Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
strings, gunshots, travels
i put fresh strings on my fiddle last night and a new battery in my pre-amp.. by all accounts that makes me ready to rock. i forget how amazing a new set of strings makes my instrument sound…. putting my playing on auto-improve just by $75 investment. i have been seriously considering taking my violin to a local luthier on the sunshine coast in the near future to get a good once over and have a growing hairline crack in the body repaired before it gets worse. it’s been ages since i have taken her in for a check-up, and at this age (250+ years) it’s stupid not to take care of small problems as they arise.
i woke up last night at around midnight with a start, and then shortly afterwards heard what sounded like a shotgun blast in the distance. this is not the first time i have heard gun noises since moving to the coast… i forget that the further you get out of the city, the more likely people are to be shooting at moving things in their yards at night. in the weekly coast reporter, the police file often has reports of gun shots called in by neighbours etc. it’s odd, and strangely non-threatening (unlike the few times i heard shots in east van neighbourhoods, which just seemed more menacing owing to the urban context).
having a hard time focusing this morning, probably as a result of fitful sleep, and also trying to figure out travel plans over the next few months. am working out the dates to visit bella coola in july, have to book a ticket to winnipeg for a union convention in august, and start thinking about the early fall canoe trip aaron and i are planning. i’m thinking a possible trip to victoria in june (which might be the last of the island trips until fall given the fact i need some weekends for camping and may also end up working in the interior during the forest fire season – i have signed up to do crisis comm as a federal communicator if things get ugly). in all, it’s shaping up to be an interesting summer if all plans go through as i want them to.
but so rarely they do…… we’ll see what transpires and i’m sure i’ll have fun no matter. in the meantime it’s work and union cases (i feel like i’m running a counselling service off the side of my desk this week)….. there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to do everything i want to get done!
my housewarming
i am considering changing the date of my housewarming to june 18th because that weekend is a 3-day one for me and also because friends of mine in victoria are having a party on the 11th, which i’m not sure about going to, but i’d like the option for the victoria folks to come to my housewarming which they can’t do if there’s a date conflict.
if there is anyone out there who seriously objects to this, please let me know (by email is fine) – otherwise i’m going ahead with the new date.
saturday night pasta mayhem
anna, ryefield and mel start the pasta dough on saturday night…. beginning the production
i am daunted, returning to this space after four days absence, so upside down and crammed full the last few days have been, where does one start?
on my drive into east vancouver on monday afternoon, i was thinking about home and what constitutes that for me. east van, victoria and gibsons are all places that figure into my sense of “coming home”, no matter that i have fixed residence in only one place, i have community like family in each of them. thus, at the moment i have finally bought a house, i have less of a fixed sense of home than ever, anchored in place but not in imagination. there i fit easily into the worlds of my friends, bringing my own meanderings to the table as arguments and songs. the stable home representing a solidity in the world that encourages adventuring beyond.
oh the epiphanies coming off drunken weekends! victoria turned out to be one long party starting when i arrived friday and carrying through until i finally dropped from exhaustion on sunday night. i mostly stayed with my friend anna and allowed her to play the role of social co-ordinator (since she’s so damned good at it), which took all the thinking out of the weekend for me and allowed me to just go along for the ride. there were many great moments, particularly the pasta-making dinner party we organized at anna’s place (and where the photos in this post came from). extra-nice (from my perspective) was the fact i spent quite a bit of time with the person i met on my last trip over, and confirmed the quite nice connection that characterizes our interactions (though one i feel no pressure to do anything about – distance and time being realities i am content with). it’s good though, to feel desired every once and awhile, and i had plenty of that on my trip which adds some colour to my week even after the fact.
i also managed to visit my friend dustin on sunday afternoon at william head, marking the first time i have seen him as an official “visitor”. i am going to make the effort to visit once every two months or so, which seems a realistic schedule given i seem to be on vancouver island more often in the past 10 months. he’s written a second novella which he promises to mail, and has decided to apply for day-parole in september which would have him in a half-way house by next spring. not too much longer for him, and then maybe we will get to hang out in the real-world again.
on monday afternoon i arrived in vancouver with enough time to do some grocery shopping and play music in the park and visit with a friend i bumped into before going to band practice at ben’s. we’re getting ready for our folklife show this saturday with a new song and a couple new arrangements of old songs and it’s sounding surprisingly good for a group that has barely played together since october. i am still trying to figure out what my weekend will look like as a composer friend is staging a dance show on friday and i may stay in town for that and then leave early for seattle the next day (sounds too like my friend anna wants to come along for the roadtrip and show which will make for more fun).
so just to sum up – before clicking the more link for additional photos – life is pretty damned good at the moment, despite being back at work.
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the anti-climax
after all the political excitement this week, friday just seems anti climactic. we have the same governments at both the provincial and federal levels with a few adjustments – but that’s about it…. the world continues to limp along under the leadership of the same white men it always has…. a new day for us indeed….
so very very tired i am today, even though i got a reasonable amount of sleep last night and didn’t even have a single drink after the presentation! i have had a severe lack of downtime this week, both at work and in the evenings and by this mid-afternoon friday i am *worn* *out*. i am looking foward to being done at work this afternoon and taking the little blue tercel down the highway to the ferry terminal… apparently anna and julia are looking to party tonight. i’m not sure how up for partying i am, but going along for the ride always results in interesting stories.
last night’s east van assembly on “policing the struggle” and police violence in the east side went reasonably well. lots of people turned up and there seemed to be some energy for taking some community action out of that process. we will see what actually happens next. in my experience it is really difficult to get tangibles out of large community meetings – but i am hoping to see some sort of community legal defense organization come together out of this as per one of my comrade’s suggestions. i spoke for a few minutes at the start to provide context for police violence against activists and went mostly off-the-cuff, and people seemed to be receptive to what i had to say. i always get so nervous! but then it works out okay. i don’t know what it will take for me to stop getting the voice shakes when i first start up. maybe just more practice…
my interest is in doing some popular education workshops in the downtown eastside that hinge on people’s rights under arrest and questioning – something that i can come into the city and do on a saturday but doesn’t require me to be going to organizing meetings every week. i have a couple of lawyer friends who i am thinking might be interested in helping out with something like that if i get the workshops structured and set up. we’ll see…. it’s not as though i don’t have a lot of work to do at the moment!
i am taking my camera to victoria this weekend, and hopefully i’ll get enough new shots to start posting photos with my blog entries again! i just don’t have a lot of stuff i like in the archives at the moment….
another day….
a solid night’s sleep makes for a world of difference – which is a good thing – because my presence in another disciplinary case has been requested for later this morning, and i need all the morale i can get at the moment. it must just be one of those weeks, that’s all i can account it to… some alignment of the stars and management that is making all these meetings line up like symbols on a slot-machine that pays out in wooden nickels.
last night i spent packing and reading – managed to plow through ursula k le guin’s 1971 classic, the lathe of heaven between yesterday and this morning’s ferry ride. i drove into town today because i am staying in tonight and leaving for victoria tomorrow after work….. i had considered cancelling my trip this weekend because the prospect of staying home and doing nothing is infinitely appealing at the moment. however, one of the plans i already made is a visit to a friend imprisoned at william head, and canceling with no way of letting him know would be a really shitty thing to do… so i’ve decided to go over and do nothing more than some low-key hanging out with friends… which is also a worthwhile break from some of the things going on at the moment.
as i have work to attend to (and lots of it), this will suffice for the moment – hopefully i will get a chance to post a little more later.
Red Cedar 