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Do you ever feel like you should be doing more than you are? Like the years of being a student have trained you to never fully relax or hang out with a cat without guilting yourself for not writing or applying for grants or editing audio??

I feel like I should be doing somethiiiinnng here in the City on the Sea but all I want is junk food and naps and white wine. I guess today is a down day. I’ve seen a lot and interviewed some cool people, I’ve photographed, filmed, taken mental notes, trying to register how I’ll describe things here for people I’m going to see soon. I’ve sent a lot of emails and have anticipated to hear back from activists, that notorious breed of late-repliers.

With only a few days left of my trip I guess my mind is already kind of back in Mtl.. Setting appointments, planning when to pick up Klava the cat from her aunty’s house, hoping that another huge demo happens once I’m back.

Maybe I’ll take a rainy afternoon nap and the inspiration will come sit on my chest like my brother and sister in law’s cat has hypnotically been doing for this last idle hour.

Voting rights suppressed by stairwells

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As many know, not all voting stations are accessible in Quebec.

People with diverse mobility are being fucked in their voting rights. The anglos and newcomers will understand the unjustness of having to prepare to vote, the need to take precautions to avoid barriers to voting. What if someone wants to vote strategically after hearing the results of the latest poll rather than vote a week in advance? What if people don’t have the energy to research if their polling station is accessible? What if they’re disorganized and show up on the day expecting to have their right to vote and find out that it got thrown down a flight of stairs and smashed at the foot of their wheelchair?

A message from the chief electoral officer:

“Please note that… on polling day, polling stations should be easily accessible but it is possible that some of them aren’t. As a result, people with difficulty moving about should check in advance with their returning officer or by contacting our Information Centre…

If it turns out that your poll is not available on April 7, you still have the possibility to exercise your right to vote at the office of the returning officer on April 1 and 2 from 9 am to 9 pm and on April 3 from 9 am to 2 pm. Locations used for this vote are accessible to people with reduced mobility.”

The fact that they refer to people as ‘having difficulty moving’ is insulting. The difficulty is posed by their choice to place voting stations up a flight of stairs. Having wheels is fucking liberating, the electoral office is the oppressive thing in this equation.

They say ‘you still have the right to vote,’ like aren’t we benevolent in offering you a shitty alternative and making you feel like it is your defective bodies that are responsible for a restriction of your rights.

I’m angry about this. It makes me either want to say fuck your election or vote really hard even if it is a pain in my ass.

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Beautiful dayyyyy!!

Water breaks laws for me

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I haven’t yet shared the bit of writing that started me off on my Under Water City journey.. so here it is! As usual, my life moves are sparked from something I wrote in a wrinkly notebook on a cafe table or on my couch in yesterday’s stretchypants. A warning, there’s a bit of sexy content in it, so if you’re averse to sexy talk of the homosensual kind avert your senses;) Also  if you’re a family member. In other words, Mum, don’t read this. If not, read onnnn!

***

Sometimes i wish the city was under water

so i could put on my goggles, see everything kind of foggy, and swim around.

I kind of see things better from a distance anyway, with something between me and the thing I’m looking at.

I would swim, float up to doorsteps, flutter my ways through windows, wouldn’t have to worry about opening taps or bottles or jars because there’d be liquid all around. And plus they would rust off if I did need to open them anyway.

God I think the best times I ever feel are when I’m making love really good and someone is licking my pussy, her tongue a little bit inside, and grabbing my hip flesh and I’m moaning and she’s smiling… or when i’m in the pool.

Concrete’s so harsh and inflexible and uncaring. Concrete would never grab my hip flesh or caress my entire body, like lovers and water do, licking, undulating on the hip part just above the bottom half of my stretched out, pseudo bikini, holding me, resisting a universal law – of physics – to make sure I don’t fall. Water breaks laws for me. Concrete doesn’t care if i fall.

And when I do, because I inevitably do, concrete makes sure there’s dirt there where the skin opens.

Water doesn’t care about borders, laughing between nets and over the sides of dams.

So there i’d be, floating up the sides of buildings, who needs elevators when you can do the frog kick up? I’d backstroke over to Steph’s house any time I wanted, I’d laugh looking down at all the bottom feeders still trying to walk in the lines on the streets at the bottom of the city. Stupid bottom feeders, don’t you know you can swim around? Don’t you know how to swim? Swim faster bottom feeders, sucks that your hands aren’t a little webbed like one of mine. Sucks that you didn’t spend all that time in the pool learning how to move as a kid, and at physio instead of learning how to drive and running on the sidewalk to keep slim and fit and show off your asses to the neighbourhood.

But that’s the concrete talking.

I never think negatively when I’m in the water. I never curse or scowl at someone just for a reaction. I stare up, lining my laps with the lines in the ceiling, meditating on the rhythm of my breathing, meditating on the feeling of my muscles contracting without hurting me, meditating on what I want for dinner.

Swimming and tired, but not tired of swimming

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I just went for an amazing swim at a pool in Burnaby near my bro’s house.

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As I looked through the sun window in the ceiling, feeling my arms go higher and higher each stroke, and focusing on relaxing the tension stored in my muscles I remembered that I had written about swimming while I was in Edmonton, but hadn’t been sure if I wanted to post it. I wrote in a frustrated frame of mind and it deals with a personal struggle I am going through right now. I deliberated between thinking ‘that my business’, and saying to myself, ‘I’ve read some really personal things on tumblr that have shed light on my reality and have been like a reassuring hug by a stranger’, so I decided to share..

Swimming in the pool I used to swim in as a kid, the diagonal windows reflecting my arms-only stroke and spending more time in the hot tub than doing laps, the activity I used to be able to do for hours, it hit me: my bod aint like it used to be. I was operated on, casted, splinted physio’d OT’d in order to make me as mobile as possible. And I was, for less than ten years. I grew accustomed to, with a little bit of pushing, functioning just below the level of stamina and energy as an average ordinary. Hiking, cross trainer, standing up to cook. Tonight in that pool as my cardiovascular self craved the panting and exhilaration of lots of laps and fast, my muscles and joints said I don’t think so bucko. No rodeo for this cowgirl tonight.

It worries me that I can’t reach that level of exercise for my heart and mental well being. It worries and frustrates me that I can’t walk to where my cousins parked their truck let alone walk a few blocks to my friend’s house. That the ways I used to be present in this city are no longer a reality for me; rushing to bus stops, my feet my primary mode of transit, going up and down stairs for exercise, not gauging what to bring downstairs at my Mum’s house, my childhood home, because I don’t want to have to come back up. Like ever. It is a drastic change and not one I anticipated.

There is a medical narrative around arthrogryposis telling us from birth that it is not progressive, non degenerative. Well why am I so tired? Why was I climbing mountains and drinking my face off after high school graduation and preparing myself for the long walk across the stage at uni graduation? I’m only 26 I said to the lines in the ceiling as I arm-back-stroked my second and final lap. I’m not 85 fucking years old.

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Take your time my dear, he said, as I struggled to pull the one side of my coat with holes to meet the side with the buttons. I didn’t realize it but the waitors’ hasty movements and hurried closing activities like slamming bar stools on benches upside down, and whipping their ponytails back and forth were making me rush to get out of the hippy cafe bar we found after a long day of travelling from the island to the mainland. There’s this phrase I’ve been saying a lot lately: on se décalice. That’s what I was doing. J was already on his scooter, ready to roll to catch the second-last sky train; we didn’t want to risk going for the last one, and I felt like once again I was making him wait, I was taking too long to do everything. I was feeling rushed and impatient with myself. These are not new feelings nor are they sparse. I have always found myself around faster moving people with quicker paced schedules than I have, and have quite often felt like I’m not measuring up. Like I’m not walking fast enough or working fast enough or eating fast enough or getting out of the bathroom fast enough or changing fast enough after going swimming with childhood friends. I had this thought today as we were having our breakfast in the hotel lobby, after J said I’m almost ready to go because he thought I was anxious to leave, but I was just enjoying my coffee, waiting for the rain to pass, that sometimes I prefer to be alone not because I don’t want company but because I don’t want to have to explain myself or say I’m coming, almost ready. Its simpler to go alone. Easier to follow my own rhythm when I’m the only one playing the song.

The thing about the Underwater City is that its as much about people as it is ramps or wheels or pave-jobs. Its about patience and laughing as you race down the sidewalks, mocking the bi-pedals for being so slow. Its about figuring out how to fit two scooters in an elevator, on a bus, how to hold the door open for each other. Its about J giving me lifts on the ferry to look at the sunset, and me grabbing something from a tight space that would be a pain in the ass for him to drive his scooter into. Not that he wouldn’t be able to do it, or that he would complain at all. Its about asking ça va, when I am clearly upset about something, its about being there for each other and finding a pub to eat and dance in.

Its about the scientist giving the writer space to sit on the pier with my cell phone writing, texting myself new bits, and the writer trying to give the scientist an estimated time of how long it will take to get her idea down on a semi-used napkin in a bar. Its about not wanting anything in return after petting my hair when I am overwhelmed with emotion from the broad uncertainty I’m swimming in, being treated so well in public and seeing the vast blue-greys of sky meeting ocean and mountains.

As we both sat on the seats of the skytrain, our scooters rocking with the turns, patiently waiting to carry us when we arrived at our stop, I said I wished I had more crip friends when I was growing up. Its comfortable and well-paced and not frustrated with me. We’re good to travel together. He gets me coffee when I’m sleepy, I make us pose for pictures. He said its true, quand tu voyage avec les gens bi-peds il comprennent pas quand tu cherche un ascenseur ou que tu prends plus de temps pour s’habiller. They are shocked when elevators aren’t as obviously located as escalators or stairs and don’t seem to understand that sometimes you need to sit there kind of groaning on a ferry seat with your legs spread in the air flashing the seagulls flying on the wind currents outside the boat window to recuperate before you go on. I’m so happy J joined me, took me to Stanley Park, and taught me how to get on the bus in a scooter without loosing my shit. We’re closer with each other now after having travelled to three different cities, across mountain ranges and prairie, across countless rivers and between tiny islands in the pacific ocean. We’re closer and I feel closer to finding the Underwater City. As I’ve jokingly been asking him repeatedly over the course of our travels… are we there yet?

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As I photograph the view from my scooter’s rear view mirror, looking straight ahead on this trail on Victoria’s bay all I see are condos. Makes me sad to think of the people who were forcibly removed from this land. There are some totems and plaques now talking about traditional sacred places and how the Esquimalt people ‘relocated’. I want to see plaques that say there was a war waged on Indigenous peoples and now we’re building condos and drinking Starbucks. I want to see fires burning and I want to learn the significance of smudging and the drum. Reading BS on plaques is for tourists. I’m a settler. I live here. I want to see the truth written in public spaces. Its written in the earth whether we want to read it or not anyway.