Those words above written by my beautiful friend, Ron Atkinson.
I've spent many years talking, meeting people on the street, but it took a long time before l learned of "the family" on the street.
My father, My Son
It was many years later, now somewhat a man, I was in my studio (which was downtown and opened to the public) and in walks a drunk mike. He was interested in what l was doing, and I somewhat interested in what he was doing. He told me to come and visit anytime, he lived in the woods in an old log cabin.
“I sit here, sipping my drink of wine, no toothache, no headache or troubles as the birds sing within the trees. With a can of sardines and dried bread, that's my fancy banquet.”
– from Mike's own journal
He shouted at me to come in...and when I entered... he was sitting in the corner in a big wooden chair he had made, a bottle of vodka in one hand, a century sam cigar in the other, and a big happy smile on his face. The air was thick with smoke from a leaky wood stove, the floor you couldn't see, covered in bottles, clothes, pistatio shells, cantelope peels and other things. Wow, I thought.... it was my first of many visits.
When mike was young, he collected lingerie, yes he would steal lingerie off of the neighbour's clotheslines. His dad finally found his stash, hidden under the basement stairs. Mike use to say "Lights me up like a torch" and many times he was referring to his lingerie hobby. He also liked to wear women's clothing, mostly undergarments but occasionally dresses that he had made. There are many reasons a person likes to wear women's clothing, but I think for mike, it was a date, a date with himself. Mike had many sketch books, even attended the Vancouver school of art in the sixties before his father squashed that.
In the last year of our friendship he was becoming weak, I would find him on the floor unable to get up. ...and he was hallucinating, would call me, telling me there was a little gypsy in the corner of the room. I would go over and remove the pile of clothes and wheelbarrow from the corner, but he still saw it.
Mike was brilliant and passionate, he had a soul. I went to Mexico city for two months but left friends to watch over him. He died while I was gone.
History built on history
My home was in the district of Cayoacan and l walked the streets every day. The green tent, this was my treasure. I discovered a big green tent on the sidewalk outside of a paper factory, tarps, couches, tables, a stove, a light. The tent ladies, they had been on strike for a year, and l visited with them every day.
I brought them goods, baked goods, pop, and a deck of cards. We played rummy, they would make me hot corn drinks, none of them spoke english, maybe a few words, "hello, goodbye, love" But it didn't matter, we communicated through laughter, gesture, doodles on a note pad, and just plain knowing. It's like the "dancer in the dirt", when you are honest, sincere, natural, and just "being", then we hear, we see, we feel.
The tent ladies were always an enigma to me, l didn't understand everything, like shadows that floated behind me, just catching a glimpse of them but never able to grasp them.
Jose and I would just chat in the alley, share smokes, grasped at words that sounded familiar.
Sandra was different than the tent ladies, where as the tent held a darkness, a sadness, Sandra was light, joyful, "Oh ken ken ken" she would say with laughter. She helped me navigate Mexico city, took me places, even to her home for dinner and to meet her parents. She was more Spanish than Mexican. She was so lovely.
We passed yellow notes back and forth like kids in grade school. She was a dark chrystal.
I would walk Rosa to the subway most nights, around midnight and in that mile there were so many scents. ...close your eyes and smell what is around you. It was assaulting, but in such a delicious way. It was like the earth made love to you.
While working at a homeless shelter in Prince Albert
I gave him an empty room and wished him a good sleep. A couple of months later Dave gave me this poem.
I wandered Lonely as a cloud
That floats on high over hill and dale
When all at once l saw a host
A host of golden daffodils
Beside the trees Below the lake
here l saw myself a fluttering in the breeze.
Dave ended up in a private resthome of sorts way out in the country. I don't think he liked it, couldn't get to town easily and sometimes he needed to get a drink or to talk with other people.
I set up this big 4x5 camera and shot very quickly as l was sure he would kick me out. We then sat at a small table, it was just a room, a bare mattress, a empty fridge and the bathroom down the hall. Wally was always quiet never initiating a conversation, however he answered most of the questions l posed to him. I took prints of wally to him and hung them on his wall, l must have seemed very unusual to him. One time he was nude. I took my place across the table as l normally did. I didn't take any pictures.
"fukin, fukin buttons, where am l going to put all these fukin buttons, on my fukin ass." This was wally's reply to my question as to why he didn't wear any of the buttons l had brought him. I always brought him weird stuff, chocolate bar, a old radio.
I went away for the summer, travelled across canada by train. I came to see him, his rooming house was empty, the neighbor next door said they buried him last week, her husband had found him dead. It struck that wally had died without love, without knowing someone out there loved him. He died of loneliness.
Mickey resided in the Colonel Belcher Veteran's Hospital, floor 3x. He invited me up to his room. There were four beds in the room, with each bed seperated by a wall of fabric. Mickey had, he explained, the choice area, in the corner with window light and only a short walk to the bathroom. We smoked, we talked and l took photographs. He's always in his pajama's now, hair never combed and the calendar, always needs to be changed. Maybe he expects it now.
"Let's go Mickey...remember today...we're going for a drive." I had even marked it on his calendar, a big X, Sept.27th. Hauling Mickey's clothes out of the closet he asked for his dungees. "You mean your jeans Mickey?" A plain white shirt, and his brown sweater. "Can you shave me Kenny?" Well we got out his old plugged up electric razor and l proceeded to shave him. His face was like a hot water bottle, warm and rubbery. "Don't forget the moustache." "Watch the sideburns...feel it." he said. Save for the aftershave lotion Mickey shuffles to the bathroom to comb his hair. A young boy getting ready for sunday school.
The first 15 minutes were held in silence as we drove around calgary with both of us filling the car with a heavy fog of smoke, Export A plain. My question breaks the silence. "Get out much Mickey?" "Naw, don't get out much...the guys in the park..like flys...get a bottle, get a bottle." Lived in New York, Mickey did, until they kicked him out for an expired work visa. He used to frequent High Park and listen to political rallys until 4 or 5 am. Drinking red wine and fcking snake on the canals in Montreal. Five years in a prison war camp in europe and escaping three times, once under potatoe peels. His boxing days, winning the bantam weight division in Saint John in 1936. From coast to coast Mickey has worked and played only to pass out in calgary and wind up in the Colonel Belcher Veteran's Hospital.
Two weeks later I stop in to see Mickey again. He remembers our car ride. I change his calendar again.
"Yap, yap, yap." Mickey replies in response to his marital status. Mickey was married once however left his wife because of his mother in law. "Always yapping, yap, yap, yap." He was married for eight years and in turn created two off spring, a boy and a girl. Funny l can't picture Mickey being a father, sure a husband, as l picture him being the wild sailor, money in his pocket, melting some girls heart, with his cute boyish looks, promises of things to come. A real ladies man. "Yap, yap, yap, yapping mother in law." Mickey tells me his daughter doesn't drink. "Wife never did either...my son's a bum...always borrowing money...the bum won't get any money out of me." Mickey tells me he hasn't seen either for about eight years. We both remain quiet, each of us pondering the last bits of our conversation, like sherlock holmes and watson trying to piece it all together. Both having different reasons.
I question Mickey's choice of clothes as he's wearing his pajama's, colonel belcher specials. "Got drunk yesterday, in the park, passed out...now l'm grounded for a month...can't leave the grounds." A small polite laugh comes from both of us. "Do you believe in alcoholic?" Mickey asks me. I'm hestitant, not sure which way to go. Like trying to please a teacher, l want to please Mickey. "What do you mean?" I reply, trying to play the idiot. "No such work, l don't believe it...you just like booze, that's all...no such word as alcoholic." Mickey says. The subject is ended now and Mickey and l drop into silence, into the nauseating fog.
– Spike, Christmas Eve
I would visit spike and butch every couple of weeks while cycling around downtown, and would bring smokes and once l brought some meager snack for butch. I was over there one christmas eve, sharing my smokes, petting butch, shared in spike's bottle of bad wine,a big generic green gallon bottle . At some point spike said he was hungry so l volunteered to make him something to eat.. I remember not finding much in his cupboards - just like a fairly tale there were crumbs with the inside of his fridge being a pale yellow ketchup stained empty wasteland.
All l remember finding was a cabbage and decided that this would be find, l could boil it and spike wouldn't go hungry. Well the inside of the cabbage was crawling with little white worms, so that kindof put a damper on spike's appetitie and we just had another smoke instead. I listened to spike talk of the neighbor, a young girl with child. He told me that she had been out of diapers, out of food, out of money, so he gave her the few bucks that he had. He was so proud, so happy with his gesture, it made me happy, made me feel glad to be there, to be with spike and butch, to share in something so simple.
I took a trip
Met Charlie Butcher- lived there all his life, 74years old and had farmed grain for 36 yrs. Lives in town now, his parents homesteaded in Swift Current.
I met the mayor who instead of the key to the city gave me a swift current pin and keychain. I gave my cheese buns and five dollars to Luis and Mercy who were from New York, lost in swift current.
Bob, Bunk, Erwin, Mrs Peters then i met Floyd. He told me that he had been in "mental wards" three times and his brother was in the kingston pen, he was framed, says Floyd. Floyd talked to me about "jerking off" and god.
People don't believe that they can get back in their mother's womb you know." "My father choked to death, my mother had a miscarriage." "Animals believe in god you know, everday down at the zoo people are talking about god and the animals hear, you know."
As l left to board the train, Floyd gave me a stubbly bearded kiss on the cheek. There was a thunderstorm going on that night, maybe one in Floyd as well.
Vern gave me a polaroid of himself which a friend had taken and he was going to tear up. Brandon was strange to me, hard, dry, but l recognized warmth there...
I bought bagels or buns whenever l stopped, and munched on them, scrunched in my seat like a raccoon with a secret. Stayed at the youth hostel in Toronto for $14.00 and like the other cities, wandered, shuffling along unsure of what l was really doing, peeking here and there, down alleys, in churches, cafe's where l could get toast and coffee. I had to be careful as l didn't have much money.
There was a strawberry luncheon going on in the back and in the front l met Joe, Mike, and Frank. None of them had whip cream on their faces so l guess they hadn't been invited.
Frank was hungry and was checking out the donation box inside the church. My journal from this trip is so embarrassing, l rant and rave about churches, l whine and fight with myself over what l'm doing.
I'm trying to think of a way of introducing myself. Approaching the bench, l knelt down at the end. Now being within a foot of his face l notice more detail. Well weathered and tanned like that of a man of the sea, his face. His open mouth revealed broken, blackened teeth. His left eye askew, probably as a result of a barroom brawl. His hair looked like it had been cut by hedge cutters, perhaps a self-helped job to rid himself of lice. A man walking on the edge...
"Smoke?" I said, pushing my pack up towards him. Smiling, "Thanks," he said, as he lit both of our smokes. Once again my seductive ploy had met with success. We remain quiet, he and l silently watching the city rush by.
The silence is finally broken. "Nice day hey." Jesus, if this had been my first date l would have blown it. "Ya," he says, looking up and confirming my statement. He smiles again, acknowledging my presence. With such a beautiful sincere smile he resembles that of a naive young boy. Cigarettes and names were exchanged and he began to tell me stories of the trains.
"I use to ride the rails." Riding the rails took Bill many directions as well as providing him with a multitude of jobs. Construction, work on the BC highways, and trapping with his uncle were among the handful. His uncle had helped him out of many tough spots, providing occasional work.
Giving him several smokes, Bill placed them in a baggy containing a few dozen cigarette butts. Bill picks butts off the street and he rolls them. "But l watch who throws them away so l won't catch any mouth diseases." Thinking on that, l wonder what Bill would do with the excess time if he didn't worry about where his next smoke was coming from.
With all types of traffic crossing back and forth, we concentrated on the females, with Bill commenting, "Lots of pretty girls go by here." I agreed. "Lots of ugly ones too, but the ugly ones have nicer personalities." We share laughter of Bill's profound comments.
Again smokes and lights were exchanged and this time Bill offers me his dirty white lighter, to keep. "Thanks Bill."
The conversation returned again to his past work, his plumbing jobs, his handling of dynamite in Winnipeg. "Lots of work in Winnipeg, I can go back there you know." As well, Bill tells me of the plentiful supply of work in BC. "I'm going back there next month," he says, "Lots of work." I have a train to catch and as l leave l tell him, "Go to BC. Bill." He nods and smiles. A half hour later while waiting in the boarding line l spot Bill in the lobby. He has his little baggy out and is picking butts from the ashtray. I hope he goes to BC. I hope he goes trapping with his uncle.
Met Douglas Mysers in a hallway of a rooming house, dark, a single uncovered bulb hung over his head like a noose.
It was unsettling, he was unsettling. I stayed at the ymca for $16.50. The next day, traveled up to Sydney, stayed at the Cliefden house hotel for $24.00. Wandered, wandered, wandered, and wondered. Went into the Irish club, not many people, very dark, very quiet, met Jimmy. Jimmy use to be on skid row in Montreal. "The french are great people."
"I’m an alcoholic, use to fish out of Nanaimo, had my steam ticket, fuckin liquor, lost it, but l knew my ships." Jimmy had a fantastic face, he should be in the mafia l thought.
Arrived in Digby at 10pm, not much money so l stayed in a all night pizza joint until the ferry to Saint John was to leave at 5am Saint John , like a dusty old chest of drawers, clothe flung in, some dirty, some stained, some even clean.
Back in Toronto, "Have l begged from you before," he asked me. Pics of Lynda, i was attracted by the gold glitter on her chest. She wore a lot of crosses, goes to three churches. "Have to please everyone," she tells me. When she got out of the hospital as she had a bio chem breakdown, she started writing. She has certain powers and when they got too great she had a breakdown but now can control them.
I drift, sleep, waking myself shouting my own dreamlike words "That's Nice" Edmonton, Jasper, Prince Rupert where l sleep in the front seat of Chet's van. My trip peters out in Princeton. How do l end this- l guess l don't, it goes on, a walk through this fog, grasping at what is human, trying to be human.
It was a family
He fell in love with a girl in PA and for a couple of months was so blissful, so in love, a smile that you could walk on. Then he had to go to Manitoba for the summer, do some guiding, make some money.
He showed up at the shelter a couple months later back from guiding, eager to see his love. ...but his love had found another, in his absence her heart had not grown fonder, her heart had wandered and found someone else. George was devastated, he mourned this love for many weeks, he drowned himself in whatever liquor he could find, he started coming into the shelter drunk, but because he was still the gentle and quiet george I would let him in and he would quietly and sadly go to sleep.
My last few days at the shelter I remember sitting with george in the lobby just quietly and with few words visiting. I remember rolling a drum cigarette for him. Now yes I know how horrible cigarettes are but if there was anything good in them it was this, it was rolling george a drum, an act so personal and almost intimate. He shook my hand and said goodbye, he shook my hand with warmth and friendship.
I hope George is back guiding in manitoba, l hope George is in love.
The night l took these photographs bill spoke about turning sixty five next year and how depressed he was of this. "If I had a gun ken...I would kill myself." he said. but he had been drinking and l knew and he knew that it was loud talk.
Bill was full of tender emotion that night, telling me what a good person I was, what a good friend. Even thelma joined in, wanting to smother my cheeks with kisses, wet dog eared kisses. "Oh stop it thelma" bill would say. "Leave him alone for god's sake." They were both tender.
Not long after that night thelma had a bad stroke, ended up on the mainland in a long term care hospital.
They change their camp every now and then, sometimes because of the city, sometimes because of the cops, sometimes for a change of scenery. Rob, Cindy, and Bobby, this was the core - every-now and then someone else joins, another body curled up on the ground, the disheveled head of hair sticking out like a scarecrow. Rob's a good person, like's my dog, tells me stories that l haven't heard before. I am welcomed when l visit their camp. On cold mornings and when there is a smouldering fire we huddle around it, feels like a Louis L'Amour novel. A sense of belonging, a sense of longing.
We need communities based on this...
Alan is fast, quick, they use to call him "speedy". He had spent some time at Tranquille before they closed down, and like any big institution, it probably left a imprint. Brenda was softer, slower, steadier perhaps, they made a good pair. I photographed their wedding... I took Alan and Brenda everywhere, camping, hotels in the big city, art shows, walkabouts... I don't know what l was trying to do, l guess l thought it was useful, important, real.
So one day l ran into her and with the flapping of wings in my tummy l asked her. "Can l photograph you" Slammed against the wall, one hand on my throat, a fist to the groin. Well that is what l expected, but no, yes, out came this beautiful sweetness, "why yes darling, that would be nice".
I photographed her at night in my studio, we talked for hours. Her life in a small town, it was hard for her, being gay in this town, being inside a body that she wanted to change.
She could make the world smile. She had cancer, they took her leg off at the knee. She would come to my studio now and then, help me with the painting. I told her to write something on the painting. She found a quote on my wall and wrote that.
An endless flame, a shinning star, the drop of dew on a blade of grass.
A plastic water pistol to ward off predators, in the dark we all look menacing. There was a grocery cart as well, filled with cardboard boxes. On the side written in black felt pen, "pictures from living room" I've seen him in the early dawn, a huddled shape under a sleeping bag, like a corpse waiting for an identity. When l go in the afternoon, he is gone, sometimes his sleeping bag is stashed in the bushes along with empty bottles of mouthwash. He has made a nest now, out of dried bramble, it looks comforting, and warm and like it would be okay to go back there at night.
l could smell the smoke ten minutes before l found him I was taking the boy for a walk, to the gully around 6:30 am. We crossed the stream and saw him, a man sitting, squatting crossed legged in front of a small fire. Little round logs burning slowly with smoke, he had collected some rocks to put around the fire and there was a blacken pot next to it. He put his hand up against his head when l approached kept it there like a shield, didn't say too much, neither of us did, just some light words. He must be from out of town, else he would have hidden himself further north in the gully and l think he wanted to hide.
Oh ken! My mother's new boyfriend is a real ass-hole...Don't you wanna come over here and marry her for me?
(Claire, from a 1996 postcard)
The painting above is of sean and clare one night in a empty old house, they played dress-up, they played house.
Years later while wandering around the streets of victoria l heard some shouting crossing the street l find Alister sitting cross legged on the sidewalk I asked him what he was shouting about...
I did a painting of Alister ("alister starbuck and his book of revelations") Near the bottom left I put a color print of the orange chair. I ran into alister a year or so later and he asked me why I put a picture of a chair in the painting. "...a place for you to sit" I told him.
