Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Pictures and imprints.
I returned home this morning with a full head and an opened heart – the struggles and landscapes of Colombia imprinted into my view of the world. I intend to post some excerpts from my journals here as soon as I can manage them but for now I have managed to post my photographs to the red cedar photo gallery. Go look – they are just simple snapshots – but you can get a sense of where I have been for the past two weeks.
From Medellin.
This will be my one and only dispatch from Colombia via the blog… This trip has turned out to be far more packed than I had realized it would be with meetings and travel taking up 14 hours or more per day.
Needless to say, I got through the US and into the country fine – and the past nine days have been spent in various parts of the country meeting with trade unions, indigenous groups, human rights organizations and barrios of displaced peoples. I have taken pages of notes, written copious amounts in my journal and taken dozens of photographs which I will try to synthesize into some coherent postings when I return home (I will be uploading my photos to my red cedar photo gallery as a first priority after returning).
We have been lucky to have access to places that most outsiders would never be invited to, the expectation being that somehow we can do something to help people once we return to Canada. I am afraid at times that the expectations might be too high… but at least in one case myself and two other people on this tour have agreed to personally fund the operation of a women´s center in the town of Neiva in the Huila province for the next year. It´s a small start – but when you are facing global injustice, it feels like almost nothing at all.
I have lots to say about Uribe, the paramilitaries, the FARC, the countryside, the resistance and the people – but am running out of time and couldn´t do it justice on this little sleep in any case. I am returning home on the 11th/12th which seems far too soon to me… so stay in touch and my travel reports will be posted here.
Getting ready to fly.
I leave for Colombia tomorrow morning – all packed and ready as I am staying in town tonight – but wow am I ever stressed about this trip! Triggered mainly by my fear of borders no doubt. But I’m all set, and will face those fears tomorrow morning bright and early with a brand-new passport and a wallet full of cash.
My anxiety has been somewhat out of control in the last two days which I am chalking up to job unhappiness, triggered traumas and pms. Once I get on that plane tomorrow, I am expecting all of this to dissipate so I can go back to being my normal only mildly-stressed self. In the meantime, I leave you with another poppy picture from the weekend.
I will try to blog while I am traveling but it might be difficult. I will be back online as of the 12th if you don’t hear from me before then.
Summer flowers.
A poppy from this morning’s garden, and an evergreen flower from the subalpine forest I was hiking in this weekend.
Giving myself the creeps.
Since I bought my house last spring I have been putting off the writing of a will – something that only really becomes essential once you own substantial things and/or have dependants. I recently also took out life insurance through my union as I have one person in my life who I wanted to make sure would be taken care of in the event of something untimely. Problem is, if you die and don’t have it all clear who people have to contact and where the beneficiaries can be found – the insurance just goes unclaimed. If I was not single it would be somewhat easier – but being that I’m on my own pretty much all my particular information is just stored in my head – which helps no one if I’m not around the explain it.
So I know I have to do the official paperwork soon and get it all notarized. But since I’m leaving the country, I felt like I should at least leave some notes behind about where to find paperwork, and where to contact people etc.
Let me tell you – that is one heavy task. Asset distribution is the simple part, but when I got down to trying to figure out who needs to be contacted, I got really very sad. Not sad about my own death, but sad because as I chose names, I thought about those people getting a phone call, about Darren’s lawyer having to come and tell him in his cell, about my parents having to make arrangements. Sad because I can remember everytime I have picked up the phone to hear of death in explicit detail – what I was doing and thinking prior to the call, how I put the phone down and where I went afterwards, how everything can be spun in an instant of new reality. A disappearance, a rush, a shock, a hollow opening up underneath, a squeeze of the heart, a slow belief. Not something I would wish on anyone I care about – that’s for sure.
(And not a day goes by when I do not still think of Bob – even 18 months later – and I remember putting down the phone and going out to the step of my house in Roberts Creek and staring at the yard silent until I believed what I had just heard and hung up on, rushing loss running through my hands. Rocking reality back and forth in myself – torn and screaming Not fair! Not fair!)
So yeah, I wouldn’t reccomend it unless you have to for some reason. I’m dreading sitting down to do an actual will, so hopefully this signed piece of paper will make do in the meantime.
Red Cedar 