The next 50 years

oIt's a funny place to find oneself.  Halfway between gratitude and existential anxiety with a dose of moral outrage.   So let me break it down backwards. The outrage is about how my country is failing it's people in their times of need. Ordinary people being let to fall into the streets. If you survive a life threatening ilness with disability, expect to be unable to afford housing on what is available to the public disabled.  I guess the privileged folks all have these fancy insurance packages that pay out a handsome tithe montly to let them live like humans.  How else could this stand? The anxiety.  Well the bus had a few mechanical scares.  We've been visited a few times by officious persons.  One pair of ladies came on as street outreach and for the cost of two cheap school lunches were able to draw way too much information out of me.  I'm kicking myself for it.  Now it's possible they'll get back to me in January with usefulness, a...

       We got kicked out of the parking lot at the social center.  The officer told us we'd had complaints.  We can't idle there and we can't stay overnight.  It's so frustrating.  I feel ever more paranoid and hated by the day.  I feel dehumanized.  I feel hunted.  I hunch over in tension and fear and it's giving me back aches and stomach trouble and poor sleep. The constant high speed traffic on every single street of this insane city doesn't help. Now I"m running out of fuel and money and it's only a third of the way through the month. Dan hasn't had any more interest in his ads.  He's out of funds too, I think.  He did fuel up today but I suspect he's got not much left.  I don't know his details and it's not my business but  I do know he took out a credit card with way more credit than he can afford and it's going to come back and screw him further.  Money mismanagement is honestly the reason we're homel...

 What does holding space mean?  It means giving someone the respectful permission to feel uncomfortable feelings.  Being willing to feel awkward, even sad, so someone else feels heard, felt, cared about. This is incredibly rare, I believe.  I think about all the miserable conversations I've had and how they all fall back on the other person's inability to do this.  Because no part of my life is not touched by some form of sorrow, honestly, it isn't possible to get through a conversation about myself that doesn't get stuck in the weeds.  Or maybe they're doing it by their questions?  Honestly I still don't get how it goes there every damn time. Well it seems it does.  Somehow we're talking about me and what I should be doing. In some context.  I know I don't ask for advice.  I often assert as much to the person asking them to stop doing it. They often refuse to stop. It gets to where I feel on the defensive and delivering way more self in...

 Sitting in a parking lot of a hiking trail after being copped out of the last squatting spot.  I knew we couldn't just stay, Dan didn't agree and so we wound up there again.  It's frankly extremely  challenging to find parking.  You can see there used to be spots everywhere, and they're all blocked off with rocks or concrete barriers or giant locked gates.  The whole atmosphere of hostility here is making me feel defensive and solitudinous. When I go to shops, people just seem miserable.  One place we were at, they were smiling and relaxed and it was like a breath of fresh air. I don't remember if this was normal back east, but it just seems so depressed and self centered here.  Dan says this lot is reserve land, that's interesting.  I would rather deal with a first nations person, but it'll be a cop no matter what, guaranteed. I'm hoping nobody cares enough. What happened at the last spot was overstaying our welcome plus setting out chairs ...

 November 11th 2023 Gotta leave gabriola and can't come back till january.  Don't want to anyway, it's a shitty place for us. We aren't rich enough, old enough or connected enough. It's clear this place is quite hostile.  I really did know it would be, although not how it would be. I am not surprised, though I am saddened to see how it is here.  The hatred is deep and owns the law and the law hounds houseless people around like rats. You need permission from someone to exist?  I don't know.  I just know I can't go anywhere else.  I get so scared, though.  Terrifed of how deep this takes me. Do I wind up homeless on the street here in a year?  Dan still keeps trying to insist he's above the law because he doesn't respect it, and I keep having to outline how that attitude has put us in this situation, how I can't work legit work, travel across the border, own a bank account, and etc. He is responsible for this and can't seem to grok the concept...

 Gabriola island.  We are here.  It's exactly as difficult as it seems it would be and I'm not surprised about it.  But I am distressed and discouraged.  If not here, where can I go?   We arrived last night. The facebook responses were very positive but now I'm thinking it's more of that canadian hypocrisy. They don't want to seem intolerant and self centered. But a lot of canadians are very much so.  They just know the right phrases to pretend otherwise. As with everywhere in Canada, homeless people are not allowed to exist.  We aren't allowed to sleep in a vehicle or on the street or in a park or doorway, we aren't allowed to exist.  But we do.  So we get hassled for it. I haven't been hassled here yet, but neither has anyone given us useable advice on where we can go. Well, the stupid provincial park where I can pay for the privilege of parking in the darkness doing fuck all.  Too many trees. We got chased around nanaimo alr...

 heh, we did it, we came across the water.  I have left north american soil and am on an island in the pacific.  Granted, still politically connected, and on the continental shelf of Canada, but heck, it feels so cool to be off the continent, and for good this time. I will have to go get my car somehow, but damn, I need to get established here.  See, importing this bus to this province is currently not possible. Much more work needs to be done to accomplish it.  That means maintaining nominal residency back there is needed until I accomplish said repairs.  However, there is now time to work on these things, and to find work also.  Dan found an ad for work that looks really attractive, and is putting out an ad.  I've been on the local listings from the mainland and there is a lot of work around for a man who can move.  "have bus, will travel."  I do need to check listings around here but let's see if that island gig happens, if we are abl...