Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
So too, we move on.
I just booked travel for next week – Vancouver to Kelowna, Kelowna to Penticton, Penticton to Nanaimo (by way of Vancouver), then Nanaimo to Vancouver. Four days. Four meetings. But if I make it through they will be my last ones so I don’t even care enough to moan about it anymore. Four meetings this week, four meetings next week. Over.
I’m struggling right now with issues of bullying and violence – bullying as it relates to my experience in my union, violence as it relates to something that happened to a friend on Friday night. Both scenarios involve people “ganging up” in order to shore up their courage, in a “might makes right” way of winning an argument. Depressing how often this tendency shows up among people really.
What I do know about it though, from having witnessed mob violence in my younger years, is that after the fact people rarely feel good about themselves for participating in it. Whether that’s verbal bullying and shouting in a meeting, or physical attacks involving more than one on one. In the moment, it feels righteous, but in the days or months afterward (if you have any human compassion at all) it starts to wear pretty crappy – and pretty soon you wish it had never happened at all.
Why? Because deep down we know it changes nothing to respond in anger and with force to other people in our community. And if we grew up right, we also know that more than one on one is simply not fair. I have noticed a tendency in my own union experience for people to vent and then apologize or shake hands immediately afterward which I think is some of that self-awareness in the moment – that it’s better to reintroduce ourselves than go away feeling blackened by the experience.
It is true that there are some who inure themselves through repeated exposure (either aimed away from or towards), or who can handily set aside their individual intellect long enough to go along with the group time after time – and if you stay submerged in that world, then it is true that you might never re-grasp the common humanity that binds us. But most people find it difficult to stay in one sub-culture forever, in one core group of belief – and if we grow, then our past is something we have to reconcile in that process.
And trust me, I know a lot about reconciling my past with myself and the people who I care about. All the losses, all the love, all the arguments that didn’t mean anything in the end anyways. They sit with you, show up in the middle of the night, inform every decision you make forever after. Fortunately, what I have learned from this is that I am not afraid to draw a line in the sand and move towards a healthier place – refocus my activism away from the negative forces and towards the positive ones – create safety as much as possible using the means at my disposal to do so.
I am not going to waste my time and energy crying at the door to be let in. I am not going to live my life cut off from my higher purpose (which in various forms I believe to be service to my community). But I am starting to feel exhausted from it, you know? And when we look at this nonsense from any type of analytic perspective, it becomes so clear why we are not winning. What exactly is the inspiration in this?
Faith and politics
There are those nowadays who would regard faith in socialism as even more eccentric than the exotic conviction that the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven. Why, then, do some of us still cling to this political faith, in the teeth of what many would regard as reason and solid evidence? Not only, I think, because socialism is such an extraordinarily good idea that it has proved exceedingly hard to discredit, and this despite its own most strenuous efforts. It is also because one cannot accept that this – the world we see groaning in agony around us – is the only way things could be, though empirically speaking this might certainly prove to be the case, because one gazes with wondering bemusement on those hard-headed types for whom all this, given a reformist tweak or two, is as good as it gets; because to back down from this vision would be to betray what one feels are the most precious powers and capacities of human beings; because however hard one tries, one simply cannot shake off the primitive conviction that this is not how it is supposed to be, however much we are conscious that this seeing the world in the light of Judgement Day, as Walter Benjamin might put it, is folly to the financiers and a stumbling block to stockbrokers; because there is something in this vision which calls to the depths of one’s being and evokes a passionate assent there; because not to feel this would not to be oneself; because one is too much in love with this vision of humankind to back down, walk away, or take no for an answer.
Terry Eagleton, from Faith, Reason & Revolution
Love mobiles
In the spirit of Made by You Monday – I am posting this little project, crafted lovingly over the weekend as small thank-you gifts to a couple of friends. Love mobiles!
I couldn’t get a very good picture of them hanging off my mantle, but essentially these are strings of 4 simple hearts made out recycled/repurposed materials (leftover fleece from another project, antique buttons). You get the idea.
B. really loves these, even though they are roughly made – he says that just looking at one of these hearts makes him feel happy – and I’m giving them away with the promise that they will bring only good luck in matters of the heart.
A very simple project, with the simple message of love and gratitude.
Urban Crow Bungalow.
When I was a much younger punk than I am right now, every collective house in my city had some kind of name. It might have been descriptive of its inhabitants (The Monkeyhouse as in Welcome to the Monkeyhouse), location (Fernwood House, Fairfield House), or some other more ephemeral quality (Serendipity) – but whatever its constellation, the house name served as a fixing point when roomates were in constant rotation. Among subcultural Vancouver the same tendency exists, though I don’t go to many of these named homes – I am familiar with them in the passing conversation of shows, parties, and “roomates-wanted” advertisements.
The naming of homes is a much more mainstream tradition in countries like Britain, where certain historic building names even show up in the formal mailing address. This tradition goes back to the gentry in that country who liked to wrap up their manors and lodges in fanciful or stately names – and carried over into the tradesman and merchant class in mimicry of their betters.
Recently, Brian and I started the disucssion about naming our house on William Street – to reflect on the character of our block, to put an end to naming all the inhabitants in the house every time we send out a party invitation, to imbue our home with its own essence. Not to mention “branding” our canned goods and christmas gifts with cute labels.
Thus we have picked the name “Urban Crow Bungalow” to represent our little home – beset as we are by murders of raucous crows nesting in the beech trees that line our block. (Not to mention, enthralled by the dusk ritual referred to in Vancouver as “crow time” wherein the city’s skies fill up with black birds heading back to their roosting points in East Van and Burnaby.) Iconic birds.
A silly little thing, really – but one that reflects our need to create a rich domicile in which we are both industrious and restful, and a way to mark ourselves as a gathering place, a garden, a studio of living arts.
Red Cedar 