#the ward toronto

[uglyandtraveling]

Urdu Vlog | Toronto Islands Tour | Ferry from Toronto Downtown to Ward's Island

The Toronto Islands are a group of 15 small islands located in Lake Ontario, just south of downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They're a favorite spot for locals and tourists alike, offering a range of activities and attractions. To reach the islands, you'll need to hop on a ferry from the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal.

Once you arrive, you can enjoy biking around the island, visiting an amusement park, relaxing on the beach, trying delicious food, capturing stunning views of the Toronto skyline, exploring beautiful gardens, and even tying the knot!

Ferries operate year-round, shuttling visitors to and from Centre Island, Hanlan's Point, and Ward's Island. The ferry ride duration is around 8-9 minutes from Toronto Jack Layton Ferry Terminal.

[pure-jeff-ward]

I want to thank @biancacosplay on instagram for providing these clips of the Jeff Panel today ! Please go follow her !!! I love her so much she’s so amazing. 💕

[butchwink]

i got the best and worst booster box ever i pulled three blue eyes. but this was pokemon and it was the fucking duck. quaxlys evolution. i got a bunch of everything cause its a booster box but i pulled three quaquavals. i did it like an advent calendar with my friend. we opened maybe five packs the day we bought it and restrained ourselves for a month and had a pack a day it was so fun pulling these!

the third quaquaval was the rare one but not the gold one and i was so mad lmao it was the second last pack. forreal! and my pulls other than the full art wooper (lets fucking gooo) were shit i wanted a clodsire! i pulled one buying three packs a few days later no big deal lmao but i was so mad at this box.

the last pack had the rare tinkaton. i also got a full art boss's orders too im so happy it was such a funny fucking box in the end i pulled three fucking blue eyes i swear if i saw a fourth quaquaval too early i mightve actually ripped it in half. my problem is I LOST THEM ON THE FUCKING BUS AND LIKE MY WALLET ITS FATE IS WITH THE HUMANS OF OTTAWA AND THE FUCKERS AT OC TRANSPO THAT I TRUST SO MUCH FUCK MY LIFE

[ribcagewolf]

tw ed :[ sowwy

[ungiorno-nellavita]

Wanderlust Wednesday: Ward's Island, A Hidden Gem

We kicked off our day bright and early, making our way to the ferry station. It was a lazy Sunday in downtown Toronto, and it felt like the whole city was still asleep. The sky was all cloudy, and that fall wind had a nice little crisp to it. Luckily, we were all bundled up, so the breeze didn’t bother us too much.When we rolled up to the ferry station, there were a few folks already there,…

[lovelymagicalglitter]

I Have Been Freed From the Psych Hospital at Last

A Higher Power sent me to the psych ward to use my powers help the other patients there. While away, my puppets did upkeep on my apartment. Now, the Higher Power has determined it is time for me and my powers to serve the world outside the confines of the hospital.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“FACTOR PICKS FLAWS! IN DEPORTATION LAW: CALLS FOR CHANGE,” Toronto Globe. November 4, 1930. Page 13.  ---- Foreigners Given Privilege Which Is Denied British-Born People --- DELEGATES IN WARD 4 ---- Eight delegates, four each from the Ridings of St. Patrick and St. Andrew, were elected to represent their respective ridings at the Liberal convention to be held on Dec. 16, at the meeting of the Ward 4 Liberal Association at Apollo Hall last night. The four delegates for the Riding of St. Andrew, which comprises the territory lying between the west side of Spadina Avenue and the east side of Bathurst Street, were T. Harcourt, J. M. O'Brien, Miss Rose Clarke and Mrs. M. Cresswicke. The Riding of St. Patrick, which is that district between University Avenue and the east side of Spadina, elected F. J. G. McDonagh, Dr. M. D. Kinsella, Mrs. Charles Porter and Miss E. O'Leary. 

Samuel Factor, M.P., stated that, with regard to the recent deportations, the very fact of the deportees being British-born was the reason why the deportations could be carried out, as a subject born in the British Isles was not by law obliged to take out naturalization papers, while a foreigner entering the Dominion was obliged to do so. and within five years became a citizen of the same status as a Canadian-born and could not be deported. A British-born subject could not claim this privilege, and was therefore liable to deportation. He stated that this law should be amended as soon as possible. 

F. J. G. McDonagh, one of the rep- resentatives elected from St. Patrick's Riding. declared that Premier Fergu- son was neglecting his duty at one of the most critical times in the history of the Province of Ontario. "Conservatives," he said, amid applause. "have kidded themselves into thinking of this as Tory Toronto, but if they can't do better than they have recently done in East York, then it is high time that some Liberals got in."

[ilyrafe]

𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅'𝒔 𝒂𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 ✧ 𝒓. 𝒄.

pairing: ex-boyfriend!rafe cameron x ex-girlfriend!reader

warnings: angst

word count: 1k

“hi, rafe.”

just your voice is enough to decentralize him entirely. he didn’t expect to see you at sarah’s party, only because he didn’t know you were back to kildare.

you look beautiful as always. your hair is shorter, but that’s the only thing that has changed about you, at least, it’s what he can assume. the flower crown you’re wearing adorns your sage green dress beautifully.

“hi.” he takes a sip of his mock tail, trying to pretend he’s cool with you there, as if he knew.

“how have you been?”

“good.”

you know rafe too well. his short answers tell you he’s not at all amused by your presence, and that breaks your heart even more. he looks so handsome with a buzzcut, and it’s like he knows it.

“i guess you didn’t know i was coming.” you chuckle quite awkwardly. “sarah convinced me to come, she said it wouldn’t be an issue, but... if you want me to leave, i will.”

“i really don’t care what you do, y/n.”

you sigh, defeated. he’ll never forgive you for what you said. you thought that maybe he would have changed, or at least, understood your point, but you see that he hasn’t done either.

“okay, um... i’ll see you around, rafe.”

he watches you leave, and you’re not even pretending to be happy. he ruined your mood and he knows it. rafe sees sarah comforting you, and she shoots him a glare, making him roll his eyes and leave his spot at the bar.

he should probably leave, too.

when he turns his back and makes his way inside tanney hill, he doesn’t look back. he goes straight to his bedroom and plops down on his king sized bed. the music is muffled, thank god.

he’s been trying to make amends with sarah, even letting her come back home and be with john b in peace. sure, he doesn’t get along with the pogues, but if accepting them is what it takes for him to have the smallest sense of peace, he’ll do it.

rafe has also decided to get sober. after almost dying of an overdose, he was really scared and decided to quit. he wants to make ward proud. staying away from alcohol is a lot harder than quitting coke and marijuana, it turns out. the mock tails aren’t as enjoyable.

as if doing all that isn’t hard enough, you’re back. and with you being back, all of the feelings he’s successfully repressed are coming back up again, stronger than ever.

he hates that he’s given you this amount of power over him.

rafe never did feelings before, and the one time he did, you left him because of himself. rafe is his worst enemy.

he really loved you. well, scratch that. he never stopped loving you. you took care of him, you improved his relationship with ward and sarah. you asked him to quit drugs and selling it. you listened to him and you took none of his bullshit. you held him accountable while giving him grace.

deep down, he knows he fucked up. he wasn’t ready to grow up, but no one likes to say they’re wrong, do they?

“i just think it’s funny how you really believe this little island is an entire world for you.” you snorted. “but i know why you don’t wanna leave this shit hole. you’re a nobody outside the outer banks. there is no “kook versus pogue” once you step out of this place. you’re just another trust fund baby with drug issues to everyone else, rafe.”

he never understood your incessant need to “explore the world”, it’s so childish. you always talked about how you wanted to live in paris, toronto, tokyo, london, seoul, or berlin or whatever (honestly, you have mentioned so many cities, he has lost count), and you always said that you would be happy anywhere else, but rafe doesn’t see himself being happy far from north carolina. from kildare. from tanney hill. it’s where he comes from and where he wants to die. it’s what he knows.

a knock on his bedroom door interrupts his thoughts. rafe huffs and rolls his eyes. when he opens the door, he comes across you.

“what do you want?” he questions, irritated.

you enter his room and close the door behind you, drowning out the noise of the music once again. you’ve missed his bedroom. his bed.

“i think... i think i owe you an apology,” you say. “i shouldn’t have been so mean to you that day, it wasn’t right.”

rafe remains quiet, sitting on his bed, just listening to you talk.

“i just… i never liked it here, and i end up projecting that onto others, and i did that to you. i’m sorry.”

in theory, hearing you apologize should be gratifying, but rafe can’t identify any sign of regret in you. it’s not that he doesn’t think your apology is insincere, it’s that the regret he wanted to see doesn’t exist. you don’t regret leaving kildare nor leaving him.

“apology accepted.”

“thank you.” you smile.

“y/n, are you happy?” he asks.

“hm?”

“are you happy there?”

your smile and small nod tells everything he didn’t want to know. you are happy. in fact, you’re happier than ever.

“i am.”

rafe has vivid memories with you, and your smile has never been so wide, your eyes have never been so bright. maybe this will take him to hell, but he hates that you’re genuinely happy away from there, especially because he isn’t happy. and if he is not happy in where he feels he belongs most, there is no place in the world that makes him happy. 

maybe happiness isn’t an option for him, and the most upsetting thing about this is that money really can’t buy happiness. not the one rafe really needs anyways.

you want to tell rafe how you’re enjoying life for the first time, how being independent is amazing, but also sucks, but it’s still amazing, how the feeling of achieving something on merit is indescribable... but rafe would never understand.

it’s funny how two people who are so similar at first are so different in the end.

“that’s all that matters to me, then.”

i love feedback! let me know your thoughts! <3

[pure-jeff-ward]

Jeff interviewed by a Toronto news station with a buggy cosplayer.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Toronto city council voted Thursday to rename Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square and recommended a host of other landmarks be stripped of the Dundas name over connections to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The move comes more than three years after council first received a petition raising concerns about the name at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in the United States. In a late council session Thursday night, councillors voted 19-2 to rename Yonge-Dundas Square. Coun. Jaye Robinson, who represents Ward 15, and Coun. Stephen Holyday, who represents Ward 2, voted against the move. 

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[koolaidoverliving]

so, because i have a bunch of characters it might be a good idea to explain their roles in the universe as well as their places in the whole slendy debacle. all the roles will be explained under the cut, but some additional info is up here! :)

NOTE: THIS IS A MASSIVE INFODUMP. LIKE A TON OF YAPPAGE ALL AROUND.

BACKGROUND INFO

The outskirts of Toronto are home to a small urban community, unexciting but charming in its appearance. There exists a forest surrounding this town. Rumours claim it's haunted, and it might just be true. Everyone who moves to this town bears the same fate: they can't escape. The inhabitants always find their way back to the town. Back to him.

Slenderman, a demonic entity—the personification of the forest itself, preys on troubled individuals. His presence alone infects them with a sickness that can only be subdued by pills.

The infected run into supernatural beings around the forest. Some of them befriend each other; others make enemies.

PROXIES

Inside the forest, there's a mansion harbouring Slenderman's proxies. It was no more than a run-down building before they renovated it for their stay. Proxies can be controlled by Slenderman. They exhibit more animalistic tendencies than the infected, although their consciousness fades when they enter their provoked states. Their primary goal is to safeguard the forest and ward off trespassers.

PROXIES: Toby, Kate, Sally, Ben, Jeff, Clockwork, Laughing Jack, Kagekao, Zero

Toby: This immature man was taken when he was a teenager. Slenderman is a sort of father figure to Toby—or, moreso his saviour. Slender uses Toby's grim past and his attachment to the mansion as a way to manipulate him. Toby consistently preaches about Slender. He's a reckless person, but his agility and lack of pain receptors come in handy.

Kate: Another young recruit. She's rarely in a conscious state, often behaving like a brainless creature roaming the woods. Despite her lanky appearance, she's as tough as any beast in the forest. Her senses are heightened, but she's weak to bright lights and loud noises. Kate normally returns to the mansion with fresh meat to cook.

Sally: A young ghost girl who was brought in by Slender at the age of 8. She takes a liking to the adults in the mansion and views them as her older-sibling figures. Like Toby, she views Slenderman as a father. She's one of many children who have died in the forest and can sense other ghosts lurking around.

Ben: Recruited at 13, Ben is useful because he provides the mansion with its technology. He's a troublemaker, but his powers are too good to give up.

Jeff: He and Toby were taken in around the same time. Jeff is hard to get along with—he's a narcissist and an asshole—but he's strong, stealthy and more experienced with killing than anyone else in the mansion.

Clockwork: She's an aggressive fighter who's quick to anger. Her endurance and courage is useful, but her rash decisions can lead to the proxies getting into some trouble. She also hates living in the mansion.

Laughing Jack: Found by Slenderman, his box is kept safe in the mansion's attic. LJ isn't allowed to leave his confinements unless he's needed. The proxies monitor him.

Kagekao: A shadow demon watched over by the proxies. He was held captive for trespassing until he agreed to work with them. His powers are the only reason he's kept in the mansion.

Zero: Despite being a powerful proxy, Zero has a knack for misbehaving. She's an intelligent demon with a strong hatred for humans, making it difficult for the other proxies to work with her.

ZALGOIDS

Zalgoids are the most common of trespassers. These creatures have been modified by Lord Zalgo, another demonic entity. Some Zalgoids have been tamed and utilised by the proxies.

ZALGOIDS: Lazari, Lulu, Eyeless Jack, Nurse Ann, The Puppeteer

Lazari: Being the illegitimate child of Zalgo, she's extremely powerful. Slenderman brought her into the mansion when she was 8. She was taught how to read, write and behave politely. But as she grew older, she became more and more curious with her backstory and who Zalgo really is.

Lulu: Zalgo blessed her with new life and supernatural abilities in exchange for her eyes. Lulu has a constant hunger for more eyeballs. She lives in a cabin with Eyeless Jack, but frequently visits the mansion. She's basically Lazari's adopted mother.

Eyeless Jack: Similar to Lulu, Jack was brought back to life. But he wasn't human anymore, he was a demon. He craves organs, blood, any sort of meat. Jack tends to stay away from the mansion, however his medical expertise is useful.

Nurse Ann: The nurse roams around an abandoned clinic. She's violent and quick to attack. The only person she has a connection to is Jack. He provides her with body parts; she provides him with organs. It's said this zombie has been wandering the halls since the 1950s.

The Puppeteer: He was given a new life after his death, but at the expense of his memories. The Puppeteer is a vengeful ghost who seeks out negativity. When he gets glimpses of his past, he can't help but want to know more. That's why he's so connected to Helen and Dina.

INFECTED

The infected individuals live in town among other townspeople. They are tasked with safeguarding the forest alongside the proxies. Their sanity depletes more rapidly, and they have to take pills in order to keep away the Slendersickness.

INFECTED: Nina, Bloody Painter, Judge Angels, X-Virus, Nathan, Jason

Nina: She's a popular inhabitant in town, disliked by many for her devotion to Jeff. Nina hadn't even graduated high-school when she ran away to see him. If Nina had only known what the future had in store for her, she would've never taken the train to Toronto. Nina's main role is assisting Jeff with whatever he needs.

Bloody Painter: Helen moved to Canada with Dina as an escape from his old life in Florida. He wasn't infected with the sickness until he wounded up chasing a victim into the woods.

Judge Angels: The sickness spread to her from Helen. No amount of angelic healing could save her from Slenderman's grasps. The proxies keep in contact with Dina for her angelic powers, but she adamantly refuses to move into the mansion with them. Dina is also a protector of sorts for Lucy and Sadie.

X-Virus: As a brilliant chemist, Cody is the producer of the pills used to alleviate the Slendersickness. Cody is popular within the community, which sucks because he's an introvert. He's had the sickness for the longest time out of everyone in town. Toby consistently asks him to join the mansion, but Cody doesn't want to.

Jason: His hatred for London caused him to move to Toronto. He lived in the city till something drew him to the forest—an unspoken calling. Now he resides in the town, occasionally going out to make toy deliveries. Jason isn't fun to work with, but his craftsmanship is one of the best.

Nathan: He moved to Toronto alongside Jason and his wife, Ciara. They lived in the city until Jason "moved out". Nathan, concerned about Jason's disappearance, ventured out until he spotted a quaint town down-south. Nathan is the worst to work with because of how much he hates Slenderman. Meanwhile, Ciara lives in the city, unable to see Nathan because Nathan can't leave without endangering Ciara.

OTHERS

These people either don't live in the town or aren't affected by Slenderman.

OTHERS: Jane, Liu, Lucy, Suicide Sadie, Candy Pop

Jane: She lives in the city, working as an accountant. In her free-time, she does research on Jeff. Her goal is to kill him and she won't stop till she succeeds in it.

Liu: He alternates from motel to motel, apartment to apartment. Liu's been on the search for Jeff for the past 7 years, and he knows he's close to finding him now.

Lucy: A wandering ghost who entraps unsuspecting adults. She isn't one to mess with. The only people she'll be nice to are Sadie, Dina and Helen.

Suicide Sadie: Another wandering ghost. She's grown attached to Lucy and claims to be her protector. They're like sisters.

Candy Pop: He isn't infected by the Slendersickness, nor is he a proxy. He's actually just some weird jester that lives with Nathan and tries to keep him and Jason sane.

i provided incredibly brief summaries for their descriptions, but i have way more info on everyone from jobs to relationships to history, etc.

let me know if you have any questions about them or my universe :D

[jacquesbonhomie]

Lawren S. Harris (Canadian, 1885-1970)

‘In the Ward, Toronto’

[txttletale]

ok, thank you for the answer irt worm! now what about all of the other wildbow webthings?

pact is pretty good it's a horror story about a trans-coded guy called blake who goes through horrible things nonstop for a million words. the pacing's absolutely fucked (blake goes to toronto for basically no reason and ends up stuck there for like a third of the book lol) but the world's very evocative and the story has a fun take on magic that plays with symbolism and narrative in a way that makes it worth reading

twig is also pretty good. it's kind of like a biopunk espionage thriller about plucky teens becoming horrendously traumatized young adults in a world where frankenstein was real and the british empire conquered the world using nasty flesh monsters. it's nonstop body horror and weird social intrigue and the back half is a genuinely grueling to read slog through the protagonist having a total fucking meltdown but it is (like most wildbow works!) just bursting with cool ideas that could have each fueled an entire novel on their own

ward is the sequel to worm and its bad and not good because 1. it was obviously barely planned out compared to his earlier work and so a lot of it makes very little sense and story arcs get dropped like hot potatoes, 2. around this point wildbow started paying a lot of attention to fan reactions and writing in direct response to them which is the mind-killer, 3. at some point it starts feeling like wildbow was just straight up miserable writing it and hated doing so and it shows

pale is set in the same universe as pact but isn't a direct sequel. it was meant to be a short little murder mystery and by all accounts started out really really good with great characters and a fun mystery and cool concepts. however now its 3 million words long and a lot of people think that by Not Ending like two million words ago it's written itself into being a load of unreadable garbage by now. i havent read it and probably wont ever because 3 million words is a lot of words

[dailyanarchistposts]

Warding off morality with common notions

Squeezed out by morality, we think, are common notions: ethical, responsive ways of relating that are tuned to the complexities of each situation and capable of supporting collective transformation. When morality takes over, common notions are converted into rigid principles, or practices that can no longer be questioned. This can be seen in what has become known as “call-out culture” in many radical milieus: the prevalence of publicly attacking certain statements or behaviors as oppressive. As Toronto-based writer Asam Ahmad writes,

What makes call-out culture so toxic is not necessarily its frequency so much as the nature and performance of the call-out itself. Especially in online venues like Twitter and Facebook, calling someone out isn’t just a private interaction between two individuals: it’s a public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are. Indeed, sometimes it can feel like the performance itself is more significant than the content of the call-out. Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that there is a mild totalitarian undercurrent not just in call-out culture but also in how progressive communities police and define the bounds of who’s in and who’s out. More often than not, this boundary is constructed through the use of appropriate language and terminology – a language and terminology that are forever shifting and almost impossible to keep up with. In such a context, it is impossible not to fail at least some of the time.[160]

Through its toxic performance, call-out culture can activate and intensify a climate of fear, shame, and self-righteousness. It is important to note that none of the voices we are bringing into this chapter are suggesting that calling people out, naming oppression, or creating boundaries is wrong. Because oppression is so pervasive and people’s responses to it are so heavily policed and pathologized, these can be hard conversations to have. We want to suggest that this conversation is already being had in ways that are more open, transformative, and ethical than what morality allows for. Ethical attunement disrupts universalizing moral frameworks that would dictate how people deal with oppression. It enables exploration, collective questioning, and responsiveness that is tuned to the situation at hand.

In a widely circulated article entitled “Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable,” Ngọc Loan Trần explains how calling out can feed into destructive ways of relating:

Most of us know the drill. Someone says something that supports the oppression of another community, the red flags pop up and someone swoops in to call them out. But what happens when that someone is a person we know — and love? What happens when we ourselves are that someone? And what does it mean for our work to rely on how we have been programmed to punish people for their mistakes? I’ll be the first person and the last person to say that anger is valid. Mistakes are mistakes; they deepen the wounds we carry. I know that for me when these mistakes are committed by people who I am in community with, it hurts even more. But these are people I care deeply about and want to see on the other side of the hurt, pain, and trauma: I am willing to offer compassion and patience as a way to build the road we are taking but have never seen before.[161]

Whereas morality tends toward universal answers, certainties, and binary thinking, Trần recovers space for openness and uncertainty in the concept of “calling in,” pointing to the ways that people are supporting each other in naming harm and violence, and undoing it together. Trần goes on to say that calling in is not about being soft or nice, but instead about tuning in to the complexities and relationships of each situation when dealing with harm and mistakes:

I don’t propose practicing “calling in” in opposition to calling out. I don’t think that our work has room for binary thinking and action. However, I do think that it’s possible to have multiple tools, strategies, and methods existing simultaneously. It’s about being strategic, weighing the stakes and figuring out what we’re trying to build and how we are going to do it together.[162]

In this sense, calling in can be understood as a common notion: not a fixed way of being or even a recommendation, but a practice that can be developed collectively, with transformative effects, and shared with caution. It is resonant with other common notions that have developed elsewhere, such as “leaning in” and “meeting people where they’re at.” It is an invitation to tune into the specificities and relationships in each situation, rather than falling back on the prescriptions and justifications of morality.

Ethical attunement might include firm boundaries and aggressive call-outs. It might include attunement to one’s own exhaustion, resulting in a refusal to engage at all. We find that ethical attunement thrives most as a collective process of experimentation. Like the concepts of infinite responsibility and emergent trust, it is sustained through a willingness to make mistakes and to allow others to make them, rather than trying to avoid being wrong. It’s ultimately about the shared capacity to take care of each other in the face of pain, hurt, and violence.

There is always the risk of a concept like calling in being recaptured by liberal morality, adding a new set of norms to govern the conduct of people who are already dealing with systemic oppression: be nice, take care of people, don’t get so angry. Therefore we want to be unequivocal, especially as white people, that we are not trying to establish new norms of conduct for conversations about oppression, or to suggest that call-outs are wrong or counterproductive. Morality can prop up white fragility, white guilt, savior complexes, and other moves to innocence. It can enforce the idea that there is some duty to have these conversations over and over, extracting emotional labor from colonized people or people of color as if it were an obligation. Liberal morality can hide the white supremacist violence pervading schools, policing, and the prison industrial complex, reducing racism to questions of individual guilt and inducing defensive reactions from white people: it’s not my fault, I’m not racist, I haven’t done anything wrong.

Morality can sometimes also be behind tendencies to replace innocence with sin, enabling white anti-racism that creates barriers to undoing white supremacy. As white people, moralism can induce us to loudly proclaim our knowledge that we are racist, and to self-righteously call out racism in others. Anti-racist organizer Chris Crass, among others, have argued that there is a class dimension to this:

For anti-racist work with a middle class orientation, this then often looks like an over-emphasis on changing personal behavior, using correct language, and calling out other people who aren’t acting and speaking in the right way. It can lead to a looking down on the communities that you have come from and distancing yourself from your own past by ruthlessly criticizing everyone who acts and talks like you did two weeks ago.[163]

Crass goes on to link these middle-class tendencies to perfectionism and a fear of making mistakes. At the same time, he makes it clear that this is not an attack on the people reproducing these tendencies, but on Empire’s forms of subjection:

The enemy is capitalism, not middle class activists. And a middle class orientation isn’t something that only middle class people can have, it’s the orientation that all of us who aren’t ruling class are raised to endlessly and exhaustingly strive for.[164]

Feminism, disability justice, decolonization, Black liberation, and other interconnected currents are short-circuiting individualizing moralism with much more complex stories about oppression. Stories about institutionalized white supremacy do not blame individual white people, but they do not let us off the hook, either: they reveal the ways that we are participating in a system that stretches far beyond us, and they compel us to discover ways to disrupt that system by supporting anti-racist struggles. They attune us to relationships and histories and deepen response-ability, not the the prescription of fixed duties, but by growing capacities to be responsive to a whole range of collectively formulated problems.

Common notions are emerging all the time against the grain of moralism. These conversations are already happening in ways that get beyond dichotomies of rightness and wrongness towards more complex questions. This can be seen when people are able to draw out other ways of being with each other, activating collective responses to violence. It can be seen in disruptive tactics of direct action, and in the quiet forms of healing and being present with others. It can be seen in the strategic use of privilege, and in the ways that people plant seeds and trust others to reach their own conclusions.

Transformative responses like these are joyful in the Spinozan sense; they lead not to an increase in happiness, but to an increase in one’s capacity to affect and be affected, with all the pain and risk and uncertainty this might entail. Joy is never a duty, and never something imposed on other people. We are not saying people should be ethically attuned. We are trying to affirm that joyful transformation is already happening, as an emergent power that undoes moralism and opens up new potentials, sometimes even beautifully. Joy subsists through common notions, which need to be held and tended in order to remain alive. As Ursula K. Le Guin writes in The Lathe of Heaven, “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone. It has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”[165]

[crashtestjeffy]

There was a time in my life I knew a crazy priest from California. I met him when he was serving at a homeless shelter in Toronto. This guy had served in a malaria ward in western Africa and prison chaplain in Texas where he dealt with death sentence cases and as an advisor to newly formed churches in the former Soviet Union. Brother Patrick was the son of Irish immigrants who immigrated to California and opened a pub in some small town just outside Big Sur Park. AN odd choice of location and occupation. He was genuinely one of the most interesting and compelling people I ever knew. At the time I had a lingering faith in a Christian god. And he nurtured that. But it seemed secondary to what he did. Instead this guy could tell stories and give advice and find resources that made fighting through any obstacle seem possible.

I was just coming up off the skids. I had just kicked heroin and I was living in the shelter.

He actually signed a surety for my bail because I was up for some serious charges and would have to go on to spend time in jail for them. That was not his job or even something I asked for. But I had a hearing because my parents had signed my original surety and I went to stay with them, but I stole from them to support my addiction and they were pulling the bail and kicking me out. Brother Patrick stepped up and put his reputation and good name on the line. Just so I didn't have to stay locked up while my case worked through the courts. He gave me the best advice. And was full of warmth and compassion. And he'd find ways to make me feel human again. He'd wake me early in the morning to come with him in the shelter van to go pick up pies baked by church ladies. Or to hand out clothes to guys who wouldn't stay in the shelter. He took me to a couple seminaries to find my quiet place and write. And eat good food. The seminaries here all had Central American nuns and sisters who worked as cooks and support staff. They always made such wonderful food. And if they were such wonderful women. One time during one of a more violent mood swing from the opiate withdrawals I told Patrick I was going to kill myself and it was all pointless. And he said "Well if you're going to kill yourself, why do it over something pointless, why not find something worth dying for?" and it was such a stunning truth. In an almost idiotic way. When I left his company I had to go serve a couple years in jail. And by the time I was released and on parole and allowed to return to Toronto, I went right back to see him. And he introduced me to a few guys he was helping along just like me. I was a little jealous and sad. But it made me realize. This is what he does. He is an angel who reaches into the muck and pulls people up. And once they are up, he reaches down for another lost soul. He wasn't going to resume in the place he had in my life before. But I respected that. A few times after I saw him. I did some volunteer work at the shelter once I was settled back in Toronto. A way of giving back. Plus it looked good to my P.O. and I would cross his path. He was sent along to bolster up a struggling shelter in Hamilton about an hour away and I never saw him again. But he did leave me a gift. 2 lbs of Jelly Belly jelly beans and a note that said, he has worked with a lot of people and I was one he would always remember and I would never be far from his mind.

He has probably passed away by now. Or he is living in a cloistered monastery that they put ancient priests in after they can no longer do pastoral work. And in that case I could never find him anyway. But I could sure use a friend like him again today, right now. Because I feel so lost lately.

[thoraeth]

I'm so millennial that if I were at the Toronto Comicon I'd be like "Who cares Jeff Ward's here l wanna see Mona!"