It occurred to me while in a Tim Horton’s washroom en route to bring my grand baby into the world, my red headed rebel baby whom I dreamt about last night, smiling and winking at me, inferring, ‘roll out the revolution Chema, I have come back to you.’ I want to be called Chema, after Che, instead of grandma. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not as though I don’t like ‘grandma’, as grandmothers are the ones who are going to turn this world around. I know it. I just feel it’s time to honour Che in a new way. I am white, but his dream of uniting all Indigenous People in the world is deeply exciting to me. We of Irish and French blood also want to see the end of colonialism, remembering its harm. We must do it with intelligence, without violence, is a voice I hear and feel is near. Nelson Mandela can be our role model and other unsung grandmothers of every Mother Tongue sung.
Of late I am swimming effortlessly along the currents of a sexual healing, writing a lot of erotic emails, and having too much fun. But, I see now that sexual healing is the most powerful kind of healing and one that is resurrecting its demand for redemption, romanticism, and sex that soars. In our efforts for empowerment, we must paradigm shift, and the sooner we do, the better sex for all, including those who prefer none, because sex is not just an act, it’s a way of being that is about true comfort in one’s own skin, finally.
Desiring this for oneself extends the desire for others to know the same comfort. It is a lesson in love for when you get to touch another’s skin and playing with words can enhance and bring much more love and sexiness into the mix. Don’t kid yourselves that we have been sexually liberated, there is a lot of rotting, patriarchal epidermis out there, and the circumcision required is from all of our souls and all of our genders, and our minds which have been systematically fucked with.
One of the lessons for me from ‘Family Week’ is that the legacies of war and trauma live on for generations. Indeed, the illness of our minds, hearts and souls is proof that is has, and what I share with my Queen St. lobbyists and so many others, is having known the long lingering dark inkling of despair. Some are luckier than others in the karmic roll of birth, and the role of resiliency, but some have had abuse, colonialism, rape and racism ground in too far and for too many generations. Think about this when you enter Queen St. and they ask for money. Think of your spare change as a tax levied for the legacies they bear, and don’t forget, it is their lobby, so be a kind guest in their vulnerable space. Where ever there is war and trauma, there is horrifying rape and mutilation of the flesh and of the spirit. Graves may say, ‘rest in peace’, but until we end all war, peace won’t be granted to anyone, and why should it?
What I also felt from this week is that art is a recovery model that has not been given its proper due. Let’s face it, art, mental health, and addiction have been having a metaphorical threesome since the beginning of humanity. Trust me, a little bi-polar or schizophrenia went a long way to help paint a few ritual buffalo haunches on those dark, flickering illuminated rock protrusions? I know I should eschew generalizations, but it is probably why artists have not been the best candidates for parenthood, being possessed by ghostly, wandering muses; being obsessed for resolutions of the glaringly obvious kind, but harder still to come are resolutions from the conflicts we cannot so easily grasp, except with a little help from addiction, now and then. I am not trying to glorify or minimize anything here as I know how much havoc can be wreaked by those possessed. I just wish we could give up some of our self-regulating selves—the comatose parts that were crystallized when educated to crush out our sensitivities, crush out our creativity, in the name of reason, in the name of might being right—what a blight. It’s no wonder we suffer inside. Though I should put it in perspective—many people are lousy as parents, not just artists. Until we see with honest eyes the myriad of ‘reasonable’ ways we harm children, and how generations of harm have yet to be reconciled, mental health and addictions will continue to beleaguer us. No prescribed petrochemical pill is going to be the fixer, only awareness. Even half awareness and half prescribed petrochemical pill is a good starting place.
The ones I will never trust are the ones who don’t hear voices because they will not be open to hearing the voices for justice. I sure learned it young to keep the voices a secret, but they have now initiated their own Declaration of Independence and refuse to shut up, but without the firearms.
I am optimistic because when a perception is shifted, and I see shape shifters everywhere, and when this shift occurs, it snips a heavy weight and reduces the malaise on everyone. Addiction is life. Mental illness is life. Breathing is life. Death is life. Sex is life. Eating is life. It’s all just life and because I believe that it’s not so much the addiction and the illness that is the problem, as much as it is the perception that is the problem, or the legacies underneath it are the problem, and that before we can fully de-stigmatize, we have to decriminalize. Harm reduction is not just about reducing harm from addiction, it’s about reducing the harm from everything that has harmed us, and we have been mother fucking harmed by systems intent on satisfying the greed at the top.
Look at what the mustached monsters of reason did to cannabis, the plant of life? This plant that will gobble up emissions, this plant that is cleaning up Chernobyl, that is medicine for cancer, HIV, arthritis, MS, depression, and so much more. Yes, indeed, not only is pot my prozac, it gives me insight in a belief in infinity where I know a revolution of the spirit, of the environment, of a new economic paradigm, is taking hold. Yes, it is still criminalized, stigmatized, even users are afraid to come out of the cannabis closet, but if they use enough, they eventually will give up their self-regulating comatose existence, and liberate them selves. With this plant we could change everything and stop sucking the oil out of mother earth that is likely causing Tsunamis, earthquakes, in addition to choking off the atmosphere’s oxygen. The daddy oilgarchies prevent us from doing so, but given that we are perilously close to having sludge for lungs, cancer in all our cells, the mother weed will save the day and give us what we need. We just need to be open to seeing how the codes that govern our actions, thoughts and deeds can be our worst enemy. The shadowy, ethical zones that serve the status quo must also be examined, with scrutiny.
What have you done to end the legacies of war and trauma lately? What have you done in your mind, in your heart, in averting glances, and in the purchases you made? Don’t be manipulated to thinking the status quo doesn’t serve war. Ingest some cannabis. Get real.
In St. Eustache the red coats employed a favourite trauma trick still used today. They burned down a church with Patriots locked inside. They spread the flames to homes and farms all around wanting to send a message, as war fuckers commonly do, that being sympathetic to the Patriots, bearers of democracy, would result in their lives, if not taken, would be ruined. Many Inhabitants left for the U.S. afterwards. The harsh pain of the past must be forgiven—there is no other truth that I know to be so true. The more, more of us do it, the easier it is for others, such is the magic of self-replicating memes. We owe it to ourselves, to our children, grandchildren, and to the Queen St. lobbyists everywhere. End the legacies of war and trauma, racism and poverty and see how different mental health and addiction will look.
While flaneuring the other day, I thought of a note I wrote about 4 thousand volumes on metaphysics not revealing what the soul is. As a child from the curb I liked to watch clouds move along and think about how my soul might be connected and if perhaps it looked like a cloud and changed shape like a cloud. For us budding flaneurs, the school system was more than a torment. It was imprisoning. Given that all the great thinkers back to Aristotle more than mentioned in passing the importance of a walk for having your best thoughts, I don’t know why schools still insist on sitting kids down for hours long, all day long. A friend of mine who is a teacher and whom I tease, declaring she must endure my joyful jabs at teachers for all the bad ones I had to suffer, but at least she isn’t half my size, told me she was asked if she thought the school system was inherently racist. A flaneur gets excited by a question with meaning and beckons a good response. She said she thought it was Eurocentric, and not inherently racist. ‘What’s the difference whitey, I asked?’ It was a lively walk and talk we had and it left me with a little more hope for the school system. Little flaneurs as I once was do not learn best sitting in rows, no matter what our mother tongue, and this has nothing to do with an attention deficit disorder, as much as it has to do with a rigid system that insisted on teaching one way out of arrogance, abuse and lack of respect for creativity and difference, which I believe is inherently racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-flaneur. It also pushes poor kids towards prison.
In order for the budding flaneur to survive without a completely jaundiced view of the adult world and with half her liver still in tact, she must lie and manipulate. Creativity can’t stop, as it must find an outlet. There is also a chance she will become a sex and love chaser, and though this will no doubt bring trouble, it will be her saving grace, with or without the leather and lace.
Life is more interesting with more genders. There is no wisdom without uneasiness. Meaning has to be shared to be real. If you go into your loneliness with love and creativity, you realize you are never alone and infinity is the magnificent divinity. The dual state from which I emanate is where I can find freedom from my fear of rejection. If you are attracted to rejection, as I believe I must be to some extent, the good news is, is that there is always a fresh crop of rejectors around the corner, and having a sense of humour really helps. With cannabis I have come to better understand this dynamic dance I do, and learning about alchemy, so can you.
A young Jock Weir aching for action would find himself to be the victim of a frenetic kill by villagers, downtrodden, desperate, exhausted from poverty. Not so different from what happens today in war zones with those who feel they have already endured too much misery. Collective desolate impotence found a vent that day in
St. Eustache, but to settle the score of one dead Lieutenant, 70 habitants and patriots would pay the price with their lives.
St. Eustache would burn and so would the memory of such indignity, and so would fear and anger continue to burn. While on the road to find his regiment, and eager to take action, having just arrived in the new land, Jock Weir came from aristocracy, and therefore had a confident, if not arrogant gait. Like every foreigner, he too was vulnerable to the hidden landscape he had never traversed, let alone flaneured. Habitants emerged from the bushy quagmires and took him prisoner. When they heard gunfire in the woods, they transformed into murderous monsters and jabbed him with pitchforks, sliced him with a bayonet and even misfired a pistol on him a few times. Too much misery kills the senses and sends men in uncontrolled frenzies in war.
Sometimes I have seen in people I have known how their childhood injustices whacked out their ability to let go, like being hit behind the knees. They do get up again and again, but because their childhood injustices never found a reasonable ally, because their perpetrators, most often parents or priests, were never held accountable, and because they didn’t have a proper cushion to grieve, they sometimes can’t seem to fully comeback from that earlier trauma. They will be in a cycle of coming back to the source by getting into situations which for them are quite unjust, so there is always an opportunity to bring awareness to shifting perceptions, but it takes time and skill and all are unique—some survivors are more resilient than others, but all deserve the right to heal from childhood trauma. At the very least we should try and bring more kindness to the situation because eventually kindness will win the day over all childhood injustices. Then the knee jerk need for pillaging, raping and warring will become a dying ember. Its flame cooled in kindness.
The Rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada had its dying ember days here in St. Eustache. For my ancestor’s family it changed everything; he became targeted, which made his wife and children targeted. It is unclear how one child died, but the remaining two would have been seriously traumatized by likely witnessing their mother be raped and beaten by British soldiers—she would die one month later, and their father would be imprisoned and hanged, leaving them orphaned. They were separated but did become reunited some years later. I can feel more than see how this legacy contributed to a karmic family dynamic, and my awareness can bring an end to it.
Getting into a character named ‘Lucy’ allows the imagination to traverse those dark places and mix projections. As Lucy, my sense of Pierre, in my limited ability to understand who he was, mostly due to me not understanding French, is that there was deep remorse and regret for what had happened to his family. When you are capable of loving deeply you know what you have lost, but you also know that the only way out is with love. This is what Pierre intuits my way. Our Mother tongue is of the soul and therefore we will always understand and feel from one another on matters of justice.
Think 7 generations back when you ponder on your own mental health and addictions.
Probably you’re the lucky first generation that gets to face the problem in a real way, not a religious way and sometimes not even a medical way because all know that both have at times made things worse, fueled the misery flame even stronger. The important thing to do is keep trying different ways not to hang onto the anger. Even if you don’t believe in infinity, you will be much more at peace. The thing about believing in infinity though—what is really exciting—is that you start to see how the universe conspires tirelessly in your favour.
170 years after the 1837 Rebellion in 2007, Lily was born in St. Eustache. Her name means truth and she is the promise of restoration of peace and kindness, security and love. She has beautiful long fingers and I project and imagine her playing the violin, forming a rebel girl band like the Dixie Chicks and using their musical instruments as weapons of mass instruction. The next revolution has to be a bloodless one and music and art are helping to lead the way.
One day I will tell my grand daughter what Thomas D’Arcy McGee said—one of the men who engineered our Confederation, and one who was known for his poetic love of words, politics, and too much drink: “So long as we respect in Canada the rights of minorities told either by tongue or creed, we are safe. For so long it will be possible for us to be united. But when we cease to respect these rights, we will be in the full tide towards that madness which the ancients considered the gods sent to those whom they wished to destroy.” McGee was murdered and it was generally believed he was murdered by a Fenian, whom he had been a harsh critic of in Canada and Ireland. Patrick James Whelan was arrested and hung in Canada’s last public hanging in Montreal in April 1868. McGee’s funeral was held on his 43rd birthday and had been the largest that Montreal had seen.
Canadians have had some difficulties leaving past troubles behind, but we must be vigilant on this, by integrating, by recovering and leaving it behind.
At only hours old my grand baby recognized me as a fellow rebel spirit by giving me the conspiratorial wink before nodding off. It may sound minor but when you are the recipient of the wink it is loaded with recognition and ritual. Her birth has changed this town. I walked around the river once brimming with tears, once illuminating the licking flames of injustice and trauma, and I feel renewed because of the promise of spring and because Lily is born in spring, in newness. Are we meeting again Pierre? I am not sure and it doesn’t matter. St. Eustache has regained a source of blessedness with the birth of our Lily. The Anglos and the French may always be heading for the divorce courts, but we have at least learned to live as unfaithful partners. What emerges from this is the possibility of a good friendship, which we should continue to strive towards. As in all lousy arranged marriages, which often begin with a variant of this kind of bad baggage (such as centuries of the English and French trying to outdo and undo each other—we really do have a lot in common), and we should be good to each other if for nothing else but the for the sake of our children. In this regard Canada as a country is like a good Mother because we did begin with an inkling of diversity—though not enough was extended to the Aboriginal community and we must make restitution, as must all Colonists towards all Indigenous Peoples—but the inkling was enough for us to grow and to learn that valuing diversity is our greatest asset. As a Mother Country we will lead the way, so raise a toast to D’Arcy McGee.
We are all born into the world with the prospect of meeting our many selves, our past and present selves. The soul is the ultimate goal, not status, in case you still didn’t know. An objective is to integrate with the soul. The disruption between body and soul has been the greatest in the sexual arena, which is where we must go to fix it. The degree to which sexual disruption occurred is very deep, like an impending tsunami. Shame, the law, the church, the medical system, all collaborated to greater and lesser degrees to ensure people would come to self regulate, repress their desires to the extent that sexual abuse illness, the oppression of women and abuse of children continue to thrive. All the signs are present that we are shifting this and when we do, all will benefit, all will be raised up.
Rise up orphan spirits, the world is ready to know that it is your soul, not your family status, which will lead you on the golden path. Right now all the Holy Mothers are straddling the girdle of the great one, emanating from her equator, tidal waves of awareness.
