Thursday, July 30, 2020

July 30, Thursday, Gilbert, Covid

I like waking in the early morning.  Gilbert climbed onto the bed his breathing laboured coughing to keep blood flowing through his damaged heart.  He licked my throat. His warm little body nestled against me, chest heaving, rasping coughing breath.  I recoiled from the disease and death. He could be contagion and I’d let him cuddle knowing he is comforted by my presence. Inside I’m praying.  I’d just been dreaming fondly of that other place and time. A slice of heaven. A bit of the CS Lewis many mansions.  Now i was fully awake and thinking it best i get out of bed and let him out.  His breathing and heart work better when he’s had a morning pee.  The furosemide fills his bladder as his thirst increases.  I’m semi naked.  I’m thankful for the tolerance of my neighbours.  Gilbert bounds outside. I love to see the movement. He’s like a puppy at times.  His laboured breathing and coughing has me wondering at times if he will make it through the night.  Then he runs to the bushes to lift his leg and I know he’ll be alright for another day.  

He doesn’t come to the call. I know he’s old and has his own ways.  He’s also become intuitive almost telepathic.  I put on my robe to follow him outside. Sometimes he sneaks over to the neighbours to poop.  But now he’s come back. He’d just walked to the front where a dog friend was passing with the neighbour.  She likes to walk here dog early before the Kamakazi cyclists with their arrogance and righteousness begin to bombardier down the paths terrorizeing the dogs and walkers.  I’m irritated but it’s karma. I was a cyclist and now I drive a Harley.  The path we all walk our dogs needs to be calmed but it’s Covid.  The number of people in the park has multiplied 10 fold. I like to walk Gilbert carrying my camera and watching for birds. My fascination these days, is, little birds.  In earlier incarnations as a photographer i was interested in big birds but now I’m finally interested in little birds. I didn’t know there were so many types.  

It gets one out of oneself.  I remember Scotty telling me to get a wildflower good and learn the names of the flowers around the city.  He said, ‘you think too much’.  That was also a line in Paul Simon song about him going to a psychiatrist who told him that.  It helps to know flowers and birds.  I like that my nephew is knowing stars.  I feel sad at the tv and media trash people know then marvel at the people who love the discovery channel and history channel.  So often they’re not academics but regular tradesmen and workers. Like the mechanics and plumbers who love opera. I admire them.

When i came into the living room this morning after bringing Gilbert back in I marvelled at the softness of the morning light. Turning on a light to make my Ethiopian coffee had been harsh. The soft light reminded me of San Francisco when I lived there and loved.  I so enjoyed the mornings when I’d have a coffee and prepared to study for my American medical exams.  Buffet’s. “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes ‘ comes to mind.  San Francisco is just 1500 km south but just that distance makes the climate gentler.  I’m here in the north on the west coast enjoying the summer.  I miss the time I lived in Mexico.  I fear the winter here.

Covid has me anxious about breathing. I had such a bad winter flu it may have been Covid. I couldn’t breathe  A couple of days of that sudden reminder that life is breath.  Holy Spirit come to me I pray in meditation. I would love to avoid the winter season here with the cold and rain. It’s mild compared to the East. I grew up in Winnipeg and worked in Churchill.  Now I’m weary of the harshness of weather. I even struggle to get excited about coming hunting season.  I like loose clothing and sandals.  I used to love the prospect of tough encounters with nature, struggles with wind and sea and mountains. But my back hurts. I like hot tubs and soft clothing. I imagine how much I’d love to be in Arizona for the winter. I loved the dry heat in Phoenix.  I always feel like leaving Vancouver and the west coast rain forest that mould is dying in my lungs and sinuses when I hit the heat and dry. I love the interior, Clinton,  high range country, the clear air.  

I’m very thankful for my life.  I ve everything I need here.  I would like my dog to be well and my body to be younger and less wracked with pain. We are companions and the suffering isn’t much.  I so enjoy the coffee with honey and milk.  Soon I’ll be loving a hot water shower. Then the dog and i will walk in the woods. He’s blind and likes to sniff things while I look.  Later I’ll work virtual.  He’ll sleep mostly comforted by my presence.  I’ll be surprised that I’m of use.  I’m thankful for the work but it’s so stressful. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.  The days are long and the years of struggle weigh on me at times.  I’m still on the frontlines and carry such resentments to the back benches arrogant and supercilious.  It’s my cross, the fear where love and forgiveness are needed.  I like when my mind reacts to the soft light with memories of other times of pleasantness.  I love when my dreams are peaceful and friendly and not of the nails scraping window panes anxiety that people bring to me and I examine.  Make me a channel of your peace I pray to Jesus.  Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ to the right of me. Christ to the lett of me. Each day i reflect on ST. Thomas too.  The doubting Thomas who walked all the way from Israel to India sharing stories of the Messiah.  

Now I’m ready for the next part of the day.  Thank you Lord for the myriad of blessings.  I’m so thankful。










Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Tues, Covid, Summer, Gilbert

Yesterday was rudely hot. I wilted inside working. Gilbert with his heart disease found breathing toughest.  At the end of the day I hopped on the Harley to get the mail. I picked up a fan for my office.  London Drugs only had USB desk fans.  Canadian Tire had a wall of fans.  I have air conditioning but if I have it on high it flips the breakers.  Low it helps.
I love the heat.  Outside it was glorious to stand soaking in the sun. The problem is working. Sunshine is good for improving the immune response to Covid.  Vitamin D3. Love it. I could lie on my lawn chair all day and looking. I am forward to the weekend to do just that.  I did a little last weekend. With the fan I hope to survive another day of work. I Remember working in the tropics, stifling. All one needed was a breeze. Then it was heaven.
There are moments when I just feel good for no reason. It’s warm. I’ve food and water and shelter. I’ve vehicles. It’s summer in the city. I’ve a long list of positive memories which flow through me. Outside with friends as kids, playing in the sun, baseball, hide and seek, tag. All those good time memories in the sunshine. Later it’s swimming in lakes,then fishing, and later sailing in the tropics.  
Now I’m here in the middle of this glorious season of warmth and cheer. I’m sitting during the day in a rather dark room in front of video screens and talking on cell phones questioning if this is wise.  I work.  I get paid. The evil government takes the money and abuses my trust and faith.  Criminals have coopted Canada. Billions of dollars have gone missing. Terrorists and money laundering are all the rage.  
Meanwhile I’m working.  Quieting the fear.  Each day at least once ,sometimes more, I feel what I’m doing is really important. Mostly I’m keeping the system rolling, greasing the wheels, oiling the cogs. So many bits of paper needed in the paper mill. I have to sign my name to it.  It seems frivolous at times but then there’s that one when it’s critical.
 I go through the motions.  Then a secret is disclosed. The knots unravel, the abscess is broken. The healing comes in.  It’s occasionally a deluge of pus, like yesterday.  I said the right thing. The knife made the cross incision in abscess so long hidden protected. The truth was out. The healing began.  So many years of pain and shame.  I was glad to be there and thought I’d not have said what I said thirty years ago. Yet somehow what I said was necessary. Truth and timing. Itworked perfectly. Mostly it’s baby steps.  Cleaning away debris.  Weeding.  I putter and muddle along , mostly taking for granted what is now second nature.
I remembered when all I wanted was to be a good doctor. I remembered when medicine was my first love. I remembered my youth. I’m often reflecting on that time now when I know and there’s not the daily eureka and the mystery and the uncertainty.  Now I’d like a SPECT scan and Functional MRI.  I’m tired of third world medicine in a first world country seeing all the parasites and lies.  But it has its feeling good days.  I”m an odd bit.  Near the end rather than the beginning of a career. Wondering if this is what I should still be doing.  I dream of driving a camper across the country for three months.  Like the sailing escape. Or the travelling.  What is it I would learn then.  Do I need to go back to university and study something new. I’ve achieved most of my major goals. 
I’m accomplished. Doing what I do now is second nature.  I’m more than good enough. I’m a thousands times better than the bureaucrats by any measure. They don’t even know it.  Their arrogance and ignorance are still mind boggling.  Herding cats. Now I’m just doing as they say.  I’m not going to fight the stupidity any more.  I’m worn out from that.  It’s what sucks my own energy, living in fear of government thugs with suits and fake smiles.  And lies. Low brow barbarians.  I’m tired of the lies and more lies. The threat of communist invasion wears on me. More stupid Herods, Marx and Nero’s.
I have amazing dreams these days.  I dreamed of being at Oxford with a friend from Cambridge and we’d developed a new glue that held universities together. It was just a bit of the roofing we were saving, a place where we’d brought the roof together and the experiment had worked. It remained now to heal all the holes where the rain had gone through.  We were smiling, shaking hands, thankful for our success.  
Gilbert woke me through the night, his heart worsening. He’s resting now. In the heat he had such a hard time yesterday getting his breath. I rubbed his chest asking God as I do to heal him, thy will be done. I don’t know if he would best die faster or revive. There was a time when laying on hands I’d heal. But today I don’t know. Would it be better. What am I to learn from his illness. I held him this morning till he calmed and his breathing restored.  He’s sleeping now. 
I know I’ve been blessed with healing. A Gift. My mother was that way with plants. I’ve almost willed people back to life in youth when I had faith to move mountains. Now I’m struggling with the gargantuan stupidity of politicians and money men and greed.  The bullies are so stifling.  Now it’s the communists.  Always the shallow and superficial , hardened criminals , the image ever of the Buddhists in prayer and the Communist Chinese killing them en mass with their machine guns. 
 The Quakers and Mennonites with their pacifiscism escaped to Canada. Kindly musical intelligent people. I loved their outlook on life. Acceptance.  Now I don’t know. I don’t know where to escape. I do the next right thing. I don’t drink. I don’t drug. I don’t take many unnecessary risks. Riding a motorcycle is insane but eating can cause death. My friend looks at the shelf dates. 
I see everything as rituals and what we do to meet the fear.  Existential fear.  Fear of not breathing. Fear of death.  Denial and humor.  I call on God always, everywhere. I pray. I ask for protection. I asked that God help Gilbert. I know he healed the fear but I don’t know that Gilbert will live much longer.  Thy will, not my will, be done.
Covid continues.  More and more people are taking it in stride. At the Post Office I remember the early days, the fear, the empty mall.  Now there are masked folk going about their day. On Facebook there’s anger and fear.  I see the Communist Chinese hand in the BLM.  It was the same in the 60’s and 70’s. Putin talked of his work in the peace movement , encouraging it for the sake of USSR war machine. George Soros is a traitor, destroyer.  Trudeau’s friend. You know a man by his associates. He was on Epstein’s island with Clinton.
It’s all about my pay grade. Freedom.  I am blessed with relative freedom.  I’ve had a wonderful life but asked about relationships on the weekend thought first about God. We play hide and seek always. At least I do.  I see God in the eyes of family and friends.  Now God is in my dog . I’m asking about Jesus and Lazarus. But  he’s an old dog. I’m an old dog.
 Life is very good but death holds no fear. I believe so much in the other side that I believe I’m there in my dreams. I see this other world so clearly, my boat, my mother, the sea and peninsula, the friends. It’s Greek like, Mediterranean.  I loved Robin Williams in what dreams may come.. My idea of heaven.  
There is no hell except for those who don’t want heaven.  The law of attraction.  The godless who know only lust and believe it love. 
Now I’m waiting. I really do feel I’m sort of on the bench. There’s probably another 30 good years to go for me. Maybe one or two for Gilbert.  We’re in this together.  Covid. It’s got a year maybe. But the war with China, that’s something different. I don’t want communism.  The bureaucrats I’ve know with their petty vendettas and stupidity have been a view of such a world where the loyal swagger and greed is all that matters. I remember the utter wastes of time and resources and humans I experienced working in government services.   The lowest common denominator.  
Now I don’t know.  I really don’t know. I just live day to day in this sitting in the box watching the game waiting to be called in for a part. I have these moments when I’m on the ice then I’m not.  I’m certainly no star. Just a player in a game. The Kazoo in the symphony of life. But it’s good.
I’d like to be on a beach today. I’d like to be swimming. But as I’ve done for 50 years I’ll go to work and do my part and feel self pity about all the slackards starting with our PM.
Oh well, one day I’ll ask St. Peter what that was all about. Then I’ll know the answer. I’d like that.  Heaven is a place where I learn the answers to all the questions I’ve had that I never knew the answer to.  In the meantime I’ll hoe a new roe, chop wood and carry water and be of service.  I hope. I pray.







Friday, July 24, 2020

Covid, Cabin Fever, Protests and Riots

The news is all about ‘protest’s’ in the US.  I was in the peace movement with long hair and sandals. I had love painted on my forehead with lipstick. I miss that time. A lot of weed ,Patch and incense, you could get high from the second hand smoke if someone wasn’t already passing you a joint.  I was with the sexiest funniest woman in the world at the time. The phenomes were thick too. All that youth.  We were young. Artists. Dancers. Athletic. World class cyclists.
 John Lennon’s « Give Peace a Chance’ and the Bed In  Love In really said it. That was a protest. Great performance art.  We were against all war.  I learned Buffy St. Martie’s Universal Soldier and sang it in coffeehouses, playing, guitar poorly.  People actually asked me to sing and play, Draft dodger’s Rag, a great song by Phil Ochs, I’d learned from Jon Cowtan.   Still a funny song.  I was an intellectual but I wasn’t serious.  We were at the Strawberry Mountain Peace and Love festival. In San Francisco we shut down the city, so many of us.  It was psychedelic.  The White Room by the Cream instantly takes me back there. More so than the Grateful Dead who were playing then. It’s a bit of blur with flashes of smiles, laughter, naked bits of beautiful bodies, the Golden Gate Bridge  and bits Gracie Slick blasting out across the city. across the city. 
No one was throwing rocks. No one was attacking police. No one was carrying guns or shooting weapons at the authorities.  It wasn’t a riot. It was a protest.  
Kids these days don’t know the difference between a protest and a riot.  None of us were getting paid. All of us were living off our parents or summer jobs, casual work that paid for the rent.  There wasn’t any coke or fentanyl.  People drank beer and wine.  Some of the old geysers in their 30’s were chugging back whiskey but they were just there for the young girls. Mostly everyone was too wasted to be smashing federal buildings.  All that lovemaking, smoking and hiking didn’t make for playing baby military types in black suits and throwing Molotov cocktails.  Paisley and bright flower Hawaiian shirts were more the motif. Lots of dancing. I remember a group of us dancing  one evening in candlelight like a Winter Palace Matisse painting. It was a time of encountering zen and learning about mystical Christians like St. Theresa of Avila.  Gandhi was our hero and Martin Luther King. Non violent resistance was a protest.  We were protesters.  
Years later , long after I’d been billy clubbed and hand cuffed for ‘giving lip’ to the authorities, long after I was expelled from high school for saying fuck, the mayor would march beside me along with some MP’s in the last of the peace marches I joined in.  That was way before the Pride Parade and way before I dressed in drag and made a pilgrimage to Stonewall in New York. I was respectable , a bit peculiar, but respectable.  Like protests.  Protests were respectable. 
My parents raised me that if you broke something you had to pay for it. My parents raised me to respect the work of another man. My parents raised me to know that a man and a woman in uniform were just doing their job and that I shouldn’t make it more difficult for them than necessary.  Dad had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII and respected the men who served. He didn’t even hold a grudge against the Germans and Japanese soldiers who served against him. It was the politicians and leaders he had concerns about.  He didn’t feel they cared much for the middle classes and lower classes. I learned young that politics is about choosing the least bad alternative.  I learned also that democracy could be bad but it was never as bad as dictatorships, especially religious and communist dictatorships.  Like Phil Ochs said, « we hate Chow en Lai and I hope he dies , but there’s one things you’ve see, someone’s got to go over there but that someone sure ain’t me. ». We were humble kids compared to the narcissists today. I’m not saying we weren’t arrogant like them but we were just saying ‘Give Peace a Chance’.  There was no civil war.  Hanoi Jane was a traitor. We cared for the American POW’s up to their neck in farces tipped pogo sticks.  We didn’t like celebrities fucking the enemy.   We even knew communists lied.  They tried to continue the war in Europe after Berlin was taken.  They would always claim to be the victims ,but they built walls to keep their citizens in.  The Berlin airlift was a thing of beauty.  Non aggressive.  I grew up seeing that on tv documentaries.   Brilliant flying,   Not long after, we watched Armstrong stepping down on the moon. 
I remember it was another  miracle when the Berlin Wall came down.  All those people freed from communism.  All the folks Solzhenitzen wrote about  getting out of the Siberian Gulags. Now there’s  millions in the Communist Chinese Gulags today and  hundreds of thousands in religious Islamic Iranian prisons. 
Today I listen to the news and hear liars calling riots and looting,  protests.  I can’t wrap my head around it. A lot of people in the north go crazy with a thing we call ‘cabin fever’.  The lockdown really must have done a number on people, especially the media.  They sound so turned around they don’t know right from wrong like the Prime Minister of Canada. CSIS, the national security service, says the Communist Chinese party has infiltrated the Canadian education system, media and politics to the highest level.
I’m too old for this shit.  I like staying in.  I’m as afraid of ignorant people and the lawless as I am of Covid 19.  I don’t understand why paying more than half my income in taxes I can’t feel safe walking in the streets at night.  The elite then and now had walls around their own homes.  Now they have bodyguards and private armies and don’t want citizens to have rabbit guns.  Everyone had guns when I was growing up, before Trudeau’s father..  Then we left the doors unlocked.  I asked the police I know why the mobs keep destroying property, interrupting traffic and communications ,more and more, without anyone  suffering consequences.  What happened to law and order and peace.   They told me the  politicians won’t let them stop the riots.  
I’d like to defund the politicians.    



Saturday, July 18, 2020

Covid 19, Communist China, Beaver Penis Bones, and the World at War

The Communist Chinese Party unleashed a gain of function chimera bat virus and the official ‘over reaction’ makes sense. NIH with Dr. Fauci had given the Wuhan lab 3.9 million dollars and it seems just about everyone knew that the Chinese were doing biological. experiments illegal in the rest of the world.  They had already transplanted a monkey brain into a politicians head and no one was the wiser in Canada.

It was believed the Wuhan chimera was part of the search for a vaccine . Bill Gates said for a billion dollar investment in vaccines he could get 400 billion return. The Communist Chinese wanted to rule the world.  Communism ideologically is perpetual war till Communists win.  It’s like Islam, the religion of peace, which says Peace will come when everyone is Muslim. Of course that means perpetual war because despite Holy Jihadist, moderates don’t want to be ruled by petty religious dictators or grandiose party bureaucrats.. No one ever likes perverted paranoid Communist aetheists with 24 hour surveillance and guns to their their heads.  Despite the beliefs of thoroughly propagandized western youth the Staci were a very unpopular metal group.

The Hong Kong Freedom movement had a million people on the streets.  The pandemic allowed the perfect opportunity to lockdown everyone and ‘disappear’ the Freedom leaders.  The Communist Chinese Party already had massacred the ‘radicals’ after Tieneman Square.  They had plans to invade Taiwan too, their navy preparing exercises weigh their new air craft carriers. Their  military even invaded India with 10 thousand horny Chinese troops killing 20 or so attractive Indian men, the Bollywood heart throbs of the few remaining Chinese women.  They killed the whisteblowing doctors having learned from Benghazi Hillary all the tricks that culminated in her coup d’atat, the famous Epstein suicide. Unfortunately everyone around Epstein was coming forth as a mounting Hollywood New York Chorus of ‘ ‘j’accuse.’  Even fascist Soros couldn’t fund Marxist BLM and black shirt Antifida fast enough to maintain the distraction from saving the sex trafficked children.

The Freedom movement of Hong Kong persists.  Taiwan and the US have prepared for invasion. Japan has weaponed up ready for the Chinese, their ancient enemy.  Australia has continued to provide reasonable caution about China. The Communists now control the pharmaceutical and electronic production of the west, steal the technology and secrets, while  refusing to keep any trade agreements.  Nothing is new. Communists have always been godless barbarians who can only wear culture and education. They are shallow and live for money.  Marx, the great kafetch of history, demanded everyone give him money.  His idea of work was paranoid fantasy fiction which sold remarkably well. Imagine how much richer Steven King would have written if he’d lived in the time of Marx. 

 Peng Liyuan, Eva Brown reincarnate, is the current black hearted soulless ugly beast of a wife of the monster Hitler reincarnate ,Xi Linping, the low life mobster boss of the Communist Chinese Party. His first wife ,Ke Lingling ,cuckolded Xi Linping for Britain which Linping has never forgiven vowing to destroy the west and all it’s hot blooded glamorous attraction.  If Xi Linping was heartless before his first wife left him for the superiority of capitalism, it’s meritocracy, celebration of history, tradition, and  male firefighter calendars, he now had a huge hole where his heart could have been. 

Xi Lingping’s cruel jealous conniving present petty peasant wife ,Peng Liyuan ,seeks to hold him with perversities.  They keep millions of Uigrs in gulags and dungeons,for body parts and human experiments, forcing them to eat pork and entertain the elite  Communist Chinese sexually, just as the Ghengis Khan, and ancient chinese emperors before them has. Xi Ling’s wife with all the rhinoceros bone and elephant tusks protected by hot black female conservation officers of Africa, and viagra and coal is no longer working for her limp dicked husband, remains in constant terror that Xi Lingping will reject her for the children girls she procures for him. When Sophie Trudeau visitted,  she told her about the magic mystical power of Canadian beaver bone aphrodisiac.  That’s all that to date has kept her husband Trudeau from his penchant for pedophilia.  China Canada relationship has soured considerably since Canadian and Chinese customs in an hilarious sting operation worthy of Jackie Chan and orchestrated by Erin O’Toole, stopped 50 tons of beaver penis bones being shipped to Peng Liyuan in Beijing.

I dreamed I was at a medical conference in Rio de Janeira,beneath the great statue of Jesus. I was dressed in a shimmering long ball gown of silver and blue lent to me by the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh.  President Trump, wearing his commander and chief well tailored light grey suit,   passed me  smiling, that warm and welcoming smile ,that grandfathers give.  It was clear he was happy to see a Christian friend and amused   at my formal attire.  Eddie Izzard was there and even Rupaul.  We all , only  had eyes for Melania, envious of her poise, genius and designers.  Mr Trumps daughter  sat with him. He was instantly the proud father of a gorgeous brilliant daughter. I just happened to notice she was dressed in a long white sleeve that particularly captured her form as she leaned cross her happy husband to talk to Kayleigh, Kelly-Anne and Sarah.  

A young Indian man stood next to me dressed in a wool tie , houndstooth jacket and jeans. He distracted me talking with great animation about his medical residency. I looked at him and remembered how I dressed once as he did.  The sports jacket originally the war jacket of empire, with pockets and tough material though hot in the tropic.  Some young ladies, all friends of Laura, appeared,only interested in the young man.  They did though offer to help me with my Janet Jackson wardrobe fail.  I stood bare chested in the vestibule as a veritable vixen fixed the pin on the neck of my gown. Keanu Reeves  walked by, as if straight from a dojo, dressed in  white cotton shirt and slacks, vaguely reminiscent of  Hugh Hefner public pyjama look I so envied .    I thought I must get such an outfit.  Perhaps it would be more comfortable.      Costuming was such a challenge for going out since Lochdown working from home I lived now on my couch in  canvas shorts and stained sailing tshirts. Justin Trudeau, looking like an Ichabod monkey,  stood by naked save for diapers and gaudy socks.

A brilliant panel of scientists assembled to discuss the cure for viral Disease  and cancer with extraordinary antibody work which came as a collaboration of Israeli, American, British, South Korean and UBC research.  I’d thought to stay but I’d just acquired the latest rocket powered  Harley Davidson motorcycle hover craft and decided instead to go for a spin. It was such a lovely sunny day.

I woke to Gilbert coughing like a twin cylinder motor in my face.  Now I’m up drinking coffee. Laura has showered and today’s task is to move my old desk to the garage. I’ve been working for months on folding tables .  I’ve no room for monitors, computer, printers and notebooks.  I’m adjusting to the new normal.  They say that I will remain in virtual this year as they figure a way to get my pod to Mars. 














Friday, July 17, 2020

Covid and Canadian Communism

Communist China released the chimera virus from the Wuhan lab, killed the whistle blowing doctors then disappeared Hong Kong freedom demonstrators, while Canada continued to give Xi Linping millions of ‘aid’ and set up Chinese Huawei 5 g systems throughout the country.  5 eyes alliance considers Justin Trudeau a security risk. He wont travel to the states.  He hardly leaves his mother’s basement.  His eyes look like saucers,.

I’m still afraid. I’m listening to people struggling daily now and it’s systemic corruption.  The level of distraction increases.  I find myself at times unable to shake the sadness.  All day I hear of the business losses, the unemployment, the fear of the future, the threat of war. The incompetence of leadership at the federal level, and all the paid riots and civil war against America remind me of the history I read of pre WWI, the pro Hitler forces WWII and the Maoist Revolution.  It’s same story different names, 

 ‘I will not fear financial insecurity.’  Yet the future at times looks bleak.  Jesus commanded ‘Be not Afraid’. So ‘worrying is wicked!”  I remember in a particularly bad blow off the north of Vancouver Island, high seas and wind, night falling and the sailboat taking on water.  My older Christian sailing friend was at the helm.  I was bailing in the cockpit below him. We’d been discussing the Bible the night before.  “Are we wicked yet,” he asked with a pirates gleam.  We were definitely wicked

I’m feeling wicked these days despite all my training and experience. 

I think I’d like a sex change. I’m weary of warrior William and defending women and children.  I’m tired of seeing all the deaths by abortion and the knowing the wealth of abortionists. Bad women have lied and Miley Cyrus rides her ‘wrecking ball’ . Eva Brawn rises from the dead.  At least Stalin’s wife killed herself.  Mao’s Jiang Quing was the ugliest dirtiest stupidest woman of history.  Now Peng Liyuan is the most disgusting disease of a woman the world has ever known.  She smiles as she celebrates her husbands murdering innocents, spreading the stink and contagion of her filth all over the world.  

Peng Liyuan is Eva Brawn.  Worse.

I don’t like Sophie Trudeau but she’s not the evil that Peng Liyuan is. Sophie is just a shallow disgusting trashy bit of self centred fluff who married a stupid stoner without principles, heart or brains. A tool. Sophie’s like Margaret, his mother who oozes entitlement now. 

The Charbonneau Enquiry confirmed that Quebec and Montreal and McGill University are ruled by mafia and biker gangs.  SNC Lavalin is now linked to the Picton Farms cannibalism and the child sex trafficking of Libya.  The head of CSIS says that the Communist Military has infiltrated Canadian education, media and government to the highest level. I talk to immigrants who have escaped ruthless totalitarian regimes like Canada is fast becoming.  They say they don’t know where to go now.  “I never thought it would happen so quickly here.” The Venezuelean grandmother weeps, telling her sons the horrors they have escaped. I remember all the refugees I saw telling of rape, theft and murder.  The Iranian girls raped by the Moslem religious police. The Vietnamese women stripped of all their wealth and raped in trains, the only thing remaining, a diamond drilled into a molar.  Freedom’s ‘just another word for nothing left to lose’.  It’s the lull before the storm.  

I read about a mother Kingfisher defending her eggs from a snake and began to cry.  I remember my mother at times like this.  I miss the strength of women of her era like Mrs. Churchill.  

My Aunt Sally was a soft, brilliant, stylish, tough executive assistant. She flew all over the world. She especially loved attending Baptist Conventions.  She was executive assistant to  the Canadian Ambassador in Washington during the war. I loved to listen to her stories.,  She was my favourite Christian. She and her gorgeous  girlfriend, Babe, the Executive Assistant to the Head of Esso.  When I visited Toronto and stayed with them as an older boy, they always made me laugh.  The two of them were so eye catching, glamorous  and confident. They reminded me always of that picture of Marilyn Munro and Rita Hayworth.  

Mom was the beautiful solid family woman. Her older sister was the wild single divorcee, I remember in the highest heels and the deepest red lipstick. They were two sides of Christian women.  Dad even suggested once that she and Babe were lovers.  He didn’t think she liked men much.  Dad liked the husband she divorced.  He was a good sort, “Your aunt didn’t want to be married to a man,” he said. “She was more interested in the Mrs. than the man.”  He didn’t say it unkindly, They were best of friends and he loved when she visited Mom because she was happiest when family was all together.    My aunt divorced and never married.  She had a rich network of beautiful single or divorced Christian women friends,  with Babe as her constant companion. Maybe they were just celibate. I’ll never know.  She lived in a building with gay men friends so over the years I’ve wondered. I realize that the gay people I knew growing up were always around 1-2 % of the society is a significant number.  Looking back I remember the coach, the gym teacher, the women neighbour. There wasn’t discrimination. When the adults spoke of them it wasn’t with disdain but rather like saying, “they’re Ukranian’.  

It’s funny now that I contemplate a sex change seeing nothing in the future for old single Christian men.  It’s not surgery I think of but  more like switching teams. Heterosexual has become as dirty a word as Christian.  Social communism calls anyone successful ‘oppressive’.  The greatest oppressor of Hocky was Goretsky, the dirty disgusting white privilege symbols, whose legs and hands would be cut off today’s to allow Antifida, Gender Students and BLM get ahead.  Intersectionalism and the liberalism of Justin Trudeau. Good old Biological Darwinism.  They won’t be satisfied till all Conservative men and women are castrated so maybe I should do it myself.  No one admits that one of the attracctivions of transsexualism is ‘identification with the aggressor’.  Stockholm syndrome and the gender wars.  

I find myself reflecting on those outsiders I knew growing up.  The lesbian couple who lived down the street. The gay men I knew in the dance world. I’d been the golden boy and like my friend passed all the male tests of masculinity.  I wasn’t able to protect my own child from abortion.   I was ridiculed for even caring and condemned for trying,. I envy the joy I know my friends who are grandfather’s feel today.  That’s the greatest accomplishment for men.  Like the mothers and grandmother’s who tell me their greatest accomplishment and love despite their awards and diplomas are their children and grand children. Family. Communism does everything to stamp out family, It’s the principle threat to the aetheist God of State. 

 I  know that the suit jacket and jeans I wear are based on the British uniform and the country work clothes. I’m weary of being a target.  All that fighting the good fright for others has worn me down.   I feel free in silk and have a sense of the lightness of being in a skirt or dress.  I like sandals and summer clothes rather than the heavy winter wear. I miss the tropics sailing in only shorts or shirtlesss in a sarong.  There seems no merit in the role of older childless single Christian man.  I’ve done my time as a monk. I discussed joining a monastery again but really don’t want to be a celebrate and love my own barbecue. 

 I’ve lived the life of a boyfriend.  It’s a good service position.  I’ve been a husband to angry entitled wives. Marriages begin well and years of bliss one day change and the criticism began.  I really believe I’ve known 20 years of great marriage all together but the three years of divorce, the smug judges and the years of rebuilding, I can’t do another Canadian marriage.  I think it’s my job. They could wear one mood and one face in the home and smiled so sweetly outside, switching on and off.  I just never felt I left the office.  I lasted years in the asylum when they’d refuse to get help and their sicknesses got worse. They found someone or some group that blamed me. The courts always blamed the man. I was always the wife as well as the principle provider working several jobs and in the end taking care of the sick one, trying to cover for her addictions,   I’ve been a wife for decades to professionals and never was ‘good enough’. There was constant criticism in the end.    I remember she wanted a bigger house.  We’d just bought her a house. But they bought a bigger house and now our house didn’t survive to have two cats in the yard.  I served,  did my time and frankly, in the end, it seemed best not to disagree.  The consequences were unforgiving.  90% good times in marriage but the 10% bad was not worth it in the end.  Three strikes you’re out.  I married in the end for children only to find they didn’t want children too. It’s not like I didn’t say this either. “I thought you’d change your mind. I never wanted to have children.” said the princess. 

I hear the song in my head ‘girl’s just want to have fun’ and think yes, that’s what I want.  I wonder  to if I’m missing that summer of 69.  I sometimes reflect back on the hedonism and frivolity and community of silly love and peace when I was naive and really did sing Kumbaya.  I smoked dope with the most beautiful girl in the world and we had such fun till the summer of years ended and we both went our separate ways.  I was always searching for God in all the wrong places. 

Divorces were the nails in the coffin. More so was the call to serve.  A clear message in a chapel and the certainty that I was doing God’s will in my work and service. My ex wife hated that I worked in the north with the natives. They admired the suburban doctors and the high rise suited clinicians who acted like lawyers and accountants and never wore the white lab coat outside the office. They hated the calls I took at home and established their practice in university protected by the institution and safe in the centre of the herd surrounded by men and women who protected this main military unit. I was out beyond the wire, in the wilderness, too many nights alone, afraid, always afraid. A scout. At best militia.  I volunteered.  They were smarter and didn’t.

I thought I could treat her addiction getting her away from her home. I thought I could lift her out of the misery of her past. I thought that we could be free to serve as doctors and all that sordid family addiction, their heroin and alcoholism and the suicides and death of their families would be behind us.  But it wouldn’t work. She came back to that and the lies and the all night long abuse. I loved that scene in the movie where the guy had to work the next day and the wife was keeping him up all night on coke.  

I sometimes reflect back on the betrayals and communists destruction of family, Marx and Engles insisting that the State must rule. I remember asking for help.  It’s all so long ago.  The betrayals and the lies and the psychopaths and sociopaths and gratitude. I survived.  I carried on. I was blessed to have men and women who were older and wiser and more experienced to talk to. My brother and family were there for me too. No one blamed her.  Men mostly blame men. Women blame men too. 

I prayed and meditated and paid off the debts she’d created and again built a life afraid of the violence of women, their lies and the mob and their protection in the courts.  I was wrong too,  but found my self saying,  like Lear, “I’m more sinned against than sinning,” Then I met my friends, a band of brothers, all who had scars from divorces and sisters and the evil tyranny of beurocrats and corrupt government and the lie of booze.  They’d known drunken judges and evil dictators. We’d all let our guards down. We had all been fools.  We laughed.  God how we laughed.  All of us falsely accused.  One with a dozen scars from knife attacks and broken bottles across his head and the woman was the ‘victim’. She said she was ‘oppressed’ , took his house and money and his reputation. I was cuckolded but he was utterly smeared by her lies.  We met women who like us had been deceived. They didn’t think it was gender. This new adult class of women, not the girls of feminism, the real women, the ones who looked at good and evil and felt they’d failed as well.  We were sinners and the groups now had neon signs saying ‘thou shalt not judge’. 

Jung described Animus and Anima.  There was further the good feminine and the bad feminine, the good male and the bad male of myth.  It’s a thin line and years of studying philosophy and theology I learned that attachment and love were together , like courage and fear.  We are all Adam and Eve.  The stories are of ourselves.  In this moment I’m alone and all the stories are mirrors of myself. I am the married and the divorced. I’m dancer and the dance to quote Campbell.  Emerson summed it up with his poem, the red slayer. ‘If the red slayer thinks he slays, or the slain thinks he’s slain, they know not well the ways I keep and turn and toss again.”  If she’d wanted to kill me I’d be dead,  We loved, not the thin love of Canada but the love of ancient passion.  

My memory of her hurting me is balanced by my forgetting her being hurt by me. She was physical. I was emotional.  The joke about Sado Masochism goes, What does the masochist say, “beat me, beat me’....what does the sadist say, “no’.

It’s all coupled and only the stupidity and ignorance of the courts which are only interested in money could reduce the spiritual and love to the merger and sordid. The Canadian Courts are Marxist too, shallow, new and without depth. The greatest couple studied by science, asked if they thought of divorce, answered,  “divorce never, murder yes.”  Communism is devoid of passion. It’s just one dimensional. Everything is power. Lizard brain entertainment.   Commitments don’t exist in communist countries. There’s only single people there. 

For depth you must have family.  Discussing the religion of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Jain told Laura and I  that the Hindu Buddha has his eyes open and the Buddhist Buddha had his eyes closed. One is the religion of the family and the other of the individual and monk. I studied with Christian monks and loved the Greek Orthodox man who gave me a cup of tea and a cookie while I sat with him in my heels and grey skirt, white blouse and grey jacket.  At that moment we were disciples beyond gender.  I felt like Jesus and that he was Mary. Martha had made the biscuits.

Inside of us are all the stories of our being, the play of our family and marriages and families and friends and work relations.  My native minister friend loves to close her prayers with ‘all my relations’ and laughs at the tales of the ‘two spirits’.  I think of Bukaroo Bonzai and Raiders from the 8th dimension, the catholic trapped by his past in the wall and lost with the aliens.  Transformations and transitions and the comfort of being inside. 

I’ve been blessed as a healer. I’ve felt like the Channel of St. Francis.  I’ve hidden the stigmata of my hands and feet and been afraid to be exposed.  As long as people focus on ny saying ‘fuck’ I feel I’m safe but not so much now.  Communists are too closed and sick to ‘fuck off’.  They mowed the Tibetan monks down with machine guns.  The Dalai Lama was the child they sought to kill but he escaped to India just as Herod had wanted to kill Jesus but he escaped to Egypt.

Now the abortionists don’t take chances. They kill all the babies before they’re born. The satanist who love sex with children and eat human flesh can’t afford to have a messiah born again or the return of the Messiah.  The mark of the beast is on them. Revelations is showing in the stories of the land.  I prefer the image of the Borg.  I see the left wing Liberals demanding we all assimilate. That’s the lie of communist speak, 1984, the hypocrisy.  Animal Farm. Goebbels said just tell a bigger lie.  Walls are no good say all the corrupt with their own walls. Guns are no good say all the corrupt with their own guns. The young like the words. Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto read pretty but adult life is messy and behaviour tells. I’m becoming Klinger in the story of MASH.  I’m not a woman. I’m a man. But I don’t want to wear uniforms anymore.  I don’t want to wear sensible shoes.  I’m too old for heels too.

The world is sad and afraid. I’m sad and afraid. ‘Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.’ Samuel Johnson paraphrased by Dylan. ‘What’s a good girl like you doing in a place like this.”   Communists have always killed half their countries and taken the best. Kill the rich and give to the poor is their slogan.  Kill the rich, ‘ they say, then they give to themselves’ In my mind I’m poor knowing the wealth of the wealth. “Feel the Bern” Bernie said with his many mansion

 Xi Linping has his many duchaus and private armies.  I’m rich though, compared to the homeless addict so he’s told that I’m the problem. Communism destroys the middle class. Marx was a black and white thinker.  He never understood history..  He had no depth.  A Kafetch,.  The moderates like the Mensheviks and parliamentarians died before the Molotov Cocktails and guns of he Bolsheviks.  Lenin, Stalin, Molotov and Trotsky made short thrift of them just like the Communist Chinese genocided Tibet and now are murdering the geniuses of Hong Kong.   He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it.

I mostly feel like a voice over on a comic strip. I struggle with the physics of time and free will and determinism.  The Big Bang theory and God.  It’s easier to follow the programming. Don’t deviate. Internalize the terror.  I think of Walden Pond and Thoreau and civil disobedience.  These thugs and killers soil the name of Martin Luther and Mandela.

I’m a coward.  Courage is overcoming fear. I did that as a man and fought all the good fights and never backed down. I fought for the safety of my patients. I fought for my friends. It began in school fighting bullies and protecting nerds and girls.  I’ve been shot at too many times and stabbed and faced too many gangs as an adult. I found walking in high heels on Davie  street,  being targeted by a car load of thugs,   I gained  new admiration for women in their vulnerability. The brown thugs brutalized a smaller gay man that night He was in the news. My friend Laura is tiny by comparison.  She’s shown such courage in her life.   I loved the courage and valour of the pregnant girls, I new,  especially in all the  deliveries, I did.  

I loved my father. He was the greatest man I knew. I miss him but I’ve found myself missing my mother and how she held me as a child.  The safety that was there. 

Feminism never celebrated women. It celebrated girls who acted like men.  I was a women’s liberationist and still am. I believe in meritocracy and love that my friend did plastic surgery better than I did. We put it down to her tiny hands and love of delicacy. I liked the heavy handed surgery and planned to do general surgery or orthopaedics.  She sewed. I chopped wood. We were friends. There never was competition. Yet all my life I’ve suffered from lesser women who wanted to compete with me. My equals and superiors never bother. I compete against myself as do they.  We stopped competing with others back in our teens. Adults compete with themselves.  

There is no benefit for a man in competition with a woman ,but there is no loss for a woman who loses a fight with a man.  It’s all in the light weight and heavy weight and professional boxing.  Now I’ve a BA student who wants to tell me, a doctor-doctor-doctor , what to do. It’s the same thing.  Communism.  Marx loved that he ‘turned Hegel on his head. ‘  The politics of the fringe. The night of the long knives the brown shirts raided the sex institute and destroyed all the files. Antifida and BLM are the Brown Shirts today.The Leader of BLM was a sex trafficker and a Marxist.  Same playbook ,  different day. 

A black woman dressed me in high wedgies and a short skirt, Jamaican colours, yellows, reds and blacks. I wanted to make a pilgrimage to Stonewall.  The girls in pink beat the boys in blue.  The photographer owner of Faces of New York followed me for blocks begging me to let him take my picture for his book. I regret that I said no today. At the time it was a personal thing.  I’d been raped and it was called ‘just busting his cherry’.  I didn’t care any more. I’d met so many people who’d lost legs and arms and brains but then and wanted to stop the silly.  I sat in the bar drinking coffee and watched the drag show with all the rich young people dressed in power clothes. They never knew the 60’s.  They didn’t know history.  I remember the sound of the bullets going by my ears as the passing car full of rednecks shot at the long haired hippy.  I never ran faster that time the Saskatchewan boys picked me up hitchhiking and told me that they’d given me a ride because they’d always wanted to beat on a long hair. I jumped out of the moving car and ran through the cornfields with three older guys chasing me with baseball bats.  I”m so thankful I was fast.  

I loved the book Pink Zwastica and the discussion of the sexual deviance and pedophilia in the SS. The Mexican sheriff over tequila told me he wasn’t a homosexual, “I have too much sex for women alone. I have to fuck boys and girls.  I am a real man.”  The man who had come out of prison after years told me “I’ve never been gay. I fuck men but I’m not gay.’

The Nazi killed the effeminate.  Those were the gays the Nazis jailed and sent to their death in Auschwitz..

I treated Sadists and Masochists.  The women who loved to cause pain and torture were to my mind the worst. They sometimes used men. I was shocked working in the jails and with the dangerously insane.  Those with Governor General warrants were a real education. I have often thought the teachers in liberal arts schools and political scientists should be required to spend some time there just like we used to get gang teens to tour the jails to meet the real criminal world. I’ve met such trash and heard such bullshit out of the ignorant and naive who teach at the university.  Psychopaths would just as soon eat you as talk with you. There are terms, ‘educable’ and ‘trainable’; for a reason.  But drugs trapped people in their minds and so many people can live in bubbles and the internet now unites us with our kind whatever that is.

I’m not alone but I’m an outsider and I’m thankful for Gladwell’s writing and others.  

Today I’m hoping to get my desk. I have to remove the couch to make room for it. I will shower first.  I’ll have another cup of coffee later.  I like walking the dying dog. I take my camera and get pictures while he lingers over scents, blind and sore. We both walk stiffly at times. It depends on the weather. 











  



Thursday, July 16, 2020

Checking In, Covid 19

When I was at sea alone in the North Pacific in the midst of hurricanes and storms, high seas and unbearable anxiety, I’d listen on the Hamm Radio for our daily contact.  The Hamm Radio operators liked making contact with us. Odd men in little rooms surrounded by electronics reaching out to solo sailors bouncing about in the middle of oceans thousands of miles from shore. The Hamm operators who managed these nets motivation primarily seemed was to be to check out their equipment’s capability and to play the Hamm Radio Game. Solo sailors like me were playing the Solo Sailor Game with a whole lot of moving parts and games in the Bluewater Solo Sailor Game. I was so thankful these Hamm Radio kindly Asperger sorts were out their on land.
There was always uncertainty. I was wedged in the aft berth with the boat rolling and tossing about. My dog and cat were crouched in beside me, their only comfort, the suspect security of my body.  I’d hear the crackly call and pressing the button on my receiver respond.  Across a thousand miles of empty sea the voice of a person I’d met in SAN Francisco or Vancouver would reach me. I’d pass on my Latitude and Longitude, give him my course, say that all was well when often it wasn’t but it was ‘well enough’.  The contacts were brief. We were strangers, relatively.  Casual friends brought together by mutual interests.  
I was one of a very lose network of adventurers. I was solo sailing across the North Pacific in winter, desperately staying alive, sometimes at all odds. By contrast he was enjoying the warmth of his home trying with arcane and modern equipment to reach out and touch someone bouncing signals off various waves of atmosphere.  I lived each day for the contact, some days more.  When I came more into tropical waters I was handed off to another person, this one a total stranger.I’d give him my lat and long and course. Someone would then record that on a map somewhere and family who followed such things would sigh. I’d once even made a radio telephone contact so that I’d be able to speak with family.  I wanted to reassure them, to let them know I was alive. They were glad and I was so thankful I had someone who cared. I’d doubted that I’d survive that hurricane and it was very uncertain. Surely they had their doubts.  The dog and cat and I continued on.  

One day I sailed into Radio Bay and anchored. The world stopped moving.  The rich scent of land and foliage and flowers enlivened my senses.  For 24 days on that passage I’d checked in.  I enjoyed checking in.

Now I’ve a group of medical colleagues and psychiatric colleagues. We’ve met together annually for a conference in different places in the world.  After we keep contact with a increasingly sophistical email list called ‘cyberdocs’.  Sometimes weeks go by when I don’t check in. Then I do.  I’ve a different dog today. The cat died to and another came and went.  I’m in the warmth of my home and the world isn’t on the lean and I”m not afraid of sinking.  I still check in though.  I feel good knowing I have friends, people who care for me , as I care for them.  It’s like the place where everyone knows my name. I’ve never known a bar like that though the community pub I visited when first I lived in South Putney had that flavour.  

I’ve heard they put bells on toilets in Putney now so the neighbours of elderly know that the old are still living. I’ m aging but years I hope before I get bells on my toilet. I’m still hoping to wear bells on my toes..  In our group we laugh a lot.  We cry too but mostly we laugh. We expresss resentments and gratitudes, share platitudes and stories and even a bit of wisdom. One of us who has now died wrote the book, “Spirituality of Imperfection’.  Some of us are famous like that but most of us, like me live in the mixed blessing of relative mediocrity. Walking talking accessorized worms with varying degrees of sentience.  

Locally we have now another cybergroup of like minded doctors who pride ourselves on our caring.  We value humility whether we have it or not. We share this common collection of character traits and values that we hold as true. We have mutual admiration as well. We know what it means to become a doctor. We don’t denigrate each other’s achievements. In our own lives we are too often encountering those who make themselves look taller by chopping their heads off.  Steal from the rich the mob cries thinking that things of value can be taken like objects.  The thieves and animals keen in the streets now looting and stealing. Our group doesn’t do that. We are workers and achievers. We appreciate things aged and pure. We believe in meritocracy.  We celebrate individual effort, thank our teachers, love the guild and apprenticeship, and respect the years that go to making that which is rare.   We understand we are not alone even if we forget it.   Checking in is a reminder.  

They asked me to be the organizer of the next checking in meeting.  We’ve sat around the province at our various computers looking like the opening of the Brady Bunch tv show, our our little squares of faces with varying backgrounds. So many of us are greying.  It surprises me when I see us. I’ve coloured dyed hair with vanity.  We’ve known each other,  many, 20 years or more.  I am reassured.  I  tell the really mensch organization folk among them that I can’t organize.  I’m right now very disorganized.  I’m thankful for the call. I want to rise to the occasion but it’s like when I was in my boat at sea.  I’d be asked for something like the wind speed and required going up  on deck. At that moment  I was afraid to go on deck, because it was so bad outside, I didn’t know I’d make it back, even tethered as I always was to the ship.

Now the word ‘organizer’ shocked me.  I reflected on the disorganization and uncertainty of my life today. In my garage I have two lap top computers, a flat screen monitor, a printer and a filing cabinet on wheels.  I’ve a cell phone and sometimes also use an iPad.  I’ve some books . The space is messy with flotsam, papers,  pens and debris. I’ve thrown this office and control centre together on a folding table. I didn’t know it would go on this long. I’d started it as a temporary solution to the announcement of a plague. We have all entered again into Camus, Plague.  Kafka is still struggling to get into the Castle. And I just want to make love in the time of Cholera while practicing social distancing. 

I’ve gone to my room and stayed for weeks, now months.  At first I was very afraid. I’d been sick early in the year and had been unable to breathe, coughing and panicking and believing that I was far from God. I’d been scared then. I’d thought how effective water boarding would be on me.  I am terribly addicted to breathe. I take it for granted too much though I love to breathe. I couldn’t then. Repeatedly I was humbled. This virus was announced weeks later and we were told we all could get it and that it would be best if we went inside for a while.  I was very relieved.  It was my fourth epidemic.  I’d already survived the Aids epidemic working in the main hospital emergency bled on, spat on and assaulted but I’d acquired tuberculosis serving up north.  A year of medications cured me after I still wheezed climbing mountains. Now I’m old and wheeze making love.  

We  know now the virus likes the old and sick.   Others are safe,.

Each day I phone or connect online on the computer with a dozen or so folk who so often sound or look like I must have looked to the Hamm operator. I have felt such love knowing that the mere connection has sustained them that day and that week.  I’ve repeatedly heard the tell tale tone of ‘cabin fever’ I’d first heard working in the Arctic. I’ve known too that just talking and checking in I’ve helped another human remain grounded. There’s such relief and gratitude in their voices.  I now know the Hamm Net Operators loved that connection as much as hearing from me the loudness and clarity of their transmission.   I’m glad to have reached my patients too.  I have so many to see and talk to. There are several staff in several clinics asking me to talk to more and more.  I’m feeling nails on a chalk board and the terror or just anxiety and irritability transfers to me even at a distance through communication lines and atmosphere. I have a satellite dish outside my home. I sometime talk to people around the world though mostly I’m just talking to people in this city.  It’s all about distance and time still.  I feel of service and that sustains me. I’m a part of this greater whole. I”m a contributing member of the community and I’ve touched another human and reminded them ‘we are not alone.’  I talk to pharmacists too and write letters to government,  employers and schools and send all these missives signed with my name and all the long line of letters aftert my name that once meant so much to me.  Now I don’t know.  Being alone myself in what the Rolling Stones aptly called ‘living in a ghost town’ I’m finding a lot is being stripped away that hadn’t already fallen away.  

Adventures do that.  Challenges do that. Expose the essentials.  Each day when I’m not working, I’m walking the dog and breathing in the rich scents and joy of nature. We have a trail through the woods by the river. I’ve taken my dog, my camera and love to catch pictures of wood ducks and herons and song sparrows. The blossoms I shot months back have given forth fruits now. My dog has a heart murmur, congestive heart failure, coughs like a 2 pack a day smokers,  is blind and injured his back . We don’t walk fast. My back is sore most days as well.  My heart weary but  still good. I don’t know.  It’s what my patient called the ‘season of uncertainty’. Friends are ill and sometimes I learn someone has died. Our hospitals are full or nearly full. They never empty.  People with covid fall and recover but I’m sure it’s sheer terror. I’m still afraid of being sick. I avoid people ,especially young people and strangers. I see a friend or two. We’ve begun meeting again on weekends.  She is loving and comforts my dog.  We laugh. I love to hung. 

There’s war and rumours of war.  The lies and misinformation are ubiquitous. Mobs in terror roam the streets.  The media has failed everyone, clanging bells of partisan bias and propaganda.  The leadership has so often lost it’s direction. There’s untold deaths of old caused by lizard brains and heartless leaders. I’m protected here. The local government is showing surprising wisdom. The insanity is at a distance.  Some guy is dementing while another talks about his socks.  I think of times of George III and know that I’m in the middle of the likes of the Charge of the Light Brigade.  Chamberlain insists the communists are friends. Still there are equally beautiful and profound hero’s.  A little boy saved his sister from a dog attack. I saw the picture and read the story on Facebook.  I liked the mother elephant rescuing the baby elephant on Utube.  The donkey sanctuary always makes me smile.  I harken back to the times I was a child and my mom and dad and older brother were there to save me, mostly from myself.

Now I pray. My God, My God, why.......I begin.....then change to,  gratitude.  Jesus commanded ‘Do Not Be Afraid’.  I told my sailing friend ‘worrying is wicked’ . He laughs whenever we are in desperate times and asks, “are we wicked yet, Billy.” 

Thank you for this day, Lord. Thank you for the joy that comes with checking in. Thank you for my family and friends and colleagues. Thank you for the example of my courageous little dog.  Thank you that I can still be of service. Thank you for the good leadership. Thank you for technology and networks that allow me to reach out and still the fear in others. Thank you for nature. Thank you for breath.  Thank you God of Gods, Creator, Sustainer, Lover and Friend  Help me to be less afraid. May my faith grow stronger. May I know you more dearly.  Thank you for checking in.







  

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Sunday Morning, Covid

I’m not going to church. Normally I would except Covid still haunts us.  I haven’t gone to the clinics except for brief appearances .I walk the dog. I do shopping quickly. I wear a mask. I am actually afraid of being in closed spaces with strangers. Even friends cause me a mild discomfort.  I am reminded of Paul Simon’s song, A Winter’s Day.  Laura visits. I have lovely convivial weekends with her and Gilbert. We talk, watch tv, eat meals together, share a bed. Then it’s the week again and work.I’m on the phone and in front of the computer 8 to 10 hours a day until Friday when the schedule changes a bit and the morning is more like being on call. It’s just keeping the methadone going.  Rote questions. Assurances.  It reminds me of general practice. Psychiatry, by contrast, the way my teachers taught me, has a complexity I have to be alert for,  in a prickly pear sort of way. 
In the evening I’m exhausted. I take my Nikon Cool Pix P 1000 camera on walks with Gilbert.  I like that my nephews are doing well. I saw Anna and the God Kids and they’re shooting up in size and their eyes are so much more alert and intelligent. 
I have old patients like old neighbours. We’ve known each other over 20 years. It astounds me sometimes to consider all those years and the crisis and trauma we have passed through.  I’m humbled by their thanks. I see new people as well.  Mostly I’m seeing new folk but the old patients cycle back and it’s astonishing how much time has passed.  
I have friends I’ve known 60 years and talking with them I feel like a kid again but wonder at the whole idea of time since we’ve changed but we’ve not changed.  .  I’m surprised that so many I know are in that over 50 zone while I continue to be in touch with younger folk, but they seem all like children to me and I’m afraid of being among aliens, people who don’t know the Beatles or the Kennedy Missile Crisis. 
I’m always surprised at the parts of me that others know. I’m this leathered up biker guy with the Harley, the white coated clinician with stethoscope around his neck, the masked surgeon or the Harris Tweed jacket and jeans consultant specialist, the cammo clad hunter, the survival jacket and khaki shorts sailor, or the scuba guy spear fishing.  I’m a bow hunter.  I’m the photographer with computer gear who once lived in dark rooms inhaling chemicals that dripped from my hanging pictures and negatives. . I’m carrying tools that define me. I’m living in Campers and RV’s having left the mansions and homesteads. Each incarnation lingers. 
I like the skirts and sandals. I like the feminine and sensitive. I seem be harkening back to the dancing days, a carefree time of the body, more hedonistic than spiritual, intellectual but always inquisitive. I wrote more then. I wrote about anima and animus. I’m weary of the burden of maleness. It’s likely with old age more estrogen is coursing through my system along with oxytocin and a variation on MAO that lessens my desire to defend and protect. All the women I’ve served and defended and protected and the media portrays us as the enemy.  
I cycle back to the false accusations and the bullying by psychopathic women and their mobs of injustice, lying to cover up their lack of competence. I’m weary with the tokenism and the demands of  the entitled insisting that I owe them. I loathe the marxist thugs with their fake intellectualism, the paranoid position of them and me. I want to walk down the streets in gossamer white clothing and sandals or canvas shorts and sailing vest. Instead today I feel like I need to wear body armour and would weapon up to face the criminals and activists but my government has disarmed me and has stabbed me in the back after decades of services. I empathize with the police and military and wonder why I served the elite by containing the dangerously insane and did my best to stop homicide and suicide and all the domestic violence since today the media and the mayors and the governors and my PM celebrate the violence.  
I look at the policemen and women and feel sorry for them tooled up with all that tack of daily work. The weight they carry on their belts and the heavy vests they wear are just part of the toughness of their jobs. My back hurts from having a spine. I’m thankful today I sit in sarong before a computer unhampered by restrictive clothing. I long for the world of Heinlein when we’ d all ‘grok’ it. But here we are devolving or at least the media is, back to our feral roots. 
It has been fun this weekend watching old Star Wars movies with Laura.   Always reminds me to look to the STARS. NASA was such a meataphor for my growing up and my life of exploration. I remember medicine as always being ‘interesting and exciting”.  I’ve enjoyed reading Science and Nature Magazine, Lancet and the NEJM remembering how for decades I read them weekly. I had a subscription when I was at the university decades back. Then I read the Economist and  psychiatry reading took precedence . I ‘d studied all the medicine of family practice and surgery, then read all the texts of community medicine then the greats of psychiatry and neuroscience. For decades I never listened to the radio but always listened to medical grand rounds from around the world on cassettes and CD’s. I loved long drives with coffee and education . Then I returned from psychotherapeutics and hypnosis to psychopharmacology and addiction.  More diplomas, more classrooms and more exam and added on a decade of doing theological studies and nights upon nights at the universities.   
We’ve watched the Prequels of Star Wars and somehow that brought back the dreams of space exploration, the countless science fiction books I’d read as a pre teen and teen. I loved anthropology too then and my favourite teen science fiction was a blue suited couple who searched for old technology of ancient races.  The cover course that first year of college,  I was touched most by was biology even though  I was in arts and was going to be a playwright. Now I’m still interested in writing and acting and all the world of multiple expressions and multiple personalities. The parts we played.  When I write stories I am the characters. I remember Dickens wearing props to help him stay in character, a scarf for a character, a hat for another.    
Laura and I then watched Mel Gibson, one of my all time favourite actors and directors.   I loved his role as a retired policeman with the beautiful daughter in an amazing script with twists and turns and bad guys all set against the backdrop of New Orleans hurricane.   “Force of Nature” movie  night with Me & Ed’s Godfather Pizza and Laura and Gilbert. A wonderful evening.  Such a great movie! Such good company.

SiOnyx Aurora Pro is a color night vision scope. I bought my first night vision equipment when the Russian Military scope became available.  It was the green head gear which I wore backwoods hunting and could see how it would allow me to shoot game or people at night because the movement was readily available as blobs. But there was little acuity. I had night vision scopes for off shore sailing and it was helpful in identifying ships. I saw one freighter come down on me with the pilot asleep in his command chair. That certainly increased my efforts to get out of his track. He’d not responded to my VHF calls. The night vision scope certainly clarified the problem, albeit too close for comfort. 
The SiOnyx Aurora Pro is the best available to date. I discussed it with my tech savy astronomer, photographer, cinematographer,  engineer nephew and was delighted to learn he’d been following the scientific sensor development.  I’m glad I have it for wilderness camping, hunting and sailing. It’s also a video and still camera which will give Graeme joy when he gets his but I confess I’m not as excited by those aspects as the expansion of my awareness. I fell in love with microscopes and binoculars as a kid and the experience never dulls.  

Now I’m wondering if I should wear a dress to my hair appointment. Do not go gentle into that still night! Rage. Rage. Against the dying of the light!. I have all the girl “friends’ who are having fun in their older age and the guys more often are on the couch. Thankfully my motorcycle and RV friends are still into adventure and exploration.  But my body hurts too  I don’t judge my older friends who’d rather be on the couch than wearing high heels. It’s been years since I wore high heels. Laura has ordered some wedgies.  She’s 4 foot 11 inches so when age made high heels more difficult for her she was vertically challenged even more.  At 6 feet wearing high heels gave me that stork like appearance of ichibod crane in drag.  The couch and hot tub and bed all have their immense appeal for me today. I take kindness wherever I can find it.   Yet I delight in the hair appointment and pedicures too.  I”d get more tattoos if I didn’t have to avoid water for a week. Something about art and the feminine.  If I was independently wealthy in the age of  covid , I’d garden and raise donkeys on a converted air craft carrier with space travel conversion that I mostly anchored off my favourite tropical island. 

It’s as new day and I’m very grateful. Yesterday was rainy and moody. The Service Department at Holeshot Motorsports were dishonest and incompetent and the day which was just supposed to be picking up a motorcycle devolved down to male to male confrontation because they had told me to pick up my bike and I’d arrived and it wasn’t ready and in that pathetic way they tried to accuse me of not having been called to come in when I was. I was put out and they played the victim. Even blaming me for being upset in that increasingly common borderline and narcissistic gas lighting defence.  Laura was upset because she was put out and I just felt castrastrated and demasculinized ,because all the normal male things I’d do, like punch the likely alcoholic little power administrator in the nose, I’d let go of 50 years ago. I’ve spent a life being civilized and obeying the law and following the rules. When I was a young I was adept in defence and martial arts, physically fighting off gangs in wayward places, rescuing damsels in distress, being stabbed for my efforts and shot at too many times.   Now the police which I used to love, areno longer protecting me, themselves increasingly taking early retirement and all working to ‘rule’ due to the the corruption of the government.  The RCMP, our national police are beneath an unethical PM, corrupt to the core, criminally servicing himself and his family with characteristic eastern Canada cronyism, while  filling our streets with ISIS and Communist Chinese, taking away our guns and making it increasingly illegal for us to protect our lives, our property, our loved ones.   I was at a point where I thought I could rest on my laurels, have a massage and bubble bath, but here were men like this bullying me and frankly I ‘m weary of that. I know I stand up to such guys physically over and over again when they did their ‘Mano or mano’ cocks displays and 99% of the time backed down without me having to kick them in the head.   But I’m too old today and don’t have any investment in that silliness. I think at times now I wasted my life being a doctor as serving as it was.   As a guy I should have left medicine and everything else to the girls while I studied law and weapons because that’s all that counts today, where the guys with money have men with guns and daily strip all the rest of the men of everything while the women lose the battle. I used to say Churchill beat Hitler but Eva Brawn beat Mrs Churchill. The democrat female mayors and governors all let the bullies rage for weeks and days. More percentage of women voted for Trudeau and like central socialist government  if the person in charge is pretty. My gay friends seem like them to not know the history of communism and dictatorships.  Ironically these friends allign with political parties here who allign with African and Middle eastern countries, thoroughly into 19th century war and business male modes , with gays denounced and stripped.   Meanwhile I love the conservative women and admire them and have always known the greatest female doctors, half my class being women and outstanding.  I have this broad network of relationships, love the tension of opposites, stand in the middle and watch extremists all around me believe they are tolerant and understanding, and middle of the road.  
So the whole area of race and gender has distracted the world from colonization of Mars and the development of a personal Harley hover craft for me. Drones are fine but I’d like to be able to fly like I ride my Harley. Maybe I’d like a skirt and scooter. It a changing thing. I loved being in Rome with Laura on the back of the Vespa touring churches .I love holy places.  I am afraid today of disease and war and my declining physical capability. I think like my friends of moving to the US where there are so many states which still have freedoms as Canada goes quickly the way of Venezuela.  I miss freedom of speech and the other freedoms. Every time I speak now and when I write I know that someone is offended. The offended are always like predators looking for their next victim. Like zombies running in mob masses with the screams . ANTIFA and the Marxist BLM and the Jihadi’s.  I think of myself as gender fluid and can’t see why so many creative people have been so deluded by the marketing. It’s right out of the Goebbels , Reich Minister of propaganda play book. It’s the same book Lenin and Trotsky used. All they do is sell ‘hate’ while claiming to be against hate. The same ‘useful idiots’ were fooled by the ‘Peacemissile’ in the omnibus bills. I’m jaded by it all
I like to light incense and remember patoula oil haze,youth and the gorgeous half naked women of the era of peace,  dance and theatre.  Free love. We said .  And Bobby Magee , Freedom’s just another world for nothing left to lose’.  We were poor and laughed and our parents had worked hard through the fifties after the wars of the 40’s and here we were hippies, long hair and girlish ways making fun of soldiers which our fathers and grandfathers had been. Gender .  Amazon women today , a minority.  
Feminism -imitation of men and denigration of mothers celebrfating abortion,  the great killing. War on babies. What Cowards! 
I am here still convincing people to not kill themselves, walking them back from the edge, going down worm holes of the mind to bring them back.  Giving them drugs that don’t kill them. Telling them they aren’t the enemy.
I’m going to have another cup of coffee. I roasted some green beans yesterday and it’s so tasty made right after I grind it.  Decadent.
Thank you Lord for all the ‘stuff’ of my existence today, the friends and family, the memories and the weekends. Thank you for Gilbert and help him live despite his heart and lung disease.  Please keep my family and friends safe and help me to be more sensitive and caring and capable.  Help us all get beyond Covid safely and don’t let the Communist Chinese win this dirty covert war  trick.And whatever conspiracy theory is the flavour of the month, you are in charge Lord, and may I always find your loving face in the peek a boo of existence.  





Thursday, July 9, 2020

Everybody’s got a somebody done me wrong story

Everybody’s got a somebody done me wrong story
Everybody has somebody to blame for their faults
Everybody claims they’ve a monopoly on suffering
Everyone says their pain is worst.

Everyone wants their time in the limelight
No one wants to step down from the Speaker’s box
Everybody wants the Camera on them and them alone
I just want to find my way back home.

Crying in obscurity
Calling out for the Maker of All
Twisting my mind away from seeing only negatives
Working all day to walk upright rather than just slither along

I’m an insect. I’m insentient. I’m weary and utterly bored
The morning light is a special time of hope and possibility
But I’m jaded, defeated,  wounded and struggling to hold on
I’m afraid, embarrassed,  ashamed and humiliated

But I’ll put on a happy face, wipe my own ass 
And be thankful for that. 
Hallelujah. A new day has dawned. 


Friday, July 3, 2020

Princeton, proto retirement

It’s another do nothing day in the Princeton Municipal RV park by the Silmilkameen River  with Laura and Gilbert.  I don’t know what I would do without Laura. She tells me what to do.  If I’m not serving Gilbert or her I’m fairly lost.  I’m back to reading a western. I’ve been reading Nicholas Wade’s , A troublesome inheritance but keep falling asleep at then end of every chapter. Then I go back to  westerns I stay awake  half the night reading them.
The pattern which I suspect won’t change when I retire is : get up ,walk the dog, make coffee, read facebook, make Laura coffee, talk about the neighbours, scan the weather. The big event is getting Gilbert to take his heart medications.  We’re down to rolling it in roast beef slices and still he spits out the pill at times.  When that’s done I’m exhausted and need more coffee, read more facebook and argue politics with some stranger whose likely retired and doing the same thing. I feel irrelevant. The world happens and I’m moved along by the glacier of elite world politics.   Laura writes a list of things she wants. Today I get to fetch bread ,  milk, cheese and fresh roast beef for the dog.   
Yesterday I rode the KTM motorcycle out to the woods with the new Chiappa Double Badger and the Ruger 30:06. Laura was glad to be rid of me. She does her crosswords, reads, scans facebooks, watches the neighbours and talks with her children and relatives.  She’s content.  I’m generally restless and was talking of climbing Kilimanjaro the other day. She doesn’t even think about such things.  I shot a couple of dozen rounds with the 30:06 180 grain 50 yards getting nice groupings around the bullseye.  Every shot would have killed the big game. Most of my shots over the years have been around 50 yards but I did shoot a deer at 600 yards, and couple of moose at 300 yards. I tried out the Chiappa and despite the red dot sites was all over the place at 50 yards, high, maybe the wind. I moved closer to the 25 yard range where I usually shoot grouse and had  nice groupings. The 20 guage slugs hit in the black and if they were bird shot would have taken out the grouse or rabbit too but I’ve not figured out how to get bulleyes out of that barrel yet.  
I had muskoil mosquito repellant so offended MLM, mosquitoes lives matter.  It was a lovely sunny day. After feeling good about being a straight shooter and some out of season practice I packed up and rode the motorcycle up the logging roads. I spooked a deer and saw a rabbit I took a picture of.  It was a great hard ride on gravel roads with spectacular vistas. I’m often here in the fall so it’s a treat to see it in spring.  It takes a lot of upper body strength handling the deep logging truck grooves here and there.  It also became really chilly in the high mountain country especially as the evening came on . I was just wearing a denim jacket and jeans, thankful for my leather gloves.  I always wear a helmet despite the depreciation on what it protects.
I was glad to get home.  Laura immediately told me the grey tank was full. We’d emptied the tanks in the morning, the camp having a central Sani dump.  This time rather than taking the truck there I brought the honey pot here and unloaded 20 gallons of grey water before taking it back. I bought a bunch of wood too and started a fire.  I put the potatoes on with chopped carrots to boil and after a bit of time took out the steaks and got them going on the barbecue. It’s always a matter of timing still decades of cheffing later.  With sour cream and butter and Coca Cola for drinks it was  a meal made in heaven for the outdoors.  I’ve been enjoying peppermint chocolate bars for dessert and drinking mint tea after dinner. Laura’s enjoyed the Hagen Daz ice cream bars.   Laura went back to reading her Michael Connelly while I returned to Facebook looking for a meaningful political argument with a computer generated political robotron. 
On FB I loved watching Kayleigh make toast of some journalists who really seem to have difficulty holding spit in their mouths.  Being an authority on world politics after driving around the backwoods on a motorcycle I commented on world affairs with aplomb. No doubt the people I talked to, most of us are now old, did even less than I did in their day. Some of my favourite political pundits are avid gardeners. I’ve at least been working till this 2 week decline. I understand how so many people who retire end up in drugs and alcohol, at gambling casinos and brothels with their bottles of viagra.  I depend on Laura with her requests for bread and cheese to keep me sane with purpose.
I remember 2 month vacations in the summer from school and being thankful to return to school because generating ideas of what to do each day on your own can be wearying. If I wasn’t working I’d end up in a library somewhere or have chapters spread out all over the floor and write the great Canadian novel. I’ve several books in outline to do but they are major projects and not something I’ve even considered this 2 week vacation. It’s been literally years since I’ve had 2 weeks of free unscheduled time in a decade or so. Normally I go to a conference for a week and extend it for a week to sight see.  Otherwise I’m on pilgrimage like Ethiopia, Israel, Rome or hunting with actual goals.  Now I’m just relaxing. I once did this on a beach and an ex wife complained that I didn’t ‘get ‘ the idea of ‘sun bathing’.  That’s when I learned to sail off the coast of Yucatan leaving her on the beach.  So much for relaxing.
Fortunately today I’m not nearly as inadequate as I was when younger. I used to have these really steep learning curves like blue water navigation, white water canoeing, black diamond skiing, winter camping. Each of these skills was a whole focussed activity with lots of pressure. Like learning guitar and then playing in a blues band trying to stay sober while people kept handing me shooters.  I’m resting on my laurels now. Last week I assembled the pontoon boat and fished without success but I did it all by the book.  I could have hunted a bear last week but I’m finding myself lazier each year. I have actually been enjoying this doing nothing.  Thankfully Laura has given my day meaning and focus with the request for bread and cheese and milk. I’ll walk the dog of course. Gilbert’s demands are always for ball throwing and walking and napping. He’s insatiable that way. 
Meanwhile I’m praying and loving nature.  
In a few days I’ll be back to being useful and I’ll have to admit this holiday has been recuperative. I don’t have a clue what time it is and I’m not even fretting about a myriad of things I’ve yet to do. I’m pretty sure I can handle riding the motorcycle into town and buying bread. I could go to backwoods on the motorcycle again or go flying fishing. I could go golfing. But I really like the idea of buying bread and cheese and milk for Laura.  It’s deeply meaningful and purposeful.  I have to buy more roast beef for my dog.  
Thank you Lord for this wonderful blank slate of a day and the unscheduled time.