St. Paul

You write letters from the other side of prison walls. You have made more than peace with death, you have made love and pledges to it; and almost casually you announce in these pages how in fact your being gone from us, will begin your new life.

But for now, persuaded by your sense of concern and mandated by the one whose dusty sandals you and me would fear to carry, you are bound to stay a little longer. And you write to me a little longer.

I continue to read; every now and then pacing between sentences, and then coming to a contemplative stop in front of the sliding glass door. I feel like a wonderer in a big city gallery whose eye has been caught by a piece that reflects and mimics my own slow, mundane, repetitive existence.

I imagine you being anxious for nothing. I wonder how I might be able to tear the secrets of your reality from the words on these pages and smash them into my reality. I sit down again and reach for your letters from this side of my prison walls. Then my eyes fall shut and I allow my whole self be aware of the heated wood of the deck slowly warming the bottom of my bare feet and I think to myself how beautiful it is, that old saying, that the righteous shall live by faith.

On Vehicle Ownership and Normalcy

When it's not a source of frustration for me, I actually find it rather interesting that owning a car in this culture is sometihng of a rite of passage. You don't realize it when you drive one, but sometimes not being behind the wheel provides a new perspective. Owning a car can send the social message that you are a responsible, trustworthy, normal and good person. Admittedly, I am writing this while the sting of a recent experience in which my possession of some of the above attributes was scrutinized based on the fact that I do not own a working vehicle. But outside of inducing frustration, the encounter also made me feel the need to vent and reflect on my own own experience of not owning a working vehicle and the various internal and social dynamics that I have encountered.

So like I said, this is not as a rule but it's been my observation that a vehicle can come to symbolize that a person is responsible, trustworthy, normal and good. Now if you own a car and choose not to drive it, then you are a responsible, trustworthy normal and good person who is also enviromentally conscious or of superior fitness. I think it's interesting that most non-driving commuters in my part of the city also happen to be wearing some kind of tight work out clothes or running while pushing an intense gigantic stroller. So if you are non-student commuter on foot in regular clothes who does not appear to be an olympian behind an intense stroller, then are you? A hobo? And if you're a mom whose got a kid with you, then you might be on your your way to pick up the goverment cheque.

I'm not a student, I'm not an uptowner or downtowner. I live in the suburbs and in recent months we pulled our van off the road as primarily financial choice (and I would like to think a political choice) while things were tight. On the most part I have enjoyed busing, and taking Izaka's stroller on the bus.

I have never really owned a car until I got married and my husband happened to have one. I must have never really been meant to drive because less than a year into our marriage I accidentlally crushed it. We then got a deal on a van just before I got pregnant with my son, and had it for about 2 years, before moving from a small town to the city and pulling it off the road.

I also spend my childhood in a city where it was more rare to own a car than not to. In the 1990's in Nairobi most people took the bus or walked. I think things have changed now. So I guess it's been a bit of an adjustment not driving for the last several months (with some significant inconviniences) but I found that also on many levels it felt familiar and good, and certainly preferable in the winter.

Having said that I have also found myself to be more of anamalie than I enjoyed. During the process of prioritizing our expenses and recognizing that we could not afford to keep our van on the road, one encouraging fact was that we had access to affordable/comfortable public transportation, and also felt that we lived in a city where alternative ways of commuting were celebrated and encouraged; you know, to lessen the carbon footprint and all that. So we made the transition with some naïveté on my part and expectation of a best case scenerio of approving nods or at the very least no stigma or shame.

Quite frankly on the most part not using the van in our day to day lives has really been a non issue. There have been some inconviniences like doctor appointments outside of a bus route and not being able to leave town as frequently as we would have to see loved ones.

But for me the challenge on the most part has been feeling like a bit of an outsider, I guess culturally/socially speaking. I have been very surprised by this. Maybe I should have anticipated the tension should going into the transition, but I felt quite unprepared for the sometimes general experience of feeling like I had something to justify or the isolated incidences of being related to with a hint of condescension, or being given the "charity case" treatment.

I have mostly expereinced patience and kindness of friends and neighbours, but there have been times the, well, I guess painful times, when an acquintance has offered to "rescue" with an obvious intent of shaming or othering. The excessive requirement for explanations and "when are you guys going to put the van back on the road?" probing that can be pressuring and also shaming. Or the blunt challenging and expression of dissapproval that makes one feel judged. I don't write about this to sound like a martyr especially when people around the world are facing real problems like not having anything to eat. I write this as part of my own experience processing but also because I think it's important to have dialogue about some of the cultural resistance that may continue to over-emphasize the nececcity of a car.

There many things (material or otherwise) that some people have that I don't have and perhaps vice vera I would imagine. So why is this one item such a game changer. And I realize now that it is a cultural symbol of normative living.

Suddenly if I was having a bad day or struggle and began to talk about it the first suggestion provided was it was understandable considering we didn't have the van. It was an adjustment for friends and loved ones, and some are yet to adjust. I have found something out about myself in the past few months. I would sometimes rather be alone than be an anamolie in spaces that used to be comfortable for me becaue community and a sense of being understood is important to me.

There is a feeling of wanting to be able to start a story saying "today when I was on the bus with Izaka" without it being taken like I'm asking for help or making a political statmement, and if I need a ride, I want to be able to ask for one like I would a cup of sugar. The latter has been as much of an internal as well as social struggle for me. During the last several months I discovered how I too (although never having purchased one really) had internalized the cultural symbolism of owning a vehicle in my stage of life. And this made me undergo all kinds of inner tensions when having to socially present myself (family) as a regular single income suburban family that just can't affort the use of a car. When I was little and growing up in a neighbourhood in Nairobi, I remember that often if we had run out of somehting that we needed I would be sent to the neighbours house with an empty bown or cup to ask for some sugar or rice or three eggs. If the woman who opened the door did not have any she simply apologized for not having some and then I would try another door. Often little children with empty bowls or cups also knocked at our door. But there was something culturally understood and accepted about seasons of not having and of course you depend on your neighbours. Mama Akinyi, the school teacher, mother and respectable community member that lives two doors down is still a school teacher, mother, and respectable community member when she during the weeks when she is in need of eggs from her neighbour for the children's lunch and the weeks when her salary is enough to buy her own eggs and have some to spare. And not to be preachy, but I think it is just a fact that in western society you are many times what you are able to have.

I appreciate people in my community (many of whom are friends) who are able to afford vehicles yet choose to rely on alternative ways of commuting mostly perhaps due to there desire for creating a better environment. [I equally appreciate those who do so for physical fitness as I imagine it takes a lot of discipline, so I cheer for them, even the ones in intense athletic gear].

I just also feel that in order for the environmental/humanitarian dreams associated with a decreased reliance on cars to be realized, it is necessary to promote alternative means of commuting as something that can belong to the masses. The work of creating a better environment both depends on changing specific personal and family practices but also may mean for some working in public spheres to grow new environmental and community friendly structures.
These kind of calling I have experienced can place you outside the economic security of existing structures, and may result in not simply choosing to not to drive, but in fact being less and less able to live out and afford the cultural symbols that represent values of speed, comfort, convinience, and the accumulation of resources. These values are not inherently bad and I might ask to knock on your door when I need a little speed, comfort or convinience. But I think many agree that there is a need to promote another set of values that are neccessary for survival and have been left of Western cultural progress and the mass production of the automobile.

I guess that if we want to promote a decreased dependency on cars then we have to normalize walking and busing, and yeah I guess biking or skiing (personally I am not likely to do either). I find myself wanting to walk with some out of shape suburban moms. I used to see fat women walk all the time when I was a child. You didn't have to be an olympian to walk to the grocery store. It would nice to see more work men and women in work clothes and ties walking, or parents picking up there kids after school, in uncomfortable shoes, complaining about the cold or the heat. Can walking/busing not belong to the masses anymore?

How do you normalize a life without affording a vehicle? I don't really know completely. Maybe car sharing is one option. I hear and don't really know but that in some European societies these changes are taking place and car's are not such a central cultural symbol. Maybe more out of town buses so we can still visit loved ones out of town or go to the beach two things I miss a lot. I think it has to be normal to talk about not owning a vehicle and still feel like you are a responsible, respectable, trustworthy, normal and good person.

Yesterday I cut the tail end of Izaka's nap short because a flatbed truck showed up in front of our drive way and I couldn't have him miss it. Izaka has many books on trucks and tractors and is learning them by name. He is intrigued by machines, ironically :) I loved watching him watch the parked van that had become part of the landscape in front of our place get lifted and rolled onto the flatbed. My dad knows a guy who might give us a deal, he's an immigrant so it's all good. I get very pre-excited about maybe going to the beach. But trying not to get ahead of myself as I have been reminded the it might be well into the Fall if we get it back at all and it's not scrap. But I'm also not ready to or willing to let go of the lifestyle we have now. I guess if this immigrant mechanic pans out, I will get to enjoy being one of those people who could totally drive but will make the alternative choice to walk or bus, so I'm still normal :)

still here

My life is a circle and I’m living here in this land that I love and hate and love and hate and learn to love again.

Fall, Winter, Summer and Spring. The best thing about Canada or Turtle Island is all these seasons and colours, I am always astounded.

How can one place have so many colours, so many different worlds to see when you look outside the window?

In the Fall I venture out like a traveller on a walkabout. I have a small bag of strategies and desires. God is the great wind Nodin, and she picks up along the way all my scattered thoughts and impulses and makes sense and motion out of everything. And everything is beautiful.

By December passion has frozen into cold resolve, as I come face to face with the reality of death. Death in the old and the gone. Death in the burial sites we trample on. Death in the living faces that stare back at me at the meeting downtown; death in the Toronto Stock Exchange, death trailing the late night news and then creeping into my heart. There are flurries of romance, parades and processions, but I am wrapped and bundled up in my own self- protective, necessary stuff. And but for the silhouette of now naked trees that stand as signposts and reminders, in Ontario’s winter I would be doomed to forget that once a colourful wind blew around me.

Spring is nothing that it claims to be. All I feel is awareness of all that went array. I want to heal so bad. I want to say I can hear a trickling of a brook or feel life in the crackling of melting snow. But the chilled brown street water is soaking through my salted suede boots, my toes are achy, and it’s an uncomfortable, humiliating walk up to the cross, where I sit alone and wait for my resurrection.

Summer is here and you catch me off guard; showing me that my growth is in your readjustment of my expectations. You go from nowhere to being everywhere. And you heal me while my hands are deep in the earth. My good God just like last year, you heal me. I can sit in the sunshine, and cry a bit at what is gone and the mistakes made, and tie up my apron and see what is here now. There is kale in the garden. There is a boy on my lap. My husband is home from work. Canada is still Canada. I can still dream of a Turtle Island Fall. I’m still here and you are everywhere.

sway

Sweet water filling up between my ears
and spilling through my eyes,
sway my skirt close to the floor.

My skirt is made from patches of yellow
curtain cloth torn from the kitchen window
and white lace.

Dancing to the sound of ripples in my chest
and wet eyelids shut I let the tip of my toes,
carry me to the warmth of the quiet sun room.

Baby napping
Laundry hanging
Lavender drying

Sweet water rocking my soul
when your waves turn black and I can’t see
my embroidery stitch,
I’m learning not to cry.
I’ll lay down needle, cotton and thread
and wait for your sweet water
to pass me by

Bondwoman

Strong enough to wait on the one that has left you
In darkness and dust
You sit.

I travel back to where you would have been
With him close to you, eyes tired with hunger and not sleep

Bondwoman,

Strong enough to leave him long enough to let yourself cry.

Tell me your story.

trees planted by water, dark shredded bark, and beautiful immigrant men with silvering beards

A couple things happened these last few days that have been meaningful to me. I will only mention them and not tell the whole story here. The first was a conversation with a taxi driver from the former Yugoslavia, he used to be a corporate lawyer in his old country. After he shared with me a bit about his former life, I also told him about foreign trained parents and there experience getting work in Canada. We talked about the increase of immigrants and the lack of jobs. He narrated some stories of his experience first as an immigrant in Germany then in Canada. "In Germany they didn't like us, but you know they don't lie to you. If you make a deal with a German he won't break it". He said.

I loved the bluntness with which he spoke, he was a beautiful man perhaps in his late fifties with a silvering beared, and his manner of speaking, the honesty and feeling in his voice made me feel like I was in some wonderful old film. I have completely romanticized/dramatized the conversation in my head but that is what I do. Howerver I can't exagerate the purity of the incident that to me was a gift.

"I got into a fight with one of the German guys, you know I told him take your shitty job!" He turned around to make eye contact with me in the cab that was now parked. My passanger door was open as the conversation had continued on my way out the door. "sorry for language, but you know, I used to get into fights with those guys".

"No problem" I excused him with a waive of my hand, and then continued expressively. "But you get it, for me it's not about them liking us, we just have to survive, we just need to find a way to make a life".

"Yes but listen to me," he looked at me more intently and reminded me of an old sailor from a book I might have read, "Money is not everything, the German guy at the cleaning job used to tell me, I can take away your job you know. I told him: You take my country, you take my life, my home, you take my brother, what is this shitty job? But you can't take my soul eh? so you remember that".

"Can I shake you hand?" I asked him before our small encounter came to a close and I shut the door of the taxi. The thought crossed my mind as I walked away that perhaps I am really part of something, some collective stories larger than my own single life.

The second incident that took place in the last couple of days that also matters to me happened yesterday. My father, who earned his Phd in the 90s from a University in South Africa had a little car trouble and took the bus to his night shift at a factory the previous night. Unfortunatey, the morning bus on Sundays that comes out to this end of the city doesn't start till 10:00am and his shift at the factory was over at 6am. So he walked from the uptown bus stop, the many many city blocks on the morning of Father's Day. I don't have very much to say about it except that on Father's Day I when I heard this little narration from a family member I felt very proud of my dad who is approaching his mid fifties. While picking up some chocolate and a card with my two year old for his dad yesterday, Izaka also picked something small up for his Kuka, whom he closely resembles and loves deeply. Daddy if you are reading this we still have to drop off some chocolate before Izaka eats them all.

Learning to start with what I have. That is a lesson that came to me over the course of the day today. I haven't done a lot on my flower bed in the backyard because I want to lay some mulch. The grocery store that is a walking distance from us is out of mulch, I found out after pulling my two year old in his wagon up the hill, anxious to buy some bags of mulch. I had even called ahead of time and the employee said they had some bags of mulch left. So needless to say I felt a bit grouchy pulling the wagon back down the hill with a few groceries and a two year old boy sitting inside it but no mulch.

I have been daydreaming of a dark shade of shredded bark, how pretty it would make my young, not very populated flower bed look. I am the kind of person who needs to see the bag of mulch sitting beside me to motivate me to weed the garden and do some transplanting. I need to know that the outcome is close at hand. But I'm realizing that this way of approaching life is making weeds creep up all over because I'm overlooking the provisions that are already at hand.

Today I was also revisited by this verse from the book of Jeremiah 17:7,

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

nineveh