I’d forgotten what it feels like to feel passionate about what you do. And he keeps reminding me. This has the effect of making me sad. I’d forgotten what purpose feels like, how it gives form to intelligence, making it a little less smug, a little less self-serving. Is this what people like him do — make the rest of us sad, just by being?

I actually enjoy running. But you wouldn’t know this if you were to judge by the death wheeze I get after 30 seconds of spirited jogging.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

– David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (1917)

I saw a brown uncle in a tweed jacket as I walked home this afternoon. I gave him a tired smile as we passed each other, but I guess after almost twelve hours straight of jail support, I get that hooligan look — unwashed mussed hair and red eyes. He gave me a dirty look.

My parents moved into a new house 2 weeks ago. They’re still meeting their neighbours, one of whom came over today to meet us. I hear my mother coming down the hallway, introducing her to my siblings as she encounters them, and then saying something about how I’m home on break from school in BC. She calls me out of the kitchen where I am having elevenses at 3PM.

- Assalamu alaikum, Aunty.
- Wa alikummus salam. It’s nice to meet you.
- It’s nice to meet you, too.
- How old are you?
- Uh … 24.
- My daugher is 23. She lives at [X] and [X]. She got married two years ago. She comes home nearly everyday.

My mother’s face stiffens.

February, and the sun is out, so all the blinds are up, and the windows and the front door open. The kitchen is chaos. I wash dishes under its angled roof, hemmed by bright yellow walls, hot water breathing up steam and clouding up the tiny window. I have a cold, and I’ve taken out my nosering to making sneezing less of a production. There’s a wad of tissue in each of the pockets of my jeans, the thin denim grimy from the previous night spent under a tarp in the rain in the tent village. Tomorrow is for laundry, for fresh underwear and crushed sweaters. There’s a pot of lentils and potatoes simmering on the splattered stove. It smells incredible; I have come to believe in the transformative power of coconut milk. There’s a carton of overpriced orange juice in the fridge, and there’s ginger to brew into sweet tea. There are cheap strawberry wafers on the counter and figs in the cupboard, and I’m feeling just a little lightheaded.

Sade’s singing about a Long Hard Road, and I sing along, scratchy-voiced and sniffling. Outside the landlord’s kids are playing, one four-year-old and one two.

And these are good days, this combination of dirt and sharp light.

February 14 2010 marked the 19th annual Women’s Memorial March, organised by the residents of Vancover’s Downtown Eastside to commemorate the lives of murdered or missing women from the neighborhood. Approximately 2,000 people attended the march this year.

Much love and respect to the elders and the bereaved, and to everyone who has suffered not only the loss of loved ones, but the wilful erasure by state institutions of that violence from mainstream consciousness.

More pictures on Flickr.

About midway through the march, the procession paused in front of the Vancouver Police Department, where elders spoke about police complicity in violence against Aboriginal women in Canada.

There are over 500 cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women in Canada. Except for a mere handful, those cases remain open, triggering a demand for a public inquiry into the policing of crimes against Aboriginal women. The violence and policy apathy is especially pronounced in British Columbia — 15 women were murdered by Robert Pickton after the police officially began investigating him.

Even the UN has demanded Stephen Harper investigate why the deaths and disappearances of aboriginal women remain unsolved (Nov 2008). To date, the Canadian government has not responded.

Hello, Weldon!

The interview process will take place on Thursday February 11th at a time between 10am and 11:30am at a location to be determined.
– email, Feb 9.

“The result would be to taunt the tort.”
– Wittman in Fiala v. Cechmanek (2001)