Saturday morning

I awoke without the alarm.  Gilbert was still sleeping but lifted his head when I began moving.  By the time I had coffee going he was sitting staring at his food bowl the way he does when he wants me to replenish it.  I got him a "little cesar" and a milk bone.
I’ve shaved.
I’ve not showered yet.
I did put sweats and sweater over my night shirt.  Gilbert was excited and at the door by the time I was donning my long black coat. I love the purple scarf that Anna knitted me.  My beret looks dashing and ancient, unisexual.  (I wore my first beret at 16 going to the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal.  I wore jeans and an Army Navy Store dark Navy sweater. I couldn’t tune my guitar but I played it nonetheless back then.
No one is up yet.  In the trailer park there’s usually someone out and about even this early. The older men, retired, go to bed early but begin projects early in the day. Many worked jobs for a lifetime that required them to be up by 5 am.  It’s already 8 am. Maybe they’ve gone to the A&W to have breakfast with the other old guys.  I see that some of the trucks are gone.
The Brunette River makes a nice running sound in the still woods. Everywhere there is snow and ice.  I have to be careful walking. I’m wearing clogs and no socks so get snow in my shoes.
Gilbert is off leash, sniffing and peeing on everything.
I walked down to the water.  I’ve actually got naked and swum in these shallow pools in the heat of summer. I consider it now.  A friend who polar bear swims most days says it’s marvellous for his sexual stamina. He’s young and crazy too, so I’m sure that contributes. He says his partner is sexually insatiable.  There’s a whole lot more there  than icy swims whatever the Romans said for it.  I rationalize my way out of a cold dip.  I think instead of the coffee that is calling me.
When I get back Gilbert is happy to have had his toilet and left his greeting cards.
I don’t know what I’m going to do today. It strikes me like a Buddhist gong on a mountainside. I’m programmed daily from morning to night with demands. It’s been so exhausting these last weeks moving a practice, dealing with the landlord and city and provincial bureaucrats.  There’s lawyers and accountants and business men and dying. There’s information overload. All the government regulations authorities demand I read their endless stream of changes any of which is a mine waiting to explode. There’s a constant threatening tone to their supposedly friendly communiques.  They are all so very bossy.  Little children who can't mind their own business but insist on telling everyone else what to do. I wish they weren't so ignorant and insecure. They have thin skins, are incredibly egotistical, little real life experience and all manner of personal secrets.  Very sick and dangerous people.  What's so sad is they utterly lack insight and are desperate to please their superiors.  They want so much that little bit of approval.
Meanwhile liberals, democrats,left wing extremists and sharia communists are rioting all over America.  Marches, destruction and threats of death.  If one questions their tyranny they risk imprisonment for hate speech. " I hate your violence” can get a Canadian jailed if they mistakenly ‘name’ the object wrongly.  Political Correctness is so aggressive.  It's a violence itself. I go through my week constantly walking on egg shells.  Barefooted I tip toe amidst the broken glass of all the easily offended worked up by highly paid agitators and todays elitist activitsts.
Doesn’t anyone understand I was a "pacifist".  I was never an activist. When I marched in the streets with love painted on my face, I was't even marching. We walking arm in arm.  We laughed and sang and gathered together in fear. It wasn’t war. It was peace. We weren’t angry. We were afraid.  We loved our land and didn’t want it to become something other.  We weren’t gathering to destroy our way of life but to hold onto love against the anger.  Now the angry are everywhere, entitled and loud.
Oh well.  I woke at 3 in the morning last week.  I couldn’t sleep. The cacaphony of voices inside my head had come alive. I was dreaming of my brother.  I was so sad, so very sad. And alone. I’ve felt so very alone since he died. We were so often like friends, apart a lot but when we were together it was like we were kids again, when we shared a room talking late into the night, keeping our voices very  low, so the parents couldn’t hear, long after lights out.