The art of survival in late capitalist ruins

During the pandemic I received a Canada Council grant to begin work on a project called The Art of survival in late capitalist ruins. For this project I began examining survival from an array of perspectives, and with an eye to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

The very bottom tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy, which is usually depicted as a pyramid, is “Physiological needs: breathing, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep.” In this time of late capitalism, the very baseline, foundational requirements for any human to live their life is not viewed as a given. It is not viewed as a baseline for existence that should be available for everyone and people who can’t meet those needs on their own, for whatever reason: mental health issues, trauma, disability - are viewed as immoral and so, disposable.

Capitalism creates a hierarchy that places the wealthy at the top and graces them with a halo of morality. The rest of us down here form the base in layers that are visibly crumbling around us the further down you go while those above us seem blissfully unaware.

I live surrounded by ruination. It is an everyday reality for me: The apartment building on the left side of my building is a crumbling dump and the house owned by an elderly couple on the right side of my building is actually falling apart. Pieces that were hanging have been pulled off in chunks since I have been living here. There has constantly been either a dilapidated porch structure falling off the rest of the house or a pile of rubble immediately next to my footpath since the day I moved in. There is a house with a caved in roof down the street and I think someone lives there.

Houses here in Unama’ki are actually still relatively affordable. There are small dumps around that you could buy for $100k and fix up. When I was looking at apartment listings a few days ago I also viewed the real estate listings and I noticed that there are small apartment buildings around, like the one I live in, that are listed in the $200K range. So you don’t actually need to be wealthy to purchase something, yet there is so much poverty here that even a small dumpy house is out of reach for many people. Including me. Being an artist is my calling, but it has not been a lucrative career, more of a feast or famine situation. I am intimately familiar with precarity.

So theoretically you could buy an apartment building like the one I live in for under $300K. So why are the rents so astronomical? Why are we paying the same kinds of sky high rents here in this falling down town with terrible, sub par infrastructure, that we would pay in a city with conveniently placed business and good public transit? And if we are already paying ridiculous rents for decent apartments, why are they trying to raise them even more? Greed.

People from off this island looking for real estate investments are attuned to the situation here and they come here to exploit the people who are already, and historically have been, trying to scratch out an existence. It is truly appalling, inhumane, exploitative behaviour.

Last night the new landlord told my upstairs neighbours, once again, that they have to move out. He told them that if they don’t he is going to sue our old landlord. He tried threatening and bullying them to intimidate them into complying. I have been helping my neighbours advocate for themselves because English is their second language and I cannot imagine how stressful having to navigate an eviction situation in a foreign country must be. I think he is targeting them because the language situation makes them more vulnerable

I know I will be next. I know that we are legally in the right here and are technically protected, but we are not protected from the stress and anxiety that this is creating in our lives. This apartment used to be my sanctuary and now I don’t feel safe/secure here and I feel unsafe leaving Poppy here on her own (I am very protective of her because she was abused in her early life). I am worried that the situation will continue to escalate with the new landlord. He seems to either not know or not care that there are laws and regulations around being a landlord that he is required to adhere to. I suspect it’s the latter, because we have informed him and it is his job to inform himself.

UPDATE - Just as casually as he was trying to evict my neighbours, the new landlord texted them to say that he will honour their lease. I wonder if he consulted with a lawyer and realized that what he was trying to do was illegal. Who knows! Fingers crossed he doesn’t try to lean on me now!

A snag

On Monday of last week, the sale of the building I live in closed. On Wednesday, July 31 at 7:25pm the new landlord texted to say that he is “the new owner of the home” and he “would appreciate it if (I) found a new place to live.”

There is a housing crisis here, as there is in many other places in Turtle Island/North America. It’s historic, it has been ongoing for a long time now, at least a decade or more. This new landlord is an example of a direct contributor to this housing crisis. He bought this building specifically with the intention of kicking myself, and the three Chinese students upstairs, out of our established homes so he could spike the rent and exploit other international students and locals. This is a trend and I find it appalling.

Fortunately for my neighbours and I, our previous landlord was a good person with foresight, and she provided us each with a six month fixed term lease before she sold our building. We will all have a place to live until January 1.

I had a look at the apartment listings available in my area online. There were two pages and I didn’t see a single dog friendly, let alone pet friendly, listing. I do believe, despite the odds, that Poppy and I will find a new place to live and be ok, but I don’t think this entire scenario is ok.

I think this is a deeply problematic, as well as a disturbing trend.

Avocado ink

I always eat avocados through the winter and I save the pits to make into inks. I let them dry on a tray on my window ledge and collect them, husk like, in a bowl. Last time I made avocado ink was shortly before I went to California for my residency. I made it with alum and it was a sort of peachy pink. This time I added baking soda ( I used an Australian recipe and had to google bicarb soda, lol), and ended up with a magnificent rosy purple.

Last time I ordered supplies, I treated myself to a set of glass beakers and stainless steel funnels. I had to hold myself back from announcing it in the group chat I have with my sisters. I did know nobody would care and definitely would not be as excited as me. Hahaha! I have used this new equipment the last few times that I made ink and it has enhanced my experience indeed. I should do a group shot of my supplies because I find them beautiful. I did include them in some process shots.

I bottled up the inks and brought them to On Paper Books where the Ocean Vuong book I ordered, Time is a Mother, was ready and waiting. I listened to him read from it and talk about it on an episode of On Being with Krista Tippett ( I also love Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama, omg). The episode is called A Life Worthy of Our Breath, and it was the first I had heard from Ocean Vuong. I had seen his novel in Drawn and Quarterly (my fave in MTL when I lived there), but I had not read his poetry. I love the sound of his voice, especially when he reads his poems. The tenderness and tough truths. With tendeness he stares down The Bull, because he has to.

I am savouring it early in the morning with my first coffee. Only a little at a time so I don’t devour it whole.

Patatas

After the last frost I decided to take some potatoes I had in a bowl with big eyes on them and cut them into pieces. I took the pieces with me on a walk to the RZ with Poppy one morning and I planted the potato eye chunks in an unused garden box. Potatoes are currently underway!

Rose petal jam

My access to fresh, free roses and rose petals is a privilege I openly acknowledge and do not take for granted. I am a lucky human in many ways and the roses rambling wild in the fallow garden and riparian zone are one of those ways. Recently I foraged petals (with a crow supervisor of course) and made rose petal jam. I’ve made rose petal jelly in the past, but this is a different beast. The rose petals stay in this jam, you do not make a rose water and then drain off the petals, and they become kind of jelly like and translucent.

I used a variety of petals for this jam, about four different kinds and only a handful were a deep pink, most of petals were a very light pink but the jam became a vibrant, deep pink once I added the lemon juice to my solution. It is magical to watch the transformation take place. I was taste testing this jam while I was making it and, let me tell you, the flavour is also magical.

I used this recipe, but I had liquid Certo, so I used half of a Certo gel pack.

Yum!

Inks for sale

I now have a selection of inks - copper oxide, turmeric and black walnut - available for purchase at On Paper Books!

Herbs and roses

Poppy and I headed out on our walk early this morning. I brought along my bonsai shears in a mesh bag with the intention of bringing home herbs and roses. I was not at all disappointed! There were plenty of each.

While I was picking herbs this morning I noticed that there is also a whole crop of wild strawberries, a big patch, I had overlooked. I was just picking them again, early yesterday morning and missed these big ones! I also harvested rose petals yesterday morning, with a rose panna cotta recipe in my mind.

If it is not still raining I will harvest a few more strawberries on our walk this evening. It started plopping down big fat drops just as we were getting ready to leave the fallow garden with our bounty.

We hurried home, but not too quickly to throw Horace, one of our crow friends, a few peanuts. He is the messenger of the gods and we must honour him duly. I’m almost certain that is the way he views it. Haha!

I have decided that I am going to make a herb butter and a strawberry butter for my garden party and pop them in the freezer til it’s time. I harvested some thyme flowers after spending some time (no pun intended) reading about them online yesterday. They were one of the first things I gathered this morning and the smell was pleasant - light, fresh, mildly floral and herby. I’m very curious about their flavour. I have bookmarked a recipe for a thyme flower infused liqueur that sounds interesting. I have already made a thyme infused simple syrup and the flavour is quite nice.

A few sprays of fragrant roses. There are a couple of varieties growing in the fallow garden right now.

Wild Strawberries

I cannot believe that it is already about two weeks into strawberry season and I haven’t rhapsodized about strawberries yet. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest times of the year. I feast on these magical berries daily at this time of the year and if I want strawberry shortcake twice a day, say, for breakfast and again for dinner? This is perfectly acceptable during strawberry season, encouraged even. I just finished eating a bowl of macerated strawberries with cream. One of my favourite treats at this time of year!

The town that I live in is graced with strawberries, liberally peppered with the wild variety. When I was a child I ferried these teensy delights from their cute little vine directly to my mouth, next to the lion sculpture, under the crabapple tree, on the waterfront.

Over the duration of the spring, I watched the little leaves and vines and flowers emerge and develop with anticipation. The time is now and I found a big patch near the fallow garden. This morning, chilly, damp and grey, with an impatient cattle dog in tow, I picked wild strawberries. These will go into the freezer to be used for a tasting event I will be hosting in October.

The pleasure of foraging bouquets

I’ve been doing it since I was a child. Foraging bouquets, I mean. Having a fallow garden and urban wilderness at my disposal feels like a rare gift to my inner child and in this, my favourite time of year, I am blessed with a constant supply of fresh flowers. I take advantage, but I don’t take too many. I make sure that there is enough for others who would like to partake, and the pollinators too.

Today, I found a peony growing in the fallow garden. I could only see one tight fuchsia ball of a bud, and I exclaimed out loud “peony!” with excitement. My first instinct was to leave it there for everyone to enjoy, and then I remembered. In May, there were some gorgeous pink tulips that tapered to purple at the base of their petals. They were elegant. One day I stopped to take some photos before doing my round of the riparian zone and then heading through the other side of the fallow garden, the luscious secret gardenish space where you enter through a small gap in voluminous hedges. While in that space, I saw a woman pull up in a blue neon and get out of her car with a bucket and a shovel and a purpose in her step and I knew just what she was going to do. And she did. She dug up the tulip bulbs, pulling up and just tossing aside those beautiful, elegant tulips. I gathered them up and took them home to put into a vase and place on my bedside table. I felt sad and a bit angry about the tulips; as if the place was slowly being stripped of its magic.

I decided to take the peony before somebody else saw it and dug up the plant for their own garden. Since that tulip day, I have noticed many holes in the fallow garden that I hadn’t noticed before and figured that people have probably been carting away the plants for years.

I took the peony and I cut a few sprigs from a surprisingly polite honeysuckle and fashioned them into a loose arrangement on my dining/work table. The sun is streaming in and falling directly on the flowers and it is a pleasure to behold.

A lil beauty and delight

Wisteria vinegar

Roses in the fallow garden

A rose for my bedside. It smells magnificent.

A Proustian sense memory

My brother recently came back from a trip to Japan. He sent me a little package of souvenir gifts he picked up for me while he was there and one of them was a box of incense. He purchased the incense at a stall directly adjacent to a beautiful shrine he visited with an enormous buddha that was cast in bronze in three pieces and then brazed together. This same incense has been burned in this temple for centuries.

I burn incense every day and it is a ritual that I enjoy very much. I find joy in the thought that I am ritualistically filling my home with an ancient scent that has also been ritualistically burned in an ancient Japanese temple for centuries. That, to me is a beautiful thought.

Recently, my enjoyment grew. As soon as I opened the box, I thought the scent was familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Last week I put my finger on it. Before the incense is lit, it smells to me like old spice cologne. And now when I open the box and light up a stick I am transported to dating boys in high school in the nineties and I find that thought very amusing.

Little miracles/simple pleasures/small joys

lilacs

Earlier this morning, I was listening to an episode of the podcast On Being where Krista Tippett was speaking with the writer Ross Gay. The episode is an older one, from 2019, and is called On the Insistence of Joy. In it, Ross Gay was discussing his daily practice of finding joy and the importance of finding pockets of joy during troubling and difficult times. I felt my heart swell in my chest and I knew just what he meant. And I could tell he knew what he was talking about, hailing from Youngstown, Ohio and now living and working in Bloomington, Indiana. Two places, like this one where I live, struck hard by deindustrialization but located on America’s notorious rust belt.

It felt pretty dreamy to be listening to this podcast while walking with Poppy, feeding the crows, and foraging for feral flowers in the fallow garden. The florals I foraged for culinary purposes also looked pretty dreamy when I got home so I did a little photoshoot on the dining table in my living room that doubles as my home studio.

PS - Krista Tippett and Ross Gay were discussing his 2019 book, The Book of Delights. I haven’t read it yet, but I intend to!

A gift of wisteria

I was absolutely delighted to see this wisteria in the fallow garden this morning! This is a flavour I have been wanting to try and my chance has arrived. I’ve already started researching how to use it!

I also love wisteria because I usually see it blooming magnificently in California - the other place where my heart lives. When I saw this wisteria, I thought of a sunny lunch in Sonoma with my brother and sister-in-law (love and miss you both + C.!) in early April at The Girl & The Fig, a cold glass of local rose sipped slowly in the honey sun and figs as promised, served in my salad. On our way to the restaurant we walked by a large, luxurious wisteria sprawling across the front of a historic building, spilling down the left side. I stopped to snap some photos and texted one to a friend.

This memory drew up another memory from my bank: A dazzling day in Napa, fun, surprising, energetic and lively. A tree was dripping peaches onto a front lawn. I picked one up off the ground and inhaled its sun warmed and luscious scent. Took a big bite. My sister-in-law captured the moment with her camera and the woman who owned the house came out to greet us. She told us that her tree was bountiful and we should take as many of her big juicy peaches as we would like.

Years later, just about a year ago now, I wrote a poem about it.

Cucumber tree

Here they are! Yellow magnolia blossoms from the cucumber tree. I plant apped this tree yesterday when I visited the fallow garden and was delighted to discover that it was called a cucumber tree. How very lovely indeed, and the scent is mildly floral, sweet with a hint of melon. I took a bite from a piece of petal and it had a vaguely gingery flavour, not as spicy as the pink magnolias I have tasted. I read online, while doing a little research, that all forms of magnolias are edible and it is possible that magnolias formed a small part of indigenous and then early settler diets on Turtle Island. This particular magnolia is indigenous to Ontario.

I’m not certain what I’m going to do with these magnolia buds yet. I might do a little more research before I decide. The bloom that opened in my dish had petals just slightly ajar when I picked it but yawned open in the warmth of my apartment.

One of my crow friends visited me while I was selecting these blossoms and I startled it away when I fumbled for my camera to snap a pic. I received a “hello’ later on from a crow friend, when I was leaving the fallow garden and had exhausted my supply of crow treats.

I walked home in the rain with a smile.

Elderflowers, food of the gods

I love elderflowers. I love them infused in vinegar and I love them as a simple syrup to be added to fizzy water or in a cocktail or drizzled on a dessert. I stumbled upon the flavour in my early twenties when I randomly bought a bottle of simple syrup to try, attracted as much by the green glass bottle as I was by the name. Floral flavour profiles are one of my top tastes and I am very excited by this elderflower simple syrup. I tried this recipe from love & olive oil, I had a little taste and the flavour is already intense. I’m really looking forward to tasting it again in a few days in a glass of fizzy water!

PS - came across this excellent foraging website a few days ago, thought I would share it here!

Elderflower simple syrup in the making

Spring flavours

I have been watching the red elderberry bushes near my home closely for the past few weeks, anticipating their flowering. I absolutely adore elderflower vinegar and simple syrups and I have been eager to gather some flowers and get started with some spring favourites. Over the weekend I gathered some bunches of elderflowers, still blushing slightly pink here and there, and started a a few batches of elderflower vinegar. While I was at it, I also collected the last of the small spruce tips still wearing their little brown papers and made the tea for a spruce simple syrup. I had a teensy taste of the tea and it tastes great! Very citrusy and flowery, not too resiny or bitter. Very mellow. I think it’s going to make a tasty simple syrup. I wish I had gathered more in time for a jelly!

Gifts from fallow gardens

I have been foraging in a few fallow gardens in a flood plain I visit every day. Flower season has been bearing gorgeous gifts!

Grape hyacinth simple syrup

The Crows

I moved into a neighbourhood late last summer that hosts a murder (or few) of crows. This is active crow country and after I posted a video of numerous crows perched high in a tree in front of my place, cawing their hearts out, my thoughtful friend Leyla sent me this poem about crows by Mary Oliver.

I see them in trees, or on ledges of buildings,
as cheerful as saints, or thieves of the small job
who have been, one more night, successful—
and like all successes, it turns my thoughts to myself.

(An excerpt of Mary Oliver’s Crows)

I have found the crows to be fascinating and full of personality. I have made a daily practice of observing them and befriending them. I read that they will sometimes leave gifts for the people they like and I would be overjoyed if that happened to me one day. A person can dream.

Last fall, before my morning walks with Poppy, I began the practice of filling my coat pocket with freeze dried chicken or salmon dog treats (in a reusable ziplock cause p.u.), and tossing them to the crows I saw while walking my daily route. They grew bold with me quickly and started escorting me home, one crow flying low (at my knee height) alongside me on the road while I walked on the sidewalk with Poppy. I continue to feed the crows, they continue to do this, and I continue to be tickled. They also perch on wires above me and click and caw. They are not shy, they let their presence be known and will sometimes land directly in my path, surprisingly close, and caw their demand for treats. I always oblige because I am delighted that they interact with me. They swoop low over my head and saucily run close to me to snatch up the treats I toss. I am endlessly amused by their funny little struts.

In the winter, I added a verbal cue to my daily crow feeding practice and I began saying “hello hello” every time I handed out a treat. After a few months of this practice, one morning I heard a tiny, high pitched “hello.” My smile most certainly reached from ear to ear that day. Over the course of the winter, I received three “hellos.”

One morning this spring, I was walking with Poppy on my usual route and from way up above me I heard a high pitched “hello,” called over and over again. A man taking out his green bin a few houses down also heard and stopped to look up and see where it was coming from. I was looking around too, and I couldn’t see the crow who was saying hello, but I knew it was for me.

I think I might be getting a reputation in my neighbourhood. And not just with the crows! Hahaha!

Daily Practice

It’s raining here today where I live and it is making me reflect upon my daily practices. It took me a very long time to find daily practices that would work for me, years of trying really. A daily practice is something that I longed for but could never seem to maintain. I suppose this is likely because I was forcing it rather than letting it come naturally to me. Now that I have been able to maintain a daily practice of some sort for several years, I have acquired a few and they have become some of the joys of my life, driving and supporting the peace of my daily rhythm. I have also incorporated my daily dog walks with Poppy into my daily practice. Perhaps this is why, on this rainy day, I feel a little restless postponing our walk, hoping for a clearing, hopeful for a beam of sun. On the days when Poppy’s walks are skipped or delayed, like on the days we were snowed in during the state of emergency in February, she looks at me as if I have committed the ultimate betrayal - tragic, huffing and oh so sad. Poppy doesn’t know it’s hard for me too! Especially on this day when I am waiting for some art supplies to be delivered so I can continue my daily indoor practice! Writing in my journal is my longest standing almost-daily practice, I am a life long journal keeper but now I need more! Physical exercise, emotional exercise and creative/intellectual exercise are the three keys I have discovered for maintaining a peaceful and satisfying daily life!