Red Cedar

Oy. Spinning girl. Frightened because things seem pretty damned good – when am I going to be punished for this period of relative peace? (Oh yes, I am nothing if not predictable in my moments of self-sabotage).

But really, my life is very good right now. Work is busy, I’m getting lots of talk time for my union (and remember, for an attention whore, any audience is a good thing), I’ve had some great social interactions in the past few days, I’ve been playing music, Darren is feeling much better this week, and I’m dating someone who makes me feel both adored and adoring. Besides that, I cleared with the friend who was upset with me, saw a decent play on Friday night, am reading an excellent novel, and managed to get both laundry and groceries done on the weekend.

I know. It can’t last right?

But as Kyla said to me last week when I was visiting Victoria – do you reject one sweet because there are only 20 sweets in the bag and not 100? By which she meant – just because the sweets aren’t infinite in life, do you eschew the ones that are offered? Of course not. So I’m working on enjoying the sweets that are there without worrying too much about where the bag bottoms out. (Or course, too much of a good thing can make you sick, but that’s another analogy all together).

I’ve another busy week ahead of me, with one night away in Courtenay and the rest of my time spent here in Vancouver going place to place. It’s a manageable schedule culminating in a daytime date with Brian on Friday and a radical girls drinking session at the WISE Friday night. I suppose if I really need something to worry about I can just start thinking about how behind I am on making Solstice gifts.

********

On an entirely different note – is it my imagination or can bill bissett do just about anything and call it poetry? It’s no wonder concrete poetry isn’t taken seriously by anyone other than literature scholars. Pshaw!

Managed to drive Campbell River to Nanaimo last night in under two hours to be the last car on the 7 pm ferry back to Vancouver. With an almost-empty tank. Let me tell you, life doesn’t get more edgy than that 😉

The real point is, I made it home safe and sound from my Victoria & Campbell River speaking gigs and fortunately today’s talkathon is right around the corner from my work. Next week it’s Courtenay and Vancouver, the week after that I’m back in Victoria for two days of meetings and then speaking again in Vancouver the week following. Bargaining team members are like union rock starts, donchaknowit – well, except we don’t have groupies, the members are often upset with us, and we don’t get paid the big bucks (or anything really)… Okay, fine, we are nothing like rockstars except on the road a lot.

Whatever. Believe it or not, one of my favourite parts about being a union rep has always been traveling around the province and meeting union members in the communities where they live and work. We’re a pretty diverse and interesting workforce and have people in pretty much every small town between the 49th parallel and the DEW line. Despite having to rush about a bit, I do enjoy the part that gets me out of Vancouver.

All that driving time though, that’s a lot of thinking space, and now I’ve got some new project ideas that involve recording interviews and doing online photoslideshows – multimedia blogging really. I’ve already story-boarded one of them in my head. That’s just because I don’t have enough to do already – you know – and I’m also incredibly compulsive when it comes to wanting to do stories in different ways. Unfortunately, this will mean the purchase of a minidisk in my future because audio recording quality into the ibook is just not that good.

It’s an experiment, really, to see if I can take music and photos and interviews and build stories – but also I’ve got a lot of smart, interesting and funny people in my life who I would like to record and share with the world (yes, that means you friends). I suspect for the initial piece I am going to explore exactly where this compulsion to share our stories comes from in the first place. Anyhow, just be a good sport when I pester you to talk to me okay?

I should get back to work. I’m here after all.

So, it’s Monday. Again. A Monday in November. Not exactly inspiring anything insightful as the rain drips down the panes of my 15th floor cube. Glass paneled buildings in Vancouver do little more than let in the gloom on days like this, though I suppose in a sunnier climate they would be unbearable to work in. Really, I’m still clearing the sleep from my brain after a weekend where I didn’t get quite enough of it. As if I was some kind of socializing machine or something. Sheesh. At least I spent yesterday alone at the house and gave myself some much needed puttering time.

Darren managed to get through yesterday to let me know he’s okay and will be transferred to a final facility after the US Thanksgiving weekend. He’s hanging in there, but travel within the penal system is pretty challenging physically and emotionally. On a travel day he is basically shackled for up to twelve hours while awaiting and being transported which is pretty overwhelming for anyone. Unfortunately, upheaval of any kind in his routine also triggers a lot in me – loss of control issues mainly – and the call was a bit more difficult than usual. On the plus side, he wasn’t aware that his release date had been moved 10 days earlier (to August 14th), so it was nice to have some good news to share. Once he’s settled again it will be a lot easier for both of us – this was the first communication that we’ve had in almost a month besides letters. Since he’s staying in Florida it’s pretty much a given that I won’t be seeing him in person again until he is released.

I spent over an hour playing music after I got off the phone, something I haven’t done on my own in ages. A jam with a friend on Saturday served up a a reminder that if I don’t play, I get really out of shape and I *hate* that feeling. So I’m going to attempt to get at it a bit more – he wants to jam a few times and see where it goes, and this type of thing is what I need to inspire me a bit. I’d like to start writing again as well as learning the tunes of others. Music is something I go around and around on – never quite letting it go, but often not keeping it up either. I wonder how connected that is to the fact that it forces my cogitating mind to switch off…. or perhaps it’s just laziness. I think I might take the advice a couple people have given me and start taking my fiddle with me when I am traveling on business. I usually have lots of empty evenings to fill up in Ottawa and it is a better release than almost anything else.

Besides all of that, this morning has been so far busy and I’m filling in my calendar for the next few weeks. Between now and mid-December I’ve got six speaking engagements (on collective bargaining), am out of town twice, and have a shwack of work to deliver before the holidays. It’s all pretty straightforward though, and I’m not going anywhere far which lessens my stressload considerably.

I’m feeling pretty good at the moment despite it being a Monday in November, I’ve got one of my last French classes tonight and a date with Brian afterwards…. So, you know, those are both pretty good things 😉

I woke up out of an angry dream last night to a couple hours of insomnia which gave me ample thinking time in the middle of the night that I probably didn’t need. I’ve been struggling lately with the concept of “sucking it up” and making things right with a friend of mine – particularly because I don’t feel it’s my responsibility to extend the effort at this point. The worst part is that it’s over something relatively insignificant – half misunderstanding and half misinterpretation. Not resolving it is more stressful than just making the phone call. I know.

This past year has been one in which I have meditated an awful lot on forgiveness, having experienced both sides of anger and hurt as a result of my continuing support for Darren, Chelsea and others in the Operation Backfire case. Through that process I have seen the difference between those who have found forgiveness and those who have not. And I worry all the more for those who haven’t, their anger projected outside of them seems untenable to live with on top of the facts of prison, betrayal, and state violence. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise two years ago, this situation was unchangeable from the very beginning and no amount of hating the self-righteous or the “snitches” makes any of it easier to bear. The opposite in fact. This outrage steals daydreams and turns them into revenge fantasies, gives an excuse to build fences between oneself and the world. Fuckers. Got to keep them out.

Early in 2007, I was sexually assaulted by someone who had been a friend to me for a long time – the fact that a friend had done it being more of an affront than the act itself. I never wrote about it here because it took me awhile to figure out and decide how to move with it – I didn’t even tell anyone at first because I didn’t want anyone making a big deal out of it before I had a chance to find that answer for myself. About three months after it happened, I started to write about it privately, and somewhere in there I realized that the only choice I had was to forgive the act and then walk away. To call the person to community accountability would mean that I would forever have my hurt and his bound up together in public space for others to look at, but to nurture my anger privately would result only in lessening myself and do nothing to counter the act.

In July I wrote him a letter outlining my perception of what he had done, how it had made me feel, and finished with my resolution to forgive him rather than holding onto it. I was clear my forgiveness did not restore our friendship, but that I had made a decision about clearing and was done thinking about it. And while some might question the sincerity of this, I can honestly say that when I sent the email I felt free of even my own self-doubt and am as sure now about that course of action as I was in the moment.

Does it make it all better? Well, no. Of course not. Simply forgiving doesn’t change the circumstance of violence, entrapment, loss or injury. These things are still present in both of the scenarios I describe above. Forgiveness is a symbolic and psychological act more than a physical one after all. But it does indicate a willingness to set one’s focus up and ahead rather than down and behind. That is – looking forward and for good instead of convinced that the past is the present and a dark one at that!

Like anything – generosity, gratitude, selflessness – learning to forgive requires regular practice – we don’t exactly live in a society that vaunts these values (being forgiving somehow being equated with being a pushover). But although it may be slightly easier each time, I still find it a struggle to let go in the moments when I am most acutely hurt. This seems to have nothing to do with the severity of the event itself but some other combined set of circumstances that I haven’t quite unravelled yet. Which oddly makes it easier to forgive a man who violated me physically than one who has simply wounded my self-perception. A chip at the ego, and I can’t bring myself to pick up the phone and clear the air between us.

Of course now that I’ve written it here, you know I have to.