It was one of those days. With the large coffee urn and a shoulder bag with a thermos mug of coffee & lunch, I rushed out into the frigid day and just missed the bus. By taking a different route, consisting of running a block, 2 buses and a streetcar, made it on time; but when I got there I found I'd forgotten my purse. The last time I forgot my purse was probably 35 years ago. Someone lent me a token to get home, otherwise I'd have been walking. The 30 cup coffee maker was well received.

At the other end of the day, the same route of 2 buses and a streetcar took not half an hour but an hour.

The lock sticks. Well, it's almost had it, actually. You turn your key for ages and it half opens, and then finally, with twiggling and effort, the dead bolt slides back into its socket and you can get in to let out the dog who's been barking nonstop throughout.

My daughter let me in tonight. Her hair was still damp from a steamy shower, which was odd, because she never showers in the afternoon. And then she unfolded a story of attempts. I'm still shaken. She spent an hour in frigidly cold weather trying to get in. She was wearing sneakers. Her key, which doesn't fit in the front door, got stuck there when she tried to get in that way. She sat in a chair by the side of the house, her hood pulled low. She cried before telling herself to stop, no self-pity. She couldn't feel her feet. She felt tired and thought of sleeping. She finally decided to go to the Community Centre but found it noisily full of children. She came back, managed to get the key out of the front door and went to try the back door one more time.

The lock slid back. She was in. To a very rowsing welcome from the dog, who by now had berserkly barked for an hour.

You can imagine how insane I became when she told me the story. And how I related it to my landlord as soon as he stepped in the house. He went into shock too and has been apologizing all evening. He's getting the lock fixed tonight or tomorrow, has promised to be here when she gets home from school tomorrow since I'm working.

And then I went and bought her a small bag of Tim Horton's sugar donuts, her favourite... have her wrapped up in a comforter with a heating pad, and have put emergency money into her backpack that she is never to spend unless she has forgotten her key or can't get in, and then she's to go to the cafe at Loblaws and buy a hot chocolate and a pastry and do homework at one of the little tables... oh, and phone me. Yes, she must phone me.

That child of mine, who I love, oh who I love, is too dreamy. The two of us, I swear...

Temperature

-12 °C (10 °F)

Pressure/ Tendency

102.0 kPa↑

Visibility

24 km

Humidity

70 %

Wind Chill

-21 (-5 °F)

Dewpoint

-16 °C

Wind

NNW 21 km/h

In the past week or so I've worked a few days at a Community Services umbrella multi-service organization covering about 16 neighbourhoods of Toronto. Among the communities it serves, some stats stand out: its families are the largest in Metro, averaging about 4 -5 people; it has the highest proportion of single parent families; it has the highest rate of multiple-family households; it has one of the most densely populated areas of the city; as a landing place for new immigrants, it is the most multi-cultural area of the city; a disproportionate number of people live in apartment buildings of 5 stories or more; it has a high proportion of low-income families; there is high unemployment, and some of the areas rely largely on governement transfer payments; it has a high rate of homeless or transiently-housed people, and a high rate of people with mental health problems; there are a large number of food bank families in the region; it has a high proportion of seniors living within its borders. York Community Service has a dedicated, hardworking staff too- many of them are working this weekend to put donations of gifts together for needy families.

I've been working on a strategic report for them. The man who I'm working for is a professor at York University, where he teaches in Nursing. For the first time in all the years I've been temping I think someone read my resume. He's let me edit, not just copy edit, but rewrite where necessary. Then on Friday he asked me to draft a condolence letter on the death of the founder of a charity organization that supports the Community Service's Holiday Basket program. And when I ran out of work mid-afternoon, he asked some of his co-workers to let me write a few of their emails (nothing important), which was gratifying.

The pay, for a temp job, is not too bad, I'm enjoying work that is more along editorial lines (though it's still secretarial, don't get me wrong), it's not too far by bus, and I can handle the place ethically. The last requirement being extremely important for me to find any contentment in a place of work. I have to agree with their philosophy and what they're doing. Banks (with their credit card interest rates and general practices) just don't cut it, if you know what I mean.

It may turn into a more regular part-time job, I sure hope so. I need the money more than I can say. My household in storage is precariously wavering on a recent NSF cheque due to the bank withdrawing their service fee first, leaving me $1.60 overdrawn, and then bouncing the $500. cheque to the moving company. I've been in contact with the moving company, who I phoned immediately. Don't worry, I'll be yelling at the bank manager when I go in on Tuesday to get the $35.00 fee they charged me on top of the indignity. I've been with this bank for 30 years too (*fumes*), and they made a tidy sum off of me in mortgage loan payments for almost 20 years (*fumes* some more).

Anyway, on a happier note, as you know, I belong to Freecycle, and last night an offer came through of a new 30 cup coffee urn/percolator that the person wanted to go to a charity organization. I immediately wrote back about York Community Services. And he chose me due to my enthusiasm! My ex will pick it up when he brings my daughter home tonight (extremely unusual, that he'd do that), and I can take it into work with me tomorrow.

A gift for the Community Services Centre, for functions, for offering coffee to people and families who come in.

Isn't that just the nicest?

Since 1995 I've been a Certified Kundalini Yoga instructor. I looked online for the meditation I've done daily for 11 years, the Dhrib Dhristi Lochina Karma Kriya, and found it at two sites: one closer to Yogi Bhajan's version, and one geared to a Western yoga market. I've separated it from any guru worship. Usually it's 15 min a day, sometimes followed by silently focusing on the breath for an equal time, or more usually with a rest after, and once a month I do a 2 1/2 hour sitting. It has had a profound effect on my sense of ethic, of understanding that there are consequences to any action that you take. I understand the concept of reverberation through this meditation. Beyond that, it's an ally, a friend, my daily comfort and teacher. Thought I'd share my practice... *hugs xo

Hmnn, in the midst of editing The Move, a pause which I offer for you to ponder:



Unconcealing the concealed, hidden, repressed, as a light beam carrying coded information is intercepted and changed, revealing its interception, because the interception itself remains as a record in the light, so unconcealing the concealed changes it.

What if the pathway of language were like a beam of light carrying coded information, and our attempt to understand what is being conveyed changes what is being conveyed because of our presence in the pathway?

What if I were telling you a secret, and, in your hearing my previously hidden secret, your listening intercepted the narratorial structure of that secret, and changed what I thought I was conveying through it?

What if there are no absolutes, and everything is relative, and it's all a matter of perspective?

Would actual memory exist, or only our perceptions of what we remember, that are being changed by our re-remembering, which are like interceptions in our own pathways?

What I mean is, if we're all intricately delicately coded light beams shining, can we shine through each other and make each other appear? Or appear to appear, perception being what it is...

I have a compilation of a lot of bits of writing for my NaNo this year. It's a semi-autobiographical book in small sections that incline towards prose poetry. It's called "The Move" and explores what it means to live without security, grounding, a home. And the discoveries in it are quite profound. It's like there is the world structured by capitalism, an economic grid, where we work, buy what we need, etc. A demand and supply model. What the protagonist discovers is a larger deeper network between people, one that seems to work through 'call' and 'response.' That there's an almost telepathic connection between us all. And that we are in a network of interconnections and are supported simply by being here. Of course I want to get all soppy and say that love is the underlying energy and that we're all cared about, but have to consider how to convey that without sounding didactic...

I'm writing it in the 3rd person because it's, well ya know, too raw. But later I may switch it all to the first person and call it a memoir, who knows. It's a strange place to be, where I am. Here's a photo of the house I owned for 19 years, but sold in 2003, in the heart of downtown Toronto in a very trendy area. It's the slate blue-green house with the tree. My children were both born in the front bedroom on the second floor. The top floor was my study/studio, until I had to rent it out after my marriage ended. There is history; there's always history. Do I feel like I've fallen? Not really. Though others who knew me back then might think so. I'm still the same person. And, the oddest thing, even with almost nothing, it amazes me how stable I feel in so many ways.

Was it because I finally chose the path of the artist? And let go of the academic path? Is that why the spiral down? Or did I want to discover this place where I am, without any support, to see what I'm really made of?

Sometimes I think I'm very confused, and other times I think I've never had such clarity.

Anyway, today I can either travel a long way to get my daughter an exercise bike from a Craigslist contact (for her birthday, but it would require my 82 year old mother, who would have to drive me out there & back downtown, not a good idea), or go to a coffee shop and try to write or organize what I have (though it's turned cold and I need warm gloves & shouldn't spend money on coffee, sigh). So, hmnn... choices, huh.

I'm meeting another Freecycle member later this afternoon who's giving me a refurbished but unopened HP Laserjet II toner cartridge for my ancient workhorse of a printer, what a gift!

Here's a link to the first section of "The Move":
http://brendaclews.com/id5.html

A few of you have asked how I'm doing. Finally the words are coming...

Let me preface by saying that I arrived in Toronto August 1st with two suitcases of summer clothes. Without work for 4 months, any government assistance or charity, somehow I have managed to put together a small home for my daughter and I. How this has happened amazes me. It's a path of gifts, of many small miracles.

Money is the very strangest thing of all. I literally have almost nothing. I don't have what I have collected over a lifetime, nor can buy what we need. With that route denied, how things have been coming to me astounds me. Oh, Freecycle™ is amazing; so is my neighbourhood. Little things, I needed a plastic drainer for a dish rack & found one yesterday; I needed a shopping cart (3 in storage, nothing to use), found an old rusted but perfectly serviceable one; needed a printer for my daughter's long Civic's project, was given one by a Freecycle™ member, and she got 144/145 on it; needed a Winter coat, found an Eddie Bauer down coat for $15. at ValuVillage, when I went to pickup a internet cable from another Freecycle member, & my son agreed to give it to me as a Christmas present; we were sleeping on thin plastic camping mats, and over the weeks I found a queen-sized and a 2 twin foam mattresses, all in good shape, and ultra cheap sheets from Wal-Mart; we were eating off 2 plastic plates from a friend's camping gear, and a Freecycle member gave us a slightly chipped but utterly beautiful 4 place setting dish set; I needed an electric broom, sweeping wasn't cleaning our small space well enough, and found one, clean, cord wrapped neatly around it, with some attachments, waiting for me as if was a gift; and on & on. Precisely what I need I find. I rub my eyes in utter amazement. You can have no idea. When I look about me, at the gifts of friends, Freecycle™, and 'finds,' I realize I have created a small home out of nothing. It's stone soup. I didn't know I was such a staunch survivor. But I am.

Even the basement apartment in which we are living was a find, not only the interior space, but it's in a genuinely loving home that is a balm to my ravaged edges, and which I am deeply appreciative of. Still, I do recognize that what keeps me here rather than on the street is a fragile line. My 3-bedroom household is in storage. Even with continued threats from my ex over cutting the little bit of child support, it trickles in and the rent gets paid every month, and some emergency money from my son paid the storage fees right on the edge of everything we own being auctioned off last week. All our photographs, mementos, books, clothes, furniture. All my paintings, and all the writing I've done through the years. Almost gone, but for a last minute reprieve. It's been like that. Living on the edge. Figuratively and literally.

I think about these things as I walk the hour and 20 minutes it takes each way to a Wal-Mart where milk is $3.77 instead of $5.50 as it is at all the supermarkets around here, and somehow manage to feed myself and my daughter on next to nothing at Wal-Mart and No Frills (which I never ever shopped at before, especially Wal-Mart with its closing a store in Quebec that was forming a union, and its child labour issues, and it's employment practices in general, but, oh). When the coffers are empty, my brother will unexpectedly press some bills into my hand, or my son (who's living at his Dad's) will deposit something into my account from his minimum wage part-time job at a supermarket (I weep at their generosity); just today, all options exhausted, a clerical temp job for two days appeared, which will feed us for 2 weeks, if we are careful.

It's a most strange existence, this. There is no luxury, not even a comfortable chair, let alone a couch to curl up in (oh, a perfect one came to me, but we couldn't get it down the narrow stairwell). Still we maintain ourselves. And I'm learning about trust. That's the key, I think. Life is an odd affair. But keep loving and trusting. Where am I going with all this? I didn't intend to write a 'tell all' post. Even I find the description of my present life rather shocking. But then, again, I am working on uncertainty and trust, which is a theme of my novel, "The Move," and now on grounding, settling, housing, coming into oneself... and so I wonder if my dream of owning a house that is large enough for my kids and I will also come true. We do move in the direction of our dreams, don't we? Aren't we the directors of our lives? Don't we create our lives as we live them? We'll see, we'll see.

"If, seated on high, amidst the authors of our destinies, we could read the book of our life. Which is written. Already written, finished. But we shall never know our story. We are only characters in it. And to think that there will be readers of our book. They will open it. And they'll make fun of the murkiness of our night. Says the author~" Helene Cixious, "Stigmata."


Nothing grand like positing a Divine other as author of our lives, or even ourselves: history is the author of our lives. History creates the book of our lives, where we only live as a character, and even then a character in what becomes our own story, a story that we can never fully know, either. If we remain anonymous bearers of history, our lack of individuality is our story. And nothing is ever 'settled,' the process of revision after revision continues. Perhaps history is an author who never finishes the story that is written and rewritten with each successive generation. There is no final Word, the author cannot be absolutist but only contextual, forever revising the book, the canon, made up of our individual transcripts where we are characters living in a story we can't ever fully know the design of.

I am a lady of hidden books, filing cabinet drawers of journals, piled up, copious writing through the years, and an abrupt end, sudden stopping. Slowly pushing into the stream of life, like here, where we all write our lives, thoughts, concerns, happenings, where we can overhear each other think, revealing those interior places, those places where we posit our lives against the anonymity of history, authoring ourselves in halting, flowing, coagulating, humorous, descriptive sentences of every kind, on every topic, a veritable cornucopia, our offerings. Writing into the future, yesterday's blog gone, like the news, an alphabetic rubble for the future historian to sift through. And some of our stories will remain, the fickle heart of history being what it is, for awhile, of our coming to writing. And then our lives will be placed in the context of. On this inky lonely night without my children, there is comfort in this, knowing that I cannot know the book of my life even while I am writing it.

From my novella-in-progress, "The Move"- sections 50 & 51. Click on the image for a larger, readable size. Suggestions are always welcomed.


Section #50

A man who she met at a garden party, talked to all evening in his kitchen, and went dancing with late in the night at a bar with a jazz band and a toy railroad all the way round the ceiling with a tiny train chugging continuously, that new friend took her to the slough. She should have been packing. She wanted to meet his friend who lived in the wetlands on the Fraser River and wrote books by hand.

Walking on boards placed on the rich vegetation of the rain forest, a pathway opened into another world. She entered a lush and overgrown secret place where creativity flourished directly out of the imagination. Kaja, statuesque and beautiful, like a Germanic goddess, welcomed her. Tall, sensual, curly chestnut hair pulled up and tied, her legs bare and long in shorts, her green eyes shone with vibrancy and mystery. The magical world was her everyday reality. Kaja, and the friend with whom she had come, spent an evening a week sharing dinner and reading their writing to each other, or telling stories. Kaja was too self-conscious to read to a stranger that night, so she told a story.

It was the story of the creativity of life that swept up on the shores all around us, calling us to understanding. The cadences of her telling were visionary and spiritual and philosophic, the poetry of her words swayed on the river, in the air, across the tops of the trees, in the choral streaks of the sunset.

Everything in Kaja’s life had come through spiritual intercession. The cottage on stilts on the river that she lived in was a perfect writer’s cabin. It had appeared as an option that couldn’t be turned down when she asked for an ideal place to live and write. Her boyfriend’s work took him away for two weeks each month, giving her time to write. She worked part-time in special education, a job that fed both her body and her creativity. She had nurturing friends who supported her emotionally. She told story after story of her life where whatever she asked for came to her in profound ways. She said she had to be careful because it was almost too easy to conjure what she asked for.

Anyone would feel fortunate, as she had, to have sat, enraptured, listening to Kaja’s tales, their marvels, her understanding of the way things came to us, how we can shape our lives in ways we desire so that we may do whatever it is that calls to us deeply.

Section #51

A new way of living, or perhaps it is a very, very old way, was opening, it seemed, everywhere.

When things that you needed snapped into place, she could feel it like two grids connecting, two genes intersplicing.

It was easier to do through the medium of money, but money was a poor substitute for the deeper exchange that went on between us all, and of which we are often barely aware.

©2005 Brenda Clews