Venting

I think I am lost out here in blogland, well off the beaten track at least, in cyberspace as well as physical space. It is fine by me though, hopefully it means I am on to something! Those who do stop by I do hope you will start commenting! Please? I am a firm believer in the teaching power of other's views just as Socrates was was back when in antiquity. How am I to strengthen flaws in myself without honest discussion?
I am not meaning just here on this screen but in general, both public and private.
I lovelovelovelove my partner for just who he is but lengthy discussion is not his interest, which is fine, he complements and balances out my tendency to exist totally in words and abstractions and I provide the catalyst to change our situation. It works, but it does mean that I need to look outside just the two of us to fufill my need to think and be thought to outloud, to learn. To ramble into the wee hours over music and food, my idea of the true university. Chris becomes suceptible to fits of narcolepsy starting anywhere between 8-11 pm and there is no inducing him back to the waking world. On my more truly insomniatic nights I observe his precious snoringness and envy him utterly. Unfortunatley although there are many wonderful people here everyone is fully engaged in their home and routine and is almost exclusively either 20 years older than us or who like to discuss over booze which is NOT my idea of a good time, while I love and admire them, it seems opportunity for real visits/discourse are rare. Visiting with a two year old during the day time is a fun exhausting business but leaves little room for more then giggling helplessly over her antics. She is VERY much the centre of all activity by being so absurdly happy 99% of the time, you can't help but give her your undivided attention which is what she deserves anyway. It doesnt help that I tend to be more interested in whatever children happen to be around and they in me, so that visiting with other parents is great but not what I am talking about. When we lived further south we had a great deal more visitors which I find so much more appealing then being the one to do the travelling then coming home to a cold house. Ila also refuses to sleep anywhere other than in her crib, no discussion, our lovely daughter who tells US when it is bedtime and happily snuggles in at night and nap becomes a raging fiendish hell beast, ALL NIGHT LONG. Factor in a dog and the assorted baggage and stuff, not to mention no $ takes all the spontenaeity out of leaving the Island. Secondly I just don't see why they would not want to see the incredible experience we are living here, I have never been anywhere like it and I have trekked back and forth across this country from Pacific to Atlantic six times (for a grand total of 18,000 kilometers by air, train, car and thumb) and spent time in every major Canadian city. I decided that I had no interest in being anywhere but the wetcoast at 16 when I came back for the last time. Since then I have travelled up and down this coast though no further north than Port Hardy (1hr from here). In a region known for it's epic beauty I have found no place more lovely or welcoming than this. The fact that this soil has been fertilized for over 100 years in dreams of freedom from modernity is no small selling point for me.
We moved to Sointula in May of 2005 and since that time only my father has made the trek here (6 hours driving the most beautiful stretch of pavement I have ever seen and a quick picturesque ferry ride) 4 or 5 times. I have been tempted a few times to get away not because I have any desire to leave but because like Ani said, "Strangers are exciting their mystery never ends, but there's nothing like seeing your own history in the faces of your friends." I can't help but feel that for 24 years of living I have left very little impression on those who I have loved since they have so little interest in what has such deep and profound value for me, dreams and the fufillment of them. I have always been so happy to support them and try to do whatever I could to help them achieve anything, whatever moved them towards happiness.
I have been reading both Sicicily Sue and supergirlest's blogs and both have written about loss of friends and community for simply being true to who they want to be. For just evolving. I know that has been true for my own experience, every time I have made decisions that brought me closer to being fully true to what in Herman Hesse wrote in Demian, "the promptings which came from my true self." I too demand as his character did, why is that so very difficult?
Not for myself but for all those who would rather deny those urgings because they are, as I can attest, so very inconvenient for living a comfortable or predicatable life. I have no wish for either. I know that safety is an illusionary carrot we dangle in our noses as distraction to keep us from recognizing the danger we present to ourselves and the immense reality of our situation. In short, all the work we should be doing. To speak out about the chains that bind us is to threaten the comforting illusion of the herd and of course they don't want to realize they have the keys to all the locks, they just want to go on milling. I refuse to settle for anything less then freedom, I believe that Martin Luther King was right when he said that it is no more possible to be half-alive then it is to be half-free. Whenever I have stood up without compromise for what I knew to be right I have lost friends regardless of the reason. So many other blogs are full of such honest stories of life and loss on a personal level and I have mainly written of where I am theoretically and physically at now. I have recreated myself so many times in self-preservation that my own past seems vaguely disconnected and surreal though if I choose I can go at will into the dark places of my heart without becoming lost or fatalistic. Why? Maybe because in the words of Dr. Suess himself, I know that, some people are much more, so much much much much more, so muchly much more, unlucky then [I] (from Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?).
I would be more inclined to let my past languish somewhere undisturbed while I am busy remaking myself (hey could you pass me the duct tape?) but I also know that it doesnt work that way. My every action is filtered through the accumulation of all my experiences, who I am is directly related to who I have been and continue to become. Everything I have been reading has made me rewind and consider my choices and the choices that were made for me, for keeping with the thread of lost friends, I have also lost many for experiencing grief or pain or anger as a result of the situations I found myself in, which I believe was also being true to myself in a different, but no less important, way. . . .
I was refusing to stop feeling.
I am feeling desperate and hopeful, torn in both directions all the posts I have been reading have been churning in my mind. I want to get it all out but it backs up, sticks in my throat, gums up my hands, falling out all garbled and incoherent. While I am still trying to pull my thoughts into some kind of tangible order so I will share some old bits and bobs on the subjects that are rattling around in my head.
I think I summed it up best when I was 14 and I type out my thoughts here for myself and whoever stumbles along because they perfectly convey my utter bewilderement that has only increased at what passes as normative for so many when they hit me right in the stomach. Like little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin, "these things just sink into my heart".

Maybe I'm just stupid.
Or maybe there is some inherent part of my psyche that got left in the womb when I was brought into this world. There is so much that I can not even begin to comprehend. I am reminded of how "a wise man is one who knows he knows nothing" or something like that. I am not sure if my realization of the fact that there are multitudes of things I'll never understand makes me wise or not but it certainly makes me frustrated.
There is no room in me to understand racism, rape, violence, murder, child abuse, the denigration and denial of women as valid and valuable human beings, religious fanaticism, the list just goes on and on into infinity. I know that these things exist. I have been a victim of a fair number and yet I still just can't wrap my mind around them.
How can anyone look into the beautiful face of a child and steal the bright light within? Hurt their precious tiny limbs?
How can anyone force another to the ground, violate, strip of human-rights, self-esteem, life?
How can we starve and demean entire nations of people?
Once again, maybe I'm stupid.
I have heard it said countless times that Canada is a glorious, free democracy. This makes me furious! A democracy means by the people not this "mob rule" as Plato rightly called it. The mob being the business men in their penthouse suites and their $70 000 cars, whispering their demands into the ears of their elected criminals, and since spineless marionettes are the only one's financially capable of running for office the last thing we have is a democracy.
In a true democracy 11 year old girls would not sell their bodies for the cash to feed their parent's heroin addictions because social services could care less and our government is too busy building billion dollar businesses and trying to get people to stop smoking.
In a democracy each person's concerns are valid but would any member of parliment stop long enought to listen to the opinions of some lysol drenched wino?
Who draws the line between a valid and non-valid member of society? Could someone please tell me how to pinpoint that distinction. Silly me, I thought we were all essential and deserving of an equal quality of life. How naive. You are only worthwhile if you play the game, smile pretty, smell nice, pay taxes and expect no less than a knife in the back for showing compassion.
In my hometown I have seen people step over the blue body of another person because of the needle in his arms, nevermind that blood is running from his ears and nose. Even disgust or anger would have been better then the blind unseeing eyes of the people who stepped over his prone body. This scares me. This sickens me. This moves me to tears.
I want to change the world, to make a difference, shake the foundations of people's ideologies, make them taker a closer look at the consequences of not only their actions but their thoughts. Where do I even start?
Charlottetown, PEI, 1996


Maybe that's it, I'm just stupid. After all instead of going to class like the normal kids I wrote stuff like that instead and got high, and abused. Go figure. I am still trying, to not allow the rest of the world who is so hell bent on conformity to let me stop thinking that I can make a difference, that I matter, whether or not anyone else believes that to be the case. I KNOW it to be true. I am reminded of my favorite Zap Mama song where they sing, for no one will I go to hell. I will not dull my painful heart to all the things I know are not okay. All the things that I am not closer to understanding now then I was then.
So instead of writing on the achingnesses that I am turning over in my brain I will end with a song that I wrote about solutions, it makes me feel good maybe you will too. Just for clarification THIS:

is Hastings and Main....

WORTH

Fill Main and Hastings with flowers
pull the stars from the sky and place them in the hair of women on corners
offer them a seat, time to rest their aching feet
Wash the faces of dirty children with love
Feed them dishes of treats they have never heard of
Give them places and spaces in your hearts and your homes
Give them room to grow

Everybody deserves someone to see their worth
To be held and cherished, honoured and nourished
To be simply seen, we all want to be simply seen
as human beings

Hold the hands of old men lying in doorways,
stop to talk and hear what they have to say
Offer something sweeter to drink then listerine
Give them time and a safe place to think over all they've seen
Offer up a smile to a man in a three piece suit
Clutching his briefcase as though he may have something to lose
For you know he is equally as confused as me and you

(chorus) Everybody....to be simply seen as a living thing

Give praise to the mothers and daughters of our generation
who are raising the next dreamers and lovers and believers
of our brand new nation and try to just simply see
each of us as deserving human beings
2000

On that note I am taking my tired out self to bed. Hopefully to dream of sugar plums and visions of other nice things instead of what I just spent the last two hours reading.