Friday Morning Journal

It's another early morning wakening.  I wonder if I have depression because I'm trained that every variation in pattern or routine could spell disaster. I'm trained to rule out all the catastrophes. After concluding that aliens aren't attacking, cancer isn't brewing, death isn't knowing scythe against door, or communist chinese disguised as Russian friends aren't jihadding through the neighbourhood, I probably just have to pee.  I'm older and getting up to pee isn't so bad or different.  It happens occasionally.  I hear from others it may begin to happen nightly.  Good night sleeps aren't appreciated like good bowel movements or soft fulfilling breathing, pain free moments.  It's the little things that make life wonderful. When any of these are awry it's like the horse flies at the beach or ants and mosquitos at the picnic.
I should be thanking God.  I'm forever grateful for this life when I'm not contemplating suicide.  It's a long time since I've thought homicide.  I keep hoping to get out of this incarnation without killing my fellow man. It's only one generation or so back,maybe two or three, that all grown men were engaged in killing each other to defend their women and children, doing as the local lords and bullies recommended.  It wasn't that long back we weren't eating our neighbours.  Some still do but not in the better parts of town.  Over there, in Africa or Vancouver Island, somewhere else. And when we learn the local pig farmers were cannibals we focus on the other aspects of the stories.  If we think in re incarnation terms, then it's not that long ago, a generation or three we were that starving person who defended their child from gang rape and having survived amazingly decided to eat their kill.
I became a doctor as much to help my fellow man as to still the passions within me as saints do.  I was meditating as a teenager, going to church and worshipping Jesus who was crucified for preaching peace.  This wasn't an enemy but rather done by the 'authorities'.  When Jews told me they were persecuted by Christians as the ones who killed Jesus, I was a kid who looked at the principal in my school and knew he was the local Herod and Pontius Pilate of my spiritual allegory.  Today the same is true for Obama.  Where I come from the 'friendly fire' is as likely from your own leader as from the enemy.
Which is why I like the alcoholic anonymous quip, "Your head's got a contract on your ass" and "my best thinking got me here".  So much for rationalism and intellectualism and politics of reason and maturity.  The age of Rationalism brought us the War to end all War and WWII and in my life it's been Vietnam and Afghanistan.  I don't blame the Moslem fighters since their women are all covered up and they don't have anything better to do for entertainment on a Saturday night than fight Americans.  It's us that I don't understand. We've got a whole lot more entertainment available than sitting at a mosque and praying the women will drop their veil and we'll get a glimpse of eye brow.
The fact is everyone wants Hollywood and would invade it and change it and take it home.  The criticism of the Roman empire was the same as it is today of the American. The cost of your roads and Pax Eternal is too much so we'll steal and raid rather than participate.  Meanwhile no one has any better idea but just criticizes what is.
I do. I'm a horrible critic. I'm living in paradise (except for the rain and clouds) and I've got everything a soul could desire, I have at some time or other, and I've never been satisfied. I've never been contented for a long time.  I've always sought adventure, or stimulation , or peace or meditation or something. I'm always on a quest. I've had women, friends, animals, homes, geographical changes, alcohol, drugs, rock and roll and religion and higher learning and one hell of a good heavenly life. But I'm still not satisfied. I know that death is the greatest passage and I'm only going to be satisfied for a goodly time in my grave.
Meanwhile I'm having a good time.  It's not like it's a life in the red or negative. Just that I've not known God face to face.  Adam walked with God in the Garden, actually saw Eve and knew the apple and the snake. I think that's got to be better than going down the the 7-11 and grabbing an apple from the bin and saying hi to the check out girl.  There's so many comparisons in marketing which make one's own existence moment to moment seem drab.  A picture in a magazine of happy faces on a Caribean cruise jumps out at me as I'm taking the garbage out.
I learned early about "no mind'" and the idolatry of 'ideas' and 'thoughts' .  I learned early that what I think is suspect.  Knowing things doesn't mean one can change them. Knowing theres a great conspiracy, probably by the Americans and the Chinese together, with the CIA and Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis Presley and John Lennon all in on it, doesn't change things.  I'm still going to have to wash and go to the office. I'm thankful I've got a job to go to.  It's just one of the too many things I take for granted.
I imagine some 'wonder job'.  Hanging out with Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie having my picture taken while someone says to the world my every word is wonderful and my bank account gets bigger and bigger. Today that's the Jim Croce, smoking a big cigar instead of working in the car wash kind of notion.  But I don't believe any more that living with Nicole Kidman would be any better than living with Roseanne Barr.  I get a half hour of Jerry Seinfeld and that's definitely the best half hour of entertainment I could have but more George and it would have to be too much salt in the soup of the week.  Yet for so long I just thought "if only I had more Hagen Daz ice cream" .  My mind tells me more and really less is better but when more might be better less seems right.
There's a moving target to the pleasure chase.  There's this karaoke machine of life with the bouncing ball that's supposed to be under the word to sing out of sync with the music.  In my dreams I end up at the fancy dress ball wearing a t shirt and jeans.
I'm often imagining myself wearing a chiffon dress at a biker bash where everyone else is dressed in leather. It's either that or I wake up and I've been pushing a Safeway cart with a wonky right wheel on some street where normal people are avoiding me.
I'm forever not quite fitting in and then not caring or telling myself "it don't matter'. There was a movie where all the soldiers in Vietnam chanted "it don't matter' whenever a friend died in some positively stupid way.
And I think if I focus on God or Love or Peace or something positive I'll get through the next moment without despair and maybe even have a better chance at winning the lottery which would just escalate my dissatisfaction by amplifying my choices.
The more money I've had, like everything else in life, from candy as a kid, to sex as a teen ager, the no greater satisfaction have I had in the end yet I 'think' I will somehow this time round 'get it right'.
And every day I get up and go to work and do my best and struggle nanosecond by nanosecond with what is the best, safest, most effective, word to say, action to take to help Grace or bring light into dark, or reduce the anger or danger, or convince a person not to suicide, or hopefully quiet their voice and body sounds and signs which are like grating fingernails on a chalk board, because frankly,  I just want to stop the bleeding..
And some nights I dream of the emergency room and not being able to stop the bleeding and the countless times I held electric paddles and I was impotent before the power of death. And I'm not surprised ad doctor friend is focused today on 'raising the dead' saying Jesus did.
Meanwhile there's thousands marching in the street about the food being altered and there's only paranoia right now.  Ludittes everywhere and the 'noble savage' and retreat into insanity. It's times like this that I want to go back to my hobby farm and spend more time with my sprouts and chickens.
But my work is in the city and I don't know how much longer I will live or what the next 'solution' will be because there's no going back and here and now is the answer.  Learning to appreciate what one has and loving the one one's with and figuring out how to get the authorities to stop killing God and get on with catching thieves.  It doesn't make sense having property after years of work and hours upon hours of labour if the police collude with the criminals and politicians to let them take your stuff while the banks are laundering drug money. The chaos is unsettling to say the least and only the police and criminals are armed and daily one thinks the fools are the 'law abiding, tax paying' targets.
It's easy to be jaded. It's easy to lose hope.
I think of my father and mother, who did 90 years in the service of the planet.
I've another third of life to go and I'm wholly unprepared.  I've never grown up. I've waxed poetic and clung to false beliefs way too long.  I have trusted the Attorney General and the Premier and Prime Minister when the smart folk have been growing marijuana and cheating on the Vancouver Stock Exchange.  I've spent my days doing everything in my power to help people get off drugs and the money and power and status has been in pushing drugs. I've kept people alive when all that is sexy is in euthanasia and eugenics.  I've been so often on the wrong side of the street, helping the underdog when the bully needs the help and would pay better.
I've liked this 'clean image'. I've played the 'nice guy' role. I've been the 'saint' and yet I've, like everyone else, merely dealt the cards I've been given and played the game and never known for sure how much was chance, how much pre determined, how much choice.
I've been the Doubting thomas and I've questioned everything and yet somehow hold it together while daily people try to convince me that killing themselves or others is the solution or that really something that happened yesterday justifies an action today or that the future is dangerous and not optimal or whatever the current sanity or insanity is in vogue.
I'm not sure I'm thankful that I know the name Kardasians or that I learned that Donald Trump was in town yesterday.  To me in the littlest corner of the world where I exist these names are no different than Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Zeus and Athena, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  They're all way above my pay grade, names of mythical creatures and monsters and polytheistic Gods.  I've spent days with Prime Ministers, hung out with multi millionaires, discussed research with Nobel Prize winners, talked sports with olympic athletes and known members of the Hells Angels, and talked with decorated combat veterans who did crazy things like charging machine gun nests to save their buddies. I've known women so brilliant and beautiful that no television or movie star could compare with the reality and enchantment they bring.  I've been blessed to know the brightest children and grandest pets. I've had experiences like this in passing, like television commercials.  Each has had it's moment in the sun and I have thought myself blessed at the time but then I've also lain in hospital beds or bleeding beside vehicle wrecks in places ambulances don't come.  I've experienced and participated in life but that's all its been.  Life.  I've been a Human and the great and small have all had their place.
I've always said "I'm the kazoo in God's symphony of life' or the 'fart in the necessary make up of reality which without the fart would be like a missing burp".  I've been the king of my creation. I've been the front row seat in my own existence. I 've seen all these great men and august Lords and Ladies of today and admired them from afar or briefly close up and am thankful for the seats at the concert. Recently I smiled at Stevie Nicks.
I don't know who knows me individually.  I don't suppose anyone really knows another more or less.  It's all an illusion when friends die or pass a way and all that are left are memories.  And now the ads warn against alzheimers and just as the thieves are grabbing the physical goods the mental hardware and software is at risk of departing in the night as well.
There's no end to possibilities for worry.
I pray and meditate and hope that 'quality time' and 'exercise' and 'diet' and 'balance' and all the 'catchwords' and 'rituals' of the present age will work half as well as sacrificing virgins did for an earlier age. Each and every one of us struggles against superstition and denial of death.
It's Friday.  Work has never only been in the office. I've been 'on call' most of my life. I've been doctoring day and night answering questions and giving advice, being that highly educated local resource for unknown numbers, woken from sleep so many times by emergencies or suicides and never getting the billing done.  There's a tax man counting sheep somewhere.  I know the details of my sub sub sub speciality in the complexities of my work where there ''s only depth and reach but don't any more seem to grasp the meaning of these people who hand out parking tickets you just pay because you were late saving a life.  I was late for work again because I resuscitated a man who was about to die on the street and no one knew what to do.
I raise the dead but I worry about it.  Like all the deliveries I did.  My government gave the great abortionist the Order of Canada.  Was I wrong or right.  Saving lives, restoring peace of mind, stopping the bleeding or holding back the chaos, and all that sort of Dr. House stuff. Is it right.  I watch cop shows and want to catch the thieves who are stealing from me all the time and wonder if I can do a lateral shift and become an armed school patrol. I understand when someone tells me they feel they've done okay because they protected their child today.
I've an office plant that's some 3 or 4 years old and the life expectancy of office plants is 6 months.  The fish are living in my tank and it's been years since I lost a fish tank. That was the one that froze when the hydro went out when I was away and while the plants revived the fish couldn't swim in the hard water.
I used to not say anything. For years I was silent. I didn't share. I didn't blog. I just listened.  Decades went by.
I understand why monks take vows of silence and married couples stop talking to each other.