Tag: Jamieson Wolf

Chapter Fourteen – Temperance

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Tarot

After wandering for days with my mind, body and spirit split from each other, I decided to do what I could to bring them back together.

Sunshine could tell that I was still being affected by my mother, so he did what he could to draw me out of myself. I wasn’t speaking a lot, and I had forgotten that I was on a journey to find myself. I had stopped trying.

“Family is awful sometimes,” he said “They know how to hurt us the most. Why don’t you come and see my mom with me? It might make you feel better.”

I was a little shocked. “You still talk to your mom?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” Sunshine said.

I gestured at the concrete jungle around us, the people milling about on the streets too busy with their own tasks to acknowledge us. “But we’re here.” I said, as if that explained everything.

“Well, she let’s me live my own life, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a relationship. When I get tired of being here, I can always go see my mother for an afternoon.”

“She let’s you live like this?” I was still hurting from what had happened with my mother, still not able to see on the other side of it.

“If you mean that she lets me live my own life, but she’s still there for me, then yes. She does.” He gave me a wink and a cigarette. “Come on, I’m taking you home to my mom. You need a hug.”

“You gave me a hug this morning.”

“Not the same and you know it.”

We took the bus to go see her. It felt like an extravagance, and I wondered when it would feel normal being in one world but coming from another.

On the bus, Sunshine and I sat in silence for a while, and I enjoyed the hum of the traffic and the sound of conversation. I tried to hear the music within the noise, the beauty within the racket, trying to distract myself from the torrent of water that still threatened to take me over. My emotions were all over the place and I found myself filled with sudden bursts of anger and shame. I tried to put that emotion into writing, to let the words flow from me, but they were stuck, too concerned with the fact that they might hurt someone else as much as I was hurting to come out onto the paper.

When we got to Sunshine’s mothers place, she greeted us at the door with a bright smile. She took me into a hug right away and it warm and comfortable. “Call me Sarah, everyone does, even this one.” She jerked a thumb at Sunshine. “You’d think he would have learned some manners by now.”

“I learned my manners from you,” Sunshine said with a smirk. Turning to me, he said “Don’t believe a thing she says. She’s lying.”

“Takes one to know one, son of mine.” Sarah looked at me, really took me in. “I’m sorry, but where are my manners? Come here, I want to give you a hug.”

“You already gave me one.”

“That was hello hug. Not a hug to help you heal. Come here, I won’t bite.”

“Unless you want her to,” Rainbow said cheekily. “I’m going to make a cup of tea, Do you want one, Jamie?” Not waiting for an answer, he went into the kitchen.

Sara wrapped her arms around me and this time, the hug felt different. It felt motherly and comforting. She held me while I cried, and I let the tears fall from my eyes. Sarah must have known that they were soaking into her shirt, but she didn’t stop hugging me. She said nothing, but made gentle noises while I cried and patted me gently on the back.

When the tears stopped, Sarah stepped back from me and held me at arms length. “There now, you look a million times better. You can’t hold on to all that sadness, Jamie. It eats you up. Instead, you have to make something from all those emotions.”

I shook my head. “My words keep getting stuck.”

“And so they will after a great upset. But you know what I believe? I believe that the greatest things are created when we’re full of emotions. Keep writing. Here,” She went to the kitchen and got a journal from a drawer. “I keep them around for Sunshine. He’s always writing something. Now you can, too.”

“Thank you, Sarah.”

“Never you mind. And don’t you worry, your mother will come around to the changes that are taking place for her, even as your whole world has changed. You’ll find each other again.”

“Mom, can I put brandy in my tea?” Rainbow asked.

“No you certainly can’t.” She slapped his hand as Rainbow reached for the bottle. “And don’t you worry, Jamie. I’ll be your mom for now.”

“Hey,” Sunshine said. “You’re my mother.”

“I have plenty of love to go around, I can be mom to both of you.”

“Fine, I’ve always wanted a brother anyways.”

We all sat with our tea, the steam coming from the cups, and I finally felt that I was going to be okay. I heard the water in me begin to rain and I wondered what would grow within me. As the rain continued, I flipped my new journal open to the first page and took hold of a pen, ready for the words to come.

Chapter Thirteen – Death

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Tarot

We spent our days in the square.

It was where we gathered when we had nothing to do and wanted to be with others but still have the freedom to be outside. There was a Coffee Revolution on one side with a large patio and on the other side, there was a Scotiabank. There were other little stores too, but we stayed away from those stores. We felt comfortable more out in the open areas. I know that I felt safer among a group of people than I did sleeping in the shelters. I had stayed at the Ottawa Mission before, and I had felt like I was out there for the world to gawk at.

When I had stayed at the Ottawa Mission, I’d had a clean room with four walls and a small window, a simple bed with clean sheets and a blanket. It is a place for healing, but when you come out of there, people look at you differently. Your story is visible for everyone to see, and you don’t belong to anyone.

Among the people here, I was among my family. Sunshine and the people I knew here had become part of me in some way. I was surprised by how quickly you could form a bond with someone. All you had here was your word and your reputation. As long as I was honest about who I was and treated people kindly until they gave me a reason not to, I could be part of this family. It was that simple to have a family and I had never experienced anything like it. In my biological and extended families, there were lies, memories held onto for too long, jealousy and pain caused by other people. There were shadows with the occasional moment of light. There were promises that were broken time and time again.

With the people here on the streets, we supported one another, and we fought for each other. These were my brothers and sisters, and this surprised me. To be accepted for who I was and the fact that people wanted to know me was mind-blowingly amazing. It felt wonderful not to justify who I was and talk about what had brought me here. I simple was.

At the end of the day, we would go back to wherever we had found to sleep and rest our heads, but during the day, we always found each other. It was like there was a homing beacon that led us together.

I remember sitting in the square one day with my family, the sun bright on my face and in my eyes. I turned to look away from the suns rays and found myself looking at my mother. She was walking with a friend and looked just as shocked to see me as I was to see her. I hadn’t thought I’d ever see my mother here, but I knew that she often went out on Friday nights of went shopping on the weekends. Still, it I had never thought that I would see her here, or rather that I couldn’t comprehend the sudden clash of my two worlds: where I had been and where I was now.

My mother did not slow down when she saw me. She continued talking to her friend and kept walking. Her eyes looked at me though and I tried to hear what my mother was saying without the power of words. I felt an ocean stretch between us, each of us on our own island and unable to touch each other. I watched the current take my mother away from me and into the waves.

I sat there stunned, my head filled only with the sound of waves and the scrape of metal and steel when the waves hit the rocks around me. I tried to think of what she could have done, what kind of life receiver she could have thrown me, and my brain came up completely empty except for the sound of the waves hitting the rocks with furious abandonment. I knew at that moment that if I didn’t give up an offering of some kind, the wave would take me, too.

Closing my eyes, I tried to delve into the wires, skin and light. It took me a while to find it, but it was still pristine. It was the mind garden that I carried with me, the plants the result of everything I had planted.

Around me, my family carried on and I could hear the gentle sounds of their voices, but I was still within myself. I knew what I had to give to the waters, what I could freely give them in order the calm the waters within me. I didn’t want to break, not now, not after all this time. My mother told me that I would have to learn to do everything by myself, that nobody else would be able to do it for me.

Up until quite recently, my mother had been the one who had helped me and made me realize that anything I wanted to do was possible, despite being disabled. She had helped me to realize that even though I had difficulties I had to fight against every day, I could fight the battle. Even better, I could win.

I just didn’t realize that when my mother had said that I would have to do everything by myself and nobody else was going to help me, she was also talking about herself.

I reached down and gently plucked the Lily-of-the-Valley. Its petals were a wonder of blue, a few different shades so that the petals were made of water. The petals had reminded me of sapphires, and they always shone like beacons in the dark when I got lost for too long among my plants.

I went to the small pond in the centre of my mind and placed the lily within the water. The hiss of the waves and the strong screech of metal stopped. I wondered where the currents would take the lily. I knew only that by the time I saw it again, I might be ready to see my mother again.

Chapter Twelve – The Hanged Man

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

It was different living with other people.

I had chosen to cut myself off from everything I known by leaving home at sixteen and had everything taken from me a year later. I had thought I would have to do everything on my own. My brother had taught me that all you had on the streets was yourself and I had prepared myself for this. I hadn’t expected to be held up by so many others having been used to and ready to do everything for myself.

Dan and Mike didn’t say much, but they were kind to me in a detached sort of way. We would eat together in the mornings with Rainbow. I could hear the cockroaches scuttle away from us as we entered the kitchen and turned on the light in the morning.

“Scary fucking things,” Dan said as he looked at them click and clack away from us. Some mornings, it was like a small wave of them, fleeing from our step like a dark wave along the floors. “It’s like they just realized that it’s last call at the fucking bar and they don’t want to end up alone tonight.”

“It’ll be one hell of an orgy.” Mike said.

I let out a snort and Dan gave Mike a scowl. “Must you?” Dan said, making a gagging gesture. “Now I have to think about one nut Louie dancing at the bar, looking to get laid. I have to think about that often enough.”

They both seemed kind of exotic to me. It’s like they had this language between the two of them. According to Rainbow, one of them didn’t want to be out of the closet yet, but they seemed to be so comfortable with each other. Maybe that’s what it’s all about, I thought. Finding that one person that matched you, even for an instant. I looked at Mike and Dan and tried to imagine them as puzzle pieces; did they fit together? I tried to see if I could spot the lines between them, if they flowed together or if someone had forced the puzzle piece into the puzzle in the wrong place only to realize that it belonged somewhere else.

They had a cat. It was a sweet grey and white conk of a kitty, and she was a friend to everyone. I had never been able to have a cat of my own before and I loved cats. Thankfully, Squeak liked me a lot and I was so happy to have her company when Mike and Dan were around. She was like a mom to all of us boys and would help us chase away the cockroaches when she saw them.

It was hard for me to live with others. Even before I had found myself on the streets, I didn’t make friends with people very easily. I had been hurt so much in life, and I had to do everything myself anyways. I had known a few good friends, but that was it. It was easier than letting people in and I wanted to protect them from getting hurt. I was so used to thinking of others first and keeping myself away from them. It was what I had learned from my father. He had taught me to stay far away so that I could avoid a fist but to keep the peace if I could. I was taught to placate, soothe and provide calm so that I could step away and hide my wounds.

            Words were my friends. If I read and kept to myself, I didn’t get hurt. Plus, I could become friends with the characters in books and lose myself in their worlds. In these worlds, good usually won over evil or those that caused harm got their comeuppance. I have written since I was young because I had to. It was as necessary as breathing to me. As much as I lost myself in the word of others, I have always found myself in the words that I write.

Now here I was living with three other men and we got along better than just Shades and I had been able to. I was being given a different perspective of living with others that wanted to know me and didn’t want to hurt me. I didn’t need to pull myself away from them to avoid getting hurt. I wasn’t used to that. I had been taught to hide myself and what I was, that being gay and disabled was shameful thing, and yet none of these people cared that I was either. I felt the walls start that I kept around myself start to go down.

I watched the smoke from my cigarette flow out of the window pictured the wall around me slip away one brick at a time, so that I could start letting people in. It would take time, that it would be difficult, but I finally knew a truth:

If I let go of the wall, maybe I could finally be able to breathe. I had been holding my breath in fear for so long. What if I didn’t have to?

Chapter Eleven – Justice

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

There was a justice on the street that hadn’t been in my life before.

In my life that had been, bullies sometimes went unchecked, those that were different were hurt and often there was no way to find retribution. The street held a kind of law and an unspoken rule of conduct. If someone was down, you held them up. It someone had been hurt by someone else, you stood up for them. I’d come to realize in a short time that you protected those that you were close to. It was just something you did without thinking about it.

Fast friendships formed and these people cemented themselves into your life and it was like you knew them right away. It was like this with Angel. I hadn’t known her at all when I had first met her, but now I searched her out whenever I was at YSB or the square. She filled my life with light, and I tended to gravitate towards it, not to drink from it but so I could bask in her glow.

It was healing to be next to her and her warmth filled over into my life. She would often draw her chalk art on the pavement of the square and put a hat out to collect change. Her art was so beautiful and lifelike that it looked like it could rise up out off the pavement and come to life. I was amazed that she could create such beautiful art with chalk on something as hard and unfriendly as the pavement. It seemed like a wonderful kind of balance whenever Angel worked the chalk into the cold pavement and brought it to life. Angel found life in the world that hadn’t been there before, and I marveled as I watched her work.

“Did you want to write something?” She asked.

I shrugged. “Well, nothing I write will be as good as your art.”

She stopped drawing and gave me a stern look. “Don’t say that. You’re a beautiful writer and your poetry is incredible. Why don’t you write a poem to go with my drawing. You can take your time with it. Here,” she handed me a piece of white chalk

I held it for a moment, watching her bring a woman to life within a forest of leaves. She looked out at me from within the window that Angel had created for her, and I could see her looking up at me. I looked into the woman’s eyes and began to write her story, scratching the white chalk onto the pavement.

I watched as both of our creations came to life together, my words taking inspiration from her. “She looks like she’s looking up at me from behind a window.” I told her. “Or like she’s outside looking within.”

Angel nodded and worked window lines in front of the chalk woman’s face. Only a few lines had been added, but it brought the chalk painting alive for me, made the final words of my poem come out and tumble from my fingers.

“There,” Angel said. We sat back and looked at our piece of art, my words a balance to her world of colours. I hadn’t noticed, but the amount of money in the hat had grown quite a bit. When the day was over, Angel handed me half.

“I can’t take that,” I said. “I wrote my poem for fun.”

“I painted my lady in the window for fun, too. We both worked hard in our own way and should both get paid for what we made. Fuck, I made more today than had it just been me painting. We helped each other.” She put the money into my hand and folded my fingers over it. “I mean, you didn’t see the people going to walk by my art, but they stopped to read your words and what you had written. We did it together, Jamie.”

We gathered up our windfall and headed towards McDonalds on Rideau Street. We could treat ourselves to something. I usually got a Fillet o’Fish and Angel would get nuggets or a Big Mac. We could eat in the restaurant and be near a washroom, pretend that we were normal, just for a moment.

I remember getting our food and thinking about the poem I had written. Eventually, both the drawing and my poem would be gone, never to exist again. It’s not like Angel and I could take a copy of her drawing, and I hadn’t thought to write down a copy of the words I had left behind.

I was okay with that.

It was our give to those that had given us the money we had in our pockets. The art and the words belonged to them, and we had left our magic in the streets. I wondered if others would be guided by the flash of the woman’s blue eyes or the curve of the vowels I had penned.

In that moment, I thought of the chalk dust we had marked the pavement with like stars, waiting to lead others to where they would find their magic.

Chapter Ten – The Wheel of Fortune

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

Rainbow was a consummate host.

He made sure that I was comfortable, and we became close. There was nothing romantic between us. Truthfully, it was just good to have a friend. I knew a lot of people on the street, but there weren’t many that I could call friend, at least not yet. It felt good to have a friend in a world that was so new to me.

I gave too much of myself away to other people. I had always been told that this was one of my failings. I couldn’t help it; I was hardwired that way, the eternal peacekeeper. It was the role I had been used to playing because it had been safer.  

I also knew when to keep myself safe and balance that with the role of a peacekeeper. I had put up a wall with Shades and I had been building it for a while. It was a way of keeping everyone happy and ensure my safety. I had been taught to do this since I was young. Growing up, there needed to be a someone to keep the peace with my father. It was easier than the alternative which happened all too often.

It was wonderful to have someone in my life who I could be myself with and not worry about romantic entanglements, protecting myself and trying to look for what was underneath so that I could see what the other person was hiding. Sunshine was completely himself and I had never known anyone like him before. I felt safe to be with him and didn’t have to hide anything about myself. I didn’t want to tell him my life story, but his behaviour towards me let me know that I could if I wanted to.

One evening, we were both scribbling away in our journals. He had given me a spare one of his as I had filled up my notebook, even with the extra paper. “I still think that my journals are going to be published some day,” he said softly over the music of pen scratching. “I wonder what kind of people will read them? Who they will be? Did you ever wonder who will read your words?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what story I want to tell.”

He shrugged. “You have to let yourself live, Jamie. You think too much. I can see it in your eyes. You’re always trying to think past the next few steps, what comes next. It must be so tiring. You have to just live day by day. Don’t worry about tomorrow before you live today.” He handed lit a cigarette and passed one to me, lit one for himself. They were slim 100’s in a gold and black carton. I felt fancy and so literary when I smoked these cigarettes. They reminded me of black and white film stars.

I sat there looking at the blank page in front of me. I knew that I wanted to start a new cycle for myself. I also knew that I had been lucky to find Sunshine when I arrived on the streets. He had been a friend from the word go. I looked at him writing out of the corner of my eyes as I tried writing some words. He was completely himself and I knew that if I was going to make it out here on my own that I would have to look at myself in a different way.

I was not a victim in any of this. Though the place I had known as my home had been taken from me and nothing was like it had been, that didn’t mean that this was horrible. I had found safety with Sunshine and I had found my freedom again. I had left home on my own when I was sixteen and I been okay. I could do this again. I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. I couldn’t be afraid if I was going to make it and the thing of it was that I knew I could make it and that I had already made it by not going back to my stepfather grovelling at his feet for him to take me back into a house that had never really been a home anyways.

Looking down at the paper in front of me, I drew a door. I flipped to the other side of the page and drew an open doorway. The smoke from my cigarette made it seem like there was fog coming from within my words and all I had to do was see past the mist to find where my words had been hiding.

Taking a drag from my cigarette, I put my pen to a clean sheet of paper and let my words free.