Friday, Burnaby Lake, Media Election

Laura and I had a lovely walk in the sun to Burnaby Lake. Great trail. No bikes.  Everyone enjoying the peace and quiet.  We finally arrived at the lake where the ducks hang out, glad for the seed treats people bring. I saw the Mandarin Duck again. The wood ducks are always there. The delight this time was the Green Winged Teal. Also loved the Red Winged Black Birds. 

 It was a wonderful escape from the cacaphony of the election. It really is disturbing , all the corporate corruption and election graft.  I don’t like Biden.  A corporate ‘nice imposter’, with the monster son who he uses. 

Then there’s Kamala, the US Eva Brawn. I thought Obama was more than his colour but to hear women on FB Kamala is just a brown vagina. Any brown vagina who gets a head is good enough for them. I can’t recall ever thinking like that about men or women. I was raised on meritocracy and believed the best pilot should fly the plane. That’s all gone now with Identity Politics and Gender Studies.  All men in Canada are primarily in their job because of their penis and a vagina would do better.  It’s South Africa all over again where white is now murdered by blacks and still there are people who think that is good. I am so out of it. I really have these outdated ideas of ‘Love thy neighbour.’  But Islam is not Christian. Communism is the religion of Aetheism. 

I look back on my life and all the times I didn’t stoop to be have like a Trudeau or a Biden cost me financially.  Now it’s all about euthanasia and MAiD.  God is great all of the time.  In this world the authorities killed Jesus.  Canada is a war monger state that lies.  Trudeau just sold 80 billion dollars in weapons and brought in more measures of dictatorship than his bro, Obama, whose spying on citizens is second only to Communist China and Koumeni Islam.  I am afraid. I’ve been brash and outspoken. My friends say they learned to ‘whisper’ in Islam.  The leaders of Islam are celebrating the beheading of anyone who makes fun of their God who clearly has no sense of humor despite being a joke to anyone not ruled by the sword. 

I’m actually enjoying my life. I’m safe. For now. I’ve heat and shelter and running water and indoor plumbing. I have all those physiological needs that Maslow said were basic. I have friends and family and my emotional needs are met. I have work and purpose and meaning so that I’m likely to survive even Auschwitz given what Victor Frankl said of his experience as a psychiatrist. The issue is self actualization.  Poets and writers are always the first killed in totalitarian states. I’ve been passed over for promotion because I’ve believed in objective truth and stated it against the lies of leadership. I’ve watched a blatant lying psychopaths fiction been preferred to sane truth by the corrupt authorities. 

It’s been worse each year but now I’m rather old and easily wasted. I can be disappeared or arrested and no one cares. The very leaders of Hong Kong are now in jail for questioning the evil Borg regime of Xi JinPing, Trudeau’s friend and likely lover.  Nothing makes sense of present day politics except the lists of those who met together on Epstein’s Island.  They are all anti Trump. I disagree with pedophilia even if that sentiment is no longer consider a true Canadian value. I celebrate adult sexuality between consenting adults and object to the Courts persisting in the sexist chivalry and political decisions.  But I’m passe. I reread the last of King Lear and hoped that that was not what we were seeing here.  Cornelia as Ivanka. 

 I don’t like George Soros, the Nazi sympathizer any more than I like Hanoi Jane and Benghazi HIllary or alleged pedophile Trudeau the stoner and liar. But frankly I don’t know these people. 

I met Trudeau’s father, an intellectual cold fish, loved the power and leadership of Chrétien who I met as well. I also thoroughly respected Turner who I spent a day with and truly admired Harper who I spent an evening with.  The difference is that these are real people. All these other images I speak about, Trump, Biden, Kamala, are media characatures.  Comic strip people created by dumbed down leftist corporate America. The translation of world by the low brow likes of corrupt Zuckerberg, a rather evil little man who thoroughly delights in abusing powers and others as the Congress hearings have taught us. These corporate leaders are not the stuff of history.  

I loved walking and looking at the colourful birds. It was good to be with Laura. We missed Gilbert, our cockapoo and talk a lot about a coming puppy.  She has her sister, children, grand children. I’ve nephews and family in the distance, friends here. But it was the dog I lived for. I miss the dogs and cats.  I’m rather lonely in my empty house thankful for a visit from Laura in these Covid times of isolation and alienation.  

I had hoped for some relief and reassurance with the election but Xi JinPing continues to rule the world with the UN at his bidding and he now looks to invade Taiwan as he has Hong Kong. That concerns me.  Clearly Trump was a formidable leader whose skills challenged the low brow stoner trust fund mentality of slacker Trudeau.  Bide and Kamala with their criminal histories will work with Quebec’s corrupt corporate SNC Lavalin. There’s more destruction of the middle class, my class and the elite will continue to get richer and more powerful with a new Maga Carta in the works but nothing for us squished down with the peasants to fit the Marxist binary vision.  We’ll get more free Heroin and free Marijuana and maybe more cheap sex with younger and younger people  The temple boys and girls given instead of work and position that gives one self esteem.  

I’ve chosen good over wrong. I’ve been a moral and ethical person.  This is Rome and the Empire moves along.  The Dark Star has always been there. Jesus said that this world was ruled by Satan. It’s all Money and Power. Marx said, Money is the God of the Jews.  Money and power is all that communism is about. Power is all that Sharia is about.   Satan is more apparent now.  I didn’t see the powers and principalities when I was young even though I read Brothers Karamasov.  It’s taken age to help me appreciate the wisdom of the classics.

I may have to stop writing to avoid jail or to avoid economic reprisal but I can continue to take pictures of birds. I’m too old to get by with sexual favours but I could sell a kidney if the need arose.  Others will face that.  It was so sad to see the active drug addicts in Malaysia and India.  The power of AA in Mexico was wonderful to see. The Church has always been there in times of terror and strife.  These are dark times. Gandhi said that we needed to meditate more. Martin Luther King said, it’s going to be a tough day, so need to spend more time one our knees.  

Thank you Jesus for all the blessings I’ve known and have today.  Guide me this day and in the days to come. Help me be of service to my fellow man and woman. St. Patrick protect me. Christ in front of me. Christ behind me. Christ to the left of me. Christ to the right of me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ within me and Christ without. Christ in the thoughts that everyone has of me. Holy Spirit come.  Hallelujah. God is good all of the time. Thank you St. Francis for the birds.

Red winged black bird

Duckie

Dowitcher

Mandarin duck

Green winged teal

Wood duck

Bird voyeur with Nikon and chef’s hat beret

King Lear, Bard on the Beach, Vancouver, BC

Bard on the Beach was great fun last night. I confess, I’d not been since the 90’s.  Then I’d loved the comedies but had tired of sitting on a blanket, aging hippy that I am. The last night I was there it was raining, the wind was blowing, I was getting wet and I really didn’t like the metal folding chair I was sitting on.  Now Bard on the Beach by comparison is epic.  The theatre is a really solid tent that appears like it could take a gale force wind. The stage of Pam Johnson and Gerald King  was spectacular too. I loved the set design for King Lear.  I loved Deitra Kalyn’s costumes. Bard on the Beach has come along way from those almost amateur theatre to a Stratford tour de force it is today. .
King Lear is my favourite play of William Shakespeare. I studied Shakespeare in my undergraduate honours English and Theatre program before deciding instead on sciences and becoming a physician. To this day I reflect fondly back on those King Lear classes when all the nuances and references of the rich layered language of Shakespeare were explained.  Now I’ve seen several Lear and watched the movies starring the likes of Olivier and Hurt.  Despite and because of all that, I loved last night’s King Lear.
Laura was enjoying Bard on the Beach for the first time and loved it too.  “There was too much ‘shouting of lines’ for me.”  I told her after.  "I love a quiet intense King Lear."  For me Shakespeare is all language and intensity.  Volume kills it for me.  Rushed delivery irritates me. There was some of that.  I didn’t even hear a couple of my all time favourite lines. The play is the essence of philosophy and theology.  It’s all about our relationships as parents and children, as leaders and servants, civil and filial duty, about determinism and free will, about gratitude and loyalty, about the inner and outer world.  I am forever mesmerized when Lear says to Cordelia, “Lets away to prison….an talk of courtly things, whose in, whose out.”  I imagine that line written about the abysmal CBC news or CNN.  I love best Lear’s line “I”m more sinned against than sinning” and all the references to Job and consideration of Machiavelli.  Divine right and just a man and Marx turning Hegel on his head and today’s euthanasia for our parents all makes Shakespeare a whole lot more relevant than the UN.
So I loved last night’s show, despite the time constraints and the slapstick loudness of the mad scenes. As a psychiatrist I’m today more aware of the mad and know that drunkeness is loud but madness is best delivered quietly.  Again the language and the meaning are what count.  Yet, that’s the joy of Shakespeare. I loved this performance because it was a really good romp. I think truly, the fight scenes are the best I ‘ve scene. I loved the choreography. I actually came away appreciating the actual plot, that weird soap opera history of Shakespeare as those times appear to us despite our own Bill Clinton, Kardasian, reality tv and pot smoking Justin.  The performance really did make clear the history and the relationships of daughters and sons to fathers.  Ironically there are no mothers in the play and the challenge of Shakespeare is that the men must deliver the maternal in the end.
The acting of  Benedict Campbell was  a tour de force. Some parts of Lear came alive for me with his insightful interpretation.  All together it was an amazing performance.  My criticism does not detract from the overall brilliance of a grand performance.  The daughters Goneril and Regan played by Colleen Wheeler and Jennifer Lines were the very best of shrew, haughty looks and leachers wretch.  Cordelia played by Andrea Rankin was as pretty as a penny and sweet but not so womanly as to deliver well enough for me some of the greatest lines in English history.   Decian O’Reilley played Duke of Albany with immense skill showing the amazing transformation of character that makes the play so dynamic. Duke of Cornwall, by Robert Klein, was simple perfection, as if born for this role.  I loved Earl of Clouchester played by David Marr because he really got the complexity of this character.  John Murphy’s Earl of Kent was my favourite Kent of all time.  What a great actor. The fool played by Scott Bellis was hit or miss for me though I can’t say why.  Goneril’s Oswald, played by Ian Butcher was quite simply excellent.  Edgar, played by Nathan Schmidt almost made it because the play demands he move from party boy, to fool to king to be and I couldn’t help feeling he was one step short in the finale, though really all together he was amazing.  Edgar, played by Nathan Schmidt was truly villainously perfect, his arrogance oozing and his reversal subtly handled.
So despite my own demands for perfection I loved this play and would recommend it to anyone. I do think Shakespeare is best met first in a comedy especially in a Bard on the Beach like setting but King Lear is akin to Hamlet and MacBeth, though better, so if one wishes to see what may well be Shakespeares’ greatest, then this is the time and place.  I think Dennis Garnhum, the director has made King Lear more accessible than it might otherwise be. Focussing on the action and the plot he’s made a play that really comes alive. I have come home to read King Lear again, the play made me want to to do that, and thanks to the Dennis Garnhum’s play I read again the immortal words with even greater joy for seeing the play live at Bard on the Beach.  So thank you.  It was a great romp, a great performance and a lovely night out in Vancouver at one of the most beautiful locations for a theatre ever known to man.  Bard on the Beach Rocks!!!