Pam Patterson

Get Over It!

2011-09-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

A friend said to me the other day - "Oh you are always that one-breasted woman" - implying somehow that I get over it? Obviously it annoys her that I am so vocal about this - am I supposed to hide it, be somehow more silent, controlled, behave appropriately ?... uhm

Outward manifestations of trauma, and others' lack of comfort with it, may be an issue here - I remember hearing someone say that she had been asked, "Why don't the Jews get over all this Holocaust stuff?". Well her answer was, "When we are good and ready".

Why should I get over it! Is trauma something that somehow we must bury - the marks of loss and pain on our bodies somehow disguised - with what? - plastic surgery, hair dye, a fake boob? Who are we doing this for? And why?

What is "it"! What are we getting over when we silence ourselves from speaking about our absences or draw attention to our appearance...? Are these conversations only to be held in whispered moments with others like us or with therapists?

I have been working around notions of the transabled - those who are able bodied who ache for the
wheelchair, the brace, or the silence of deafness. What might it mean to reconfigure a world in which disability becomes that which is desired, not shunned? It is not the nose job, the breast enlargement, the tummy tuck we are talking about here – seen as perhaps a more acceptable desire – but the need to be a person with a disaiblity. What can the transabled as theoretical model provide?
uhm.......

DAILy-ness July 10

2011-07-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about a lot lately.... jobs, cut and mangled fingers, the various problems and shit in my life...do I stay in academe or do I get some guts and practice my art or listen to myself.... whatever that means..... I am too scared to take the risk? What is the risk? I have already starved, been homeless, without a job, health... that risk is not enough it seems or it is not the "right" risk. Is it just a way of avoiding a commitment?

Research: Transmodern, transgendered theory, trans abled aesthetics.....

Transabled... interesting that it refers to a desire to be a person with a disability - the assumption being ..... wait! why the hell would anyone want to be like this? Perhaps that is the theoretical place to start to "trouble ability"? (God I hate trying to correct my typos)....

A phrase I heard today listening/watching to a video on line: "contradiction produces consciousness"

"Two problems juxtaposed may present a solution" from a Q & A after a film at Picturefest Friday night.....

Enough......tomorrow is my birthday and I realize as I near 60 years I am way too fucked up for someone my age!

Every night the animals destroy the birdfeeder- every time a different part of it: the plastic sides, the attachment that anchors it to the bottom, the loop at the top - and every day I unscrew the thing and figure out some new and stronger way to put it back together and each early morning or in the evening after work I look outside and there it is on the ground.... in pieces. And I keep fixing it.... it isn't getting any better! It still gets wrecked... is there another solution? putting it somewhere else? not doing it anymore? But who knows? Because there I am persisting....I keep at it......

DAILy-ness June 23

2011-06-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

Last raccoon caught... total of 6 were living in the ceiling/floors... imagine the shit! The kits - well 4 of them - are on the far side of the Bloomfield Millpond.... this is the sound that brought the last one down to the kitchen hatch... And yes I grabbed it, stuffed it in a box and drove to the pond as it chewed to get out.... it's claws and head already through by the time I completed the 5 mins drive... I celebrate with white wine and fried fish and cole slaw! It's also quiet in Baptist land (oh nope the drums and bass just started) and pouring rain. Almost my lucky day!

June 21 DAILy-ness

2011-06-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

Finally out of sheer frustration of not being able to rid the house of raccoons…. John arrived Sunday and that afternoon one of the kits fell out of the kitchen ceiling hatch… it was caught and put into a box… a second came down to look and John caught it and it too went into the box. They were released by the Mill Pond. Last night Ron (animal control) arrived with two live traps … I realize that I have been analyzing the raccoon movements, habits and various locations at all times of the days – Sunday evening for about 2 hours both John and I watch to see exactly how the mother racoon gets out of the house to forage at night for example.

Traps are set by Ron – one in the basement, one near the bird feeder. I tell Ron that she leaves the house by the large hole she has chewed under the eaves between 8.30pm and 9.30pm and returns around 2am by the hole under the foundation. The other trap is baited in the basement. At 9.30pm, she is in the outside trap. She is then put into the basement and we wait. At about 2am I attempt to sleep – by 7am John catches the last (we hope) pup on the steps leading to the basement and we put it in with the mother. I call Ron and wait for pick up. Both will be killed

Sounds so cut and dry. But what is missing is both of our many sleepless nights as we hear chewing, squeaking, squabbling as we wait at open hatches and holes trying to figure out what to do. We were able to get the raccoons out in the past by sealing up the holes after mother and pups leave, but not this time. The pups stubbornly stay. We fear that if the raccoon chews a wire, the wood frame house may burn. Debris rains down on our heads from her daily excavations.

They will be shot with a 22 rifle. Ron is a frightening man – severe, serious, clean cut, a young looking grandfather at age 49 (clean living he says), ultra religious, pro-lifer – “The Devil is out there you know,” he challenges us. “Jesus got 39 stripes to save us from our sins. Prayer will save you from Hell…” He kills raccoons, beavers (some guy in Belleville eats them), rats, skunks, bears…. “They won’t let you kill them in Toronto so I know some guy who takes the ‘coons outside of the city limits and gasses them.” He comes today and takes the mother coon and her pup. I continue to ruminate – certainly not an intellectual affair. I have spent a night awake and tortured by all this. The contradictions I experience and I observe are huge. Ron, the pro-lifer, who kills animals all day – save me Jesus. I, an intellectual, who has sentimental attachments to animals – it is my birdfeeder and bath after all that provides the best environs for raccoons – and who now traps them and delivers them to death. And while I am awake all night waiting, I watch on video The Godfather parts 1, 2 & 3. Somehow there is some sublime appropriateness here. John and I sit later at sunrise – the last pup (we hope) now in the cage - and I tell him about the last hour of the film. As Corleon comments, "I have spent my life trying to extricate myself from the family business only to find that the higher I go – even to the Vatican - that the corruption is inescapable."

June 13 DAILy- ness

2011-06-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

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.

DAILy-ness June 6

2011-06-06T16:23:00.000-07:00

Is that straw in the salad greens? "I had salad twice last week and there was straw in it... you need to watch for it this time of year you know...".

DAILy-ness June 05th

2011-06-05T18:46:00.000-07:00

DAILy-ness June 01st

2011-06-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

My brother Tony - brain damaged at birth, developmentally delayed, now physically age 50, but still 2 years old - alone in hospital and obsessed with dying… “I don’t want to be in the cold ground”…and of me “You almost died didn’t you?” he says to me…Why don’t I visit again? Why do my eyes fill with tears as I recall the image of him in that bare room the only colour being his cookie monster stuffed toy? Do I use him as an excuse of my own emotional turmoil? Will his death represent yet another victory for my other California-sunny-living-brother and his Payton Place wife as they prepare to gorge on Tony’s monied mortal leavings? It is not so much the California boy’s victory that enrages me but my own losses due to my own mismanagement, misplanning and the totally wasted years that sucked up my life and resources. But it is now 9.23 am and the kitchen opens for lunch soon. It is a gorgeous day - clear blue sky and the lawn spotted with grackles and robins... what a racket. Take a pain killer and get going to work. I stress over my own indecision around work and health.

DAILy-NESS…a performance May 1-August 31, 2011

2011-05-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Pulling into the cafe lot before work.

For the 4 months May – August 2011, I am practicing my art daily for about 5-30mins per day. OK what does that mean? Some days it has been recording the birds outside on a crappy tape recorder. Some days, responding to a job ad by furiously scribbling on it with crayon. I make a drawing, an action, a piece of text. As I work, I am aware that we encourage few, if any, conscious non-linear reactions to our daily living. We go through the motions of being alive. Oh of course, we angst about what we do, enjoy, plan, and cogitate, set goals, change diapers, cook food but do we respond in any creative non-linear way? Do we make something of it - not necessarily by becoming a famous pianist or teaching a good lesson - but simply by taking what is there and responding to it as directly as possible?

I have been working in academia and teaching performance, studio art and visual culture for over 30 years. I am exhausted, broke, ill and frustrated as a result of being a forever adjunct or sessional. Perhaps assumptions are being made that I must have an independent income to allow me to indulge in research and publish or have lots of free time to attend meetings. But this summer I had planned to chop vegs and wash dishes.... and all armed with my PhD! The work would be so much more immediate. But now I am ill and frightened.

Those who live the pensioned or pandered lifestyles well they don't get my panic at all. I suppose why should they - some haven't worked at anything out of necessity ever. Am I jealous? No, not at all. I think it has more to do with the fact that I want to be understood. But really Pam, how can you expect someone who has never experienced real poverty to know what that really feels like... to know in your gut the terror when critical illness strikes and you have no support or family help and you won't be well enough to work and pay the rent anymore....

I am going to write weekly and update an account of this process as I build a new "work" from this DAILy-ness of survival and see where this takes me....

Imagining Abundance on the Margins....

2011-05-30T19:55:00.001-07:00

Swallowtail Light video/performance 2010 by Pam Patterson dedicated to her grandmother, Vivian.

In these challenging economic times, those of us who live and work in the margins as social activists and cultural workers need to become more creative and ingenious in finding funds to live and support our work.

As one such worker, I have, since my major cancer surgery eight years ago, been struggling with ill health; directing, with no pay but with much passion, an arts-informed feminist academic and activist program (http://www.wiaprojects.com/); and attempting to support myself and my creative work with contract teaching and a CPP disability pension. I need others’ assistance to help buy me time – about 5 months – to deal with pressing health issues, search for more substantial funding for WIAprojects, and to find more long-term teaching work. In exchange, I will post each person’s name, if so wished, as a patron and supporter on the WIAprojects website and, for donations over $100.00, also mail out a free copy of Performing Pedagogy: Communitas in Context, my recently published monograph of an exhibition and text on women in a collective art community.

Proposed Work:

This coming year’s WIAprojects projected programming is attached for you to enjoy reading. My current performative work-in-process for Oboro Gallery in 2012 Liturgical Returning examines the liminal transitional space from life to one’s death, and my creative and academic writing is for a project with Eva Karpinski entitled The Silent Book: Crafting Memories from a Life with Breast Cancer. All are very exciting projects.

The funds will be put to very good use!

Donations may be sent as cheques payable to Pam Patterson via mail to:

Pam Patterson

WIAprojects

264 Bloor Street West

PO Box 22580

Toronto, ON

M5S 1V8

Or by Interac bank transfer or check or cash deposit to:

TD Canada Trust

Pam Patterson

Account #: 6396551

Bank Transit #: 1968