Author: foxtongue

maybe I’ll be lucky, maybe he’s died.

I’ve begun pursuing a potentially dangerous course of action, something I’ve been putting off as long as I possibly could:

I’ve started the steps required to get my Irish citizenship.

My father’s father was born in Cashel. Because of this, according to Irish Naturalization and Immigration Services, I’m eligible for Citizenship Through Descent. Naturally, you might be curious as to why this is a risky proposition, and why I haven’t followed through with it before, especially as I’ve such a bee in my bonnet about getting the heck out of Canada. Well, here’s the caveat: even though my family in Winnipeg already has copies of all the tricky, hard-to-find, turn-of-last-century, grandfather-related paperwork, the application also requires documents that relate to my unstable, schizophrenic, murderous father. Very particular documents, the sort that require permission to access, like his full civil birth certificate and copies of his current identity documents.

When I had set up to move to London a few years ago, my plan was to apply for all the paperwork from the safety of another continent, where there would be no possible way he would go so far as to show up at my door with a gun or a sharpened crowbar. My work visa would cover my UK residency until my citizenship was finalized, freeing me to finally wander the EU as I saw fit, but when that move didn’t happen, stupidly superseded by the failed Heart of the World project, my citizenship application plans were put on the back burner, only to be considered as an utterly last resort.

Given that my 29th birthday has just come and gone, it seems to be well past time I dust those plans off again. Which raises some interesting questions, like “would contacting my father to get permission, as hazardous and a bad idea as that is, break the terms of the restraining order I have against him?” or “because I have a restraining order, and he has a proven history of extreme violence, is it possible that the government would let me circumvent him entirely?”. I really have no idea, nor do I know who to contact to get those answers.

In the meantime, while I call endless office drones, attempting to find out what I need to know, (and to discover who, honestly, I should be calling), the family clan in Winnipeg are my angels, sifting through old boxes, looking for the relevant paperwork to scan and e-mail to me, so I don’t have to apply directly to Ireland in the middle of a postal strike.

the way of it

Very few updates lately. I still haven’t found work, though I apply to at least ten vacancies a day, my uncle John is still living with us, growing more frustrated with Vancouver by the hour, and David’s bookstore has been suffering, sales wiped out by the hockey season, to the point where the owners seem to be threatening closure. Yet, all in all, things seem static. We abide. Job hunting continues, the search for a way out of this city continues. There is very little change.

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.