Dreams in a Pandemic

Covid 19 continues like fires that raged last summer.  Each day there is new news.  Finally borders closing.  Corrupt politicians insider dealing with the information. Lies coming out of Communist China. Fakes news and rotating narratives.  Each day we feel better.  Only a few weeks of this high alert. The wave will hit us and pass in one to two months. Reminds me sailing solo in the middle of the Pacific waiting for the hurricane to hit.

I was booked for the Transgender medical conference.  It was cancelled.  I was booked for Esprit, the annual May transgender conference. I’d  hoped to be going. Lighter hearted. Less afraid. I’d bought a baby blue spring jacket for the occasion.  I wonder when and where I’ll wear it. These times are more pyjamas at home or cammo in the streets days. Not a time for high heels. Big girl panty times. Where’s the fun in that.   

There’s that fear that something will burst. But there have been no riots.  Order prevails.  Our local government with Mr. Horgan and Mr. Dix are doing admirably.  Nationally the government has been as silly and out of step as funny walks of Monty Python but provincially we’ve been saved by reason and maturity. Even the Vancouver City mayor is hearing the concern of the majority of citizens and reassuring us that there will be order.  Our Vancouver Police are the best.

The tension is palpable. The city is a ghost town. All the seasons tickets to theatres and concerts have been cancelled till June. I have front row seats to the Guess Who in July. I’m so glad. I watched and listened yesterday to Burton Cummings doing a real time on line concert from his home.  “I will sing a rhapsody”, he sang. .  How beautiful and uplifting.

I went by the meat store and bought a week or so of protein provisions for my adopted family.  The man is so hard working.  Each day despite the times he goes out to work construction necessary for the city.  So many workers like him now being recognized as the unsung hero’s.  We must have roads. His beautiful wife is home with the children and the new baby. I loved seeing Gilbert’s little friends. It was sad that they couldn’t play. The little girl wanted to hug him and me but we kept our distance.  I drove away thinking that in these tough times one family will have a feast.  So much extra home costs and runs on stores a concern.  I had my own steaks too.  Barbecues will work even after infrastructure lapses. My freezer is on electricity and propane.

Gilbert and I had the best charbroil steak with potatoes and butter and sour cream. I drank tonic with quinine.

More texting.  Calls to patients.  Refilling prescriptions. I’d done the methadone clinic already that morning keeping the essentially medications to my patients most at risk. Helping pharmacist serve this most debilitated population. 

I’d been to the ophthalmologist and obtained my new RX. I was down to my last pair of glasses. Now thanks the One Time Optical folk I’ll have a couple of new pair next week.  Less squinting. I’m thinking of things like this. If the city closes down or disease quarantines us or there’s shortages for months, what essentials do I need.  Glasses.  I was glad to get my laptop to my friends. I’ve a new one and didn’t need the old one. I have a back up ipad and they had one everyone used. Now they are more secure with more entertainment choices for the children.

Having sailed solo on oceans I’m used to survivalist thinking. I have a hand held Hamm radio in storage. A trip to the locker might be an idea.  I’ve hand held radios.  I tell families that you don’t want members going off without a cell phone or a radio.  We need to keep in touch. Survivalist thinking. The real thing, not the often silly tv drama. 

I keep my gas tank in the car filled.  I have the motorcycle. I’m going to check out the bicycle soon.  Grease it up.  It’s good to think ahead. Get essential repairs done while shops are still open. Certainly the local businesses can use the work and all one has to do is maintain social distancing but only for essentials. I told my friend to phone a garage and drop off the car leaving the keys and walk home paying by credit card and picking it up later.

It’s a slower paced world.  I am walking more and its healthier. I may return to a svelte shape rather than the pear I’ve become.

Last night I dreamed wonderful dreams. They were my recurrent place.  I’ve these places that I go to in my dream world .I believe they exist in the afterlife and the parallel world.  This one is the peninsula where my sailboat is. I’m sailing and at a marina. In this dream I’m actually flying in a balloon looking down at the expanses of ocean where great wooly sheep are running in the hundreds on the water or perhaps in shallows. The feelings I’m having are like the ecstasy I felt trade wind sailing all alone in the middle of the South Pacific. Back at the marina the men all have rifles and scopes and groups are going out hunting moose.  There’s so many moose in the hills. I walk by a female and talk to a fellow who respects my age and maturity and says, “It will be my first moose I’ve shot.. Nothing new for you in this.”  I smile.  A bit like my father smiled at me. The young man learning and the old man teaching.  Sharing knowledge.  The great gifts.  Wisdom not things.  I’m comforted in the dream by the families and mutual care. I’m with a woman I think I know , but she comes and goes in my dreams, probably afraid to stay.  I’m a fairly dangerous dude in all ways. I think I’ll shoot a moose in the afternoon. I hear one in my mind talking to me.  He’s told me where he is.  I don’t have to go yet. The young man hopefully will find him but I’ve oiled my gun and put it in the quad by my sailboat. The snow capped mountains are beautiful in the morning sun .

Last week I was given cherry cake in my dream and it tasted like ambrosia in my dream. I can’t remember tasting in my dreams but this was exquisite. I imagine older with death staring at us all , war and rumors of war, the haunting streets, the anxiety and all the heightened awareness which comes with anxiety, I’m escaping in my dreams. I don’t fear death and am wondering if I’m preparing to come back as a woman in a next life. Maybe this is just self soothing. As a man I’ve always been provider protector always caring for everyone. We only played dress up in good times or safe in side. Outside among strangers it was always suited up, even armed. The men’s suit jacket based on the 19th Century British military jacket. Now old I prefer to live in pyjama bottoms. Not the satin of Hefner, more the red tartan flannel of the scot.

I believe early Christians believed in reincarnation. I’m living in a multi verse now.  My mind is not reality.  Reality is this present. The dreams may just be escapism. I’m so exhausted after the days of tension that I love my bed and falling asleep.

Today I’ve woken without cough or sore throat or fever or tight lungs. I love that I don’t have to be with the sick and can go about my day like I normally do on the weekend, avoiding people. During the week I’m too much with people so this is not new.

More cures announced. The science is amazing. The speed of research light years ahead of my youth experiences of previous epidemics. . Advances in technology. So much fun watching Moore’s law real time.  

Good leadership from Mr. Trump. Singapore and Taiwan so brilliant.  I love their hand held temperature scanner. A patient told me they have them in construction work.  Dr. Bonnie  Henry doing really well.  Great BC CDC site.  I think there’s more that Mr. Trump and the western world know about this Communist China created virus.  There’s war within war.  I wouldn’t put it past the communists to try to collapse the economy to get “One World Order’ with the greedy power hungry UN dictators in control.  

I joked yesterday when I heard that China might have the first vaccine.

  “Sorry,” I said.  “They probably made this virus. I woudn trust a vaccine they made. I’ll wait for one MADE IN AMERICA”.  

The truth be told I’d love the one being made in Saskatchewan.  But the Israelis and Aussie New Zealanders have them. In the meantime the treatments just keep rolling out of the research labs. Anti virals and hydroxy chloroquine.