Month: June 2011

nothing to keep me here

I am tired today, exhausted almost to the point of sickness. Absolutely everything hurts, my body a canvas of bruises faded to a spectacular spray of purple and green and yellowy red, my heart a tight and unhappy fist. Depression has closed over me again, a horrid glue I can’t wash off without resources I do not have. I am hungry for more than this, for sunshine, for a place where I don’t know anyone, where I have something to do.

So I am lurking on-line, examining work-visa options, all of them rushing away from me faster than I can run, opportunities closing each day I creep closer to thirty. I feel absolutely trapped, too poor to make requirements, too undereducated, too sad.

If I don’t find a way to escape before my next birthday, I’m walking out.

my pictures of the 2011 vancouver hockey riot

My photos from the 2011 Vancouver Hockey Riots.

before & after

I am made of bruises today. I took a truncheon to the arm and back while protecting my head and camera, was smashed in the side with a policebike, pepper-sprayed by riot cops, pushed off a roof by a rioter, and got stomped on while rescuing a girl from being trampled, yet I wasn’t even in the more dangerous western riots, where the actual violence and looting took place. To get an idea of what that was like, check out David Lang’s photos and the amazing set that Lung put up.

I am conflicted about this family heirloom

World’s first womb transplant planned.

Eva Ottosson, 56, has agreed to take part in a groundbreaking new medical procedure, which if successful could see her donate her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter Sara.

Doctors hope if the transplant is successful Sara, who was born without reproductive organs, could become pregnant and carry a child in the same womb from which she herself was born.

“She needs the womb and if I’m the best donor for her… well, go on. She needs it more than me. I’ve had two daughters so it’s served me well.”

take a penny, leave a penny

I <3 commercial drive

I recently stumbled upon a guerrilla back alley library about a block away from my apartment. It was full of odd titles, mostly romance novels and soviet tracts, but sprinkled liberally with terrible summer beach books, too, the sort you buy at the airport for the flight then never read again. I borrowed a copy of The Third Policeman and left behind A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six, one of my favourite books from early childhood. If you would also like to donate, or even just browse, it can be found in the alley between Francis and Pender, a half block west of Commercial Drive.

setting, the scene

An excerpt from the journal of Metrocentric:

Across from the pub, an office building, presenting to us its side elevation. A column of windows, about half a dozen in height.

In many workplaces people making or taking calls on their mobile phones will leave their desks and make their way to a more anonymous part of the building: a corridor, a stairway, a lift lobby. There they stand and shuffle as they speak – if there is a window they will typically look out of it for all or part of the call.

It was that part of the afternoon in which anyone going back to the office would have done so, and the post-work clientele had yet to appear. I was drinking Bombardier, because he got the first round in and he can’t ask for lager, he says.

Every now and then a face and torso would appear at one of the windows opposite. At one point there were four. Four in a row. “Connect Four!”, I remarked. All this was happening behind him.

Once, when all four fully presented themselves at the window, and none were crouched into themselves in their phone calls, and two were gesticulating, the sun came out; the light fell on all four. The squares of window stood out against the dark concrete. It was like looking at a grand opera stage set: they could have flung the glass aside and burst into song.

nevermind that time I was kidnapped in L.A., just remember the time I was in a wedding dress instead

I dragged 40 pounds of books over to Pulp Fiction on Main St. yesterday, only to have them buy two titles, basically reducing my trip to $8 for an hour’s work. Boo. Then, on the long walk home, after a lovely streetside conversation with BJ, one of my cart wheels snapped off. Double boo. Luckily, after about half a mile of unsuccessfully attempting to drag a broken cart, some very nice guy on a bicycle pulled up and said, “Did you lose a wheel? Yeah, that’s ruined. Hold on, stay here, you going far? I’ll give you a ride home.”, spun away, then came back and picked me up in a big shiny jeep with a canadian flag on the back. (Turned out to be Oliver’s neighbor, because this city is small like that.)

So that was my tiny, merry adventure, and once again, like many of them, it involved hopping into a car with a total unknown. Thank you random man, for making my day so much better!

New score – Jhayne: 1. Stranger Danger: 0. Win.

The other exciting thing that happened yesterday was that I recieved my very first HST return. Not a huge chunk of money, not even remotely enough to get me in the clear, but enough that I’ve been able to kill some of my debts. I paid off the $70 I owed on taxes, set aside what I owe Karen, and half of what I owe Paula, put some cash towards my EI debt, and today I’m paying off the ICBC transit tickets someone put in my name while I was in Montreal, so I can continue working on getting a driver’s licence. Sounds mundane, perhaps, but it feels bloody brilliant all the same.