Up to Speed

On 4:16 PM 0 comments

It's been a while between updates and for that, gentle reader, I apologize.
I apologize also to my self, because I had wanted to increase my output and it's gone south instead.
Things in my real life have continued in much the same fashion as for the last couple of months - a few things have changed though , the most significant one being that I'm no longer living in a cold basement. This a positive thing in the long run, but the way it all went down is anything but.

My sis's boyfriend kicked me out.

It happened two weeks ago.My dear friend Anne was here in the Gspot visiting  from Toronto where she lives. She and her boyfriend, who's a sweetie by the way,  took me out to the magical woods in the south end of town and got we got mildly lost.I never would have gone if not for them, and I had a lot of fun.
Then I arrived home to Terra and her BF arguing. I sat out on the back porch enjoying the sun and trying to ignore them and work on my computer when out he comes,all aquiver with pent up emotion and he sputters out through his clenched jaw
"you can go" trying too hard to sound tough
I say "what?" taken by surprise
and he repeats "you can go. Get out I can't take this shit anymore"
"what shit" I ask - a legitimate question I thoughgt since I have no way of knowing why he's got a bee in his bonnet
"your sister" he responds, still literally shaking with his barely contained anger - he then turns and goes back in the house while I power down the puter and think of finding a friendlier port to set anchor in for awhile - as I'm doing this he comes out again still all bugged eyed and seething
"why are you still here?" he says "get going"
and my patience, which for asshats like this guy is in short supply at the best of times, now is wearing thin and I laugh in his face and say "don't stroke out, buddy"
I proceed then tozip my bag and go to pack my gear from the basement dungeon.
I left and then some stuff happened that I'm not comfortable going into great detail about here - not that i care about nmy own privacy - But there are other people involved and I have no right to be as open with their lives as I am with my own - but the end result is he's no longer under the same roof and won't be for the forseeable future.

so on to other stuff.
This past sunday the weather gods relented in the prolonged insult that was the start of May and it became warm and now these last few days it has been hot and sunny as though we skipped spring altogether and gone straigt through into summer. This is great for me since there are few things in life I loathe as much as the cold - also as an added incentive to be thankful for the heat wave - it's much easier to be homeless - or at least underhoused when its warm than it is when it's cold.

I've been continuing to smoke pot - as I've mentioned earlier, but am still clean and sober as far as everything else goes - next week will be 3 months with no alcohol. This is doing a world of good both for my own sanity and in how people around me view me.All in all it's a good thing, and every day without a drink makes it that much more unlikely that I'll find myself backsliding.

I still don't have a place however and so I'm still couch surfing for the time being and this means just finding the sort of mental place where I can relax and think and get any creative work done is somewhat difficult. But there's no excuse for not getting anything done, and if I really mean it when I say I want to turn my pain into art, I'll find some way to do it.

With regards to my legal woes that I left off the second from most recent post with all drags along in the slow and slothful way of the Canadian (in)justice system. But I managed to get the warrant rescinded and am not a fugitive or in jail , both of which were my main fears, and real possibilities after missing that court date last month.
I'm on the bus to Toronto right now, as I type this, for my return engagement at Old City Hall, where, hopefully, I will get my disclosure from the Crown. That's not likely since the complainant and "witness" are making the whole thing up and avoiding the police for that very reason, but we shall soon see what other little twists and turns theyt have in store.
They should be duly warned, however, I'm pissing fire and in full blown "streetwalking cheetah" mode, so if they want a showdown they are going to need a bigger boat.
(and if that isn't a confused series of references and mixed metaphors, then I don't know what is,).
In other news, I went out this past weekend with a lovely old friend named Niki - she's stunning, beautiful, smart, sophisticated and funny, and I knew her years ago when her and her friend Doreen were the ultimate party girls in this sleepy little town.
We went to the park and sat by the river and smoked some dewbs and talked and laughed and I tried not to be as blatant as I wanted to be about checking her out and picturing her naked and pressed underneath me.
She's sexy and funny  and smart - so I don't know why Im scared to make that first move- I feel on some level that she wouldn't be interested because of my past - which of course she knows aboput if not in full details she's at least got a reasonable hand drawn facsimilie, or the Cliff notes version.
I had a wonderful, fun time. The weather and the beauty of the river plus my lusty joy over her, were only tempered by my thoughts (again) of how disappointing it was that I no longer had a camera.
My sister has a smart phone, and I thought I could use that in the meantime, until I manage to acquire a camera of my own, but after only a few hours of messing around with it I somehow managed to brick the damnable thing, and so now there's one more gadget lying around that doesn't work.
I can't get it to start no matter what I do and I just hope it's still covered under the warranty.

Things are peaceful here in the Gspot.
Peaceful, and there's time to think. I have far less of anger and stress and pain in my day to day life, but I'm bored to the point of sobbing.
Sometimes - like on Saturday with Nikki, going out and catching up with an old friend are great - and I enjoy the freedom from the hell that life with Lisa had become, but I'm bored and lonely far too often.

So now the plan is to find a place to live. That's the first priority - like Virginia Woolf, I need a "room of one's own". I also need to find some gainful employment and if at all  possible find some way of making money or at very least get free stuff with this blog.
Speaking of the blog, despite the fact that it's been some time between updates, it isn't as though I haven't been writing - I have.
I've currently got three blog posts that I'm working on and they are all of them promising to be good ones. Like the ones "Meeting Cory" and "The Needle has Landed",  they all take place in the past -  about 7 or 8 years ago.
The working titles offer a hint as to what they're about; Fred victor, My OverDose and Found Money.
Fred Victor is about me moving into a a rent geared to income shared housing building in the heart of Toronto's historic Cracktown district where I lived and worked and played  for the next more than four years. it was there that things became exclusively about the drugs with no other distractions able to get through to me in the crack palace which turned into a nightmare mirrored stairway in no time at all.
My Overdose ( as the title suggests,) is the story of the events leading up to my overdose
And the one on Found money also is pretty much self explanatory.

I started this blog just over a year ago and it began as something I needed to do to achieve some catharsis -  a need to just get something out. There was a smaller portion of it that was simply boredom and then a drop of learning what's up with web technology since last timei poked around. But mostly it was a way to safely release some of the feelings I was having and to give myself a voice.Despite it being publicly available, I truly doubted anyone but 1 or 2 people might read my lame rambling thoughts.
As it turns out though a whole bunch of people started reading and talking to me through email and tweeting me encouragement and as a result of writing it I've met a lot of very interesting and great people. plus it's given me a very valuable release and I daresay my writing has even improved, if only incrementally.
My way of looking at this blog and at what I write has changed dramatically in this time and not necessarily in the ways you might think.

I'm certainly much more conscious of people reading this and that I have an audience, however small that audience may be. But this hasn't affected my willingness to be open and honest in what I write , nor am I inclined to hush ove r things that may be embarrassing to mehonesty about real things that may be embarrassing.
But an awareness that there are actually people reading, that I have an audience has made me want to give the blog more "value"  (much as I hate these biznobby terms and the world view they represent.)
I don't feel right anymore about just slapping together the first few thoughts I can dash off on a paticular subject and then posting it - instead I actually want to make it something I'd be interested in reading.
There's nothing happening with my non-existant sex life either these days, which is beginning to become a source of discomfort at the very least.
But I have to remember to not let it get me down to not let it stop me from feeling sexy and desirable.I've become so used to using sex and other people to make me feel good about myself and worthwhile and its hard to get the same sort of thing just on my own.

And that's the state of Sadie these days, and now, gentle reader, you are officially up to speed.



I was browsing around on Flickr the other day and I did a search for "Toronto" and "homeless" and came across a picture of a girl I knew named Slayer. or at least Slayer is what she was called by everybody. I can't remember for sure what her real name was - and it doesn't matter anyway. She was always just Slayer.
We first met when I lived at the Fred Victor and she would panhandle and squeegee nearby. Lisa was always trying to turn her out, telling her she could get a lot more money for a lot less work, but Slayer never did hit the corner.
Lisa knew her because they were both in Vanier - the womens jail - at the same time.
Later she moved in just down the hall from Lisa and I at the Woodgreen building. And by then she had a dog named Shiloh. I remember her sharing pizza with us, and one time while Lisa and I were fighting she came by and we shared some Jack Daniels.
That wasn't a good place for Slayer to be I don't think, with all the drugs and craziness in that building, so I hope she's found something better. Lisa would sometimes talk about the three of us hooking up sexually, but it never happened. Which is a shame because she always had such a gorgeous ass.
But seeing this picture on Flicr got me to thinking about the idea of photographing disadvantaged and disenfranchised people. Especially without permission.
The morality or ethics of it being too complex for me right now.
But it's nice to see someone I know in any event, and I hope she's doing well.
Photo :Pink Hair Blue Ink
Originally uploaded by 
The Taste of Rain
Wednesday May 12th of 2010 will go down as a trial. not a trial in a court of law - oh no, we missed that party, but a trial and a test of my will.

Today I was supposed to appear in court, at two o clock.

Not for anything big, but simply to show up, make an appearance,  and get disclosure from the Crown. This all stems from the events that also wound me up having to leave the Roach Motel as you may remember from here.
There was a misunderstanding though today in regards to the the schedule and we wound up not even leaving until a quarter after two. Fifteen minutes after I was supposed to be there.
My stomach sank. It felt as though it were acually "sinking" I'd never realized how literal the expression could really be , I was panicing and furious at the same time and so I sat and turned on my laptop, and pounded out vitriolic smokeshow rant that condemned everyone and everytyhing without mercy.
It was entitled This is Such Fucking Bullshit
here's an excerpt (typing left as is,)
This is such fucking bullshit!
 i got to the bus station all ready to make the trip to Toronto for my court appearance 
only to find that we'd missed the bus and now at the best I'll be 1 and a half hours late. 
So, hopefully they'll still be in session when I gewt there, because othedrwise, I'll have a 
warrent for my arrest and have to go wait in jail for a month or so.
This whole day turns into a shitstorm of massive proportions - just under an hour to wait 
now for thwe bus, and I'm supppsed yto be in court in 40 minutes. Fuck!
I've got that horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when things are spinning 
hopelessly out of control, and there is absolutely noithing that can be done about it - 
Liike a slow motion train wreck

I hope and pray that this works out and I'm there in time to salvage this. I just can't go 
to jail again - not even for a day. I can't do it
I'm so pissed off right now - pissedoff that I missed the bus, 
poissed off thaty I'm in this bullshit city, pissed off about everything and very,
 very pissed off at Lisa for ruining my life and being the root cazuse of all this bullshit

I knew even then that I wouldn't make it, but I had to go and deal with clearing it up - plus there wa sat least a chance that I could still make it in time to catch the session.
But of course my gut was right as it oftebn is, and I had missed it. So I got a "request to recind" form from the Duty council office ( for my American friends, this is like the public defender, in your court, and the Crown is the equivalent to your District Attorney)
  I then had to spend the next hour racing from office to office and then finally getting the Crown attorney to sign off on it then returning it to the court clerk and after all of this I still have to be back tomorrow morning at 10.


As you can see I was pissed off. But I also wasn't in a very positive state, so you can imagine that by the time I actually got to Court at Old City Hall I was practically spewing steam from my nostrils.
On top of all this stressors and my generally agitated state, I was inundated with a flood of sense memories from my past.
The streeets of Toronto are crowded with ghosts.
Walking along, no matter how involved I am in whatever else I have going on and then Bang! I round a corner and suddenly I'm somewhere else - back in time and back in space and back most of all in spirit, and there is the liquor store, the one with the punks sitting begging in front - but that hardly narrows it down - the one where I was arrested  that time. I had money, but I was drunk and I pocketed a mickey of Jack Daniels while buying wine.
Security saw the whole thing
It was where Lisa and I once got given change from a 50 for our 10.
and then later once the booze toolk hold, she insisted that it was her money - because she'd somehow distracted the clerk, her beauty making his mind slip up and lose count of the money
Hogwash.
But we bought wine with it anyway
And it was thnat liquor store we would go to in the morning to buy our cheap twist top wine while I was at Womens res. Especially if it was early because it opened an hour earlier than the beloved Wine Rack
Always a twist top, because we lacked a corkscrew and surely didn't want to wind up in the unenviable position of having wine and being unable to drink it.
(Analogous to but in no way as severe in severity as having crack, and a pipe without a light I've seen people light fires on their stove tops in search of a flame for that one last toke.

I make it past the EllCee, and past more ghosts at  the tea shop above which used to be a asian crack dealer who woiuld sell 10 doller stones each wrapped in a little individual ten dollar tinfoil envelopes - it was there that Lisa spent the night sucking cock and smokikng crack and left me waiting the day of what we always called the Waverly Incident.
Once after the long after the Waverly Incident there was a time I went there one night to this guy with the tinfoil - and the stairs were covered in fresh blood, someone had been stabbed a mere hour or so before we arrived. Freaky. 
I heard he got busted shortly thereafter.
And there's the park behind the (still) new Art Gallery. In cold weather they open the community center for homeless people to sleep not an full time shelter, but part of an initiativce called Out of the Coldthey have a space for men and for women and for couples - which was so great for us - and I rememer Lisa's excitement when they asked our name, and Lisa said shmoo, so our bag of bedding and on any forms we were filled in as the shmoos. this delighted her to no end.

Ghosts crowd every corner and every laneway and every park we pass. At times I am afraid they will suffocate me, the ghosts.
But also  someplaces are so full of them - the court being an example , and Chinatown and Kensington being two more, the streets and laneways and parks where ghosts choke my light off and I feel I can't breathe

When I got the news at the bus station nthat I was going to be late I sunk into a pit that by the time we got to the court I was frothing and mad with grief and anger and sorrow. I had turned near feral - it wasn't until much later on - even now calm down and see this as it really is and that is as an inconvenience and a pain in the ass perhaps, sure. But not the calamatious event -the horrible final dagger that I was imagining it to be earlier on.

It's a scary thing this anger that can rise up like that but the beautiful thing is there are a few poisitive lessons I can take from this  - for example I knew going in that it was going to be a strugl too not drink anything while there and then missing the bus upped the odds a bit and then on finding out Id have to be back in the morning I almost caved in.
I went round the bend and as we walked towards Yehuahs I still can't believe I didn't buy any booze.
It was all I could do not to.

And now I must go to sleep and try not to dream of ghosts. 

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