Tuesday Morning, I'm awake

Tuesday Morning. I’m awake.  Thank you God.  Another day. I so appreciate the little munchkin room mate Madigan. He was irritated at me in the night when my feet crowded him. He sleeps at the end of my bed. My little puppy guardian. Well, we’ve not made it back to the bed. I’m sleeping on the couch because I’m afraid he might fall off of  the bed or pee and poop in the clothes I’ve piled at the side. I do laundry and bring it back in a bag a can’t say I’m very good at stowing. Now i’m stepping over pee pads and searching out poop that’s mostly on the pee pads but might still appears as an underfoot surprise.  He’s a very smart dog and learning house training okay.  Unfortunately with the rain and cold I can’t get him outside. He needs to be lifted down the stairs.  

I don’t know what’s going on internationally.  Everything I hear about Canada, the liberal government and Trudeau is appalling and frightening.  I feel my once fine country is being turned into a third world slum with communism and dictatorship looming.  The Covid continues to spread with the fear and hysteria. The lockdowns don’t make any sense from a scientific health perspective.  My patients are plagued with mental illness. The anxiety and depression and despair are palpable.  I daily reassure, prescribe meds and diagnose illness.  

It’s like all these administrations are one trick ponies. We had the ‘climate change hysteria’ with everything focus on the ‘the world’s dying give me money’ while every other aspect of life was belittled. “Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.”  says harry only to have Jill shreik, “Don’t you care. We’re all going to die.”  Now suddenly we’re oll goingto die for Covid.  But what about my job , what about church, school, music, the theatre company.  

I Know. 

The isolation is beginning to wear on me. I’m like I was solo sailing.  I spend alot of time alone. Writer’s do. Wilderness survivalists do. I have alot of experience. I don’t mind being a hermit. I like it here. I’ve this new funny roommate. Right now he’s chewing a bone which is so much better than when he’s chewing cable. Yesterday he found fishing reel and unreeled fish line all over the living room. I felt like a Navy Seal had booby trapped my place.  I had to cut my way through.  

I continue to pray and ask God for guidance.  

The future is so uncertain.

I wonder if this is any more true of any other time or just a product of the awareness brought on by Covid.  I am aging. I will die. We hear of people dying all the time.

No one I personally have known has died in months.  Patients have attempted suicide but every other patient I know has lost someone and grief is heavy in the air. What I fear is the torture and isolation of the nursing homes.  Deaths are great there. I remember Dad saying how horrible it was to be confined to bed blind with a hospital acquired infection. Solitary confinement, he called it.

I used to take comfort from the thought that I’d write the great Canadian novel. I thought to sail across the Atlantic retracing the path of my forefathers back to Scotland. I’ve looked forward to going to Aberdeen where my grandfather hailed from. Then I actually fell to the childish becoming of a ‘lord’ as a result of buying a foot square of Aberdeenshire land in Scotland for $50.  What a ruse!  Now I’m Lord Hay.  Some family probably owned that land one day as that’s the clan origins. If it’ had not been Aberdeenshire I’d not have fallen for the inspired money making venture. Now I’d like to visit ‘my land’.  

I have sexual thoughts.  Bisexual.  Romantic. Orgies.  I dream of Egypt and barges and fans and being fed grapes. I have strong young men and women serving me. I channel some ancient Gods or aliens or emperors.  Mostly I think of massages. What does one do after an orgasm.  There’s whatever leads up to it. I have friends. Even now I have to socially distance. I can’t have assistance with the function of orgasm anymore than I can hope to have someone scratch my back. I’m alone with my own bodily functions.  I imagine royal assistants and laugh.  How once there were chambermaids to the king. But then there was constant paranoia. Even now we don’t know what Gates plans to put in the vaccines he may well force on the world with the complicity of the weakling corrupt Trudeau.  I like Elon Musk. I’m delighting in his space age activties. Perhpas I’d like a plae on Mars.  This world has become too adolescent and bizarre.

But what really do I have to complain about. I m thanikful for the food, the fresh running water, indoor plumbing, heat, the intermittent good weather.  Christmas Advent is here.  The Coming of the King. There’s the renewal.  Spring isn’t that far off. Each day I plod. My back hurt. My joints complain but I’m moving forward, slouching towards bethlehem perhaps. 

I’ve so much to be thankful for but though I have a full belly I take no pleasure in the many who have not.  I want us all to be blessed. I don’t have the I win you lose trait . It’s always been for as long as I can remember, we’re all have to go through to the last one before we can all go through. There’s no hierarchy in the wisdom of the spirutual worldl. There’s no first. We all arrive together. so we might as well help the one falling behind.  I will die I supposed but I can’t get ahead.

I hear of all the deaths from overdoses and think of the luxury and poverty.  I could be captaining my sailboat across the cold Atlantic but I’d rather have a sex change and find pleasure inside out of the elements.  I see the street person getting some cheap short lived pleasure from drugs and can’t judge them.  It’s the same as abortion and euthanasia now. The ultra rich elite allow slum accomodation. The main problem is the courts. The judges allow the bullies thugs and gangs to terrorize the people. Sellig them drugs and taking the best for themselves with all the corruption of the legal system.  I idealize these matters only to know that everyone really isn’t corrupt but indeed is doing the best the can.

Everyone is doing the best they can.  

Everyone is doing the best they can.

Some are sicker than others.

I could do more but I’m lazy too., I fantasize about beaches in the tropics.  I long to sail in warm weather. I consider selling my offshore sailing vessle for a lighter rigged coastal cruise I can better handle. I’m happy smaller more constrained. My dreams are smaller. I’m thinking lakes rather than oceans. 

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

I am thankful for the puppy. I’m thankful for work and purpose. I muddle on.  It’s enough I suppose. I’d like to see the confusion lift. I’m afraid of the UN and the Great Reset and communism and persecution and dictators and poverty.  I fear aging in cockroach infested nursing homes.  I fear torture.  

But God is good and I feel distant from God.  I feel dsitant from my fellow man and woman.  

I was visitted by Laura on the weekend and it was comforting.  

I don’t know what I want at time even.  

I pray.  Thank you God for this creation. Thank you for the opportunities. 

I’m looking forward to another coffee and a shower and a walk with the puppy and my camera. I like taking pictures of birds.  

Dentistry, St. George and Salvation

Dr. Doug Lovely extracted my molar on an emergency basis. He’s a kind and caring man, a gifted dentist and my personal Mensch.  He commented about the suddenness of the white van jihadi attack in Toronto this week, “Life is fragile. I doubt any of those people who got up that morning thought they’d be mowed down and killed on the street.”

As he was extracting my tooth he commented on the copious pus escaping.  “It must be 200 cc. No wonder your jaw and cheek were all swollen. Most people respond to antibiotics but you didn’t."
He went on to say, "Before antibiotics people died all the time from these abscesses.  When I read history I'm always  amazed at how many people died of infections, consumption, TB, pneumonia.  Then there were the flu epidemics. We take it for granted but antibiotics changed the course of history.” 

I listened as the suction took the pus. Then there was intense tugging and a cracking sound.  “It’s a boy!” Doug laughingly exclaimed.  His bright and beautiful assistant laughed too. There was obvious relief.  Anyone who lives in the real world, especially that of surgery, knows things can take very scary turns.  That moment though it was as if the war had paused.  The  words ‘cease fire’ were being shouted down the battlefield.

I laughed too, a little, as best one can, in a dental chair, another's fists in your mouth. My eyes teared with the relief.  God , the relief.  In the night I'd felt I couldn't go on.    I am so ashamed at how weak I am alone. I so don't like to be dependent, to ask for help, to need help.
The evil was now gone.  The thought of the pus though left me feeling dirty. The sickly smell of anaerobes in the room. The scent of contagion.  The shame. I'd been defiled and not even known it. I felt apologetic for kissing her days before.  I felt betrayed by my body. Smaller. Human.
The nightmare was all but over now.  I felt I was no longer on the down elevator, not moving up yet, but no longer descending.
There followed  a tense moment as Doug moved along to get out the back root. He heaved and pulled, a muscular activity, with steady gentle persuasion.  

 “You don’t want to break the root off in the socket.” He said.
I thought of thousands of years and millions of toothaches.  The sheer misery in the world untold, before the advent of modern dentistry, precision tools, anitibiotics,  anesthesia, guild and professional training.   A toothache can be so humbling.   We are an ungrateful species. I'm the worst, so utterly self absorbed till life literally slaps me in the face. 

When that second root came out it was a bit of an aftermath.  A last tug and more relief.  Both Doug and his assistant relaxed. The tension left the room. Almost immediately it was like the Post Modern Jukebox began playing a coccabana song.   Tropical breezes wafted through the room.  Water lapping on beach in the distance.  Sunrise over sand.  Sweet relief.
The offending tooth and all it’s parts were gone. The whole body strained.  Doug had been asking me how I was doing through out the procedure.  I'd only grunted.  Now I felt good. It's  been a long time since  I felt good.  

I’d not been breathing there for a bit. My chest  felt heavy. Bacteremia. Septicemia.  The whole process was a work out, a physical ordeal.  I’m not as young and athletic as I once was. I felt tired,  worn, battered.  The Travelling Willbury Song, “Handle me with care.”comes to mind too often these days.

The briefest exquisite pain occurred then, like an electric shock.   Doug pulled out the last of the abscess sack.   A tiny price to pay.  “I added more freezing but it leaks out so quickly at the end when everything is so inflamed.” he said.   It gave me a glimpse of what dental and surgical care had been like before the advent of anaesthesia.   What else do we take for granted, I thought. 

 Every second that passed from the removal of that offending tooth,  gospel band Third Day's song, "There's a Light at the End the Tunnel" now  played in my mind. Hillsong, Mercy,  Grace and Salvation all came to mind. Timeless themes.

I’d been crying in the night in pain and despair, waiting till 6 am to email Doug that morning. Sleeplessness makes everything worse. I remember  being alone at sea, at night, at the end of a hurricane , waiting for either my boat to break up, pitchpole in the high seas, or dawn to come. Dawn had come with all it's glory that day.  Dawn came this day.  Again.  "Ye of little faith."
I'd just read that Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to her royal baby boy, serendipitously, on St. George's Day.   A great time of celebration.
I had a fleeting thought of  Dr. Doug Lovely as St. George, white shining dental armour, great dental lance,  the evil dragon tooth putrid tooth stabbed dead through the middle.  

I don’t know how long the pustulence had been there.  Abscesses are sneaky that way.  Like liars and false allegations. I’ve not felt well for some time.  Low grade fever. Lethargy. Disappointment with putrid politics.  Negativity.  I just couldn’t shake the foreboding. Too many family and friends dying. Patients dying.  Another great one died last week. He'd turned his life around and was a veritable success story in so many ways before his cirrhotic liver dragged him home.  Maybe only the good die young. I'm around for a long time.
My own mortality has been ever present. It’s been a  bad winter of sad blues tinged with poor rockabilly. The tooth flaring last week moved the whole universe symphonically.  It became a regular Tchaikovsky then crescendoed seriously Richard Straus at the end.  Now there’s hope again. I'd loved a little Bach, maybe some Handel's, Water Music.  I’d give anything for Strauss but that’s reaching in these shallow godless bureaucratic times.

I slept last night. I’m still on antibiotics. My mind is clearer. I woke to  sunshine and spring. I feel like Steven Segal punched me in the jaw in my sleep.  Otherwise the swelling is down.  I actually feel hope.  I’d lost it there. I'm pretty much a wimp.
Hope's like peace of mind.  And faith. They’re so utterly precious.  They colour the universe. Without them life would be just black and white and grey. I didn't  quite see them slip away.  Somewhere in the night. That 19th version of Dark Night of the Soul,the comic strip despair.
We'd  watched Monty Python last week,  the  Crucifixion Scene,  the men hanging from nails,  whistling and singing, "Always look on the bright side of life."  It's hard not to be cynical.
All those people who survived the jihadi van attack.  A new born baby boy..  A Royal couple pleased as any commoner.  The cycles of life. The blessing of spring.
There's a certain absurdity to a molar abscess. The dentist as St. George. I take life too much for granted these days.  I need to be more thankful for small mercies. The cracks that Leonard Cohen  described are the places where the Light shone in.  The gentle touch of the sacred can still be felt beneath the burden of the mundane.  
I heard the  bird songs today.  The scent of cherry blossoms was in the breeze.   Salvation  and Modern Dentistry.  Hooray for St. George.

Winter and Spring Fight to the Death, Hear all about it! Place your bets!

The snow came just after I called Trev Deely motorcycle to ask them to have my Harley ready a month early.  Dave had ridden his Softail past me with that smug look I’d seen on all the motorcyclists for days.  Spring was here.  Ha ha ha. Looking at you still riding in a cage.  I fear I jinxed it.  As we say among friends, “I may not be much but I’m all I think about.”
That’s when my furnace died.  I called Eric at Starfleet and had faith he’d have it fixed in a day or two. He’s the best there is and has solved every problem I’ve thrown at him over the years.  I just turned out the furnace lacked the normal access and each day he’d fix one thing and it would work better but crap out in the night. I love my electric blanket.
I fear I’d been thinking about returning to the prairies but this taste of winter cold and equipment break downs was a personal reminder of the struggle with the environment that was part of day to day existence out east.  Here I had mosquito people and horsefly authorities and wasp drivers but there were no real bugs in the lower mainland.  And winter didn’t last all year. The climate here is more hospitable. Even if the creepy people demand carbon taxes and punish people for heating their homes so LA people won’t have to use their air conditioners more.
Winter here lasted only a couple of months at most .  I’d just taken pictures of pretty blue crocus and tulips and posted them on Face book.  I called them Hope and Faith.  Would they survive.
Thank God for Canadian Tire. They had an indoor propane heater to attach to propane bottles. They are imostly used in construction sites.  The temperature had dropped and my electric heater limited by the available power on my cable wouldn’t do more than keep the temperature above 60. Since living in the tropics I will only wear shorts and t shirt in the home.  I was now wearing sweats and sweaters and slippers. I may as well be in Winnipeg.
When the weekend came I escaped with Laura to Harrison Hotsprings. The Harrison Lake Hotel was luxurious with heat and I sat for hours in the public hot spring pool dreaming of the Mariana Islands.  My dreams all week week were of my sailboat and fair winds and following seas. Darlene’s incredible Facebook  pictures of Australia beaches have certainly stoked the dreams. Laura began talking about her love of Saipan once the snowstorm hit.
This week Eric became pretzel man and got into the inner workings of the furnace to scratch the right spot that had made the beast ornery.  A tiny burnt out part that somehow not responded to the computer command to ignite.  Eric set it straight. Heat, glorious, heat was now mine.
I sat on the couch in shorts and T-shirt watching NCIS and Big Bang Theory in shock.  I went to work each day.  I love my F350 truck with new snow tires. I smugly watched cars fish tailing in the ice and snow.  I talked to a motorcyclist who said it was ‘awfully’ cold, the year’s best understatement.
All over the news the Justin Trudeau and family reality show desperate to out compete their role models the Kardashian’s and Jenners were in India dressed funny doing photo ops in front of impressive old buildings. I laughed at the quotes from Indiannews about how ridiculous they looked in their Indian “costume”. Anyway now I expect him to break into the song “It’s fun to live at the YMCA” Even when I visited Mumbai it was as sophisticated as New York so I’m not surprised Trudeau’s antics are perceived as “mocking”. When he visited us in the DTES he certainly didn’t get dressed in layers of rags carry and carry a sleeping bag.
  The India government was further disgusted with him as he was only meetings with terrorists, the same modus operadi he used in Canada. But even that didn’t help his plummeting ratings so he went back to his winning strategy of giving millions and billions to strangers. 10’s of millions to terrorists in Canada. Billions to overseas tyrannies. And now he says he’s got a million dollar ‘trade deal’ but it turns out he knows as little about a good trade deal as he knows about economy, environmen or community. He’s given $750 million to chucling gleeful Indian billionaires, he really likes to hob nob with billionaires at our expense,, and they have said they’ll give him $250 billion in return.  It’s like stealing candy from a baby. But the media is all over it and every one is smoking dope and drinking and no doubt some are trying opium because ‘why not’.
My patients are homeless and the news says the shelters turned away 50 people or more.  I’m writing prescriptions for antibiotics. The flu is killing old people.  There’s a sense the government wants to save money by killing off the citizens .  The death rate from the fentanyl epidemic I’m in the middle of is over a thousand and now they’re shooting each other near the clinic I’m working. But there’s another picture of Justin and Sophie cavorting in front of religious monuments in the hot weather having abandoned Canada to the cold for his weekly family vacation.
I snarl by myself at times.  My eye less dog comforts me.  He’s been in a world of pain and now we’re relatively okay. We have heat to return to.
Then the pipes freeze. It’s a diagnostic dilemma in the dark in the snow in the below zero windchill last night in the dark but I find some idiot (me) has unplug the heat wire for the hoses so he could plug in his electric bicycle falsely believeing spring had sprung.  I plug in the cord.  In the morning the shower is running full blast, the pipe unfroze in thee night,but there’s puddles mist and spray throughout the bathroom.  I towel everything  down.  I really have to pee.
I go to my refrigerator to get milk for the coffee I’m making and the fridge is off, the freezer meat is soft. Sometime in the night the water pump and new plug and electric heater have blown the circuit.  I re set it.  I now have heat and electricity and my refrigerator is working. My water heater I hope is back on line.  It’s taken me about a half hour to get this all back in order. I’m having my first sip of coffee.
I’m running a bit late. I didn’t do the sit ups I promised myself I’d do. I’ve not meditated but I’ve not suicided.  I’ve not shot up with a needle. I ‘ve not gone looking for a bomb to blow up some government office. I’ve not become a rapper. I’ve not voted Liberal. I’ve just plodded through a not atypical Canadian winter day knowing that as I’m in Vancouver this is likely my karma for all the ‘smug’ remarks I’ve made about Winnipeg when my friend Wes sends pictures of the magic driveways and walkways there that fill up with snow minutes after they’ve been plowed or shoveled.  Here the snow will be gone in a week or so. I hope the bulbs are deep enough to withstand the cold. I love the flowers of spring.  Soon I’ll be visiting the tulips in the valley for the annual glorious tulip festival.
I just have to remember that Spring does come.  Even in Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal Spring eventually returns with warmth and joy for all.  I expect the media will have triumphal selfies of Justin Trudeau in Canada at last, maybe even at work in parliament.  It might just be once like the sighting of the ground hogs but even the French work here eventually.  The biker gangs and mafia will soon take to the streets. The corruption will heat up. It’s Canada , we’re resilient.
Another old friend died. He was spiritual. We know he’s in heaven.  That alternative appears more attractive in Canadian winters.
  My back hurts getting out of bed.  The chiropractor is helping.  I’ve been chewing aspirin and my lovely doctor gave me a stool sample kit for Occult Blood testing. I am surely bleeding in my aching gut with all this aspirin I’m taking to just be mobile so the last thing I want is a ‘false positive’ test. They threaten everyone over 50 with the long snake. As kids we were scared of them under our beds but these ones are real and despite the humor of Connolly’s description of a colonoscopy I really feel I could go to my grave happily having avoided medically induced explosive diarrhea.
It really isn’t that bad.  I have to look on the positive. Snow tires, clothing, healthy cat and dog, heat again, running water again, light and aspirin.
 There’s just this little bit about going outside. Too many car crashes. The other drivers scare me.
 I see people who can’t bring themselves to leave their apartments. I’m seeing more and more people afraid and paranoid.  The heart patients are having trouble breathing in the cold.
I have a picture of two malaria’s and a cholera up on my wall to remind me we’re just helping each other, one a little more along the road or a little less sick.
 My mother would say, “lord love a duck”.
. I’ve got to see if the water has had enough time to heat so I can shave. I need the inspiration of a hot shower especially to ease my back.
 I’ve got clean clothes.  And snow tires. Don’t forget the snow tires.
Thank God for spring and please get rid of this snow so I can ride my motorcycle.  Really I don’t want a pickle I just want to ride on my motorcycle.
 I trust you spring. You will beat winter . You always do.

12 steps to restoring sanity.

I love when ‘you’re feeling kind of lonesome and crowd calls out for more’  and you can turn your back on all the demands and go to a place where pretty soon everyone really does know your name.

I’d been trusting and vulnerable and the old paranoia that wasn’t paranoia but reality came back.   I began feeling scared again.  There’s that place where you get in a fetal position and just rock because people who are supposed to be caring are hurting you. I didn’t know that as a kid.  I learned that as an adult.

I was forced against my will.  Sometimes it just comes back. That feeling of helplessness and terror.  They always begin their hurt with claiming you hurt them but you didn’t. You weren’t even in the country when they claimed you hurt them. Their stories unravel with layers and layers of lies but no one cares about the truth anymore. They tell you that it’s okay to feel but the moment you let down the guard the keys come out.  The locks and bolts and the pain seems unbearable. They don't want to hear what you have to say. They say that but all they want to hear is what they've told you to say. It's an education in political correctness. If you say this the pain stops. But it only stops when you figure out the words.
I still remember the pain.  I’d had surgery and they came.  After surgery you just want to lie safely and heal.   You don't want to be marched about on display.  I was expected to perform tricks and smile.  I remember limping.  There’s a thing called spasticity.  The muscles can all go into these bundles of pain. It’s a reaction.  It comes back to me at times. When I’m threatened. When the falsehoods are piling higher and higher.  
It’s called catastrophising.  What I'm doing.
You’re not going back there.
I repeat, "All shall be well. All shall be well.  And all manner of things shall be well." An Anglican minister, himself falsely accused, taught me that nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Breathe in, breathe out.  I remember St. Augustine. I try to focus on Brother Lawrence.
Everything I've  done for work is for life.   Now they want me to kill.  It’s an option they say.  When someone is vulnerable and afraid and you're just supposed to say matter of factly, " we could end it now."
It’s so terrifying to think how easily I would have. Back then. When they would have if they could and I would have because there didn't seem much to live for after all the lies and betrayal. I was wrong.  There was life after.  In so many ways life began then.
The pain was unbearable. The lies were excruciating. The love so betrayed. It’s hard enough carrying on when death is discouraged. But now they’re actually encouraging it.
I hear them saying, "You cost too much." I remember all the fights I had to get a bed or stop someone being turfed. Administration hated me.  Not a team player.  Wouldn't let people die on my watch.  Now I'm told it was a mistake.  I should have killed them outright. My life's work an error.  It all could have been so much easier if I'd just been a 'team player'.
I feel all used up. Like Jack Nicholson in What about Schmidt. I feel old.   I can't go back and undo the damage.  I can't kill people now.
I’m poor by comparison too so there's no future for me.  I'm looking at death. Some young do gooder with a lethal injection smiling to please his superiors, thinking he's doing well. Like I was when I helped people live..
I guess they don’t like us crowding the streets. I don't like the congestion in the city either but I don't have the power to do something about it.  Maybe if I did I'd stir up war and get more people to kill themselves and sell drugs and get rid of the trouble makers who've lived here a while, bring in some easier lead cattle.  It all seems like Solyent Green, just they haven't started feeding us to each other. Maybe that comes later when they've diverted more resources to their own palaces and jets. I don't know. It all seems so far above my pay grade. I'm just trying to live and I'm finding that's my mistake.  
Young people are now being taught to kill us. Not outright in plain speak English. They speak beurocratese, legalese and doublespeak and legalese but what it comes down to is, “WE want you dead,  Dr. Hay. You've always been a trouble maker.   We need your bed for someone else. You thought you earned it but they're entitled to it.”
It’s not like the new ones attracted to this, the predators, they're not going to come right out and say,"  I got this job because I like to kill people”. That’s what the pedophiles did who joined the priesthood.  There weren't even one in a thousand but that's all it takes if that one has power over you. Doctoring is more attractive without the hippocratic oath to some. Especially the powerful who know it won't  happen to them.
All the guilt and shame and regrets and self pity assail me at times. I devoted myself to the company job. I  gave  my all healing and  to saving lives.  Now that looks ridiculous in retrospect.The lengths I went to saving people. The risks I took.
I thought I was a salesman for life. I convinced hundreds to live.  I argued against death daily. I  still do. It’s ludiculous. I’m the fool. I see the disdain in the faces of the  powerful politically correct.    What an idiot they think I am.  I feel their censure as they grow more powerful given  the option to kill.  Recreational marijuana and heroin and dealing addiction and death but calling it medical and health care. It's all in the name.  There's a book called a Tyranny of Cliches I must read.   I can't get into see a doctor but here's a little dope and death while you wait.
It terrifies me because I remember that my doctor gave me hope. Doctors aren’t supposed to hold that out any more.  It’s all reduced to boxes. I'm to ask people to check their choices. Fill out the on line form and we're arrange your medical marijuana and medical death for you and throw abortion in for free.  Family deals in death. If your score doesn’t add up quite right up by some computer projection scale  then we give you  death anyway.  Really its humane. There's even new euphemisms for euthanasia.  It's all in the marketing.
I really did believe there would be a pasture.  I really hoped for a meadow to hang out in.Maybe I'd have some more sailing time. Maybe a bit of fishing. That all costs money. Once you’re finished working there's  a better place for you.
I was supposed to be at a banquet.  The people are all lovely but they’ve mostly not been on the other side. They've not been locked up. They don’’t know personally the minority of their colleagues who are psychopaths,  take pleasure in pain,  and live for control and only protect their own.  They're good people. They've invited me into their home.  I'm kind of rough. A prodigal son.
I rode motorcycles with a lot of different folk.  Outlyers mostly. I loved when I finally joined the Biker Church. We've all got scars and tattoos. I first heard Third Day at the Biker Church long before I'd attend their concert, after their songs got me through some really wild storms.  I could finally play spiritual music without falling asleep barrelling down the highway.  I still like Steppenwolf.
There’s a real insanity in speed.  Believing leathers will protect you.  Knowing grace every time you step on and step off the big bikes. There’s a thrill.  They marginalize and reduce us.  Make what we are a disease,  ‘adrenaline junkies’ they say.  But they don’t climb mountains or sail open seas or race motorcycles.  I think I'm conservative because I don't jump out of planes like some of my friends. A lot of guys and girls I know are ex military. Then there's the cowboys and cowgirls.  Rural folk. City people think everyone is like them and they think they're tolerant and understanding. We wish.
 Sometimes in their churches we don't feel welcomed.   Gospel is meant to be praise and thanksgiving but to go to some churches it seems people are acting like there’s a special merit in  passive aggressiveness.  Not the right sort of people.
I liked the the biker church.  It was alright.  Gospel riders talking about god and love long after the talk of lust and power had worn thin.
I guess I’ve known too many deaths that weren’t planned.  I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost men to death and women to divorce. The fact is the older I get the more afraid I am to get close to anyone.  Bernie and Hank gone. Family gone.
Old is good among the bikers.  Not anywhere else in this bigger society called Canada anymore.  If I was aboriginal or Chinese maybe it would be okay to be old.  Old and male and even white are the new discard words.  Past shelf life.  
Thankfully there's another place where it's okay to get old.  When I'm feeling insane and want to be among people who God has restored to sanity or is supposed to be in the process of doing there's this place I can go.  They don’t care what colour your skin is. They don't care what car you drive. It's a Travelling Wilbury kind of place.   So I just picked up the phone in my hotel.  Sure enough the city had a central office and someone was doing service manning the phone.  A man answered stating his name and condition.  I responded in kind.  Kind of a special verbal handshake. “I’m looking for a meeting.” I said.  I can tell now when I'm feeling kind of insane.
He told me the nearest one to where I was. I knew I could have asked  and  someone would have come to take me there.   I hopped a taxi instead.  When I walked in  sure enough the room was full people. I was pretty sure some of them had had a struggle to get out of the safety of their rooms.  There was coffee. Even cookies.  I sat down.  Asked if there was anyone from out of town. I raised my hand.
“Welcome,” they all said. The healing rituals began to take hold.   I knew the reading. I liked them talking about the futility of thinking of yesterday and tomorrow. I knew I got into the trap of worrying and regretting.  I just couldn’t break away from the crazy thinking. The dark places in the city were starting to look attractive. It was them or the fetal position.  Prayer and meditation weren't holding up against the pressure of endless demands and the chronic threat. It's a seige and they don't care how it messes with the mind. The process is the punishment.  I feel more and more alone.  The past and future get a stranglehold on the present.
But listening.  I begin to feel glad to be old. I applaud the newcomers along with everyone else..  It going to be okay.  Just for today.  Everything was going to be okay.

A white haired guy was asked to speak. He shared his inner story of failure and redemption.    He even talked  of miracles and no one ridiculed him. It was like at the meeting I was at when all these men and women did intercessionary prayer and no one was offended. Everywhere I go people are offended. Knee jerk offence mechanisms and name calling. I feel like I'm in a re run of the moving Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I 'm afraid to speak.  But here we all laughed.
In the background in this poorly lit basement of a church there was a banner. It wasn't part of the meeting but it was there for only me to see.  It said “Christ is risen.”  I thought about how we are all inter related, children of God.  Not some accident or random explosion.  But the product of an act of love. That felt better than the intellectual pseudoscience soup.
I drift in and out of the story the man is sharing. His own story.  Another prodigal son.
I’m at home.  I get to know the strangers on either side of me. It’s safe here.  At the end of the meeting we pray together saying words I’ve said so many times before with other strangers.
 I could go for coffee after. We do that. But I walk alone into the night and head down Avenue Road. On University Avenue passing  Queens Park I remember as a child being fascinated by black squirrels play there.
Eventually I turned at King street. Soon I was  in bed watching Vin Diesel XXX save the world. He's a funny guy, that Vin Diesel.  The stuntmen in his movies are incredible.
Another day is done.  One day at a time. I just have to live one day at a time.
They’re not going to kill me today.  They’re planning it. They’re getting all the legal work ready so they can claim they were doing me a favour. They're changing the words to make it sound right. But it’s not happening today. And I survived all those yesterdays.
And tomorrow. Well thats today.  Today I can make it again.  I just have to do the next right thing.

Wednesday Morning Journal

I’m feeling a failure.  It’s something that comes over me in waves.  I’ve got this aging thing happening. Like I’ve had my time and blown it. There were so many dreams and they’ve gone past. The first was family. The decisions and abortions took those. The glass is half empty. I had this belief that I’d save the world in some way in medicine, make things better. I was a cog in the machine. I served my time. I did my part in a thousand little ways but I was plagued by the complaint that always comes to those who want to change something. The reformer is the enemy of all who benefit from the status quo.  The corruption and deceit in the system is putrid to the max and yet others move along stepping around the cesspools. I waded right in and began with a bucket to no avail.  There’s a cesspool swamp in every system. I learned that too late. I look back on years of frustration. There was always this really scummy dirty ignorant person in a position of leadership.  They were killing people and I couldn’t stop them because there was always someone holding me back.  Mostly that was to save my life. The amount of money in killing is amazing. Healing gets a fraction. The big boys and big girls dish out death like it was a fashion designer item.
Spirituality teaches me to look for the positive. Use both hands and pull my head out of my ass. Look back on your life and see the successes.  You’re still alive. Others have died. You’ve been in multiple crashes and walked away. Others are missing limbs. You’ve known incredible stress especially dealing with the corruption of government and the lies of authorities and the theft of the finances meant for services but you’ve not had a heart attack. The stress has been countered by exercise and meditation, family and friends. Others are dying of chronic disease because they’ve had to deal with these same assholes in their own worlds. Cancers come from stress as do all the diseases.  Acute stress is what our bodies are built for not the chronic debilitating stress of endless legal cases and beaurocratic miasma’s that go on for years.
Daily I’ve been required to make a decision , a diagnosis and a recommendation in less than a hour.  I’m on the front line.  Step back one leadership position and they form a committee to make a lesser decision. Step back one more leadership position and they have an enquiry. Step back another leadership position and they have a review. All of these ‘processes’ are to ensure that nothing gets done till maximum graft has been taken from the system and that the ones deepest in the shit have been able to get out and move to more lucrative grounds.  I get paid x for making a decision.  The next level gets 2 x and then 3x and 4 x.  The longer one can delay making a decision in the courts and bureaucracy the more money and power one has.  We’re living in a world of siege mentality.
And every year I’ve tried to stop someone killing some baby somewhere. And I’ve been punished and humiliated and shut up year after year.  I feel like my life could be called one baby too far. I’ve just tried to save one life too many and someone a whole lot higher wanted that life killed. It’s the Morgentaller system. The whole abortion industry of our times. It’s a metaphor.  Like Solyent Green.
And spirituality calls this my personal ‘black dog’. , my ‘depressive thinking’.  I must daily struggle to focus on the positives. Today the worm of despair entered my mind when I read in the papers how a colleague I know as the most deceitful and psychopathic is being rewarded.  It’s like the Aliens with a hidden head and no heart have a little gift ceremony for their cronies and this guys name comes up.
I see it with mixed envy and horror.  It’s like Hitler getting the Nobel Prize. Who can want a Nobel Prize after Hitler gets it.  I see this and wonder as always am I wrong. Was this fellow a good guy. He’s rich and famous now and I knew him as the liar and cheat. I personally know a fellow who let people die and ensured that others were seriously hurt, who sold out everyone and he got ahead.
So my cognitive behaviour therapy teaches me that I have to focus on those who are good people.  I can’t let the drop of ink discolour all the water. I just heard a lovely woman I know won a beauty contest.  A fellow I think is great got a job. My favourite person in academia got a professorship.  Another friend’s book was awarded. There’s all manner of positives there if I can just focus on them.
I wake up now and drag myself out of bed. There’s a whole lot of aches.The dog is ecstatic. He bounces on me.  When I get his leash he barks.  He’s exuberant. He’s loving life. He’s showing me what we both should be doing. I walk him outside down to the park. He sniffs up a storm then has a marvellous bowel movement.  I scoop it up and put it into the container.  He’s happy to walk back with me pulling on the leash.
I think maybe I’d better stop reading the medical news in the morning.  I’ve all but stopped listening to CBC.  I feel like increasingly I’m becoming monastic turning away from the insanity of the world.  I see that a whole lot of the folk I went to school with are hunkering down. They’re retired and kind of preparing for death.  They’ve taken what ever crumbs they’ve been offered and have got out. They don’t plan to do more and are kind of like kids on summer vacation. They don’t think of the future. They don’t particularly care what’s happening in politics.  They’re prepared for Armageddon and mostly just looking to their individual comfort.  I remember dad began fishing seriously when he was my age.  Fame is foolish.  Fortune makes more sense but it’s pretty obvious most of the casinos are rigged in some way. The house always wins.  Maybe next time around the karmic reincarnation cycle I’ll have more tools to win against the bank.
I read about St. John of the Cross in prison for 11 months being flogged every week or so for the entertainment of his fellow monks, the ones who didn’t like the reforms he’d tried to make.  It’s in failure that we find Christ. If I had a room full of sex objects, cocaine and bags of money and a personal army and world leaders dropping by to give me prizes I’d not think of inward riches, those infinite glories that surpass death.  Here it’s about the temporal. I’ve been given all manner of awards and made fortunes.  I’ve delivered babies and had so many children treat me with love and respect. I’ve a full life. I’ve been blessed beyond my wildest dreams.  If I measure my success from the bottom up. It’s success. But if I measure my success from the top down, from my not being an astronaut flying to Mars for instance, then yes my life is a failure.  I haven’t written the great canadian novel, found the cure for all cancer or developed a faster than light space ship.  I’ve been humbled by the reality of limitations.  I’ve done my part. I’ve contributed. I’ve paid taxes. I’ve worked and been a good man when the temptations were overwhelming to be other.  I’m not particularly wanting to be flogged every week so that I can compose the ‘long dark night of the soul’ to point the direction to the infinite. I’m kind of focussed on comfortable. Now I must get to work.  Mid week.  A few more days to go.  The weekends are always down hill.
Thank you Jesus for opening an individual door of communication with the infinite.

Journal - Aug. 14, 2012

I was dreaming of a big barge of an old chevy. There was a 50's girl there, decked out in wide brimmed hat, half veil, long white gloves and a form fitting three quarter length skirt. I was wearing a white suit and fedora, classic detective clothing from the 30's. I remember her saying he was 'hunting for something'. Then I awoke.

Rolling over, I encountered a little dog head attached to a little dog body that came alive licking my face when he realized I was awake. Then he was jumping from the bed to bring me a toy. I up stumbling across the floor jumping one leg at a time into sweats while slipping into sandals I fastened on the stairs. He was flying out the door and down the dock a head of me. He still had his chewy in his mouth. Happy dog.

What a glorious day in the city! Sunny blue sky. Early morning sounds. 7 am. I was taking the dog for a walk. He was happy. My body was 'slouching towards Bethlehem". I said the Lord's Prayer to myself. Seagulls flew overhead. Already the man with the shop was working on the rear end of his GT. He's up early. No one else was a bout. None of the usual traffic. Nice walk in an industrial neighbourhood. Dog doesn't care. I'd like trees and grass. He poops on the one stretch of grass we encounter.

There's not much happening here. Not much happening inside. I'm thankful for the sunshine. August. Summer almost gone. No July to speak of. No June. Now the glorious days of August. I fear the winter. Can't think ahead to the cold rain and misery of despair. The suicidal springs and the loss of all hope. It's an annual tsunnami of grief. I wonder if I'll be up to facing it again this year. Want to somehow offer more.

Find myself missing San Francisco. Lots more mornings like this. Memory anyway. Then the endless summers of Winnipeg come back, open skies and dry heat.

I'm content here. My mind jumps about like a fish on a line. I'll be fishing this weekend. I have the capability. One step ahead of the Hound of Heaven.

Thinking of Dad. A good visit. Wanting to return to see him again. A rock in a changing world. Sitting in the sun with him talking nonsense really. Words just music to the shared time in sunshine. Connections.

Gilbert lying at my feet, happy for the walk. I'd done that religiously before I went away and now am re establishing good habits. He's curled up in a little ball. My buddy. My friend. A companion happy just to be along. No criticism, no expectation, glad to share the time and food. He does like eating my food.

We've been enjoying the toaster oven recently. Lots of cheese sandwiches. Summer grazing food. Loved the elk Roast we had at Laura's. Loved Art's elk jerky in Orlando. Already looking forward to bow hunting in a few weeks. This weekend sailing to Salt Spring Island.

I've thought about the meaning of life. I've also thought about the disparity. The economic crisis looms large with the last couple of years one after another person talking non stop about the financial difficulties. I complain about the high taxes here and two kinds of welfare, those snakes that suck the life from the top looking only to siphon off resources from government plans to line their pockets uncaring of the projects only interested in sounding like they're doing something, mostly interested in spending money and the blue collar welfare folk, those who could work but won't. Both groups free loaders and parasites on the real thing, making a supposedly lean machine swollen with lethargy and sloth. I feel like I carry the weight of the world. Struggling and supporting working more than 3 or 4 men and women and tired of the years of long hours, sacrifice and service.

The welfare system takes money from taxes to pay the fat beaurocratic wages and all the CEO's while the church donations do the major work of service. I'm doing way too much for free and pro bono and am called a 'mark' for my 'generosity'. I curse generosity. The lending of money over the years in the range of tens of thousands and every time I'm burnt like now by psychopaths whose mothers didn't raise them not bite the nipple or bite the hand that feeds.

The mind seeks a place of self pity. Self aggrandisment and self pity are always waiting to pounce on thought and steer the ideas into their direction. Self centered and selfish. Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink.

It's a glorious day. I'm drinking a cup of coffee. I've just had a great walk. I've a day of work that's bound to please the bank. I can hope a motorcycle sells today and some of the stress of finance is lifted. Maybe someone who owes me money will pay. Maybe the outstanding collectibles will come in. I'll work longer hours and more days and in the end I'll have the same Canada pension as those who didn't work. I served the government all my life but there's no pension and older I see the future and today go without to have more money should I live in a town where I can't afford to live wondering why I'm here save for relationships.

I look up and I'm confused. I keep my nose to the grindstone and life is good. Where am I supposed to be. Here I guess. What am I supposed to be doing, this I guess. It's a "living". as they say. But I look about and it seems that the scoundrels I knew who killed and maimed for profit, the liars and the cheats are now flying about the world visitting other countries and letting them see what Canada is like. I am Canadian. This is a grand country.

Self pity and self aggrandisement, twin vultures on thought. Jealousy, envy all lying beneath the surface. Run behind all the journalistic reports I read.

I'm praising God and seeking closer relationship. Should be meditating. Singing praise. It's a good day. I'm about to shower in hot water, put on clean clothing and drive a marvellous little sports car into a fine office to sit all day and serve in work. It's a priviledge and an honour. I'm blessed in so many ways. Thankful. God is great. God is almighty. I am a child of God and my role and purpose is to know God more. This is a sojourn. I'm a tourist here, an eternal being just passing through. This is a kindergarden. I'm in God's sandbox. Love is what counts. I am to be a lover not a fighter. Healing is good. Celebration of life is good. Life is good.

Thank you Jesus. This is the day the Lord has made and I am thankful for that. Hallelujah!


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