Saturday, May 19, 2018

May Long Week-end. Princeton, BC

The Royal Wedding between Prince Harry and Meaghan Markle happened in darkness at 2-3 am here on the Canadian west coast. Obviously in Windsor it was day time.  A grand cathedral event with history and tradition.  Laura was talking about it. Girls on face book had stayed up all night to watch the procession.  Gilbert and I slept through it all.

There will be a major boost to the British economy that even curmudgeon George Soros couldn’t influence.  No terrorists. I might well have missed the whole thing despite the news except for Laura who has been commenting on her freckles and saying that she ‘did wear a train....they were saying she wasn’t because it was old fashioned....but she did wear a train.’ 

 I did hear she was part black. That was on the news last week.  Everything in the news in Canada today is racist.   It was said in hushed tones too.  But that wasn’t nearly as much of a social outrage as her being ‘American’.  American’s marrying into the British royalty have in the past been associated with traitorous behaviour.  She’s also divorced. What ever is the Church of England coming to.  Gay priests and now divorced brides. They’re wearing white even when dirty red would be the colour of tradition though that might clash with the clergy.   Now all that said, I think she’s in love and Harry,who I really like, is obviously very happy.  His brother and Kate are doing the Royal thing with the next generation of Kings and Queens..  Aristocracy and titles and genetics and hundreds of years of empires. All rather rich.  Laura’s interested in the girl’s freckles and that the flower girls being Mulroneys.

I’m in a cabin in a small town in the BC Interior.  I’m not working. The routine and threat of work are miles away and I’m feeling myself relax for the first time it seems since I was last out of Vancouver.  I normally have to leave the country to feel free.  Out of Canada I have a feeling that I am for a brief time beyond the range of all intrusive threatening overwhelming government totalitarianism.  Daily new laws restrict citizenship.  By the hour freedoms are lost and no one seems cares. Taxes increase exorbitantly and official bicker endlessly with no apparent accountability or sense of monetary priorities beyond their own pay.  

I continue to act as if the tyrants aren’t supported by all, hoping that any day there will be a reversal. I also feel I’m old and might die before any more government abuse pours down from on high.  I worry I’m depressed.  But my East European doctor friends say everyone was depressed under the communists and that Canada has become what their countries were. They’re disappointed as they escaped from there and now like me feel there’s nowhere to escape. The British Royalty were a symbol of a time when there was ‘eccentricity’ and ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘magma carta’ and ‘suffragettes’ and ‘enlightenment’.  The wedding is a pagentry today.  A symbol.

I’m thankful for my life. I’m very fortunate to be relatively well.  I bicycled yesterday and though being out of shape surprised myself. The countryside was magnificent. The sunflowers lit up the green hillsides. Douglas fir, spruce were everywhere.  My heart was racing with the effort of pedalling uphill and even more so when I found I had no brakes on the journey back down hill.  If I was going to have a stroke or heart attack I had my stress test then. I’m good for another day.

This log cabin is sweet.  All the amenities, hot water shower, indoor toilet, microwave, refridgerator, stove ,cable tv.  We’ve come to take these for granted. In the far corner of the lot there is an outhouse. The cabins have been here since 1934.  I have cell phone coverage and even have wifi if I go out of the cabin. This morning I stepped outside and downloaded the Royal wedding procession on my iPad for Laura.  She was excited.  Older women are easier to please than the young women of Canada known the world over for being ever offended. This is sad because these loud buffoons steal the stage from the amazing Canadian women who are making advances in bioengineering and doing micro surgery or being the architects of the new age of building. 

I thought I’d hunt bear.  There are apparently a lot of them about and some causing nuisance. Like rabbits they go in cycles. A couple of years ago we shot so many rabbits in the spring.  The trouble with shooting bear is that I’m not as big a fan of bear meat in general. I’ve never had a sausage I’ve really liked despite shooting three bear and having my own sausage and sausage offered to me by friends. I’ve loved Bear Ham but it’s not like venison or moose or elk. I love those meats better than beef.  Pigs are more human but I suspect I’d have less difficulty shooting pigs since they’ve not been portrayed as Smokey and other childhood friendly animal characters. I grew up eating deer and moose and  didn’t have bear till I was an adult. There’s the parasites too and the need to cook it long and freeze it. I’ve had smoked bear with my native friends and liked that though all the while worried a worm was now entering my brain.  I never think a worm might be advantageous.  Some dull days invasion of the body snatchers looks good like being a Liberal in Canada.  Besides once I shot a bear I’d have to go home to drop the bear off at the butcher.  My friends all hope I’ll shoot a bear so they can share with me but I’m enjoying being here.  

I imagine I’ll drive my truck out into the woods and target practice with the bolt action Winchester Coyote 300 SWM rifle.  I bought a set of ear plugs only to find I had a pair in the truck already. The rifle is a cannon. Long range sniper capacity and certainly big enough to bring down any large game.  Bullets are about $2 each.  I have my Ruger break down 22 long rifle which I usually target practice with. 22 shells are pennies and the Ruger semi auto is a pleasure to use.  In fall I shoot the heads off grouse and enjoy the succulent wild game birds. The Queen is particularly fond of these partridge which we find high in the west coast mountains.  I’ve a 20 gauge shotgun I shoot them on the wing with. But in spring its only really bear and rabbit we can shoot so the 22 has it’s purpose beyond target shooting. I do have a fly rod for fishing rainbow trout but that requires patience and I’ve not slowed down enough to enjoy that. 

My mind is simpler now.  There’s a strange calm. I expect retirement will one day be like this. I’m faced with showering and then looking forward to an omelette and sausage at Thomasina, a short walk up the street.  I don’t know what I’ll do from there. I’ve been so enjoying reading the Briganshaw Chronicles about Rhodesian families and Elephant Walk,  My brain is definitely becoming more of a beach brain by the minute.. A beach brain is a step further where one just lies in the sun and at most reads fashion magazines.  I think the general blottoness of my own brain right now is healing.  It’s emptiness is slightly disconcerting.  I’m so assaulted with information in the city and all the strangers are overwhelming because to join spinal columns is so absorbing and there’s just so much vulnerability.  Empathy is a dirty word today.  The bean counters and beurocrats have turned everything into a factory and all that doesn’t fit is rejected.  There’s so much demand for goose stepping conformity and I don’t belong like the majority of humans.  One dimensional consumers and shallow happy workers. I’m reminded of the art exhibit of communist ‘worker’s paradise’, all those smiling chubby people and the bold warm colours.  They celebrate diversity is unity then kill off half the population because it doesn’t agree with them.  

But here I am far from the front.  Recuperating. There are no demands.  To get away I faced 10 times the work and will return to 10 times the work but in this little oasis there’s holy water. I find myself turning to God. I’m always praying but so often they’re prayers of ‘protection’.  Waking daily to the never ending assault and threat of the city. But here I’m feeling the love and grace that comes with prayer and meditation. I’m blessed with the Holy Spirit. The son and father are together. I don’t have to feel like Job. I don’t ask what have I done to have this karma. I ‘m not asking about generational DNA. I’m not asking if I do thy will or my will. I’m just trusting in faith. Going through the motions.  Like Narcissisus and Goldmund of Hesse I’m action. Thought is slowed and secondary.  I’m present mostly. More so in the cacophony of resentment and fear of the city and government.  I’m distant from internet. I have to walk outdoors to access it.  There’s no traffic sounds or sirens.  The people are few even on the streets. Bullying beggars don’t threaten me as I walk demanding money to pass.   There’s long spaces between vehicles and no road rage.  I’m sitting here not knowing what to do.  I slept in. I lay in bed long past the light.  I’ve shaved. That’s a big achievement. The blade needs replacing.  My back hurts but that’s old news. I’m mobile.  I exercise and take ibuprofen.  I’m supposed to be building up my ‘core’.  Meanwhile everyone I meet is smiling and friendly like they are in country towns.  We really are blessed today.

I’’m grateful. I’m feeling like my IQ dropped 20 points or so but the tension is going out of my fight or flight stance.  I’d rather face a charging wounded bear than the Borg like arrogance and petty pretentious irrelevance of bureaucrats.  I’ll enjoy getting up into the back woods later.  It’s a bit like being on the ocean with no one around for hundreds of miles.  There are people out in the woods, others participating in the wilderness but they’re more socialized, respectful of space and not demanding or intrusive.  We leave each other alone out here.  I’m far from the maddening crowd.

There’s a soft ringing in the back ground, a sense of electricity. The clinician might call it tinnitus but it’s not. It’s an awareness of the matrix. In the country it’s a pleasant sense whereas in the city it’s not noticeable. I think of the city as the hive.  For so many the separation that occurs from the hive in the wilderness causes them madness. So many Urbans can’t survive mentally in the loneliness and quiet.  To them it’s Deliverance .  To me this is heaven. I’m tuning down the Defcons..  The insensitivity of the urbane increases with the size of the city, the proximity hardening entities. Here there’s an opening, the interconnections more apparent. They say that the heart beats of trees have been found but long ago the aliveness and communication of plants was identified.  Around the time that police began to use ‘lie detector’ machines they realized plants were sentient.  The vegetarians deny this as they murder zucchini’s and eat them live. I hear the screaming of salads. 

Here I feel the word of life.  In the city it’s cement and buildings with the false fluorescent light.  Here we’re experiencing the full spectrum of light. Our pineal glands are thankful. 

It’s quite glorious.  Slowing down smelling the outdoors profusion of scents.  

Laura is out of the shower. My turn. Then I don’t know what I’ll do.    She told me yesterday she’d taken off her watch.  I’ve kept mine on for now.  Though I do feel like I’m harbouring a fugitive.  Gilbert is in his element and glad to have us paying more attention to what really matters. 

Thank you. Really.  Grace.  Your name is Grace today.  The fĂ©minine side of God, the mother Mary aspect.  Grace.  Undeserved.





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