Friday, June 23, 2006

connected by the rhythms

to iPod or not to iPod. that is the question. no, seriously. when i'm out there, walking around or on the bus I have the choice of listening to my iPod or not. this means every CD I own plus all the music I've downloaded plus all my CBC Radio 3 podcasts and even some BBC 4 Documentaries are at my finger tips and anything I could ever want to listen to is as simple as swishing my thumb around the circle some number of times.

without the iPod, I'm a part of it all. small joys reach my heart - the child playing some silly game with mommy, the girl on her lunchbreak stopping to talk to the homeless man beside the hotdog cart, the people at the sandwich shop going out of their way to make my moment in their store sweet... you know the little things. I go with the flow, move with the sidewalk traffic and I feel like I'm really a part of it all. I feel the energy flow as the same sun warms my shoulder as everyone else. It's a natural flow, it's me, it's my rhythm in tune with the people around them and it's possible to feel love and appreciation.

with my iPod and whatever playlist, album, artist or genre I got rollin on shuffle... it's different. that vibe, that rhythm, that sound seems almost to come from the inside... and in a way it does because I chose which wave I would catch. however at the same time as it comes from inside, it also wraps me up and folds me inside. it detaches me from the street and the people roaming along it. I no longer flow as they do, but instead I move at whatever speed the music moves me. I move in and around and through - I slip sideways so that I don't have to change my rhythm.

When I choose to iPod I'm choosing to separate myself from all of the life around me and plug in to this artificial rhythm and force my body to flow to whatever it is i've chosen... the chaos of broken social scene, the aggression of rise against or nine inch nails, the vaguely cheesey longing in solo boy singers,...whatever it is it's not the natural flow that surrounds me. When I plug into my iPod, I think I'm really plugging into myself. my blood is flowing and I choose the music that most closely matches the emotion that results... or does it choose me?

it's a choice indeed. I'm glad I have the iPod because there are times it seems to be the only option. I need to get back into my head and move around at it's determined pace and sometimes nothing matches that pace as well as Greenday's Jesus of Suburbia... And then I'm glad also for the moments when I plug into the sidewalk and dance to same the rhythm as all the other whose feet share it with me.

someone left a marker at this page...why? this passage here...could it be?

What I'm Reading: Even Cowboys Get the Blues by Tom Robbins. As I turn the page on page 72 I find a little slip of paper from the corner of a sheet of letterhead for the company my recent ex-roommate works... and I think 'that's weird... Steve didn't finish this book or som'n? this is such a bad bookmark..." and then I read this paragraph on page 73 and it dawns on me that just maybe someone wanted to remember this. Steve? Dan? Someone else?

"...relationships seem to lead only to marriage, and for most dumb brainwashed women marriage is the climactic experience. For men, marriage is a matter of efficient logistics: the male gets his food, bed, laundry, TV, pussy, offspring and creature comforts all under one roof, where he doesn't have to dissipate his psychic energy thinking about them too much---then he is free to go out and fight the battles of life, which is what existence is all about. But for a woman, marriage is surrender. Marriage is when a girl gives up the fight, walks off the battlefield and from then on leaves the truly interesting and significant action to her husband, who has bargained to 'take care' of her. What a sad bum deal. Women live longer than men because they really haven't been living. Better blue-in-the-face dead of a heart attack at fifty than a healthy seventy-year-old widow who hasn't had a piece of life's action since girlhood. Shit O goodness, how I do go on."

shudder...

eta... not that anyone believes that marriage IS always like this or even that it has to be. but in all honesty I think I have never rushed to be married and that I ran from the one time I came even remotely close is that this sort of idea has always been my fear. Because this is definitely not an impossible or unrealistic picture of what it can become.

I know that there are people who have - or will have - marriages that are nothing like this, that are or will be what marriage can and should be. And I know that if I do decide to get married someday it will be nothing like that above picture. Partnership. Love. Respect. In the trenches fighting the battle together. Interesting and significant life together ...and that's what it's all about!

Friday, June 02, 2006

an article from political affairs dot net and People's Voice

I just like the whole article and couldn't say it any better. this is something that's really been on my mind since it started.

THE SIX NATIONS blockade at Caledonia has outlasted the 1990 Oka struggle to become the longest First Nations blockade in Canada's history. At times there has been a testy reaction by a very small minority of white extremists, but on the Native side there has been a very firm resolve for disciplined and peaceful pressure on government to win negotiation and solution.

This land was registered as under dispute and apparently on the federal government's calendar for a hearing sometime in the next 100 to 150 years, going on past practice. This disgraceful situation probably would have continued if the federal government had not added insult to injury by selling the disputed land to a private developer. That's a decision without a hearing - so much for the process of law!

Knowing that in a few days their land would be lost forever, the people of the Six Nations played their last card, blockading the land, and later Caledonia's main street (part of the disputed land) and the Highway Six by-pass around the town in response to an early morning raid by the Ontario Provincial Police.

The response of the population in southern Ontario has been quite calm and there is a growing core of support for the Native people. The weekly counter-protests are organized by a minority of hotheads with racist tendencies who scream for law and order, yet are determined to bypass legal negotiations and bully the Six Nations into street submission. This will not happen.

By the Victoria Day weekend, considerable progress had been made, although unfortunately this was not officially reported by the government. This progress included an apparent commitment to return land that houses a defunct and vacant Correctional Facility, originally taken illegally from Six Nations, after an environmental study to establish the condition of the land. It was widely rumoured that there would be a moratorium on the disputed Douglas Creek land and a third party archeological study for graves of Native people.

This led to a goodwill offer by the Six Nations to open Argylle Street. But on Friday evening, May 19, the anti-protests became more aggressive. When the Six Nations people started to dismantle their barricades on Monday, May 22, the rednecks could not stand the prospect of peaceful resolution without retribution. The baseball-bat armed mob put up their own barricade and the situation degenerated, complete with physical engagements. The Native people threw up a new defensive barricade, dug up the road and prepared to defend themselves. A state of emergency was declared in Caledonia, and people worried that the Canadian Army would be called in.

Some facts must be stated for the record. During this protest no Native person has attacked a resident of Caledonia even when provoked with racist slurs. When the citizens of Caledonia had a rally at the Fair Grounds, the Native people applauded their right to congregate peacefully. A young Six Nations man was shot just under the eye with a pellet gun; the next day a young intruder was captured within their camp driving erratically and in possession of a pellet gun and military equipment, including a flack jacket. He was handed over unharmed to the OPP. Violence and the threat of violence have only come from the anti-native minority.

There is a problem in Ontario. It might be convenient to look at every phenomenon in isolation and to pretend awe, ignorance and wonder when an oppressed people stand courageously on their own behalf. If ignorance is bliss, there are a lot of happy people in government here and they are trying to spread it around.

But there is a history, with its twists and turns, and also with a common thread. Remember the murder of Dudley George at Ipperwash by the OPP? Remember the lies and subterfuge to protect a red-neck premier and his cabinet cabal? Remember the OPP riot squad attack on OPSEU members right in front of the Ontario legislature? How about the legions of missing Native women who don't get media attention? How about water you can't drink? How about mercury poisoning? Where the hell is the conscience of the Canadian State? When the police become spectators, as they were when racists stoned Native people at Kahnesetake in 1990, they are supporting the attackers, carrying out state policy.

The cancer of right-wing, imperialist and racist thinking explodes around the Native people. Their struggle is a beacon that lights up the political environment and exposes the danger facing all of us. Will the social justice movement face similar violence and retribution when it escalates the very issues the Native people are dealing with now? The issues of water, environment, medicine, living space, the right to exist purely as a condition of birth and being?

I think the Native people are politically more advanced in many ways because they are forced to deal with these problems, not hide from them. As a student of history, a trade-unionist and a Hamilton worker, I am not surprised by the calm and peaceful determination of the Six Nations people. Throughout history, struggle develops its own dignity, its own unity. There is nobility in standing your ground, in fighting for justice. That's why Robin Hood is a folk hero and Hitler is not.