| HOMELESSNESS by Seville A. Farley Item: December 1985 - Drina Joubert freezes in an old truck aback of a decrepit-looking building in Cabbagetown, Toronto. Earlier that night, she had gone to three different places seeking accommodation for the night, but she was turned away from each of them. She is one of several to freeze in Toronto during that winter..... Item: Alberto Lopes is sleeping in a shack with ten of his children in one of the rat-infested, foul-smelling slums of Rio, Brazil. His constant wheezing from consumption does not awaken his children any longer. They are now accustomed to it Item: Young Ahmed, four years old, belly swollen, flies alight all over his sore-infested body, is in a camp along with hundred-others, in Wedel-Hilow in the Sudan. He was taken there by his elder brother (his mother succumbed to fever during the trek, his father died when he was two). The camp has a solitary container from which water is taken for drinking purposes as well as for washing. Toilet facilities in the camp are non-existent, and food - when available - is at the mercy of the countless flies and rodents which abound all over the camp. This is considered one of the better camps in the vicinity, and Ahmed is going to spend two years in this, the only home that he ever knows, before he too dies a slow, lingering tortuous death ..... In this world, where the population has now topped the six billion mark, living in a home with the basic necessities of life is considered a luxury by most of the world's population. True, there are parts of the world where people live in opulent mansions. Homes where luxury is the operative word "Uniquely designed Tudor - $409,000. Superb construction and design are just a few of the qualities offered by this unique Mississauga residence ... located in the prestigious west...." The Toronto Star "Meadowvale - 401. Luxury 1 bedroom + den, adult lifestyle building. Ensuite laundry, central air, includes 5 appliances. Enjoy the indoor pool, tennis courts, sauna, gym, whirlpool, etc ... $126,900" Metro MLS but the sad truth is that most of the world's teeming millions live in homes which might be considered little better than hovels - homes which ill afford them the minimal comforts necessary for normal daily living. And the situation isn't getting any better. What with the world's population exploding... "According to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities ... most of the (population) growth is in the countries least able to accommodate it. In sub-Saharan Africa the rate of growth continues to rise ... and is outstripping increases in food production." The New York Times What with some countries being reluctant to institute birth-control methods. What with the "have" countries getting have-er, and the "have-nots" have-not-er. What with the prices of houses getting more expensive and the ordinary working-man having to mortgage his working lifeline order to pay for a home. What with the rich nations adopting a "hands-off" attitude to the problem.... what will be the situation fifteen, twenty years hence? Limiting the population might help. "Family-planning programs are beginning to overcome decades of resistance in many Third world countries" according to Dr Nafis Sadik the executive director of the United population fund. The New York Times Making more affordable housing units might be of some assistance. Transferring resources to the have-not countries might help alleviate the situation. But for how long? Feeding six billion mouths is an enormous problem. Clothing them is another mammoth task. To this add housing, and we have a gargantuan problem at hand. ..... home in Markham for $406,000 ..... Ahmed being shunted form camp to camp in the Oagaden desert ..... Lopes eke-ing out a living in the slums of Brazil ..... Lau Li subsisting on a junk off Hong Kong harbour along with a dozen other Lis Homes Homeless Homeleast !!!!!!!!!!!!!! ===================================================================== Notes From Hollywood North by Oswald Phills = A Rugged Little Field = I was caught off-guard when the phone rang. I was almost dead tired. I had just finished a somewhat large project and had begun to slack from the constant effort of work. In the back of my mind, in the half-shadow zone where things to come linger before presenting themselves on the stage of awareness, lurked the constant, perennial, and proverbial question: whence the next paycheck? I didn't want to deal with it just yet. I thought that my priority was giving body and mind a break from my punishing work ethic that disguises itself with a rather shabby front. I was deep in my usual melancholic ruminations, my private blue chamber, when the phone went off like a gattlin-gun. Call display showed the six red dollar signs that I had programmed in. Hi Kevin, what's up? I answered. Yo Buddy, nothin' much! He laughed, Everything is smoothe… Where to this time? I took a deep breath. I didn't want small talk. Quick off the mark huh? The question was exploratory. I didn't answer. My usual cheery front was non-operational. The mansion. Kevin answered unflappable as always. Actually two mansions, 37 and 39, the one next door! What's the movie? I feigned interest. It's called Light and Water, his voice drifted off into boredom, It's with this European director. I forget his name Burghoff or Jerkoff or something like that… They say he's amazing … They're going to be using the two mansions for interior shots. Carpet duty? I didn't really have to ask. Sorry Buddy, that's all I got right now. Hey, I told you, one step at a time. Do you want it? There was a vague threat in his voice now. I knew that there were others waiting to leap on the chance. How many days? I nailed my disappointed deadpan tone. Hey man I told you I got some better stuff coming up that you'll like, was Kevin's peevish return of serve. Four days! You want it? Four days! That's punishment! You can handle it dude! You the man! He had that I-know-you-need-the-money vibe in his voice. I know you can kick butt! Deep breath, deep exhale. 8 AM sharp, said Kevin all business, then he hung up the phone. Dial tone. I immediately went through a rush of different feelings. I was relieved as I now had another short term source of income. I was jealous that Kevin, just 25, twenty-five, knew how to play me like a fiddle. I was angry because that was my fault. I was sad because my dream of being in Hollywood North had become a nightmare of hard physical work on set. I was confused because of constant tiredness I couldn't step back to reassess what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. I was clearly floundering, no longer guided by a vision, but right where the sharks wanted me, hungry for money! A curtain of exhaustion came down on me. I dropped the phone by the receiver. I let my body fall onto my bed. I clasped my hands behind my head. In the mirror of the bureau I could see myself as a black log set perpendicular on the bed. I felt lost. Even with some cash about to come in I still felt lost in Hollywood North. What were my goals? Maybe they weren't clear enough. I never thought that I would be humping carpet on movie sets! Laife's fulla surprises innit? There was no one to blame for this. It was a technical problem. My goals weren't focussed enough. My goal was to work in the movies, and hell, that's just what I was doing, working like a dog in the movies! If I had fixed my goals more clearly I would have ended up in a different place, maybe a better place. Maybe I'd be an AD instead of a carpet hump for the Locations Department! A delicious bitterness started to seep into my being…They say be careful what you wish for; I would add, be specific in what you wish for! But I didn't want to take all the blame myself. I had to share it with someone. That role would have to go to Annie of course my partner in an affair years back… I had first seen her in the stacks of the Concordia University library wandering around as if in a dream looking for something. I never spoke to her then, I just watched her from a distance. I found her rusty unruly mat of hair riveting! Something about her aura, her presence, her incredible distraction, enchanted me. She was not what you'd call pretty or beautiful, her appeal was more of the hypnotic variety. Her vibe drew me in like a little black moth to a sooty orange flame. Part of me went off with her though I didn't make any contact with her except maybe as a fellow student brushing past her in the narrow isles of the stacks. Maybe at that point she was a part of my future speaking to me, because when I met her ten years later at a film screening in Toronto we began to date almost immediately! By then Annie had been transformed into a thicker version of the younger woman I gazed at in the library. Her teeth had gone bad and she wore tacky clothes. What had not changed was her rusty bramble of hair, the locust of her strange energy! I did not care that she was not the attractive young thing I knew from my university days. The spell was in place. Part of this spell was her passion for film. She loved the medium of film and was fanatical about Tarkovsky. She treated the works of this director as religious icons. She went as far as only looking at his films from a certain angle in the cinema. Sometimes she wept raking her pudgy fingers through the rusty mass of her hair. She pleaded with me to understand Tarkovsky. She made super 8 films that tried to parallel Tarkovsky's mood in her own way. She used a second hand super 8 camera to create her ouvre. That little camera was a fetish object for her. Once seeing how I handled the camera she warned me against liking her camera too much! More than anything I think it was her passion for film that pushed me in the direction of Hollywood North. I doubt that I had ever felt any innate love for film. Its just that I never had anything I felt that strongly about and I enjoyed seeing her display of passion. The film culture that she worshipped was not of that of the box office epic but the European Art film as filtered through her romantic mind, and especially Tarkovsky's haunting religious meditations. Years later I headed off to work in Hollywood North. I didn't even know what to expect. When offered work I took it with the memory of Annie's passion helping me on my way. But I did not find great beauty, or great meaning, or anybody close to the status of the great Tarkovsky. I've simply met people trying to make a buck. I've done the nuts and bolts work of preparing for a shot. I've struggled with the logistics of making a Hollywood movie, a very particular beast. I've watched American stars scuttle about the unglamorous sites of film production. I feel that I've lost the borrowed dream that was my secondhand fuel and lost the trajectory into the worlds of film. Now it has come down to humping mats in mansions trying to protect the expanses of white carpet and white marble from the rude presence of film workers. I have come to understand that it is not a good thing trying to live out another person's dreams. There is something sad about living vicariously off another's passion. I see that I have clearly been running down wrong paths. But even errors and mistakes have a big impact on one's life. We never, ever get to see our lives clearly. I hope that's not true. Whatever the case, I had to be on set at the two Etobicoke mansions at 8 AM in the morning. Exhaustion now had me in its delicious sea. I fell asleep looking at my dark supine form on the bed in the mirror. In the dream that took me into the unconscious a woman say saying something to the effect of - that I should try my call again and that this is a reordering. Annie appeared with her wild hair and invited me to her bed. In the unusually textured sheets we embraced like we used to in the old days. Then clutching her clothing and super 8 camera she plumply crossed a rugged little field. |
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