From a certain perspective I left out one of the paintings. I use paper towels in one of my techniques to create a water colour impression. Mike saved the paper towel used to create one of the six. It is, in fact, a seventh creation all by itself, but I did not include it in the slides I showed that night.

Painting with Mike as my tracker, and also having him as one of only two personal assistants, and also living with him as a housemate for two weeks created the kind of emotional compression that my circle worries about vis a vis me and my safety and the choices I make in my life. It was very clearly, at least at some points, a strain for both of us. We got through it and we both did quite well, I think. We accomplished what we intended to do and the accomplishments were well done for the most part. At the same time we have conversations to have with each other and with others to explore that emotional compression and to see if there are better ways to achieve such accomplishments in the future.

So what was achieved? For me it was the six paintings, and above all THE painting. It turned out that “Dirty Window” is not THE painting. By February 20th it was clear to me that Mike and I could not finish “Dirty Window” in a way that would leave me satisfied with the work and him feeling acknowledged for his effort. It was at this point that I had a conversation with Mike that gave me a better understanding of how he could paint and keep up the work in a way that was both centred in his previous experience of doing art and reflecting the direction I wanted to go in. When I understood what he meant by “inking” I was able to formulate the picture in my own mind in a way that could work for both of us. Once again the art lead both of us in a different direction. The painting ‘Winter Mourning” is a true expression of Mike’s efforts, my response to the prison, and what the art itself wanted to be.

Here are some of our other accomplishments. I saw 14 pelicans over 2 days. We had a lot of fabulous meals. We spent a little less money than was available – YAY! We went for several long walks – sometimes together, sometimes separately. I gave two trainings for Chatham Savannah Citizen Advocacy, and both were well received. My talk at the Bean lead to some interesting reflections on what it will take to forward the action on Inclusion and Peace. Finally I did a bang up job of supporting an advocacy group on the last Monday of our trip, in Atlanta.

Now is a re-entry time. I love Savannah and I love Etobicoke. I am appreciated in a way in Savannah that does not happen anywhere else. The same is true in Etobicoke. The two worlds are different and both compelling. Part of my own inclusion journey is to continuously sort out having both.

February 19, 2011

It is Saturday. I had a late lunch at “the Bean” after resting for the morning and spending a few hours on Tybee Island. No pelicans today, except for four I saw from the causeway, driving into the island from Thunderbolt. They were flying in formation much as fighter plane pilots do at air shows. This is how I knew they were pelicans and not sea gulls.

It has been an exceptionally warm day. Mike and I both wore shorts. Tybee was packed with beach folks. This likely is the reason for no pelicans. I walked around most of the southern end of the island but did not feel much like staying. I just don’t like people in crowds that much.

We – Lara, Mike and I – finally met up with Tom Kohler at the Bean. At first Tom was a little cool – arms crossed and that sort of thing. As the conversation unfolded it seems that he is defensive/worried that I will confront him about the Citizen Advocacy approach to imaging the “protégé” – the official term used in CA to denote the person who has been labelled disabled, and with whom CA programs “match” a typical citizen. Tom and I have disagreed in the past about the importance of providing “trainings” to both the citizen advocate and his/her protégé, and not just the advocate alone, as tomorrow and Tuesday are arranged. It wasn’t on my mind to confront him this time with that, but clearly he was getting up for an argument.

For me the biggest thing to sort out was what I am going to talk about tomorrow and on Tuesday. Tom wants something about presence and possibility. With Mike there we ended up talking a lot about the inclusive video game. In the end Tom said he wants me to talk about Marsha and me, then about how Mike and I met and got into the several projects we share – along the theme of listen, imagine, network.

I will sleep on this, and I am sure will catch the flavour, but as a different theme has been becoming more important to me, this doesn’t seem too natural.

It has been fabulous working with Lara. But as any given day progresses, without good structures for me to participate, and to eat and sleep without Lara’s or Mike’s full time presence, all of us get tired, defocused and edgy.

In particular I feel the need to create some distance between Mike and I and we made some progress with that today. Even though Mike is not working as a personal assistant today he has hung around me except when he slept in and when he lay on the beach for awhile. I believe that Tom caught the wave because he took Mike for a beer without me, and he also entered into a brainstorm about where, when and with whom Mike can go for a meal – again without me.

I am alone now and it is good. I was not prepared for how dirty Imlay House is. I was going to get Lara to wash the kitchen floor which is so filthy that my chair leaves track marks in the dirt. There is no mop. Lara offered to wash it with rags, but she is getting tired, the edginess has started, and it isn’t worth the time/cost to exhaust her that much. So we will continue to live with the grime.

My own edginess is abating as I get Mike’s alignment with how much money we have to spend on food, as well as getting the painting well underway. I think we are about 30% done. We will also need to set up some slides for Friday. I think it is going to get easier as we get the strangeness and the vacation –ness out of the way, hopefully pretty soon now. Then both of us will get more comfortable just getting the work done. There is a lot of work.

February 16, 2011

I feel like I am cheating the readers of this blog because I have not been giving lots of details of life for several weeks now. Mike and I are at Imlay House in Savannah after three days travelling down and stopping to visit along the way with Peter Block. Chris Lee drove with us and has gone back to Ontario and Florida. He will join us again on the 26th. Lara Howell is now supporting me along with Mike. Everything is working out.

There are so many details. At the moment I am tired and adjusting to the sulphur in the air and water of this marshy place. Today Mike and I got to Tybee. In the absence of detail I thought I would share a few of the pictures of what we have experienced. And, yes, I have seen pelicans - about ten of them. One demonstrated to Mike just how pelicans fish. It is a sight and a sound to behold. I hope you get to see it yourself someday.

Here are the pics:

February 4, 2011

I thought some might want to get a sense of the park and shore of Lake Ontario that is just 3 blocks from my apartment.



This video was taken two days ago by Nick Lin, a friend and personal assistant.

Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes. They are fresh water inland seas, and some say they do have tides, though the rise and fall are nearly imperceptable. Well, not really, at least not to me!

I was born and have lived most of my life within five miles of this sweet sea. I have been able to see the waters from three of the homes I have lived in. I have written into my will that my ashes are to be sunk beneath its waters.

As I prepare to journey again to Savannah it is the sea and the pelicans that I imagine as my destination. I am deeply called, not to be in or on, but to abide by great waters and to watch the sea birds.

I learned several months ago that there are fresh water pelicans, and that occasionally they will rest while migrating at Point Pelee in Lake Eire, the next Great Lake to the east. It would be wonderful if they would sojourn on the rocks that jut into the waters just 3 blocks away.

Pelicans and hummingbirds, and butterflies among other species, and clowns, and the circus stand in the human psyche for the Epiphany - that eternally timeless moment of NOW when we in our physical beingness experience the we of our spiritual beingness and know that we are all connected and one forever. Pelicans are clownlike. When they fish they dive bomb in a spiral, to disappear beneath the water to reemerge facing opposite way around to the direction they went in. In the human psyche spirals stand for the eternal rejuvenation of life.

In Savannah I will paint the abomination of the Mimico prison. With the pelicans leading me and refreshed by the salty tide, at rest in the seat of deep slavery, I will find my true relationship with this deeply rooted structure of exclusion.

Today the ROM offered me a contract to exhibit my paintings and tell my story. My feet are set and the journey begins!