I spent the afternoon at the Syrian refugee donation centre today. After dancing my butt off at the Mic Mac boat club last night to the phenomenal talent of Charlie A’Court, John Campbelljohn, Bill Stevenson and my new favourites – the Mark Greene Band – it seemed like the natural way to balance my energy, the little I had left.
It had been eight days since my last visit. If I was overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that came through the door that first day, I have no words for what has happened since. One of the government guys told me that 3,000 bags of clothing alone have been dropped off this past week. Add to that the furniture, small kitchen appliances, toys, toiletries, and miscellaneous items and, well, you get a lot of items to be sorted, categorized, displayed, etc.
Some volunteers were in the process of installing shelving while others were actually tackling the bags and boxes. For some reason (maybe all the dancing), it took me awhile before I found my niche. Hangers. Boxes and garbage bags and grocery bags and you-name-it bags of hangers. Wooden hangers, big black coat hangers, plastic hangers, pant hangers, padded hangers, hangers covered with Phentex yarn and finally, those #%+£€¥$&@/( wire hangers that seem to engage in orgies whenever two or more of them meet.
At first it seemed impossible. After awhile, a Zenlike quality seemed to settle around me and my life became about bringing order to the chaos…separating the offenders and getting them settled into orderly groups, never again to engage in such debauchery. I tied them up. Some of them probably liked it.
I’m okay with that.