I have something to say and am struggling to find the words to say it.

The issue isn’t personal. It’s national in scope. Political. It’s about a social issue, a cause near and dear to my heart.

One of my foundational premises of writing here is that it takes me 45 minutes to write and post each day.

I’ve just spent two hours working on this piece and I’m still not satisfied with where it’s at.

It’s a great lesson. To let it go as is or to keep working on it.

I’m choosing the latter.

It is much too important a subject to just let loose a rant that is incorherent or lacking in depth.

So I leave it for today and will come back to it tomorrow.

Have a good one!

I am walking south on the street when I spy him walking on the avenue, from the east, towards me. His face is obscured by a scraggly salt and pepper beard, his eyes are hidden behind long hair that hangs about his face. He’s wearing a rumpled green rain jacket over an equally rumpled dark coloured shirt and pants. In one hand he carries a big black garbage bag and over the opposite shoulder he totes a black computer bag.

He looks visibly homeless and for a moment, I do not recognize him.

He sees me. Stops and peers intently at me through piercing blue eyes.

I look back. We smile at each other in recognition.  

“M!” I call out in delight. I am happy to see him. And we step into eachother’s arms for a hug.

It’s rush hour. Traffic is stopped at the light at the corner where we stand. People glance at us and stare. 

A middle aged woman in business attire. A middle aged man in ‘street’ attire.

We are an odd pair. 

We hug again and I ask him what he’s up to.

“Walking my trap line,” he says and he shakes the black garbage bag slightly. It rattles with the sounds of cans and glass bottles.

I laugh. Oh yes. The trap line. 

It is one of the songs created for Shelter from the Storm, the musical showcase of songs from the homeless shelter the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre staged in July as part of Sled Island. It was amazing.

M. was one of the artists who contributed to the show, both musically and technically. He is gifted in so many ways. A regular at the art studio I helped create at the shelter, every Friday afternoon he can be found on the second floor of the shelter, manning the sound system for ArtBeat, a one hour musical interlude where musicians from Calgary, and elsewhere, share their talents with the clients and staff of the Drop-In.

For M, ArtBeat is a baby he helped nurture and grow into one of the ‘to be at’ musical venues of the week. From helping paint the backdrop to setting up the sound board and ensuring the technology works every week, M has played a part.

We walk west along the avenue together. I am on my way back to the office from an early morning breakfast meeting and M. is checking his trap line for possible catch. A bottle in this bin. A coin left in the parking machine. He is efficient in his checks, barely breaking step with me as he casually lifts the lid off a streetside bin or dips a finger into the silver change slot of a parking machine lining our route.

As he checks, we walk and talk and catch up on eachother’s lives.

His father passed away recently. He went to the funeral.

Years ago, that might not have happened. Since becoming involved in the art scene both at the shelter and in the city, M has reconnected with the core of his being. Artist. Musician. Craftsman. Human.

In his reconnection to his creative self, he has reconnected with family, visiting and checking in with them regularly.

It is not something that happens often in homelessness. People drift away from family, away from the roots that once held them in place.  They drift away and learn to live on their own carrying the burden of homelessness as a shield, a blanket. They become isolated. Disconnected. The shelter and its people, the street and those who call it home, become their family, the place where they are known and where they know they fit.

The past was a place that hurt. They don’t want to go back. Many times they can’t.

And so, they mourn what was lost and carry on and when news of someone they once knew arrives, good or bad, they tuck it away and focus on the street ahead.

They’ve got trap lines to check. People to meet. Places to go.

I met an old friend on the street the other day. we chatted about where we’ve been. About family and friends and shared experiences of creative expressions at the shelter where I used to work and where he still lives. They’re getting closer to finding him a place to live, he tells me. He’ll be out soon.

And I hope it’s true.

I left him at the corner of 7th and 4th. 

I turned south towards my office and he carried on in the opposite direction, the black plastic bag filling up with the product of his labours as he walked the streets of the concrete jungle where his trap line is set and he knows its path.

I am a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend. I am a writer. A musician. A carpenter. An artist. I laugh. I cry. I bleed. I hurt. Which of these are diminished because I am homeless? he once asked me.

None of them, I replied.

 

Beaumont keeps growing and enriching the tapestry of my life. 

Life is a beautiful tapestry. Colour and feeling woven together, threads drawn, threads snipped. Threads that hold their weave forever, threads that loose their warp and loosen. Each day threads connect, disconnect, Weave in. Weave out. Up and down, in and out in a rhythmic wave of motion.
The tapestry of my life is created beneath a warm and gentle weave of waves rolling into the sea, pulling under, pulling out, pushing forward. Each person, each encounter, each moment creates a delicate, vibrant thread, to be followed, to be left alone, to be explored, to be cherished for the value it adds, then tucked into the warp so that it doesn’t unravel.

We each have our tapestry. Vibrant. Colourful. Filled with design. Sometimes balanced. Sometimes just a riotous explosion of feeling and texture and colour and design.

Sometimes, we step back and look at a thread and see where its value has created a unique perspective that will last a lifetime. Sometimes we step into a colour and discover its value is the length of the space it fills. No matter the length of the thread, its value is integral to the overall weave and warp of our tapestry.

Like colour. To enhance green, to make it pop out, the artist adds a hint of red at its edges. To make blue sparkle, a touch of yellow. Each colour adds value to the next.

Each encounter in my life adds depth, meaning, value. I carry with me memories, lessons learned, feelings felt, ideas explored. I carry with me the touch of someone’s gentle words upon my heart, the imprint of their laughter. Their smile. Their eyes.

Every thread adds value not always seen to the one who has linked their to mine, just as I do not always see how my thread has linked to theirs.

Yet in our connection, story is made, story unfolds.

In our connection, lives are enriched, touched, changed.

May the tapestries of our lives connect and create beauty and awe with every breath.

   Art journal entry, August 23, 2015. Louise Gallagher

And so I come back to the studio, the canvas, the unknown, the mystical nature of creation.

I come back to my creative essence. My mystical core. My mysterious creative drive. I come back to this space where the canvas waits to be explored, to be created upon, within and with. To be seen. Known. Felt. Experienced.

To this space where I enter knowing that I must trust.

Trust in being here. Trust in being part of this sacred space. Trust in the process and in letting go of what I believe I know is true, to explore what is possible when I do not hold onto believing I know. The answer. The outcome. The end before I’ve even begun.

And I breathe.

In each breath I feel the presence of the wonder and awe of creation. And I feel fear’s presence. It nudges and pulls and grabs at me to stop. To not create. To not let my expressions become visible.  

It is true. Amidst the wonder and awe, fear is also present.

I want to run from fear. Instead, I hold my ground and greet it. Hello fear. I see you. I hear you filling my thoughts with your fear of the unknown. I hear you questionning my creative purpose, my creative voice, begging me not to express it for fear I will make a fool of myself. People will laugh at what I create. People will think of me in less than terms.

It’s okay fear. I see you. I acknowledge you. I know you. You and your compansion are part of me too. Self-doubt. Worry. Hesitation. Your constant yammering about who am I to think I have something to express. Is this really me, this artistic soul? Or am I just pretending to be the ‘me’ who creates? Who am I? What am I? How am I? Is this creative urge my trust self calling me to express itself? Explore my need, my heart’s desire to create?

I will not heed your fears. I will listen only to the expression of my creative urgings pushing and pulling at me to be released.

I must.

And so I breathe.

I breathe into the presence of fear and allow fear to breathe freely so that I can create free of fear and its companions.

And with each breath I feel the presence of wonder and awe flowing freely, filling in the spaces fear has left behind as it flew into the winds of freedom.

Wonder and awe are present. So is joy, love, contentment, bliss. So many other things are present, even in fear’s presence.

I breathe.

You are all welcome here. I do not fear you. I embrace you. You are all part of my creative process.

Like the moon needs the sun to find its light, and the sun yearns for the planets to hold their orbit around its warmth, I need all of me to be present here so that all of me can be expressed freely.

And so I breathe. And so it is.

Namaste.

****************************

I have been away from the studio for awhile. I have come back to its sacred space. I am so blessed.

Recently, a friend and I talked about loss and how it impacts our lives more, or less, depending upon how confident or safe we feel in our lives.

The challenge with homelessness, I shared, is that no matter where you are, you never feel safe in your life or environment. 

Aren’t shelters designed to give people that sense of safety? they asked.

The simple answer is yes. 

The reality is staying in a shelter is preferrable than on the streets. Shelters do everything they can to create a place of safety and caring. But it doesn’t change how the individual feels. It doesn’t change the perception of being unsafe, not because of the environment, but rather, because of this condition called ‘homeless’. 

When I was in my teens, we travelled to Czechoslovakia. It was still behind the Iron Curtain and I remember feeling unsafe, at risk, compromised. My father was unpredictable and did not suffer fools easily. In a communist country, his quick to anger responses left us at risk, or at least, that was my fear. What if he said the wrong thing to the wrong person? Would we be stuck behind the Curtain forever?

We arrived late in the day in Prague and could not find a hotel. We ended up staying in a hostel. My father in ‘the men’s room’ and my mother, two sisters and I in the ‘women’s room’.

Our fellow travellers were nice but problem was, to get to the men’s room, men had to walk through the women’s room.

I remember sleeping with one eye open the entire night. I remember keeping my belongings, what few belongings we’d brought into the hostel with us, underneath my blanket, close to my body. Every little sound stirred me and my mother’s constant query of “who’s there” didn’t help. It also didn’t help that our suitcases were in the VW van we were travelling in and I was worried someone would break into it and steal everything while we slept.

I was angst driven and uncomfortable in my strange surroundings.

We only stayed two days in Prague, one day longer than intended because our VW van broke down and needed repairs. We were lucky. The day after we left the country, they closed the borders to both entry and exit and as my father worked for the government, we weren’t supposed to be there anyway. Then again, my father being my father, we were all travelling on our British passports rather than Canadian just so the government wouldn’t know we were there.

I remember the beauty of the city architecture, but it was overlaid with a pervasive feeling of dark foreboding fear. Everything was run down and shabby. It was a year after the Russians had rolled into the country and taken over control. People walked with their heads down seldom making eye contact. And they definitely didn’t chat with foreigners.  I remember the tanks standing still in the middle of public squares and uniformed men with machines guns at the ready walking along streets.

And I remember feeling uncomfortable, at risk, far from home and unsafe.

We weren’t homeless, but we were definitely on foreign soil, far from our norm and out of our element. A few years later I travelled on my own to Berlin. The wall had not yet come down and crossing over into East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie also gave me that feeling of dark, foreboding fear. Of being at risk, uncomfortable and unsafe.

Like living in an emergency shelter, I wasn’t truly unsafe. But, my environment and the conditions around me evoked a sense of unsettledness that all my thinking in the world could not disperse.

Homelessness by its very nature creates a feeling of unsettledness, despair, discomfort and fear. No matter the intentions of those around you, good or bad, the condition of homelessness is distressing. Like me sleeping with one eye open and all my clothes and belongings grasped beneath my blanket in the hostel that night, the condition of homelessness leaves you with no alternative than to be hyper conscious of your surroundings, holding on for dear life to what few belongings you possess.

In homelessness, your way of life is at risk, your past is swept away and all you have to hold onto is the reality of where you’re at and the fear you may be stuck there forever. And that’s scary.

Image by Arjun Mujay – http://www.naturepictures.co/deserts/water-on-desert-wallpaper/

There is an ancient story of a man lost in the desert who searches and searches for the land beyond the endless sand surrounding him. One day, he stumbles to the top of a sand dune and discovers a river running freely in the valley below.

On the other side of the river, is the land he’s always dreamed of. Beautiful flowers of every colour line its banks. Lush, verdant forest stretches far to the horizon.

Overcome with anticipation, he rushes down the sand dune to the waters edge only to discover, there is no way across.

Inconsolable, he sits at the water’s edge and cries and cries. And the river runs freely and he cries and cries until with nothing else to do, he begins to search along the waters edge for materials to build a raft.

Eventually, he finds some old pieces of wood and builds a raft to carry him across the river.

Eventually, he makes it across.

Overjoyed by having discovered the land he’s always dreamt of, he climbs off his raft and begins to explore. He doesn’t go very far when he realizes his mistake.

“What if I come upon another river and need to cross it?” he wonders.

And he goes back to where he left his raft on the shore, picks it up and puts it on his back.

He continues on his exploration, holding tightly to the raft, just in case.

The raft becomes heavier and heavier, but he cannot let go. It served him well when he needed it before. He might need it again.

And the raft becomes heavier and heavier until the man can no longer walk. He crumbles to the ground and begins to crawl, dragging his raft with him until he can no longer move beneath the weight of all he carries.

And he lies still.

Too often, we are like that man. We search and search for someplace better to be, someone else to love us more, something else to bring us joy, happiness, contentment. As we search, we carry with us the things that have brought us here, no matter how heavy those things become, or how useless they are in our search today.
In our fear we may need those things from the past again, we do not lighten our load and begin to bend beneath the weight of all we carry.

There are things from my childhood and past I hope I never lose. My sense of wonder in the world around me. My curiosity. My joyful passion for love and light and life and living.

There are other things I hope to let go of. My fear of the dark, of feeling unwanted, stupid, unloved. My fear of making mistakes, of never getting it right, of being the cause of all the darkness in the world. These things I have no need of. They do not serve me well.

Yet still, vestiges of their presence cling to me and slip, unbidden, into my journey when I am not paying attention. They irritate my passage through life like a pebble in my shoe.  If I do not stop to take it out, pain will be my constant companion in every step I take.

There are many ways to let go of self-defeating behaviours and burdens that hinder our passage through life. For me, one of the greatest ways to let it go is to write it out.

There is power in writing it out. In naming the things I carry and do not need, they become visible, and can no longer hide behind their cloak of invisibility. In seeing them on the page, I see them for what they are: disruptive, somewhat ridiculous, and oh so contrary to what I want more of in my life.

In writing it out I get to stand in my power and overcome their insidious nature simply by turning the light on them, and not the darkness they would have me believe keeps me safe.

In writing it out I find my way through the desert and across the river without needing to build a raft to carry me across. I do not need wood, or words, to swim. I need the power of my belief I deserve to be on the other side. I can do it.

Writing it out lightens my load. Writing it out means I’m not lying still beneath the burden of the past. I am jettisoning the things I do not need and swimming freely in the waters of life.

Writing it out sets me free.

What do you do to lighten your load? what do you do to set yourself free?

Namaste.

Wanderer, there is no way. The path is made by walking. Antonia Machado

We are a world of contradictions. We fight for peace. We fight for the right to bear arms to protect ourselves against an enemy we cannot see but fear is out there lurking, waiting to take what is ours. We fight for the right to vote, and then, do not vote.

ON October 19, Canada will hold a federal election. 

In the homeless sector, voting in an election is not a common practice. 

This year, a group of individuals with lived experience of homelessness want to change that. They are planning a ‘mock election’ in late September complete with ballot boxes, screening officers and candidates vying for the votes of those who do not believe their vote counts.

It is the challenge of homelessness.

You must lose everything to carry the label. And in your loss, you lose dignity, self-respect, and a belief in the power of your voice to make a difference.

At a meeting the other day to discuss plans for the upcoming mock election, a co-worker talked about one young man who has decided this year he will exercise his perogative. In his early 30s, he has been homeless off and on most of his life. 

This year, he will vote for the first time.

But first, he needs to get identification that will let him vote.

It is another challenge of homelessness. Voting requires identification. Many people living the experience of homelessness do not have that which the majority of us take for granted; a piece of paper that legally confirms we are who we say we are in the world.

At the mock election, there will be people who can support those without identification obtain it. 

“Is a month enough time to get ID?”, someone at the meeting asked.

None of us knew for sure.

None of us had ever been faced with the task of getting something so seemingly simple.

At the shelter where I used to work there is a room filled with belongings clients have left behind. When giving tours of the facility, people would ask, “Why do they leave these things behind? Don’t they want them? Don’t they care?”

It is not so simple. 

Sometimes, someone won’t return to their locker because in the process of going about their daily life, they have been arrested for outstanding warrants. With no ability to pay for jay walking tickets, vagrancy tickets, and a host of other tickets a homeless individual can acquire in daily life, they opt for jail. They have no choice.

Sometimes, they wind up in hospital with no means to let anyone know where they are.

Sometimes, a job offer comes up and they grab it, even if it means leaving right now to travel to the oil fields or some other distant place. They do not dare hesitate. Jobs don’t come along often in the world of homelessness.

Sometimes, the burden of the past is too great to keep carrying, and they leave it behind.

Sometimes, in constantly leaving things behind, the things they carried are simply that – things.

There are many, many reasons people leave things behind. Things like clothing. Family photo albums. Bibles and and other books. Certificates, like the certificate of merit from a Scout troupe one person left in their locker. Staff could not throw it out, just as they could not discard or repurpose things like Bibles and family photos and other personal items. For staff, clearing out an abandoned locker was one of the most difficult tasks. The choice to keep it, just in case the person returned, or let it go. It is not easy. 

Homelessness fosters a sense of disconnection. Of not being part of ‘your life’ because the fact that this, this place called homeless could be ‘your life’ is hard to grasp. Hard to understand. Hard to believe.

In the disbelief, in the tiredness of having to keep jettisoning the things that once made up your life which you can no longer carry, or bring into a shelter because there is no room for all your stuff, only one suitcase that will fit into a small locker, you let go of holding onto everything.

It’s easier that way.

Just let it go and don’t hold on, to anything.

Especially the belief, you can make a difference.

It’s too hard to hold, that belief. Because if I can make a difference, if for example, my vote might count, then why am I in this place called homeless?

A group of individuals with lived experience of homelessness are holding a mock election in September to encourage those with the lived experience of homelessness to exercise their right to vote. 

It is an important thing they are doing, this group of concerned citizens. 

They are building the path, walking their talk, creating space for their voice to be heard. And in that space, they will hold space for others to rise up and cast their vote too.

They cannot predict the outcome. But they do know, that if they do not walk this path. If they do not take these steps, the way will not magically appear. 

There are lessons to be learned from these individuals who are walking this path. They are creating a new direction with every step they take.

  

I have been writing a poem a day about Peace on my Poetry Affair blog.

It is hard, this commitment to write a poem a day. I’ve already missed one day!

Sort of. Almost. 

I wrote yesterday’s and forgot to post it. 

Actually, I wrote it in my head while walking with Beaumont and forgot to write it down.

This morning, there it still was, waiting for me to uncover it. To set the words free. To make them visible.

Like so many things in life. Ideas live in our heads, we carry dreams and wishes and hopes and schemes and wonder why they never appear in our lives.

As Mark said in his comment on yesterday’s post, it takes action.

Someone asked me the other day what they should do about a situation in their life they wanted to change.

“What do you think?” they asked. “Should I do A or B?”

“I don’t have your answers,” I replied. “You hold the answer you seek. Both are directions you can take. There is no wrong choice. There is only the choice you make.”

“But I want to do the right thing,” they said.

“Then do it,” I replied.

This morning, as I pondered missing yesterday’s poem posting, I considered posting it and changing the date to yesterday so my chronology would be correct.

I can do either. Change it or leave it as is.

I can still post another poem today. Or not.

What is the write thing for me to do?

What eases my mind and brings my heart peace?

An interesting question. 

What eases my mind and brings my heart peace?

My heart does not feel restful when I consciously choose to ‘cheat’, even if I am the only one I’m really affecting.

My heart does not feel restful.

And as I write the answer comes to me.

I am building a new habit. When building a new habit, patience, persistence, passion and compassion are necessary.

Patience with my clumsiness in learning new things.

Persistence in the face of my critter mind’s chatter to forget about it and fall back into old ways.

Passion to honour my higher good’s desire to express itself.

And compassion for my forgetfulness, and the confusion it instills in my mind and heart.

Begin again. Always begin again.

Searching for peace of mind and a peaceful heart, I realize the answer is simple.

I will write a poem later today on creating peace of the heart, and post it. I will have two poems posted on the same day, but they’ll be numbered so my count will still be accurate.

Whew! Another bullet dodged in my wish to do that which creates more of what I want in my life, and my desire to keep my commitments with myself.

And so, I begin again.

 

 Memory came calling like a souvenir postcard tucked away in the back of a drawer, that is found and read only to be discarded again.

Memory came calling in the form of a bird, A pheasant hen scuttling about our backyard. Beaumont and I spied her at the same time as we came out the back door. I stopped to wonder what it was. Beaumont raced across the  yard to get a closer look.

Not too close. He wasn’t quite sure what this alien being was on his territory.

The pheasant scurried under the edge of the back hedge, darting as quickly as it could into deeper cover. 

 

 Beaumont stood poised at the edge where lawn meets hedge, tail wagging, his entire being fixated on figuring out this trespasser’s purpose or maybe just trying to convince her to play with him.

It was not his first choice to come to me when I called, but I was insistent and he heeded my command. I put him in the house, made sure Marley the Great Cat was also locked inside as well and went back outside to check on ‘the bird’.

I knew she couldn’t fly. She tried that when Beaumont had first approached. 

I called 3-1-1, the City’s information line. They told me to call the Alberta Wildlife Conservation Institute (AWIC).

The lady on the other end of the telephone line suggested ‘the bird’ might have flown into the side of the house and broken its collar bone. Not unusual, she said. Sometimes we can heal them and rehabilitate them.

But first, I had to catch her.

Easier said than done.

When C.C arrived home, I stood in the backyard, armed with towels, trying to fence in ‘the bird’.

Finally, between the two of house and a half hour of moving cautiously, slowly and patiently around the edges of the yard, stalking the wounded bird, he managed to throw a towel over her head and grab her.

“Birds will go completely still if you can get a towel over her head,” the woman at AWIC had told me.

She was right.

There were no volunteers available to come and pick her up so C.C. and I drove her to the animal hospital where someone from AWIC would come and get her later.

And that’s where memory snuck out of the drawer.

It was the same animal hospital where a year ago, C.C. and I took Ellie the Wunder Pooch on her final day.

My eyes still well up at the memory of that day. I still feel the sadness, and the fear.

I didn’t know for sure it would be her last day. I didn’t know for sure what was going to happen when we got there. And I was afraid.

This visit, fear did not accompany me, though sadness crept in for a few moments to remind me of Ellie’s loss.

Time (and the joy of Beaumont) has healed most of the sadness and, it has erased the fear I carried with me on that day.

What I hadn’t realized, until it crept in to taunt me with its unanswerable question, is that it has not been able to vanish all the regret. The regret of ‘what if I’d… reacted sooner, done something else, seen what was wrong…’ The regret that comes with losing a loved one and not being able to change anything that lead up to their leaving.

My rational mind knows, I could not have known, I could not have done, anything different.

My heart still carries some regret and walking into that place where I handed the leash over to a veterinary assistant and watched her walk Ellie into the back nethers of the place, only for her never to come out again, my mind still wonders, ‘what if?’

Carrying the unasnwerable questions silently in my heart, C.C. and filled out the paper work at the desk, left ‘the bird’ and came home.

Beaumont greeted us with his squirms and loving cuddles and in his soft fur and puppy breath laden licks I remembered, ‘what if I’d…’ is just a trick of my mind, a slight of hand of memories thrall calling me to let go of what is so I can be consumed by the past.

There is no room for ‘what if I’d..’ ruminations or  visiting the past in the present. There is only room for celebrating the now, for living in the ‘what is’ and joyfully embracing the love that is ever present when I let go of wishing I could change the past.

There is not one moment of the past that I can change. There is only now.

And in this now, C.C. and I took care of a wounded bird. We took her to safety and gave her over to people who will do their best to care for her.

And when we came home, we were greeted by the present of Beaumont’s love squirming in our arms and reminding us as he does every moment of every day, living in the past, regretting what was, does not create more love and joy in the now. It only takes me back to what I cannot change.

I cannot change the joy Ellie brought into my life for almost 14 years.

I cannot change the memories of her love.

I can change how I see that final day, that last good-bye. I can celebrate the truth of what we had and what we did to care for her when she was no longer able to be in this world with us.

And in those memories are the boundless love, the endless joy and the path to being present with Beaumont today. Because in that joy is the knowing, the past is just a memory. I choose whether it’s a trap, or a gateway to living free of its burden and in Love today.