Gratitude Jan.15 , 2020

Thank you God for light.  Thank you God for breath.  Thank you God for warmth. Thank you for morning.  Thank you for the night’s sleep. Thank you for the dreams that touched me with otherworlds and mystery. Thank you for the mind. Thank you for Gilbert in bed beside me. Thank you for indoor plumbing, running water, hot water, flushing toilets.  Thank you for coffee.  Thank you for grinders and electricity and intricate machines that make the morning brew. Thank you for my rugs. Thank you for the heater. Thank you for this clothing. Thank you for my positive memories.  Those things that spark the mind looking forward. I thought of old friends and little children and knew I was blessed. I reviewed my fears and felt that I didn’t want to live in a fortress of walls and moats. I’m so terribly vulnerable and I live in a dystopia but I continue to trust. Each day I go out on the battlefield and bring back the wounded.  I rally the dying.  I’m in this insane world but I’m doing my bit. Each day.  I pay my way. I guess I do thy will.  I’m bitching and complaining and self pitying and moaning and groaning and whining but I get up and help the next person in the line. Two malaria’s and and a cholera.

There are the elite. These men and women so far above the world with guards and limousines and servants and nannies.  I’m wrong to compare myself with them without comparing myself with the cripple.  Acceptance is the answer but I keep slipping. I struggle with my thoughts. I’m beating on your chest God asking for protection and support and guidance. I want to be safe in an unsafe world, rich in a planet of poverty. I want to be joyful in the malaise and depression of existence. Life is suffering unto death.  Desire is the root of all suffering. My back hurts. My shoulder hurts. My knees hurts. I’m always in pain. The plane crash, the car crash. All these attacks on my being. I was doing nothing wrong and paying attention. Shit happens. Ive been living but Ive not been able to evade the arrogant narcissist going through the red light oblivious to others or the troubles he causes. Now years later the trauma greets me.  Ive got to get through the pain. 

The life long desire to be in the south in winter. I want to run from the snow. I’m reminded of the terrrible cold.  Lost in blizzards. Making fires in woods, waiting out the night, blue.  So many negative memories. I can pull them out like a speed dial.  Dial up despair.

Yet here I am with you.  I’ve meditated sitting cross legged on the floor, listening to my breath, distracted by every sound and every undone thing but there I am making a space for you. Listening on the radio pointed to the inside.  God’s within.  I am the bubble make me the sea. I’m talking to the architect not the wall. Be with me today. Guide me.  

I’m supposed to act with dignity today.  Dignity the new standard that has been thrown at us.  The latest demand for perfection by aa group of hookers, thieves and murderers.  They have the guns and the lies and own the courts and rig the election and propagandize to the children.  Fear mongering.

I’m afraid.  Jesus said Do not be afraid.  I’m always afraid. A perpetual coward, faking it till I make it.  I dont’ want to go to Ninevah. I ve been on the icy roads with every poor driver who hit me out of control. The memories of the 360 degree flying through the air , the idiot speeding on black ice losing control in the passing lane and hitting me. I never knew a car could pitch pole and the driver still live. My divorce wasn’t long after. I’d had another near death experience and couldnt believe I was alive.  The car rolling sideways and righting itself. The self centred drunk and stoned in the morning party animals. I couldn’t get to the clinic that day. The police man took me to the emergency and I was so thankful my friend was on. I was desperately falling apart, my back seizing like its done forever. The incompetent young lawyer. The deceitful insurance company.  I was a week in bed.  I bought an encyclopedia britannica and began to read it.  Drinking scotch and popping T3, every move excruciating.

I have never recovered. Flashback pains in cold weather, the icy roads a reminder. The stoned Prime Minister wanting everyone to be stoned along with him so he can make factories and money and have more jets and nannies. I’m trying to stop them drinking. Trying to stop them drugging. Then yesterday I was asked if I wanted to be a euthanasia doctor.  If thinking about suicide isn’t enough. The government wants me to kill. I surrender we say.  Let me be captain of the artillery. I’ve read a book about mortar’s and gain a whole new respect for tubes. Meanwhile low testosterone is at epidemic proportions in Canada and no ones cares. I’m writing viagra prescriptions and talking to women who are blaming themselves for the mans noodle. The men are crying.  I’m sitting with crying me. The transsexuals are no more happy.

I’m talking to friends who stay as far away from sorrow and fear as they can. They live in little gated communities of the mind and heart and think they are Jesus. 

I write gratitude lists. I send people to anger management. I get asked to talk about anger and struggle to forgive. Forgiveness is not for them as much as it is for me. It’s also we’re all connected. I’m angry at my toe for stubbing itself.  I’m so unenlightened. I’m so dark. I’m carrying the light each day, trying to reduce the pain, trying to cut away as little good flesh. Taking out the old and weak.  I miss the easy days of surgery. I miss delivering babies. I miss the days when my skills with my hands were sought out. I did cut downs in hospital, always go the lumbar punctures and inserted needles in to hearts, swan gauzes and chest tubes and pacemakers. It was all glorious. Now I muck in the mediocre.  

The pain is real. It is all in your head.

“You saying its all in my head.” 

‘If I cut off your head you’d feel more pain?”

Why is the brain and mind and soul so little validated but the body is all the rage.  They want money and more money and more money.  Everyone is poor.  Validate the pain. Blame the world for my pain. But accountability brings power. I am my nemesis.  I can change me but not you. The serenity prayer.  

I drove to work 2 hours commuting.  Duty.  Wanting a pay check.  I had such silly expectations of what it would be like to grow old. Retirement. The promise of all those years of sacrifice. Now they circle like mosquitoes outside the screen. The vampires are coming in the chimney.

I’m grateful.  I need only look at a flower and see the wonder.  I have to focus on the positive and let go of the negative. Ive got to walk on the right side of the street and then I won’t be hit by the cars, mostly.

Ive so many blessing. I have these glorious times walking in the forest by the river with my dog who is happy, blind and old and so content not to be alone .Thank you Lord that I’m not alone. Not in solitary. Not locked in quiet room by the instrument of my rape and terror.  Not injected with anti psychotic medications for telling the truth and shouting ‘j’accuse’.  I’m vindicated. The enemy dies.  Arjuna talks with Krishna. The war goes on.

I buy a little statue of St. Michael as I look back my back trail and see the karma of all who hurt me and wonder why I am afraid.  Why must I get wounded for the squad to come up. I’m walking point and always afraid.  But someone else is walking point right now. I’m here in the warmth and have a royally expensive tank of propane to replace this one that got me through the night. It’s so cold outside. I miss Mexico and the beach.  I miss the glory days. I wallow in grief, suck on the tit of despair. I grieve so much but then I look back and today is the glory day.  Today is now. Now is where god is. If I get into the future I get into fear and if I dwell in the past I gather resentments. Expectation is a preformed resentment.  I’m searching for God, playing hide and seek, minute by minute. Here in the mystery in the game. I’m looking for love in all the wrong place and all the right places.  Life is a poem and I’m a poet. Life is a song and I’m the singer. 

Thank you for the laughter. Especially the laughter at myself.  This too will pass. The end is a grave. All else is vanity.  

Thank you God for the coffee.  Thank you for this body.  10 fingers 10 toes.  Help me make the time for seeing friends.  Help me face my fears and go out on the road.  Help me face my fears and get out of bed. Thank you for my waking today. Thank you for the prospect of a hot shower.  Thank you for the coming of the light. Thank you that we know the sun is returning and we dont have to sacrifice any virgins. We dont have many virgins left Lord so thank you for science and the knowledge of astronomy.  

Thank you for all your blessings. Help me to know you more deeply feel you more fully trust you more truly.  Thank you Lord for this life and this day. May I make the best of it, serve you and my fellow man and woman. May I be a better man today than I was yesterday.  Thank you Lord.