I was dreaming about taking care of Lady chainsaw in East Vancouver and I met her at a big convention with Viking and Celtic revisionists and there were a ton of people there in really great outfits. One guy was a reinvention of Thor and had a wooden Mjolnir.

I was getting in a big discussion with some of the people there about the differences in the Celtic worldview and the Norse worldview. There are many parallels yet also many differences. One of them men was transitioning from being a Norse character to being a Celtic character. We met up in different dark restaurants and bars and I was going from room to room.  It was at night and everything was warm and sentimental and I was feeling like I fit in with the people around me and was being accepted and people were looking up to me. 

Lady Chinasaw said that she wanted to come back to my place and then have me take her somewhere. I was totally into it and then ended up on a big adventure with her (as is generally the case). In the dream her hair is lighter brown and softer and her face was softer, and she was quite peaceful and serene and she wasn't chain smoking cigarettes and weed as she usually was. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to carry her and I was worried that I would to have to clean a diaper at some point or might puke if I smelled poo but somehow people were always there to help with the heavy lifting and there’s no bad smells. I read somewhere once that you can’t smell in your dreams, and that isn’t true for me. I’m taking hesitant breaths in the is dream and I can smell the bus and the city air and I can smell Lady Chainsaw's sweat but it’s not overly strong. The air is more dirty in Vancouver than it is in Victoria. It’s also like the 90’s. It’s always like the 90’s when I dream of Vancouver - or the Apocalypse, or post-Apocalypse.

I was crying so much last night and have been crying so much for the past few days since i got to the new place. It’s a big transition and I’m shedding etheric skins. I’m fighting a demon inside that wants to crawl into a hole and die and is tired as fuck of moving all of the time. But I live in safety. I am warm and have a full belly and I have so much freedom.

He people who run the anarchist book store (isn't that an oxymoron?) were in my dream last night and they were so fucking obnoxious. They were like bratty little children and kept showing up and giving their opinions really loudly and were so arrogant and full of themselves. I couldn’t handle it and when I woke up was like get out of my brain you assholes.

I don’t have the energy to go into exactly just how weird that bookstore is (edit: okay maybe I do) and what an abomination it is to the true spirit of anarchy and anti-authoritarianism, but lets just say that the world just becomes more and more disappointing every time I stick my head out of my turtle shell. I realize that this all sounds very cynical but I promise you that I went into that space full of enthusiasm, an open heart and a fuck ton of skills that I’d love to share. But there is no room for any of that. In a short period of time I feel drained and dragged down by the pettiness fo the way people interact and the lack of community. There have been a couple of individuals in the collective who’ve reached out to me and they are very cool people, yet in our open and honest conversations they have euphemistically confirmed my intuition about the toxic internal dynamics. One person said that nobody there is even friends or hangs out with each other socially, which seems so strange to me. And it's a pattern that I've seen repeated over and over in various activists scenes.

The stuff that we’re (supposedly) taking on is so dark and so heavy that it’s impossible for me to stay involved for any length of time without having sincere connections with the people I'm working with. At the same time, it can’t really be forced. But somehow a core of people (or in this case a couple) who are very cliquey and closed of “gatekeep” their activities and end up dominating everything. I’ve seen this play out over and over on the frontlines and in other so-called communities and it’s super fucked up. Then those same people are complaining because no one shows up for their rallies or their fundraisers or their meetings. These movements would attract a lot more people if the core members weren’t so difficult to deal with.

Though I guess my real complaint here is humanity as a whole. I’m just more of a loner type who doesn’t have the energy to deal with how tedious humans are. I'm seeing this play out at my customer service job. I just don't have a ton of patience left. And my thoughts become very dark. I’m like how the fuck are people going to deal the realities we’re facing on this planet when they have meltdowns over the tiniest of inconveniences?. So many people in this city are so fucking entitled and it’s just gross. And the consequences of our collective human entitlement is that we’re literally destroying everything around us and rotting out from the inside. I'm in the middle of hardcore gentrification where I live and it’s super brutal. It’s just build build build build build. And buy $12 avocado breakfasts sandwiches (don't forget a 20% tip).

This can’t go on forever. And a dark part of me wants to see everyone forced to reckon with how selfish and greedy they are. Is pain the only way for people to learn? I knwo that love and kindness can go a along way, yet I also know that so many people see love and kindness as a weakness, and I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes people need a tough kind of love and strong boundaries.

I feel myself drawing out of activism again and back into art. I’ve puked out too much of my energy into these movements that are kind of fucked up in the end. I’m also putting a lot less of my energy into my job and am glad to have only 2 days a week there now. And miraculously, it’s enough to pay my bills with my new very cheap apartment.

There was a lot more going on my dream but it’s all fading away now...