St Barnabas Anglican Church and Shiloh-Fifth Avenue United Church

St. Barnabas Anglican Church certainly is a welcoming church.  As Gilbert and I arrived Reverend Emilie Smith, Parish Priest and Rector welcomed us. Her frisky little dog immediately barked a greeting to Gilbert and Gilbert’s little tail wagged up a storm.

I loved the interior of the church. Since moving to Burnaby I’ve been a church tourist and delighted to see this church while running errands in New Westminster yesterday on my motorcycle.   When I saw at their website that (stbarnabasparish.ca) that this day was to be an early St. Francis Blessing of the Animals day I knew Gilbert and I had to go.

The building is exquisite. Warm and old and holy.  The young pianist was practicing with the very little choir who were however very good.  The Rev. Shannon Tennant, the Shiloh-5th Avenue United Church Minister, the parish’s were mixed to day but normally use the church together, 10 am Anglican Sunday worship, 11:30 am United.  Rev Shannon’s beautiful white dog immediately greeted Gilbert.  The lovely blond sitting next to me welcomed me and got me the program and song books.  They were using a mix of Anglican and United.  

While Gilbert was blessed by Rev. Emilie, Rev. Shannon conducted most of the service today.  Rev. Laurel Dykstra from a watershed ministry gave the sermon, more social and political than my taste. I seek the inspirational and traditional in church, most uplifted by the sermons of Dr. James Houston of Regent College.  I prefer, Repent the End is nigh to Repent the Planet is dying.  However I  love the Christian history of Stewardship and Environmentalism so that this was a very apropos sermon for the Blessing of the Animals day.  The congregation all around me very much enjoyed the talk. 

At communion. I was glad to receive grape juice from Rev. Laurel, having noted that the bread was much better than the flat wafer. I wonder if that reflected the gentility of the Anglican set over the United or vice versa. Perhaps with combined resources they can serve better bread. Tran substantiation is beyond such earthly consideration, of course.

When I attended a church in California the screen writer who gave the sermon did quip about the Californians having a better selection of wines than neighbouring states.  I love ecclesiastical humor and noted that the ministers were all delightfully light hearted.  None took themselves too seriously. No pomposity or airs at St. Barnabus.

At the Peace, greeting neighbours I delighted in the pleasantness of everyone. Gilbert escaped and greeted a big dog he’d been wanting to visit up to that point. They had a marvellous visit till their owners pulled them apart.

It was all really friendly and welcoming. An inclusive church. Something for everyone.  I liked the children. A church is always best when there are children and dogs. I like churches where dogs are welcome.  Gilbert really liked this church and he’s the best judge of churches I know.

After the blessing, we all filed out.  There was a potluck lunch today instead of the normal coffee and tea. I’ve had some really fine church lunch experiences with great fellowship and conversation but today I’d other plans.

Laura texted me that she’d enjoyed the website and would enjoy attending some time when she’s visiting.  Gilbert would like that.  We’ve attended many church services together.  

I did like also that they’re planning a 5 week series on Thursday to go through the Letter to James.  The Holy Bible is such a moving book. I really wish my schedule allowed me to participate more in such activities. The Letter to James is fascinating and small group study and discussion is so rewarding. 

Thank you Jesus for St. Barnabas Anglican Church and Shiloh-5th Avenue United Church. 

Free Will ,Determinism, Synchronicity, St. Barnabus and Gilbert

Since moving to Burnaby I’ve been a church tourist. I’ve attended all the ones close to me and yesterday I saw St. Barnabus Church in my travels. My friend named his fine son Barnabus so I appreciate the Biblical significance of this less common reference.  Today the rain from inside was kind of depressing as a harbinger of Vancouver Eastern Rain Forest deluge that often goes on months.  We don’t have the snow of the east but there there’s sunshine and endless sky.  Here is mountains and clouds so it’s somewhat closed in, at times claustrophobic..  Church is an antidote with it’s inspiration and uplifting community association. To quote Third Day, we can ‘soar like eagles’.

So today I looked at the website and saw the St. Barnabus Church is holding the blessing of the pets, a St. Francis of Assisi tradition.  Gilbert my cockapoo, the best dog ever, was blessed by the Bishop of the Anglican Church here. We’re not sure it took since his interest in dogs genitals of either sex and his interest in their butts and the butts of cats and butts generally,  hasn’t changed.  We insist that this is perhaps the genetics of the French poodle as it certainly can’t come from the English cocker spaniel lineage.  

Gilbert comes to church with me as he comes to work . I’ve always picked places of work and church on their welcoming him.  I’m only modestly more upright in behaviour so he’s my ‘canary’ so to speak socially.  If people object to a little dog they’re soon object to me. 

Now these points, passing the church yesterday and it’s welcoming dog’s today, two ‘coincidences’ in my life seem to me to be synchronistic.  Dr. Carl Jung described the synchronistic as subjective experiences which to an outside observer would appear as coincidences.  The ‘objective’ observer sees events as ‘disconnected’ ,as was common in the ‘age of rationalism’ and the idea of disconnected objects in space. That was the now defunct ‘scientific materialism’ that still plagues those who ‘want the facts and nothing but the facts’.  The courts are still full of them but the science labs simply moved onto multi dimensional universes and quantum physics and the observer and observed interacting. 

If a butterfly flaps its wings in China there is a breeze here in North America.  Everything is ‘interconnected’.  Just because we don’t see the wind doesn’t mean that it’s not there. Like the proverbial 7 points of ‘connection’ in societies.  

I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s latest book, The Square and the Tower, (Networks and power, from Freemasons to Facebook) all about human interconnectedness.   Up to the. Magic Number of 150 about men and women can function as a society with limited structure because they mostly know and have contact with each other. (Sapiens, A brief history of humankind by Yuval Harari)  Beyond 150 there has historically been a need for formal governmental and organizational structures, each of which competes with others through commerce and war.   As Dr. Jordan Peterson speaks eloquently about there’s always this balance between chaos and order.

I love the Gospel of St. John, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God.....’

The Hindus might say that sound was ‘om’ while the scientists might call it ‘bang’.   The mathematics of music is as exciting as the harmonics and how the arrangements of sound affect our mood and health. Music Therapy is just one application but for me there is the issue of vibration and the String Theory. The uniqueness of an individual elements by it’s ‘sound’.  All of these are interconnected in the ‘ONE ‘.  I love the music in church the reciting together and singing together in community. It’s not about performance but rather about community. 

So in church we gather as a community for prayer , praise and thanksgiving.  Prayer is simply talking to the One and Thanksgiving and Praise are simply positive celebration. Politics by contrast to religion seems predominantly to be negative and critical and I have never had much truck with the judgemental, God as scornful angry condemning.  I rather think of God as ‘HOME’.  The tides of my life go out and in like breathing.

So believing the world to be sacred and that the energy that is between all is best called ‘love’ and that which separates us is ‘fear’ I love to ‘meditate’ in church, ‘listening in community’ for guidance and presence. It’s a mystical place touched by hundreds of thousands minds and hearts and souls over often hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. I love the ‘choice’ of place for a church and the changed atmosphere of that place by so many worshiping there. I feel the difference between the places of war and the places of worship.  

Now because there are billions of people and trillions of beings consciousness, a decision, results in ripples and flows and conflict because we’re all not standing miles apart in an open field but rather huddled together on a subway. If I want to change my position or direction there’s all those around me.  We can do it of course with huffing and puffing and pushing and such.  Then a new flow is created.  But it’s not just ‘me’ doing things.

In 12 step programs they say G.O.D. Is  ‘Good Orderly Direction’ because the alienating effect of the zombism of drugs and alcohol in excess results in aberrant behaviour that the adults about must accommodate to adjust to. As people mature they feel the community and need for community and realize they are simply not alone as adolescents feel they are especially with the heady experience of first drunk on lust, fame, booze, or drugs. 

So I’m ‘called’ to church in my mind. Gilbert is welcome and we’re having the feeling that St. Barnabus might well be the answer for a prayer for now.  I’m inspired to get off the couch and go out in the rain, today,  on a Sunday to participate with my fellow humans in a transcendent ritual and feel the communion.  This is sharing bread and grape juice or wine with others as Jesus, our Lord and Savior, did at the Last Supper which beget the endless communion of God and Man in a cosmic consciousness and an unconscious dance made conscious in the shared experience. 

Hallelujah!

Blank Slate

Blank slate. Saturday morning.  Wake to the day at 630 am. Didn’t sleep in. Like sleeping in. But somehow the mind and body thought getting up was the thing to do.  Don’t recall any discussion or referendum.  Not even a bladder lead motion.  Just up and at ‘em.

I didn’t make coffee or meditate or do the daily yoga calisthentics, modest as they are. I did shower and shave and dress and then of all things fed the cat and walked the dog.  I picked up his poop. Twice.

Now I’ve read.  Commenting fatuously on facebook.  Thinking myself rather clever. Vanity. Laughing at the comedy.  Now again, the blank slate.  

There’s countless things to do

1. Build a space ship

2. Escape orbit

3. Die and go to heaven and pay for the guide book this time round

4. Clean the place...my latest delaying tactic has been to think I ‘ll hire someone and supervise them while they clean the place and keep me attending to this. I did it just before the repairs and the now seeing the post repair mess I’ve been slow going at fixing things up

5. It’s hunting season. I have my truck back and could go out and have an overnight hunt but next week I’m really going hunting.

6. I could go do those shopping things I never have time for.

7. I’d like to get Gilbert groomed but they need an appointment so it will have to wait another couple of weeks.

8. I have a storage locker to organize and clean - Again I thought I’d hire someone and supervise them. What I really need is someone to supervise me. 

9. I ‘should’ write the Great Canadian Novel.

10 I ‘should’ produce the ‘great work of art’.

11. I ‘should’ exercise more. I thought of going to the pool.

12. I’ve rather enjoyed reading on the couch.  I finished my submarine warfare book last night in bed and have more of Yuval Harran’s Sapiens to have a go at.  I’m reading three books a few pages at a time, Harran’s, Ferguson’s and Jordans.

13. I’m supposed to learn another language.

14. I could address the slow internet problem.

15. I have book keeping to do.

16. I could put on pants.

17. I could go to a meeting or church or the pool or the gym or the library or the reading room or Macdonald’s for an egg McMuffin or Starbucks for a latte. I could phone someone .

18.  It’s this blank slate.  A free day. Not really.  Nothing is pressing.  The hunting is sort of. The season is limited.  

19.  I could télé transport somewhere.  Beam me up.  I’d rather like to have a sex change to slot in a different personality for this one.  A new life of adventure.  Sort of ‘black like me’ but keeping the genitalia. Cross dressing. I’ve rather wanted breasts.  Whenever they’re not around I miss them. So perhaps have my own.  Of course whenever there are breasts about I prefer the whole woman and am rather transfixed by their beauty, creativity, genius, but they frighten me today.  If you can’t beat em join em.
 I don’t remember a lot of my childhood. I was in some very sketchy places, people drinking and doing drugs. I was at the time with girls and other guys. I ‘m thankfully not a ‘black out’ drinker.  But what if I was. I would swear I’ve never hit a woman and never raped a woman.  I’ve never raped a man. Or had sex with children or animals.  I’ve begged women for sex.  I’ve given women most of my income in my life time.  Even in marriage I’ve requested sex and waited and after months of no sex walked away. I don’t think of myself as a ‘fighter’. I preferred even in hockey to play defence. I’ve hospitalized attackers but they were men.  I’ve been attacked by three men at a time and been pretty beat up but let my guard down and on drugs was raped. But I knew the risks and gambled there would be gains. I was disappointed, a lot, The promises didn’t come true.  I didn’t get ‘contracts’.  I want to get everyone I talk to day to sign a contract.  I fear the irrationality and political natures of courts, their preferential treatment to maintain the rich and status quo, their pseudo mercenary war nature, the lack of truth in society and the celebration of slander and false allegations.  No one I know today , all my friends, and certainly my enemies, some of whom I think have sex with animals, wouldn’t ‘pass’ the ‘journalist test of public office’.  Increasingly I look at the Chinese ‘citizen awar’ and it seems the only one who could ‘pass’ would be a psychopath.  Humans need not apply.
 I’ve had women and men crawl naked into my beds on many occasions. That happened on the ‘road trips’ with dance and drama.  It happened with nurses in call rooms.  When I complained I was told I was ‘radiated sexuality’ and my beautiful colleague laughed saying she faced the same and we both wondered if we should ‘act ugly’ or something, I certainly didn’t tell people I was a doctor when I went to clubs. I said I was a teacher and met another teacher who was a priest.   I said no over and over again.  I’ve run out of rooms and slept in locked bathrooms. Even with a wife on cocaine I’ve left to get a hotel to sleep so I could work in the morning. Her work was erratic. Her drug abuse my problems. I couldn’t ‘control’ my wife so I stopped everything to limit the potential deaths.    I was always saying ‘no I’m married’ to women unclothing or rubbing against me.  When I was a divorced doctor it was cleavage city and hands all over my body and strategic brushing up against me.  It was obvious.  The single women doctors laughed and complained about the orderlies.  We were as leaders held to a higher standard. I said no and then dated that professional, the amazing day time nurse, night time brothel worker, stalker.  Scarey lady.  Right out said she wanted to marry a doctor.  Cut the tips off condoms. I left town to get away from her.  I’ve treated so many psychotics and psychopaths and borderlines and sociopaths.  I’m afraid to be around women or children. I don’t like to go outside.  The attacks can come from any direction.  Maybe the clerk wants 20 minutes fame.  I already paid extortion once, and learned ‘that’s just norm in business, the lawyer said, I know she was caught stealing and smoking meth on the job but it’s better to give them money to go away that get dragged through the courts....thousands to a lawyer for advice.....same with the fellow who stole my vehicle.....’if it was worth more, it would be worth the court and all, but you parked it at his place and he sold it and the police won’t prove it and the insurance company won’t accept it lost because you said it was stolen and he’s now chopped it and included it in the insurance claim for his house he burnt down....go after him and he’ll show up on tv holding somebody’s baby and claiming you’re harassing him....take the loss....the price of doing business....my friend laughs when I whine about the law....tells me how he and his friends have to remove a gang and their meth lab from his father’s apartment building because the police wouldn’t get involved.  The guy threatened to kills me and my dog for a whole year and only stops when he threatens to kill Trudeau on his visit and finally he’s silenced.  I felt in good company he’d been threatening to kill a lawyer and his dog all year.  I don’t know why I pay taxes. 

I can go out .  I stay alone and it’s a bit crazy. I liked sailing across straits and such.  The boat on autopilot. A fishing line out. I was doing something. I can’t sit here and put a fishing line out the window and feel I’m doing something.  

20. I ‘should’ be finding a cure for schizophrenia.  It’s the physical doctors job to ‘cure cancer’. I should find a ‘cure’ for addiction. Abstinence and truth are too daunting. The great experiment with everyone smoking dope is about to begin. Seemed like the drinkers smoked and drugs begat drugs rather than lessened them and drugs birds of a feather flock together.  C

21.  It’s a blank slate I derail into past resentments and future fears rather than addressing the perfection of the present, the now won because this is the dimension where God is.  I’m in the presence of God, plaise and thanksgiving, prayer and forgiveness, meditation.  Here Lord I’m yours. Guide me. Take this time and make me a channel of thy peace.

22. I have to get the cat kitty litter.  I need a screw to repair my bow. I need a u-bolt from Canadian Tire. I could vacuum.  I could just get on my motorcycle and see where it takes me. I did that with my bicycle those idyllic summer days when I had nothing but time. Now it’s a priceless commodity and I’m always feeling I’m not holding it sacred like a new born baby but taking it for granted.  Time is life.  

23. I have to leave this screen and keyboard for now and move.  I like the get on the motorcycle idea. Wind therapy.  Thank you God. 

Gratitude List

I think it’s the weather or politics but there’s that sense of impending doom. I just suffered through the anniversary of a failed marriage. I had a flashback to the wedding and the promises. I tend to nurse resentments and have trouble some days cleaning the slate and starting anew. With coming of winter I have fears.  So rather than selectively recalling the negatives of the past or worrying about the future which hasn’t come I attempt to stay in the day.  Be here now. Just for today.  Practicing the present. Knowing that an attitude of gratitude will attractive more positive than a negative attitude.

So now to get out of the slump of loss I need to remind myself of what I have this day.

Well thank you God for 

Friends

Family

Especially Gilbert and George

Electricity

Light

Heat and warmth

Running water

Clean air

My motorcycles

My car

Telephones

Internet

Indoor plumbing - toilet - this should be higher in the list

Food

Coffee - especially coffee

the idea of space shifts

Potential for Interdimensional travel

Flight

Speed - i like variable speed in vehicles and walking

Flat surfaces

Mountains

Roads and walkways

Buildings

Mines

Trains and planes

Poetry

Music

Refrigeration

Hot showers and hot tubs

Swimming pools

Bicycles

Rifles and bullets

Bows and arrows and sharp knives

Forks and spoons

Bowls

Journals

Typing and keyboards.

Memory

Fragrances

Incense

T-shirt’s, especially Harley Davidson and Sailing T-shirt’s

Sailboats

Canoes

Vehicles of every kind

Tents

Campers

RV’s

Babies

Puppies

Kittens

Photography

Thank you for colours.

Thank you God for all these blessings thes coming hours of wakefulness, the myriad experiences and adventures available to me in the moment to moment day of potential sacred wonder. Help me lift up my eyes. Protect me.  Guide me.  Be with me.  

Thank you Jesus. 

Good Morning God

Well, here we are another day, God.  I talk to you.  Formally in prayer. Lots of repetition and positive affirmation, mantra talk with mindfulness meditation and breathing and focus. I hope that hours upon hours of practice over half a century or more should help. But I could be doing it wrong and I can’t rest on my laurels.  But it’s not like I’ve just begun seeking this relationship.  My mother taught me about you and prayer as a little child. I know all about the Hound of Heaven. It’s like you’re a lover.

But I do feel I suggest going for Pizza and you wanted me to pick Sushi. You don’t make it clear sometimes and other times I simply don’t want what you want and I don’t like or feel the consequences are fair.
It’s like you’re a date and I’m trying to seek your approval but you’re like a mother who approves of me whatever. So then I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if I was a serial killer and joined ISIS.
 I call you Jesus, Messiah and really like the story.  The main story. The central story of our time.  Crucifixion. Religion is supposed to address the question of why bad things happen to good people. I want divine retribution I guess. I”ve been pretty good. And I know to those who have most are expected more from but even then I look at my life compared to most and I’ve been mostly caring productive, creative, building, cooperative. I’m certainly not perfect in the eyes of others. I just wonder if instead of being a doctor I should have been Che.  I’ve done all I could to maintain order and contribute to progress. I’ve not torn down and destroyed things in general.

But I’ve wondered if I was doing enough or if I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Like sins of omission. Would it be better if I were to become a missionary or a monk. I looked into the monastery idea and found that little would differ in my life. This being a doctor bit would remain. Most others, other than my government, admire education and training and experience and doctors.  My own government and it’s doctors hates us and has reduced our numbers by half and taken the resources for doctors and given them to their chatter box cronies.  They like committees and talk and self congratulations. 

Yet I’m second guessing myself all the time now. I’m doing the best I can, doing as I was taught, making diagnosis which are respected in the broadest and highest levels. I’m doing therapeutics consistent with the latest research. I’m trained beyond the beyond, not only at the highest levels initially with this gift of an IQ and crazy workaholism and the most incredible teachers but ever since I’ve been incredibly studious.  But the goal posts have been moved.

I was taught to help people stay alive. The idea was good work as a doctor was judged against ‘quantity’, length of life. If a baby could live and I negligently caused a death, I was wrong.

Yet today our government, the leading authorities, those that license doctors celebrate MAID.  Euthanasia , death , is okay.  So if a person dies on my watch, someone suicides for instance, it’s not my fault and probably good. I”m supposed to look sad and go throug the politically correct emotions but so what.  I reduced the suicide attempts on the chronic suicide ward from 30 a year to 10 and the deaths from 3 or 4 a year to O but wasn’t even thanked. The individuals didn’t know because these traditionally critical stats of ‘quality care’ are not ‘overt’ but ‘hidden’.

I tell the story of the great research project so common. A Surgical unit discharged patient to 2 wards. In one ward the death rate was high.  In the other ward pretty well all the patients lived.  The surgeons were concerned because they wanted the best results from their work. So they investigated this.  The first ward had a head nurse everyone loved.  In psychiatry we call her a ‘good tit’.  Melanie Klein one of the first and leading psychiatrists said children see the world as a ‘good breast’ or ‘bad breast’.  If you are giving and positive happy happy you’re a ‘good tit’.  By contrast if you are not giving milk you’re a ‘bad tit’.
 On the second ward the head nurse was one of the ‘battle axe type matron’s, like Florence Nightingale and Sister Theresa.  High standards, demanding, critical and conscientious.  The key to survival after surgery is movement.  Patients in the ‘good tit’ ward were dying mostly because of blood clots. While on the ‘bad tit’ ward the patients were being made to walk according to the doctors protocols. The nurses were following the doctors orders and the patients were following the nurses orders and they were living and complaining about what bad ass or rather bad tits the nurses were because they were only happy if the patients were eating and walking and sleeping and generally being good patients and doing as they were supposed to to. On the other ward it was permissive, kind of like public schools, and everyone was happy except for the dying and dead and of course the surgeons who were accountable.

So while administration was very upset with the unpopular ‘bad tit’ nurse the surgeons loved that head nurse but her staff didn’t get a whole lot of chocolates or flowers. The living on the other ward however did give those nurses flowers and chocolates and having seen so many other patients dying during their stay thought the nurses who were being so kind and understanding were making all the difference. The fact was that these lucky ones would have probably lived with or without the ‘good tit’ nurses since they had other qualities of survival and genetics that may well have a ccounted for their survival.

The key here is that the dead didn’t get a vote.

The dead don’t vote.

This is the story of Communism of course.  The communists ‘stole from the rich and gave to the poor’.  Lenin, Malotov and Stalin before even Lenin murdered the Czar and the others killed the democratically elected leadership in Russia, were robbing banks and assassinating people.  This was a murderous gangster lot much like Mao in China.  Every communist socialist country to this day has had high death rates and poverty. The riches are made from taking them from the previous government.  It’s what Liberal governments are doing today but they’re stealing money from the children with creations of debt. It’s what Pierre Trudeau did in Canada and his son is doing now.  It’s a tried and proven rape and pillage tactic that began tens of thousands of yearss ago.  Warriors road across the tracks and stole the neighbours women’s and food.  

The famous statement ‘hide your potatoes’ came from Ireland because the English came across the water and stole everything so the Irish died of starvation en mass.

If someone is going to take what you make then you might as well not work.  So communist socialists countries run down simply because everyone sees there’s no reward. In capitalism the person who works more gets more.

However if you can’t get rewarded positively for good work then you learn to ‘hide your potatoes’.  This is the ‘black market’.

It’s estimated now in Canada that 50 to 75% of the economy is ‘underground’ because of the theft of government.  Government wants to redistribute wealth from the workers to those who are their friends.

In Canada in the health care system, which began as a ‘Medicare system’ paying for doctors, nurses and hospitals and equipment, has become a bloated cancerous burocacy with a whole bunch of half wit cousins of the Liberal party in positions of power with longer and longer waitlists and fewer and fewer people actually seeing patients and doing what was supposed to be ‘medical care’.  They ‘change’ the name of things.  This is what political correctness does.  

So in the DTES millions of dollars are voted for medical care and health care but instead we get ‘free crack pipes’

In the military medical care of veterans is given to murderers of policewomen. 

It’s so insane that psychiatrists like me said that the bars were on the windows of asylums to keep the world out.  We’re too sensitive for this lying cheating deceitful shit.  British Columbia after Quebec is the most criminal province in the world. It’s world renown for it’s 85 billion dollar pot industry and billions a year pass the border from China in fentanyl and heroin.  It’s a regular Los Vegas.  The Casinos are money laundering havens and the housing costs are so high normal people can’t afford to live here because international criminals, especially the gangsters and their families from Communist China have bought speculation property housing.

The Middle East is a gangster religion with the Tribal groups like aboriginals having economies based on jihad military and slave sales and any business goes with crime and corruption so bad that whole states are no go zones.  The persecution of Christians is rampant and gang rape is the normal. There is no peace except for the wealthy and the wealthy have got wealthy paying fortunes for protection.

The US is the most sought after nation , the ‘promised land’ where people from all over the world run to. They don’t run to Saudi or China or South Africa. They come to Capitalist countries because if you are an inventor and work, if you are a businessman and work and if you are a doctor and work you will be rewarded .  Taxes are low.  Costs are low.  People are rewarded for working. Those who work can have good lives and their children can have better. In Saudi Arabia and especially in communist countries there is little upward mobility.  Most of the world functions on who your father and mother were and which caste or tribe you belong to.  Education is reserved for the rich.  If you are a successful singer an agent will fund you and take all your income.  Here there is a chance for a successful singer to keep enough potatoes not only to thrive but to have their families thrive. 50% of millionaires in the states are self made in their own life times. That’s why it’s called the ‘land of opportunity’.  

There is a war now between the communists and capitalists, between the Liberals and Conservatives, between the ISIS and the Christians.  

The best song of our times for this was Leonard Cohen’s There is a war between the rich and the poor, a war between the man and the woman.

A friend just bought a house. I learned she never bought anything new. My brother never bought anything not on sale.  These are good people. They are discerning steady eddies. My present lack of a space ship isn’t because I’m ‘oppressed’ by the rich but because I’ve preferred spending my money on chocolate and television. I’ve wasted a whole lot of resources while the richest man I knew , the owner the mercantile bank of London, singleminded worked from childhood to amass wealth and own a London bank. He was ‘single minded’.  These guys are like General Patton. My grandfather, a Reece and Rancher wasn’t anything like the Kardasians. He lived and breathed cattle. I’ve spent my life doing medicine and psychiatry.  I’ve specialized.  Specialization depends on having potatoes.  I need protection and reward to do my job but don’t feel I have that here.  

God guide me today.     You know I’m ready to die.  I go to bed ready to die and wake up here. And here is great. I’m grateful for my dog and the cat who are alive and remind me I have to feed them and work to feed them.  I have to continue to build for the future. If I wake up tomorrow I’ll need food. I exercised some today. I meditated .I’m going to get out of the house which is very frightening. It’s very hard to leave this house and go out in the world where there’s kamikaze cars on the commute and all the angry entitled people and all the social justice warriors. Every woman looks at men like the English looked at the Irish. We’re peasants and oppressed by their sexuality and their sexual claims.

Is it 50% or more now that women claim sexual abuse/harrassment/rape. -it’s never clear what this is. Even the courts have a moving target. And daily ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’ is accepted by women in the workplace. I am today wondering if I could get a job in a male jail because it might be more safe but maybe some woman in my junior high school thought I sexually harrassed her and with a slick lawyer will come for my potatoes. I don’t know if I can keep anything because liars and criminals are so much more rewarded in CAnada than the workers and the actual soldiers who fought for this country and were wounded are being thrown under the bus by this government which doesn’t like doctors, and hates the educated, well what hope is their for me. I’m a bad tit.  But you woke me up today God and I’ll get going with my day.  It’s like invasion of the body snatchers out there. I’m truly terrified.  It’s so hard to get out of the room. But you woke. Me.  I’ll have a shower. i like hot showers and I’ll put on fresh clothes and I like my car so I’ll get in my car. I preferred trains but didn’t like being pick pocketed or looking down and seeing a knife at my ribs in public transit knowing that the government doesn’t protect me from criminals.  I’m afraid of all the violent dangerous gangs of men from other cultures who lie together and I’m getting old and can’t defend myself with running like I could as a kid and getting old in Canada is terrifying.

But I trust in you God.  PLease Lord be with me in all my endeavours , protect me and guide me and help me safely through this day.  Help me help others and protect me from those who want to kill doctors and nurses and hide their true intentions with smiles.  Help me not suicide today Lord. I know the government makes money off euthanasia and it wants me to kill myself . It’s minions have indicated as much. They want us old men , especially the old white men to die. They convinced the women to abort the babies. Now they want us to die.  Help me to live today. You woke me up.

Bless me like Joaz . Expand my territory.  Help me to Laugh like Borther Lawerence and be Like St. Patrick and see like St. John and take heart like St. George.  God be with me, in me, above me around me and help me to hear and see you always today. God is good all of the time.  

Anacortes Oyster Run 2018

Great ride down on the Harley Electra glide. Chuckunut Road never ceases to give joy. The awesome views of the ocean, winding road through evergreen corridors.

Now I’m in downtown Anacortes at Island Cafe.  There’s the rumble of Harleys and the bumble bee buzz of  crotch rockets in the background. I’ve a window side table where I’m eating raw oyster and clam chowder soup. There’s a whole lot of bikers in leather walking by, lots still wearing their chaps, others stripped down to club vests and jeans.  The women are most beautiful. More and more come on their own motorcycles. A lot still ride behind their rich men on big touring motorcycles, couples who can afford them.  

Here and there is a gang member, a Bandido or such but they’re less than a thousandth of the gathering, Christian bikers and War veterans bikers much more prevalent.  The Combat Veterans even have a booth and the word ‘combat’ is obviously distinguishing.  Did I say the women were beautiful? Lots of bearded men.  It’s America so land of luxury and fat with no one commenting on the prevalence of bellies.  We joke that that’s why we need the big cc bikes, to haul our old white haired lard asses.The crotch rocket set and the Harley Sportster crowd are slim and trim and more fashionably dressed.  The Victory crowd are really stylin. The Indian set, a vintage breed apart.  Lots of choppers and some incredible bike art. I talked to a young guy on a KTM Duke. The prettiest little girl was riding a Rebel. Lots of Yamaha and Honda’s too. The Trikes and Spiders are becoming more and more popular too. 

A rock band was playing when I arrived. The hour and a half wait at the border delayed me some while I only got away at 12 having planned to leave before 10.  It’s an accomplishment to make it another year. Don Pollock got me out to my first Oyster Run years past. 

I didn’t realize back then how sober bikers generally are. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a classic in the mindset of mainstream bikers. Now there’s a whole lot of adventure bikers touring the world. The Triumph Tiger and later BMW got into that market. I still argue that my Harley Electraglide is the best American freeway bike ever developed. I loved riding across the country and back to Sturges. The trip down here on the #5 freeway then along the back roads thorough Pacific Northwest farming areas made me love my Harley all over again. It’s just such an amazing machine.

Anacortes is such a sweet little family town back drop for this long standing biker  rally.  Quilting stores ,lots of sea side tourist items along side furniture stores and lots of variety in restaurants and coffee bars.  I’ve come here in summer on the bike just to enjoy the town when it’s quiet.  Anacortes rocks all the time.  But really this day it roars.   

Autumn 2018

Autumn is upon us.  The leaves kaleidoscope with colour.

Having soared green all summer they finally Icarus.

Beside them the evergreens steady eddy.

The sun retreats, repulsed another year  by fat bodies  disrobed on beaches

And I am here, presuming to face another Canadian winter, 

The 40 days and 40 nights of rain have begun in Vancouver

Racist weather in it’s unforgiving whiteness begins to Viking from the north and attack the prairies

The east is deeply evil with Ottawa and Montreal and Toronto gripped by cement and madness.

Gossiping silly southerners continue to sully fake news with sex, sex and more sex

Doing it, not doing it, accused of doing it ,did it, watched it , with who, when

A choir of chimpanzees not yet out of the trees, what passes for advanced journalism

Perverts and dirty minded little lawyers with nothing else on their hands and minds but genitalia

Spaceships continue to pass and send messages back home galaxies away,

‘There is still no intelligent life form on the earth.’

The emotional stench of billions of aborted babies keeps the angels  catching falling angels

Occasionally a rainbow. A leprechaun in a Ponzi scheme cackles with a genie over 649.

 A drought, a flood, all blamed by aetheists on the breath of life

All the while denying higher things. Repent, repent, the street preacher cries out 

Recording a selfie of his own performance while we all learn to read  finally 

But only to text political obscenities and tribal grunts and sext

These are the silly days. Like all others.  The fall of summer, autumn and the cycle continues.

Récurrent like the beating heart, the tides of love.your face in my mind.

Beyond the deluge is the death of a saviour and his crucifixion follows just before spring

The cycle repeats itself. The life of one man, a species, a planet.  Lift up your hearts!

This too will pass but right now, this moment, this day, autumn plays.

Look up from your screen, feel the rain and wind.

Pay attention. Falling leaves and falling rain. Personal metaphors. 

Tomorrow snow men, making angels, then  we’ll all  congratulating our selves,

The sound of trumpets, sight of lilies and ladies in weird hats.

Death, rebirth, eternal life.  Conscious, unconscious. Dreams and wakes. Welcome weather.

I will not burden you with unseemly names but celebrate your progress as my own.  

Who ever would have thought we’d survive the heat and flies.

But we did. And will. Again and again. Like weather. 

Brave. Disciplined. Dutiful. Majestic. Humble.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

So enjoying this ‘brief history of human kind’

Learned that humans evolved in East Africa 2.5 million years ago. Use of tools identified early mankind.  Bone marrow scavenger tools.

Only 400,000 years ago did humans hunt large animals together. Use of fire and society and large head Neanderthal and Sapiens.  Sapiens appear 150,000 years ago.

Interbreeding theory - Sapiens spread into Neanderthal Lands north.  Sapiens spread into Erectus lands east, Chinese a mixture of Sapients and Erectus

2010 geneticists - Middle East and Europe - 1-4 % human DNA Neanderthal/ 6% of modern DNA of Melanesian and Aboriginal Australians is Denisovan DNA

50,000 years ago Neanderthal, Sapiens and Denisovians...Then genocide and taking over of other’s resources. Last remains of Homo sole sis 50,000 years ago. Last homodenisova about 50,000 years ago.  Last Neanderthals 30,000 years ago.  Last human drarvs of Flores Islands 12,000 years ago

Last 10,000 years Homo Sapiens.

Theory - Homo sapiens conquered the world thanks to it’s unique language.

- details from Sapiens

Insight -

The bottom line is that aboriginals were not kind to their neighbours and neither are we.  The conquerer writes the history though.  

She

She is very slim with long blond hair and a very pretty face. High cheek bones. Full lips.   Her nipples protrude through the thin fabric of her designer blouse.  She is wearing blue jeans with a rhinestone studded belt. One leg is curled under her as she sips her latte in the comfortable living room atmosphere of the Swiss coffee shop.

Other than the two barristas behind the counter there is only one table taken.  A thin long haired man with scraggly beard  is sitting with his computer by the great stone fireplace.  It is not lit.  The scene outside the window is that of snow and winter.  The fireplace is lit in the evenings.  Midday the modern efficient furnace suffices.

‘It is now,’ he is saying.  The man she is sitting with is wearing a herringbone brown jacket with leather elbow patches. They are both  wearing jeans, His shirt  is flannel.  He too is sipping a latte.  Handel’s water music is playing on the sound system. 

‘Obviously it is now,’ she says, her green eyes flashing.

‘It is now and everything and everywhen and everywhere spirals out from this very moment.  That’s the Big Bang.  Creativity. It’s happening now, here and now as the old mystics tried to warn us. They did, you know, they warned us. Here inside.  There’s no yesterday or tomorrow.  No there and then. Just here.  The bits we piece together are abstractions.’

‘Constructions.’ 

‘Some call them that but that idea lacks the miraculaous and sacred.  There’s a dry intellectualism about constructionism.  Something coined by aetheists to approximate God. An orgasm described by a robot.   I’m saying this is Brother Lawrence. This is the Holy Spirit. This is very unfolding.  Here and now.’

She sipped her latte and looked at his eyes. 

Hé really was quite mesmerized by her eyes, he thought then as if it was an original thought.   He thought he could get lost in them too and had a mixed mental flash of nerve gas attack and pheromes but he couldn’t really grasp what he thought. He had enough sense to feel scared and awkward. She really was awesome.

She was at that moment thinking about bedding him.  Would she or would she not.? She’d pulled petals off flowers as a child. ‘He loves me. He loves me not’.  ‘Fuck him. Fuck him not.’ She thought. She felt her fingers twirling her blond locks.

‘It’s either fate or free will,’ he said when an unknown quantity of time had passed. .  ‘What happens next is either a conscious decision that selects one of a myriad of possibilities from the string theory of infinite, or almost infinite, dimensional reality, or it’s just a linear fixed thing. We are experiencing this set play as if we had choice when in fact it’s all determined. ‘

She imagined she chose him.  He’d smiled at her in the lecture theatre, she remembered. She thought he was cute.  Obviously clean and well dressed and from her own sort.  Outsiders wouldn’t have been at his lecture. It was that sort of selection process. She vaguely felt she was an alpha and that he was an alpha and she should get to know him better, marking her territory so to speak. The other girls drifted away when she first approached and began  to talk to him. 

The coffee was his idea, he thought. She knew that she could have him then if she wanted him.  She could always have a man if she wanted them.  That was choice. I don’t think it’s fate, she thought.

‘Fate  may be everything.  It may also be that nothing unfolds and it’s all just appearances. Appearances and vanity.’

‘Why vanity?’ She asked, her attention once again drawn to the conversation.  She wore East Indian gold earrings.  Heavy.

‘Eclessiastes. Wolfe and Bonfires.  Man’s insignificance.  Bacteria on the planet.  Yet in our minds so much more. God like in our opinions but really quite insignificant next to the imagination we have of history and even of the future. These abstractions of past and present and future with time a flow and relative as well.’

The top two buttons of her blouse were undone. She chose that, didn’t she.  He had thought to say something about digital worlds and fractals  and one and two and one two and well, her breasts were somehow perfect, he thought.  They could even be said to be Godly..

She smiled.

That was an old story. An orthodoxy.  He was a virgin academic of good and old  family. She was a whore, of noveau riche origins. The father got rich selling cannibis.   She preferred to call her self a courtesan at this time in her life.   Before and after she became a princess.  

Today she’d throw a hissy fit and pout with lies and no elan..  

It was in jail with time  on his hands that he wrote the masterpiece.  The great Canadian novel which contained the bon mot  ‘ poutine of the soul.’ It was mentioned in all the media.    The star was a green eye woman who would be played by a fatuous famous Hollywood actress who learned how to read in her third drug rebab.   The book was called the  Countess of Montreal  It wasn’t very original but gender gave it the twist that put it ahead of Fifty More Shades. The author kept his buttons done up after his time in  penitentiary.  She was thankful for the changes.  

Anonymity was next to godly.  No one recognized him.  She certainly didn’t remember him.  She might never even have existed.   The fiction and non fiction was no longer divided in the multicultural relativism. Truth was lost.  

‘Could we go back to the part where you were looking into my eyes. ‘ she asked.

Hé looked up, blushing.   Her face really was pretty and again he was lost in her eyes.  There was a timelessness there.  She understood time.  He didn’t. For her it was something finite and particulate.  Her eyes twinkled as she did up one button.  Two had been overdoing it.  She  reached out her hand to touch his cheek intentionally breaking the spell.

‘You had a splash of cream there,’ she said, her voice nore husky.

She was a witchy woman, he thought much later,  much much later.  But still here.  Still now.  Within, where it all begins. 

Picard Creek Camping and Hunting

My alarm with the song of the creed woke me,  I believe in Jesus.  A good way to begin the day.  A reminder.  Christ the Lord.

What am I here for?  What is my purpose?  The Law of Attraction.  Love thy neighbour as you would have them love you.  For days I’ve ridden my motorcycle looking for deer, and bear, shooting grouse and rabbit.  I’ve blocked negative thoughts by repeated affirmstions.  All Shall Be Well.  Lord Jesus Christ.  The Lord’s Prayer.  

The first day my mind was busy. By the third day I was focussed in the here and now.  Motorcycling can get you killed if you’re not meditating on the present.  I’m so easily distracted by the past.  Resentments creep in and suddenly I’m reliving a negative time in my life.  Here I am in paradise loving what I’m doing, exhilarated and then my mind plays tricks.  

Lord God Almighty. God of Creation.  

Why am I here?

What is this place really?  Deeply?

Is there anything I should be doing differently?

Guide me. Show me the way.  Thy will be done. 

I’m reading a book about Aboriginal Dreamtime.  With Scottish Irish heritage, clans and tribes and proximity to the reality of land and people, I’ve been called ‘fay’ and accepted the intuitive grace as another might accept strength.

 I loved CS Lewis’s book, « Surprised by joy’ and riding my motorcycle I had so many moments of joy.  The smells of the earth fragrances of plants, I so enjoyed one place because it smelt like a favoured bathroom scent. I thought how very clever someone was. They smelt this smell and re created it.  Something like ‘forest scent’.  I stopped my motorcycle and just inhaled the rich fragrance and smiled right down to my boots.  How clever humans are. Like a sketch artist with chemistry.  

The coffee is good this morning. I ground some more Kona and added it to the last of the Maxwell House.  The Honda 2000 generator has served well.  The new shut off switch got jiggled so that the battery got disconnected. When I turned off the generator yesterday Laura was left without electricity. I found her standing in the camper with Gilbert in the dark.  

« I was beginning to get chilled so hoping you’d return. ». 

« You could have plugged in the truck and used it. »

« I know. »

Man as problem solver. Man as tool maker.  I am reading Sapiens and enjoying learning about the other hominids.  I’d read years ago a book telling the tale of the great battle betweeen Cro mignon and us.  We carry their genes.  Some more than others.  

Drinking coffee and looking out this window at the white water creek, great fir and spruce tree; the beginning of autum colours in the poplars, so very pleasant. Eye candy.

There are two men here with campers and trucks. One has a dog. Another told me he winters in Mexico where he has a girlfriend.  They’re both retired.  God’s waiting room folk.  Brother Lawrence and Thoreau and probably too much beer. One at least makes a beer run each day. Sit by the fire.  Maybe reminisce.  Old men story telling. I must resist.  The eyes of the young glaze over.  Write a novel.  Tell the fiction that is your belief. 

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead the Bardot is described, a place between lives where a whole cast of characters get together and decide on parts to play.  My ex wife, the drug addict, played the saint in her previous life. The violent girlfriend who broke into my place and  punched me in my sleep leaving my face black and blue till I could throw her off, her screaming, « no man leaves me. If you hit me I’ll have you in jail.’  I left the city and no one knew why I left my job and work and escaped this stalker. I now know that’s what cocaine does to a girl.  A high class girl from a good family, professional with a career, working nights as an escort to pay for her habit and saw me as her ‘solution’.  So many saw me as their ‘solution’. Imperialist women who colonized men. I never hit a woman. I retreated.  Now I listen to friend complain of the law against hitting women.  Their modus operandi is lies and alliances and violence by proxy.  Girlfriends and ex wives.  And one day we get to laugh again in the green room between lives and talk of our performances. I did play the coward and escape artist well. She was always beautiful in her rage.

It was fun watching Dwight Yoakum and Cote and Kris Kristofferson here in a bette noir spaghetti western with an arty director, Last Rites of Ransom Pride.  Running the generator I had power for the DVD and TV.  What decadence! I believe it did justice to the insaneity of the day.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Sex and drugs, blasphemy and demonic.  Death and guilt.  Maybe it’s true only the good die young. Everything was in this Bonnie and Clyde gunslinger flick.

 Later I walked the blind dog around the known path in this campsite letting him sniff all the places where other dogs had been.  Once I lead him about an area he becomes more confident.  The beach and rocks remain a challenge.  I think it keeps him young learning these new ways of seeing.

God I would know you better. I call to you. I speak to you.  I know you as a friend. I would know you as a friend.  You are a lover and the zen warriors say that God is the one who teaches them the final lesson.  The last mistake. I should have ducked and didn’t. In the next life time I carry the learning.

Waiting for the Messiah to come. In orthodoxy I am here one life but Christ reincarnates.  I must read Revelations more. I miss more Bible study. I loved Bible studies. I loved Book studies. I loved sharing a common reading and discussing varying observations.  I’ve read the Bible cover to cover several times but it’s the one book that never gets old. I need a new home church too. I like a good sermon and the community of friends.

The ‘core’ learning component is so often absent in the YouTube internet fake news, multiple feeds. It’s a regular Babylon.  There’s the city folk and a common parking lot and stale air sensation.  Traffic jams and construction.  Offices and appointments.  Man made. Easy for the weak intellectual constructivist opinion. Not out here.  Not in the pristine and myriad creation of primal force and life incarnate.  

I am packing up today and going back to the city.  Another good vacation.  Ostensibly I’m hunting for game but mostly I’m looking for God and myself. The hide and seek of the Hound of Heaven.  Far from the Maddening Crowd, I gather my wits  from the unholy front and pray that I’m done with the carpetbaggers and their long necked women and the boys of the petty bureaucracy, the long finger nail crowd of todays day.  Such effete arrogance and ignorance. We will laugh in the Green Room. Their performances have been Dickensian  

I lost a golden hook fishing with the spin caster yesterday.  I lack patience fishing these days. I used to love and believe in little boats by reeds but here I’ve not had the same success so can’t see the fish under the water and attract them to my bait. I psych myself out.  There are no fish. The hook is wrong. They’ve eaten. It’s the wrong time of day. I’ve an endless run of negativity fishing streams here in BC.  I’ve caught trout but not so many as to have the confidence I had out east with pickerel and pike.  I’m like a hockey team with a losing streak. I need a fish whisperer psychologist to force me to stay through the drought and reap the reward of patience.  Instead I fish till I lose a hook which I may well do on purpose or unconsciously because rather than the tranquility of casting I enjoy the OM hum of the engine and the meditation in motion of the motorcycle.  

I’m motivated by a Macdonald’s breakfast or burger on the road depending on how soon we get away.  Road food.  Gilbert loves the paddy. The cat and he are sleeping with Laura who has gone back to snooze.  

I enjoyed talking to the ranchers on their combination of horses and 4x4’s beginning round up. The dogs were so excited running about the legs of the horses so ready to teach the cows a lesson. I must get back to riding horses. I miss them,  I long to visit the home ranch and see what’s left of the cowboy clan in the north.  My cousins who became loggers and horse wranglers. It’s been 5 or 10 years now since we spoke.  When our mothers and dads were alive we stayed closer.  

My sister in law has come back from Scotland having visited the professors but hadn’t seen Robert who is no longer with the BBC. He was covering wars at one time. I remember nights laughing around campfires talking about tobacco farming. 

I do look forward to the Green Room in heaven.  There are so many I’d like to see again, family and friends and yes, the enemies.  Perhaps not the bores but the bright coloured originals. The pirates and desperate.  But they became bores in time.  The desperation makes them such.  Grasping.  Begging.  I imagine we’ll laugh at their performances , like a high school reunion. I still laugh remembering my pregnant high school sweetheart teasing me and the guy who lived in the high school sports past because his life had become so mundane.  I vaguely remember the ‘great game’ he raved on and on about.  And one day we’ll remember it all in microscopic detail as our lives fly before us in a kaleidoscope of colour.

I like to think of this campsite as Captain Picard Creek.  We’ll go where no man has gone before. Make it so number one.  

Sunday Morning Hunting, Princeton

It’s pouring down something fierce. I just got in from hunting when the drizzle began.  Laura told me she’d read they were having monsoon wind and rain in Vancouver.

The Maverick camper is leaking.  Laura found the pillow and top of the mattress wet when we woke this morning.  My duct tape and gorilla tape patch wasn’t wide enough. I’d planned to fill the hole with silicone putty today but now I can’t with the rain.  When it lets up I’ll do so and reduce the flow of water into the camper.  We worry about mould.  After hunting season I’ll get it in for a proper repair. I don’t know how the front got bashed.  A bird hitting it seems the best explanation. It was old and second hand.

The rain on the roof is really heavy.  It was cold up in the high country on the KTM 690 this morning. Dark clouds.  Sinister.  I was blessed to shoot a rabbit.  It stopped on the side of the road. I was too far away but blasted it with two barrels of 20 gauge 4 shot.  Then I crawled unceremoniously off my too tall motorcycle, my ballet splits getting better by the day.  I missed Gilbert the cockapoo.  I figured the rabbit was wounded and that it had crawled under a wood pile in the ditch.  Gilbert would have found or flushed it. As it was I went over the side and there sitting still a little ways away was the rabbit.  I blasted it, glad to have reloaded the shot gun.  It was smaller like the grouse yesterday was smaller.  The grouse was a good meal.

When I gutted the rabbit I saw that my shot had taken out the centre like a single shot, I was that close. There were pellets in one leg from I figure the first shot. Three legs and 2 shoulders and 2 thighs were in tact still.. . Not bad. I thought. A 22 would have been better but the 20 gauge is best for grouse.  The year I’d shot a lot of rabbits, a couple of years back, I’d made head shots with the Ruger Mini 14 223.  That turned out to be a perfect rifle for the rabbits that sat on the grass roads way up ahead. If I got any closer they’d spook so the 20 gauge and 22 were not nearly as appropriate.

I was up late and only on the back roads at 830.  A downpour had struck at dawn so I went back to sleep.  I was out riding around the back woods for three hours.  It’s incredibly tiring holding oneself upright off road trying not to slip on the wet and bumping along up and down. I almost lost it twice with riding over wet logs.  The  back end of the bike slid out but I recovered.  I was tired and wet and figured I was pretty exhausted so stopped for a Starbucks cold coffee and a can of sardines.  The drizzle had begun and I rode back doing the greasy gravelly downhill in first gear with back and forward breaks at times.  15 km.  My arms are shaking a bit still.  

Yesterday’s barbecue grouse with Canadian back bacon barbecued on aluminum foil and a 6 egg scrambled made on the inside propane stove with barbecued whole wheat buns was delicious.  I gave Gilbert and George tiny pieces of barbecued grouse and they were both in heaven. Gilbert is accommodating well to being blind, a little over zealous in his new job as guard dog but not too disappointed when I go off alone.  He sure lights up when I return and takes an active tail wagging part in my cleaning and cooking game.  He knows he’s still part of the hunt.  He also knows Laura and George couldn’t defend themselves against zombie attacks without him.  

Now I’m loving the heater and Irish Breakfast tea with honey. Life is good.

It’s Sunday and I found myself thinking a lot about God out riding in the beautiful wilderness. God the creator.  Jesus is such a personal and perhaps community God with the churches.   Jesus helped the fishermen with their catch.  He would help hunters and fishermen.  I prayed for his help and safety. Mostly I was thankful I didn’t crash the motorcycle or go over one of the cliffs..  I wasn’t doing anything silly.  Just putting along watching either side of the road for game and keeping down around 15 km/hr though returning I was doing 25 km/hr.  I feel I’m in God’s creation.  Like a dreamer inside a dream.  

The rabbit was surely a gift.

Thank you Lord.  

Saturday Morning, Princeton (camping and hunting)

Laura, Gilbert, George and I are here in the Palomino Maverick camper sitting atop my Ford F350 truck looking out the salon window at an evergreen wonderland by a fast running shallow  creek.  I was here once before and now have brought Laura and Gilbert back with me. George the cat had no vote and no choice and was very much against the whole move till we arrived.  Now with the home stationary, not rocking or bouncing or stopping and starting he’s back to his old authoritative self.  He’s eating Fancy Feast Pate I just put out for him.

Gilbert woke me whining.  He wanted to be next to the love of his life Laura so I got out of bed to pee and lifted him up to greet her with his licking squirmy body.  The sounds of the two of them were rapturous. I thought it rather pleasant as I personally went to the in-house toilet to relieve myself. Feeling rather chipper I actually shaved. Next I put the coffee on. 

Ostensibly I’m deer hunting.  My KTM690 motorcycle  is still on the rack on the front of the truck.  I’d told Laura that we’d just stop here for the night and in the morning go onto a place nearer Grand Forks.  I’d been hearing from others that there were so many deer in the Okanagan.  It’s further to go and tempting. Here there is only grouse and 4 point deer, 6 point elk.  Further east there’s more likelihood of white tail deer. I’ve a bear tag too and they can be anywhere.  I picked up the elk tag at Cabelas in Abbotsford on the way.  

I am lucky to shoot one big game animal a year. I have so few actual days hunting and so far to drive to get out of the increasing press of population in the Frazer Valley.  Buying tags I do contribute to conservation.  

Hunters and Fishers are responsible for funding 90% of the Conservation efforts in the Province. Meanwhile we are demonized by the Liberal government and chronically abused by aetheist urban vegan girls who read Huffington Post and ‘know it all’ after getting a liberal arts degree in Marxist gender studies.  They  write and criticize and march and activist  and everything but put money into the environment.  Their personal money goes to latte’s and sitting around bars drinking white wine complaining about Trump. They’re hypocrites. At night they masturbate to sleep looking at tax payer fund life size cut outs of their teen idol Justin Trudeau.  

I envy them. I truly believe having the brain of a jelly fish and the heart of a lemming living in the Canadian Colonialist cities of Toronto or Montreal, fat off the stolen wealth of Canada West and North and the Maritimes would be sweet. I’d like to wear the latest fashion and have men pay for my meals and just lie back and have sex brought to one on the home delivery take out menu called Tinder.  It’s seems so luxurious like an Empress or Princess, and the best part must be complaining all day about men and Trump and the planet and men and Trump and how long it takes for acrylic nails to dry, and the wait list to see the personal physician at the upscale urban clinic which treats you for acne and STD’s. 

Right now I’m having the espresso coffee I made on the propane camper stove. I’ve not got electricity to the outlets so couldn’t grind my personal Kona roast so have had to use the Maxwell House StarBuck blend I concocted last week when the barrista’s ground the Dark French too fine it plugged my espresso machine.  The country store only had Maxwell House but mixed together they make an okay experience coupled with the 3% milk I have in the propane cooled refrigerator with the clover honey added in great dollops.  The heater just went on and off so it’s really cozy and snug in here.  Laura has woken and been chatting in her sexy sweet girl voice. She sounds just like the girl that match.com used for their late night advertisements telling all the single guys watching war movies that girls were waiting atthe end of the telephone line.  Laura is a clinic receptionist and answers the phone with that sexy voice. I’m sure it helps lessen men and women’s pain immeasurably.  

I am convinced I can see some frost on the stones by the stream.  It’s already chilly out. I could pack up and drive further just to put off the inevitable hauling the motorcycle off the rack, loading it with a strapped on 20 gauge shot gun for grouse and carrying my Winchester 300 win mag on my back. I’ve brought long johns and winter clothing to deal with the wind cold. This time of the year it’s either too cold on the motorcycle or too hot walking.  IF I shoot anything it’s a whole lot of messy cutting and cleaning.  Guts and blood.  Then I don’t really know how I’m going to get whatever I shoot other than grouse back to the camper. The deer are 300 lbs and I expect I’ll have to bring them back in halves or quarters roped on the back of the bike. A bear is dangerous as hell but easier to butcher and usually only a couple of hundred lbs of meat if it’s one of the more common young bear in these parts. A big one could be hundreds of pounds. I leave the bones so it’s just hide and meat which makes for considerably less hauling. The deer one tries to keep in tack to some degree so the meat can be hung by the butcher while the bear can be bagged. 

 I’ve shot close to 50 big game animals over the last 30 years or so, some moose and elk as well.  When I was younger it was normal for me to have bear and moose and venison in the freezer. I used to fish salmon and cod each year too so had a whole lot of prime fish in my diet.  These last few years I’m lucky if I get a deer and shoot some birds.  There was that time when every meal every week was roast or barbecued wild meat or stews.  It’s so incredibly healthy and I loved cooking the game I shot.  Thinking of those winter stews generally gets me motivated.  

I really like things when I’m doing them. It’s getting from sitting on my fat ass on the couch to actually moving that’s the tough part. I loved the drive up here from Vancouver, stopping for a Macdonald’s burger and fries on the way. Chatting with Laura about friends and family and future holidays.  Gilbert was sitting between us and George was bitching in his cat carrier.  George is a neutered male but sometimes I think he reads Miss Chatelaine’s Huffington Post.

We stopped at the O Connor parts store in Chilliwack.  The staff there are the best. They gave me a sealant I needed and had the hanger which will allow me to carry the recliners hanging from the camper ladder.  The rain stopped when we pulled into this camp.  Laura gets really tired on Friday night and perks up over the weekend. I’m happy to drive and now I’m supposed to be hunting at the break of dawn but would rather bitch about how tough this life is, the roughing it, how I have to make my own second cup of coffee and how I’m going to have to be nice if I hope to have sex this weekend.  Laura isn’t a Tinder type girl.  Sex is part of the whole relationship deal.  It’s actually pretty easy to be nice to her.  She’s been coming camping and hunting with me for almost two decades. She laughs now about the tents collapsing under snow and the bears and setting up tents in the rain at night.  Mostly she likes the dog. George is her cat. So it’s a blended family deal and thankfully George and Gilbert are best friends.

As my long married friend says any young guy can get laid once or twice but it takes a real man to have sex with the same woman over many years.  My dad, the engineer, used to talk to me about oil and vehicle maintenance when I was young. I was so stupid I thought the old guy was talking to me about cars.  It was however more a Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance father son talk and it took me years of maturing to understand how smart the old guy was.. He and mom we’re lovers and friends for over 50 years.  They camped and travelled too. I learned to hunt and fish from him like he did from his rancher logger father . 

I could make eggs and bacon and put off the thought of getting dressed and getting out in the woods.  I think another cup of coffee will decide me.