Soledad to SAN Diego in the Mini Cooper with Dog and Girl

We arrived at another Motel 6.  They’re dog friendly.  Gilbert likes anything dog friendly.

We left Soledad at 830 and have arrived here just after dark at 7 pm.  We’ve stopped at rest stops for pee breaks and Gilbert walks. We’ve filled up a couple of times. The Mini is getting great mileage.

The weather has been amazing.  With the panaramic sun roof on the Mini open we’ve acquired a tan. Laura and I had to take off our sweaters before noon and Gilbert was panting most of the day.  Definitely shorts and tshirt weather tomorrow.  We love the sunshine.  

American free way rest stops are great. We stopped at one where there was even a sign in the pet area warning of rattlesnakes that might fancy one’s children.

I couldn’t drive past LA without cruising down Hollywood Blvd.  Both Laura and I have been here before. With all the NCIS Los Angeles I watch because I love the characters , especially Hetti, I wanted to see the Hollywood sign again.  They show it so often in the show.  

We ended up driving up Laurel Canyon expecting to see famous people taking out their garbage but even at Lookout point we didn’t see anyone we recognized.  

No one recognized us either. I would have at least thought someone would have known Gilbert.

We cruised Sunset Blvd but it’s not the same as it was 30 years ago.  Without Cecil de Mille or the Rat Pack it’s just another street.  

Heading back to the freeway, there was Hollywood Bowl and that fabulous Hollywood sign. We’d just listened to an audio book on the way down where the serial killer drop a body by one of the letters. On this last stretch though we really enjoyed Michael Connolly’s Detective Bosch finding suicides were really homicides.  Great writer.

On the number 5 we got off at a view point and watched the most beautiful sunset over the Pacific. It was wonderful  looking out from the coast remembering sailing down this way some 20 miles off shore. SAN Diego Harbour is something special in my memory.  

Now here we are. 2500 km, 3 1/2 days of all day driving.  Today we were speeding along in 8 lane freeways at 120 to 140 km /hour with motorcycles passing us on the white lines between cars.  

I’m exhausted. These American freeways are so demanding I had to forego reading and texting on  Facebook.

Laura is glad she arrived alive. We’re now settling in for SAN Diego pizza.  

Tuesday Morning Journal Ottawa

I’ve awoken early.  I’m on vacation but my iPhone alarm doesn’t seem to know that.  I watched NCIS past midnight with Adell and Graeme and the cockapoos Eva and Pepper.  Weird, because that’s what I’d been doing last month, watching the repetitious, finding solace in the sameness.  So much changing in my work life, overwhelmed with details I’d been coming home to eat in front of the tv and seek out known stories to escape into the sameness. There’s Josephut  Campbell surety to police shows.
Good guy dies and bad guy gets away. Hero arrives and catches bad guy. Nothing is done for the dead guy. It’s not like a medical mystery where the dying guy is resurrected by the hero and science. The morality play of the cop show is that the good triumph and evil  languishes but what of the poor good guy who is sacrificed. It’s Christian in that way.  One could argue that’s the appeal. A sacrifice for the show.  But Joseph Campbell would trace the cop show to where all cultures and religions have existed. It’s universal and deeper in our Jungian collective heritage before that epic narrative of Christian conscious.  It’s revenge and tribal without any of the trappings of foregiveness.
At the end of the day when I hear of politicians giving money away to cronies overseas for later distribution in favours I want the good to prevail.  I want a sheriff or marshall.  I want Gibbs and Siva and Tony and Duckie and Probie and Abby to ride to the rescue as superheroes dishing out justice to the wrong and ‘teaching a lesson’ to the dark. Because the morality play is light prevails over darkness. And at the end of long days of giving  licit drugs to addicts using illicit drugs doing a little to thwart the drug dealers I have little sense that I’m prevailing. Like the army doctor the wounded are piling up at one door even as a dribble are moving forward out from the shadow of death.
The fact is I fear evil.  I know lethargy and despair has coloured my world since my brother died.
I’m sitting in the house he and his beloved created into a home for the boys to grow in.  It’s like my own childhood home.  Yard, basement, bed rooms, kitchen living room.  A lovely domicile for family.  Now the boys are grown and Adell is moving to the home my brother and she began together in the country.  There the flowers he planted are growing.  It doesn’t seem right that he should die and I should live.  But then the good die young and I never knew how much stress he experienced.  He gave his life for his family and their future.
I think my anger at the Liberal government is mostly to do with them being principally his employer.  The bureaucracy sucked his life out of him and he prevailed in the deadness of the idiocy and waste of government solely to support his family. He had so many dreams that I know he let go of because he so loved his wife and children. He was larger than life here.  He was so happy surrounded by children. His wife was his all and he had his hobbies and distraction.  Millions of men like him father the future and love more deeply than can ever be known.  He suffered through the illnesses of children and parents and finally succumbed to his own struggle with the wear and tear disease of cancer.  The daily repair of self failed.  And I wanted him to live another thirty years or more. I wanted him to enjoy his home.  And all he said he wanted was to be longer with his sons and wife.
I am too shallow to know the depths of love that they all shared.
I have kept a safe distance from life.  I have not bound my being to the lives of children and beloveds.  My brother cried each time his children cried.  He laughed when they did.  Together he and Adell were ever working to better the life of family.  I left home at 16, albeit coming and going but he stayed. My father’s son.  He stayed close to home. I roamed far away and so often alone.  Wives came and went.  We lacked the depth and honesty of those who marry and fulfill their promises.
I have thought about reliability a lot these last months. So many things that should have been done were left undone in my office.  Daily routines were broken and letters lost.  Important messages went awry.  I wasn’t able to catch all the mistakes which occurred because of a failure of reliability.  The tortoise and hare played out in my workplace.  My truck didn’t start when I needed it. Repaired it would work amazingly only to die for no apparent reason on a cold morning or a steep hill.  It was unreliable.
So I’ve been rearranging my life settling for less excellence but more reliability.  There’s its own excellence in the dependable and reliable.  My brother was ever so until he died.  I could call him and count on his sage advise. I could trust that he was home with his family. I knew that he was taking care of my dad. I leaned on him. I knew that without him I’d have to pick up the responsibility of care for the elderly and all I did was spend the day in and out with the sick and dying.
I have no safe places. For so many years I could sit cross legged or kneeling and meditate for hours and find some God within. I drew on this infinite source of energy and joy and rose again to vanguish monsters and tyrants in the workplace. I fought countless holy wars against disease and mopping up exercises against the administration.  Those far from the frontline were always tardy and needed constant reminders that their own fat cat existence wasn’t what was needed. Answers were required in moments. In reality in most cases the police arrived late.  I have never known bureaucracy to be on time. Institutions are arrogant after thoughts. They rally to the occasion but the crisis and emergency is on us and humans roll up their sleeves and solve the problems while the administration and those furthest from reality take credit. They have so little substance in their lives they desperately need all the glory and money.
My brother was a roll up your sleeves and get the job done guy like my father and grandfather before him.  I watch his sons and see that in them.  They wrestle with reality and fix broken doors while more and more watch tv and sit back and complain and think that complaining is solving the world’s problems  My nephews are doers like he was a doer.
I miss him.  Here in this house he’s everywhere and I don’t know how his wife has been able to do the job of packing up.  A life time of little things are being put in boxes wrapped in papers. Painters are coming. Her cousins are amazing.  These two loving women have rallied to her side.  I see the momentous wonder of a home being packaged up and remnants of yesterday put into storage.
By contrast I have bits of past marriages that sit in boxes in cold storage lockers that are like radioactive material. I am waiting for them to cool so that perhaps once again I can revisit the past and not feel my heart torn from my chest.  Each time I return to the great failures of my life I  feel the tears flow unwanted continuously down my cheeks.  My brother and sister in law lived ‘till death do us part’.  Now she ‘soldiers’ on.  A great love.  Her cousins, wise and loving, wrap up memories invested with love,  crystal carefully placed  in boxes.  Adell deals with a myriad of details letting go.  Her boys are bricks.
I’m passing through. Always passing through.
My brother’s faith was in the planting of trees and plants. My mother before him did the same. I ‘ve a cactus in my room that may survive but my office plant died after 7 years. The life expectancy of office plants is six months.  Still I grieved the passing.
I’m older now.  I suppose I’m angry with the dead because they are not here to see the mess our government has made of things.  As a psychiatrist I ask if that’s just projection. Is reality really out there or is out there just a perception of what I see. My brother saw flowers. My mother saw flowers as friends. I see them as pretty and am rushing haunted and frantic filled with a lifetime of countless demands daily from morning to night living in a chute of being with angry sad dangerous despairing people while I am the reason in their eyes some that I am for their unhappiness. I don't fix their life and fail.
Everyone family, friends and especially the government blame me because I can’t shut up every single one of the adult babies who are despised by the authorities. The authorities talk mealy mouthed with forked tongue.  They demand money and take taxes galore but never give enough to the insatiable hoards who they have promised cradle to grave welfare and health care.   Like red cross workers doling out food in a place of famine we are being malled.  I walk among the wounded, the psychiatric patients and addicted and stigmatized and daily 12 hours face to face 5 and 6 and 7 days a week for 30 years.  I’ve been with them and more and more I see the government wanting to renege on it’s agreement. They want to take the money and run. Leave the sick and dying.  The adult baby in the group is just one that makes the most noise.
I am out for dinner and all I am thinking about is work and myself.  I’m self absorbed.  I lack the polite and caring concerned nature of my brother who was good with everyone bringing laughter wherever he went. I thought him sometimes quirky as his brother but in retrospect see how others perceived his fun as just that and warmed in his presence.
The dogs are all around comforting and loving. I worry about my own little one anticipating surgery to remove an eye that no longer serves him.
We talked of going to an art gallery last night.
I look forward to passing by parliament hill.
I feel less heavy today than yesterday.  Inside something has fallen and even nature doesn’t seem to lift the cloud.  I remember when my mother died it was at least a year before I carried on but during that time I was attacked and savaged in my weakness. Betrayed  by my own administration and the uncultured I was set upon by a deeply sick soul I find it hard still to pray for.    Now I’m similiarly afflicted and the attacks are on again.  I can be open or closed but closed no healing occurs, inauthentic I serve myself and the machine, open and present, I move the equation closer to life but vulnerable I’m a target.  I’ve likened my work to going down deep holes to pull people back into the light knowing that they can bite and fight to avoid living as they have chosen to escape.  I know escape.
There is no escape now.
Each encounter I have tried to do my very best with all my training. I’ve lived to serve.
Now I don’t know.  I’m reading Carrie Fischer’s book.  Princess Leia.  Debbie Reynolds. Paul Simon. Drugs and alcohol and recovery. Celebrities.  It’s truthful. Wishful Drinking.
My apple watch is being reprogrammed. New software is downloading. I’m surrounded by technology. This computer, The iPhone.
I’ve had a cup of coffee from a programmed machine.
I’m praying daily, going to meetings, talking to friends and family, meeting with priests and psychiatrists and physicians, facing forward.  Every moment is cathected with so much history. Maybe that’s aging. There are layers of memories everywhere. We watch a play and I’m again 16 years old and 8 in my first plays and I wonder why I didn’t stay in TV and theatre.  Instead I’ve done this gig.  The missionary doctor who stayed in Canada rather than going overseas because Jack Hildes convinced me there was as much missionary work to do here.  I'd would be paid. Ye of little faith and the scottish gene that said ‘do good but get paid’ . I’m not been St. Francis.  I like that I have had the illustrious career and been the distinguished clinician even if ever tainted by the latest absurdity of political correctness.  
I’m caught in a loop of self pity though.  I justify my curmudgeoness by grief when it’s just the latest excuse for self pity.
I pray daily to thwart comparison and self pity. Yet I’ve come down into the politics of these last months taking sides and playing the ‘game’ getting caught up in the heady emotion of silliness. It’s all so far about my pay grade.  I’ve been distracted by words like Canadian Values and Islamophobia.  My Christian friends are being persecuted.   I know some of those who are also in the frontline as the battle looms and the war goes on on many fronts.  Then we lose  Leonard Cohen’s who knew ’there is a war’. We are left with the jesters and clowns.
Well I’ve got to do the deeds, shower and change. I’ve shaved. Living with others I don’t like seeing the grizzly white hairs, my vanity offended.  Everyday I remember that I’m under attack.  I can’t relax. The Borg are out there and though there’s nothing I can do but survive, I know their hatred and begin my day praying for my enemy.  “They know not what they do."
I told Thelma that the story of jesus is now a daily tale. There are the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin.
I’m ambivalent.
I suit up and show up. I put on the armor of God. I talked of sailing across the Atlantic to my nephew last night.  I am waylaid by work and a truck. The truck is central to the land based adventure which precedes the sailing dream.  I feel safe in the truck commuting. I’m tempted though to find a corner and write drivel.  I see these journals as Steinbeck did, The precursor to the real work. Like Cameron I write these morning pages as mental calisthenics. I blog as musicians play scales each day.
The courts want my writing in the form of briefs and reports. The administration wants me to write all the life of individuals, a spy for the authorities. I once wrote anxiety or depression and all else was confidential.  Now the administration and lawyers insist the files much be excessively detailed.  "The patient is the enemy," the administrator tells me. "Protect yourself from them always, " he says. He is not a healer.
I imagine plays and novels and poetry and songs. But I’m not beaten down enough to be a poet.  I am still too much of this world, still easily caught up in the Facebook insanity of arguing with random strangers and those who are paid to argue with strangers.  I’ve no dog in the fight. I’m forgetting where I’m going. I’m supposed to focus on the light.  More and more the dark places have no appeal. I’ve been in these circus rooms.  I like the art galleries now.  I long to be camping by the clear running stream.
I wanted once to share the process of mind. I wanted to show that under the finished product of the conscious was this great unconscious. I want to share the ‘stream of consciousness’.    So often i meet officials who fearful for themselves tell me that I must hide and play my cards close to my chest and be closed and safe.  I used to believe there was a hiding place but now I only know this as the Lord
More and more I turn to the spiritual . The good are falling all around me. Death is going through my village like a plague.  I know so many who have died.  It’s medieval.

But death can be a celebration.  I feel the loneliness of the left behind but I can hopefully find a way to laugh and dance and smile while I wait my turn.  The morbid and maudlin are a choice.  It’s a new day.  I’m off to do something with my nephew.

Central Park Murder Scene, New York City

Guggenheim Museum has a lovely little cafe where Laura and I stopped for cappucino’s and croissants.  It has a perfect view of grizzly Central Park.
Given that media has taken to making up the news, NCIS, CIS and other New York based detective series have taken to killing off people randomly for their upcoming shows.
Homeless actors who have failed to become regular stars,  now  hoping for a last shot at a big breakthrough line up daily hoping to be picked.  Even understudies are coveted roles.  Canadians who can't afford the physician assisted suicide extra costs are also taking part.
From the Guggenheim you can see the television cameras rolling as a new ‘victim’ begins their career. Most set out jogging before they’re bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in Central Park. The serial sex crime scenes were a favourite at the Guggenheim Cafe eliciting the most cheers and bravos.
Laura and I leaving the Guggenheim headed down the Museum Mile and actually entered the famed Central Park outside the Met. We immediately tripped over a half dozen dead bodies left by detective novelists. Due to the ebook craze the book publishing industry can no longer afford the hefty clean up fees. Instead, they knock their victims off in the middle of the night leaving the bodies for the city to clean up.  Park workers were threatening to strike over their increased work load.
It was very exciting using Laura as bait. I was hoping to get a video of a live murder, sex scene, gang rape or alien abduction, to impress the Canadians back home.  There were too many people in the park at that time also trying to get bludgeoned,  not that Laura wasn’t great bait. Especially when she stood by the duck pond where a whole group of nanny’s have found dead bodies in the past.
We were a little disappointed.  But we figured we just hadn’t given it enough time. There’s just so many things to do in New York City one can’t hang around in Central Park forever waiting  to be murdered.
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Television Reviews from a Sick Body and Mind

I don't tend to watch much tv.  However when I have the flu or am ill it's a godsend.  This winter and early spring, thanks to overwhelming work  stress ,environmental stress, karma, divine retribution, a big nose that attracts bugs,forgetting a flu shot, smoking as a young man, tsunamis, earthquakes and tyrannical governments in the middle east, I've been bedridden with Upper Respiratory Infections off and on.  As a result I'm now an authority on television series.  They're all incredibly good.  There's only so much reading one can do with headache, back ache, fever and running nose.  The tv is a saniety saver.  I actually watched a bonanza and a matlock episode and realized, it's always been.  Commercials have got better over the years. The mute button on the remote is technological wizardry.
Now to the shows themselves.
NCIS is great.  I love all the characters.  Can't remember their names. The ex Mossad agent is just so hot.  The goth chemist is darling. The computer geek is so believable. The playboy is endearing and the old doctor, duckie and his side kick are just wonderful.  This family has a silent mysterious father and he's just fine too.  There's bosses behind him but the team is really a great school grouping that makes all the intriguing scenarios that happen each week quite wonderful.
I like NCIS Miami too. Mostly because of the black guy and white guy military types but the best is the old lady. She's a great actress and it's a joy to see such wit and charm and age appreciated. The young pair are a delightful combination and this family with a smart mommy character works just great. Maybe the stories are even better. The odd girl in this one is the communication computer hacker as opposed to the chemistry chick from the other NCIS.
The UNIT is the best.  Laura and I watch this even when we're not sick.  It's the best combination of  military 007 Spike guy thing couple with army brat wives chick flick thing.  All the characters have depth and the plots are sensationa,
I love the Mentalist.  He's believable and his partner is gorgeous and bright and they make the kind of team that Dianna woman was part of in the early 70's. It's got that great boy girl working together with touch of romance thrown in. Great stories too.
The Closer is terrific. I like this cop team. She and her FBI boyfriend are a hoot. I love her female Colombo style.  I like the irreverent old cop and the smart chinese guy.  It's just a good cop show.
Chicago Code is real cop material.  Believable. Gets to the corruption. The regular cop and the head of the police fighting the corruption of city hall and the gangs on the street is thrilling. It's real like the Unit is real.Serious drama.
Burn Notice is slick. The guy is smart and it's got all the McGivor 007 and Diesel xxx smarts too it.  I like the commentary.  Love the killer ex girlfriend. The buddy is a good balance but the mother is a show stopper. Love that she was written in. Brings this whole thing home. We never did know 007's family.  I like the cozy home feel of this.
Pretty Little Liars is intense and twisted and smart camera. Everything that soap opera aspires to in the making. But too much information.  Everything is drama.
Insecurity the Canadian spy series is really funny.  Makes me proud to be Canadian when I see such good drama.
I love Stargate and Stargate Atlantis. I'm a big sci fi fan. This isn't star trek but it's the next best thing and I love it.  I like the doctor to and the wild man and wild woman and the blond leader is so believable and the guy leader is so believable and the bright guy is so believable and I just think I should have my own personal star gate. This is going on at Rockwell right now.  And the government isn't telling us about it.!
Criminal Minds is dependable. I like the team.  I like the leaders and I like the whole unit.  The smart guy is my favourite.  Good drama.
Law and Order is still as good as ever. It's been around for ever and it's always just good informative drama.
House - I don't tend to watch doctor tv much anymore.  I love the information on House. The stuff they're dealing with is usually really good medicine. They've obviously got some good consultants but I just can't accept the drama. Maybe in the US this goes on. But here all the doctors are required to be without personality and there is no drama allowed or someone complains and they're up on charges for being colorful.  When I started in medicine I learned from a few House like characters but they've been killed off and I mourn their passing.
In the wilderness doc series seemed too flakey. I've done the wilderness medicine stuff and the plot and scenarios were just too weak for me.
ER was a terrific doc series.  Michael Creighton consulted and it was at times just like it was in real life.  The police told me Barney Miller was fairly representative of alot of time in Canadian police activity.  The Hill and things like that in New York and LA just didn't seem to be relevant to Canadian police activity. Cold Squad was brilliant and better than Quincy.  But today given all the gang wars in Vancouver and meth labs blowing up down town maybe it's time for a new Vancouver cop series.
Nothing has come along to even come close to Seinfeld and Friends.
I dont' get the Discovery or History channel here.  BBC news beats out everyone else.  Manbridge is still good though.  I wonder if the girls felt about him the way the guys feel about the BBC news announcers. The main men and women on CNN seem flat in comparison to the Brits and Canadians.  More like corporate brands than real people.
I love the English and Australian drama but it's a bit low key for when I'm sick. The American pizzaz for making fast action and multiple cameras is best for the sick person.  I'd rather read a book but I dose alot.  Movies are too involved so these TV Series are really the best for sick people.  I found I like watching the two guys myth busting a blowing up something while at the dentist. Loved watching big fish catching with my nephew.  I think all round tv has got a whole lot better. That's not even with PBS and the HBO mini series.
That said, the general population is given a real skewed view of law enforcement, crime labs and such.  I think that's part of the propoganda of Big Brother is all powerful and watching you. It's really so much myth and entertainment. I can't imagine any crime except maybe the shooting of a senator or such that would get the millions of dollars of investigation time and resource each NCIS series would cost.  It's even more fanciful than Sherlock Holmes.  But great drama.
Criminal Minds is all this profiling stuff. It's fun psychodrama but it's utterfly far fetched. My field.  But it's better than Freud.  Lots of stereotypes and psych 101 but really.  Good drama though.
Mentalist is however in contrast believable in a real way. The "book of tells" is about those little things people give themselves away with. He's over the top but the stuff he's based on is well founded.  It draws on years of hypnosis research and is really valid. Irritating but it's what the circus carnies do their stuff with and why the best tarot card readers read you more than the cards.  I like it. I like the character too.  But mostly I like the girl.
So it's all about team playing. The girls, like Nikita, are the killers. So we're tv is long beyond the feminist  dichotomy - men are bad, women are good. There's a real balance of good and bad characters and a balance of believable female and male leaders . There's lots of black representation, some oriental and even some latin, some Russian, but not that much first nations.  It's a long way from vanilla for sure.
The other propaganda item is that the world is on the brink of disaster and every week there are dozens of terrorists the US is protecting everyone from.  This is probably going to end up like the War on Drugs, with all the Homeland security measures as much begetting terrorism as protecting us from it. It's got that feel. However the propaganda is there. Every series has a terrorist being caught about to blow up a city. The other thing to propagandize to the women , especially the silly girls, is that Big Brother is protecting you from a daily serial sexual predator. The pig farmer was the biggest news here in Vancouver. They're rare but watching tv land they're everywhere so that's major fear mongering.  Terrorists and serial sexual sadists behind every door. I preferred the good old commie scare. So I'm aware I'm being fed this constant message of good government in the end, the bad guys get caught but I haven't heard of any convictions over 911 or the recent banker regulation scam.  I appreciate the purpose of tv as opiate for the masses. When I'm sick I enjoy being anesthetized.  Somebody like dirty harry is out there fighting for me the little guy whose sick right now and couldn't defend myself from a wet noodle.  I like Bat man and Superman some days too.
I know the lie though. I still appreciate the propaganda.  I probably was benefitted from watching Bonanza and the goodness of the Cartwrights.  I wish there were more westerns.  There sure are alot of cop shows and Big Brother and stuff.  I like the guns and car chases.  That diner canadian comedy in Saskatchewan or the north somewhere is good but it doesn't have the guns and car chases you need when youre sick and dozing.
Right now I'm thankful for the tv.  I'm hoping to be well before I know all the names of all the characters.  Oh yea, Oprah really is good. Her talk show is the best. I fall asleep before the late night ones especially when I'm sick.  But after David Letterman there really isn't anyone out there.  I figure if I get a slice of David Letterman coupled with Fox news I've just about got the full spectrum of what's important in the news.
Glee is great too but the music has become American Idol made like the Monkeys since the earlier ones so it lost me.  I wish there was more godly and Christian programming.  I like the televangelism on Sunday but it loses me when it seems like the product is a used car.
The reality series suck for me. I'm a survivalist and all the stuff they do and the way they act is just not the world I know.  Too much phony adrenaline and testosterone with downright nastiness.  People in difficult times in my experience usually pull together a whole lot better than those prima donnas so I've just not got into them.  Apparently office workers with cutthroat office politics love the reality series.  Man and girl made
That said, television rocks.  There's so much really good tv out there. The commercials are a whole lot funnier too.  The motorcycles are awesome. The acting is terrific.  I'm just really thankful and really impressed.  The dancing is phenomenal.  Channel surfing the music series is always a buzz.  So much happening in so little time.  Great video.
Now I'd rather be outside doing stuff but if you have to be inside and if you're sick tv today is the best!