Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
there’s an article in the paper today stating that starting this fall the us will be photographing and fingerprinting every non-canadian visitor to the united states (and some candians on visas) – starting with seaports and airports in september, and then adding most land crossings by december. although this does not target most canadians at the moment, it’s only a matter of time before this program is expanded to include *everyone* – for once the infrastructure is in place, the us will not flinch at using it in the name of “self-defense”.
this is something that has been threatened for the last couple of years, and raises a very serious question in me of whether i will ever travel to the us again after this comes to pass. i know it may seem freakishly paranoid – but i don’t believe any government has the right to arbitrarily document my existence. it’s bad enough that my own government has done it (both legally and illegally), but the thought of the evil empire logging me into their databases – well…… yikes is all i have to say.
i’m glad i don’t have to make this decision right now, as a have a few very close friends who happen to have been born in the united states – and i do travel south a few times a year for various reasons (social, artistic, political)… but at the same time i feel like i would be giving up my right to privacy, and my right to autonomy from government interference – if i were to submit to the hysteria of the security-culture of the immediate south.
what’s a girl to do?
about a year ago, i was talking about writing a book – an activist’s guide to security culture and the law – which i made an outline for and started writing last spring before my life fell apart. so this project has languished since then… and as i was packing i came across a bunch of accumulated research materials, and packed them all together with the idea that once i have moved i might start in on it again. in the last two weeks, three different people have asked me “what ever happened to that book project”? which seems odd since no one has asked about it at all in the last year – i’m feeling that i might be ready to turn out this book, with some elicited help from people (and if anyone reading this is interested in helping with the “little sister’s guide to fighting big brother” please contact me and we’ll talk about it).
focus and discipline – those are my goals for the fall – once i get through this period of uprooting……..
princess of the bureaucracy
so today i apparently am the princess of knowledge in this grand castle called the government. so great is my ability to analyze policy that i have made several people very happy this morning by answering their questions on obscure regulations… and then i talked to our tech department and it looks like they are going to allow me to purchase a transparency scanner for a major image digitizing project i proposed to my boss a couple of weeks ago….
hurrah! i am embracing my inner bureaucrat….
so things are good in meg-land. last night i laid down a fiddle and a vocal track on a friend’s new album (joey only) – which went much better than i expected and contributed to my general state of well-being. i haven’t been playing much lately and i forgot how good it can feel. the song i was contributing to is called “fire on anarchist mountain” which has a nice bluegrassy feel to it….. when it’s mixed down it’s going to sound really nice. i’m going back on thursday to lay down tracks on two other songs as well, which i have to work on tonight.
i’m on day ten of the no sugar/flour/dairy cleanse and my naturopath advised me on monday that to make it effective, i should stay the course for a month. it certainly is getting easier, and i am eating a lot healthier as a result of cutting out the major components of processed foods. i feel light all over (physically and mentally) which is a little ungrounding, and i think essential to getting me moved out of my neighbourhood. ungrounded = unattached – or at least less attached.
going… going… gone?
on friday a woman made an offer on my apartment that was accepted. although she is fearful of the noise potential, she seems almost committed to going through with the purchase. if that happens then i will get my notice for october 1st which means i will aim to move in the beginning of september.
i’m thinking of planning a party before i move out of this apartment.
my biggest accomplishment of the week was to finish packing my office/den today which has taken up several hours of my recent life. i don’t know how i could have had that much stuff in my small den, but in the end i hauled out 4 bags of garbage. mostly old files and papers. i am getting rid of my desk – so let me know if you want it.
i have become ruthless in my quest to rid my life of extraneous *stuff*.
my father and i went to the sunshine coast this weekend and poked around. checked out a cheap house that has a super-cute yard but is *small* and in need of some serious redoing. it started me on thinking about buying a place again – something i would like to do soon amid fears of perpetually renting.
we’ll see.
now purging my life of uneccesary things, i am also stripping parts of myself away – making myself new in order to be freed from the grasp of my accumulated life. it is by turns painful and renewing – and i find myself looking back every few minutes to make sure that this is really something i want to do.
this is without a doubt the most anxiety-inducing move i have ever been through. apparently my psyche doesn’t like change.
romanian memory
one of the things that has alway stuck with me since i was a teenager was after the downfall of ceausescu in romania (1989) when the common romanian people were allowed to go through his houses for a tour to see what kind of lifestyle he was living while they scraped by in poverty. i remember the news reports showed throngs of people shuffling through his main mansion, stuffed with fine artifacts and artwork, utterly stunned to see the riches he had been accumulating secretly and at their expense – the outrage those people displayed at how they had been misled by their leader and
“comrade”.
i often wonder if it will be like that as civilization collapses – will regular folk finally get to see the criminal wealth that some have lived with at the expense of the rest of us? and we will be shocked and horrified at what was done for the privelege of a few for so many decades?
friday day five
so it’s friday – and day five of no sugar – wheeee!
i’m actually feeling pretty good today and despite my whacked out mood this week i’ve managed to accomplish quite a lot including:
- setting up a investment savings account to put my savings towards a house in
- writing a long letter to a friend in jail
- packing boxes
- visiting with a friend from out of town
- mailing off all the stuff i sold on ebay
- finishing off another section of the rug i am working on
- a whole bunch of random stuff at work including troubleshooting other people’s problems with a system i set up, and researching and ordering hardware to get my next project started
- following up on a lot of email
and i also have agreed to record on a friend’s album so next week i’m going to meet up with him and some others to see what we can lay down. i haven’t really been playing much fiddle lately (or singing for that matter), though i want to! so i think that working on someone else’s project will be useful to kicking me in the ass a little bit.
there have been a bunch of people viewing my apartment this week, including one woman who has been back twice with her realtor. she seems pretty keen and i’m hoping she will put an offer in on it so i can get on with scheduling the rest of my life. i am trying to figure out going to cali in october and the ffa has been invited to play a show in sf at the same time… so i hope that as a band we will be able to get it together to do a mini-tour and i can fold in visits to folks at the same time. we’ll see – the band has been a little dysfunctional as of late so i’m not too optimistic we will get enough members committing to the trip.
and on it goes….
Red Cedar 