Perspectives

from the other side: Jon's Jail Journal.

beginings of endings of beginings of endings of beginings

I lapse into silence
when I don't know
where to begin

morning sitting with tea

snow falls through grey light
golden fish marks his
sky's surface

you can be like me

and listen to Tune up your Science on tuesdays from 5:30-6:00!

fandango for the saint

so my question is, why does it all come down to a tangle of arms and legs, and the rules of engagement. sex sex sex. don't get me wrong, i'm a very very big fan, but i know too well the complications, when heads or hearts get roused more than the flesh.

here am i, trying to live a life a little freer, with love and fewer rules. but it seems rules are the rule after all. today i ran into a friendly fondlee, and that was nice, but for the first time he seemed awkward. yesterday, before sweet ring tones, we talked about missing and other people's curves, and all i felt was nothing. we dance a champion dance around the black hole that speaks of lonely, the void that says we're going it alone, when the tally of the days is reckoned. but you don't really go it alone. and i don't really want to. my needs: debriefing, in both senses of the word, and the crook of a warm arm to lay my head upon.

i miss you, far away.

exhausted again,

but delighted, too, at the prospect of a monday evening all my own! yet another amazing mentor filled my head with ideas and my bag with books. and the last grant proposal submitted.

i'm weary, as i should well be, after slipping into slumber's arms at well past three, well past four... but also (")motivated(") to actually get shit done! so i'll trundle off through the icy rain to the goat for to do a little of the work of necessity. lest i hook up my hammock and nap and nap and nap till only the night remains, and the cycle of topsy-turvy wakedness repeats.

aujourd'hui

it is lonely
to be loved
by a lover
of a lake
that has frozen

gold chains=good sounds

where are the poems?

i'm not sure i can go to any more films. i couldn't figure out why i couldn't sleep last night. a long night of tossing and turning, straining to breathe. Fitful rest that left me wide-eyed but dopey early this morning. silly that it took me this many hours to figure out that the images of bodies hacked up, of children-turned killers, of rooms filled w/ decayed bodies might be able to touch me.

and i notice i've been de-friend-listed. sniff, deflation.

but maybe i'll persuade one of the evening film-goers (if'n i do go) to debrief with me over some beer after. i don't think i'm allowed to go it alone.

i feel something's a bad beginning. i'll soon need to make masks, i think. masks with lovely noses.

today i feel ashamed to be human,

even as i feel some joy that there are courageous folk among the many.

a human rights film festival may not be the most uplifting way to spend a week-end. just now i watched an NFB film: "Two Worlds Colliding".

and here is what i scribbled down, as the discussion, led by a student micmac former OPP, ensued:
we canadians
need to stop being so bloody self-righteous. it makes us blind and limp.

we failed as much as anyone, in spite of our 'hero',
in rwanda.

we fail here at home, our own people.
and we don't want to see.

amnesty international draws attention to our failings, even.
apparently (see the documentary!), an aboriginal child in saskatchewan is more likely to go to jail than to high school.
apparently, over 1/2 of people with 'african' heritage in toronto live in poverty.
and then someone told us all the story of his uncle, a native man, who died on manitoulin island while in police custody. he was diabetic, but they probably thought he was drunk, and took him to 'the tank'. by the time they got him to the hospital, and by the time the doc arrived, it was too late, and he died.

so i drank some beer

and off i went, thoroughly exhausted after impassioned meetings with marvelous mentors, to the human rights film festival's screening of dallaire's "shake hands with the devil"(director, peter raymont, in attendance, along with co-author mjr.. beardsley). excellent. most very.

and i'm so glad they chose, during the q&a, to talk about sudan. like me, you may be wondering why we haven't done anything yet, given that few disagree that at least crimes against humanity (if not genocide) are occurring at the hands of the complicit government.

i know why. either we learn nothing, or we've learned not to care.

i ranted a bit about how we allow one ideal (in this case state autonomy, if i'm feeling generous, or the lack of political will to face the loss of a handful of valued lives for the protection of the faceless poor, when i'm feeling more realistic) to justify our failure to meet all the other ideals. but again i think i was being too kind. i don't think ideals come into it at all. ideals are myths, just like heroes and enemies and gods and love stories. we construct them to suit our purposes, and then we re-write them when our purposes change.

we can wait for all the political delay tactics, or we can remind them that voters haven't forgotten...here are things you can do, if you'd like. writing to parliament requires no stamp!

(was that me saying ideals were dead?)

freedom's just another word

there are, in this world, people who surround themselves with absolute merriment. the kinds of people who know people who live life completely. the barriers have melted away.

it makes me breathless, and i'm only a bit-part by-stander.

i love my people, and i love people. but it seems i'd rather be interested than loved, which should leave me freer than i am.

but i won't be too hard on my sometimes-staid self: after all, i did moon the sea plane, grace the train with a little bit of us, and commit myself fully to the joy of skinny-dipping by day and night alike.

one day i will be venus,
open wide to swallow the world.

fun with ice: 3

when what aches can't be bound.

fun with ice: 2 -> bind what aches

i think i nearly got into my first fight ever tonight. sadly, it was while doing one of my favorite things - soccering. it was a well-matched game, except that we had lots of subs, and they only a few. they were tired, and so maybe a little cranky. and they (well, mostly just one of the white demons) were playing a rough and dirty game - drawing fouls, playing the ball from the prone position, generally knocking and pulling, and making a big fuss over the normal scuffles of the game... near the end (they were down a point, and by now maybe frustrated?) i stepped in front of her at the boards to knock the ball back to my player. the play moved on, but while the ref's back was to us, she gave me a good two-handed shove from behind! this is ADULT women's soccer!! tier II!! i (impolitely) told her not to do that again (frankly, i was appalled, and the ref was watching us by now). i may have raised my voice and told her again. i came off the field, fuming. i think i actually wanted to make contact with her roughly - she'd been getting away with it all game! but instead, from the side i shouted that this game was just not worth that kind of dirty play. and it was over. she was the only one who wouldn't shake hands at the end of the game.

now i'm trying to write a grant proposal for to get me some bucks for a summer's worth of sublime research on health and literacy, with a nice bag of frozen vegetables tensored to my knee!

fun with ice: 1

before it warmed up, out on the lake. dancers cavorting in wind on water frozen.

sunflower

swimming

what i really mean to say is that i want to throw my arms around the world, bury my head in all the energy, suck at the breasts of all the lives and intellects that i have witnessed.

there is just so much happening. it is all too much, even if it's never enough. time speeds by, and i whirl and twirl and spin around with it, and that, there, yes - that's my voice howling in amidst the voices of billions and the winds of seven seas.

if i was only good to watch a thousand years. i'll have to be content with dancing a few thousand bars.

swim like sperm

these past days have filled me to the brim...

post-conflict rehabilitation - i listened, learning about disability and conflict, landmines and children, and rebuilding.

i whatched as a survivor of toture in el salvador, gasping as she recounted, remembered.

i conferenced about choice - a primer on all things healthy-sexy-fertility...

and then there was more, there's been more, there'll be more.

my head is swimming.

I LOVE EXPOSURE!!!

work i your bodies?

And so it is, after-all, not so difficult to have, if having is what is desired.

I live a life like no other. Further from the truth that can be imagined.

There are worlds apart around me: surrounding, hounding. There are voices wanting to be heard, but none call for me by name. My voice is wanting to be heard, it always sounds the same.


I rejoice in bodies, of work. I rejoice in your bodies. Of work, I rejoice. In bodies. Work I. Your bodies.

i should be outside taking pictures

but instead i've retreated to the interior.

i've been surrounded by folk and people and persons and friends and colleagues all week. now i must rest. how is it that i feel a little lonely, then? how is it that i can't bear the thought of words whispered into the cradled phone, yet i long for whispers direct to my rapt ear? i want hugs and slumber wrapped up in warm arms and legs. i want the thrill of dissonant song - screaming at the top of our lungs to the lichen and the ice and the sun behind the islands.