Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
photo-real
i have been spending the morning going through the voluminous image-archive belonging to my work unit in the pacific region. lightboard and loupe in hand, i am going through three dozen binders full of slides, photos and negatives that have accumulated over the past hundred years or so, to decide which of them will end up in our digital image archive. i thought this project would take me a day or two max (the photo-selection part), but now i am seeing the vastness of this task. it is easy to get bored and stop looking at the photos critically, and then i have to go back over them and make sure i didn’t miss some gem with historical importance or a species shot misfiled under some other heading.
in communications, we have to access these images frequently. often i am required to locate general photos of a fish species, examples of habitat disturbance, scenic ocean shots or any number of other related areas – a task made tedious with the poor image-management we have had in place for years, and even worse when having to resort to the binders. since technology for archiving, labeling and searching photographs has really improved over the last three years, i proposed to my work unit that we properly archive our images and developed the plan to do it – so this is my big project of the moment (fortunately i don’t have to do the scanning or the initial inputting into the database, i have someone hired to do that for me).
after selecting the images from the archive, my next step is develop the architecture – which is the most interesting part of the job for me. i like organizing data into useable aggregates – as i often am not only the creator, but a user of the end-product.
there is sadness in looking at these decades of photographs – going right back to the time when the people of bc still believed the fish would never leave – trawlers and seiners and gillnetters and even whaling ships – an echo of past policy and the tinge of human arrogance gracing the photo paper in the eyes of men and the full bellies of their vessels. it’s a shame to me to see how the land has been so used here, looking at images of the first clearcuts on slopes reaching the sea, small villages perched on the edge of the world taking as much as they could before it got to be too late.
it’s hard to believe looking from this place in history – that so few people could see the scrabble for resources that would occur, that damage to the earth would not be repaired so quickly as to feed the growing mouths of this land, and we would eventually stand on a precipice of all decisions come before us and weighing on our backs.
awakened
i am distracted today, bored by work, a critter in a cage desiring escape. what’s wild in me is unbound while at the same time caught up in emotion constricted, awaiting, breathing quietly, alert. this part of me awakened is running over the forest floor, wrapped in cedar and hidden in the hollow of a tree trunk. this part of me is ready.
saturday night hot as hades
and i’m sedentary though sweating, lounging about the apartment trying to motivate myself to go out and do something. i think the lethargy is going to win even though it’s illuminares tonight and there’s also a party up the street – my ability to deal with crowds of people is thin in general – i’m becoming a recluse in my old age.
the sun has just gone down behind the trees, which means i can sit out on the balcony and look down on the scrabbly park across from my house – it gets so overused in the summer that by the beginning of august almost all the grass is dead and spread thin over brown patches of weed and dust. scabby ground cover or not, there are always people there in the summer – apartment dwellers who have no luxury of a backyard, children taking advantage of evening sun, drug dealers waiting for clientelle by the cenetaph – a cross-section of living underfoot. of all the places to live in vancouver i think i chose the most interesting one, and have not often been sorry for it.
i packed a little today, ran errands in the morning before the heat overtook, and did my first ever beaded wire-work as a way of keeping my mind off the noise of the indy race and the smell of the chicken plant. i thought about getting out of the ‘hood for the day, but the effort of driving and the knowledge that everything close by would be packed with people, kept me close to home – dreaming of next weekend in cool mountains.
tomorrow i have an all-day union meeting (yes, on a sunday) – to discuss the possibility of a strike upcoming. i keep silently hoping it doesn’t come to that. as an area strike organizer i’m responsible for several worksites (totalling 1500 workers), and galvanizing people to take up the line – but my heart just isn’t in it this time around. i definitely think we should be getting a better offer, but i’m just pretty worn out from political organizing these days and more and more enjoying time off and to myself to do creative and personal work.
forever i have been an activist, and since i gave myself permission to take a break this year, my desire for personal freedom and autonomy has only grown – making me resentful of the struggle rather than a willing participant.
i’m sure it will pass – there’s too much injustice in the world to stay away from organizing forever – and in any case, even during my “break” i have continued to work on the projects i deem essential to my self-identity as a hell-raiser.
what happens when i give those up too? who do i become then?
friday night 9:00 report
it is blistering hot, the chicken processing plant smell has overtaken the neighbourhood (and it’s yuck yuck yuck), and it appears there is no respite from this heat for the next week.
what is going on here? vancouver is a *rainforest* for the love of pete! (no i’m not going to spout an apocalyptic fact here because you all know what’s going on).
i bought a hiking pole tonight at mec at the recommendation of a friend who told me they really aren’t just for wusses… and it would take some pressure off my ankle. i’m going to use it on my trip next weekend.
in better news, i got a phone call tonight from the realtor. there is another offer on my apartment, subjects come off wednesday – i could still get evicted after all! the realtors told me to hold off on giving my notice (they are in on my plan to collect the eviction money), that the sale looks more solid this time.
we’ll see. i can hardly wait to get the hell out of dodge (errrr… east van i mean).
reflections on a broken ankle
i have been sluggish with work this week, lazy from the heat or just the general mid-summer vibe – i’m not sure – but it is making me unproductive and distracted.
i worked from home yesterday, too disenchanted with the city to leave my apartment and get myself to the office – toodled around on email, fixed some documents i have been working on, and occasionally throwing things into boxes around my apartment which has steadily grown in untidiness. i did manage to get some of the items i am giving away into my car and to their new owners at the end of the day before meeting my friend steph for a early-evening hike at lynn headwaters. i forgot my hiking socks and did over half the hike in my sandals which was not as bad as i thought it would be. apparently my joints and tissue are pretty much back in order, a year after the accident – though i still am leading with my left side, a compensation i haven’t given up on.
funny enough, exactly one week short of the one-year anniversary of breaking my ankle – i am embarking on another 4-day (42 km) trip with friends in manning park. we will leave next friday morning and return on the monday – hiking in the sub-alpine meadows surrounded by the rising peaks. this is a spectacular time of year up there, with the fragile grasslands in full bloom, ripe with the brief spring of the mountains.
so here it is – testing myself like this for the first time, carrying now extra weight in my body in the form of 2 plates and 6 pins my bones will forever grow over, causing a hardness to the outer skin that could only exist with the insertion of foreign objects. if i meditate briefly on the event of last summer, i can access the immediate fear of the moment which gave way to the care and support of my hiking partner and close friend who washed my hands and held me in the sunset waiting for the rescue to arrive. my wool sweater and his head resting against me will forever be etched in my memory as a flashflood of a total love and support that i had never known existed before then – though possibly i had accessed it as a child, not so consciously.
breaking my bones was a gift of self-reflection and a lesson in self-knowledge – and prepared me for the things that followed, paring me to the core so i could learn to walk again, and live a different way – something i am getting better at as i work my way through each new door that opens. i am trying to keep back the fear that makes me cautious, trying to open myself without feeling foolish or having reservation, and watching for the moment i see the whole healed against all the heart-sickness of this world.
i am eager for this trip and at the same time hesitant, for while i crave the sky and the meadows, the mountains and the pine forests, i am reminded how easy it is to fall or to fail – and how a part of you can get broken through no real doing of your own.
this is the practice of living i am working at.
Red Cedar 