Burnaby - Thor,Gratitude, Grace

Thank you God for this day. Thank you for a night of sleep and interesting dreams. Thank you for the peace and quiet of the awakening day. Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for  Madigan. Thank you for my ancestors.  Thank you for this Thor. Thank you for the coffee, eggs and yoghurt. Thank you for work and play. Thank you for Jordan Peterson’ We who wrestle with God.  Thank you for Fry’s Mythology.  Thank you for westerns and reading and eyes and imagination of story tellers. Thank you for history and chemistry and physicals. Thank you for my friend Kirk and his Salt Spring Island coffeeshop revival. Thank you for George, his 49 years of inspiration and his love of Burnaby Fellowship, women and cats.  Thank you for Madigan. Thank you for vehicles. Thank you for air. Thank you for space. Thank you for astronaughts and the dream of Mars exploration. Thank you for civilization. Thank you for sensuality and silk and satin and trade. Thank you for satin. Thank you for prayer and contemplation. Thank you for meditation. Thank you for breath.  Thank you for Apple. Thank you for universities. Thank you for medicine and engineering.  Thank you for logic and truth. Thank you for spirituality and the learning of the artists and ethicists,  Thank you for morality and grace.  Thank you for poetry. Thank you for animals and birds and wheat fields and forests and lakes. Thank you for oceans and whales. Thanks you for fish and rain and tropical winds. Thank you for Saipan and San Francisco, Ottawa, Toronto, London, Vancouver, La Paz, Brandon, Churchill, Victoria, Parksville, Tinian, LA, Arizona, Mexico, British Columbia. Thank you for Canada and the USA.  Thank you for all those who have been freed from communism and totalitarianism. Thank you for civilization, Thank you for gravity and physics. Thank you for all dear Lord. Thank you for creation and life and this journey and adventure you have given.  Thank you God for your presence and companionship and reassurance. Thank you for yesterday, today and tomorrow. Thank you Jesus.  

Thriving, Laura and Madigan, Davie Street

I’m grateful. Life is good.  I read that Joseph Campbell saw life as the ‘Hero’s Journey » , an adventure. I live one day at a time.  So each day I wake now with the idea of adventure.  Even though I’m working I remember summer holidays as a kid when the day was a Tabala Rosa.  I’d have breakfast with my mom, corn flakes and milk usually, with toast and jam.  Then I’d get on my blue single gear motorcycle and explore the world,  I drove everywhere everyday.  Sometimes friends would join.  We’d come home for lunch though sometimes Mom would pack a cheese or bologna sandwich and I’d not come back till dinner.  Every day an adventure.  

Now I have a Harley and a Mini Cooper , a Ford F350 and a Honda Tracker 420 4x4 quad. I’ve an electric biker but I’ve not used that much recently.  The car and motorcycle are for the city and the truck and quad for the country recently.

I was in looking at a Vespa. I sold my last one and miss it. I’m only allowed one motorcycle here so am thinking of getting the Vespa when I put the Harley down for the winter. I’m planning on travelling down to LA, Mexico, maybe Yuma and have been told not to take my Harley into Mexico.  

Today I attended an on line meeting and really enjoyed the group as always.  I shared. I listened.  I felt apart of.  After that Dr Ready called and said he could fit me in, So I headed over there for an excellent chiropractic adjustment. After that I called Laura who was just stepping into a bath and asked if she wanted me to visit we could go for a walk

It was an hour drive through Richmond using my new Garmin Drive 55 GPS I bought last night at Best Buy.  The GPS I take in the woods has too small a screen for driving while this one is as large as my iPhone.  Excellent.  I really enjoyed using. Also its hand held so can be taken off the mount with a rechargeable battery good for 12 hours.  I really liked it.

Laura met me at the Rainbow Side walk circle on Davie after I parked.  Madigan was ecstatic. He jumped up and down like a pogo stick puppy.  We walked back to Amoka.  Laura had a 

butter croissant she shared with Madigan I had a bacon egg breakfast sandwich. We both had Chai Latte’s.  Delicious.  Madigan loved all the passing dogs. Laura and I caught up on our Facebook friends and reading. I’m really enjoying Ray Kurwell , The Singularity is Nearer. I’d watched a presentation by Elon Musk of what motivated him as a young man when he developed Pay Pal and Tesla and then Space X.  I’m certainly enjoying his Starlink out in the woods,

Laura bought flowers,  I walked her home.  Madigan and I stopped at Vespa to ask them to watch for a second hand bike I could take to Mexico. I think I’ll get it in November December.  

I learned yesterday that an iPhone 16 won’t arrive for a month or so. It’s like the Cabbage Patch Doll equivalent of tech

I had my tooth fixed yesterday.  A week ago I’d broken off an old filling leaving a ragged hole .  I was so pleased to see Doug Lovely who repaired my smile and made a bridge to to conceal a missing tooth some 27 years ago, I really am vain and Doug was a life savior, He’s sold his practice but still works with New West Dentists. Dr. Tan an excellent dentist solved my dilemna with a new filling, I was simply elated and had to really pay attention riding my motorcycle home.

Now I’m having steak and potatoes.

Life is good

Thank you God for all your blessings, Thank you for Laura, Thank you for Madigan, Thank you for the vehicles and the city of Vancouver and Burnaby, books, TV, RV’s iPhones and Garmin GPS.  

Laura and I are planning our hunt for the October Long Weekend,  I’m haven’t decided wheere to go Clinton, Cache Creek, Princeton and Nakusp.  It’s great hunting but cold and snowy. Oh well, please guide me Lord, Thank you Thank you Thank you. 

Trans

I am enjoying the audio book, Before we were trans, a new history of gender by Ktt Heyam.  It begins with the dissecting of gender assigned at birth (ex AFAB or AMAB) and then looks at the fluidity of gender in different cultures and different times.

I’m sensitized to this as an old hippy. Long hair was gay and the Beatles long hair was obscene to many in my parents generation fresh from the wars when men fought with crew cuts not so much an expression of gender as a prevention of lice and better fit for helmets.  I was called gay when I supoorted women wearing pants to school, a huge scandal in my school in which I was roundly vilified.  It was a time when women wore skirts and skirts represented feminity.  Such silliness diddn’t consider Roman Legionaries or Scottish Highland Warriors.  

The great song of my youth was ‘are you a boy or are you a girl with your hair like that you look like a girl’.  When I got into a fisticuff with a redneck looking for a fight and too full of beer my ‘long hair’ like the Beatles of the day was hardly over the ears, executive cut for today.  

I enjoyed therefore this book reminding us of the absurdities of gender laws through the years..  Men wearing coloured vests scandalously gay while women wearing short hair was obviously a sure sign of a woman being lesbian, I think of my poor elderly mother cutting her hair because managing her glorious long red hair , fond memories from my child, was just too much trouble in her late 80’s . I fear she’d be aghast if she was accused of late age lesbianism but historically this would be true ,  Men wearing jewelry was suspect especially more than one earring.

Now what’s fascinating is that in other  cultures gender hasn’t been as reductive as it has in western patriarchy.  I was most interested in the separation of gender and sexuality. A role in Angola was masculine but it could be held by a woman until the patriarchal Portuguese invaded and subjected the country to th catholic patriarchy of the day.  Women holding these masculine ‘roles’ were evicted from their jobs as an ideas of female inferiority was introduced.

Recently there’s been a spate of chauvinist humor directed at world leaders like Trump as the female patter of Putin and Trudeau as the bitch of Singh.  I tend to think of trans as gender and sexuality despite knowing that 90% of ‘cross dressers’ are heterosexual , mostly married and not interested in men.  

The author also points out the history bisexuality where leaders female and male are historically known to have had sex with the other but it’s not affected their ‘gender’ assignment. Alexander a notorious bisexual is never depicted as such an is gender queer. His maleness is  never in doubt.  This is because the chauvinist patriarchy demands the greater world leader be male and heterosexual .  So bisexuality  is downplayed.

 Hitler’ s murder of the gays along with Jews as discussed in the classic ‘Pink Swaztika,was not of the ‘discrete’ gays but rather the ‘feminine’ .  The macho men are this,  like prison ‘top’s who will kill you for calling them gay or a bitch.  “I fuked men’ but I was never fucked.  I ‘let fairies suck my divk but I never sucked dick’.  The Mexican police I met insisted they has so much ‘Sex’ they needed to have sex with men and women because they were so male. Sexuality and gender were not necessarily linked. Yet in different cultures gender is linked to spirituality.

The book unpacks this ideas separating gender from sex and role, considering it academically with fascinateing examples from history. I just listened to the story of Ann Lister, a famous early last century lesbian whose fault was her fashion more than her sexuality. She apparently dressed in clothing more from 5hemlikes of Mountain Equipment Coop than Holt Renfrew because  liked to hike with her girlfriends. Male attire though scandalous was  more appropriate for the climbing.  

I’m here on Commercial and seeing the whole kaboodle of gender expression.  Personally I’ve painted males and earrings .  But then at one time men shaving was considered feminine.  I like that Jesus apparently had long hair without the aquiline nose. The dandies of the Elizabethan court were frowned upon because they washed .

I think my poor dog who was groomed yesterday must be seen as gay today. .  He is really omnisexual  being discouraged frequently from humping Laura’s leg, boy and girl dogs and pillows.  Humans are a funny lot. Too band wanker isn’t a gender category.

Sex is biological and genetic. 

The judgemental are amusing. I loved reading the Golden Bough of Frazer which describes the need for a community to be the same for difference could  lead god to cause floods or droughts. When people dont know which red berry causes death or which snake venom is deadly then stereotypical behaviour is safe.  Primitive society is extremely fearful repetitive  and superstitious. There is no doubt that sameness may lead to longevity of centuries. Tried and proved. Mainstream. Not bad and certainly a common template for raising the young.   The obsession with rules is what is needed to appease the Gods.  

As a Christian I know Jesus was a good guy. I don’t feel such fondness for St. Paul. Alot of themOld Testament as history is little different than the murderously  barbariaric Koran.  

Madigan and I had fun having a mexican lunch with Laura on Davie street. She’s noted that the once young gay street is now much more populated by older gay male couples .I told her she was definitely gorgeous and voluptuous, with pink nails and sparkling sandals .  She liked my the multi colour glass frames. Today they would just be considered trendy and far too square for Elton John. My rugby playing woman I know  delights in gowns and pears when she goes out to concerts.. My other  female friend changes to black jeans and black tshirt when she works on her truck engine,

I feel less than because I’m not a macho man with  a safe certainty.  Like many men who were sexually abused I feel identification with the aggressor who considered my youth at the time feminine and his being a chauvinist partricarchal predator saw me as a hole in the mattress.  There’s been an effort to address pedophilia, sexual abuse of children and serious questions about man boy ‘love’. Meanwhile a girl from  Iran told me peoophilia was normal for the Ayatola and his fellow clergy. Their approach to pedohilia is way behind the Catholic Church and the education system here in Canada which have been exposed and vetted unlike parliament and congress. 

I often comment on the Khan gene that suggest his brother and he had many hundred of thousand of mates, A one man rape of the sabines  Certainly the Unwillingness of Biden an Trudeau and others like the British royal family to let out the Epstein list shows that pedophilia is enmeshed in the leadership in Washington, Ottawa, London, 

Also I’d trust a pillow with my dog than anyone or anything with Xi Jin Ping in Beijing.  If Putin did anything untoward inecrophilia would follow. Indo Europeans and celts popularized the family while South African success was having as many cattle and wives as possible. Trudeau lowered the age of consent for bestiality as obviously that would get him more liberal votes.The silliness of multi culturalsm is the homogeneity and ethnocentric who project their own ignorance  on the world .  Thank God for the Darwin awards.

I was criticized by a woman doctor administrator who never realized what a butch bitch she was when I explained the Berkeley gender sexuality scale that had hard wired homosexuals and hard wired heterosexuals who on questioning would rather die than have sex with other.  Meanwhile the majority of people were opportunistic with a middle bisexuality blip. . The test results  reminded me of the great movie scene where the man asked the woman would you have Sex with me for a million dollars an she answerd, I’dconsider it . Then he asked,  what about for a dollars.  She sthen said what do you take me for. ‘He responded  , well that’s established I’m just dickering for price.

I’m enjoying the book because it’s expanded my ideas of gender and made a place for the Mad Mollies of Ireland , the female soldiers and others but most importantly that it separates the ‘chauvinist patriarchal’ idea of the woman and transwoman as inferior.  Dirty.  I think of myself as that.  I mostly think of my self as less than because I’m not a father and the only baby I had was aborted.  That’s a whole other history. 

Before genetics and viagra a king could still be king if his knight was happy to pregnante the queen.  Not so today.  Confusing complex times when so many are anxious and afraid . 

Madigan was so happy to see Laura today demanding her whole attention, He was jumping up and down between us that I let her go without hugging her.  I miss hugging her.  

Getting old is unmanly too.  

Halloween on Davie Street

I love Davie Street at Halloween. It's always carnival.  Not just a night but a season.  Everyone seems to get in the spirit and dress up. Costumes galore.
Certainly every man who ever wanted to wear a dress was doing Benny Hill's Lads in Frocks. Eddie Izzard would have been lost in the crowd.
The Smurfs were sensational. A lot of beautiful girls had maintained their genetic advantage by wearing form revealing skeleton leotards.  I wondered if Leonard Cohen hadn't met such young women when he wrote his classic, "As I lay dead in my love soaked bed......".
I simply donned a blond wig, glasses and hat and with some lipstick became my favourite old fat church lady self, with a funky purse, mind you.  It was 10 pm when I drove to Davie for coffee. Other years I've come for late night dinner getting a window seat in one of the many many excellent restaurants.  A dozen parties were advertised but with Gilbert not invited I wasn't much for late night activities.  11 pm as it was is  my normal bed time these years.  Still it's a tradition. Other years I've taken in the Rocky Horror Picture Show bringing along a roll of toilet paper at very least.  Tonight though, I was proud of myself for making the  drive across town.  It never ceases to amaze me how many late night people live in Vancouver. It's become like New York in that way.  
I regretted not bringing my other camera when I saw photographers out enjoying the medley of creative genius.  One young woman's face was unforgettable with the most amazing zombie painting over her chin and lips leaving her beautiful laughing eyes unscathed.  A couple of women, there were a lot of older people to my surprise out in costume like me, were dressed in Napoleon soldier costumes. Very period.  I love the 'period' dress. Some with hoop skirts Great bodices.  Lots of ghosts.  Its a wonder what you can do with a sheet.  Some very impressive pointy hatted witches carrying wicked brooms. There was every  variety of animal and one amazing Sasquatch.  A 'flasher' with the the biggest store-bought  dildo ever sold, flashed me and everyone else on the street.   Several fairytale figures. Lil Bo Peep.  Not so many disney characters.  But cartoon figures and an authentic Spiderman for sure.  A group of Chinese people lead by an emperor, a dozen in all, a wide variety of costumes did a parade up one side of the street and down the other.  A bear was incongruously in their midst.  What was prettiest was a group of young women who'd all dressed together as red and green bubble wearing somethings.  They looked a bit like very perky cheerleaders except for these bright coloured bubbles all over their torsos.
Line ups everywhere. After having a coffee and walking about the hood I returned to my little dog and had a late night movie with pastry from East Vancouver Bakery.  Someone was shooting off fireworks. It's Vancouver so someone is always lighting up the sky.