Red Cedar

the days are definitely getting much longer now – by the time the ferry departs langdale in the morning the sun is in rising mode – and i can make it home before total darkness falls. pretty soon, it will be light late into the evening and early in the morning and i won’t feel like such a creature of gloom on my way to and from work….

perhaps this is making me hopeful – for i have started to think about buying a house again, have been pondering this question for the past few days and started making inquiries today – listings have started appearing given that the real estate “season” is almost upon us. i even spoke to a mortgage broker today over my lunch who informed me that yes, there is some hope in hell i can find someone to lend me money.

times of making big decisions (like sinking all my savings and expendable cash into a house) often make me wish i wasn’t single. although i love the selfish privilege of having things all my way, i wish there was someone i could share the burden with, so i wouldn’t always have to feel like i’m in this all by myself. of course, this latent desire is premised on some fantasy of a partner who would be at least as responsible about taking care of things as i am, something i have never been lucky enough to find (which of course does not mean that i have not been deeply in love, or deeply committed – i think i am too adept at taking care of myself however, and that doesn’t attract the type of man who might want to take care of me even just a little bit). anyhow, decisions like this make me both giddy and nervous – to the point that i am not even sure i want to start the process at all – what if i make the wrong choice? what if i hate it? what if an accident befalls me and i can’t make mortgage payments?

many many things to worry about! and all i have done is contact a mortgage broker….. who told me about “alternative” mortgaging for people like me (with bad credit that is)… and apparently i can get a mortgage at 7% interest (locked in for 3 years) or wait 6 months and see if my credit gets better and then i would get a fairer rate (4.75%).

so what i’ve decided to do is engage a real estate agent and start looking – keeping in mind that if i find the *right* place for me that i will just eat the higher interest rate for the time being – but that i don’t have to make any decisions right now. i’m actually thinking gibsons rather than roberts creek – it seems to get a lot more light and i could actually walk home from the ferry in the summer which would be nicer than driving (central gibsons is only 4 km from the terminal). plus, it’s waaay cheaper to buy houses in gibsons. i think all the rich people in roberts creek drive the regular folks’ property values up.

i’m thinking it’s time to stop paying someone else rent and put in a semi-permanent garden somewhere…. as long as it’s not going to cause me too much stress! this just seems so freaky to me – and it will likely mean reprioritizing things in my life (like school) – i think i will just take each moment as it comes and make my decisions accordingly.

yup – that’s right, i was quoted in an east-van monthly freebie as a “security specialist”. check out the article about resist! here. these comments were generated as part of an interview i did for someone’s academic research right before i left, and the researcher put together an article on security out of them…. which is really the point in so many ways.

got into los angeles 2 nights ago at 2:30 in the morning… after 3 days of hotsprings and a 10 hour bus ride. my friends here live in west hollywood, in a non-gentrified corner of a city so massive i can’t quite get a handle on where everything is.

there is a certain passing point reached once i’ve been in the united states for more than a few days – a line that demarcates patience from revulsion – where i am reminded over and over of the mean-ness and shabbiness characterizing so much of the small-towns, or the craziness lying just under the skin’s surface in the large cities. this is the border within myself, crossed on pretty much every trip south longer than 5 days – the farther south i go the more foreign i feel.

this country simultaneously produces in me a deep desire for radical action, and at the same time the nagging doubts of the futility of fighting a beast so large and self-involved. no doubt i find my hope (and my privilege) in a half acre and a rented house nestled within the cedars and firs of the northwest in a place no one down here has ever heard of. it is so far away, so safe, so not-america.

but still, i am glad to be here among friends, spending time with aaron who i have not seen for over a year – and plotting our escape to the desert tomorrow to see the rare desert-bloom (apparently the best in 10 years owing to all the rain they have had down here in the past 2 months). this camping trip will be a first for me, as canada provides only a single opportunity to experience true desert and it’s not the same in any case. i am hoping to get some good photographs and possibly some colour in my skin which is ghost-pale in this land of 365-day sun.

we have errands to run, and i have to transfer my clothes from washer to dryer – so this i where i will sign off for the time being…..