Can we heal across space and time?

The thing about love is that you have to be solid with your self first and this can be tricky for us artists and Orphan Spirits at times. We have to own up to our whiney and self indulgent nonsense and move on. Quash out negative thoughts—this does not mean you disconnect from reality. Love gives intrinsic tools to deal with harsh realities in a greater way for diminishing the harm done. We must never be divided by kin, colour of skin, ever again. The new paradigm will honour uniqueness—see your self radiating with divinity—imagine a golden globe in your belly. Let it slow your thoughts down to experience presence and know you are reborn with this eternity. Go for a long walk.

I am intuiting something about healing across time and though I know how powerful truth and words work in this endeavour, there is still much I am learning. We will evolve to transmute all the grief into gold and we will come to know that words matter more than we could have ever possibly imagined. Transform with silent resilience. Think and speak from on high and from everywhere—be the resistance de thought patterns that dishonor your self. Work at reducing the anger in your self first, and it will be reduced in the world.

We know that war and killing is wrong, will never be right, so, why do we have a knee jerk reaction and choose to fight? How many times do we choose to knee jerk to anger every day in little ways? Can we silence the war monger a different way by expressing goodwill to every passerby, every day? What can the role of artists and whores be to deter killings and negativity? Every artist was once a soldier and sought out sex for solace, escape from carnage done. How can we harness more of the memes that put us on the Orphan Spirit artist path? These are the conversations of alchemy we need to exchange with the currency of kindness. Be open to where the spirit is leading. Go with it.

Like cures like. In the alchemical cannabis mud crater, the Mother moves to a Scorpio position to give her Orphan Spirits garrulous attention. It is necessary to honour her and think of her hourly if we need reminding not to get mired in selfish sludge. When we’re ready, she pulls us out and rejuvenates, no matter what age. When you believe in infinity, age is irrelevant. This in itself is revolutionary. Engage in the greatest conspiracy of all time—the conspiracy of hope.

‘The River I Step In Is Not The One I Stand In’—Every time I cross this bridge over the Don in East Toronto I usually think two things—who was it who said this, Hegel? It is a lovely metaphor more appreciated on foot than in a car. I regularly look up and down the Don and like to imagine gondola’s floating by with riverside performances and water used imaginatively to drown out the hum of cars. This city is getting more creative, but there is still too much pebble and dash, and car culture is a culture’s vulture.

Divine power does not care how long it will take for us to reach our destiny—eventually we have to step into the river. Doing the alchemical dance with the Mother is often necessary when things are challenging in the grief cules—those clusters of grief bearing molecules, that Orphan Spirits can sometimes be burdened by.

We must be cleansed of all demulcent negativity that besmirched our small mortal frames to feed our sacred flames.

Whenever I try to retain a focus for releasing emotions, I remember that Aristotle, the founder of the peripatetic school, proved the best thinking is done while walking, and so I walk and walk to put the tugs from the past in perspective. A long time ago when I reclaimed the words, ‘dyke, lezzie, crazy’. I embraced the sting of marginalization and did come to see what a gift this margin did bring. In a world bent on oppression you can always find a piece of heaven in the margin. You can always find sexiness, inventiveness, creativity and survival. It bristles with sexual healing energy, even though in childhood they tried to crush us for not being ‘normal’. It is necessary to be awakened to all what this means and not take the road most traveled by lashing out at others marginalized.

Thank goodness for me I was a kid who managed to protect my imagination, but still, when will there be flaneur schools where we can ground our emotional selves while philosophizing how justice functions merely as a regulative ideal with critical costs?

It is said, and this I now understand that the gold child travels the reverse path in the brain where it is born immortal and united in infinity—the consciousness of the universe.

We can silence the war monger’s song when we own up to our own wrongs and yes, even by spreading good will to every passerby, every day. Of course there is more we must do but just starting with you changes everything.

There comes a time when you must transform the grief you bear into a gift. Going into my own spirit and wanting to understand infinity is what has sustained me—this and always trying to get closer to nature by flaneuring. Nature will win because She is everything. Being open to vulnerability has given me a strength I never thought possible. It is through vulnerability that you can glimpse how the fear based control that derails our thought processes is our final frontier. There are so many possibilities we can consider. Come play in the alchemical cannabis mud with me. It’s Mother’s medicine for you and me.

I see that no matter what happens to me, everything that will happen again will happen verily. Love is my irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly. I simply have a role to play and I am learning about love along the way, lucky, lucky me. I have been here before I will be here again and build on this work I now love.

I felt privileged to be a part of a conspiracy of hope in the 90’s in Toronto when gay and marginalized people were dying all the time from HIV/AIDS. The mettle of resistance, the drive for love, activism and friendship at its best, is what I was shown. I can’t imagine a more profound lesson on transformation. We kept our hearts open no matter the hurt and sometimes it really did hurt—sometimes it really hurt when you knew you only scratched the surface of someone’s hurt before they died and you felt afterwards that if only you got there sooner, there could have been more released. Sometimes injustice and indignity was oozing his wet, religious face everywhere.

Something akin to feeling strange, but that which is more ordinary and extraordinary happens when you stand side by side with this hurt openly. A step has been taken towards the infinite and a new strength is born.

Our friends and loved ones on the other side bless us with gifts too—we feel this when we ease them over. We learned that conquering fears of death were inextricably linked to fears of sexuality, and we had been taught to fear much, but we rose to the occasion in outstanding ways. I would say Toronto was exemplary in how it evolved through the HIV/AIDS crisis. Of course, I might be high on nostalgia here and that can certainly be taken into consideration, but we dared to hope for realities that were better for us, more sexual, more healing, more creative and when we continue to challenge our own racism, privilege, transphobia, we continue to be wonderful leaders in the world.

This golden path is traversing to another realm of grief. There comes a time when we take what we have learned and apply elsewhere.

This world I step in is the not the one I stand in.

I met Edward at the Eaton Centre through a friend who had spent a short time on his orphanage in Uganda. Edward comes back to Canada annually to see his family here, but in Uganda he houses orphaned children from the war and HIV zones in the surrounding countries, living with him on a farm. We had come to meet each other by me wanting to tell him about hemp and how if it was not grown there already, that he should consider growing it for its incredible nutrition and the many by-products that could be made. Edward was having a hard time with the difference between hemp and cannabis and he helped me realize that it is stupid to create a difference, so I no longer do. Both have a great economic, medicinal and eco destiny.

He was keen on learning more about the thousands of products that could be made from this plant that grows like a ‘weed’ and requires little or no pesticides. I had assumed Edward to be religious and so I wanted to let him know that I was a lesbian. He smiled and said, ‘I know. You behave like a man.’ ‘Really,’ I responded. ‘I thought I behaved much better than that.’

Edward said he thought if his government knew what this plant could do, and that it was legal to grow hemp in Canada, than it would be possible to grow it there too. He said cannabis grows there wildly already, which is what made sense to me. This is a plant that can grow everywhere, which is why it’s key to our green revolution and healing.

Suddenly my mundane surroundings was intruded upon by Edward lilting into our conversation a tell of torture and tragedy of one of his kids. Imperceptible tremors emanated from deep within—so deep in fact, it went below the ocean’s floor. I had met Edward for less than 10 minutes when he told me, and there is no preparing for imagining the horror of this, a young boy had his penis was cut off in the war.

Before he could finish this sentence of horror, I could feel my resentment build towards him for telling it, but it was something that was meant to be said. A pastiche of images trundled in front of me, and I am still processing them, and more words on this will come. We must see and insist on a world without such heinous sex traumas—we must insist on a world without war. There are many good things we can do and learn from each other and heal with each other. We’re called to do them.

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Below is an initiative that I am seeking partnerships on to bring health, healing and prosperity to Edward’s orphanage in Uganda. Please email if interested: lorettahempfactory@sympatico.ca

Operation—Hemp for HIV, health, and sustainability for Africa

ANTI-POVERTY TOURISM INITIATIVE

FOR BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE

OF HEMP AT HOUSE OF HOPE IN UGANDA

Rationale: This is a logical evolution, extension of eco-tourism, though more intensely involved. Kenya may have been one of the first eco-tourism initiatives in the 70’s when people were convinced not kill animals like giraffes because Europeans would pay to come and see them in their environment. Many people are good willed and want the opportunity to do something more than just send money or items to Africa. They know Africa’s problems are significant and complex, but people want more satisfaction in making a difference. They want to be part of the transformation to long term sustainability and hemp holds the key to this possibility. Many people want to see Africa, feel its air and earth and connect with its people because deep down is an inkling that Africa is the Mother of all of us.

As a part of the House of Hope’s long term goal for sustainability, the anti-poverty tourism initiative will fulfill the following objectives:

• Bring resources for upgrading supplies, food and medicine and a focus on hemp.

• Bring farming equipment, art, music, and school supplies.

• Bring medical, nutrition and vitamin supplements.

• Bring skills for short term, and the possibility of doing an internship longer term. This will provide an opportunity for students and other professionals seeking experience to work in Africa on HIV/AIDS, anti-poverty, and health initiatives with women and orphans, to determine if it is a good fit for the individual and for the House of Hope. Internships could be for up to one year for those providing skills in health care, education, social justice issues, (HIV/AIDS) women’s programming, child care, trauma counseling, research, labour and expertise in the hemp fields, solar technology, farming, irrigation, and construction.

It’s true there are many needs and the reason for focusing on hemp is because it is easy to grow with water (House of Hope has major river on the property that needs irrigating on 100 acres). Hemp is likely the most nutritious seed in the plant kingdom with its 3 essentially fatty acids and complete perfect protein. Food, fibre and oil products can be made from this amazing plant. It grows like a weed with little or no pesticides required.

• For those who have always dreamed of Africa and its animals, and who are affected by the struggles for social justice and want to see an end to poverty, than this venture is a great opportunity to do something deeply meaningful on a two-week or month trip.

• For those who want to envision with the orphans their strength, leadership and hope for the future of Africa.

• For those who want to help bring an end to poverty.

• It would be the goal that such a trip would create long lasting bonds and that when anti-poverty tourists return to their regular lives and responsibilities, they shall feel compelled to continue to be involved in raising funds for farm equipment, irrigation, and developing a hemp industry for its nutrition and sustainability. Or, perhaps they would be interested in raising funds to send playground equipment, nutritional and naturopathic supplements, computers, musical instruments, books and clothing. Medical supplies also need to be sent on a regular basis.

• This trip will be packaged to include airfare, a day’s driving trip from the airport, and orphan meals for two weeks. Yes, you will eat, break beans and rice, and very little or no bread, with the orphans, and you will very likely lose weight. Anti-poverty tourists will be expected to bring their sleeping bags and tents, and bring supplies, including nutritional supplements. They will be expected to work in the fields, work with the women and children, in the kitchen, in the laundry, with sick little ones.

• There would also be 3 day trips organized for hiking along the river, and into the beautiful mists to meet the guerrillas Diana Fossey fell in love with, or a day trip to see lions lounging on a range. Winston Churchill called Uganda the ‘Pearl’ of Africa. It has the highest mountain ranges next to Kilimanjaro. It is lush and bountiful of animals and friendly people.

• There is golf.

• Anti-poverty tourists will share resources and skills, and the orphans will share their survival and heroism, and this sharing will bring benefits to both. There is much healing to be done from poverty, HIV/AIDS, and war trauma. There is also joy to be shared.

• In addition, anti-poverty tourists are expected to get their medical check-ups, shots, and bring nutritious supplements and other items. All come with full hands and full luggage of necessary items.

• Charitable status is provided for receipts needed.

• To begin with, groups will only be 4 to 6 people and will depart from Toronto. The first window for an opportunity to go would be from January 15^th 2007 to March 1^st, 2007 and the next window of opportunity would be April to July 2007 whereby those who are interested in staying on could arrange with Edward a summer placement, work in exchange for being there.

The hemp initiatives will begin by focusing on simple hemp foods, such as hempzels made like a soft pretzel. The flour, oil and seeds need to become a part of the daily staple of food for the orphans and all others. It’s good as a butter, as a cereal/gruel, or putting seeds on bread, beans and rice, etc. The potential for hemp milk must be considered initially, but it requires a machine.

Once irrigation is achieved and much larger scale hemp growth can occur, initiatives for HIV and women’s programming will include making hemp soaps and taking hempzels or other hemp food products to the market place.

The fibre part of the plant could be used to make fuel. Although equipment will be required, initially, some rudimentary experimentation can be done with making fibre fuel and hopefully soaps if vegetable glycerin can be obtained, but ideally, the goal would be to eventually make a hemp glycerin. There can also be experimentation with the soil to see what type of ceramic or cosmetic products could be made, such as a hemp mud. The goal would be to get some simple hemp food, soap and cosmetic products to the market place and after some successes, make the case for utilization of the fibre on a much bigger scale.

Edward currently has an acre where he farms maize and millet and the first planting of hemp can go in there, but there are 100 potential acres along the river that needs irrigation and preparation for planting. There are also many more acres aligning the property that is government, other farmers renting out land, and it is believed that once hemp proves itself, it will be grown all over, enabling a much greater economic opportunity.

ANTI-POVERTY TOURISM

CHANGE THE WORLD ON YOUR NEXT HOLIDAY—BY MAKING HEMP SUSTAINABILITY A REALITY IN AFRICA

Contact: Loretta Clark lorettahempfactory@sympatico.ca

(416) 461-6448

Cannabis-induced erotic emailing and sexual healing

The thing about being a sex chaser and grief-bearer is that one is susceptible to rejection. But the good news of this modern world is that there is always a fresh crop of rejecters around the on-line corner to keep you on your sexy, metaphysical toes, and erotic emailing, as I’ve discovered can cure sexual woes.

Secrets, blood, fire, fuel this perverted desire. I raised my eyes to Toronto’s unclear skies and conjured your butch thighs. I hardly know you but you mated with my muse just as we mused on our mutual love of Joan D’Arc. I believe that all love is made up of a thousand different subtleties and now I send love soaring with my words. Sometimes, however ephemeral, emotional love angst is just another medium to add to the canvass of consciousness, which is what I do here, for you, as a parting gift.

Pleasure in woman is such a magic spell, the true joy of life worth the risk of rejection. Besides, some rejecters are a fantastic artistic feed, especially when they embody those hockey and/or horse riding thighs, thighs that could crush a mini cooper. Thank-you Mother. As I walked and thought about my current rejecter—how sexy she is, I felt her radiating down the hilly bluff road. It’s true I am a wanton whore for words to woo her right now, but I do sometimes see with clarity how I signed up for this destiny. Other times I just fall sweetly. Ah, masochism…hmmm. Danger pleasures is what I share with other Orphan Spirits, and it’s okay, but we have to share it with consideration and contemplation. We must always be compassionate to ourselves.

We orphans, waifs, whores, grief bearers and the like have such a big job to do, alchemizing so much grief and turning it into gold. Childhood should not feel like the eternal roughness it can be, but it still does. It must be shared to begin the nascent percolation to sex and/or to love the pain away. I don’t think sex was intended to protrude into so much of our lives, but it did because of control. You couldn’t get the masses to do what you wanted unless you controlled the crotch and they most certainly did and we all have been victimized by it. Enslavement isn’t only with the chains we see but finally at last we are breaking free. It has been deemed by the Almighty Mother—I take no direction from any other. She rewards me with the poetic insights that flow from cannabis. Oh cannabis, our home and native plant…Me, sex and cannabis have a role to play in the green revolution, which is exciting, since I am so fond of the French one. I’ll have to design my fetish gear in French Revolution style, minus the hat and frills out front, but definitely accentuate the boots. My blue/green jacket would be made of hemp, of course, likely not unlike the original.

I go to the water to feel what is real because the water floats away my memories so I no longer have to deal with how they feel—empty it in The 4th River Orphan Spirits! I am not just a sex toy, although it sure can be fun to be one. I am not just a collector of metaphysical curiosities—though what a journey I have been on. This waif comes with a warning label: she bends trickery with romanticism and will lead you to the cannabis-induced mud dance for sexual healing by erotic emailing. However, this is also what the waif knows about transmutation into gold: Sometimes I do feel lonely in this life of lesbian writer = marginalization x 2. Instead of denying it, I try to sit with it and say, it’s just being human, it’s okay. The more this awareness and kindness towards my self settles in, the stronger and better I become.

To be the change agents we’ve been waiting for, we should reinvent our sensuality, creativity, and mingle both in our developments, including economic ones. My sighing heart holds something meaningful in all of it; the dance must take on a fearless wend for those who try to understand. The following landscape is a statement on my soul:

So, soothe your self as I am inclined to do with an image of layers of muddy life forming, noisome vapours, alchemizing, steaming, transforming a ring of smoldering ashes. When I am there, I usually first remind myself, ‘oh Scorpio, you definitely crawled out of the dark side of the pond, you kinky creature. It’s a good thing you have hairy, spindly legs to do your dance around alchemical vapors. Come on, Scorpio, you know you can’t help yourself, go ahead, do your famed two step’: Sex and death, sex and death, why contemplate other stuff, when these two lay you to rest? Appease your inner addictions, yield instead of deny, the rewards of awareness are awareness. Sometimes my sex leads the dance to mock and tease Death, taunting her a little: ‘Death, you’re so pedestrian, such a random peon—you have no respect for order—I am not afraid of your power.’ Death then rises up out of vapor and sucks sex in close to steam her cunty soul. Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, inner thighs moisten and drizzle. ‘Sex, my sweaty little darling one, sometimes you are just a bitch with a silly itch. I am the one, the penultimate submission, for which all must come, indeed succumb, ya, ya.—there’s no one who gets it more than me.’ This steamy mingling always gets the better of sex and she begins to liquefy in Death’s lust becoming so hot she must cool off, however hard and wet.

Luckily, there are always sex creatures on the horizon: Taurus’s, Virgos, Libras, Leo’s, Gemini’s, Cancer’s, all of course, potential rejecters, but still they flash their irresistible dance cards, and the call for sex to cool down, calm one self, cannot be ignored. When someone offers their body, it must be considered sacred. When ambrosia flows through both sets of glands and nectar is released from restraining thighs, such golden and silvery light rays settle down unsettling thoughts, finally. Ah, and then sex with cannabis is such a great mix—it ameliorates the historical fix—and we are becoming unfixed.

Death knows life has been cruel to women and she wants the dance to be honoured with how women have survived. Her vaporous fumes are the creative drive. Sometimes she rubs on a sensitive nub and a hairy sting medicates and predicates. Death is the Queen of romance and eventually she puts you to rest, so why not become less afraid of her in the romance dance? She wants you to know that life is much greater than mere chance. The Queen of pleasure does not abstain; rather she detains the pleasure and makes art of it every day.

When sex is a safe distance from the hot liquid she turns to Death now masquerading wispy and weakened missing sex so sublime. She loves my sex because my sex is not afraid, and it’s always hard to let a good girl go—this is I truly know. ‘Til next time Death, as I must cool off in the cannabis mud and rejuvenate, escalate my light, gain insight into my plight. I don’t know why so many are so afraid of you—you really are muddily sweet in all that heat.’ Death always gets the last line: ‘It is you who chooses to look at life through muddy ashen lenses, and I know it is good, because I chose that you would SEE, so remember my sweet sex, it is the greatest spiritual privilege to have a dance with me—now let go and believe. I’ll be waiting for you lover girl—you’re my special one.’ My sex knows Death says this to all her girls, but still, a craving is quenched in hearing it so.

Such a dance always leaves one feeling present, at last. When you are present, when your attention is fully in the now, that presence will flow into and transform what you do. There will be quality and power in it, but you must at least become friendly with the present moment, even before you can enter the dance. Cooling off in a lover’s contemplation with having sex feels good, so I say to myself, ‘make love as though it is your last day alive. Love a woman deeply because you want to stop time for love not because you want to be remembered as a good lover.’ Wanting to be remembered is a shallow grave, be brave and heal.

Even if you cannot be sexually present as such is a women’s challenge, know that you are infinity, that you were forged in the stars long ago and that the Almighty Mother will bring you home to her eventually, but in the meantime, make the world better with better love and sex.

Baste in the cannabis mud and remove the abusive crud. When the moon passes over Scorpio muddied waters, you can heal childhood trauma wounds. Transform the grief your bear into your gift. She/he who is reborn in imagination discovers the latent forces of nature. Beget a new star and heaven within the alchemical cannabis mud and transmute all that interferes with your infinity. Remember, energy follows thought. Be vigilant about ending oppression, but also be vigilant about not submitting to oppressive thought patterns. Heel, feel and sexually heal.

One of the great skills that come from the dance is to transform words that have caused deep hurt, words such as ‘cunt’. The oppressive slave makers and haters of women loaded this word with their germ and their sperm, but it just so happens to be my humble fate (given to me as a gift from Death) to be a word transformer and lucky for me, ‘cunt’ is the greatest mystery of them all, which is why I must love and plunge her deeply to be a true transforming agent for golden change. I take my work seriously in this erotic emailing game—this is one from She who inspired much of this transmutation:

Where ever the wild mare cunt wants it, she will be indulged. Can a she-wolf/waif break a mare? Hmmm. Well, no doubt, it is a deep and holy challenge, and one must rely on internal and external resources to mount this sermon. One must rely on planetary alignment and communing with the female spirits. The she-wolf/waif requires this: several probing emails to learn more, to build up, to make the wild mare cunt weak with words, because if the she-wolf/waif has lived to see proof of anything biblical, it is this--the word is INDEED mightier than the sword. This is hard for a wild mare cunt to believe, especially she who loves to look at her foe in the glint of her sword; she who is aroused when hearing her sword clashing and scraping violently up against another; she who is sated when plunging her sword into flesh, but so sad when the game is over, or is it a sadness that comes with the false belief of conquering? Beloved Joan knew that when you removed the ‘s’ you had the ‘word’. Because of her steely ways, the wild mare cunt is a truth-seeker, not so unlike the she-wolf/waif. Obviously, she is finally ready to acquiesce, to accept the she-wolf/waif for who she really is--medicine for wild mare cunt--and the sooner the better.

I swear the Mother puts them all on my path to ensnare but also to share, and look at the creativity it did bear. I am lifted with erotically composed emails but when you’re a sex chaser like me, you have to have a healthy dollop of resistance for rejection—it gets those sex molecules bristling for another dance, to transmute more desire into more good. When we engage in sexual love and healing by erotic emailing, we can have the best conversations ever. Engage in the conspiracy of hope for better love Orphan Spirits and take an oath to transmute your grief into a gift, remain ever mindful knowing the Almighty Mother conspires tirelessly in our favour.

No matter how many times you get rejected Orphan Spirits, never stop believing in romance. Live the love you dream and speak well of love in your head and heart. Whatever heavy energy you bear, swoosh it in The 4th River.

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See more about hemp cannabis products for development on website, www.thehempfactory.com Interested in developing alchemical cannabis mud and other hemp/cannabis based products—if so contact: lorettahempfactory@sympatico.ca LOOKING TO DEVELOP A FORMULA FOR EROTIC EMAILING TO ENHANCE SEX: if interested, same email address. Loretta Clark

Rebirthing in St. Eustache

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 43^rd 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.

The 4th River - A Multi-Reality Medium

Today is January 4^th 007—the right time in space to open the gates of ‘The 4^th River’ and let it finally take its course. It is my destiny after all. I have been alchemizing this story for quite some time, churning it in my psyche, and though I’ve chastised myself on procrastination, I can see now that I wasn’t procrastinating, but alchemizing. Brewing and stewing my whole life long, sometimes a wee vaporous puff escapes from the corner of my eye, and then I know it’s time to start writing again. Of course, I could be delusional, but it has been my good fortune to have been born with a supernatural fear of the medical model and to never have been diagnosed. The Dark Mother says it was a gift from her. I also had a talent for lying and being a trickster for the first part of my life, but have devoted the second part to being a truth seeker. Life is after all, quite short, and it is the truth that sets us free.

If what I am now writing is prophetic, than this is the year that cannabis/hemp will be set free, and I will go to Africa and start an underground organization called ‘13 Orphans’ to begin a hemp revolution from Tanzania all the way up to Afghanistan. My name is Lucy and the Almighty Dark Mother has pushed me around since I was young, probably in the womb, and now she says it’s time to write this down and make it happen. It is all based on dreams, fantasies, sexual desires, social justice, and even a martyr complex because of my damned Catholic upbringing, which has always been a curse and a gift, but mostly has felt like a sexual curse, especially lately. My undiagnosed realities include the Dark Mother sometimes being mean to me with her whispering voice, ‘you will always look for love, even crave it, but you might never find it, ya, ya’. One of my addictions she gave me from this voice is being addicted to feeling insecure and although I am still an excellent hider—though she’s breaking down these barriers too in order for the world and me to apparently feel better one day, I am so often chasing women in a hundred different interior ways, and of course, I fall for the ones who don’t want me. I cannot think of a word for my sensitivity.

So, I might be torn asunder by lions on a range or bitten by a poisonous snake while I am in Africa because I have had dreams such as these, but it will be for a good cause. Africa—I have fantasized going there since before the age of 10 and I cringe admitting this, but it all started with stories from missionaries at church. I escaped my outsider suburban life by dreaming of toiling her land and planting seeds, feeling her with my bare feet. As I grew into an aware Feminist, I shunted this dream to the recesses of my mind, embarrassed that I once thought like a Colonialist Christ, like so many white people, that I would go there and give them what they needed. Many years have passed and my life has been rich in goodwill, grief, sorrow and joy and I have been saved by my imagination on many occasions. But the Dark Mother recently made it very clear to me that it was time to get over my white ass and go. Africa is after all the Mother of all of us and she is owed. I am relinquishing my part of the monumental debt to her into the 4^th River so that I may rest finally on her milky shores.

If I have lived for any pedestrian reason at all, it is to participate in a good cause. The Almighty Mother is dark and mean but she has to be—look at the mess we’re in? The polar bears are starving to death, Katrina, Tsunami, possibly caused from the oil we’re sucking out of the ocean floor, even though this is never mentioned as a possible cause. War, sexual trauma, a daily television staple that is hard to resist because of its forensic and technological creativity, but is always about women being raped and murdered because we certainly have been given the message early on that this easily can and does happen to us, day in day out.

Yes, the Dark Mother is mighty MAD MAD MAD and she is summoning many of us to crack the whip or we’ll all be whipped for good. I may be a humanitarian, but I am not doing it for any of you, you ugly masses; you make me angry with your greed and violent impulses. No, I am doing it for her love and her love only. If she has recruited me for higher reasons, they would include depression, substance use, a weakness for wanting sex and a desire for danger. It’s what makes me special.

I am no saint, that is for sure, but she did make herself known to me in my childhood reveries climbing the Scarborough Bluffs. It was by the water that I first felt her presence, and it did feel holy. She reminds me of this sometimes and makes me see her in many of the women I desire, which has been more torment than pleasure, but being masochistically bent, I, of course, blend the two feelings together, and do enjoy. But now it is pay back time and I could never say no to her because she has hinted, taunted, teased, that she will be my ultimate prize, so I am going soon, sweet Motherfucker that I strive to be.

Currently, I am doing a short term project at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). It’s such a good fit for me as the other two in my pod are Scorpios and we have transformed our space into a bit of a pervert pod, forming a bond between us—it’s the kind of ‘pervert’ that is de-toxifying and humorous and NOT toxifying—there is a huge difference and sexual healing is big on the Mother’s agenda—I’m just a sexual healing slut trying to soldier on for HER. They have massages here, one day maybe they will offer what I call Catholic massages, a little flogging, a little whipping—it’s far more meaningful when someone else does it for you!

When they gave me the keys to the office, my eyes alit with glee, something inside stirred, and I thought, finally, the keys to the asylum! Ha, ha, finally, they have no idea what they have done, but at least they won’t need to be forgiven this time, right Mother?

They say, ‘former patients’ I say former unpaid labourers, i.e. slaves.

I do have crazy thoughts at times, and, at least I am in the right place to have them, because I sense that some of the people working here, like me, were former prisoners in a previous life. They say ‘patients’ I say ‘prisoners’. How can I storm this Bastille while I am there? My heart is brimming with love and revolution. It will unfold as it is meant to, is what I must believe. It is.

I can see that one of the benefits of being at CAMH is access to the abundant pamphlets on the tendencies I have been beleaguered with, such as depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety. My thoughts re: suicide, if you have not thought about it 40 times by the age of 40, you’re probably not someone I would ever get close to, as you would lack a certain depth of feeling, a certain finessed compassion, understanding. I could be wrong, I like being wrong about such things, because there are always exceptions.

The people I love have been laid with grief.

My close friend ended his life and the devastation left in this wake is something we must strive to prevent. I don’t believe he wanted to as much as he was temporarily seized/paralyzed by sadness, and couldn’t see a way out, and had easy access to pills because of his profession. The night I learned of his death I dreamt about him sitting in a chair looking sickly and he gazed up to my sorrow and said, ‘have you come here to lecture me?’ My response in the dream was, ‘who could lecture on this?’

I see good evidence in this world that we are learning to liberate ourselves allowing children to grow without freezing their feelings out, but we have all inherited some pretty awful legacies.

My friend’s parents are good people. They came to Ottawa with a group of us to lobby gay-bashing in law as a hate crime. My friend and his lover had been gay-bashed. I believe this contributed to his suicide since he killed himself within a few weeks of Matthew Shepard’s murder and his accusers (soccer stars) never went to prison. I was hardly an amateur attending the funerals of young gay men in the 90’s, but his was the hardest to bear.

What is still upsetting to me is that because of his religion, his casket was not allowed in the chapel, and his burial had to be on the periphery of the cemetery, stigmatizing and punishing him, one more indignity, even in death. In death I believed he transcended this stigma, but we should all reach higher for harm reduction in life—nothing should be sacred from this principle.

If I had been born a decade earlier in the same repressive milieu, I likely would have become a nun. I know this because my first ‘unnatural’ obsessions were with nuns. I like putting quotation marks to emphasize words, including words I want to point out as being stupid, like ‘unnatural’ or ‘illegitimate’. I know we’re currently living in a world that is lamenting the loss of the empire’s superiority complex in language, but if it’s going down, could we not toss out some of the Fatherfucker words and make up new ones like Fatherfucker and transform other ones like Motherfucker, as I am hoping this question might do.

Because I hang around gay men as much as I do, my ability to cruise discreetly has been diminished and not discreetly. There must be a course I can take, a program I can enroll in? Fortunately, the good women at CAMH have been mildly amused by my flirting. The woman who hired me told someone in front of me that I was brilliant and I fell for her ruse as she knew with my narcissistic bent, that I would—still, she fantastically gave this opportunity to me so I know she must be part of the revolutionary plan.

The real reason she hired me was because I could immediately avail myself and because when trying to get things done with an unreasonable deadline, I transform into a pathetic waif, with as much charm as one can muster in middle age, but luckily, it is like good energy, and if you use it, you never lose it, and it comes in handy with flirting ferociously to move the myriad of tasks along.

Emotional tugs make me want skin to skin contact like a newborn. I’ve been touched—no not touched, smacked, slapped, hacked by the need for redemption of the Romantics; such hubristic folly turns me into a revolutionary over and over where I cannot and do not want to escape, as much as I want to understand. This crawl forward is never easy. Its success depends on me never knowing truly if what has happened to me is a sign from Pierre. Sometimes the signs are so obvious I feel him saying to me, ‘how many times do I have to prove it over and over for you to believe?’

I must throw it all with love into The 4^th River where turbulent, centrifugal forces swish and swirl the white water alchemy of innocence, of awareness, and in the centre of post coital tenderness, the accumulation of all desire, all unmet infant and childhood needs released at last. When your ego plummets your confidence rises from this watershed moment in the rushing sounds of joy, purity; at last not inspired or motivated by patriarchy and poisonous perversion—this orgasm reaches the summit of its true destiny. Or, is this death? The Scorpio delights with a sex and death appetite.

No domestic ease for this Scarborough soul, there is some kind of magic in those Bluffs and I submitted to the journey, knew it would be burdensome, lonely, but wounded I could see .

To ease the pain I am a flaneur and walk and observe everything—sometimes it is everything inside and other times it is outside. The two can become one and more. Sometimes I can even truly fall in love with my own city Toronto. Walking up Jones Ave. and peering down Gerrard St., I am suddenly awed on a climate change January eve. The sky shrieks pink with fluffy haloed lavender frays as a backdrop to street car lines that always remind me of our city being stitched together loosely, somewhat recklessly, but still, it holds itself together well, a metaphor that aptly suits me. Dark stitching and a sissy sailor’s sky provoke a lost context and the want for more nuanced feelings envelopes me.

I love my city, which is why I want her to be better at diversity, to make an everlasting, deep commitment to diversity, and to reward those who continue to challenge diversity’s meaning at its most heartfelt level.

The people who will lead the way will have known, met, fought, acquiesced deeply with grief and will still lay with love. Revolutionary love is the Mother of all of us. Rise up Orphan Spirits.