More pictures, I hope

figuring out photos.

I

Connecticut

First weekday morning in Connecticut, still figuring out pictures and how to post them on this mac but I'll get to it sometime today.

I've never been one to be particularly patriotic but there is something in the make-up of this country that brings out the team spirit in me.

Most of the authors I've admired throughout my life have come from here. Maybe it's the difference in population level, I don't know but people feel more engaged here, more present. I feel less tension about asserting one's individuality or hiding it. Hard to explain and clearly, I've left off blogging for too long, this is all but inarticulate but Margaret Atwood comes to mind.

The United States would never produce a Margaret Atwood.

I like Atwood's work, I've read most of her novels and about half her poems. Her work is suffused with a sense of arch observation, she is the removed observer, always. The perfect narrator, Atwood is dispassionate. She is the ideal, non-judgmental purveyor of irony and cool detachment. She is a turn of the century writer, as I feel is Munro. Technically adept they are emotionally removed and this is perceived as a strength. Ok - in Canada, I see it. Here? Not so much.

The sun is slanting over the snow in outside the house. It is absolutely silent, much quieter than my place in Ottawa or even my family home in Victoria. Nevertheless, there is a palpable sense that life in all its messy, busy, active, bustle carries on just a few minutes away. And it does.

Americans are engaged. It's easy to love that.

And there's nothing detached about my writing, at its best or worst - I'm here, I'm present, I'm involved.

This week I have an essay on adoption to revise and complete, four personal statements to write for my application to law school and a communications plan to sketch. There are dinners to cook, family time to spend, conversations to be had and a Christmas tree to decorate.

Maybe it's always true that our friends know that our friends know us better than our family. It's certainly true for me here and now - this is a kind of homecoming and I am very glad of it.

December in Victoria

I know it's been a while. I've been afraid to write - then there was a new computer and the upheaval hasn't helped.

Anyway, I'm back.

It's December, in five days I will leave Victoria for maybe a few months - maybe forever. In Austin, before I left, an elderly palm reader told me it was important for me to work out my relationship with my mother. At the time I thought it unlikely.

Within days of arriving in Victoria in late September, I decided the palm reader was absolutely wrong. We fought. I was angry. It was clear to me she was still giving everything she had, everything she has, in every way, to my sister. I felt she didn't care anything about me.

My birthday is Friday. I am leaving first thing in the morning to go to Connecticut for Christmas and then back to Ottawa. I've written the LSAT. I am going to apply to law schools this month and next. My grades are good, my resume is strong. I expect to get in.

I feel as though I have put things in order and gotten back on to my own path and somehow in doing that, the relationship with my mother has healed itself. I love her. I want the best for her. I am no longer envious of my sister. I've finally learned the lesson that means so much to me in theory - finally learned it in practice. Love is valuable for the act, valuable for loving much more so than for being loved and when I really understood that the gate swung open and I understood, I have been loved.

So now I will get on an airplane on the morning of my birthday, the day she brought me into the world will be the day we say goodbye. And it might be the last time.

Two months ago I wouldn't have cared about that, now it seems almost impossible to bear.

I pray to keep my heart open. Pray to accept that I am doing the right thing, pray that she knows I love her and that I can remember that she loves me.

Maybe it was cruel to leave on my birthday, it was the only day that worked in every way and so I will have to accept that.

Accept it.

Accept love.

Accept growth and try not to be afraid to cry. After all, only people capable of love can cry over things like this. The trip to Victoria has been a gift of such value, beyond all expectation. It's humbling.

Oh Politics - in a Metapolitical way.

So here's the thing.

Canada is in a negative spiral. We are perpetually poised on the verge of a federal election with all of the Parties and their leaders jockeying for public approval all the time. Essentially we are dealing with a bunch of politicians who, instead of representing the people who elected them, are in stuck in permanent, sloppy-baby-kissing, glad-handing, mud-slinging mode. Not one of them is fit to sit in the House of Commons. You'd find more ethical clarity at a convention of disbarred personal injury lawyers just before they all got sent to A.A.

in a casino,

with their mistresses.

And meanwhile, Canadians wring their hands and talk about proportional representation and how much better things could be if and if and if...

Well folks, "IF" won't ever be "WHEN" unless you stand up and say so.

We have all adopted this idea of sparing people's feelings to the point where we are completely incapacitated.

I walk up Christmas Hill these days, nearly every morning. I never want to go. I hate the first fifteen minutes. Once I get up there it is often windy and to tell you the God's honest truth there is nowhere on earth I would like to be less than Victoria BC and yet - here I am and there I go.

I do it because I can't stand to be the kind of person who doesn't do it. I'm here because I took a risk on being somewhere else and lost. And I'm here because this is the most practical place for me to be. I do it because I know I am going to benefit from it with a stronger body and a mind that is sharper and more prepared for the day. I might not enjoy it at the time but I know I will enjoy the results and I might even enjoy it and learn to love Victoria a little more - and on and on and on - there are dozens more reasons why and very few of them have to do with immediate, pleasurable gratification.

My point here is this; doing the right thing is sometimes damned painful. It is inconvenient, awkward, it can lose you friends and put you in places where you do not wish to be. Canadians have forgotten this en masse. But it is always worth it. It is worth it because ultimately the cost of not doing the right thing is much higher.

We have grown, perhaps not surprisingly, into a nation of people who seek comfort above all else and who value avoiding confrontation. A nation like that cannot tolerate democracy for long. At this point in time the values publicly demonstrated to be shared by most Canadians are, in my opinion, quite similar to those held dear by pre-war Germans.

We want a quiet, orderly society. We want personal affluence or at least security. We want clean streets decent transportation, safety for our children and nice parks. We do not want confrontation, we do not want graffiti and if the Hamster in Chief is right, and he certainly seems to be, we do not want art that challenges the mind, heart or soul in any way. We want quiet, clean and pretty. These are things that do not exist in an uninterrupted stream in a healthy world. These are things that are not consistent even within our own bodies. These are demands that cannot be met and it is dictatorial and greedy and small for people to think they can.

Ironically, if we want any of these things to come to us in an organic, authentic way then we need to start being honest. We need to start standing up and speaking out when we see our leaders lying, and don't say you've never seen it - remember the time he accused the three other party leaders of refusing to have the Canadian flag in the room while Gilles Duceppe signed the agreement to work together in the event of a coalition government? I had that picture over my desk for six months - the picture of the Canadian flag right behind the desk at which those men sat while they signed the document. A lie is a lie.

Remember the Hamster in Chief pocketing the communion wafer? He did it - it was on film, there were witnesses and yet somehow we managed as a country to not only ignore it but to pretend that there could possibly be two sides to that story. Well there are two sides to that story - Right and Wrong.

Time to stand up, not shut up. Time to speak up, not saddle up. Time to wake up - we've been coasting way too long. All you have to do is see the truth and refuse to pretend otherwise. That's all - that's not much. Do it.

Me-vision.

This is a close-up of a vinyl sofa I took while I was waiting for my ex to shop for tea. There was a series of these but most of them have been lost along the way. My ex shopped like a California trophy-wife.

I thought the details of that sofa were highly suggestive and wanted to shoot them in a way that would convey their erotic qualities.

My ex thought that was a warped way of thinking about a sofa - or anything. He wanted me to stop it. Ironically, he was, for the most part, all hands all the time - he practically drooled over me, it was repugnant.

I think different ways of looking at the same world make life more interesting. Seeing this sofa in this way is not a personality trait of which I am ashamed. I don't like the fact that we have to pretend the whole world is rated pg. I'm happy to be an adult and I don't think sex is creepy or shameful. For the most part, I think it's healthy.

If, like my IKEA sniffing friend (see deciphering IKEA) or my lacivious ex, you think there's something wrong with me for being me and you feel compelled to try to pressure me into being another kind of person or tell me I don't have the right to take a picture, think a thought or express myself on my own blog- you need to go away. It's a big wide web. I am not objective. I see things the way I see them and I hope you do too.

Focus? What Focus?

These are two things I miss about Ottawa.

and tulips and a perfect latte.

and my very much beloved Pootsy-cat.

Since I decided to focus this blog I have denied myself permission to write.

I changed my mind.

Here are some pictures.

Deciphering Ikea Heights

Over the last few weeks there’s been a lot of press about IKEA. First there was the hub-bub about the change in font in the new catalogue; apparently the IKEA catalogue shift from Then came the story on CBC about an independent film maker who shot a TV series inside an IKEA store in Burbank. It was reported without any critical analysis at all.

From the perspective of a PR pro, this series is like having a press release published as hard news. Sure, the reporter said the series was shot "without the staff's knowledge" and "without permission of the management" but these are phrases that can be used honestly without divulging the fact that corporate headquarters support the project.

Even the most unseasoned reporter should have wondered how it was possible for this series to film four episodes, getting in and out of beds, sitting in displays and filming strangers, chase scenes and clinches all without attracting a ripple of attention.

I thought I sensed another campaign and so decided to ignore it and let it cycle through the web in the same way the Bridezilla and Lonelygirl 115 videos did when they appeared on YouTube. I figured people probably saw it for what it was and my mentioning it would only be restating the obvious and drawing still more attention to the series.

Then IKEA Heights appeared on my friend's Face Book page. He swallowed it whole - I think he wanted to think about the place of consumer culture in most people's lives and he may have seen it as subversive. He is a brilliant man - his intelligence is not at issue. I think what is at work here is a desire to see the possibility of subversive creativity working in the margins of corporate culture. That desire to believe in the magic of the rebel, the allure of the pirate artist, is powerful enough to trump common sense.At first glance it looks like any other ad.

The IKEA Heights logo's similarity to IKEA’s logo is unmistakeable, the blue background of the IKEA sign has been replaced by black, sure but otherwise it looks like a pretty clear trademark infringement to me. My friend believed it. That bothered me. I went to the site and looked at the series. Here is a link: http://www.ikeaheights.com/ Look at it objectively:

First the front page. Unlike the floating Face book logo the IKEA Heights web page is IKEA blue with yellow writing. Swedish flag colors - IKEA colors. The yellow on black logo is displayed to the right; a reinforcement of the link to the logo that appeared on my friend's Face book page. The web page is called ikeahights.com. And there was one more thing that should always raise suspicion on a web page; no place to leave a comment and yet there are comments listed - all positive, like the blurbs on the back of a newly published book.

This could come off looking like an attempt to make a joke about the act of filming the series, an ironic nod to IKEA’s role in the production of the series. However, IKEA is protective of their brand. On September 9 of this year, they won their suit against someone for using the word IKEA as part of their domain name. Here's a link.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2009/09/09/Ikea-wins-domain-name-ruling/UPI-65531252528299/

The domain name in question was iloveikea.com Now have a look at episode one: Opening shot - a couple snuggled down in bed. Price tag, visible. Could be an accident, you never know. Cut to - wide shot of IKEA sign, in case you didn't get that it's filmed inside an IKEA store. No reason to do that if you're just a guerrilla filmmaker guy and no reason to allow it to stand if you're the corporate entity who owns the brand unless it serves a purpose.

Close up on the Swedish meatballs sign. Close up on "We're crazy about low prices." If the film maker is trying to be funny about being in IKEA, once is enough and anyway, these signs are on-message for the company's agenda, aren't they?Then there is the pillow scene, the crime boss wanted down pillows but the henchman brings an assortment of colorful cushions filled with polyester. His boss is annoyed because "polyester breathes"

No video screen, regardless of how good its definition may be can discern between polyester and goose down or foam or any other kind of fill. However, not everyone is clear on the selling points of polyester fill, one being, cost and another, apparently, that polyester fill, at least this polyester fill, breathes. Gee - thanks for the information, you can get breathable polyester pillows at IKEA in lots of colors, who knew?

From there, it just goes on and on. The acting is awful, the scripts are not funny enough to raise a smile but the product placement and the idea, as viral, are brilliant. I have shown this video to a couple of other people and they have laughed but what they laughed about was the absurdity of filming a TV series in IKEA and about how awful the acting, shooting and scripting was. Ask them anything about the actual content and they can't remember. Hmmmm

With IKEA Heights, IKEA has launched into a new level of marketing, making pretty good use of web resources that have puzzled other marketers and finding a way to generate income without wasting resources on an untried medium.

Doubtless it is an excellent use of resources even if the film maker was paid from the start and especially if, as people continue to claim, this is a series made by some struggling film maker in California who received no remuneration for his efforts.

With this campaign IKEA avoided the cost of placing ads in any medium. It was carried virally and generated its own press. Most of it looks as though it came free and all of it top tier. The LA Times covered this story, as did CBC, NBC and of course there is all the chatter online. You cannot buy coverage this good.

Even better, all of the press was of the "gee-whiz-isn't-this-great!" variety. Not a critical word was spoken. Just two months previous, IKEA other "viral" campaign tanked in the news. A Vancouver skateboard shop owner complained vociferously to the CBC that IKEA had defaced his property with graffiti as part of a guerrilla ad campaign. (story below)

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/07/29/bc-vancouver-guerilla-ad-campaign.html

Then there is the fact that the series continues to run online making full use of the IKEA name, showing interiors and garnering coverage that is positive if not exactly credible. I know I have said this already but I feel it should be emphasized, IKEA is a sophisticated corporate entity with an elaborate corporate structure. This would not and could not happen without consent from IKEA.

IKEA Heights is completely consistent with IKEA’s history of unorthodox ad campaigns. IKEA campaigns have, in my opinion, successfully positioned them as a quirky individualistic place. This placement defies all logic. Surely, if there is a MacDonald's of furniture stores IKEA is it. They are literally everywhere, all over the world and their product serves a very large segment of the market.

In these times, IKEA may serve the largest segment of the furniture buying market. I have only ever met two people who have not been to an IKEA store; both make well in excess of $100,000 a year.

In the course of my research into this story I took one of them to the local IKEA store. What did he do? He bought a dresser.

Here's a link to another interesting IKEA campaign from 2006: http://marketallica.wordpress.com/2006/05/23/everyday-fabulous-with-ikea/

Then there was the official IKEA TV series which starred Ileana Douglas and can be found here http://www.easytoassemble.tv/ Easy to Assemble wrapped up earlier this year, leaving a plank missing from IKEA’s marketing platform until the space was filled by IKEA Heights.

If IKEAHeights were an independent production, copyright law would protect IKEA’s right to their trademark. If IKEA chose to relinquish that right, even by choosing not to prosecute, then this story could be true. However, if IKEA allows IKEA Heights to use their trademark as they have then the door is opened to anyone else using it in a similar fashion, once you’ve opened up your trademark to the public domain you cannot choose to reel it in. If IKEA protects their trademark as they have proven they do, a contract must exist between IKEA and IKEA Heights which means it is not guerrilla film making it is smart if cynical, marketing.

Facebook

My Aunt wrote a message on my wall on Facebook. It said she had heard about my ear infection and hoped there was someone in Austin to take care of me while I am sick.

Considerate enough - and innocuous. I deleted it immediately.

My reaction to my Aunt's perfectly reasonable and totally banal posting on my page taught me something about Facebook: yes, it's personal and yes, it's marketing.

The posting she had replied to was one about pouring poison into the ear. Although I did not realize it at the time, it was a way of being intensely personal whilst also showing off my knowledge of literary references. The latter being more of the point than the former. In fact, the personal front-loading of the message served more to point out that even when I am ill, I am still clever.

That is, I believe, the function of Facebook. My Aunt's reply was completely inappropriate, unless it had been a private message. I was not wrong to remove it - I was wrong to treat the medium as though it could be navigated by people who didn't grow up with the idea of using every aspect of your life to consciously create a persona. My friends all get it and can read postings on two levels - in that case, 1.) Stephanie is sick and 2.) Stephanie is still looking for a job. (if you count my writer friends - there is a third level 3.) Stephanie is still one of us.

Any response to the first level alone is worse than useless, it is distracting, potentially a liability - it breaks the seamlessness of the interface and draws attention to the wrong side of the discourse.

I know she did not do it intentionally, I look at her own page and it is painfully boring, completely concerned with how cute her grandkids are, what she did with them today, how happy she is - it is, in short, a family Chirstmas letter except that it runs year-round.

This is my first real brush with the awareness that it is possible to master the technology and still not get it. Now I have to ask myself, do I get it?

I know my Facebook status updates should be funny or interesting or informative in some way. I know better than to do what some of my friends do and post things that are secretive or cryptic. It's tempting to write about the personal details forgetting why and how they must relate to anyone who reads it.

Which, of course, leads me to this blog. It cannot be an online archive, even if it isn't getting read. It's nice to have somewhere to put random new writing and ramblings on various issues but it isn't enough.

Some conversations really should be private.

Time to reassess. More later.

Today, it is only partly sunny in Austin.

Compare "partly sunny" here to "a very nice day" in Ottawa or "gorgeous" on the west coast and you will find very little to distinguish them, except for the fact that it is likely to be warmer, softer and lovelier in Austin - with less road work - and better restaurants.

People can be good anywhere, I think they always try. Just the same it is easier to be friendly when the air is soft and fragrant, the sky is blue and the temperature remains above the freezing mark.

Maybe it's just me.

Of course there are lots of problems in Austin, just as there are in any city but if you're going to tackle problems, I think it is somehow more manageable under blue skies. Simplistic, I know - maybe I should say, it's easier for me. Fine weather soothes me like money soothes many people I know.

I am going out tonight - going to have dinner at a family restaurant all by myself. The reason I am doing this is because it will benefit the local homeless shelter. I'm trying not to mind that it's just for men. Gotta start somewhere.

There is just so much to do in any community, people take on the problems they think they can manage first. I'm looking at it this way; if we can all make an effort to get this program settled and stable maybe then there will be the time, energy and resources to help homeless women.

But then again - I just looked at that and it sums up my entire life and not in a good way.

All my life I have put my problems on-hold because there is always someone with a more pressing or more predictable problem standing right beside me demanding to go first.

My sister with her refusal to stay in school and subsequent employment problems - her three pregnancies, her endless need for every bit of the family resources in every way, my lover - with his very many catastrophic individuals who are in seemingly endless orbit around him, propelled by one distaster after another - drugs, career derailment, petty crime, family suicide, unplanned pregnancy - all self-made, of course but no less pressing for all that - work, where some other woman attached to the firm needed more work directed her way than I did because she was going through a very messy divorce and had two kids to support...

And on and on and on - all of these are very good reasons for me to stand aside and wait my turn, after all, I am pretty self-sufficient and one way or another, I get by. More accurately, I give the impression of getting by. What I really do is stand aside, make do, keep trying and wait.

It occurs to me that this method of coping with my own seemingly insoluable problems, is very similar to how women in this era deal with homelessness. I've been there myself. Without enough money to support yourself, women go to family or they find a man. How many marriages have been made out of fear?

Fact is, homelessness presents more challenges for a woman than it does for a man. Once a month, for example, a woman must bleed. She needs a clean place to do it. We have been convinced by the purveyors of "feminine hygeine products" that somehow, having a period is effortless, insignificant - a minor inconvenience. I am here to tell you (or remind you) that is not true.

Having a period is messy, painful, sometimes embarassing and nearly always exhausting. Unless you are on the pill, have a car, have access to pain killers, have an ensuite bathroom and a readily available shower - it is a bit of an ordeal. I do not know of any homeless women who possess any of those things.

So how is it that the women have stood aside and waited while men, who experience none of this, have their homeless problem solved? Even if that was the only complication faced by women, that would be reason enough to put them first.

Of course there are other reasons - rape, children, physical weakness in comparison to the average homeless man, inequitable access to credit, employment, even transportation - a man can hitchhike, a woman really can't. All of these are reasons why women should come first. Yet, they still don't.

I'm not blaming anyone - you have to start somewhere. It's just that there is so very much to do. Front Steps has started a recuperative care program - how many of us have ever even thought about how it would be to have a heart attack with nowhere to live, nowhere to go? Front Steps is trying to help end that situation, in the processs, they've discovered they often end the patient's homeless too. That's something else to think about.

Austin has problems, Austin is doing something about it - Austin needs a little more. I pray every day that I can contribute something to that.

And I pray, every day, that when people tell me I need to wait for someone else to go first before I can have a life, a job, a love, a place - I remember that they think that way not because it's true but because they just don't know any better. It's easy.

I have to find a way to change that.

Austin Pictures

So far, nobody has been able to tell me what these flowers are the answers I get are "sun loving" "ubiquitous," "orange" and "hardy." I like them anyway.










This is a common chain of grocery stores here. The name gave me pause.




A corridor at the Blanton Gallery at UT Austin.









Grackle.

Giant star and unabashed love for Texas - both absolutely typical of the place and both loveable I think.

Terrazzo floor at the Bob Bullock Museum of Texas History

Driving down Congress.




Downtown Mission-style architectural detail

Dry Creek.

Humid palm.

Austin likes neon

the black smudges are bats. (more bat pictures next time)

River palette

more neon - this time for pizza.

Austin Revisited

People keep telling me this is the hottest summer they've ever experienced in Austin. I realize they say it out of sympathy. Here, I am decidedly an ice lolly, a melting one.

A friend of mine told me to take a cab to a meeting, he underlined it. "Be sure to take a cab." "I will but why are you saying that?" I asked. He said, "Because I don't want you to arrive looking like you just got out of a swimming pool."

Yesterday, at the Italian Festival, I consumed a large strawberry-lemonade water-ice from Jim Jim's water ice, a large Italian soda and two large-ish bottles of water. I could have had more but people were staring.

Anyhow - it never stays in me very long, just comes pouring out of every pore.

I am a sieve.

And sievelike, I also continue to leak information, speak out when I should be silent and all that very interesting, supposedly dangerous stuff.

Here are a few of my observations about Austin at closer range:

Turtles do not like cameras.

Grackles will as happily poop on your head as take a chip from your hand. Charming as they may be, they have no manners whatsoever.

Breakfast tacos are God's gift to eating before noon.

Converted "Motor Inns" do not, contrary to popular belief, make dandy apartment complexes.

The amount of sunshine I can absorb and still be just delighted about it really is limitless.

People are quite baffled by a woman soaked with sweat who nevertheless claims to be having the time of her life. They make every effort to get said woman to admit to the contrary.

I wish people would stop trying to make me unhappy about things - I am perfectly able to make myself unhappy enough for two or more people, just read my posts about Victoria and you'll know that for sure.

Bacon and tacos don't mix.

A half hour walk before yoga is overly ambitious in 100 degree heat.

U2 is good anywhere - Radiohead, not so much.

Southern cooking is not all about the meat. Threadgills is bliss.

Velveeta can be snuck into food that I will eat without complaint. (shocking.)

Sometimes you really don't want to eat on the patio.

Bats smell funny.

sketch for a new poem.

I once knew a boy whose beauty was rooted in his youth. He was blonde and sincere, with rosy pink cheeks, newly shed of his baby fat. Dewy and fresh in appearance and demeanor.

He grew of course, into a man with an angular face and a stern expression.

When I look at his pictures I see the passage of time. I see, very clearly, the movement from youth and wonder to age and - perhaps wisdom or perhaps a kind of guarded skepticism a way of walking through the world that carries with it the scars of a sudden awakening.

I don't know what any of it means - don't even understand the feelings he provokes, I only know that when I see the face of the man, in this case, I see no trace of the boy and I wonder how that can possibly be.

He has darkened. His bones have hardened,
into ways and shapes, frames and structures
I never thought possible.

Old men sometimes spring, fully formed from the cowlicked foreheads of handsome blonde boys
barely out of puberty,
they leap into being
with no previous experience
no memory at all
of what might have been.

an attempt to post a video

This won't work on Facebook so let's see if it will work here.

more rain and mj

I am drawing close to the end of my time in Boston and the rain just keeps falling. Last week there were two and a half sunnyish days that got my hopes up but today the sky has returned to its customary june bunting - steel grey, dirty white and smudged.

I hate the rain and it is hard to keep up the slightest positive veneer as it continues to pour and puddle all around me. Very hard.

Also hard to keep from saying that I think Michael Jackson was a sneaky, utterly corrupt, contemptible little child abuser who should have gone to jail a long time ago and whose pop-pop easy-happy pompous, silly music cannot in any way make up for the display of deception that was his daily life or his public self-mutilation.

Even if you accept the assertion that he was innocent of any charges of child molestation, there is the fact that he made it publicly acceptable for middle aged men to have sleepovers with young boys. And if you don't think that gave an army of pedophiles the very in they craved with countless young boys who will now be scarred for life - then you deserve to listen to his sugary, self-aggrandized pablum for the rest of your life.

That's enough from me today - today, I am one bitter, rain sodden woman - tired of the pretense that everything is OK by me, it's not. The never-ending rain is not OK and middle aged pedophiles in full blown denial supported by the public - that's not OK either.

Light

Have you ever sat at a campfire and looked into the forest around you? Try it sometime and you will see just how dark a forest can really look.

An overabundance of light, especially artificial light, concentrated in one spot, blinds a person to everything that is not directly under the beam of that light. Even within the sphere of influence of the campfire, spotlight, desklamp or overhead fixture, unnatural shadows are cast. Things appear not as they are but as they might be under an artificially produced scrutiny. Vision is more obscured than assisted.

I have been in Boston for some time now and the family I am staying with, most especially my friend's ex-husband, are dependent on artificial light twenty-four hours a day.

This month has been gloomy. The sun has not shone more than three times since June began, so people make the argument that it is necessary. Still, I get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and find dining room and living room lights blazing and more often than not, two or three different light fixtures turned on at once in the bathroom itself.

It is hurting my vision both in physical and metaphorical terms.

At home, I use artificial light only when it is necessary and as time goes on I find it to be less and less necessary. With the exception of reading and cooking, there really is nothing that requires a focused artificial light source, nothing you cannot do or see better by natural light, even when that is only moonlight, than you could with a lamp or fire of any kind.

Things show you what they really are by natural light. Not what they might be under incandescent's yellow cast or flourescent's shuddering white aura.

God please spare me from thinking the light I cast on things, the perspective I see when I look with that focus, is the real light. Let me remember the shadows and the clarity provided by sun and moon, time and movement - life lived under an honest source of illumination.

Grant me clarity and grant me just a few more days of compassion for this man who does not seem to deserve it because I know, in the long run, nobody does and so we all do.

Get me through this overlit, blinded, dark time.

Essential

Yesterday I saw one of Frank Gehry's projects up close - I'll post pictures here after this entry.
I know people see him as a major visionary in architecture and doubtless he has made great strides in helping people see that a building does not have to be a box but the whole time all I could think of was Sam Mockbee's Rural Studio project and how these two ideas need to be joined.

As a society we seem to accept the idea that art does not or need not serve a purpose. We choose up sides, those of us who believe art is important are forced into defending the indefensible while those who think the survival and care of humanity is more important than anything else feel forced to condemn "high art" as frivolous.

Your soul is not frivolous and art does not need to be useless.

I come back to the central idea, over and over again - art that is not created in the spirit of compassionate communication is weak. Art can soar, it can restore us all, art is the backbone of architecture, the impetus behind the great gardens of the world, the fuel that keeps the writer writing, the carpenter building and the rest of us tending to our daily chores.

Where would we be without music, without color? We need art but more than that - we need to stop thinking that a housing project, a school, an employment center, a farm, a social program and any of a million other things have to exist outside of art in order to be useful.

I suppose today I am praying and I suppose the substance of my prayer is that we learn to recognize that beauty does not cost us one cent extra and that everyone deserves to live in beauty.

Rich or poor, conservative or liberal, male or female, scientist, accountant, plumber, poet or artist - you deserve compassion, you deserve dignity, you deserve beauty.

We all do.

This is an article about the Rural Studio, pass it on.
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2008/ruralstudio/mockbee_ruralstudio.shtml

Summer

I remember when June meant that the skies would clear and the sun would shine from 6 a.m. until 9 at night. I remember the freedom of playing outside in shorts and a top or a sundress and never having to think about staying dry or deal with the glowering clouds hanging right overhead.

I remember hating Victoria for the lack of sunshine and wanting more than anything to be back in a place where I could rely on a series of sunny days, not just one or half of one every two weeks.

I am a person who requires sunlight.

The East no longer recieves it.

I have been in Boston for a month - we have had maybe 5 sunny days the whole time. For the most part I have managed to maintain a pleasant demeanor. I stay busy, make jokes, cook and clean and help pack out the house - when it dries up for a few hours I explore the city.

I have explored the city three times - no more than that.

Many of my friends say they are quite happy in the rain. I want to say emphatically, I am not.
I hate the rain. Hate it. It makes me want to slap somebody and if it doesn't bloody well stop soon I might just do that.

Grocery Addendum

I have asked the people at the grocery store what happened to that woman every time we've gone since we saw her accident.

Nobody knows.

One of the big problems with how we live right now and maybe one of the strengths in some ways, is that we have such strangely truncated communities.

That woman and her deadly accident are part of this Boston community, I know she will never be wiped from my memory. I hope she recovered or that her family was able to get to the hospital (more likely, I think) but I will never know for sure.

Part of what makes the idea of people I love travelling or taking any risk at all is that fact. The idea that someone I cherish might become an anonymous wounded person, dependant on the mercy of strangers, frightens me and makes me feel helpless and lost.

The man I love is travelling today. Very far. I am trying to have faith that he will be fine. After all, more often than not, people do travel safely.

But I am still praying and still just a little on edge.

How do we ever learn to let anyone we love do a single thing alone?

The risks are so enormous.

pray pray pray.

Still in Boston

Yesterday we had sunshine. Piles of green leaves heaped and billowed against blue sky in yellow sun. The city was happy.

I went downtown to look for sandals and for summer clothes that will likely serve me until December. I shopped at places that were only names in storybooks until this trip, Macy's among them. Discovered my first Marshall's came back outfitted and sated.

Today it is raining again and Boston feels like camp. That's a good feeling because it means the house is beginning to break down, it is becoming a temporary place and that is the purpose of this month, this trip, this adventure.

Next month - I am almost completely certain I will be in Austin and I need to say it - I will be there first and foremost for love.

Last week we were shopping at the local Stop and Shop. At the end of the ice cream aisle, a woman came careening and stumbling around the corner from behind us. She was running, doubled over with one hand crumpled into her chest. She was saying the whole time, "I'm OK, I'm OK" when clearly she was not.

She rounded the aisle, picked up speed and lunged into the magazine rack at the end of the checkout head first.

Then she fell to the floor.

Blood began to flow from her head in a thick, heavy stream, like molasses. A man took off his shirt and held it to the wound. She looked baffled, still trying to stand she kept on saying "I'm OK, I'm OK."

We all did what we could. We made sure to talk to the paramedics, I told them exactly what I saw, a few of us got our phones out to call 911. Some people broke out paper towels to staunch the wound. Nothing stopped it - nothing seemed to get through to her. On the stretcher, she was no longer struggling but still looked confused as though she thought all of this was normal.

I am pretty sure she died. I just feel it. She was in her late 60's or 70's and I think that was a stroke we saw. Whatever it was - in that store I saw life and death come careening around the corner and it made it very clear to me that life is short and unpredictable. One minute you are in the ice cream aisle and the next you are on the floor, the star of a gruesome show. The lead player in the final act.

Life matters too much to pretend you can control anything about it. That's one thing I know.

The Sky

I've been preoccupied with weather this spring. There seems to be so much of it. Hardly a day goes by when the clouds do not thicken over wherever I am and the sky give forth some form of somethingorother - heavy wind, rain, snow, seems there is always something swooping or falling from over my head.

And most of the time I don't much like it.

This fact - this immutable, impersonal, non-negotiable fact, must be dealt with by changing my response to it since, for obvious reasons it can't be fixed on the other end. The weather will do what it will do and it will not change because anyone has had far too much of it, least of all me.

I remind myself that, no matter what, above the cloud and rain and wind, hail, frogs, leaves, branches, airplanes and whatever else the sky may be dropping on us earthbound creatures, there is always clear blue sky and sun - always.

I cannot see it and cannot feel it but must know it. Sun and blue sky are the constants, the rest changes daily. I suppose it is like faith of any kind. I know there is a higher benevolent force even when things are dropping on my head and messing up my hair and generally making me miserable for weeks, months or even years on end. I just find it difficult to remember that in a way meaningful enough to help me change how I feel about being stuck under the deluge.

I suppose this is all part of climate change. Summer never used to be like this and there are records to prove it. But it is hard to accept the results of reckless human behaviour as being partly my fault when I have only owned 2 cars for a total of 10 years of my life and really, have contributed comparitively little to the whole mess that is climate change. And then I think - that is true of everyone. Our innocence and culpability are both of such insignificant measure that really, no full blame can ever be laid on anyone and no full credit given either.

Knowing this does not make me sad but it does make me think that maybe we take these things on in ways that are not useful nor accurate in their assessment. It's another of those beautiful paradoxes - we are all guilty as a collective and we are all innocent as individuals.

How do we change that to make a meaningful difference?

I think we have to do it through the expression of individuality. We must show each other our different ways, share our thoughts and our fears and try to reach out to one another and ameliorate them. You cannot be responsible for everything - hell, you cannot really be responsible for anything so you must show the people around you the small ways in which you take responsibility or fear you are to blame or think you deserve credit so that they can show you their ways and we can all adopt the better and discard the fear that creates the worse.

We must all be honest with each other. Honesty tempered with compassion is one way to walk away from continuing to make these collective messes, I'm sure of that. Now the only question is how to learn not to resent the weather in a northern June - rainy and dreary and sad with the one true thing, sun and blue sky, hidden away thanks to the collective actions of our species driven by greed, ignorance and fear. That is a bigger challenge and I am working on it today.

June Gloom

On the west coast June is seldom a pleasant month. The rain and mist roll in and seem to stick around forever. Of course, this makes it the best place to buy summer clothes - many of which go on sale in June. Summer clothes are seldom necessary on the west coast before July, the selection on sale is always very good - there are bargains to be had.

Seems that pattern has recently changed.

For the last two years BC has had stellar summer weather in June while Ottawa and other points east, (Boston apparently included) are bewildered by summer days devoid of summer weather.

People dress as though it was summer but the temperature and the clouds defy it. Bare toes look cold and unhappy in sandals and flip-flops although, I admit, having grown up on the west coast the incongruity of a sweater with shorts and sandals does not seem as jarring as it must to those who grew up depending on June to bring the warmth and sunny skies that March and April withheld.

It is strange and contradictory but I am trying to enjoy it. It could not be worse for photographs - everything is ugly to my eye in this light - but I hear the folks in Austin crave rain deeply for much of the time during the summer so I am trying to appreciate cold damp mornings, velvet-cool fogs and nights where it is easy to sleep with blankets and a window open, no air conditioning on. Wherever you are, there is someone else who craves the very thing you wish you could be free of - imagine that.

Renovation

I think, if a person pays attention, it is possible to gain a fair bit of personal insight while carrying out fairly mundane tasks.

During the clean-up/minor renovation of my friend's house, I have noticed that I make plans to deal with the worst possible outcome. In one room I decided the smartest thing to do was to try to take the carpet up in one piece just in case the floor beneath it was damaged.

This was difficult, ( but not impossible) to do. However, when it became apparent that the floor was in perfectly good shape and we would not have to re-lay the old carpet as the best choice to make the house look presentable, I realized I had created a bigger job for myself in lugging the carpet down to the back garden than was actually necessary. In fact, I wasn't sure I could manage it on my own.

It never occured to me to make a contingency plan just in case the best possible outcome was the result of my efforts. I ended up wrestling with a giant chunk of green shag carpet as big as a whole room. It also never occured to me that once the carpet was up and the floor had met my standards, I no longer had any reason to preserve its integrity. I was so focused on the negative possibilities that I couldn't let myself see any room for the positive alternatives.

I finally managed to get it down the stairs and out the door but it did give me something to think about.

I am planning to extend my trip to Boston, it's possible it will even carry over into a trip to Austin. Seems the feeling of things coming to an end in Ottawa was absolutely correct but I couldn't let myself prepare for the possibility of getting exactly what I want out of life so my apartment is still halfway there. I wanted to get rid of everything but being sensible, I planned to return, just in case. Now it looks as though returning will create more hurdles in a situation where the hurdles are rapidly clearing as long as I listen to circumstance and accept the good and stop trying to block the flow of events in my own life.

Short lessons: make plans for both the worst contingency and the best possible outcome - both are equally possible. And when it comes to being sensible, listen to your feelings, they know the score better than you think.

Boston Common and uncommon

I love Boston, every inch of it. More and better pictures later.

boomerang

The price of being judgemental, for me, is the near-instant compassion rebound. I watched my friend's ex-husband leave the house for jury duty today and thought, "how would this feel to me?"

Life is complicated. I remember times when I felt so completely demoralized I could not move. I can remember times when I unhappy enough to be destructive and truth be told I live in fear of becoming completely superfluous.

What if things go wrong? What if I suddenly lose my way and shudder to a halt? What if my What if the things that led to this house running itself down with the passage of time start to happen to me? What if I suddenly find I can't move forward?

It's terrifying.

I hope and pray I can always find a way to be useful. I suppose that means I hope always to be included, somewhere. It's not a given, people do end up alone. I've seen proof of that and it looks pretty scary.

Underlay

I am helping my friend make her house ready to sell. She's lived here for years and years, longer than I've lived anywhere in my life. She has summoned the courage to end her marriage and now is moving on to what I think will be the best part of her life.

It's interesting how many metaphors open completely when one is engaged in a process like this. Her husband was indifferent to the idea of divorce just as he is indifferent and astonishingly oblivious to the process of the move itself. He remains in place and seems not to be even thinking about packing his belongings and he does not seem to grasp the fact that he and my friend are no longer joined in anyway but through the children and this transitional proximity. There's a reality rift in this house and it teaches me things about life and work and art every day, even when I don't realize it.

At the moment I am in the house alone. I had vowed to continue the work my friend, her partner and I have been carrying out on her ex-husband's office. But the day is sunny and lovely and his office, like the other spaces he chooses to occupy here, is dark and gloomy. The windows are blocked and it is cluttered beyond belief. I cannot give up the sunshine, cannot give up the loveliness of the day to be, however efficiently, imprisoned in that nightmareish space - the space where he chooses to live. Even thinking about making such a choice, I find myself shaking my head.

Since I arrived, we have opened the blinds in several of the larger rooms for the first time in months if not years. He prefers them to be closed and prefers lights on at night. I can't get over how it feels to help my friend begin to reverse this process. To throw open the windows and let light come into this lovely old space, to clear out the piles and piles and piles of old flyers, church bulletins, frequent flyer point statements dating back to the 1980's. It's like an infected wound that cannot close until it is cleaned out.

And now the carpet.

The upstairs living room (there are two) is carpeted in green shag. It was wallpapered in heavy oppressive paper but we have torn that down and repainted. Today, I am beginning to rip the carpet up.

As I tear through the brittle old shag I encounter the crumbling underlay. In many places it has turned to powder. In other places it is cemented to the floor in some places from the pressure of wear but in others from spilled soda-pop or wine or water from the Christmas tree, spills that were absorbed into the carpet and seemed to disappear but only went deeper. The spills went deeper and glued the ugly stuff more firmly into place but one thing I know - they can't keep her here forever. We are tearing this stuff up, scraping the floor clean, filling bag after bag with the accumulated paper garbage of nearly 30 years.

We are opening the windows, lifting the shutters, watering the garden and nothing - certainly not a passive man who prefers the dark, is ever going to trap my friend in a cave again.

Boston pictures