Spit In the Wind (I Dare You)
Living in The Purple House represented specific challenges for me, as an individual. It overwhelmed me at times because the atmosphere was always thick with an undercurrent of inaudible murmurs, which seemed to rattle about the rooms of that house, from place to place, causing a certain hair in the centre of my forehead to feel as though it was being tugged, teasingly. Something always seemed to want my attention there, yet I spent much of the time alone, in a little room geared for studying. This is the house in which I began my studies, which I took great pride in, at the time, and still do but for very different reasons. Some of the first courses I took were about the history of Canada and I had very personal motives for taking them. These reasons are rooted in an experience when I was a reporter in the early 2000s, which is a rather long time ago now. I worked in a small office on a busy street (relatively speaking). It was my first foray into the world of journalism and I was eager to say the least because I had connected with the editor of this paper in a way I have never connected with anyone before. He saw something in me that translated as a sense of relief for me. It was just really nice to be understood without having to make it so. He just seemed to get me from the first moment we met. And I got him too. His name was Bob Rupert and I learned to love him as a mentor and friend though there was a 30+ year age-gap between us, I felt like he was one of the few people in the entire world I could relate to. He taught me a lot and wrote me an extremely generous reference letter when the newspaper we worked for shut down during what was described as a "perfect storm" of economic crisis for the world of print media.
I had deep and abiding respect for Bob and I desired to achieve good writing for the paper we both loved so dearly. After all, he gave me my start as a journalist, among so many others and at the time, I had no degree nor any experience. All I had to offer was raw talent and passion and he took the risk of taking me on as a reporter. Before the end, he provided me with significant experience and instilled a confidence in me that endured. Our paper was a free press renegade little-engine-that-wanted-to and sometimes proved to be the engine-that-could. It was an incredible experience, in hindsight.
I had an encounter at this newspaper late on a Friday afternoon that changed the course of my life and represents the first step and in ongoing journey I am on at this very moment. This journey leads me to today, the time and place where it seems important to share this little anecdote so let me continue by starting at the beginning. It was a very warm summer's day, in July, if memory serves me correctly. I had just submitted my last assignment for the day and was ready to go home. There were only a few of us left in the office; the publisher, the editor, and me. As I stepped away from my desk I heard a crash and the grinding of metal. I grabbed my Canon Rebel and ran to the door, knowing full well a car accident could get me on the front page. I had a flash of remorse regarding the exploitation of such a thing, but as it was happening right outside the office, I also had presence of mind to know I would likely hear about it the next day if I didn't catch the story in the heat of the moment. So off I went. As I went outside, I saw a cab and another vehicle had a minor collision, minimal damage, and no injuries apparent. I started snapping pictures anyway because you never know when they might come in handy to fill a space on a page. As I took pictures, a young woman of obvious Native descent came flying out the backdoor of the cab, on the opposite side of the collision, extremely upset and screaming for an ambulance but it was not immediately obvious what the injuries may have been. I started taking even more pictures. She noticed me right away and told me off, harshly. I felt ashamed of the scene, knowing I was making her bad day even worse. I made a naive and stupid decision. I went closer to her and started to show her my camera. I was in the process of deleting all the photos and offering an apology to her. Rather than taking the time to listen to what I was saying, she started swearing at me afresh, exhibiting extreme hostility. I held my ground. I new enough to know that the Natives in my town constantly clashed with the locals, but I was not her enemy and I knew what she was up against and I thought for a moment I could communicate this to her, but I had already lost her trust and she lost her temper even further, the more I tried to explain. I stepped back, but she stepped towards me at the same time. She then proceeded to spit in my face, right between the eyes. It oozed down my face and I turned and walked away amidst a crowd of people. Back at the office, Bob was speechless. He rushed out and confronted the scene.
I was not so much shocked by it, but frustrated. It was lack of communication and a lack of general respect on a variety of levels, mutually experienced, that caused this scene to go from bad to worse. I realized I was in the wrong industry that night, however, knowing I was never meant to be a "news" reporter because I didn't have it in me to do these things to people. I didn't really care that she spit in my face, I probably would have done the same thing to her, if our roles were reversed. What bothered me is how quickly things devolved between us, as women, as members of the same community, as relatives, most likely, if you trace the heritage back far enough. I couldn't stand it. I felt a sense of despair in that moment that horrified me. I realized the rift that existed between us was immeasurable. We might as well have lived on different planets. I've never felt like I had it easy, but in comparison, of course I did. She immediately hated me and everything I represented and I knew exactly why. It was untangling the mess of distance and pain between the two of us and all we respectively represented that intrigued me. I wanted no part in furthering these disconnections, wherever they may exist. It felt like there was something very significant at play that day.
It was this exact exchange that motivated me to investigate the root cause, which lead me to study the history of Canada. As is commonly understood, Canada was formed largely by European colonizers and exploited for the sake of a cross-country railway system, to put it simply.
She had her reasons for spitting at me. Of course she did.
I cried most of the night when that happened. I got drunk on cheap red wine for comfort. I was insulted, understandably. I was embarrassed, definitely. But on a deeper level I was heartbroken. This was a rough situation to confront the next day, as we had mutual acquaintances who chalked it up to her being "crazy" and "dramatic" (sounds familiar) and everyone around me was horrified by the story, but I knew this woman was not crazy for doing what she did. I was still in shock, so frustrated that I ended my day in conflict with this woman, who may otherwise have been a friend to me under different circumstances. I couldn't believe I had stooped so low as to rush out there to take her picture like I did. I was so angry at myself for allowing my motives to be swayed by the desire to be on the front page. I understood her anger, but I was not accustomed to hostility, attested by the fact that I opened myself right up to the whole event by approaching her in hopes to appease her. That was foolish of me. That's where I went wrong, in terms of personal safety, of course. But it was more than that. There was something happening that felt so much more significant than a spur of the moment clash. I look back on this event and realize a part of me heard a part of her; I heard her screaming to be understood, underneath everything–much like I feel, almost all the time. This is my touchstone life event which motivated me to follow a nearly invisible thread from place to place, tracing the pathways of clues that bring me back to the same origins, repeatedly.
As for my studies, the more I learned, as time went on, the more entangled the history of my country became for me within the roots of my own family tree. But, my family tree had been uprooted and disturbed numerous times either by tragedy or by force or by loss. As a consequence, I had no idea exactly who I was, back then. As I learned the origins of Canada as a country, it didn't take long to see why that woman spit at me that day. It wasn't me she was spitting on per se, it was everything that brought me to that point, it was everything that pushed her to that limit. She was reacting to a world that was systematically regimented, and implemented intentionally over time to nearly decimate her culture and her entire life, to be frank. And in many ways, I was doing the same only from a directly opposite perspective. The epidemic of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, to the unmarked graves of the Residential Schools, to the inherent racism in my own community, are a few examples of events and circumstances that lead her to make her decision to spit on me. It was my traumatic childhood, my fatherlessness, my lack of education (formal and otherwise) which lead me to decide to do what I did. She had every right to spit on me that day, but the truth is I had no right to take her picture (therefore profit), on ethical principal alone.
As for the spitting? I could have pressed charges on her for assault, but Bob wisely encouraged me not to because he wanted me to seek a deeper meaning in the experience. He always pushed me to think critically and to see things from more than one perspective. I knew she was in the wrong by modern laws and conventions, but I knew there was a greater wrong at play and her's was the greater offence. I chose to stand in that gap and figure out if there was any way I could build some sort of bridge from her world to mine, somehow.
This event shaped many of the decisions I made in my life ever since. I've been on a passionately determined quest to get to the bottom of all of this pain, to see it, to know it, to unearth it. When I first began digging in to Treaty Rights, Indigenous literature, and the events that built Canada as a whole, I wasn't sure at all as to where I fit in and at that time, I felt viscerally alone in the world, feeling like I didn't belong anywhere, not even to my own family. I felt so very very lost, all the time. It plagued my life but I always attributed it to the tragedy of my father's death, which I will describe in detail at a later date so you can know the burdens I've carried in my own life, especially as a little girl. But as a grown woman, on the day I was spit on, I didn't care about anything except understanding. I was so damned naive, and painfully aware of that fact.
Fast forward to the year 2020 and it seems this journey had a predestined agenda of its own, and I was just a living, breathing cog in the wheel, meant to bring it all to fruition. I hope that doesn't seem overly grandiose, but it is traceable and true, regardless. Living in the woods for a decade prior to The Purple House, I learned to listen to the natural world around me. It was in this timeframe that I felt I started to hear a certain call upon the winds, as though something was chasing me down, or beckoning me to take heed. Everything in my life started to shift and change in a gradual kind of way, but it was noticeable. All things were punctuated by grief and loss and the effects of the looming empty nest didn't help matters, either. My family was getting older, we started to drift apart, I felt I was losing my grip on all I had known, but in its place, voices swept through the air, beseeching me to have the courage to break away from the status quo. As the pandemic came to Canada, I felt a deep and intense feeling of an imminent departure from all I knew and I resisted it, but my resistance was futile. I became swept up in all these things which I have discussed at length in this blog by now and I encourage you to refer to my older posts to grasp at least some of the scope of this experience with me.
I started sitting on the floor almost all the time back then. I had a board I put on my lap and I used it as a substrate for watercolour paper, which I used to paint with. I painted a lot back then, especially in water-colour. One night in particular, an image started to emerge from the paper and I began painting a woman, laying in a pine tree forest, eyes closed as if in prayer. The painting took on a life of it's own, and the trees became a part of her and she became a part of the trees. I painted her skin a soft red. She wore a crown. She had long brown hair. I didn't know who she was or what she was all about, but she emerged from a sense of raw intuition mingled with a visceral knowing of an indescribable nature. All the while, this sense of hearing something just outside my periphery was getting stronger and stronger and it was not long after this experience that my entire life erupted in total chaos on levels I cannot even explain. My home filled with dust, there was a cacophony of noise, my son's bedroom was totally destroyed, we had to move (back to The Purple House) and in that interim, I experienced a breakdown or perhaps a breakthrough and started to see patterns emerge within music that erupted so forcefully in my mind, it felt like a metaphorical bomb going off inside of me. I've spent the last five years dissecting the experience I had with that woman. It emboldened me and humbled me at the same time and caused me to know how deeply disconnected we are, from person to person. It is so easy to be offended by one another and we all take great pride in confronting these offences as if it is somehow effective in changing the behaviour of another person. It is usually not effective at all. It is my experience that we would serve each other and ourselves much better to investigate the pain at which someone would chose to lash out at someone else. These things are almost always motived by a deeper problem.
This artwork is a very important image for me. It proved to be prophetic in nature for me and I believe what emerged onto the page that day is the essence of my spirit, allowing itself to be captured in order to guide me through the incredibly many challenging experiences. I will write about its deeper significance at a later date, but for tonight, the take-away here I hope that you can see, is how long and how hard I have been working to understand the world around me, the people within it, and especially myself. It has cost me more than you might think.
Much like the sensation that something was reaching out to me at The Purple House, I felt something reaching out to me on a scale I could not fathom when that painting was made, causing me to feel things I could not contain. One thing lead to another and another and eventually, I found my way back to the beginning where my heritage unearthed a curse, a rhythm, plots, schemes, love, hate, revenge, media output bar none, conflict, and on and on and on. It all morphed into a beast all its own. And still, I flourish, somehow.
“You write the facts and never, never sacrifice your integrity for the wishes of another.”
Bob Rupert
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