Spring

I woke up in a really good mood. I’d had wonderful dreams of a heavenly place I just couldn’t quite remember. Madigan, my cockapoo puppy, was curled up beside me on the bed, waking with me, ready to play. My home was warm. I love the range of things and mementos I have. Pictures on walls that mean so much to me. Fresh clothes. I did the wash in my home with my in home washer driver. I used the toilet. Indoor plumbing, hot and cold water. 

Then I threw on my Scottish red flannel night coat and slippers to take Madigan out for a pee. He’s not lifting his leg yet. He’s shifted his body weight to three points but just hasn’t lifted the leg. 6 month old. He just got his tick and flea med from his vet Dr Biernacki at North Road Animal Hospital. The sun was shining. Blue sky. Fresh air. Light breeze. Having had his pee, Madigan scooted up the stairs inside with me following. 

I sat cross legged on the floor. Madigan has taken this as a time for him to be petted. He has a toy or bone in his mouth, he walks back and forth in front of me while I pet his back and head. I am there to give thanks and pray. I give God thanks for Madigan.I lift him aside and focus on prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer. Some of Yogananda’s prayers. As he thanks his teacher today like some days I go through a long list starting with my family and then my teachers. I’m always uplifted thinking of Dr. Carl Ridd. I give thanks to the great men and women of my life. Those whose guidance, love and care meant so much to me. Dr. Bernie. Dr. Hank. Dr.George. Dr.John meant so much to me. But there are so many great living teachers I know today, Willie, Phillip, James, Shirley, Peter, Hugh, Art, Cheryl, so many wise friends and mentors. I let the names roll through my mind, annoyed at all those I list first one day and next another.imkeepmremembering more and more. how blessed! There’s the incredible list of friends, Kirk and Wes, Glenn and Frank, and all the glorious ex wives and lovers, Kathy, Nina, Baiba, Maureen, Sherrie, Anne, Stephanie, and Laura. These beautiful people whose intimacy and love have helped me along the journey for years. Now I’ve Peter, Bee, Lydia, Karen, Dave and Mack,Mary Lou, Gary, George, Dean, Emily and so many more. All these extraordinary gifted accomplished folk who have come close in work and friendship and as neighbours and just others we walk our dogs together with. I sit as the names roll through my mind and give thanks to the incredible blessing of knowing such remarkable people. Then I quote St Patricks’s BreastPlate prayer and ask for help. I’ve been blessed to work with tens of thousands of patients some for a few visits others decades. I ask for guidance. I pray for wisdom and peace and bliss. I give thanks for a lifetime journey with Christ, with Jesus. God within. God will come again. Yahway, the great I am. 

I then do stretches and sit ups and push Madigan away because he’s waited patiently but now thinks it’s his time again to play. But I stand stiffly still feeling my weight and move onto making an Ethiopian Expresso coffee. The aroma takes me back to my time there among the Coptic Christians, those deeply loving people. 

I take an energy bar from the cupboard. With coffee and the mint bar I sit on the couch, Madigan immediately on my lap ready to beg for a crumb from my protein bar. I’ve put out some wet food for him and watered the Christmas cactus. Now sipping delicious coffee, from the ancient original source, I begin the task of going through a deluge of emails then enjoy the friends postings on Facebook, the pictures of beautiful women, cuddly pets, political insights, uplifting saying, spring flowers and reminiscences. 

I’m here now. I’ve realized I’ve not blogged for a while since my iPad keypad 't' key came loose. I’ve yet to find someone to repair it or another keyboard. Another task on the list. But I’ve now done this blog with two fingers mostly so I can add some recent pictures of Madigan and the spring flowers we see these days on our walks. Thank you God for all your blessings.

Flow

I play peek a boo and hide and seek with you, God. I know the hound of heaven. I know practicing the presence. I channel and pray and meditate. I come as a beggar and a friend, a lover and a son. Be with me God. Now and forever. Let me into your holy of holies. Let me enter the flow and go without detour to the nectar treasure within and without, ever and never, that quasatimismo leap of faith and trust, the surrender and conquest, the sweet embrace. Harmony,tranquility, serenity and joy. Thank you supreme being, first of all, creator and friend, confidant and relation, love. Love, love, love.

The Balance Sheet

I wish that I could say my own internal balance sheet was based on matters of high character and achievement but it’s not. I’m a man of very high character with many outstanding achievements but I don’t think of those things. Emotionally I’m tied to a lower strata of considerations.

1. I don’t have children. I didn’t reproduce. I failed the fundamental ‘duty’, ‘naturalness’, ‘manliness’ of having children. I was told by a woman that she had aborted my child. I had my sperm tested at the lowest point in my life when I was drinking, drugging, depressed and suicidal having failed at stopping my wive’s cocaine and drug addiction and her lying, feeling betrayed by all the recent idols in my life.  The test said the sperm was adequate.  So there I was having contributed with great work and effort to the baby making industry, with multiple partners over decades and yet despite my giving houses and fortunes to women, they’d not had my children. They did have the children of psychopaths, addicts and politicians.  

There was even that one truly glorious upper class professional who worked as an escort on the side, had an alcohol and cocaine problem she hid and a true addiction to male doctors and money.  I don’t know if she ever saw me as anything more than status and finance and putty in her hands for future development. I caught her cutting the tips off my condoms sometimes around the time I found she was stealing to pay for her cocaine habit. I still dream of her on occasion. She was the girl next door and I would have loved her as a family member but the thought of her as a mother was scarey. She caused her mother many tears and had such a drive to socially excell all he while she was falling deeper into her addiction.  

1 On the positive side I saved thousands of babies lives. I also helped thousands of children’s parents. I delivered a hundred babies and cared for the newborns. Later I’d do family therapy and adolescent therapy and treat drug and alcohol addiction successfully in parents, adolescents and children. I put that on the plus side.  I remember my mother in my early years of medicine working sleepless nights as a country gp and later as a fly in doctor in the sub arctic, “You’ve delivered so many babies and cared for so many women and children don’t ever feel you have to have children for me.  Your brother has given us grandchildren and you’ve done so much for others.”  I’d been going into dangerous reserves facing up to guns and knives and broken bottles to get to the sick children and sick women. I’d saved all this native children in a meningitis epidemic. I’d been in a plane crash. I’d got TB. I was always working more than the job required taking extra shifts in the emergency, covering for others, putting in twice the hours. I’ve always done hours of unpaid work, that guy who shows up early and leaves late and doesn’t pay attention to the ‘billable hours’ the lawyers teach us about. I did so much pro bono work to, serving people without health care, doing countless procedures and visits unpaid for by the plan. I just did the ‘right’ thing and watched the clever government accountants rubbing their hands and thinking that they had another stupid doctor they could fleece. Everywhere I went the businessmen double charged the doctor and openly took advantage all the time claiming we had some kind of priviledge.  Meanwhile I worked seven days a week for years and vacations were educational.  Later I’d be told by the government administrator that physicians were just doing their ‘jobs’.  Now increasingly doctors don’t specialize but get a law or accounting or business degree instead of learning more medicine to better serve the patients. I believe they are right because our focus on health care meant we weren’t watching our backs as these administrators and bean counters moved in and stole the money for medical care redefining everything with euphemism and getting themselves and their cronies bigger offices and more pensions and services. I will never forget the day the “doctor only’ parking sign was pulled down and the ‘administrator only’ sign was put up. The administrator saw everything in terms of status and power whereas the doctor only parking was by the emergency and meant to ensure quickest access. I’ve always wondered when I’ll get back the millions in back pay since these aetheists think they’re so clever and don’ believe in heaven or hell or figure I can get my reward in heaven while they’re going to take the cream here.  I ‘ m now designated as a ‘people pleaser’ and all my ‘service’ is defined as pathological.  My idea of duty and tradition and nobless oblige and service and altruism and generosity are no longer ‘Canadian values’ but redefined as new Canadian values as ‘every man for himself’, ‘lick and kick’ hierarchy, and ‘survival of the fitest’, and the one with the most money from whatever means wins.  Honour and truth are not ‘multi cultural terms’.  Multi culturalism is the lowest common denominator of culture, ‘dog eat dog’, not the highest idea of ‘kultura’ as defined by Austrians as the development of the best a nation has to offer, in art and sciences.  My medical government rewards the clever doctors who does the least for the patient and most for the administration.  Even the awards have shifted to give those loyal to the regime the most and those who have contributed to medicine as an ideal the least.

I’ve worked for 24 years of education and forty plus years of front line service, having on my own time done a specialty and subspecialty and theological training all at cost to myself. The highest I was paid was as a gp.  Yet my specialization and subspecialization training and maintenance have cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours.  Internists, psychiatrists, addictionists and family physicians are all the lowest paid clinicians.  All the front line workers of medicine are open to the most criticism and scrutiny by patients however the doctor police are utterly removed from the front line and if they did any of the behaviours they do miles behind the lines in the luxury and safety of their offices they would not last a week.  There is no arrogance on the front lines or over the wire as their is in the safety and priviledge of the command bunkers of the world where stupidity and incompetence are common and there is all the time in the world for graft and corruption.  

2. I did drugs, LSD, marijuana, tried coke and didn’t like it, had opiates at the hospital and didn’t like it. But I liked the loss of clarity of marijuania. I liked the social effects of alcohol, the dinner party and the sex after. I liked smoking a combination of cannabis and tobacco. I liked the image of the smoker.  I liked the pipe and the cigarette. I didn’t like he sore on my lip from the burning pipe. I didn’t like the wheezing and cough. I did like the cowboy, sailor, blue collar , lower class man flavour of smoking. I didn’t think of it as superior or elevated but rather what Hollywood and worldly people did. I saw it as lawyers and soldiers. 

I was a binger  so on holidays smoked dope and drank too much the for 6 month at a time I’d knuckle down to work. I was on call one in three for years or on call all the time in private practice .I couldn’t be impaired. It was like being a driver. I had to be out of the country or off the grid beyond telephone to let my hair down.  I wasn’ t a regular user. Even in the last year before I stopped drinking and stopped smoking I’d sailed a yacht to Mexico, rescued a whale, published countless articles, helped set up a school for disabled children, played guitar in a band, learned ham and provided medical ham radio emergency services at sea. I was never a ‘dysfunctional’ alcoholic. I was always highly functional. I was gifted and accomplished and felt that a weekend drunk was a ‘blue collar reward’ well earned by above and beyond the call of duty. I saved lives at sea. I rescued cruisers after they lost their boat to fire. I established a new medical practice but I couldn’t deal with my wife’s cocaine addiction. I couldn’t address her catatonic states and drug abuse and manic bizarre behaviour that began the first year of marriage, depression and mania. Drugs and alcohol. I remember saying “I can say home and care for one person or I can go to work and care for a hundred, I can’t do both.”  I felt an utter failure for that. My psychiatrist and I arranged for her to leave work and go to treatment in Southern California mostly to get away from he cocaine dealers but instead of going into treatment she escaped and continued drugs and alcohol with me providing the cover for her dysfunction. Well I walked out. If you can’t beat them join them. I concluded that no one knew how to deal with addicted wives and that I was tired of being the wife and father to professional women. Twenty years I’d cooked and cleaned and done the lions share of the ‘pink jobs’ and the lion’s share of he ‘blue ‘ jobs and brought home three times the income of my partners who had been ‘party girls’ when I met then and considered ‘husband’s’ the tools they had in exchange for sex. Yet while the sex was spectacular in first years the last years were more like necrophilia and in the last couple of years absent.  I was the bad man.  I was blamed for women using pot. There was a strange dichotomy. If men did somehing wrong it was always the man’s fault. If women did something wrong, i was also the man’s fault. Now I’m seeing all the white women I’d known who once blamed men for their faults coming awake to the idea that now it’s all their fault. White women are the problem of he world. Of course white women make good winnings for others and yet in the end men sing I’d rather be a hammer than a nail. Self pity is ugly on a man and not on a woman. Men are seen as bitter while women are seen as victims.  I never liked unfair games without level playing fields.  I’d seen myself as a failure. I disappointed women because I stepped back from the Sado masochism.  I had been the ‘daddy;’,provider and protector and I’d done that overtime, all my work and income going to the home. Financially though in the feminist world ‘what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours’ so the incomes that the women made went to their own entertainment and family whereas I gave to the company store. I didn’t mind because I was committed for life but prisoner’s dilemma dictates that the trick is how to time the getting in and gettting out.  Life time marriages are zero sum but now the average length of relationship is 5 years and the trick is to take. So I watched these extra bank accounts appear and was fascinated .I simply didn’t care. I’ve been curious and would rather know than ‘win’.  I’d won so much in my time but I wanted to know God. God was always hide and seek.  So what was love. I truly loved the women and they loved me but they were afraid.  I know so much more about anxiety today.

So I’ve supported and cared for women most of my life. I cared for my mother. I cared for wives. I ‘ve shared my income and all I have with a series of beautiful women. I have been amazed at men who women seem to routinely admire and celebrate who get women to serve them. Pimps are very successful and men who play boys and whine in the home.As a marriage therapist I saw these interesting arrangements. I was even more fascinated doing marriage therapy with gays and lesbians and seeing the same dynamics. Always prisoner’s dilemma.  The problem of cooperative behaviour and fear.

Fascinating.

So in a way my own relationships helped me help others to master theirs in the same way my 21 years of sobriety helped me help other get free of addiction.  

I’m a better person today but I don’ give myself credit. I continue to consider myself a failure and a dissappoitment. I’ve given my left arm to work and relationships only to realize that my boss was a zombie cannibals or that my wife had insatiable needs. I’ve never been good at saying ‘no’. I’d rather walk away alone. And I have.  I don’t know anyone else but other solo sailors and survivalists who’ve passive aggressively left the world. 25 days without human contact at sea.  Weeks on end in cabins or tents.  Long periods of time alone. But the key is that 25 days. Now I’m doing the Covid thing but i ‘m still in the hive. I pick up the mail. I have a relationship with the mailman. I’m not really alone. I know alone. Other’s don’t.  It’s like when I fasted for weeks on orange juice and water. People say they fast but the Muslims mean they don’t eat during the day, that’s not the same as 21 years not smoking or fasting from alcohol or weeks of fasting from food.

It’s said that sacrifice is giving up what you most enjoy for a higher good of the relationship with God.  

Even the sacrifices I’ve made and they’re countless were self centered and self serving. I believe that God is the greater self. When I give to my girlfriend or a patient or family or a stranger I feel I’m just a conduit, like St. Francis, make me a channel of your peace. I only feel badly when I think I’m a limited person like the paranoid Scrooge .  I’m a little more fearful in old age.  

These aren’t the only things I beat myself up about but they’re a start. Humility is godly but it’s easy to ‘appear’ humble and wear grey suits. Veblem talked about that but it’s hard to be humble. Humility means God all and me nothing. Since ‘me’ is ego and as long as I function at the ego level I’m insatiable. It’s called ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’. Addiction is best explained by CS Lewis who said,stop looking for the architect in he wall.  I like chocolate right now. I have to try and be moderate with it.  I remember as a kids we ate so much chocolate after Halloween we got sick. My bulemic patients and my masochists patients and all those patients who have difficulties with self control and narcissism have taught me about my own foibles. I must learn to drop the ‘rock’. Part of that is not beating myself up.  

Today I’m a good guy because I care for a plant and a puppy. In addition to that I care for this body and do a lot for others too but the plant needs me and it’s a real chore to remember to water her. She’s a Christmas cactus.  

Meanwhile I can’ seem to forgive the system. I’m like Arendt at Nuremberg I know that the ‘security’ council of the UN is a euphemism for ‘warlords’.  The War Lords of the World are Russia, China , US, France, and Britain. They make the most money.  ‘Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king’.  The ‘reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo’.  The ‘useful idiots’ are those who unknowing serve.  In medicine the abortionists financially make a killing. The big bucks are in death and now the euthanist doctors are ramping up their money making killing machine.  I took a Hippocrates Oath. It’s no longer ‘in’. It’s unfashionable. The government has always been into killing and it’s now coopted the medical profession. The nurses went first, agreeing to do the bidding of the administration unquestioning and now the medical profession has fallen for the gold and bling.  

Dreams

My dreams are mostly visual and emotional. I don’t seem to have olfactory dreams and only occasionally remember auditory dreams. There are conversations in my dreams but I don’t remember them as sound but rather as meaning.  I have had tactile dreams.  My dreams are often not in colour either or are pastel rather than bold. I don’t have tastes in my dreams or memory of my dreams. Now this may reflect my memory of my dream rather the dream itself. 

Babies have synchresia.  They experience the five senses as one. This was noted with the disinhibition of LSD. I saw colours. I saw sounds. But what of the lack of smells in dreams. I lost a lot of my smell and some hearing to the treatment I received for TB so can’t say if I used to have more smells in my dreams. Do my dreams parallel my present. I don’t think so because the body I have in my dreams is normally younger.  Sometimes is a child even though mostly I’m 20 to 40. My dogs are alive and younger and my parents are usually the age they were when I was in my teens or childhood.  

Soft Nightmares

Obviously they’re bad dreams. But they’re not quite nightmares.  Trapped and disturbing but not horrifying. I learned long ago to not get upset in a flurry and wake up. Mostly I just work my way through lucid dreaming, looking for a way out. Sometimes I wake up to restart.

There’s the poop dreams. I remember coming into the room on the ward and he’d smeared the room with his poop. It wasn’ t a one time experience. Others smeared themselves in poop.  Trying to hold them down to give them an injection, I’d be  trying to avoid the eye gouges. Wondering where to wash the clothes or discard them after. Wearing OR scrubs till I could get a new change.standing in showers clothed washing the poop out of the body curled on the floor in a fetal position. I was thankful for others, the nurses who did it mostly. I came and went. They lived with this day and day, night after night. I wasn’t always there.

Toilets in Africa and India. Shit everywhere. Outhouses in the north with shit everywhere. Their airport toilets where they squatted on the seats and never cleaned up the massive misses. Not a dribble. Shit everywhere. 

In my dream I can’t open a door because there’s shit on the door handle.  I’m in an institution like a college looking for a place to sit and all the toilet seats are covered in shit.  I want to shower but the shower is dirtier than I am.

I suppose a Freudian might suggest homosexual issues but anal sex isn’t same sex alone. There’s nothing sexual about the dreams. Pre sexual. Toilet training days. Maybe shame based. Primordial. Disturbing. Disappointing.  Frustrating. I often have the urge to go.  That need to pee or poop at night and eventually waking to use the toilet only to return to the poop dream. Searching for somewhere clean.  Dirty world dream.

I was in a room, a very nice room but the wall opened. The room was the perfect study call room, bed and desk and books.  Only the wall kept being pushed in by a party next door , drunks staggering into my space and I have to show them out and resecure the accordion wall.  Time and again. Trying to sleep on call and the noise of nursing stations and inability to find quiet.  The party in the next apartment. The guy sticking a butcher knife to my throat when I ask him to turn his stereo down at 4 am.  The cranked out psychotic addicts coming to my door and demanding I stop pounding on my ceiling or floor and I’m sleeping, trying to sleep. Years of begging for quiet and sleep. Now I’m back in those nights

My mentor is visitting, someone older and esteemed and they’re at the apartment, clothed in my idealization sand projections, inhuman perfection. butthere’s a cigarette, or dope or a vibrator or a banned book and I find it as they come in. I’m adjusting my fig leaf before God. If there’s a woman she’s always sassy with the Apple or terrified hiding behind me. The days my friends invited professors to stag parties and drunken birthday parties because they were outside the hierarchy and wanted to brush shoulders with the great men and women I knew. When I had compartmentalized worlds. I still have compartmentalized worlds. Facets of the diamond. Trying always to remember which are vegans and wearying of the work of pleasing the potters.

Long ago memories and the dreams that percolate through. I wonder about the nights like that.  Old nights with too much to drink or smoke and trying to be ‘normal’ and not being ‘normal’ and wanting to sleep and being at some social event with an ex or someone else and I’m supposed to be paying attention and my eyes are spinning in my head and I can’t stay awake. I’m so tired yet I’m in a dream and I can’t fall asleep. I wake and I can’ t fall asleep.  

Somewhere there’s a psychopath passing me. I see him and know. He’s a cannibal or a pedophile or a drug pusher and he’s passing through my room. I’ve not kept the door closed tight enough to keep the devil out and he’s okay with me. I’m immune but he’s using me to get to the innoscent and naive I know. He’s just a step a head of me in the dream and I’m intent on killing him to protect the children but he always has those in government or the police that protect him and I will go to jail if I hurt him and he’s always gloating.  Psychopaths looking over their shoulders laughing at me. I’m weak. I can take him but I can’t get at him because of all his protectors in high place. And I’m being held back from killing him or me or them or something I’ve alienated. The face laughing at me on the other side of the glass.

All is God and yet I must choose. I choose the good and it’s me a hit man in my dream and some innoscent looking with dismay at the service I’ve done. I’m covered in blood. I’ve saved a life and they’ve turned away disgusted with soldiers and surgeons.  Psychotic women living delusions and lies preferring their gilded cages and masters to freedom, antiseptic lives I’m playing in dirt, walking through the wild. I’m in those places only God knows. There’s no way but through here. The manure is fertilizer for the flowers. I’m delivering babies again. It’s not pretty and yet it is. 

 I’m walking away across deserts knowing the oasis is just a little further. The demons in the forest are afraid of me. The devil only catches stragglers. The war is won.  I’m alone longer than anyone I know. I’ve held on longer. And hold on another day. Then I’m among those again with discipline.  Our eyes meet and we know. It’s old souls and baby souls and out past the wire. It’s exclusive and inclusive. We’re waiting for the last one so we can all pass together into heaven. I worry I’m holding everyone up until I know it doesn’t matter.   Uncertainty.  I’m at the cross. I’m in the glade. I’m beneath the sea. I’m gliding on the wings of a bird.  I awake with lingering dreams and every emotion.  It takes a moment to realize I’m here again. In this life. 

And I wonder what the meaning is.  Always the dark side - shame, envy, remorse, resentment, fear. And it’s not important anymore. 

God loves me. I love God.  I used to spend days and nights on my knees or sitting cross legged years of prayer and meditation. I learned to slow my heart so it was as if I was dead, breathing so long and shallow that I was near to dead. My mind lit up and the presence of God and heaven palpable. I’ve talked with Jesus. Sat with saints. Been present in the most austere moments. And loved. Angels naked in my bed, the brilliance in flesh and light. The explosions of intimacy. I’ve known bliss in his world and out of this world. Now I’m just here. Mostly raising a puppy. Cleaning up his poop and pee and realizing that critics don’t know blood. They’ve lived pristine lives in little square and cubicles and are afraid. Who am I to judge. Live and let live.   It’s okay to be afraid. Existential angst. But Jesus did say , do not be afraid. There’s a main stream. I’m an outlier. I’m a guide or scout on the edge, riding point. The natives are mostly friendly.

There’s a place in my dreams where there a boat and a great sprawling luxury apartment complex. There’s a place where mothers sit at tables and drink tea and I’m a little boy crawling at their feat. There are white water rapids which I’m body surfing. There are intimate conversations with classical guitars and violins.  I’m with friends and we’re drinking coffee. The aromas of incense are in the air. A cello and a saxophone are being played. Ballet is danced. I’m in the embrace of the most beautiful and she is smiling and we Viennese waltz in clouds. The sun is rising with pink colours over a delicious rocky coast. 

I’m lost in some dreams, trying to find the way out of maizes encountering others desperate while I’m just plodding along, no longer afraid, just tired.  The journey seems forever then I remember to look at the details and it’s no longer about the arrival but about the journey.  

Sometimes my insides are not in my body but leaking out of me and I’m trying to put them back knowing it’s futile and letting myself slip into the horror passing through to another room.  Lucid dreaming, catching the fear, riding it like a wave. Adjusting the sails, praying for fair winds and following seas.  The lesson only seems to be .’this too will pass’. Walking in the fragrance of roses and gardens that go on for ever. The Holy Spirit and a princess.  I’m naming things.  Laughter in the sunlight.

Then I’m in poo and piss and blood and I can’t hold onto the tissue that keeps slipping from my fingers and there’s an artery spraying blood on my glasses blinding my eyes. The nurse is helping in one dream and in another she’s screaming like the Scream in horror and I’m alone without another pair of hands and the patient is awake and dying.  I’m unable to save every life and they come and go. I’m facing failures rarely but they’re all I think about. The successes are so easily forgotten. The comedy routine where they all don’t laugh. I m back on stage forgetting my lines. Then I’m in the embrace of a goddess whose name I’ve forgotten but I’m on that peninsula, my little bit of heaven where it’s safe and there are great white table  meals, like a five star hotel, and it’s clean.

I like that it’s clean.  I like fresh clothes. I’m in a rocket ship going from galaxy to galaxy and I love the view and I love the clean  clothes but  the air isn’t as fresh as the air by the mountain streams.  I’m climbing in the woods. Dogs are with me. Sometimes a cat. Mostly there are the occasional strangers.  I’m mostly alone and they’re passing happier somehow and I’m an outsider.

It’s after a major catastrophe and there are huge snakes underground and the avalanche has happened. Tectonic shifts of plates and whole cities have disappeared. I’m back watching the volcanic lava burning away everything in its path. I see the two drunken doctors ride by in their side car motorcycle. I’m admiring their insanity and joie to vie. I’m thinking and observing too much, trying to carefully get out of the mud, away from the crocodiles, snakes and predators, escaping to where I don’t know. I’m going one dream at a time.

Waking sometimes. Curious. Wondering what the hell was that about. It’s a long time now since the nightmares.  She says I don’t scream in my sleep any more. The feel of dead bodies doesn’t alarm me anymore.  I’m okay with that. I’m no longer grilled in the court house by the stupid shrill little girl with her memory books and pretty notes asking me detail of a far too different past. I’ve been there and I’m always reporting back to these people who fear reality and use me as a buffer but abuse me to cover their fear and stupidity. Hothouse plant girls and boys.  Monday morning quarterbacks.

I’m no longer fighting gangs of men in 10s and 20’s doing the bully pile on and feeling good about themselves. I’m not playing golf with the guy who pulls out a gun and shoots me because he doesn’t like my perfect shot. I don’t have these betrayals or stupid authorities or spiders . I’m shooting monsters with ray guns and hand guns. I’m piloting rocket ships. I have my own flitter and amphibious hovercraft. . I’m swimming under water with gils. 

It’s safer today. The sad dreams are like an old wound healed but with the poop and pustulence still oozing occasionally. I  carry on. This too will pass.  I know not to cling to the good. I look past the bad.  I sail from place to place. I’m unhappy with the poop, and piss and puss,  but it’s okay.  The blue skies, sunshine and starlets, puppies and kittens all reappear and I’m walking through green fields with a stave and good shoes.  This too will pass.  I’m learning. If only I can remember its an adventure. So much is perception. Practicing the presence.

Morning Thursday

Madigan walk was very pleasant today. I saw a buffle duck on the river. The cedar and fir was greener with spring. The air was fresh. Blue sky and sunshine. A robin stood on a bush near the path chirping. Madigan pooped. 

Then he was keen to get back to Laura whose been off work this week and staying with us. She spoils him with treats.  I’m happy with the company. 

I thought this is the first day of a new year. My birthday was full of greetings and I was thankful for the people I know. I feel isolated then realize I’m part of a community despite lockdown.  I found myself thinking of travel. Wanting to return to Ireland, Italy, Ethiopia, Israel, St. Petersburg, Turkey. I even thought I’d like to go to Paris for the Louvre. I was there once but didn’t want to wait in line so instead went to the Eiffel Tower. Now I love Museums and art galleries and long to return to New York to see the Klimt again.  I just loved the Winter Palace and the Rembrandt.  

The lockdowns and the restrictions on travel have had me desiring that which I almost took for granted.  The limitation on travel was money and desire. Mostly I like to go camping. I’ve invested a fortune to live like a homeless person.  This year a new quad and a new puppy are the exciting draw.

I talked with a beautiful young Chinese girl who had graduated her Bachelors in Travel and Hotel. 

« Like getting a Water assessment degree in the middle of a desert, » I said. 

She sadly said, ‘yes, that’ why I’m still working at the market.’  

‘Things are opening up, » I said. « Cruise ships booking.  Taiwan restoring business travel.  Texas and Mississippi dropping restrictions.  Your degree will land you a great job.Soon everyone will be wanting to travel this year and next. I wanted to go to Aberdeen this year and had to cancel conferences. Laura and I would love to go to Venice. »

 She laughed.  Hopeful.

So many young people hit by lay offs and the economy set back. Trudeau completely self absorbed and irresponsibly not ensuring vaccines in a timely way.  We’re 6 months behind in getting vaccines.  Our economy is staggering under the stupidity of Trudeau while thankful Mr. Horgan and Mr. Dix locally have been doing a magnificent job despite the national failure.

I’m hoping the churches will open. I did enjoy the judge saying he couldn’t comprehend how Dr. Bonnie Henry could think an hour or two in the pub watching a game and having a couple of pints was any more safe than attending communion. He’s right. She’s wrong. This whole covid debacle politically has been a communist religion of aetheism attack on Christians and Buddhists and Jews and Hindus.  Sex stores , pot shops, gambling vendors and booze services are all open and called ‘essential’ but place of faith are closed. That’s communist thinking. Communism is the religion of aetheism.  I’m a theist. I believe in God. L’Chaim. Life is good. The good is God . 

Communism worships the STATE.  There is no truth in Satan. There is no truth in addiction. The multicultural postmodern world is a subjective state of power. Truth  is subsumed by the bully.  I like truth.  I like love and compassion. I don’t like drugs and booze.  

I’m blessed to have a home, indoor plumbing, electricity, running water, hot and cold. I rode the Vespa to get the mail yesterday and to drop off letters for the clinics and pharmacists.  It’s a joy to be able to ride a motorcycle all year. I think of the east and wonder about losing that.  I wouldn’t mind ski doing again though. I like vehicles. I’m probably a kid that way. Cycling was my joy as a child and to this day I love wheels.

Motion. 

I mediated this morning. It was good. Seeking God within.  Holy Spirit come.  

Madigan takes my sitting on the floor as his que to get a back rub. Before I can do exercises I have to thoroughly pet him. What a little cuddle bug! He sleeps in the bed beside me or between Laura and I or by her. It’s like he apportions the night to get a share of us all.  

Thank you Jesus for this day. Thank you for all your blessings.

Pictures taken with my iphone

Sexy Birthday

Another day. An arbitrary break in the year. The tedium of lockdown broken by an uncelebrated event of monumentous personal relevance. I never expected to live past 30. I’ve died a hundred deaths in car crashes, truck crashes, motorcycle crashes, plane crashes, shot at, stabbed, taken hostage, threatened, in hurricanes and charged by bear and moose. It’s a miracle I’m alive. There really are no aetheists at sea. Only liars.

I was reminded of a celebration at Joe Fortes, a grand feast five years ago. I look forward to the listing of the Covid Lockdown restrictions so we can gather for another. I’ve asked, Laura who wished me happy birthday this morning with a kiss to remind me this summer.  Lockdowns are being dropped in Texas and Mississippi.  Business flights are being restored in Taiwan.  Germany is opening the economy. Trudeau dropped the ball again and the vaccination roll out is 6 months and billions of dollars of waste behind schedule.  Ask that man to take a poo and he couldn’t find his ass. I suspect that if we could get his urine and filter his pea we would have a new drug supply that would compete with the already famous BC Bud. Call it Trudeau Blanto.  Dementia where natural or drug induced seems to be the favoured political fashion today.  

I’m thankful for Madigan.  He took Laura’s morning kiss as indication for a dog pile. We instantly had squirmy puppy body and dog tongue all over our heads and faces. If we hug he’s right in the middle.  Nice being part of a puppy’s family.

I am humbled by the kindness of friends wishing me happy birthday, Cards from family.  A very thoughtful card from the Cappadoecia folk , Kharlik Evi family, I toured with when I pilgrimaged alone to visit the underground churches and see the magnificent ancient land of central Turkey.  Extraordinary trip that makes me so wanting to travel again. I would love to take Laura to Ethiopia or Turkey to see the wonders I saw. She’d like to go back to Ireland and New York with me, destinations made memorable by her company.  I have a boat in Ontario I must make a decision about. I don’t imagine I’ll sail solo across the Atlantic as I’d planned. Maybe I should. I have aches and pains on land that make me feel the gravity of aging whereas in the constant dynamic world of sailing I might have less pain. A smaller sailboat perhaps. I can’t imagine having the strength and speed to raise and lower sails in the blows that I encountered solo sailing in the past.  I much prefer my camper. I’m so looking forward to our planned quad camping adventure in the Okanagan this spring. BC is God’s country and I love every time I leave the city and enter the glory of this province.

Thank you God for this year. We were in India last year and I enjoyed seeing the family in Hay Bay. I was so sick with the flu, that now we think may have been Covid, as I couldn’t breathe and thought I’d die, a week off work and slow recovery. Unlike any flue I’d had. Then the March birthday a year ago in the midst of Covid. My returning home to a virtual practice. Rolling Stone song, Living in a Ghost Town. Walks with old blind cockapoo, Gilbert. The Nikon Coolpix P1000 for bird pictures. Discussion with my cinematography astronomer nephew Graeme.  Andrew and Tanya’s Finn. Another on the way. Great conversations with Adell.  So Thankful that Alan and Meagan returned hom.e The increasing epidemic of mental health. Calls to police to prevent my patients from killing themselves. The heroic and kind service of the New Westminister and Burnaby police. Laura and I apart for weeks at a time. My enjoyment of cross dressing and buying shifts and kaftans on Amazon.  Dress up and barbecues. My neighbours non pluses.  Late night photographs with the night vision SiOnyx of the moon and stars.  Writing and reading. I read endless westerns, detective novels and thrillers watching whole series on Netflix and revisiting all the old Star Trek.  After work looking forward to Captain Kirk. Then Madigan came along. What a blessing. I didn’t do well after Gilbert died in his sleep, his valvular heart disease catching up on him. A good life , hunting, sailing, camping, riding on motorcycles and quads. The great trip to California in the racing green Mini I traded the Mazda in for so he and Laura would have room for the trip. He stretched out on the seat folded down. Now Madigan, a blessing from the land of chinooks when all the breeders were sold out for a year, Van Dekker from Southern Alberta. What a lovely young woman!. What a great little pup. He’s destroyed blankets, shoes, computer cable and chewed the corners of my camel hair carpet but remains alive despite my desire to kill the little monster when I find another piddle place or step on poop. We walked this morning and he peed and pooped outside. 95% good now. And more cuddles than destruction and a source of entertainment and a walker. I’ve barely resisted the widening known as Covid. Horizontal rather than vertical growth. Madigan’s walking me has taken over from the personal training of Gilbert. Life goes on.

There’s a Tedium. Now music≥ No church. No concerts. No ballet. No symphony.  TV. Walks. I’ve the guitar out to play but I am exhausted by virtual work.  Now I’ve a vaccine and the world is wakening with spring and the end of lockdown. The Trump election loss was sad given the rise of communist china and the megalomania of the Davos 2030 and UN Agenda 21 tyranny and communism. I’d so hoped Trump with the initiation of anti trust laws again big tech and big social media and standing up to Communism would stop the descent into the godless darkness that comes with the murderous psychopaths that rule these countries. Democracy and freedom are such hot house plants. Very little remains and Canada under the evil Trudeau stupidity has descended into Communist hell.  Such sadness politically, watching freedom go as the Criminal gangs of Quebec and Islam and Communism rule.  Alberta is attacked. Western Canada is a colony. Taxes, taxes, more taxes and now inflation. All for gender clinics in Pakistan and money Trudeau gives to other countries illegal aliens and terrorists. 10 million dollars to a terrorist who kill an American soldier who saved children’s lives. We are so far from the days of Canada the good.  

I pray more and meditate. The routine each morning.  Walking the dog, prayer and meditation then a day in front of the screen or on the phone and exhausted a t night ready for food and tv. The event is a drive through MacDonald’s meal. Madigan likes that.  Now Laura’s over and we get White Spots or have a pizza. There’s been fine roasts and barbecue.

It’s another year. I’m still in my 60’s.  I paid off my truck. I liked that. I’d thought it would take till 70 but last year I paid it off.  I’m thankful for work and the monthly ability to pay the mortgage payment. We’re all indentured servants. Costs of houses beyond the middle class in Vancouver. I now understand my father ‘s pride in owning his home. Canadians lease everything from the government who owns everything.  There’s such insecurity compared to the world of my youth.  A few elite own and control the world. 

The middle class is being squished down.  

I’m okay. I think and feel like all the aging people before me. Never one to be concerned about security I find myself ‘worrying’ about the future in a way I remember my parents and uncles and aunts did and patient s in the 70’s and 80’s. The seniors were devastated by the TRudeau government. Covid exposed the abuses and terrible conditions in the old folk homes.  We’d seen them working in the field but people didn’t know how Trudeau ‘s MAID euthanasia program showed the coal of the government heart. Now all years we’ve heard of seniors deaths . Thank God our local Government, Mr. Horgan and Mr Dix with the early wisdom of Dr. Bonny Henry mitigated against the errors of Trudeau and Tam and Fauci. Thank God we didn’t have the Gov. Cuomo , the nursing home killer. Instead Dr. Henry did as Taiwan did, caring for the elderly as best we can despite the failure of national government to fund the health care system but instead abusing it. 

Now I’m looking forward to being social again.  90%  success with first Pfizer vaccine.  Another due next month but the psychosomatic response is enough.

I’m another year old. I’ve survived the year of Covid. Trump kept the world from war. Now we have Biden bombing the Middle East and Xi Jinping muscling in to take over a third of the world’s shipping lanes in the China sea. So far the American and British Navy had stood strong against the Hitler like communists.  India is standing strong too. Thailand and Australia and Japan have all stood up to the offences of China and it’s release or loss of the Wuhan Virus that caused so much world suffering.  The country owes a trillion in reparations for their irresponsible handling of a world crisis. We make companies pay for oil spills.  

I’m thankful for the year. I’m thankful to have been with Gilbert his final months. I’m so thankful to have Madigan as a company and friends like Laura and others. I was so sad to lose John, a Christian saint who was persecuted to the end by the demonic who will go to hell for their false allegations and great lucrative offence. It was a scene out of Zorba the Greek. Disgusting uncivilized people who don’t know who to wipe their own butts and eat where they pee. The greatest man, a hero , who in a better age and country would be celebrated for his genius and contributions to the world is crucified by pigs.  I cried.  I have lost George and John and friends like that don’t happen over night. My friend Tom disappeared in his mind too , older friends wandering off.  I’m thankful that I have friends. Relationships are the colour in the world.  I am blessed.  It’s been hard this isolation but there’s definitely a Howard Hughes element in my soul. I spend so much time solo sailing and wilderness camping hunting and fishing alone. I’m not the social butterfly I was when I was young. The trauma of the last years in Winnipeg destroyed that joie de vivie in company. I’m more likely to sit with my back to the wall today. I’m sad that betrayal is done by friends and the government has repeatedly failed the good. Siding with the criminals time and again.  Drunken drug addicted bosses. 21 years clean and sober I’ve loved being a member of the Anonymous group. I’m blessed and thankful. Life on life’s terms. As CS Lewis said, Stop looking for the architect in the wall. I’ve had the experience of being surprised by joy.  It’s different. I don’t wear the uniform of the religious or worldly. I’m different and peculiar. I don’t march in goose step and yet I’m like the scout in the militia. One step a head of the crowd, you’re a leader. Two steps a head of the crowd you’re a martyr. I’m somewhere in between. What Gadwell calls the ‘outlier’.  Now I’m older I’m finding the other seniors, survivors and retired often share in the insaneity of perspective.  There’s less to lose when one is old. 

I’m thankful. Thank you Jesus. Thank you God. Thank you family and friends. Thank you animals and birds and plants. Thanks for the air and the colours. Thank you for NASA and Space X . Thank you Canada. Thank you for my native friends. Thanks for the Urban Aboriginal Society. Thank you Royal College. Thank you Guild.  Thank you all for this day,.  Thank you.  

Picture of a wood duck taken quickly this morning walking Madigan. I love that the bird are returning after so many leaving over winter. I love the buds on the tree and look forward to the crocus and tulips that will soon appear. Spring has sprung.  March is when I can get the Harley out but right now I’m still enjoying the Vespa I’ve ridden all year around the city,.  

Old blind Gilbert weeks before he died in his sleep

.
5 month old Madigan.

Lockdowns, Masks and Vaccines

Lockdowns and masks and social distancing continue. I remember when Covid began and Rollings Stones put out the song, “Living in a Ghost Town.”  It’s much better now. Lots of breakthroughs in treatment.  We’re in the so called 3rd wave with ripples likely to continue. The first was was about the lack of resources in health care caused by the failure of Canada to fund the health care system.  Trudeau has been stealing taxes for pet projects and the cost is in the lockdowns, vaccine delays and massive national government mismanagement. Mostly the provinces have been trying to mitigate the catastrophes created by Ottawa.  

I have my Psiezer Vaccine.  I feel further ahead. 90% efficacy keeping one out of hospital.  The Cochran’s reviews still question hydroxychloroquine but not it’s potential for prevention. I was interested in the selection of studies too which leave Cochrane studies open for selection bias.  No comment on the false data base in the Lancet reviews so still political. There is hope.  I just don’t like the politics of church closure and draconian government control of individuals based on at best pseudoscience regarding politically biased lockdowns. The economics continue to show that Communist China is benefitting from a virus that spilled from the Wuhan Labs.  When will they pay the billions in reparations they owe the world. 

I like the sun.  I like the blue sky. I’m thankful for each day. I feel grateful that I’m not falling behind whatever that means but I’m not going forward either. I’m holding my own.  I’m working twice as hard to get less done. There’s despair in the air. Daily I hear and see the sadness, anger, boredom and futility.  I carry on. I pray for relief.  I look forward to camping.  Camping is my personal antidote. I know there are those who look forward to dance and music concerts. Perhaps this summer there will be outdoor concerts. I look forward to meetings and church.  

I enjoyed my monthly doctors meeting on zoom.  

Laura is over this week, working from home, her boss away from the office.  It’s been good to have company.

I’ve enjoyed talking with Raju in Calgary.  

I loved hearing from Andrew that Tanya is pregnant and another nephew is en route.  Allan and Graeme are well. Meghan’s well. All is good. Laura and I are happy that families are healthy.  The bar of expectation is lowered.

Madigan is making puppy steps forward. Pooping outdoors is a celebration for us. More pees and more poops outdoors. The right direction. 

I’ve been barbecueing and making roasts. I got a baby fryer and have had the pleasure of making fries. Yesterday I brought home White Spot halibut and fries a change from the routine.

Each day I walk Madigan along the river trail.  I do the runs to the post office on the Vespa.  

Time to settle in for work.  Video is fine but the phone calls are wearing. 

Thank you Christ for salvation.  Thank you God for the light.