I Hate Americans

Oh Canada! July 1st is nearly here and Oh Boy! Kate and Willy are coming! (Now... who is it, Canada, that you think is ridiculous?) Maybe now that the Canadian dollar has trumped the US dollar by 4 cents we can finally stop hating Americans.

I was an American once. It wasn't so bad. For years and years I held on defiantly to that title from this side of the border, just to get in your faces, until a recent dunk across into the US made me realize I've actually grown uncomfortable with wide open vowels and large toilet paper. Oh I'm not saying that I'm Canadian, exactly, although I do carry both passports. But I have to admit, I have developed a somewhat Canadian sensibility in many affairs over my 13 years in residence. In other regards I remain definitively Yanquoise/Nouvelle Yorkaise-- daring, innovative, bold; welcoming to a disarming degree (if you're Canadian) direct, entrepeneurial. But my NY schtick has had a strong northern filter slapped on it; ie, I'm more in control of my cultural default settings.

Speaking of default settings, lets talk about hate. I mean, more specifically, lets talk about anti-americanism.

Now, your average Canadian will not openly admit... well... uh... anything really. Europeans, on the other hand, will tell you straight out that they hate Americans and then they will tell you why. Some of their explanations will make sense. In fact you may agree with them, and return to America as an anti-american American, (as I did, years ago) which is probably a positive thing in a nation of people awash in a lack of self-awareness and self-reflection. But Canadian hatred of Americans is different. Its friendlier. Its couched as humor, or sarcasm. Good wholesome beer-hall hahaha, can't you take a joke? Its in-bred. Its passive aggressive, and its completely socially acceptable. Its default, man. It isn't intelligent, or insightful or politically astute. Its knee-jerk, its mainstream and its elementary. Its bullied-kid-turned-JD Salinger gang of boys. Freaks out for vengeance. Luckily it is backed by very little fire-power, comparatively. But its culturally lethal, nonetheless.

Now what is bizarre as an American (who is no longer an American) is the bipolar experience of being hated and adored. In my individual experience, being American has earned me strange brownie points with other immigrants-- members of many groups who have been broadly disenfranchised, endangered and displaced by US politic and policy in either direct or indirect ways. "Oh!", they exclaim, brightly. "you're from The States!" they glow, putting their arm around me, pulling me in a little closer. "You will come to my family, for dinner. You will stay as long as you like. You can live with us!" I love these people. But why? Why are they not dripping with anti american hatred? Maybe it is the 'we are in this together' immigrant experience, bonding in the face of the relatively cold and insular Canadian cultural climate. Or maybe they want to associate with my US citizenship and the perceived privilege and opportunity it might afford. Or more likely, they recognize the difference between a government and its people, many of them having witnessed and experienced corruption in their own governments at home. Perhaps, for some reason, they just plain like me. Or maybe, they are just being very very polite, and are secretly seething below the surface.

As for you Canadians, I being kind-of one of you now, it is kind of understandable. Canadians take for granted a government that mostly does represent them. It is hard for them to imagine a dichotomy. They are outraged by the fluke election where a party sweeps into power without popular, majority support, whereas, I am always dumbstruck and bewildered by any dynamic groundswell of the people that manages to impact the actions and policies of any government. Its really about privilege, and sense of entitlement from a semi socially liberal democracy that has the comfort of the social welfare net in the background of Canadian lives. Its the 'well, you can always go on welfare' mindset that gets everyone of the accountability hook, instead of the do or die cry of 'give me liberty or give me death'. With the rate of unemployment and homelessness down south these days, death wins out more often than not for a lot of people. And no, we do not all share the views of our government. In fact, there are 30 million 'progressive' Americans whose political views and lifestyles reside somewhere in between the NDP an the Greens, with an added dash of innovation and communitarianism. That is almost the entire population of Canada! Put that in your snide and smoke it.

So don't teach your kids to hate Americans. Look to form alliances, liase across borders, celebrate the contributions from both sides, and open your minds. Me? Oh I can hate Americans on a bad day, if I want to, because I am one. Well, I was one. Well, anyway. You get the point. And go ahead, Oh Canada, have a grass fed hamburger and enjoy your extra day off. But stop wishing me a Happy 4th of July and then sneering behind my back. I don't do patriotic holidays anyway. Because national borders, insofar as they divide us, pit us against each other, and sic us on each other like a bunch of rabid boozed up soccer/football/hockey fans, are not all that much to celebrate, if you ask me.

The Angels Singing

Imagine, if you will. Imagine a force so powerful, it has the ability to shift the totality of your every microcellular vibration 180 degrees in a split second; from inside to outside to upside to downside to right-side up; from backwards to forwards, from frazzled to peacin’ out, from insomniac to sleepin-like-a-baby, from screamin bitch to sighing smiling happyface, for the skies have opened and rays of light like tendrils of god’s ET finger light-beams are shining down upon you! Imagine this moment of utter physio-energetic transformation that happens in an unseen instant; how it creeps around the corner and suddenly and quietly pours hot fudge sauce all over your life, (or at least upon your outlook.) And all of a sudden you’re like Oooooooooooohhhh you are swimming in the silkiest fudge sauce ever known to man, even European ones, while whipped cream clouds drift lazily by and cherries fall gently like dew drops from the heavens. What is this moment to which I refer? I’ll tell you what. I just got my period, beeoitches, and the angels are singing!!! All at once, I am floating on an endorphin laced magic carpet ride barely touching the treetops of reality and the world is all celebration. There’s a refreshing breeze in the air, the stars twinkle inside my heart-heart like a million fireflies come to life from inside. Simultaneously, I feel the insistence of earth power pulling down, down through my womb through my legs and feet, tension pouring out of my ether, releasing with the blood to fertilize the earth, unburden my soul, and I am free! I am free! Thank god almighty, I’m free at last!

But lets back up a bit. There is no greater hell than PMS. PMS should stand for something meaningful like ‘Please Massage this Sister’. Or ‘Puffed up Manic and Stinky’; or, ‘Possible Murder Suspect’. Or ‘Please Manifest Sex’. All of the nasty with all of the needy, colliding in one body, mine, yours, with a great array of un-delightful and specific physical symptoms, say, swollen tender breasts, or a migraine, perhaps? How about some searing low back pain, sore feet, an aching, sad heart, chronic resentment, manic mean lust, ridiculous cravings, insomnia, or persistent anxiety? Perhaps just aching teeth, skin eruptions and eczema, night sweats, weird dreams, hot flashes, the impulse to shove everything you see into your mouth, or a soul tearing massive crying fit to break up the mundaneness of never ending exhaustion, exhaustion, exhaustion.

Do you know what? I deserve a fucking medal every month for enduring 5-10 days of this miserable crescendo without killing or hurting anybody while other people are skipping down the street, whistling dixie. “Is it really that bad?” you may wonder. Fucking YES!! Who knew how bestial we all are, how controlled by biological cycles? When one minute I can be entwined and entangled in the slowest, most unbearable web of I-hate-everyone-and-everything-and-I’m-sick-and-tired-of-it-all, and in the next second, literally, I am the essence of god’s glory, the mist on an angels’ eyelash, and earth-godess-mama drawing all of life to her bosom’s embrace, well, then something whack is going on. Yea, it’s nature folks, doing its finest work, so fuck you, nature.

And so why bother with culture at all? When in the end of the day, I am but a moaning, bloated cow, desperate for some burly farmer’s hand-action, why do any other kind of posturing? I’ll tell you why. For the sake of your children. For public safety-- law and order. For traffic calming and reasonable driving behaviour on America’s highways. For God Save the Queen. For decorum or civility of any sort. For table manners. For sidewalks free of spit. For the pledge of allegiance, and church going grannies. For making it through the workday with your bra still hooked.

Ladies! We must, against our every peri-menopausal and pre-menstrual demolition engineer instinct, control ourselves. We must, as I do, harness all our self discipline, and reign it in, using all the underwire, willpower, masturbation and chocolate necessary. We must endure until that pivotal moment when the entire universe reverses itself with one smooth turn on its axis of evil and the blood comes flowing (out of us, not them), releasing flocks of doves in a ruffle of wings and choir robes as cherubs break out into a bombastic, celebratory anthem, just for us.

God knows, there would be absolute mayem otherwise.

Another night in the car

I love the car bed and I love my laptop and I love my lungs. Too much inhalation of mysterious particles to which my body doth protest, too many days in a row and here I have landed once more, sleeping in the car tonight with no better option, and this time only semi-prepared—I could stand another blanket or two, to be honest. Nobody wants to hear about suffering, especially due to weird allergic reactions that are incomprehensible to most, even to me, who has had them all my life, following generations of family members with the same. I am, quite frankly, homeless, and this, because of strange and uncontrollable circumstances. Not financial ruin. Not alcoholism. Not war or natural disaster or fire. Allergies in transitional times. Say freakin’ what? And this is not the first time it’s happened. Tell someone you are homeless because of allergies and they will think you are a certified nut-bar. Well, call me crazy, I just don’t give a ---- anymore—
Really.

When you have gone for days and days w/o enough oxygen, nothing really matters anymore except that very physiological fact. It even trumps sleep deprivation, its sidekick, which I have also in my company. To make matters even more interesting, my procrastinated upper left dental project has started to ache and swell in the middle of this crisis. There are seemingly no choices, yet my sexi flexi-mind re-minds me that there always are. Things could always be worse. Seen through the roses, this old car interior is like an upscale tent, and there is the nice bed I built into it. I have laptop luxury. I have clean water and I am rurally parked so I have enough darkness to sleep, no police harassment, and pee freely just outside my four doors. The weather is just right—not too hot, not too cold, and hardly any bugs. I have a jug of clean water. I happen to have a Tylenol in my purse. In a state of acceptance of the now, things couldn’t be any better, and they’re not great but they could be worse. The kids I serve as nanny think the car bed is cool and they are right. Seen at best it’s a groovy studio apartment on wheels. Let’s roll…

The biggest evil in this and any challenging situation in life is the worry monster. The worry monster freaks you out and grabs your calm and flails it about recklessly. The worry monster grips at all your innovativeness, creativity, problem-solving power and optimism. It seizes your soul, robs you of sleep and a sense of humor, makes your symptoms worse. The worry monster is the enemy, and must be shot down by any means necessary. Cool tunes, midnight car-blogging, scribble art on the interior, car yoga, absolute childlike behavior, a dedication to the delightful in the most seemingly awful of circumstances; a refusal to be a victim, and a vicious, vicious dedication to ‘glass half full’ ideology in action, or, failing that, to ambivalence at least.

It’s a starry starry night, I am safe, and it is summer. I have a toothbrush and there is no reason for panic, doom and gloom, depression, tears, or nightmares. In this moment I am both the most threatened and the most protected human being on the planet, my experience spanning a wide expanse of lived realities throughout time and space. The car bed is cool. The car bed is eternal. The car bed could be better but right now, it has to be just fine.

Somethin' Gotcher Goat

Hello readers. I’m sorry to have abandoned my Wild Wakefield Blogspot for so many months. What can I say? I got housing-outsourced to Chelsea for the winter where there was just not that much to snack on. I perched (and froze) in a beautiful riverfront what-should-be-a-3-season chateau/cottage as caretaker, binged on high-speed internet, and played with the neighbors’ baby. That’s about it, unless you count the four and a half month battle with the H1N1 or some other kind of arctic bonanza virus that is still tweaking at me from the corners of my immune system. Oh, and I also got paid really decent cash to drive a few Chelsea kids around and fry them up some veggie dogs a couple times a week. Not a bad gig. Overall, I would not report any significant advancements of body, mind, spirit or career. But I did survive another Canadian winter, and if you grew up somewhere else, that counts as an accomplishment.

Not two days back in range of the ‘field, and I’ve already slept in my car twice, sat outside the closed library to check my email, skinny-dipped behind the General Store at 5am, jammed Cajun with Claude and Nathan, had a massive 48 hour asthma attack, chased goats out of my neighbor’s living room, and noticed an oily scum on the surface of Brown Lake. The changes that attempt to wring the funk factor out of our village are increasing: the wages and number of affordable, healthy living options are not. But the thing about change is that as it closes some doors, cuts down some forests, re-routes some wildlife corridors, and expropriates some properties, it also creates some new entryways, opportunities and areas for exploration. At least that’s how the goats see it when a crucial barricade is suddenly left open by a forgetful human. They do not hesitate to leap inside, party it up, and shit all over the place. While I scrub away at hippy dirt and feverishly attempt to vanquish allergic smells from my small apartment on the upper level, the goats are rockin’ out to 60’s vinyl and mixing up groovy desserts that are raw, vegan, and organic. They make me feel uptight and conventional, an experience I certainly am hard pressed to have anywhere else.

The fireflies are back early this year, lighting up fresh sprigs of poison ivy along the roadsides. Its dry and the river is lower than I’ve seen in a long time, but the lake is high because the beavers downstream have been busy. Oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico while web surfing has never been faster. Elsewhere, sudden sinkholes appear, Apple launches their IPad, and people stand in line to buy them. I move slowly into Hippy Summer Camp and sleep on a yoga mat, because I do not have a bed, and do hot flashes and night sweats while wading through a delayed and exaggerated bout of PMS—post moving syndrome. Life seems full of increasingly extreme paradoxes, and we all might be going to hell on earth. Or this could be heaven. Its hard to know. To the goats, a broken window presents not problem but opportunity. Not that I completely agree, but I’m just sayin’, I’d pull that window shut next time if I were you.

This is a Pajama Town

This is a Pajama town, and we might as well admit it. In fact, we might as well appreciate it, heck, celebrate it, and all that other warm fuzzy stuff. Now what constitutes pajamas might vary from person to person, with seasonal shifts, personality differences, and so on. For example tonight I am donning as pajamas my down jacket, my winter hat, wool stockings with wool socks over them and, well, pajamas... all for lack of an official heating system in my current living quarters. In fact, I'm so ready to roll in this outfit I don't see any reason why not to. And the fact is, nobody really would care one way or the other if I did, and that's the point.

For years now, my choice of clothing has revolved mostly around the relentless pursuit of 'that pajama-y feeling', which I seem to want all the time. Simply put, I want comfort. I don't want waist lines that cut into my tender fat or bras that shut down my respiratory system; pant-legs that cut off my lymphatic return or inseams that scream up my hootchie, "HOW ABOUT A NICE YEAST INFECTION, HA HA HA!!!" I want comfort. I want to fill the hug-void with flannel, floppy cotton, cozy fleece and squishy slippers.

Now, if someone wants to come along and attempt to overthrow my pajama governance with tender caresses, warm full-body presses, juicy kisses and general touchy-feely goodness, they are more than welcome to try (upon approval). But its gonna be tough. Pajamas are my friend, my steady companion, my resting place,my comfort, my haven, my blanket-against-the-cold. My pajamas are always there for me, require very little maintenance, and never talk back!

Luckily, I am a pajama lover who walks among other pajama people in a pajama friendly place. Pajamas and the like are acceptable wear here in the village. Most establishments allow it, either overtly or implicitly. Even the elementary school has a pajama day. Layered, baggy fashion is not scorned here, nay! Au contraire, it is quite common. But I am suggesting that we click on the bold and italic and underscore what we take for granted: that this is pajama town, and no one will be turned away for the crime of being comfortable in their own skin, or PJ's.

Now 'Pajama Town' doesn't only refer to fashion, although that is its conceptual wellspring. Pajama town means you can do weird, beautiful stuff like paint pictures with ice skates, build wigwams and deliver bean sprouts and have vegan potlucks in revivalist churches. you can do down-home stuff like host a square dance or grow sheep and make your own yarn to darn your holy socks, gosh darn! You can build space ships from paper clips and brew donut wine from dog strangling vine and tell tall tales for amusement park babies -- you can churn the butter, and spurn the gravy.

Pajama town is a place where you can still leave notes on peoples' doors. You can pay the next time if you come up short in the stores. The librarians will lend you books on trust, and someone lives in the greenhouse, and someone else in the school bus, see...

Pajama town excels at deceleration; it takes walks and wears rubber boots and swaps clothing and watches each others' children. It's kind, forgiving, non-judgemental, old fashioned, basic, beautiful, and not always connected to the world wide web. It is unofficial, unplanned, imperfect and out of order. Pajama town is sleepy, and goes to bed early, then it sleeps late, and, takes a nap if need be. It is dog-snooze in sun-shaft and taking the hard things in life like water off a duck's back.

Pajama town is my home, and it's yours too! Its all love and charm and gooey gooey goo. It's not anti-fashionista-- if you want to dress up, that's fine. There are some very snappy dressers here and they're good friends of mine. The point is, take your time! Get cozy, and wear whatever's right-- for you! Cuz this is a pajama town. you might as well admit it, cuz its true.

Chicken Bus

I’m writing today on the bus. It’s not a chicken bus, but it’s just as slow. The last time (well, the only time) I was on a real chicken bus, I had a bladder infection and had to ‘hold it’ for 5 ½ hours on the way from the Guatemala border all the way to Lake Panajachel through the Sierra Madre, on my way to visit a stray Wakefield hippie. I distracted myself by covertly slipping plantain chips to a little kid who was squished between me and his father as he slept with his machete between his thighs and his other kid on top of that. The bus groaned and lurched along to blaring latino pop tunes, stopping every 2 minutes to pick up more passengers and discharge garbage out onto the highway, or wherever. Hijole! That was a loooong ride, the scenery was gorgeous, and one chicken bus ride was enough for me…

Today’s bus is a lot cleaner and I fit into the seat, designed for adults. My bags enjoy a whole spot to themselves beside me. People with large personal buffer zones get on and off the bus without so much as a squawk. Rain pours down outside and the scenery is strip-mall Hull interspersed with stations d’essence and depanneurs. I don’t have to wonder what will happen next, or how much to agree to pay, although I do wonder where to get off to make a connection to the ‘other’ side, (Ottawa), and then to the O-Train to Carleton University. “C’est une autre compagnie,” the drivers tell me, explaining their cluelessness as to what goes on ‘over dere’. Three busses later, I find it myself.

You see, I have been exploring transportation alternatives in the region since the SAAQ (the Quebec Car Bureaucracy) suspended my license and vehicle registration for taking five unfortunate steps across petite Rue St Henri next to Jean Talon Market in Montreal last October. “But officer!” I had protested, to no avail. Apparently yellow stripes are not universal markers for pedestrian crosswalks, but how am I supposed to know that, estie, tabernack?! I tell everyone who stops to pick up the hitchhiker-with-a-briefcase my tale of woe (or, whoa!). I even told the cops who stopped to harass me the other day. Oddly, I have the luxury of time and the creativity and patience to make do in the meantime, so my car stays parked, and I’m going back to Montreal next week to fight the ticket, which has grown from $55 to $210 in the year that I ignored it. (Ca c’est ma faut, biensur!). It’s extortion, and I won’t pay it. I will wear decent clothes and address the judge as ‘your honor’ en francais.

Yesterday was a holiday for my thumb and I was glad that I didn’t have to go anywhere. I was woken early anyway by the rumble of another kind of chicken bus as it pulled up in front of my window, packed full of 89 yapping birds on their way to the Thanksgiving Day slaughter. The old bus has been parked out on the back 40, serving as a hen house, but it will be empty now by sundown. (Maybe I can borrow it to get to school tomorrow, and mark my trail with mud and blood through the tunnels of Academentia!) Meanwhile, the farmer and his sons have their work cut out for them, as wringing chicken necks “is never very pleasant,” the farmer’s wife, my friend, advises gently. I think it’s a good thing— young boys learning where their food comes from, and how to face the grimmer side of life, right in front of my window. I would have even stayed to help, but... I had to catch the bus.

Mud is Not for Sissies

It’s fall in the Gatineau hills, and I’m shacked up in my friend’s loft in the top of a converted old barn. From the inside, it could be a spacious Soho studio, with its polished cement floor, high ceilings, picture windows, fairy paintings, sexy/artsy furniture, and, (god has blessed me,) a piano! I feel coddled, lucky to have temporary, comfortable refuge in a period of extreme homelessness and transition, and happy to not be sleeping in the car. As a matter of fact, it’s downright luxurious, in a way, although the furnace and the kitchen sink aren’t hooked up just yet, the mice keep nibbling at my supplies, and I’m still living out of suitcases because there’s no place, really, to put my things. But I digress. Luxury is relative, and I’m a happy camper with a roof over my head and a view of Gatineau foliage. Yes, I am home again.

Just outside the door, it’s another world. You see, my friend's husband has a brand new tractor, and he spends hours and hours driving back and forth, pushing dirt around, creating new piles and potholes and generally rearranging the earth— I’m sure with some plan in mind, but one that isn’t left to settle for very long before the strategy, or priority seems to change. We all have our way of working things out, and the sound his tractor going back and forth and around the loft/barn is a comforting one to me. It reminds me of my dad, who processed life in hay bales, not mud, but with a similar down-beat on the John Deere.

I’ve been slucking through the muck a lot myself lately, and not only in the squishy rubber-boot path from the studio to the car, where I keep a selection of shoes to slip into once I get out of the driveway. Great globs of bureaucracy are decorating my days and ruining my shoes. From complicated institutional procedures to parking tickets, insurance conundrums, financial woes, health care line-ups and loose ends of all sorts, my problems are the inevitable result of the mail having to follow a zigzag path across North America to find its way to me, which mostly, it doesn’t.

It’s hard to explain my transitional state, which some more annoying people have started to call my ‘lifestyle’. Bollocks. I guess they have never experienced the difficulty of finding a roost: the right roost, on the right tree, in the right forest, with the right companions. Maybe those people just take life as it comes to them, or never leave home in the first place. I find patience to be the only missing ingredient within myself, and the rest is just a matter of persistence. “I’m fine,” I say, with an evasive half-laugh and a shift of eyes to avoid the all too natural ‘interviews’ of the curious. (“How are you? Where have you been? What are you doing? Where are you now?”— Hand them a drink, point to a flock of geese, make a weather comment, run.)

Other people require no explanation. They take one look at me up to my knees in mud, and nod quietly in greeting. They know that mud is not for sissies. One of these friend-saints gave me some words the other night. He explained to me how the early English settlers to Canada (his ancestors), came over here and toughed it out for years, all the while groaning over the hardships and getting increasingly frustrated, until finally they managed to lurch free of the new world soil to return to the warm breast of the motherland. Once there, they realized mud was much sexier than the queen, and so they turned around and came back. “They called it the 10,000 pound cure,” he says. I have no idea exactly what that means but yes, it does feel that heavy, and yes, I think that it may have worked.

I’m tired. I show up with globs of wet dirt caked to my sneakers which are falling apart from walking so far, only to arrive back where I started. Not so unlike my friend’s husband on his tractor at the end of another day -- the terrain now both different, and yet essentially the same, as a result of his muditations.

So for those who still don’t understand, I’ll let Eminem speak for me, rather than attempting to explain any further. “A lot of people been asking me,” he says, “where the fuck I been at the last few years. Shit. I don’t know! … But I do know one thing… I’m back now… Ha ha!”