Living with magic may be challenging, but there is no greater satisfaction than knowing you are living in accordance with your highest values.

"It's taken a lot of determination, but I've finally given up on ambition."

I give thanks every day to intuition, silence, and courage. Thank the lord that I write my little passions and paint my little glamours from this big daddy of a brown leather chair, on a trunk filled with old journals, instead of in a stream of post-secondary cluster-fuck, with minds that are searching for what I already know; purpose.

I can't judge what the stones look like on anther's path, I can only know that I like how the stones on my path feel against my feet.

Perhaps I can modify the infamous Gonzo quote"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me." to
"I wouldn't recommend dropping out of college, meditation and buying a van to everyone, but it certainly worked for me."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A thanks to all of you who follow this pitiable little blog,floating around in the horrifying swirl of genius that social media creates.

Did you know? EVERYONE is a genius. Everyone! Perhaps that's what we'll look back on the "2000's" like:
"Yes, there was some political upheavel, invasions and conquering, like with any good era, but most amazingly, judging by the amount of broadcasted opinion, we are lead to believe that in fact, there was an incredible surge of brilliance."

Oh dear.

As far as life goes, it's hard to believe it continues to be this rich.

Battling the addictions, depravities and pesky thoughts that follow us around in this mortal realm, delighting in the amazing gifts that keep ending up on my doorstep this evening, and learning about the nature of myself, my spirt-our spirit, and the levels and spaces in between.

The college dropout and: the dream life!

I have to crouch down to keep from being thrown to the back of the truck, through it's loosely locked doors, and into an death all too perfect and fitting, albeit untimely.

As I am interviewing a city councillor in hours, I sit on my scarf, and try to keep my mouth clean and my pants cleaner.

In this country, we say "folks" not "bitches."

We're careening through Vancouver's streets, up into glass towers to steal furniture from the media with the money, and bring it back, behind hastings, in a purple and orange alley, wedge our U Haul in and block the cars and rats from going past.

Once we get back into the alley, and wade past the dripping tarps and deflated baloons that fill the doorway, I tug down the gridded wood of the utiltiy elevator, and rise jerkily through oily wood and darkness to the second floor, where we grunt and throw solid oak bookshelves around like mere books.

The floor is painted, the ceilings high, the place is expansive. All my artificial memories of Warhols factoy and New York artist warehouse days come flooding through. I bite my tounge to keep from running around screaming.

This, is community media.

These are my people.

This, is my dream life.

A new twist in the land of lincoln, blinkin and blog.

Well Kidlets, here it is.

I've abandoned the ship of the ivory tower, and gone hurling into the uncharted deep, to make it on my own.

A very good decision, in my case, and on my part, if you were wondering.

While school has more than its place in this world and my life, I felt, and now know, that I was missing out on the opportunities and experiences of the "real world" filling out bogus stories and listening to how it was in the golden age of journalism.

And it's good, the opportunities are flooding down the drainpipe and providing me with the time to use such rediculous metaphors as "flooding down the drain pipe"

ahem.
so, such begins my journey into the world of a J-School Dropout.

Surfing the waves of elation and self defeat.

Such an incredible amount of poured concrete in post secondary institutions, and even as I sit in the incredible glass building that is the Langara library, complete with bamboo, breathing roofs and lake-like moats (even ducks! even ducks swim in them) I can't help but feel like the most lifeless file clerk this side of an office tower downtown (and they're actually doing what they want to be doing)

Yes, I ached for J school
Yes, I sweated and bled over my applications.

But here I am, choking down economic theories and remembering the days in the summer when I was actually living my shit, was actually PRACTICING journalism and BEING an independent journalist, instead of swallowing someone else's antiquated wisdom and filing information back in my brain to be regurgitated later.

It's probably a bitter moment, a mere bitter moment.

But all I feel like saying, is baby, I see through it.
The glass tower just ain't my bag.

Check back with me tommorrow... it's probably going to look like the other side of the coin.

Anatomy

The mouth, blackens itself to street meat
The flesh, lying, is thick with regret
The mind, denying, mimes defeat
And the heart beats itself apart.

The bones, cave with a sorrow that lets
The flesh grieve as it needs
and feed, this human debt.

The hands, bend back and yet
Undo nothing, the past indeed
Will not take breath, nor ressurect
It's heart that beat itself apart.

shiny and new.

A few things have changed in space and time since the spring, and now this wet hot center of summer afternoon finds me pulling a "never thought i would" stunt; the mass update.

I loathed, despised, and degraded mass updates for the majority of my adult life.

heavy duty, no? I hated the boring play by plays that had to be the descriptive equivalent of beige, because even though I, your trusted, guilty of the same acts as you, friend, was receiving the e-mail, so was your catholic grandma.

But, I'm feeling like there hasn't been nearly enough contact with nearly enough people, so I'm bringing everyone up to speed, and I'll try to include all the gory details I can fathom.


So, I left Victoria in mid May, and headed around the Gulf Islands with my longtime sisterfriend Heather, during which we climbed mountains, slept for free, lived off oats and lsd, bought a 1970's Volkswagen van named Pearl (Janis anyone?), sold a 1970s Volkswagen Van named Pearl, and looked at a lot of trees, very, very closely.

I am now the proud owner of a hat that says "eternal" on the brim, because that's what the rocks told me to write on it.
That alone should let those in the know, know, exactly how the trip was going.

We hung out in my favorite wartime house in East Vancouver for a week, drinking, sitting in wheel chairs, and playing pingpong, untill the troops were rounded up and we headed on a greyhound bus.

The Greyhound trip from Vancouver to Nashville was far too many things (mostly racist, homophobic, gun threatening things) to describe in a mass update, so I'll let this picture of myself do the talking. This was taken in Kansas, where I was taken over by a demon and slaughtered small families.



Dorthy was right, if you're from Kansas, there really is no place like home.Thank god. A world with two Kansas's
is too much of a hell to fathom.

Bonnaroo was amazing, I had no idea my friends and I had livers or stomachs that large. An incredible amount of meat, catfish and whiskey was consumed.

And, come to think of it, the rest of the rip went pretty much like that. Drink, Eat, Sweat, Repeat.

Caught up with friends from Europe, saw Talahasse Florida and real live frats and sororities! New Orleans was incredible, it's like Vegas for people who hate Vegas.

And now, I live in Vancouver. I'm sharing a loft in "Railtown" in a renovated wharehouse (talk about one of those "Is this actually my life?" moments) that has been, in its day, a fish packing plant, morgue and brothel, and despite these things is one of most energy-clean places I've ever lived.

There's a rooftop garden/gym/amazing room that over looks downtown Vancouver, there's a beach that's a three minute walk from my front door, and an amaizngly affordable chinese grocery store down the block (that controls all the soy production in Vancouver no less! Juicy)

I've been super fortunate to have loads of writing work (work as in free) and am ticking along on the publication formerly known as Wolf Woman.
That's right kids, Wolf Woman is no more. The royal we decided that we were only alienating half of our readership and pigeonholing ourselves into a market that won't grow with us, if we kept the title. And, I got tired of conversations like
"Yea, I know theres 'woman' in the title, but it's not feminist, well, not exclusively feminist"

So we need a new name, we're bouncing around ideas, but if anyone gets struck with brilliance, let me know. It'd be great to get the marketing back on a roll.

The aforementioned writing "work" that I'm drowning in, doesn't put soy milk on my granola, espresso in my system or a roof over my head, so I am drive pedi-cab. Like kabuki-kab. Like I cycle around all night pulling people in a rickshaw.

Like my ass is made of steel now, and I can eat as much as a logger. It gives me awesome flexibility to write and take lil' summer trips (budget, budget summer trips)
Speaking of which, I hope to make it back to the island to see all my homies as soon as I can.

So that's this. That's this up to now. Stay tuned kids, mamas takin' over.

city sketch rooftop. Vancouver. 6:51

Quick spit the city
Ten million mouths, the city
Ten million tounges, the city
I take no milk with it, thank you mam,
I take no milk at all, in fact
I take it so black, so black in fact
I remove the teet with my teeth
Every minute of my day is dawn.

East Georgia st.

I rest and I work, just on top of the tracks— Railtown now, with the winners and liars. I make sweaty little rides on a blue bicycle to the East side of the city, where I hold commune and peace with a cluster of astronauts and artists and I know who live there, in The House of Lingering Looks. The House of Lingering Looks is a war time shack, 1940s mostly, and the bread-board porch is a cracking back that, for god or for glory, refuses to relax and send us tumbling, though we are all long overdue for a fall.

The House of Lingering Looks finds my writers eyes faulted, as it makes me question my imagery, and in such, death. For when I am there I drink the most vital poison, and smoke the most coital, renewing ash. My old words rip themselves from the page, and I am left speechless, at least twice a week.

I remember now, there was an outbreak, in the days of The Lingering Looks, and I, among others, quarantined myself there, hanging up on that porch over such a small section of earth. The planet paled and shook, “DISEASE” in their masks, while we laughed.
“Communal living beats infection!” We’d clink our glasses and swill our spirits— as spit in untrained mouth; like us, then, untrained in fear (health) or distance (city), we smoked each others ash, swallowed each others last, and woke, again and again, each morning.

4am.

Perhaps it's been growing, inch by inch this entire trip. The wheels of the Greyhound bus used to grind into the highway like a evangelical minister into that plush purple pulpit carpet; full of sweaty reverence and fist pounding passion. Now, they just grind like knuckles into my back.

I was bent over a toilet somewhere between Montana and Wyoming when I split in half. That's what I'll tell them if they come looking for a skinny girl with a backpack. The last time I saw her she was taping up her hiking boot as I was putting on a pair of folded jeans. She was scrawling poetry on the wall as I was brushing my teeth. She never had time for hygene. Too busy smoking borrowed butts and running around bus station dumpsters with maniacs.

She removed herself from me gently, and is still half there. The ratty poetry books, long conversations, wild eyes-- still there.

I've just traded in her gangly arms for hips,
her engine blood for roots.

I pull long, white, fresh ciggerettes from my own pack now, and smoke them like a Woman.

roo.

The Southern sky is smashing into itself. Pulsing lightning, earth bending thunder, and drowning downpours all aid in exhuming armies of crawdads and fireflies from the wet-warm soil. Just north of Nashville, a 700 acre farm gets pounded every June with thundering feet that give even the worst Southern storm competition. For eight years now, the small town of Manchester, Tennessee is infiltrated with 80,000 migrants from June 11-14, each one coming for music, magic and good ol’ Tennessee dew.


Welcome to Bonnaroo.


The cars heading into Bonnaroo are almost at a standstill, whereas the people inside are already well adjusted into festival mode. Bill White, 65, (pictured) walks the four miles from his Manchester TN home into the Bonnaroo grounds every year. Why? “I just like to get twisted and listen to Phish.” White must be one of the lucky few, stuck somewhere between 1967 and 1972, still having a really, really good time.


Bonnaroo has the notoriety of being a festival “by the festies, for the festies” and on first arrival, it’s easy to see why. Street names in the campgrounds? Massive numbered balloons floating above a sea of identical tents? Security guards that simply ask you if you have anything illegal, and then trust your answer? Yes! My naive Canadian fear of the gun-toting, drug-hating south is shockingly unfounded! Here I was, expecting DEA agents armed to the teeth, intent on ripping apart my possessions and dignity, preparing to succumb to a treatment so brutal, that I end up sobbing a pitiful confession of selling crack to six year olds.


Obviously, I was delighted when my “interrogation” was simply a friendly man in a Rasta hat asking “Y’all got anything y’all shouldn’t? Cuz’ if you do, and I find it, I’ll take it. But, if you just tell me that you have it, I’ll just be jealous as sin and let y’all go”


With apologies to apple pie, Bonnaroo may just be the perfect realization of the American Dream. Bless my God given right to smuggle and consume at will!


After setting up a pitiful excuse for a tent, I descended into the Garden of Eden; Centeroo. If multi-stage festivals are the Universe’s gift to mankind, then the Bonnaroo stage layout is a cosmic joke. The stages in Centeroo are: What stage, Which stage, This tent, That tent, and The Other Tent. Perhaps that’s why the security is so lax; the Bonnaroo big wigs just want to sit in some secret tower and watch people stumble around, lost in an acid fueled “Who’s on First” living hell.


Aside from the screaming teenage girl attempting to claw her way into the ground, or the man who broke his ankle jumping off of a porta-potty, the Bonnaroo medic I spoke to said that this year was no worse than any other for drug overdoses, freak outs or “seemed like a good idea at the time” situations. One man was discovered dead in his tent after the festival, from a previous medical condition. Not bad, considering the Bonnaroo campground is centered around “Shakedown Street”, (after the Grateful Dead song) a veritable pharmacy to delight the far reaching corners of ones mind (for better or for worse.)


The first day of the festival whirred slowly into action, until darkness fell and People Under the Stairs and Passion Pit gave consecutive explosions of energy, and like starting pistols, got the insanity of the ‘roo underway.


Friday morning groaned awake like an uninvited fat man sitting on my chest. The Tennessee heat is oppressive, but couldn’t stifle the electric feeling in the air, as Friday was host to some of the most anticipated acts of the weekend.


“I love Animal Collective, but I guess I don’t love watching Animal Collective?” says a confused Sydney Weststed, of the band’s early afternoon set. The 20 year old college student’s sentiment was all too shared, as incredibly high expectations for the Animal Collective set were dashed. Long, slow, meandering versions of what could have been upbeat crowd pumping classics left the crowd waiting for more. Perhaps it was the 2:45 p.m timing, the large stage, or the outdoor atmosphere, but for having such a full, resonating recorded sound, Animal Collective could barely control the stage. Fortunately, the day was quickly rectified with the YEAH.


The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s nearly drove the “Which” stage into the ground, performing in front of a huge glittering eyeball, with Karen O wearing an amped-up version of Grace Slicks 1969 white leather Woodstock ensemble . Well arranged, the set mixed all three albums flawlessly, opening with “Runaway”, featuring an acoustic “Maps” and closing with “Date With the Night.” Ms.O put the icing on the cake, saying “We don’t usually smash instruments after a show but, fuck it!” and smashed her mic into the stage. Karen-O fullfilled every inch of my feminist rock-and-roll fantasy. Even though running over to the Santigold set without so much of a trickle of Karen-O’s beer, sweat or spit in my hair left a small dark hole in my heart, there’s still nothing hotter than a woman, on a stage, smashing shit up. Nothing.


Santigold was performing as part of the David Byrne curated stage, and as I arrived, was leading the ecstatic audience in an acapella war chant of “I’ve got to be unstoppable”, to which she replied “I believe you Bonnaroo, one hundred percent.”


Dripping sweat in a pink denim tuxedo, Santigold was fleeced by her two robotic Ray-Banned dancers and a three piece band. It may have been any number of the chemicals pulsing through my veins that were affecting my vision, but I swear I saw sparks shooting from her fingers during “Creator.” Call it technical difficulties if you must, I call it festival magic.


Santgiold was followed by TV on the Radio, whose sound and collective stage presence managed to make the expansive space around the "Which" stage feel like an intimate club setting. TOTR exploded through favorites such as “Wolf Like Me” and “Halfway Home”, and radiated exaltation for being at Bonnaroo, a sentiment so obviously shared by the crowd that their set created the intimate feeling of a conversation so often lost at festivals. Friday night flowed on in a hot, electric blur, sets by Crystal Castles, Girl Talk and Paul Oakenfold drawing to a close well after the sun rise.


Saturday saw Bon Iver holding an entire tent of broken, bleeding hearts in his hand. During “Wolves”, I found myself surrounded by four waiflike girls, each in a tear stained t-shirt, swaying with eyes closed, bodies wracked with sobs.


Seriously.


Granted, there are now photos circulating Facebook of me sobbing with joy and ripping off my clothes during Bruce Springsteen’s set, (guilty pleasure) but that was a happenstance occurance involving too much gin. This unification of experience, lies in a songwriting power that is almost un-bearably moving to see live.


Massaging the crowd playing “Skinny Love” through to “Blood Bank” Vernon was humble onstage, even surprised, as the audience's unified voice often overpowered his own. Playing nearly all of For Emma, Forever ago, and much of Blood Bank, Bon Iver left “This” tent hypnotized and stunned into submission, at least for the forty five minute layover between acts.


Festival legend Beatle Bob brought Of Montreal onstage just after Bon Iver, promising a trip of “psychedelic” wonderment. If an Of Montreal live show is what psychedelics are supposed to be like, then it’s a wonder anyone made it out of the Sixties alive. Above the expected highlights, (like Of Montreal looking incredible in flamboyant, otherworldly costumes) there was a dancing Christmas tree, assistants in gas masks, and the gas poisoning of a child, to name a few. Andy Kiel of Consequence of Sound describes it best— “If you weren’t a fan of Montreal before the performance, you certainly left as one. If you were under the influence before the performance, you left scared shitless.”


By the time The Decemberists went on, a mere half an hour later, I was wondering if I need a heart (or liver) transplant to keep going. I was busy cursing my weak mortal flesh, trying to scrape some semblance of energy together by chain smoking , when the epic “Hazards of Love” set began, and assuaged all my worries. “This” tent filled with ethereal beauty, the concept performance landing somewhere between high school musical theatrics and an opera quivering with beauty. Returning for the encore, front man Colin Meloy quipped “We’ll try not to piss off the Boss too much” as Bruce Springsteen’s set was already underway. Their encore was a Decemberists fan’s wet dream, with “The Engine Driver”, July, July!” and “Oh Valencia” leading up to a hilarious, and flawless rendition of “Crazy on You” by Heart. Saturday night was alive and very, very high, as MGMT and Yeasayer turning Centeroo into a burst of glow sticks and teenagers with massive pupils flapping fairy wings.


The weakest of the flock had dropped out and headed home by the fourth day, and the dedicated that remained were so strung out that Centeroo filled with a lazy Sunday vibe. Andrew Bird’s Sunday afternoon set is easily one of the most memorable shows of the weekend. Easing us into the evening with tracks like “Fitz and the Dizzyspells”, “Oh, no” and “Why?” Bird sent us on our way flattered, as he said, “Y’all are like one person, one really cool person.”


Although the Bonnaroo line up gets more diverse every year, Bonnaroo is and always has been a jam-band focused festival. Proof? 2009 is the first year that not a single member of the Grateful Dead has played, and jam bands Phish and Moe played for over twelve hours combined. Now, I’m a Victoria girl, I understand hippies, my parents were Dead Heads and I visited Shakedown street (perhaps too many times), but I cannot, try as I may, understand the cultish following that pulls droves of hippies into trances for rambling six hours sets. However, biggest benefit to Bonnaroo’s jam band nature reaches to even the most skeptical republican in the ‘roo crowd; namely, you don’t need to be a “jam band” to jam.


Sunday was the holy day for Bonnaroo exclusive jams. Erykah Badu mixed “Rappers Delight” and “DP Gangsta” into her set (wearing a Public Enemy hoodie, no less), and then later joined Snoop Dogg on stage for “Lodi Dodi.” A legion of dedicated Neko Case fans were shaking in their sundresses when Triumph the Insult Comic Dog came onstage during her set for a duet and, speaking of her animal rights activism asked her, “Do any of those dogs that you rescue get to watch you shower?”


Bonnaroo walks the thin line between Coachella and Shambala, with enough organization and foresight to keep its gears turning, but with enough freedom and psychedelic drugs to keep the fights and vandalism at bay. There is a distinct fervor in which the South attacks life, and the approach to Southern festivals is no different. Bonnaroo will beat the shit out of you, call you “Honey” and then ask if you want some more sweet tea.


The answer is always yes, you always, always want more.

Pearl.

Lack of cohesive writing?
Lack of cohesive thought!

I am on the gulf islands, ingesting numerous psychedelics and buying volkswagen vans.

and being tanned. lots of that.

stay tuned. It's gun' be a good one.

-Zan

Get ready.

keep your eyes up

Keep your tread rubber down.



Goodbye island.

Hello southern assault.

Tennesee, the big easy, vision quest, press tents, piles of cocaine and mountains of ciggerettes.

Das life, no?

Keep up kids, it's going to be messy.

In only half jest, a wise Quebecouis friend once said of his province, “All of Canada hates us, and we hate ourselves.” The same is not far from the truth for West Coasters.
We are “Universers” and believe in chi.
We get called flakey, and in turn we try and align our heart chakras.
We are often mocked,and mockery is most often valid.

Events like last weeks V-Day Art Show and Silent Auction however, prove that the West still is the best. Discovery Coffee’s beautiful gallery space was filled with men wearing buttons proclaiming “I Love Pussy” and “Don’t Forget The Clit”

A far cry from the “Your Princess is My Whore” bumper sticker I saw last time I was in Alberta.


Bouncing children with names like Cedar and Moon, nibbled on “Cunt Cakes”, munched
on “Vaginer Scones.” An organic young thing on stage sings and strums a worn guitar, songs about the “pigs” beating up her boyfriend, fucking old friends.



Just another, gender inclusive safe space in praise of the all mighty vag, just another Thursday evening.

These people are here to stop violence against women. These men, women, children are here because they want to love, respect and protect: The Flesh Canoe.
It doesn’t take long to learn a multitude of names for my beloved “Va-Jay-Jay”, pawing through the jar of creatively blunt buttons at the door. All the proceeds of the event are going to the Mary Manning Center, and information on all realms of sexual abuse is at the door, just beyond the chocolate vag-pops.
Who said overt feminism was for the nineties?

As for the show itself, it truly could have been your average Thursday evening. Acoustic singer/songwriters Alex, Nicole and Beth provided crisp, clear and mellow background music for the oft intense conversations going on around the floor-“ARE YOU AFRAID THESE GIRLS ARE GOING TO FIND OUT THAT THEY HAVE A VAGINA?! YOU CANT PROTECT THEM ANY LONGER!”

Having just done a radio show on CFUV that afternoon on alternative menstrual products and the “Breast is Best” breastfeeding campaign, and looking down at the “VAG” button on my lapel, I was quite literally drowning in pussy. I cursed my heterosexuality, and I cursed the lack of men in this city. I drowned my sorrow in Cunt Cakes and carried on.

The highlight of the show was undeniably Trinity, an all vocal hip-hop trio. Backed up by local CFC member on beatbox support, Cleo, Mandy and Samantha threw down incredibly smooth, intelligent and well crafted lyrics about re-incarnation, positive vibes, feminine beauty and handling their business when it comes to the fellas. I had interviewed Trinity on air earlier that week, and we had discussed the portrayal of women in hip hop, and posturing ones stage presence not after men or big screen booty.



Onstage, these are three goddesses, comfortable in their bodies and rooted to the mic. Transcendent positive spiritual lyrics, weave back and forth between negative brothas harshing on a good days vibe, to all of the beings, races and faces one spirit can be in a lifetime. Their feminine charm and caramel smooth voices are gaining them fast recognition in the local music scene, but Trinity views the opportunities that they have been given because of their gender as anything but pigeon holding or detrimental, but as credit to the fact that they wise warrior women, standing out in field full of men.

This rings true to the spirit of the evening, as the "Cunt Cakes" and discussions of sexualised violence are not designed to make anyone uncomfortable or ostracized.

Gestures like the celebrations surrounding V-Day are to make such large spectacles of the issues involving women, in order to make them a non-issue.

In the same way that Barack Obama's having been elected makes the fact that he is black, a non issue, so having vaginal empowerment thrown right in your flesh canoe loving face, will make being the proud owner of one, a non issue as well.

your man is going!

Here's the skinny (or the fat, or the average, the husky, the healthy, the "sure likes her pancakes")

Heres's the deal. Keep your eyes peeled to the mean streets of the Island for info, and your little sticky fingers stuck to your keyboard for all of you not floating around the pacific.

WolfWoman Press is igniting this month.

until then, satiate yourselves with this!

http://www.eckomfg.com/

slave labour? nay!
sexist labour!YAY!

Something I've noticed lately,

journalism is harder than dating.
editors.
wires.
collectives.

Men are easy.

Treat em' mean, keep em' keen

but journalism..trying to make it (REALLY REALLY TRYING! IF ANYONE IS LISTENING.. I'M TRYING)
you pour your heat out, or you smoothly try and seduce them using confidence and charm, making them believe that everyone else wants you, and they should jump at the chance to have you!

and then you wait.. endlessly, chain smoking and checking your e-mail by the second
refresh.refresh.refresh.

Untill finally you collapse in a puddle of self-indulgent loathing, begin drinking, and fighting off the urge to e-mail the editor

"WHY! WHY HAVEN'T YOU GOTTEN BACK TO ME?! I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR YOU"



feckin' day jobs.

Something I've noticed lately,

is that the sun keeps coming up.

Every day, we get loaded deeper and deeper into our graves, with news of what's coming, speeding, hurteling down the drainpipe into our unprotected faces.
Everything is melting, dying, or setting on fire.
And yet, as I write this, at 4:15 in the morning, the happy little cub that cleans the streets is bustling by, and soon, the sun will be coming up.

Just like it did yesterday. Probably tomorrow too.

I'm constantly amazed at our human ability to focus on the present, without actually living in it. How we live in the future, without seeing the kind of future our silly dreams will have us living.

Maybe this is where the secret to fixing all of our problems lies; the one great, all holy answer that is always just dangling like a carrot from some invisible thread, right there in front of our glassy and distracted eyes.

Maybe it's in this middle ground, this no mans land that we always skip over. We're always down in the trenches, smoking ciggarettes, writing letters home. Or, we're stuck in the anguish of passion, charging over the top, firing all barrels without the faintest idea who, or what, we're shooting at.

What if w just climbed over the edge of the trench, gradually? Step by step, walked towards the enemy, walked, towards the future.
Perhaps each step would provide clues, slow, methodical, understandable clues.

And we would lean enough to stop, and rest comfrotably in the middle of this no man's land for a little while, safe, warm, wrapped in the true meaning of today.

And we could stay there for a while, comfortably.

I walked in. I, was a large soy latte, not sure about the gentics of those soybeans, but hell, it was a throw caution to the wind kind of day.

and I would.

Univserity cafe's, commerce students surroundind us and yet you, with your longhair and surfoard, your ekhart tolle.

you broke down those walls.

We infiltrated the natterings of price margins and the clicking of i-books with our excited conversations about the magic of the universe
one-ness
eye contact

please please please drop acid with me till dawn.


I finished my essay.

Mother

Listen to your tongue, inventing its own sound
it attaches electric to the hinges in my mouth
I allow myself to be plowed, throat thick with soil
promises dig out with purpose, they use both hands
and break on you, claim themselves false.
Unhinged I swim, up to my eyes in the end

Earth bleeds it’s stones free marking the end:
Of tounges, inventing sound
Of authenticity, now shielded in false
Of more than one option for the use of the mouth
Of what was, of unbroken hands.
Empty harvest, a rocky dead soil

Blurring between true and false
I move to understand the soil:
toungless, the same sounds move the mouth.
The earth will begins what it knows not to end
Her mouths make same blank sounds.
Broken and constant, yet we have shadows of hands

And yet in the shadow of themselves, hands
Begin to rebuild, rebuke the falseness
That came before, the false sounds
Like the past again, rain hits the soil
And begins to sprout, unending,
Growing with tongue with teeth, with mouth

Free! The tounge dances in the mouth
The earth fills with life (clapping of hands)
Forgetting the definition of the end
The definition of false
Whole, I bless the garden, the soil
Grows huge flowers of soft sounds.

If my mouth calls her false
If my hands work her soil
Let us all sound her end.

womyn.

The daughters of the revolution are sitting comfortably on donated couches. They share a hallway with the leftovers of the free love, who hand out condoms without questions, share it with the Harvey Milk's reclaiming the rainbow and breaking out of the closet. This is the subversive basement of sex, love and gender neutrality. The Camosun College Women’s Center is located in the basement of Richmond house, alongside the Pride Society, and the Island Sexual Health Society. The gateway into this epicenter of emergence is a blue steel utility door in the bottom left corner of the building, near a water heater and an overgrown garden. To the passerby, it could be a utility door; behind it hides the grid of wires and gears that keep the college chaos culture spinning. To those who frequent these facilities, this space does just that.

“We need something that’s just more… more vaginal!”
“Yea, I’m thinking just the word VAG.”
Discussions are taking place about the images to put on buttons, which will advertise the upcoming performance of The Vagina Monologues. Seeing this moment unfold, makes me wish that the shades could be drawn, to avoid the stereotypes leaking through the windows that all women do in Women’s Centers is talk about their vagina.
“Clit man, clit and lips. It’s not the Indiscernible Genital Monologues”
Do the women do just sit on couches, read inflammatory feminist literature and talk about their vaginas? Dream up fashionable vagina accessories? Is this space exclusive to it’s non-members? Perhaps this exclusion is needed. The space, by means of its physical existence, makes room for discourses and progression. These women are talking about their vaginas, speaking for the women in the world who can’t let their bodies speak.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The space is my best friend’s apartment, my mother’s kitchen. Women dribble in throughout the day, bringing bowls of oranges, baskets of condoms. The windows are painted with words, dotting the landscape outside with quips of inspiration. “Only Yes means Yes” and “Make Herstory” grow alongside the blades of grass, wrap around the Gary Oaks. Bookshelves fill with ethical porn, feminist slanted rantings and chantings. All the waves of feminism are cresting here, lapped up by these women, enjoying the fruits of their laborious mothers. Many would argue that feminism died with punk rock, and should be buried in the shallow grave of the 1970s. Others, would argue that the fight has barely begun.
Women’s Centers first were created in the 1970s, a time when it was understood that ever other space on campus was inherently a man’s space. It was through this understanding that it was decided that women needed and deserved a space where they could plan and mobilize, without the infiltration on men’s bodies and minds.
Since their inception, Women’s Centers have been under critique from all genders as to their nessecity and importance. The question is often posed of how any group fighting for equal rights and acceptance can expect results when they themselves are guilty of excluding and ostracizing their “oppressor.” The mandate of all Women’s Center’s has made a clear answer to this: The space is not about the alienation of men, but the empowerment of women.
So how do our mothers and their mothers and their mothers feel about our direction? Are we looking after the property they staked claim to, with their jobs, families and lives? “I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women.” says feminist journalist Erma Bombeck, “We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don’t realize it can be taken away.”
Where are my generation’s hands failing? Is it when we let our genders figureheads be oversexualized skeletons? When, in many places, we allowed the right to our bodies and wombs to be taken away from us? Perhaps it happens every time an ass get’s smacked, everytime a woman rubs “Ruby Red” lipstick on closed lips, instead of opening them to speak.
* * * * * * * * * * *
“The movement isn’t our movement anymore, we just embody it and live it in our day to day,” says a woman in the Center’s kitchen, slicing an orange into segments to share. “Of course it’s our fucking movement! If it isn’t our movement, then its definitely not fucking moving is it? And further more, if it’s not our movement, then who fucking movement is it?” vents another, punctuating her passion by banging her cigarette pack against the table. The fire burns brighter in some of us more than others. Perhaps that is how we’ve carried the torch; by allowing small sections of it’s flame to be spread out however the bearer sees fit. When a woman decides to leave her abusive husband, she’s carrying the torch. Standing up to a sexist professor is carrying the torch. Getting an education is carrying the torch
The space is a relaxing place to study for some; a haven away from the feeding trough of the cafeteria, from the itchy fluorescent library. For others, the place is a vehicle for change; what city lights was to the beat poets.
These women on these couches, drinking cups of coffee and pursuing education, are they thinking of their sisters? As they gripe about the ability to take off their shirts in public, the freedom to hold their sexuality to whichever they candle they choose, are they thinking of their sisters?
These daughters of the revolution are ranting and raving, being and believing, because of their sisters.
Sisters who cannot expose their skins or minds in the presence of men. Sisters whose bodies bear the marks of a stifled sprit. Sisters sold to the west for sex. Sisters, who take care of whom they are told to take care of, hide when they are supposed to hide, and fuck when they are supposed to fuck.
It is because of their sisters that these women rant and rave, these women take up space. It is with them in mind, that they use their voices. Because they know that they are the one-per centers. Women who outnumber men on this campus. Women who decide when and what they are going to study. Women who decided if and with whom their bodies will be shared. Women who have monolouges with vaginas and know their bodies on the schedule of the moon.
These women take up this space in this building, because of all the women in the world, who forced to take up as little space as they can.

blue badge bullshit.

" they let harley's killer out, go home quickly girl, the streets are not safe"-local maniac night walker


Harley is a 20 year old,a part of the street community, who was pushed under a bus by a drunk man "well dressed" bystanders say, "not from the streets"

and he got out tonight.

Unsuprisngly, I have a tendency to attract maniacs, and as such have come to appreciate thier company. One of my kind walked up to me tonight and spun me the dangerous streets. These situations go as they go, and the large methaphysical side of myself opens up, and assumes that this is a godlike intervention.

"go home quickly" she says, all scarves and magic, "the streets are not safe. These young girls (gesturing to the sex-trade workers and addicts on the nearby corner) are all bait for the Pickton Pig farms ---

which are alive and well in the victoria police department"

More than one way to skin a cat as the saying goes, and when you're dealing with an explosive homeless population, there are a multitude of ways.

A twenty year old had her skull crushed by a bus. If the rumours circulating are true, and the men that pushed her to her death are released and not charged, it will be another link in a long chain of evidence to prove that the city of victoria and it's police department view our brothers and sisters without homes as disposable, and un-deserving of the same judicial rights that housed citizens possess.

"Since he is of no use anymore, there is no gain if he lives, and no loss if he dies"- PolPot

the price we pay to live near the mountains.

In the tangle of streets that make up the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, a familiar scene unfolds. Carts full of belongings, the odd police car, dealers and workers, and people panhandling with a mismatch of sayings etched into cardboard signs. One man in particular, alternates smoking a cigarette for playing on a rusty trumpet. He looks up at me as I pass, and in his eyes I see a flash of jazz, of the thousands of stories this man, just like everybody on this strip has to tell. His sign, like the others, cardboard and black marker, with three or four old sayings crossed out. A new one, the ink still drying in the sun, screams from the center of the sign: “I used to be you.” My eyes do a double take and I nearly hear his raspy his voice say the words aloud. “Quite a sign there man,” I say, offering him a fresh cigarette and lighting one myself. “ Sure gets you in the guts eh?”
He laughs, leans back against the wall behind him, smiles a toothless grin and replies:

“Hell, you ain’t gunna wake ‘em up with the same thing that put ‘em to sleep”




Understandably people are getting cynical. It makes sense that people have a healthy sense of skepticism. When that which is supposed to be the “driving force” behind solving Victoria’s issue with homelessness, The Coalition To End Homelessness, is orchestrated, funded and organized by the very system that is routinely interrupting alternative, feasible solutions, we’re not waking anybody up.

We know the statistics. We know the conditions of the crowded shelters, the bylaws and the bylaw amendments. We also know that there is something amiss.

In a city with a Council that claims to have homelessness and affordable housing as it’s number one priorities, a city that claims to be committed to a Housing First strategy, one trusting in therr City, in their ‘representatives’ would imagine progression, communication and solutions.

Instead, we are served red tape, and political jargon.


When “Housing First” means only after; Olympics, flower boxes, light displays, fountains, clean up crews and more police, we are a society asleep.

When “Ending Homelessness” means the criminalization of poverty, violating peoples right for basic survival, and furthering the stigma toward those who are homeless, we are a society asleep.


The City of Victoria has been hitting the snooze button for far too long. It’s time we, together in all the aspects of our diverse city, join together and wake up.

school and the service industry

I used to believe that the service industry was the sole killer of young, supple youth. Late hours, a prevailing drinking culture, the only relief from the hectic busy floor is a cigarette sucked back behind the dumpster, or a shot of whiskey, at the opportune moment when the management has turned their backs.

I have since learned that the ivory tower is just as toxic.

I've sat down for 10 hours today and I'm not even done yet! I've started drinking 6 cups of coffee a day, my hands are continuously attached to a humming machine which I cannot understand, and the whirr of the flourescent lights above my head is slowly boring holes into my brain. I am running on redbull and will power, with occasional breaks for nicotine.

TELL ME HOW THIS IS ENRICHING MY FUTURE

maybe all the knowledge is settling like sediment in my hips.

artsy vs crafty.

Nine years old and Judy Blume is the only thing that makes sense. Fourty-five and between doing the dishes and raising kids, you’ve discovered your destiny: to be rural British Columbia’s answer to Danielle Steel.

“I want to be a writer.” Your vision becomes tunneled. There is nothing standing between you and a large cult following, Time Magazine cover shot, and movie deal. Except, work?
The map of a creative heart is as follows: The left atrium is filled solely with the ego, swelling and deflating; the right ventricle is, in essence, a five year old boy. Left of some far vessel, just right of the darkest cockle, is the part of the heart that houses the soul. It is in that very spot that the artist and the craftsman live. These two are poles apart in practice, but forced to work together by the nature of the creative beast.

It may be true that the creative process for your inner artist is hopping from party to party describing your passions to attractive strangers who want nothing more than to offer you movie deals and mountains of cocaine. Your craftsman, however, is sitting in front of a mess of first drafts, unwashed and underpaid, furiously scribbling on yet another masterpiece. It is in the acquaintance of these two people, that you can begin to define your creative process.

No aspect of the arts is more romanticized than the lives of the artists themselves. They lead Lives rich with strife, torrid love affairs and substance abuse. For many, following in the footsteps of the greats does not begin with studying their ways and mastering their crafts. The first step into the artistic process is often found at the bottom of a bottle, the end of a pack of cigarettes.

Every time someone opens a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, five more drop acid. For every ten college dropouts who crack the spine of On the Road, there are twenty more buying a bottle of whiskey and heading for the train tracks. Is questing after the same experience as your idols a form of dedication, or a means to distraction?
When is the line drawn between eccentricity and substance abuse? Is it when you’ve been drunk for three weeks and the only writing you’ve done is your phone number on beer mats? Easily justified as research for the upcoming novel about a young girl’s budding sexuality in the Victoria bar circuit? When are you procrastinating as opposed to preparing? Is it when you’ve gone back to The Papery four times comparing pen tips and paper thickness? Let pure logic draw those lines.

Webster’s online dictionary defines a writer as: A person who is able to write and has written something. Meaning, the words must be on the page. Words on the page being read by someone else are even better, but one must start somewhere. Writers write. An necessary and at times unpleasant truth, that refuses to be changed by drunken proclamations of “Well, I’m a writer myself” into someone else’s gin and tonic.

5:15 am.

Victoria appears to have two, on a good day three, sections that feel like a big city.

Well, certain aspects of a big city. Definitely not the cosmopolitan - sky scraper- never sleeping excitement aspect. More the one level furniture rental stores- cramped apartments with yellowing windows-half lit neon aspect. East Vancouver before it was East Van. Northeast Winnipeg before it was... well, it still is Northeast Winnipeg.

Along with these certain aspects of big city livin', Quadra street also has a higher than average population of psychopathic, off-shift taxi drivers.

I believe that there should be a sense of comrade between humans when we are forced to rise before the sun. There is no need for cheery hellos, no need for comments on time, nor the weather. There is definitely no need for cheery hellos, no need for comments on time, nor the weather. There definitely no need for opportunistic cabbies to take this unholy hour as mating season. I'm not sure if its the sacks of bluish black beneath my eyes, or the obnoxious volume at which I'm talkin to myself, but it seems that I have just what it takes to drive these Bluebird Taxi Bloodhounds crazy.

It's important to note that Quadra village is not my usual domain, so it is only during walks of shame or strides of pride that I find myself stranded in the valley between Bay and Hillside.
We all know how easily dignity can be snatched during these types of heroic walks, how short the tether between holding it together and losing all touch with conscious thought. When the only cohesive thought pulsing through your brain is whether or not you put underwear in your pocket, number on the nightstand or vice versa.

In my naivety,one morning, I try to hail a taxi. The driver proceeds to screech to a stop, turn its headlights off and inch along beside me. "Where are you doing, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING?"
"Not with you man, just downtown, thanks"
The obvious response for cab 736 is to begin to do a series of u-turns, looping back and forth around the median. Rolling the window up and down six or seven times, he finally tilts his head ti scream through a half inch space at the top "I cant' take you there, I'm sorry! I can't take you there! I'm sorry!Is that ok? IS IT?!"
It was like all of the taxi-driver synapses were firing in his brain at once, twenty five years of driving around drunken college kids and grocery shopping senile seniors had finally taken its tole.
There is no way to decipher what this man would do next.
Do I call the cops? Do I begin shooting blindly?
Do I negotiate myself as a hostage, throw myself on the ground, and prepare to be hogtied?
Fallowing the road most travelled when I find myself in awkward situations, I fumble past the aforementioned underwear in my pocket and grab my package of cigarettes. I walk calmly behind a hedge, and stand there smoking. The whirr of his window closing and opening and his mutters "I'm sorry, I can't take you there" slowly fade away.

Dunhills, Buckets of Coffee, and the thrilling world of highere education

10:42
Waiting for the editorial meeting to start and trying to be productive as possible with forgotten resources, letting the writing gods come. I had an excellent interview with Mike, the shop teacher for vic high, man with smile lines who listens to funk and agrees with me on how sweet life is within the first five minutes of conversation. I walked in and he was moonwalking, yes, moonwalking around the shop listening to james brown, waxing down a 1960's chevy. It was so exicting to see someone from the car generation jumping around at the thought of bikes being the first step for all mechanics, and cars taking a back seat. Loving more and more this delving into the world of journalism, I hope to look back on these days sometime as my glory days, when I've found my footing and leigons of fans, gone through a (another?) serious drug addiction and period where I sleep with models and strictly models, and have people care enough about me to give my work colour periods. I reckon this one would be eggshell.."during the artists eggshell period, she ate a lot of quinoa, slept in a living room, and took whatever assignments she could get, including dry college policy changes and doggy daycare reviews"

Lesson of the day: 9-5's get in the way of anything close to production