Napanee debrief

I moved to Napanee almost two years ago for the same reason I chose this new place we’ve just moved to - it was the apartment with the most manageable set of health compromises possible within very limiting time and budgetary constraints.

Napanee is a pretty town, though MMS and I saw very little of it, for a few reasons… and there’s some good people there, a few of whom I already miss tremendously.

It was supposed to be a long term place, but capitalism ruins everything and it’s now slated to become a parking lot. Hopefully the new place works out and lasts longer, or at least long enough to stop the rugs from flying out from under me, to heal as much as is possible, to make a plan so I can go back to living instead of surviving… and then get started living that plan. Maybe that’s a lot to ask of the universe, but I’m asking, and if I keep trying to listen and learn, maybe the universe will help balance things better… because the universe is an infinite balancing act.

It’s been just over two years since my body, nerves, and trust issues were destroyed in the Ottawa hospital, my life purpose and the dream I was finally making real ruined by ignorance and discrimination.

I’ve made little headway with addressing that through the Human Rights Tribunal, due largely to inaccessible processes and massive case backlog. But it’s in process. I’m understandably less than optimistic about the outcome, but we’ll see. I will also talk to a lawyer after moving, to make sure I’m doing all I can.

I’ve made less headway with healing, in any sense… lack of assessment and treatment - due to lack of credibility because of the very skewed hospital and police records, and lack of coverage/funds - has meant the physical injuries didn’t heal properly and are aggravating other issues… the same applies to the trauma, brain damage, and related issues.

That hasn’t been helped by being scammed, stolen from (very much), and having to deal with multiple chemical reactions while here, as well as bullying (personal and professional), pand a pile of other lousy stuff.

Really, I was burnt out before I got to Ottawa… then the Climate Emergency Camp at the PMO was a rough experience… and Covid kicked me hard… losing my brand new to me little old sailboat, which was my dream home and my means of continuing my activism and environmental efforts, was even harder. And then the assault. Maybe asking to heal in Napanee was too much… maybe that part of the itinerary was just for stopping, like the space before a heart starts again… or like a spent jellyfish drifting after a storm.

Without the good parts of the past two years, and those people I miss, I would be gone and Mr Myrtle Sir would be an orphan. Yes, there have been good parts, and they mean all the more for being written into this particular chapter of my life. They’re the marmalade in Alice’s fall… or the illustrations in a great big dark steel wall of greasy scorched morphing illegible orc text.

Those parts made it worth it.

I’ve also been able, somehow, to begin to fathom what happened two years ago, and see it more clearly. That sheds another bit of light on my own big picture, as well as my understanding of how utterly and irretrievably fucked the system truly is.

The few professionals who’ve helped me in Napanee are swimming against the current, but they know which way is right, and though outnumbered, they’re not alone. This doesn’t give me any hope for the system - that anachronistic metafuckup needs to die - but it does give me a little in terms of individuals and the way ripple effects spread through a multifaceted network… sometimes the stained glass from church windows is even more beautiful when it falls out of the network of metal binding… then there a myriad of possibilities.

My boundaries have been kicked and burned… but they’d been moved and mended too much… maybe I can grow them again, woven on a loom made from pieces of the walls, using wool reclaimed from flying rugs, with lights made from from the shattered glass.

And maybe later I can use the parts again, to make a way to be this human being I’m finding under all the damage and darkness.

It’s been a difficult start at the new place, but also very good… I’ve spent time with - and been helped by - people I’m glad to be able to get to know better. I’ve been ambushed by a gas heater, but that ought to be resolvable (knock on wood). One of the social service transfers started off rough (and too soon), but maybe I won’t have to talk to that particular person again, and maybe the others will be better.

MMS is tickled by all the green and can’t wait to go exploring… I’m not up to it yet, but we will. He likes the windows, and the light, and the space. We’re both downright ecstatic to apparently have no other dogs around! And we’re both dead tired and also pretty wired.

It seems like everything is like that now… simultaneous extremes are more and more exaggerated, while the middle ground is disappearing. It’s happening in the climate and environment, in politics and industry and religion, it’s happening financially and socially and culturally… individually and collectively… and we’re like drowning islands, or melting icebergs.

Sometimes, the rocks and boulders caught in lava flows come together and survive as crags amid the chaos, and later as beacons in the burnt earth where the remnants of life that serendipity preserved are able to continue.

This completely different new area a few hours away where we’ve moved to could well be wetland as the ice melts and the waters rise, or wetter… I feel like I live in an hourglass… the Buddha said “the trouble is, you think you have time.” I had time in Napanee… now I need to use time. There isn’t much left. To quote another wise being, “tell me, what is it you will do with your one wild and precious life?” (Mary Oliver).

I want mine back.

What are you doing with yours?

…

(There was going to be a picture here but apparently I’ve used up my quota… deleting old ones and/or upgrading my wix account are important,m to me, but there’s too much else to do first, so you’ll have to imagine your own… I meant to put Odilon Redon’s Evocation of Butterflies here, if you want to find it.)