South to the Sun, Half Moon Bay, Day 5, 8 am

I woke at 4 am. I let Madigan out to pee.  The sky was clear and Orion stars were dazzling.,  Lovely southern night.  I saw one trailer leaving and thought about it.  LA is 6 hours and I’m only planning on going half way today possibly SAN Luis Obispo, I climbed back into the camper bed above the roof of the Ford truck.  I’m glad I did.

I woke when the lights came on from a wonderful dream. I was with a group of colleagues and felt very much a part of.  They were showing me their clinic and inviting me to join them. It was all in one building and there were at least a half dozen or more, some of who I knew and liked.  There was even a psychiatrist in a white walled office wearing white starched shirt with cuffed sleeves inviting a young couple into what was clearly a psychoanalytic psychotherapy room.  I enjoyed it all.  

There was a bit though which is a mystery. They wanted me to take an injection like a vaccine.  I did but it seemed I had to have this ‘mark’ or injection to be apart of this group. I have felt the outsider so long and remembered when another psychiatrist wanted me to take a drug to join his group.  It wasn’t ominous and I liked them all. They had wives and children and houses and were regular sorts.  Guys I admired.  

Yet I also saw the Matthew 8:20 on the wall of Jim Houston’s office, “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests , but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

I thought to of the annual artist show called the “outsider festival’. The artist as outsider but reading history I know that the Impressionists I love were mostly friends but not part of the establishment of the day.  Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were part of the guild and yet went to Florence and Milan and Rome , places away from their homes.

I liked the dream though.  Nothing scares. I liked reading last night that Elon Musk said he was a 3000 year old alien searching for his home. He was obviously being humorous but I can relate.  He was joking about insomnia perhaps which I’ve had at times this year.  People describe happiness and I’ve had that feeling recently but more contentment I’m on an adventure and driving at times is high stress just as sailing was associated with a lot of adrenaline experiences,  I appreciate that many don’t embrace the challenges and perhaps know more serenity. I believe that emotions are contrasting and you can’t experience true joy without having known great sadness.  So many leads ‘lives of quiet desperation’ and I have known that too,

I have been so poor for days I’ve not had food.  Like a beggar I’ve depended on hand outs.  Leaving my parents home was a Prodigal son event as was coming home and being welcomed back by my mmother and brother and tentatively by my father.  Then I trusted musician friends and was betrayed. Later I’d be a dancer and have steady income. I really was rich in love.  Me and Bobby McGee described my life back then, the hitchhiking hippie married and in love working kitchens to pay for lessons and a bicycle. Bicycling across Europe to Morocco and having to borrow money to survive that first month in London.  I felt confident then.   I felt safe in the love of parents and being supported by a rich country I was so proud of.  Being Canadian was truly something after WWII and the sacrifice of the soldiers.  Our life in Canada was such a contrast to Europeans. In England they had just stopped some kinds of rationing when we were there.  

Then I was frugal doing university with just enough money to live but I had a students bachelor near the university and all I wanted to do was study. I lived in the library and was rich in books. I was meditating and praying and not long after fell in love again.  We were like our friends buying houses and working two jobs.  It was passed the time when in first year I gave blood to buy a stethoscope.  I was going somewhere. A yuppie. Young upwardly mobile professional.  I was climbing the mountain, rich in purpose and again in love,

The next divorce was a set back but not the personal betrayal or the anxiety or the alcohol and marijuana. I was drinking and smoking weed not so much for fun as to escape. I was deeply depressed with my life.  I had given up my dreams for marriage, left country and northern practice and gone into psychiatry to live in the city with her and now I didn’t know what to do. I did my American exams , had a girlfriend and thought of that life but returned to Canada and emergency work.  I really was picking up the pieces and all those other cliches.  The nurse I was with turned out to do coke. I escape to the country and was fine smoking dope but paranoid of my colleague who turned out to be a scoundrel. I only learned this from his previous associates who he stabbed in the back.  Sexually I was fucked.  I was haunted by my past.  I’d had such good times and couldn’t get over the feeling of being victimized and taken advantage of. I asked my self would I ever do that to someone struggling and realized I wouldn’t.  

 I was married again. I felt rich when I met her, psychologically troubled but thousands in the bank ,no debts, all I needed and was happy with my new Vanagon.  Truly a step up from the VW bug I’d had at the end of my last marriage.  I’d traded the Mustang I had and loved for this character car and the money to carry on,  For the next 10 years I was working and sailing, living in the country in a homestead for a couple o years having a truly incredible clinic and practice but again with the sick wife.  I ‘d gone through the death of one mother in law and now faced another sick and dying and the depressed and angry daughter.    I was always alone waiting for her to come home assuming affairs and worried about the coke again. I was drinking wine and smoking dope but everything was regular. I was enjoying the country practice and colleagues again.  But it crashed.  Her mother’s death and her lack of practice and ‘I never wanted to be in the country I only came till you got it out of your system’.  All her friends laughed and said ‘we all knew she was a Shaugnassey girl’

I returned to live on the boat. She could do her thing and I would work and train asa off shore sea captain, The renanisance man.  Maybe I’d escape to sea.  I eventually did but never felt poor all those years working and supporting here and feeling that I had what I needed and money was being spent on fixing up a house or outfitting a boat but that was it.  The women only made half what I did but paid their own way though in all those years I paid the lions’s share but didn’t care because I had money to pay for roofs and /or hull paint and workers who worked with me.  

I was only poor again when I invested everything into a new practice and she again didn’t show up for work and stayed in bed and wouldn’t come out of her room.  I remember saying, I can go to work and care for a thousand depressed people and come hone but i can’t come home and care for you as well, “ I was seeing a therapist and she refused to . Her drinking and drugging and the cocaine were all worse but I was seeing the therapist and telling him the truth and he was very concerned about her cocaine, not the wine, not the pot but ‘I’ve known too many people who have lost their lives to cocaine,’. So we sent her off to see. Her family and get therapy in Southern California with family.  

Another divorce.  I was poor then. I’d gone to stay at friends, the old gang who smoked dope and drank beer, guys I hunted with, we rode off road bikes, they made whiskey in the woods.  I didn’t know that cocaine had got to them. I didn’t like cocaine.  It gave me coke jaw and made me ill. I joked with a family physician friend whop felt the same. “I get enough stimulation assisting surgery, the last thing I need is something to get me wired”.  I felt the same. I liked a glass of wine and a joint and wine.  The Irish doctors I worked with liked to drink but didn’t smoke dope. I couldn’t do both and preferred the mellow of marijuania but it made me more asocial.  

I was really poor when my friends again stole and the ex wracked up debts and I later learned was a multi millionaire and we lived off all my money but she never touch he ‘stash’ while I was wiped out just trying to get through the divorce and keep my boat but she was playing lawyer games , not showing and waiting me out, the seige game.  I couldn’t work either.  A psychiatrist with a broke heart is like a surgeon with broken fingers . I took a Hippocrates oath. I didn’t work when I might hurt someone.  I was not able to make money. I lived off my RRSP’s.  I cashed in my pension. When I finally went to welfare the lady said I couldn’t have any money  She shouted me out of the office and shamed me.  Thankfully I had years before taken out practice insurance, from my very first private practice and thereafter with the help of my private insurance broker was supported. I had not money from the Doctors union because they paid based on last year of earning and I’d been sailing.  Welfare had been the only solution but then someone suggested I contact my insurance company. I’d been staying at a friends and working for him doing construction. I clean septic systems for old people.  It was a bottom I’d later laugh. I was going to church and seeing Willie Gutowski a Christian psychiatrist and chaplain I admired.  I was clean and sober months having decided that I’d drunk after my second divorce and now with this third one I needed all my wits about me because I’d trusted friends who in their cocaine addiction stolen tens of thousands of my dollars from RRSP’s.  It was a thing they were doing at the time. Inviting people to stay with them then kicking them out and stealing all their stuff.  I was told by an associate they were glad I’d got out with my clothes.  For months after they tried to extort more money and threatened to kill me.  I actually thought these were the friends and there was the X wife and I was smoking dope and drinking and my judgment was obviously totally off. I couldn’t afford to drink. I went back to church where I’d felt safe and my mother and father had taken me.  

I was finally able to face the anal pain and shame and unhealed tear and hemorrhoids and had surgery. the pain was excruciating and I was up all night and didn’t take anything . I had God and I could suicidal but I wasn’t going to . I was going through the pain with God and I was admitted to hospital and was in pain and couldn’t shit because of the pain and had the worst medical care I could have known.  Third world.  Not even sits bath,  The psychiatrist may as well have been a psychologists and the nurses counsellor because they just gave me meds that worsened the constipation and worsened the pain but I wasn’t a Christian and this was shame and pain and I had a gay man in the bed beside me and the psychiatrist like the one I was seeing was saying I could drink again and didn’t need to abstain

I had gone back to church and was seeing Willie and was approached by Doug who introduced me to Willie.  I hadn’t been drinking or smoking dope months by then and was glad to know these two but I literally felt safest with Jesus and at church.  I only trusted my Christian lawyer and she got back my boat leaving many many millions for an old steel hull I’d lived on and worked on and wanted to sail across an ocean on because that was the goal before she went insane. Of course when you are insane you think everyone else is insane.  

I was living on carrots then and couldn’t afford meat, back to life as a student when I saved and scrounged but didn’t feel poor, I enjoyed most the invitations out for dinner with friends. I loved the home cooking of women.  I was very poor and didn’t know what I would do.  It was only the ex trying to sell my boat having taken it across border and broken international laws to get it to where she was selling it to a friend out of spite along with all the other things she was doing to hurt me when I’d never wanted to hurt her but did everything I could to help her pass her exams to work and live but I did’t want her doing drugs. I was shocked when I told her psycvhiatrist all I wanted was for her to not do cocaine and drink and drug and go to AA. He said ‘women don’t go to AA’.  I was late to have him be chosen as the speaker at a recovery conference I attended where he was thought the authority on addiction.  So many atheists were jumping on the ship that was floated by the spiritual.  The abstinent had money and the whole community and even religious communities hustled the recovered but said no to ‘spirituality’.  So often people would say I’d not go to AA because of the ‘god stuff’.  Yet they wouldn’t acknowledge that addiction was their religious and the religions like Catholicism wouldn’t have AA because it wasn’t god enough or their god.  The only requirement for AA was a ‘desire not to drink’ and it was suggested in the steps that a person would find a ‘god of their understanding’ that wasn’t booze or themselves. Alcoholics were described as egomaniacs with inferiority complexes.  

I was studying theology and spirituality at UBC attending Vancouver School of Theology and Regent College, and I returned to my private practice and lived on my boat and continued to see Willie, Bernie, and Ray. I ‘d gone to Homewood when I was over 6 months sober and glad for the time there with Graham Cunningham and the psychiatrists.  I was astonished that the addiction,called cancer of the brain, was so pervasive. I d married women who drank and drugged and that was as much an attraction as their obvious beauty and genius. I even took the job at UBC over Stanford because my boss to be suggested we go for a drink to celebrate. That was his test and my department at the time was full of people who liked to drink. Ironically I sat in a meeting for months with the former head when we were both sober.  I laughed when he said to me ‘if you can’t do the time don’t do the crime’ and we were both sentence to a life of sobriety. I was digging myself out of the hole and having a spiritual life and whereas all my previous friends and women I knew drank now none did.  I actually had colleagues now who were clean and sober, When I drank and smoked dope I thought everyone did but we were the minority.  I was back to meditating and praying and loving the natural highs of hiking and sailing and cycling.  

I wasn’t poor in those days but each year after a divorce and quitting drinking I’d experienced a financial ‘bottom’. Now I’m relatively rich again and old but that feeling of poverty worrying about food or rent and getting calls from the debt collecting wanting all the money my ex wife had taken still haunted me.  Fear of financial insecurity will leave us and it’s a promise and I’ve always had money I needed. I’ve had my ‘daily bravado’ of the Lord’s prayer’.  I’ll always thank Willie for telling me that Jesus said over and over again ‘do not be afraid’. I loved discussing Christianity with my friend George when he was listening to Ekart Tolle’s power of now I’d read.  We both were aware of “one day at a time’ and Brother Lawerence living in the present yet it was hard to practice this,  Living in the past we carried resentments and living in the future we had fear. The aim was to be present. Ironically I’d read Richard Alpert , Baba Ram Dass’ book Be here Now when I’d dropped acid as a hippie. Now years later I sat with 30 psychiatrists laughing and discussing which spiritual text we’d read under the influence of which drug or alcohol. I’ll never forget Hugh sharing how he always read the Bible when he was drunk on scotch.  What a crew,  I laugh so much these days.

I’m aware now when I’m not present and can do spot checks and don’t dwell on the past,  I’m under a lot of stress with this driving for days and the fatigue and rain and night. I’m aware I’m getting old but I’m getting there. Travelling ,even crossing bridges is unsettling. I’ve coming this way again. I just passed SAN Francisco where I lived in Marin Country in the late 80’s but I’d first come to San Francisco in the early 70s and been dancing in the street after attending the strawberry mountain peace and love festival in Colorado with my friend Kirk who met his guru then and left for India. I was with the most beautiful girl in the world dancing in the streets of San Francisco listening to the song ‘if in you re going to San Francisco he sure to wear some flowers in your hair’.  That had begun with the summer of love and was still going.   We were there dancing in the streets  and she wrote ‘love’ in her red lipstick on my forehead.  Decades later I’d write Love in white paint on my navy blue Baja Bug pissing off my yuppie girlfriend Suzanne who didn’t like me or the whole hippie era. I was the ‘doctor’ and should act like one,  All my life even when I was a doctor, doctors doctor, I was told I should act like a doctor.I’d been an actor and dancer and I was a doctor. I also got kicked out of high school for reciting a poem I’d written “hey man what a fuck u-‘.  Decades later I’;d be told ‘saying the work ‘fuck ‘ was un professional.  Not once did anyone check if I had Tourette’s either.  I really could related to Dr. House especially when I found his character had addiction.

I’m now so full of gratitude on a day like this looking at the sun and green grass and incredible blue sky and blue ocean,  I’ve got this crazy mutt Madigan (Gaelic for small dog) beside me and our job to day is just to drive 4 hours or so to Luis Obispo .  I love these west coast ports since I sailed into them or by them a couple of tines when I sailed south to Mexico or when I sailed to San Francisco before sailing solo in winter to Hawaii.  It’s a new day.  

God is good all of the time. All shall be well. All Shall Be Well. All manner of things shall me well,  I am struggling with comparison and envy and self pity but know these enemies of joy. I’m laughing thinking of the times when I didn’t have food or whatever and was really poor and lost but today I still have those feelings at times but by comparison today I’m rich. Maybe not in years of life. Maybe that’s what I’m grieving the life I lost and wasted though I don’t believe any life is wasted.  I just wish I’d been less afraid, kinder, more loving a better husband, sober longer. It’s 26 years and some now but I often think if I’d stopped drinking five years earlier things would have been different but the fact is what occurs is the best option. If I’d stopped drinking five years earlier, stayed in surgery, chosen a different wife I could have been hit by a car and died.  Life is the best option of the choices as the time, consciously and unconsciously.  My friend told me that when he flew his spitfire in the Battle of Britain alcohol saved his life because it stopped the shaking and gave m him courage to get back in the plane and face almost certain death, what Light foot once called ‘his liquid courage’.  Maybe being shot at, being in a plane crash being taken hostage and all those near death experiences raised the anxiety level and left me with trauma in the body that never forgets.  It was just that life happened, it unfolds as it should. The Bugghist doctor I trained with who taught me his Merton wisdom said ‘no praise, no blame, no regrets.’

And the great Tai Chi master asked what enlghtenement was ‘I shit when I’m shitting’.   When I rode my motorcycle 4000 km to Sturgies I knew when ever my mind wasn’t on the road I was dying not living.  Focus.  I’m doing ‘meditation in motion ‘ now especially with 10 lanes of highway going 100 km an hour.  

Time to get going.  I want to walk him a bit before we saddle up.  

thank you Jesus  

I thought this was an old guy 

South to the Sun, Day 4 ,evening, Half Moon Bay, California

I’m here in Francis’s Beach Campground, Half Moon Bay south of SF and 400 miles north of Long Beach. It was an unremarkable long haul down I had to stop twice because I was zoning out.  The countryside was spectacular, forest and mountains.  Redwood Highway and Highway of the Giants.  Some Kich big foot site and a few other Disney kind of places .I expect the kids like it. I saw a herd of deer and think they were domestic.

I stopped at an outdoor 101 best burger drive in at Willits. It advertises local sourced beef and it really was a quantum leap better than fast food. Madigan devoured his burger paddy and wanted mine. He loved the real banana milk shake too.  

In Coverdale I picked up at coffee at Macdonald’s.  I stopped before SF spacey and ate a box of chocolate to stay a wake. It worked.  I had fond memories going through Marin county past where I lived in SAN Rafael years ago.  I didn’t take the Golden Gate Bridge but the Richmond 580 following my guide and knowing that the last time I went through the heart of SF with the motorcycle and Camper last year it had been tight on the little streets.

The 10 lanes of freeway driving at 100 km going across the Richmond Bridge to downtown Oakland takes a lot of concentration.  Glad to begin looking for an RV place before dark tonight.  What a great find here. I was able to search campsites and RV parks close to me on a vista stop and this was 7 miles away.  I got the last site.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll try to book the upcoming sites in SAN Louis Obispo and Long Beach.  I’ve done well with finding places and have enjoyed the freedom.  

I’m wearing down with the driving.  Soon I’ll be able to stay for a while in one place. If there’s room in LA Long Beach I’ll book for a week or two before going back to Yuma.  I’m still thinking of Rosario.  This place on Half Moon Bay is heaven.  $50 with electricity.  Electricity is all I need for the  Starlink and space heater.  I filled up the water and emptied the black and grey water tanks at the Eureka RV resort so I’m flush. It bothers me that the exchange rate for money is what it is.  I will pay more in LA. Location, location, location.  

The weather was sunny today and I stood waiting for my burger in Willit enjoying the heat of the sun.  Here in Half Moon Bay its even and windbreaker weather. Just glad it’s not raining.  Tomorrow I’ll be in the warm. We find half way between SF and LA it really becomes wonderful. I certainly appreciated that it wasn’t raining all day today, just a little fog and a few light short showers.  I’m here for the weather and God is giving me what I seek. Thank you God!

Another great day travelling and getting closer to the destinations with enjoyment along the way.

Madigan is such a good companion,  It’s also good to check in with Laura and family. I can feel a bit lonely.  

South to Sun, Eureka, Day 4, 6 am

I’m here in Eureka.  The last time I came into Eureka I was driving my Volkswagen Baha Bug, called Pendergast. It has been resurrected from a farmer’s field and used as an ambulance at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. I was fleeing a divorce and yuppie dom.  I had to use up the Thai stick before crossing the border.  I’d sold my Mustang for funds and bought the Bug for $500 and paid $500 for blue paint job and minimum to make it street legal. A trucker had hit a deer right before me at night.  We hit the carcass and were airborne.  I didn’t know at the time the axle was bent.  My young Mennonite artist friend who’d shared the driving to there departed for Eureka California.  His wanting to go there was the first I heard of the town and liked the name. 

I pulled into a coffee shop into this town wth the name Love something. .  I parked Pendergast and both front tires fell off and the car dropped to the pavement, exhausted .. I’d learn later that the lug nuts had been sheared.  The mechanic I met towed me to his shop and regaled me about the love of his life he’d met in a whorehouse. Make the best wives, he said.  Pendergast was reborn that day and I headed onto San Francisco to be with Suzanne. I was playing guitar and singing Dylan’s Don’t think twice, and Cohen’s Suzanne.  It was a hell of a ride.

Since then Ive passed through Eureka several times always meaning to stop and stay. Humboldt County folk are really fine.  My Marin friend, Suzanne’s brother said Humboldt was where they grew the best marijuana.  We’d canoed there with him and his wife when my marriage was shiny and new, a well polished thing before the rust set in.

Now I’m alone with a dog.  I already miss my friends.  These expedition adventures can be lonely. I left the Alder Dune Campground yesterday , pleased I’d used my new Honda 3200i generator. It had been a cosy night in a fine off road campground, no amenities, just the grand outdoors.  It poured all night.  I was glad for the generator and electric heater. I could save on propane.  I was up at 5 am then too.  Just like today.  It was hard finding my way out of the camp in the utter darkness. I had to get out several times with a flashlight to ensure I was on the trail.  Back on the 101 it wasn’t long before I made Florence. I’d just been reading about the Medici and Michelangelo and Da Vinci.  I was glad to fill up a propane tank at a gas station beside a Macdonald’s. Madigan liked his sausage paddi and I liked the refill of coffee the sausage egger and bun and greasy hash browns. Part of the trip is the road food.  

In Coose Bay I went on line and enjoyed a meeting.  Colleagues and friends.  I don’t feel entirely safe but am present.  I’m amazed with one of my mentors.  Like so many he’s more than 5 years older than me, some are 10 years older.  So many are retired or semi retired.  I enjoyed another fellow sharing how he didn’t explode when a teller ignored his crutches and asked him to get another box since she couldn’t read the price.  He said how he’d have exploded years ago.  I shared how I mellowed too being patient while waiting for all the paper work and regulation related to getting a new phone to replace the one I’d dropped.  I expressed appreciation and gratitude for the progress. The topic was integrity.  Outside and inside. I’ve felt I had been well trained in morality and ethics in my Baptist faith and my friends said ‘get off the cross we can use the wood’.  Well it’s’ better I’m still working on Arendt and the Nuremberg scenario and the Serenity Prayer.  My iPad died then.  I had been distracted by the ambivalent invitation to share, “if you want to share’ and a person leaving for another commitment and then this iPad death. I’ve carried a resentment about a fellow who plays it safe and doesn’t share but interrogated me once such that I had to stop him and recognierd he was just relatively new in sobriety and struggling with judgement the issue issue I struggle with  these days. Judgment and comparison,

I’d wanted to say that I’m feeling good and glad to have learned that the resentment I carried and dealt with were more often these days about people who were dead. I had the thought earlier that detectives say it’s likely a crime of passion when they find multiple gunshots or stabs to the body’.  i expected I’d desecrate graves.  Something about the Irish Scottish heritage.  I thought it was funny and progress. But the iPad died and I being paranoid thought no one liked me I’d been cut off. I’d looked an there’d been 10 minutes and I’d only shared a few minutes when that happened.  A better explanation was that I’d used up the cell phone time on the iPad. I couldn’t get it to come back on.  But there I was reflecting on being rather happy and content but not able to conclude on a higher note than Arendt and Nuremberg.

The truth is that’s where I was then. I’ve been away of how poor I am which is silly but with Canadian dollar going for 65Cents to the American dollar I feel like the poor cousin. I’ve also felt that my integrity in my work cost me outrageously as the colleagues at the hospital who were mum about the unnecessary deaths that I spoke to an stopped had gone on to greater wealth and position. I left in disgust and still judge unfairly.  I didn’t have children and I didn’t play it safe.  I was frustrated at myself and concerned about my future running scenarios of past false accusations and the cost of integrity.  I felt like the Count of Monte Christi but had fore gone recvenge for Christian forgiveness.

I was driving south with my mind no longer at peace. I also couldn’t phone anyone because I didn’t have my contact list.  I was also emotionally disturbed and had a couple of near misses driving. Jesus definitely took the wheel when I almost drove into a cliff the sun in my eyes and my not seeing the road had a sharp turn.  Forgiveness is for my sake. it’s to give me peace of mind.  Before the meeting I had relative peace of mind. I wrote yesterday a fine piece on spirituality and was resting on my laurels when I felt this judgment and rejection.  

it’s also that I’m alone.  My mind is a bad neighbourhood and I shouldn’t go there alone. I’m experiencing envy .  There are these character flaws and I have hear that while I have pain others have shared their surgeries and pain and I’ve felt apart of as they’ve shared their experience, strength and hope. But I found it interesting that I didn’t know about the pain and struggle till now thought we ‘ve shared together several times in the year. I’;ve listened too.  I’ ve shared honestly about my struggles I’ve even shared my issues with gender and felt the velvet shame associated.  I shared to about the proxy wars that women have waged using authorities to punish men .  Today they have their children and it’s a challenge as I see with my effect of my dog on my life. But the single women collectively ride on the shirt tails of chivalry. I tend to self pity.  

I’ve struggled with those who say I’m number one or compete and yet I’ve been content to be number two as God is one.  I’ve spiritually struggled with thy will. Thy will be done not my will yet I’ve so often been challenged by those who seek superiority to deal with their inferiority. I shot Billy the Kid.  Today the young men kick dirt in the faces of the old men.  I wonder how long before they throw dirt on us. Jesus died in his 30’s. I was pretty good then physically but today I am struggling with integrity. In the 12 step program the least done and hardest part is the Step 4 recommendation to address resentment to people, institutions and principles.  Ive pretty much done my step 4 regarding people several times I’ve also addressed institutions such as the school, legal system, bank, college and even marriage. But principles such as integrity still come up to bite me.  I note that so many people now are becoming ‘spiritual’ after they have pensions and wealth made sometimes not so licitly .  I don’t hear of amends being made either.  I am not a beaming example. But its apparent that the Peter Principle was at play in the hierarchy.  I struggle with regrets of leaving the university and see life as that of thee ‘regular’ army and the ‘scouts’ and I’ve remained a scout.  The ‘regular armies’ are principles that I struggle with the ancient history of the Celts and Romans and later the Crusaders and Islam.  Then today there’s the identification with the aggressor that pays.

Well all this insanity was playing in my mind while the most extraordinary creations of God were flying by on either side of me. I loved the beaches of Oregon and Northern California. I loved driving by Gold Beach when I spent a week last year and loved walking each day on the beach.  I loved being on the beach where my dog Madigan who’d had his eyes removed for hereditary glaucoma had memories of our beaches and sailing. For the first time since his surgery all the while he’d been timid and afraid, here he came with me and we ran together on the beach. It was the first he’d run free in months. I’d try to get him to run with me in the park but he so feared slamming into something, Yet here I ran with glee and I was so uplifted to see that and feel his joy and be thankful.  Madigan also loved running to me and sniffing all around.  It was different. He’s been a cuddle bug the whole way down, leaning up against me and rssting his head on my leg as we drive  away the miles. 

We came upon the herd of Elk and I loved getting pictures I can be proud of. I was thankful I had my big Nikon and if I hadn’t broken my phone I might not have had it out.  Using it has taken me back to all the joys I’ve had from photography.  I’m engaging in my world.  I’m living in thee present.  I’m praying and yet I’ve had my mind awaken in funny ways. I sang Jesus Loves me and then Suzanne and other songs. I’ve listened to the radio a bit enjoying Christian music.  Since my phone had all my audiobooks I’ve not been able to listen to books on the way down.  Coming back last year I loved Louise Penny. I’ve downloaded some to audible and last night got them ready to play on the ipad.  I’m muddling along. I was pleased to pass into California.  The light seemed just a bit brighter.  The rain had stopped and the sun came out a bit

I was pleased to make Eureka and find this 4 star RV park. The campground cost $31 us , more like $45 Canadian while this place with all the amenities costs $65 American which is more like $90.  A buck is a buck . I’m grateful Thank you Jesus.

Thank you Godl

Thank you for a new day,  Guide me in my thoughts and action,  Show me the way.  Protect family and friends and be with Madigan and I as we travel south.  Today’s destination is to get through SAN Francisco.  Thank you God. 

South for Sun , Day two, evening. 46.07/124.10, Alder Dune Campground off HW 101 Oregon

It’ day 2 in the evening.  I’ve driven from Astoria to this campground along the Oregon beaches about an hour south Newport and an hour north of Coos Bay.  I stopped at the Walmart in Newport and have an AT &T red iPhone SE with excess data for US and Mexico.  I’ve not even tried to use my Hamm Radio or the Sat Phone.  I’m pleased with this phone and plan just like last year with T Mobile.  I’ll stoop at Apple most likely in LA and get things sorted out.  

I’ve just loved the great waves. It reminded me of my coming down from the Columbia River in the SV GIRI, my 39.9 ft 13 ton  steel sailboarta day ,after a hurricane went through. The fishermen advised me to wait a day saying it takes that long for the sea to settle.  I didn’t and went out in these great waves like I’ve witnessed today.  My antennae broke off at the top of the mast and threatened 4to do more damage so I climbed the mast to fasten it down. Despite being on autopilot going forward slowly the ship was rolling from side to side.  I could have reached out and touched the water on each roll. I was glad to quickly fix the problem with bungee cords.  

Coos Bay was where we put in the first time going south because the exaust separated from the engine with the vibration.  The whole for the cabin filled with smoke and was terrifying till we realized there was no fire.  We fixed the exhaust in Coos Bay and carried on. I’ve a soft spot for these harbours as a consequence.

Now I’m enjoying my camper and truck with the Vespa on the front. I’ve yet to use that. Once I’m in one place for a while I will.  This morning I was up at 530 and on the road at 700.  We stopped or Macdonalds egg sausge bun.  Madigan doesn’t like sausage like he likes burger but will eat it if I chop it into little pieces and hand feed him.

The fellow just came by to collect camping fee. $31 .I only had American $20.  First cash I’ve used.  Each day I’ve  put $100 in the tank and spent $20 on food a coffee. I’m using my supplies from the fridge and cupboards.  

It’s continued to rain though I had some dry parts in the day.  Low hanging clouds.

I phoned Laura and left my new number on her answering service .  

I had poor Starlink coverage because of obstruction, I’m right under a fir tree, and the heavy rain. I’ll have to pay taxes when I have a better connection. I downloaded a few kindle books.  I only had the Renaissance history which I am enjoying but I’m looking forward to the naval historical fiction.  I’m rather mentally exhausted at the end of the day.  Building up stamina.  A lot of concentration.  It was especially nerve racking the first couple of hours in the dark with the rain.  So much is weather.  

The two hours waiting at Walmart was an expertise in patience but well worth the effort. I worried about Madigan in the camper in the parking lot but he was okay and happy to see me happy when I returned.  Enrique took care of all the paper work and number insertion with the cell phones. What a todo.  I’d have hated to do it myself if I even could.  I agree with Elon Musk there is way too much government regulation.Part of the problem was being Canadian and trying to get a phone in the US but i had no such difficulty buying a phone in Greece. The only difficulty there was it was programmed in the language and I made some mistakes guessing at what a message meant.

Now I’m tired. Laura texted me she had steak and has gone to bed. I fried up potatoes the way my dad liked them with a shallot and smokies chopped up , all fried in butter with mustard salt and pepper and very tasty. 

Madigan had a bowl of his Tikki France wet food.  I had to get him new water. The water I’d had in the truck must be stale because he wouldn’t drink it. He’s fine with the tap water in the camper and the new Spring water.  He’s been a really good boy cuddling up beside me on the trip down.  

Thank you Jesus. Thank you Lord of All.

I really enjoyed trying out my new 3200i Honda Generator.  I powered the Starlink and charged all my devices. I had locked to the stairs but put everything way so I can get away easy in the morning. I can make stove top espresso too.  It’s a good day. Thank you. 

South to Sun, 2024, day 3 am , Alder Dune Campground, off 101 Oregon, just north of Florence

I woke at 4 am.  It’s been raining hard all night long.  It’s like sentient alien water drops are landing on the camper roof and seeking a way into the dry and warm interior. I’ve slept well despite the cacophony of heavy static sounding raindrops.  I see Madigan is still sleepy. I use the toilet and return to bed.  

I’m not able to sleep.  I’m thinking of the AT&T new phone and my old phone number and how am I going to get back on Telus so I have two phones because everyone knows to call the old phone number. It’s also the one use in 2 step verification.  But with the phone broken I can’t see that. I don’t like going back to the little phone either. My fingers are too big. Of course I can sort all this out at an Apple Store in LA.  

I also thought of the 60’s horror show, probably Twilight Zone where the sailors come upon an old ship cover in dripping fungus. They board and look about but bring the fungus back to their ship and become another floating fungus garden. The crew first noticed patches on their skin then they are slowly devoured.  It’s that rainy and wet here.

I’ve also had “worthy is the blood of the lamb” , chorus of a Christian evangelical song playing in my mind.

____________________

I remember a capsule headed to what I think today is Mars but something , perhaps a big asteroid knocked it off course and I landed on earth. I always felt strange. Mom and Dad were wonderful and lovely but I felt peculiar. When I was particularly scared as a child in bed I saw an angelic couple above my bed, spiritual mom and dad, telling me all would be well. Mom appeared then and the world restored to normal though I’d have out of body experiences when I’d visit friends and do all the other things that shaman books describe.  I certainly felt good with animals and especially loved the family dog.  We were on the same wave length.  

Later I’d think we were souls who had to learn to control our minds and impulses.  The spiritual world was instant gratification but what one thought of that became. Like my memory of the Fungus ship. I feel for Steven King and his wonderful horror stories.  He drank and the darkness no doubt was the source of his writing.  I am only now beginning to clear mind mind.  I learned from St. Paul to ‘pray unceasingly’.  I’m old now so perhaps this journey is coming to a close and another beginning. I might make it to Mars yet.  To do so I must have ‘peace of mind’.  Marijuania and Alcohol and other drugs make this near impossible.  

From an early age I sought spiritual guidance.  The church leaders were mostly about morality.  I had great advice from Dad and Mom but was so egotistical when I was a teen.  I was on a journey of discovery hoping to make sense of my physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual world.  I was raised Baptist and studied the Bible first as comic books and later as the book iteself.  I liked going through the 365 day Bible reading a bit each day though another time I just read as much as I could and completed it in about a year too. I studied it at University in English Literature.  The Bible as stories and later I’d study it as myth and eventually as a key.

‘Worthy is the blood of the lamb.”  Sacrificial messages and codes.  

The ministers talked mostly of morality and ethics and their prescriptions were like those of public health while I was searching for a personal message.  I wanted a ‘friend in Jesus’.  

The Trinity according to the Chancellor of Regent College, professor of Spiritual Christianity, described it in terms of 3 persons in one.  The mystery.  Of course there was God the father , God of Gods, Creator, omniscient omnipotent omnipotential, the very fabric of reality, the omnivores, alpha and omega, everything and nothing. I liked to say that in the Beginning there was God and he created the Heavens and the Earth. There wasn’t God and Building Blocks.  The one bccame many.  I saw the holograph and later the DNA as evidence of the At OM ness of the one , the true Home, the Self.  

This did explain the binary relationship of Buber’s I and Thou.  First I and the other then I and I and then with humility and a true appreciation of Grace, I and Thou. I struggled with friends ideas of fate and free will. When things went well they claimed responsibility but when things didn’t they blamed anything but themselves.  I however had the benefit of studying eastern religion, first though Emerson and Vivekianada and later Paramahansa Yogananda.  I enjoyed Herman Hesse and the Glass Bead Game.  So much of what I learned was the writings of authors not religious leaders per see. “I sing the Body Electric,” by Walt Whitman, the poets, and writers like Mark Twain.  Their ideas about the universe and themselves and heaven and earth.

In the Trinity the Son is Jesus or the Messiah.  He is the advocate who was God becoming God being crucified and resurrecting.  The caterpillar butterfly image. The lost and now I’m found story beyond the Hubris of the Wall Street Gods or the Graeco Roman competiont gods driven by time. They are all over the on line games. I met them first in Duke Nukim.  It was like the fool on the hill. I’m fine alone and meditating.  I’m the movie ‘a boy and his dog’.  The difficulty is the Holy Spirit.

The job the son is to obey the father.  It’s taken me most of my life to appreciate the wisdom of my earthly father and poor Jesus didn’t live long enough to get back to carpetntry. I’ve lived long enough to re visit the worlds my father introduced me too when I was a child.  I’m living his dream and my own dream.

But what of Mom.

When I told Willie, my evangelical mentor that I thought the Holy Spirit was the female he was annoyed. I realize now that in his world men are men and women and women.  His Holy Spirit is masculine i anything. But I’m of the era and age where the Borderline is the cross over.  Where as in the world of the 50’s the extrovert personality disorder were described as Narccisistic , Antisocial, Historionic and Borderline. Mostly men were described as antisocial and sent to prison while women were described as borderline and sent to the asylum. The gay and lesbian commonly were sent to the aslum. It was part of the men’s era and intent. Men were intentional or not

Kate Lister the brilliant author of Curious History of Sex said that Freud described the female as the ‘dark continent’.  It was appropriate she said because he was obvious lost and afraid of the natives.

So the Holy Spirit is this sense of connectedness which I equated with the sense I had that my mother always knew what I was doing.  Somehow there was my conscience which game me the right answer and may choice which was wrong but good.

Freud’s idea of the ‘ID” was that it was something primitive like the idea of the untamed ,dis organized, the early man free to follow urges and like an animal sensual and not controlled by a higher power or such.  Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel makes it very clear that the primitive man was not the impulse seeking sensate of the 60’s mod scene but rather one dominated by taboos and restrictions.  To put it bluntly he wasn’t free.  Nor was he the ‘noble savage’ which is being white washed and paraded out again by none other than the ancestors who like the Nazi once did in their ‘ancestor worship’ , perhaps the oldest religion.

By contrast, Milton Erickson, father of American Psychiatry and Hypnosis said Freud was afraid of the unconscious . I’d argue that Jews and Arabs and those who are tribally connected by genital mutilation at an early age might well have good reason to fear as such. But then another might just speak to the birth trauma.  Personally I’m Caesarian Section so I didn’t want to be here and was dragged forth while others escaped the mother at an early age. I liked the umbilical cord and boom box heart sound.  This world has been tough by comparison.  Erickson said that when someone fell their unconscious righted them, indeed much of their systems of safety were on automatic , eating sleeping and all so the ID or primal unconscious was protective.  Jung described Freud in also afraid of the unknown.  He was an empire builder and a genius but needed to be in control and striving to be ‘number one’.  

Personally I’ve just been glad to be on the team.  I am thankful to be invited in and given a place by the fire.  It’s cold out there and warm in here.  I believe I was very young when I realized the challenge was beating my yesterday self not my opponent. I saw losing at chess as my mistake. I also learned in my study of martial arts from an early age, my friend Kirk and I doing Jugitsu together in the back yard after my dad taught us boxing in the basement with the boxing gloves he brought home one day.  In Zen the master is said to be the one who kills you and so doing teaches you the secret you will carry into the next life what will save you for being kllled that way again.  

Reincarnation is central to the east and west.  In the East the Jews knew it or they’d not be confused as to who was resurrecting.  Similarly for Christian’s it was Constantine the Sun worshipper who excluded reincarnation at the Council of Nevis when Christianity became the ‘STATE’ Church,  

Now I’m living ‘One Day at a Time’. So reincarnation is a daily experience. When I wake a new life begins. The past is memory and the future is yet to come.

Willie, reverend, doctor, psychiatrist, said that Jesus said over and over again ‘Be not afraid’.

When asked to sum up the scripture he said that the key was ‘Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself”. 

‘Worthy is the blood of the lamb”

___________________________________________________

It’s 630 am.  I got going yesterday at 7.  The rain and dark are still here. I was on the road about an hour before it got lighter and at 9 am we stopped at Macdonalds’ for breakfast on the run. 

Time to stow.

Thank you Jesus. 

South for Sun - Day 2, Astoria KOA

Thousands made this trip south in winter. When I sailed down this coast each time I knew I was one of relative few. The joke with sailboats and cruisers is only 1 % leave the harbour and of that 1% only go off shore.  I ‘m here at Astoria remembering fondly one time I harboured here.  The fishermen and working crews come and go but not in the numbers of tourists that take rigs on the road.  Seems to me most of the people who get an RV get out in it.  Maybe not for an extended holiday south but still there are so many rigs on the road.  

Yesterday the i5 was a full freeway.  With the major commercial haulers and the cars we were all headed south.  

I’m particularly well outfitted for mobility and safety. I’d rather my truck camper than the nightmares I experienced when I had to turn around towing an RV.  I imagine everyone else is more competent but in reality it’s just a learning curve. It would have been better if I’d had lessons early.  I don’t need them with this truck and camper but many of the problems I had backing up and turning and such could have been missed with training early.

That’s why we all love drive throughs for camping.  No backing up.  Just pull through and stop.  I don’t need one but was glad for it here last night in the dark and rain trying to find my 353 spot with a flashlight torch I’d just bought that day. 

Now I’m having the morning coffee. Great night despite the wind.  The camper was shaking at time. I woke to check Madigan and look outside.  The wind almost took the door off.  I didn’t put down the jacks so it was a bit like being at sea but no concern .  Not that I didn’t consider such fantasies as my Starlink satellite flying off through camper. I pray a lot. That blocks the constant negative scenarios that otherwise would fill my mind and steal my piece.  

I had a few near misses yesterday.   A bad driver misjudging distances and pulling into the traffic so we all had to brake quickly, another maniac changing lanes back and forth trying to hurry death.  It was terrible driving conditions, so much rain and spray as to reduce visibility.  At times it was like driving in a blizzard.  When the rain stopped it was such a change. No sun but the cloud filled sky low over head lightened up a little at times .  Despite this, despite 8-10 lanes of highways and the worst driving conditions, I only saw one accident.  An older couple with a mile fender bender in their car.  No one hurt. It’s a miracle really. All these people who are as difficult to lead as bearding carts, hurling down the freeway and no one killed.  Accidents occur but they are read.  The media following it’s if it bleeds it leads mentality would have us believe less in our fellow man than we should. I’m driving this big rig and there are working professionals and amateurs all sharing the road, young and old, barrelling along in high tech machines, proto spaceships and we’re all following the rules and staying alive . Unbelievable . Amazing. Hallelujah.  

I’m up. I’ve a coffee for the road.  I just need to put on my pants. I prayed. I will walk the dog later when there is light. I’ve let him out to pee.  

I’ve made my bed roughly. I’m washed and just finishing a yoghurt. I’ve had juice and vitamins. The coffee making it the big event.  That and taking down the Starlink .  When I finish my first coffee I’ll put on pant and stow the little that needs stowing. Then it’s outside to take down the Starlink. This Astoria KOA has turned out to be a godsend.  Certainly with the swimming pool and store and proximity to shore it’s a fabulous setting. I could stay and enjoy more but I really do like to head south.  It’s the rain and cold I’m escaping. Already it’s warmer and today will take me definitely into milder climes. I’ll make San Francisco tomorrow and it becomes balmy just south of there. 

When Macdonalds opens Madigan and I will have breakfast on the road.  I like Macdonalds for their fast food and wifi. They are my land port.  I’ll need to fill up again today and that’s a welcome break. I might even get organized to listen to audio books today. I’ve Louise Penny’s latest along with some scientific tombs but the truth is I’m looking forward to Louise Penny. I listened to a book of hers a year ago coming north.  

Thank you God for this day. Thank you for the pleasant dreams of work and colleagues.  Thank you for Madigan and this gear and this adventure expedition. Thank you for Astoria, I’ve loved stopping here driving on land and sailing into port.  Thank you for Astoria KOA. Thank you for the comfort and warm in this Adventurer Camper and the reliability of my Ford F350 Truck. 

Thank you Jesus. 

South for the Winter - day 1 - Burnaby to Astoria

I woke in the darkness at 4:30. I’d done all the final details the night before. Early in the week I’d moved all I needed to the Adcventurer Camper and Ford F350 Truck.  With Dave’s help I loaded the Vespa for the first time on the front carrier.  

Laura left early boxin day after we’ enjoyed her family Christmas dinner , ham, turkey, mashed potatoes and green beans. John was up at 4:30, normally an early riser, but not to peel potatoes. He and Caroline did a magnificent spread.  John’s brother Rob provided all manner of tasty treats like candied citrus fruit.  I had a blue berry cup cake.  Rob’s son Randy, the railway engineer was there.  Carolin John’s daughter was there.  Laura’s daughter, Shannon and the granddaughter, Erie was a delight. Along with Bandit the big dog and Madigan the little dog. An unforgettable Christmas. I was so appreciative to be invited.  No white Christmas. Just pouring rain.  

Boxing Day morning when the light came up and there was a break in the rain, Laura headed home in her Smart Car.  She has to start and work in Vancouver.  Dave met me at  Chilliwack Storage where I left my car and was driven home by Dave.

Everything was done. The Passport, the Rabies, the new Vet requirement, the work items, lap top and printer and iPads.  I stayed up late reading a Tom Clancy then a William Black western.  I was ready to go but didn’t want to drive in the dark.  

It was dark when I drove out at 7 am. I’d thought to go to Aldergrove but found out that it was closed.  Sumas was open so I drove to Abbotsford and took that crossing.  A young man with a short hair cut, good looking, dedicated.  

Where are you going?

Astoria, and on to Yuma,

Why are you headed south.

For the heat and dry.  

There were a few more questions. Not so self evident.  Then I was through.  What a relief.  I’d gone through my camper and truck a couple of times trying to make sure I’d not had any ammunition slip out of my pockets from hunting season.  I’d passed on the opened meat and veggies and fruit. Still border crossings are a challenge, with a dog, and a moveable house.  It’s not like my normal travel with a single carry on bag,  I’ll be down south for a couple of months all goes well,

The first challenge was the truck fob not working. I fiddled with it and it worked but I was fortunate to get new batter in auto place like Lordco.  I filled up the truck there, $100 American. Trudeau money is $65 cents so my cost was closer to $150 Canadian.  At least I can afford to pay fuel and groceries. So many Canadians are resorting to the food bank.  My problems are Cadillacs problems.  

I was glad to get almost to Seattle before the skies opened and the rain came down.  Even with high speed wipers it was hard to see at time.  Driving down to Seattle i had many fond memories of time with friends and motorcycle excursions.  I always think of George when I pass Le Connor.  

I was going to stop in Olympia but there was a few more hours of light so I continued on to Astoria planning on staying at the place I’d recorded in my phone.  The phone died when I took the dog for a walk at a rest stop. I think when I dropped it earlier something went wrong because it overheated. Now it’s not taking a charge and I arrived in Astoria without a clue where the RV park was,

Thank God I saw the KOA sig n and end up in this really terrific Astoria Warrenton Seaside KOA resort 1100 NW Ridge Road Hammond, Or. 97121. 503 861 2606, astoriakoa@racpack.com.  The girl at the front was so friendly and welcoming. I was delighted to see the sign and follow the signs here and it’s just perfect.  

I’ve had liverworst sandwiches with peasant bread.  I’m planning on getting out the tv and vegging.  I’m so wiped from the long drive in poor conditions. I’d stopped in a school parking lot past Tacoma to make coffee and have a nap. Madigan and I had our Macdonalds’ Egg Sausages and he actually ate the sausage. I had to break it up in little pieces and hand fed it.  He doen’st need this for the burgers.  I’d planned to have burgers in the afternoon but a bag of chips and a chocolate bar sufficed.  I liked that I could make my own coffee in the camper.  I liked to that I had my own bathroom for pee breaks.  It’s a challenge but I’ve made it to the first stop and am looking forward to getting below the rain and chill into the warm and dry.  I’ll have to stop at Apple and thanks to Apple Care they’ll have a solution tomorrow for my phone.  I just don’t know if I’ll be in a big enough town for an Apple Store for a day or two. Thankfully I have the iPad with its Cellular and wifi link. Then I’ve the satellite phone for emergencies.

I have to charge up my camera I’m glad I remembered to bring. The phone is my camera as well.. I’ve redundancy built into everyone. My sailing and survival days but today I’m looking forward to being more laid back.   It’s all pretty exciting.  

Camper Life begins again

Two more days till Christmas and 2 more days after that I head south for the winter. I’ve transferred all that’s necessary and important to my Camper. My valuables along with hunting supplies have gone into storage. I’m on Star Link now and will be able to set it up along the route. I do like stopping at MacDonalds for their excellent coffee and because their wifi carries on from one place to the next. Madigan likes their burgers too.  I’ve all the components necessary for virtual work to continue.  I’ve the next week for camping and travel. 

I haven’t had any special Christmas feelings. I appreciated Hansel’s Messiah but haven’t heard many Christmas caroles. The lights have been wonderful The winter solstice was Saturday Dec. 21.  I’ve been quite exhausted with the outfitting and finishing up details of work.  Now here I am in this little world and almost ready to go. The days are getting longer.  The Birth of Baby Jesus is about to happen again.  The old year is ending and a new year beginning.  

The new President is taking office in Jan 6-20.  I’ll be in the US then and hope that there won’t be troubles that affect my travel plans. I’m looking forward to going to Mexico again this year but am concerned about the migrants and illegal aliens and criminals associated with them. So far I’ve heard that Rosario is safe and fine.  Tijuana is a concern outside major tourist areas but once south of Ensenada everything is fine according to what I’ve learned. I’ll investigate further south

Peter and Larry are wintering in LA. I’d hoped to stop over for a few days, leave Madigan in the camper and spend a couple of days visiting art galleries.  Then I’d really like to move on to Yuma and Algadones. I’m considered a stop at the Salton Sea State Park in Southern California. I’ve the new Honda 3200 Generator and want to spend more time off grid. 

Trudeau money is only 60 - 70 cent on the American dollar.  In Mexico it’s always inexpensive.  Truthfully I like bargains and deals and don’t like paying even more than necessary for the incompetence of leardership we’ve had this last 10 years.  

I’m hoping to visit Hay Bay and see the nephews and great nephews late spring. I’ve my zodiac trailer and motor to bring back.  I like the idea of fishing this summer.  I even consider hunting with the boat in the fall rather than driving all over with the Honda Tracker scaring game away.  It’s always novelty.  What to do till the Messiah comes?

I’m enjoying work. I’ve accepted my role as a cog in the machine and am no longer trying to push the universe.  The Serenity Prayer helps.  I like that it was once said that “Hay would no only lead a horse to water but push them under to force them to drink.”  I was heavily invested in ‘outcome measures’.  My time in Community Medicine certainly affected my Psychiatry training. Now I’m more the ‘facilitator’ rather than ‘healer’.  I don’t have to walk on water. I don’t have to be a ‘channel of healing’. I’m just hear to serve.  I wonder if I had it to do over I’d not ‘select’ much more and help the motivated rather than spend time with those who are by all appearances ‘precontemplation’.  

I’m thinking of death and end of life and what it means. I’ve nothing better to do than this. I could be proactive and seek a different service and role but the present is just fine. I found last year I was ready to come home in a couple of months.  This year I was even thinking a few weeks in Mexico on the beach would serve.  Each year I’ve recovered somewhat though my back remains weak and painful.  I was at a low the last few days dragging myself through packing and stowing but now I’m in the camper ready to go I’m beginning to be excited with life again.  I find travelling listening to audio books, seeing the incredible world invigorating. 

I’ve a number of patients who are chronically angry blaming the world, me and everyone else for their illness,  I think how my colleagues avoid Narcisists , Borderline Personality Disorders, addicted and alcoholic but here I am with most of my practice seeing people who the ‘cherry picking’ clinicians would exclude. I’ve certainly been inclusive but have resented the authorities scapegoating me and others like me because of the systemic problems of the system. Their arrogance is as upsetting as that Herod Trudeau fellow worshipping his own brand of chauvinism and sharia communism all the while lying with forked tongue.

It’s the season of forgiveness. Peace on earth. Joy to all. I pray ‘may thy light shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion” from Paramahans and Lord Jesus Christ Son of God Have mercy on me a sinner from the desert fathers. There is no doubt I’m a sinner and miss the mark. I observe the fear and negativity and character defects in my thoughts and struggle daily to be a better person.  

Today I’m waiting for Paul to come with his tow truck and take the RV to storage. Laura is coming over. I have a trip to the TD bank and a trip to Ralf’s Radio to get a SIM card for my Satellite phone , The SIM Card I have is only for Canada as I’ve used it for emergencies in the backwoods. Now I want want that’s good for Canada , US and Mexico.  

I like expeditions and adventures. Once I find the place I’ll set up for weeks and settle in with my work and day trips on the weekends. I’m getting myself a new lawn chair in the south. I bought one last year and left it with the tracker. It really was spookum so I’m planning on finding another one of equal quality then I’ll have two .  I still have an old one I’vc had nearly 10 years.  At lunch in the south I sit outside in the sun on the lawn chair having lunch and a nap.  I walk the dog several times a day and will use the Vespa to make store runs. I used the truck last year and the Harley but this year I’m going to try to do everything with the Vespa and leave the Camper on the Truck.  That may change.

It’s a good life. I’m grateful to be alive and well enough to do these excursions.  I’m exited. I love my dog.. What a crazy growly attitudinous companion.  I like the compactness of this, like the sailboat, everything close, all I need in a little package.  The RV is like a house and I know I’ll miss my couch and that this place will become a little tight in time. I only lasted a couple of months last year before wanting to return.  

It’s getting light outside. I’ve been waking at 4 am these last few days and getting up early.  I had a great meal of fish and chips at White Spot last night sitting in the car with service and Madigan enjoying his burger paddy.  I’ve lots of food and just need milk for coffee.  Probably some bread soon too.  

It’s a new day. Thank you Jesus. Thank you God.  Thank you. Thank you.  Thank you.  

Kelvin from Travco did a fabulous job of winterizing the RV and helping me close up the slides and stow for storage.  He really was a god send last year and all winter but especially now,  I’m just so exhausted at the end of the year and Kelvin makes sure it’s all going to be okay.  He checked out the camper too.  It’s sure good to have others helping especially as I age and become weaker, physically if not so much mentally.  But I do get brain fog at the end of the day or when I’ve been dealing with too many moving parts.  Thank you all for the help. We are not alone. 

Early Wakening and Christmas Reflections

It’s 5 am.  I woke at 4 and went back to bed for a bit. I read a delightful story of Elon Musk and humility. I enjoy his mythical character, an Obie wanna sort. He’s like Keanu Reeves.  Nerdy and considerate. Not the Kardasian flash or Trudeau arrogance. I see myself though as an egomaniac with an inferiority complex.  I’m defensive at times. I can trace the recurrent struggle with some wrong authority intent on maintaining their dominance for personal gain. I’ve had a sense of my own ‘awareness’ but how I’ve appeared as a threat to the Borg like corrupt authority figure. I’ve played out the Jesus myth in my life, Herod and Satan and Pontius Pilate.

I say, myth only in the Joseph Campbell sense. I don’t know the factual objective truth of these statements I’ve physically met the Dalai Lama and Bishop Toto, Chrétien and Harper, the Guess Who and Lead Zeppelin. I did meet a Nobel Prize winner in physics or chemistry but forget his name,  I’ve had a host of incredible mentors and teachers, Carl Ridd, Gold, Ray Baker, Graham Cunningham, Hank Olivier, Jack Hildes, Nady el Guebaly. The list goes on and on.  My parents were incredible as was my brother Ron. 

It’s Christmas season. I feel alone but have friends and lovers and organizations and institutions. I’m still working. Today I have three patients to see then head out to pick up my Camper which will be my home for the next months as I journey south for a winter break continueing to work but taking in the dessert and sun like others might take the baths.

I’ve struggled my life to know God, to make sense of this life, to serve.  I’ve also tried to address my character flaws and have fun and learn. I like to say I’m a voice over on the comic strip of my life and I’m playing peek a boo with Jesus.  

I liked studying “I think therefore I am”.  That equation served a foundation to self study. Now I’m living in the day very aware of when I’m in the past and future. I’ve also made major progress in CBT knowing my moods follow my thoughts and focussing on weeding out negative thoughts of fear and anger.  I respond to threat with fight, flight or freeze.  Freeze is the one that gets me.  Stillness. Patience.  

I’ve meditated and prayed and muddle along.  

My work is so demanding.  Spending so much time in the presence of pain and anguish.  Searching solutions or just being there.  Listening. Teaching. Sharing.  I’m a cheer leader in life.  Entertainer , healer.  Erudite.

It’s Christmas season.  Birthdays. Celebration. The earth has moved away from the sun in rotation and will return. I am not waiting for the crocus or the clouds to leave but actively seeking the sun and heat. My third year of this safety precautions. I was so sick in Mumbai. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get air to enter my lungs and had to become so still in the panic I felt then.  It was like the scuba diving accident I experienced , running out of air swimming against the current under the reef and having to surface slowly.  The sense of panic stays with me.  My personal NDE.  A kind of awakening. I had to take medication for a year for Tuberculosis I acquired working as a flyin doctor in the north.  So many patients with TB.  Mantoux.  The disease shopping up on the X-ray and tests to work in America.  It was always dormant. I sealed it off but carried the reminder.  

We call pneumonia, the old man’s friend.  So many deaths by infectious diseases.  I remember my first cases as a country gp. Late nights at the bedside in the rural hospital.  Countless fights in the ICU.  Then Covid. My friends died just as they had in HIV.  Disease and futility.  The inevitability of death with the sense of immortality.

I fear I cling to life when I could best let go and wear this time as a lose cloak.  I am a soul and all else is illusion. I’m a child of God who came naked into this world and will leave thought.  

Now I make diagnosis of disease and offer solutions in the form of knowledge and medication or referrals to further investigation or intervention. I am so highly experienced in what I do I say in jest I’m educated beyond my intelligenc. I encounter such fear and anxiety , depression, despair, guilt , shame and anger.  I enter rooms heavy with remorse and leave with the atmosphere lighter. I shine light into darkness. I channel healing. I’m a conduit of a long line of teachers and lessons.  I’m out there on the edge with patients that frustrate their doctors family and conventions.  I sometimes miss the ease and simplicity of general practice without the layers of complex communications brought by survivors. We say spirituality is for those who’ve been to hell and don’t want to return. Religion is for those who’ve never been and don’t want to go.

I’ve known evil and godlessness.  It resonates in me or the loss.  I am with the loveless and love the unloveable. I’ve taken a patient from interview direct to shower and stood in the shower with him both of us clothed washing us as the first step in healing. The lice coming off him triggered it. He was a hospital patient and had so succeeded in keeping people at a distance with his smell and lack of hygiene no one had noticed or dared to approach. I held him crying in my arms in the shower.

Half the people Trudeau is killing with MAID and euthanasia are lonely.

His father celebrated the abortion of the children of the Christian and Catholic poor. The rich routinely have three children.  

I have none.  Should I be rewarded.  Through no desire or lack of trying.  What is God’s will.  I live now hoping to live long enough to care for my dog another decade or two so he can have a good life. My own life has been a remarkable journey and adventure .I don’t know where the time went. I certainly had greatest passion with the most extraordinary goddesses, lovers and friends.  

My back hurts. I was angry and self pitying in Edinburgh visiting family castles frustrated at my inability to find more about my grandfather when I slipped on the Seat in the rain and hurt my back, the last straw, early athletic injuries, then construction work injuries, then falls, bike crashes, car crashes, plane crashes, truck crashes, motorcycle crashes.  Miracles of NDE. Lying in hospital beds waiting to hear if my spine had been broken again. Now I’ve evidence of an old fracture and the pain that radiates to my hip and leg and is just a product of my over eating, my lack of stretching, and my self pitying.  Poor me.  My friend says get down of the cross we can use the wood. I’m not Jesus and Jesus died for me so I don’t have to be on the cross.  I do like ice cream, tv and lying on the couch.  The pain reminds me of how much I have to learn and how hard it is to change. I’m fasting and must fast more. It’s a new day I must spend more time on my knees.  Remember the Hound of Heaven and the Long Dark Night of the Sout.  

Thank you God. An attitude of gratitude.  I’m grieving Sally, George, Archie, Bernie, Hank and all those who’ve gone before.  Thank you God.  

Thank you Jesus for this story and sacrifice rebirth and resurrection.  Thank you Jesus.

Turn Down Morning

I loved the song ‘it’s a turn down day’ by the Cykle.  It played on the radio when I was a teen and captured the spirit of pleasant summer days.  

It’s my day off and all I have planned is a Docside Clinic Party at 5 at Season’s in the Park Restaurant Q E Park. 33rd and Cambie. I also have an online Cyberdocs meeting I try to make at 1 but if I don’t I can make the 8 am meeting tomorrow.  Laura is coming over too.

I slept well dreaming of the afterlife with family and friends. I have a sea like the Greek Islands and also a Forest Riverside area where I hunt. I was in the forest house with many rooms,  It was a comforting dream. I was in bed at 10 and woke at 2 and went back to sleep.  I had turned off the alarm but work at 7 anyway and got up planning to sleep more on the couch, I meditated little and was reading when there was a truck outside and a woman, When I opened the door Madigan came out barking. The staff complained about him being off the leash. He was 10 feet from the door but I thanked then and promised I’d have himn on the leash, I don’t like complaining neighbours . It’s not like he’s a big dog and I was there calling him back. I just didn’t want to go out in the rain in my boxer shorts and t shirt, My bad,  I also thought I’m only here for another week or two. Then I’m travelling and the rules will change from place to place. I’m ready for the holidays and away from the constant threat of offending someone.  Canada has become such an offensive nation under Trudeau.

I normally would pray and meditate more.  Martin Luther King would say ‘it’s a tough day so I need to spend more time on my knees’.  It’s actually a light day.

It’s been dark and grey with lots of rain earlier. Madigan needs a walk. I usually do that first thing and also shower but I’ve done little here, I did take care of phone calls.  I’ve just avoided sitting at my desk,  I’m waiting for a call now from Ralf’s where they’re checking my satellite phone coverage, I’ve only a Canadian plan and would like one that covers US and maybe Mexico too. It’s my emergency plan. I have cell phone and Star link.  I just hope to do some more ‘off grid’ camping and use the generator for Starlink. Last year I saw some wilderness style campgrounds in Oregon and Northern California. In Southern California there and Arizona there were places in the Dessert I could pull over for a day or two I’d like to mix it up but still mostly be in RV Resorts.  

I’ve moved all my valuables into storage, The RV is ready for storage too.  Next week I bring the Camper here to tranfer clothes and such from here to there.  I’ve Merry Maids booked and Paul’s Tow Truck.   I’m storing my car on the 26 or 27 with Dave driving me back. I can leave for sure on Dec. 28, 500 km a day driving and a half dozen interesting audiobook planned.  I love the holiday feeling as the stress goes. I feel so relaxed driving south , I love the coastal route,

I talked with Peter and he and Larry are heading out as usual Boxing Day and planning to be in LA Jan. 1.  They’re taking the I5.  I wonder if I should but I don’t like the Grant Pass and I do like letting the little guy run on the beaches. I love the memory of blind Gilbert running on the beaches for the first time since he lost his eyes. I loved his joy.  We do have fun along thee coast.  The freeway experience happens at SAN Francisco and LA so I’m glad for the forest and sea route.  4 -5 days driving was fine,  I avoided night driving mostly last time and that made all the difference,  I’m going to try that again, I’ve a number of RV parks too at the 500 km range so could phone ahead and book each day.  The one night I drove at night and didn’t find a place for a few hours happened because several sites were closed for the winter,  Better planning and research this time,  Each trip is it’s own adventure, 

Thank you God.for this day.  

Chilly Morning

I woke at 3 and 5 to fix the heater fuse,  The vibration or something causes it to become lose so the furnace doesn’t work. It did this last year. I thought it was fixed, I went back to sleep well each time remembering all the nights on call I’d missed sleep and the off shore sailing night after night on watch.

I dreamed I was at my hunting lodge in the valley by the rapids or on the ridge with my truck. In the lodge men were talking of moose they’d shot and I was telling them about the 7 grouse I had in the freezer saying grouse was gold but even I wasn’t believing it. Yet I’d so enjoyed the grouse curry I made last week  I think some dreams have the residue of the day.  Others come from a deeper level. In the next I ‘m in a sports jacket and tie,  a young man talking to a room of older wealthy power family men speaking to my mind on behalf of those who ‘don’t fit’.  I was saying that the ‘choices’ were limited and exclusive.   The rewards of tokenism we’re going to only a select few,  I became impassioned and lost my voice responding to the stupidity of power,  I’d clearly moved some but lost others and felt like I’d often felt advocating for others though in a way I myself was included.  

Like the funny walks of John Cleese,  Some were definitely included but others not so,  

We are taught look for the similarities and not the differences, It was clearly a speech about haves and have nots. In the end I was still welcome though perhaps less so as I’d not moved the most entrenched authority.  That may be the military industrial complex’s. I might have been arguing for the inclusion of an accordion or Banjo in the marine band.  In the dream it was clear I appreciated the bag pipes.  But Trudeau is outlawing a whole new group of guns and gun owners in Canada are planning to paint their hunting rifles pink.  He’s such a tyrant, nazi communist traitor and the cost of heat is probably what triggers such.  the cost of living,  And yet I’m doing okay

My life is good,  I’ve had an adventure though feel passed over.  I feel I’ve spent years advocating for others concerns and now facing old age feel alone and vulnerable It’s all illusion though and I am trained to focus on the positive ,

The dream was a looking into my past, my Canadian upbringing, my values and generosity and willingness to help and courage,  The Cause that Jesus died for, was ours, not his really, He could have walked away.   I always thought I’d go north but now older I’m much more sensitive to the cold and wearied by the struggle of the wilderness. Like the Gods in Dick Slaterly Holistic Detective agency I can see the merit in a retirement community.  I appreciate Howard Hughes living in a hotel. 

I’m my camper I have all I need.  I remember dad with his canoe and motor and van fishing all summer.  I imagine I could do that. But I’m loonging to look at more art, I ‘m looking forward to Hansel’s Messiah,  

I may yet end up a monk,  I imagine I’d still like an air ship,  The way to get around the congestion of the city.  Personal drones and helicopters,  Air traffic control would be a concern,  I do like motion and the air is all that remains unexplored individually. I’ve certainly been a passenger in planes for years at a time, Fly in doctor services,  

I could use another coffee,  Christmas is near and I’m focused on the cold today.  The warmth is inside, We say we’ll love you till you can love yourself We call spirituality growing love inside. The solution is within,  I know this. It’s the practice that’s hard,

Thank you God for this day 

Christ and Christmas

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,”. John 1,1-6

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world”John 1, 9

This is the meaning of Christmas,  Each year the earth moves away from the sun and the days grow shorter, Each year the earth returns to the sun and the days grow longer,  In each life we do the same,  Each day, for there is only one day, we move away from the sun and return to the sun,  This is called the coming of the Christ.  Enlightenment. 

God is all,  I am a child of God as Jesus was the child of God.  

The Ascent of Mount Carmel, the dark night of the soul, and cares left among the lillies.

My Sweet Lord, I really want to know you, George Harrison

Christmas is the tine of contemplation.  In the lighting of candles, families reunited, peace on earth, theRembrandt of birth, love not war, prayer and meditation,  

It begins,  

The days become longer, Another cycle renews,  We go round and round and round in the circle game,  Joni Mitchell.

Yes,  

Thank you

My mother taught me to get on my knees beside my bed and pray to god giving thanks, praying for the health and wellness of my friends and family.  She taught me as child to have faith and trust,  Do not be afraid Jesus said time and time  again,  Forgive,  

Thank you Jesus Thank you God, Thank you Holy Spirit

Brunette River Walk

The day lightened up.  It was gloomy earlier. Madigan and I just did the Brunette River walk.  Several other walker with their dogs, Winter coated humans except the athletes running by in space age body clinging attired,  An occasional dog wore a jacket too.  But the weather was mild.  Madigan having lost hid heavy coat weeks back was warm enough in his summer trim.

I liked the hemlock.  Enjoyed stopping to look at the running river,  

There were no birds today. I usually see mallards and often a great blue heron. My favourite is the king fisher.  I once saw an eagle there close up and some hawks., I do like birds.  Recently the fish were migrating but now there’d nothing much happening,  A CN train went by.  

im enjoying the walk counter in the iPhone 16.  It tells me I’ve done 3,800 steps. 10,000 is recommended. I’m normally doing 3-4000 now but when I began counting I was only doing 2 to 3000.  I really did think I was doing 10,000.  I walk the dog several times a day but what I thought was a greater distance turned out only to be 1000 steps each circle of the park. I used to walk the river trail a couple of times during covid years then became concerned about the bullies, bikes and bears.  It was easier to stay in the park but I’m sure I reduced my distance each outing by 1-2000 steps My best so far in 5-6000 steps.  A minor project, 

Assad left Syria and took asylum in Russia.  I didn’t like Assad and was hopeful when he was almost turfed before Putrin came to his side.  Syria might well know peace.  Imagine visiting Damascus one day with all that history,  I’d wanted to go to Egypt but the Muslim Brotherhood was causing instability and terrorist were bombing Copt churched,  

I’ve been hanging s down turn day. I’d thought to go downtown on the weekend but the congestion caused by the Taylor Swift concert and some other events made it easier for me to stay home. I even missed church this morning having woken and 4 am and then gone back to sleep after 6. 

Laura sent me pictures of her red glittery nails.  She looks very festive.  I’m hardly into Christmas yet. I did read about the Annunciation but haven’t even opened Mathew or Luke.  I’m mostly prepared to go south.  Just waiting to move from RV to Camper. I’ve been investigating RV parks but feel limited by the Southern California and border response to Trumps taking power Jan 6.  

thank you Jesus halliluhaja 

Anxiety

It’s a word for a feeling. A sort of empty even painful hollow sort of feeling Confusing really.  Uncertainty of death.  The opposite of envy. Hearing of people you may or may not know already in assisted living ,  The undermining insertion of mimetic viruses of fear and loathing,  Clinging to the tattered remnants of faith like a flag shot through and through

I believe. 

I love.

 

I am. 

The Creator is not me or if it is me it’s the Shadow side for I know not how to fly or know with any solace the future or even the myth of the past.

If is the season of the Christmas story. Jesus of Nazareth. I’m wholly unprepared.  The Postal Strike.  The Eras Tour of Taylor Swift. The money no longer sufficient in millions or billions now being described in trillions, Inflationn and secular security.  Thieves and capitalists and communist.  The politicians and other salesmen are toting the term ‘giving Tuesday’.  The shell game continues,

I understand gambling. The allure of the dandelion petals. She loves me she loved me not.

A beggar to pass his year of requisite learning must sit with a begging bowl believing that someone will give him food and drink. He must practically accept grace and known the synchronicity of his belly and the universe.

The lack of faith id the satanic.  

The oldest law of the world or so I learned is that Chinese teaching , there are big fish and little fish and the little fish must be fast and numerous.  Conditional and unconditional love,

Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.  Thank you Holy Spirit. Thank you Mother Mary.  Thank you grand fathers and grandmothers. Thank you ancestors. Thank you relatives and friends. Thank you today.

It is 4 am, I went to bed reading Tori Ames and now am awake remembering New York and Moscow.  

Leaches , parasites and symbiotes,

I am thinking more of death, transformation from this world to the next.  Passings, Preparation,  How vulnerable, The begging bowl.

Believing, 

I am not alone.  I only knew of one man crucified or three as a child, Now I’ve learned of millions, the Armenians.I visited an Armenian church,  The priest had no illusions,

My father described men as ‘hard’, meaning their hearts were hard as in scarred. He was anxious in the end about his pension. It ran out at 90 and he lived longer than 90. His children, especially my brother reassured him.

I am today without a child or a brother and thought earlier of the woman how aborted my child and the women who withheld children not interested in anything but themselves as princess and then that day in the room with the play boy and the white dressed nurse ourdfied the door and giving her the vial of white.  The sperm were viable. I’d made all the effort and given the millions and they’d made all the promises and the media blamed it all on men,  We were stupid gullible and Pierre Trudeau pushed abortion and now Justin Trudeau continues the family hatred of Catholics and Christians killing babies, burning their churches and inviting invasion and changing the language.

I am alone,

She once described the men and women she loathed who took care of pets but did not have children,  But false allegations and lies and libel flourish in Canada so where can one be Caesar’s wife within this world of empty begging bowls,

Dog eat dog.  Rule of the jungle, 

Or forgiveness and love.  

Where can one retreat - Cappidocea , Meterora,  A good book.  

I’m watching Star Trek again, the Empire and Rebels.  God the father, God the son,  The passage of earth as a lesson in humility.  

Patience,  

I want to know you Creator.  Maybe if I’m with you I’ll grasp the Hitchiker’s Guide to Religiodity.  The Idiots guide to enlightenment,  I was fervently disappointed to learn Alan Watts was quite the drunk. I’ve thought the same of the writing of prophets and the Church has definitely had it’s drunken propes,  The Imans lust and sneak opium and hashish,

Life on life’s terms,  I am here clear witted offered a daily reprieve from demon drink.  Another escape lost to me, No wonder i follow the Mars expedition story with such interest.  And the demented escape like the psychotic to the dreams in their heads,

God is good all the time,  Thank you Jesus,