Wednesday, Summer work day

I’m full of gratitude. I woke to my little dog, Madigan, keen to see me get up.  He loves when I dress, get the leash and take him for a walk. He actually walks me. His little soldier like body marching off to the woods.  Today he pooped early.  Some days I walk a mile or more and then return and he just doesn’t need to go. It’s been weeks since he used a pee pad inside. I’m good at remembering to walk him morning and night and sometimes even a few times during the day. We go out to the back yard so there’s no issue of pee time. Yet to date he hasn’t gone to the door and let me know he wants out. That will come later.

He’s entered his ‘humper’ phase. I’m discouraging that. Gilbert had that for a bout 6 months.  The chewing is much less. He still chews on the second throw in the living room. I think it’s because crumbs fall on it and that gets him started.  I’m at least not having to deal with attack on the stuffed comforter, his Big Bird, I killed Big Bird moment, with Doun feathers all over the bedroom.

Thank you God for my bed. I loved my dreams last night.  Childhood friends.  Women I’d known. All just hanging out in the conference. Old teachers.  The big meeting in the sky.  I talked with a high school friends, both of us commenting on the view, the water and forest.  These dreams of this big mansion with many rooms and people flowing about has been recurrent in Covid. I’ve been so alone.  All those years in university and hospital and theatres and dances, then the libraries and offices. I would be surrounded by people but in my own space. Ultimately I was alone 25 days at sea and even now I live with neighbours but rarely am actually in contact with more than two or three at a time. When I go to the clinic its busy with people. The first night at the men’s meeting I saw those around me as 2 d zoom people and it took a while to see them in 3 d space.  

I like FB where people are socializing again. I was so uplifted during lockdown ,listening to despair all day, by the dance routines of the Guppie girls and the music some families put together, seeing pictures of children playing, mostly dogs being dogs. It was a positive distraction.

I think of retirement a lot.  It’s only this last year with so little alternative to listening to pain and hearing the bitterness and remorse.  Meanwhile my boss, the ultimate person who signs the Canadian cheques was an utter total fuck up looking more stoned than my patients and speaking like the psychopaths I used to visit in jail, a truly bad actor. Locally they were fine but the whole Covid vaccination emergency crisis, lockdown and cronyism and political wrangling over which business stayed open, the attack on churches, the decision that there was a ‘good riot and take over of government’ if it was Democrat -so 2 weeks of destruction and Chaz , called the peaceful demonstration, with AK47’s, while the Capitol Hill looking orchestrated debacle not unlike 9-11 where the skies were empty of planes, where were the guards and police and soldiers. It’s total negligence and gaslighting and all this media propaganda.  I had that and daily talked to people isolated.  

I’m gone camping. This last weekend with Madigan alone was uplifting. I find that in the forest I recharge my battery but I’ve been so longing to be in a sailboat again. Made plans to look at one. The Macgregors are calling but so is the Hunter 27.  Trailerable boats which I could take out of the water and store on land without the lift costs and hassle. I may just have to rent one for the feeling. Like horseback riding. I would love to go on a trail ride again, just to enjuoy the motion.

I have to take the truck in Friday and and am trying to arrange a chiropractor visit. Chronic pain sucks.  The hot tub was my solace but now it’s a hassle to sign in and make sure no one else is using the pool.  

Nothing stops me from driving over to the beach. I loved taking Madigan on the back of the Harley to Docside yesterday. He did really well after a weekend on the back of the ATV.  

It’s glorious this sunshine even if the heat inside is stifling but late after noon and it’s hard to see the last patient or do anything after the last patient It’s 80 and 90 degrees inside. I have to get someone to check the air conditioning but by the time I get to it the hot spell will be over. A maintenance task I can do some time.

I have to call the Flight Centre again. Meagan and Allan’s wedding invitation came yesterday.  

Graeme may have surgery booked this month.

I think of taking a few months to drive about in the back woods with a camper and a Vespa and a dinghy . I really would like that. I would like to shoot a deer this year and have venison stew all winter.  I miss upper class living and feel like I’ve descended to the peasant life style.  There is so much holy in the bird and game I shoot and I know the difference even though I barbecue a lot of fine meat. It’s just not sacred and it’s what peasants. I guess it’s that lingering old warrior theme.  I loved watching the Queen and family shooting pheasants and grouse in the highlands. I loved all the salmon I caught at sea. I’ve been among the people propagandize by tv who like restaurant food and fast food but don’t know the holy.  I feel like a vampire who has been sustained on plasma.  I long to catch a fish or shoot a bird and enjoy the unhandled gift.  

I’m trying to keep my Christmas cactus alive and it’s doing okay but I miss my herb gardens and tomato’s. I really must grow more.  

I also dream of driving about the US visiting old sites but cross dressed in the sense of ‘black like me’.  Transgender like me, watching the different reactions seeing the novelty in the encounter. I’m that ‘competeent’ man who meets the other ‘competent’ men whereeer I go. But I was telling a friend the other day out I miss the arts and the somewhat frivolous world. Women imitate men and call it ‘feminism’.   I can’t have children but all the women I know who are not mothers are entertaining.  They simply can’t collectively compete …there are exceptions obviously….I know women who hunt and fish and sail and build but they remain exceptions.  They’re also mothers and usually in the country.  I imagine the idea of wearing white pants and a white jacket, my dream of sailing, which for 20 years was cut off shorts , grease and oil and sweat over everything.  So I think of trying again driving a truck and trailer about the US visiting museums or civil war sites.  I’d just like to not feel the need to offer a hand as a I did this week helping another man with his truck.  I see that women help each other with children and with household ‘pink’ tasks but again rarely are there for the ‘dirty’ and ‘hard’ tasks of fixing car engines, changing tires. I’ve done that a hundred times on the side of a road and all those times there has never been a woman who actually got her hands dirty.

I’m envious. I said it all when I wrote about being a ‘princesss for a day’..  I want to treat myself like a porcelain doll then claim I’ve been abused and tell everyone what a victim I am.

I think it’s identification with the aggressor or imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. When I get my nails done I don’t like to risk breaking them so I hold myself aloof . On the weekend I broke two nails . Wrestling with machinery.  

I have paid my dues. I’ve done the heavy lifting and taken the merciless knocks.  Yet I will never forget the coastal sailors wanting to tell us offshore sailors how to sail and how the coastal sailors always demanded the limelight and want to have all the attention and tell everyone about their sailing trip.

I love d watching Virgin Galactic space fight and there was Richard.

I’m tired of working 3 jobs and hearing those working half a job complaining and insisting they are doing ‘as much work’ .  They never see that the difference is in the focus, activity and a life long persistence.  I really do know a lot of people who refuse to take direction and want to ‘do it my way’.  They want to lead but they can’t follow and they are full of anger and rage and opposition if they are encouraged to ‘follow’.  

I wish there was universal conscription for a year as I think people might then have this capacity. But I’ve done my time and increasingly I see utter flakes in government demanding that we follow in old age and seniors all over are working while immigrants have their wives working and having kids and their kids are supporting the seniors who are living off my taxes and I feel frustrated.

Self pity haunts me and I have so much to be grateful for. Compare and despair. Thank you for Madigan, this home, the vehicles and camper and such good people to work with and work that serves in the Buddhist tradition of right livelihood.  I am so thankful for the air, the colours, this day, this life, waking in the wonder of a forest and stream near by, neighbours and friends who are good and kind.  Safe environment.  

I have to decide. And focus on what I’m going to prioritize.  This year it’s Camper and ATV and dinghy.  I am sorely tempted with distraction of another sailboat but I really ought to sell my sailboat for a smaller one or get off the pot and sail my boat to Ireland.  

If my back didn’t hurt and I thought i could handle lifting the sails and facing another trying adventure maybe, but when I think of the pain I would rather play it safe. I’m getting old.  Yet there I was on the weekend in the wilderness with an ATV careening about the logging roads on a mountain.  At least I had a satellite phone.  

I don’t feel appreciated. The age of deference is gone.  There is a great emptiness today given that the Omar Khardr’s are given 10 million after killing the soldiers of allies.  Free money to drug addicts and slackards.  I was brought up well. I was ‘reward’ , money was given for work and school.  So yes given drug addicts ‘treatment’ but not an industry of free drugs unless it’s in an institution. Yes we need asylums and yes we need treatment centres and retreats but no more criminality.  The city should not be a ghetto down town.  Move that to the outskirts.  There’s something to be said for the ‘gulags’ only that institutions should be on the outskirts of town, in the less desirable places. Now the government has all the most desirable real estate and I feel afraid to go down town yet pay the heavy taxes for the privilege of this downtown.  

Or well there goest hat brain defect. Criticism and complaining and the rabbit hole of ‘if I was king’ …..acceptance…..what about ‘attitude of gratitude’. Serenity prayer and looking within rather than changing without.  Know God.  Prayer and meditation. More exercise.  Less couch connoisseur and critic.  

Thank you Jesus.