Shank’s Mare - I wake in this body with this back story

You woke me God. I dreamed of meeting my friend with a beautiful woman in a red dress at the restaurant on the hill with the many rooms. I’d guessed he was there because he’d left the rifle outside. I picked it up and was carrying it with me when I saw him.  We nodded. I wasn’t hungry and began to walk from room to room. There were many beautiful young girls.  The air was sweet.  I don’t remember the weight of the rifle.  I was only carrying it in my hand.  Normally I use a strap. But the place was such that a rifle had not weight.  It wasn’t unwelcome either.  People were adults. They minded their own business whatever that was. And no one was afraid.  I liked the absence of fear and the sense of you there.  After so many years there really was a sense of good government.

Then I awoke in this body, comfortable in this bed. The cat was near. He’d come to watch me in my sleep, daring to come close on the bed. I didn’t see the dog till I climbed down.  There was a sword and knife beside me.  I could see that the place was purposed for expedition yet I was waking to a day of work.  When I stepped down and stood tall the soreness in my back returned. I could sit and meditate, make coffee, write or walk the dog. The dog was waking enthusiastic so slipping on clothes, I loved the big sweater for the fall morning, and finding his leash and doggie bags, seemed great.  

It was lovely outside, sun rising, fresh morning air, just a touch crisp. I’d turned the heater on inside so it would be warm when I returned there. The cat would thank me. He likes the warm.  The dog was sniffing the world all over again. What had changed? I guess he was asking. 

I was talking to God. I imagine there is a God. Someone who made this all. Someone who gave me this body. I wasn’t thankful for the back pain, the curse of walking upright, but I loved the rest, except for the ponch, I must mention the ponch. Whoever sculpted the body or even the one who misused it before me feeding the poor thing excessively and then not exercising it, should be held accountable. I’ve inherited such work today. It was also he no doubt that did a number on the back.  

These bodies are like rentals.  Each day I wake up and I put one on.  Shank’s Mare.  I really must take better care of it for the next guy.  Back inside I’m looking around at all the clutter and admit I know that there’s lots of cool stuff I like here. It’s like a space ship that’s been rapidly loaded. I remember. Yesterday I transferred all these things, the clothes and tools, to this ship.  She helped me.  She’s not here but there’s a plan we’re going to a play this Friday. Tonight I have to make a stop in Langley to pick up something because of the chaos my friends created as if there’s not enough unnecessary drama in the world.  I regret seeing it that I in my time created my share and now try very hard to go more gently and watch more carefully for the threats and pitfalls.  

There’s a whole program that’s downloaded in the morning. When I reach into the recesses of my mind I find a huge backstory .I’ve only this day. I really do best to focus on this day. This is my part.  

The local boss is a tyrant, smug and arrogant and he doesn’t like psychiatry or sobriety. We see that in the crazy and indulgent.  That’s the simplest explanation.  His anger is palpable.  An egomaniac with  inferiority complex. 

I’m a doctor in this life time. A psychiatrist. A modern witch doctor of sorts but a scientist who works in the multidimensional realm.  If I were a neurologist I’d be more down to earth, judgemental, simple, but I’m a psychiatrist.  Not as flakey as a psychologist or sociologist but further away from a neurosurgeon than a neurologist.  He deals with the brain and I deal with the mind.  The bureaucrats are afraid of both for their constructs are man made and clinical science is about nature and nurture.  It’s more mysterious to be a psychiatrist. The bureaucrats live lives of quiet desperation in denial. 

I wonder at the lifetime I’ve devoted to being a psychiatrist. I put on that cloak today too.  I know they want me to sell drugs.  Medicine has been usurped by government and corporations. What the patient wants is secondary unless they see the physician as a ‘seller’, w’re now all employees and professionalism is eroded to a marketing slogan.  The government are in the industry of abortion and euthanasia. They’ve an actual Agenda 21 which says they want to kill the poor while all the while they live lives of lies and deceit and pander to the rich for the tips. Their wages are paid for by all of us but they want the extras so sell themselves out of greed. The corporations are simply marketing and they want us doctors to do their bidding, selling MRI »s and pills and hospitals and health care promises. In an earlier day the challenge was curing morbidity and mortality. Yes, a great doctor would make one live for ever. Jesus the son of God was the greatest healer. So many forget him and they forget Dr. Carl Jung, Freud, Kernberg, Kohut.  They don’t even know Prochaska.  The great men of my field are like the Einsteins of Physics.  Neurochemistry and neuroplasticity mean a whole lot more than some understand.  

And I’ve awoken into this body with that back story and an unfolding narrative. I’ve this age and this maturity.  But the question I put to God is what I’m supposed to do today. I have an advanced adventure mobile, space ship that could go to Newfoundland or head down to Florida for the winter. I ‘ve a sailboat on the lake of Ontario geared up and ready to take the canals to New York.  I have money, at least enough for a sex change in Thailand.  I could have another adventure, change this body which I was given male to one which is outwardly female or rather is transsexual.  Then again I could meditate more and go within to know God, the creator, but I do prayer and sing praise. I ride that motorcycle outside and each day I live is a challenge.  Yesterday a raving road raging child encouraged me to pay attention to him in his big truck wanting my parking space I was leaving when I was ready, and had I, paid attention to his hostility,  I would have been smacked by another road rageaholic who passed him.I was blessed to be focussed.  

There are people who I meet with.  It’s the routine. It’s the program. G.O.D. Good Orderly Direction.  Even when I sailed solo in winter storms I gave months notice.  What I’m doing is good.  Buddha described my work as ‘good livelihood’. It’s too harried and factory settinged.  The push for product is high.  I feel increasingly that the CEO’s are just the new Sultan or Satanic fat cats.  They’ve usurped the industry, reduced it to mediocrity.  But that was the ideas of ysterday’s guy.  Today’s guy might see think differently. The ‘trick’ as it were is to stay in the sacred. Moving meditation.  I practice walking and mindfulness meditation, feeling the surreality of this world and this person. I identify as a child of God. The one who woke in this world. I am not of this world. I’m a spiritual being having a material existence.  

I hardly paid attention to the coffee I just drank. It was good and I know from the back story that I love the shower experience. Those are things to do before I exit this tiny home and enter the rush hour to the city offices.  I think of my friend Brian, the forester, who instead of running in the city headed out for years of work into the wilderness.  Smart man.  I think his life choice wild whereas mine is rather ant like.  There’s the buzz though, that hive sense in the centre.  It comforts those who lack identity.  I remember I liked being a part of this bigger thing called Vancouver. I truly liked being a part of the thing called Canada until the Quebec mobsters reduced the vision to a third world French colony.  Perhaps Vancouver will survive as we move to city states. But the Democrat and Liberal ones all descend into crime and cronyism like the socialist communist countries overseas Venezuela, USSR, China.Tribalism still prevails and I’m not encouraged to feel proud of my Celtic roots Theere’s this monster propaganda’s machine waging war on history and facts called CBC in this realm. I must remember to speak carefully because so many have been affected by the invasion of the mind snatchers in this realm. They even think their lemming thoughts are their own.  I remember this is the major pitfalls in the game. So many women waiting to be offended and outraged by any who deviate from the prescribed script of what King Lear described to Cornelius as ‘whose in and whose out ».

I’m barely in.  So few are today. Most are out in this Modor realm.

I must keep my wits about me.  There are dragons in the city.  

I feel the familiar desire to run away but I have patients to see who themselves have got out from under their blankets, peeping one eye first and wanting to roll over but also wanting to see me, the doctor, much like an urge to go to the toilet. It’s motivated them to see me and I’m today going to give them hope and advise them and guide them in their journey.  If I was a brain doctor I’d just fix the broken brain but I’m a mindful doctor and must focus on the biological, psychological, sociological and even spiritual. It’s the Glass Bead Game I’m playing.  I’m a very rare.  I’m tremendously experienced and trained with so many degrees, educated beyond my intelligence. And I know there are so many more who benefit from the insaneity I want to ease and eliminate. I am in constant competition with the drug dealers and the overlords.  Mostly my patients are beaten down.  Mostly I see people who really did try to fly but their wings melted near the sun.  I try to protect them from the boots of the social Darwinists.  I try to lift them up. I point out the eagles. I am as much a Florence Nightingale of the mind, çajoling and humouring. Mental health is the ability to love, work and play. I encourage them to do this but so many are in a major pout, wounded, holding their injured souls and I’m trying to get them to let me see the booboo so I can kiss it better but I have a whole lot of yahoo shouting dirty minded little boys and immature girls riding their high chair desks and watching my every move. I blow kisses at the enemy with in . I teach immunology of the soul. I say inane things like you must love the pain. U must used the pain. I’m a psychiatrist. I live in the realm of the unseen and unknown.  It’s all hocus pocus to the ignorant and superior.  They love to cut the gordien knot with their heavy handed swords and say see. The military rule health care these days. It was once so much more maternal and loving but now the judges strut everywhere with religious authority and it’s all about money and what is seen. But it really doesn’t mean anything if it can be paid for.  I felt sad that my millionaire patient died because of his love affair with rum.  All the money in the world could not put Humpty together again. But I’m fighting what is the cancer of the soul.  

This weekend there is a Recovery Conference. I’m going to that in New Westminister after the play at Pacific Theatre on Friday Night.  I know I’ll come out of this like I’ve been in a war with the enemy at the front and the political leaders micromanaging from afar and shooting us who are in no man’s land in the back if we don’t fight forward so they can get their high status and fat pensions.  They’re disgusting but I bring myself down thinking of them.

Why God did you create mosquitoes, cockroaches and other parasites.  This is the game.  Somewhere I am dreaming this reality and I’ve probably even paid to play in this body and life because it was sold to me in another time and space on a planet far away or in a dimension where there is peace and everyone is kind because it’s heaven and the godly reign.  Here I fight the good fight.  If I survive the motorcycle ride in and don’t make myself a patient and have a mangled body to teach me patience I will go on.  I remember the shower is the next step, how I like the warm water. Would it not have been better if I’d programmed a scene in a Polynesian island with the refreshing water cascading over a verdant edge. I am a shampoo commercial actor without this middle age ponch and sore back.  

I want to meet the script writer, the producer and the director. Thank you God.  My sweet lord.  Job and Yahweh.