June 13 DAILy- ness

In looking at the images I have been working with, I am drawn to those in which I am squatting. The latest one was taken on Saturday evening in the Baptist  parking lot in front of a pile of rubble. Today the land around that lot was transformed... at 7.30am a group of them - children, adults, men, women with BIG trucks, forklifts, rakes, laid sod, raked, swept, yelled, beeped etc. I was reduced to a shivering stressed mess in response to this - it has been a year of constant noise, dirt, trucks, chancy hydro, interventions in my life by members of the congregation. Some, during this time, have harassed the Rector of the United Church and her parishioners accusing them of heresy against the evangelical cause. Letters whip back and forth in the county paper. I am terrified that I will somehow be the next body. There is now a newly erected sign pointedly thrust at my front door. I feel victimized by rampant fundamentalism.

I am torn apart by my need to make a living wherever I can and by the inordinate amount of stress I experience from living here and/or from living in the city. Which is worse!

The squatting idea resonates on many levels: a squatter lives where she can - occupying unowned (by her) land; a temporary occupation by one who is poor and derelict. Squatting is an act associated with giving birth, waiting/resting (usually by non-white and/or working class peoples), shitting or female pissing, or sometimes a position in which one looks closely at something on, or close to, the ground. White euro-peoples now squat on "aboriginal" land.

What does all this rumination of mine say about colonialization as an act of aggression against native peoples and also about the current actions of some Bloomfield Baptists? There is a relationship.

Tonight it is cold and raining. I am unable to sleep waiting for the imagined (?) but no less frightening pending attack.

Rainy night June 13 looking over at the Baptist parking lot.