Yuma - love

I ward off fear every day.  I like that religion is for those who have never been to hell and spirituality for those who have been and don’t want to go back.  My very life and being and mind were threatened by a satanic man .  I knew fear. I’d seen the torture provided in the name of justice. I’d witnessed the grossest abuse of power.  I was afraid. I was experiencing ‘incomprehenible demoralization’ and cried out to Jesus.  I had felt beyond Grace. I felt every path I took was blocked. I thought ‘how could all these bad things be happening to a good guy like me’.  I felt the depth of betrayal and knew terror and despair.  I cried out to Jesus.  I cried out to God.  

“My God  My God why hast thou forsaken me?” “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’  I was in the long dark night of the soul.  

I survived. Later I’d be in a hurricane in winter at sea, days inside of the washing machine like sail boat unable to find comfort, totally at the mercy.  I  felt then the  same physically as I’d felt imprisoned by enemies.  This time I did not feel I was alone or that I had done wrong. I felt close with God.  I’d not turned my back on Jesus but knew he was with me. I had faith and trust in the Lord.  I’d clung to him in the darkest of times and been rewarded.  I’d confessed my sins. I was no longer alone and alienated. I’d been the Prodigal Son returning to my family. I’d sought the guidance and leadership of  Christian missionary doctors and Christian professors, and spiritual friends.  I’d begun the path back to the god of my understanding. I once again sought to know daily God and God’s will for me. I prayed daily and eventually ceaselessly as St. Paul had taught. I meditated as I had long ago learned.  I lived.  I humbly turned my will and my life over to God. I accepted I was powerless over alcohol and drugs and that my life had become unmanageable. I found the lost strength and hope within me. I attended church and meetings and studies.  I pilgrimaged to the Holy Lands and prayed in the places of worship of the holy.  I literally let go and let God.  

I contrast the time I have today with that turning point decades ago. I’d put my faith in romance back then and looked to sex and drugs and rock and roll for answers. Today I talk directly with God and ask for his forgiveness and guidance.  Each day I begin the day in gratitude and ask for the presence of Jesus Christ in my life.  I pray to God and the saints of all religions . I am a seeker and yet trust in the Hound of Heaven. I know the footprints in the sand and see the hand prints of God in my life. Theres’ a fourth dimension I often stumble into. . That flow or consciousness that is beyond all human understanding, the transscendence.   I fear at times I am a spiritual consumer seeking the nectar of God. It is a journey and destination. I accept I am in this life and enjoy food,  .exercise, sleep and fellowship that  is itself Godly.  I live in this world but I ‘ m not of this world.  I am a child of God but I am vigilant, less naive, older. 

I dreamed of being given marijuana by a taxi driver last night. I took the package and woke.  I still have dreams like that, not using, but as C.S. Lewis say thinking that God could be found in the wall of his creation. I want direct contact with God . The old tantric path was thoroughly explored. The journey is forward not back.  It served its time back when.  Now it has no future.  I don’t know why it came to me out of my memories, as a tease or temptation.   I imagine it was because I ‘ve been watching 007 and revisiting the 60’s.  I’m remembering youth and love and dancing in the streets of San Francisco with flowers in our hair.  I’m reading a book on the history of Northern Africa and remembering being in the Kazbah, me and Bobby McGee. I’m grieving my youth.   

Today I’m old and life has been a grand adventure with my Doystoeyski encounter with the sophisticated devil who offered me a choice. I look the road I did and the one he din’t not know. Now I’m feeling sometimes that I’m in Heaven’s waiting room but I know that’s decades a head.  It’s the weariness that assails me now sometimes.  I remember the single footprints in the sand then. I say All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. I remember Hal’s teachings on an Attitude of Gratitude. I try to get over myself.  I try to keep my head in the same room as my ass.  I know God is in the present. 

It’s best then I go for a walk.  My dog is always happy to walk with me. He’s a great teacher.  

Thank you God for rescuing me from myself. Thank you God for loving me as father and mother and giving me a father and mother who loved and taught me love. . Thank you God for this life of mystery and adventure. Thank you for the journey, companions and memories.  Help me do my best today, Grant me serenity, courage and wisdom. 

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.

Shame

On his death bed, my brother called me a woman.  He was gaunt.  He’d been drifting in and out of narcotic sleep.  Struggling to focus.  It was a hospital room with shiny metal and white cloth.  His family were around.  I’d been fighting in every way I knew to keep him alive.  I’ve kept the dying alive and resurrected the dead.  But they say a prophet can’t be a saviour in his home.  He was my older brother.  It didn’t matter that I was the doctor.  He was going to die.  He was going to have it his way.  I was going to have to let go.
“You don’t understand,” he said. All my life I have heard that.  “I want to die. I don’t want to live. You don’t understand.” I’m a contrarian.  I’ve swum against the stream. I’ve overcome the impossible time and time again.  I’m always afraid. I never know if this will be the one. I join in the fight. I gather all my resources and go at it.  I fight demons. I wrestle with the devil.  I fail.  I cry. But mostly I win.  I don’t think of it as myself, not really. I think more of summoning a power greater than myself and bringing this to bear.  I call on God and science and self and beg, plead, cajole.  I offer myself as sacrifice.
I asked that God take me instead.  I’ve no family. I’m all alone.  I’ve had a full life. I’m old.  So many times I’ve not wanted to live.  All the time I am crying and dying and having near death experiences.  But with him there was love.
He just said, “you’re a woman.” As much as a low blow, brother to brother ,in a fight of words.  We fought physically as children. I remember him trying to kill me in an all out cat and dog fight when our parents won’t home.  I remember my trying to kill him too, as only men can, as boys.  There’s that love and hate and betrayal thing that goes beyond all checks and balances. I don’t judge people when they lose it, find it, are it, whatever term speaks to the barbaric and refined. I’ve known that place of desperation and desire. As brothers we survived and surpassed these times.  
My brother was dying. I was pushing him to live. I was fighting with him, for him, and it was something I did and do.  Jacob and  anonymous.  It’s not a pretty sight.  I’ve killed and gutted many a fish and animal.  Living is only sanitized for the effete.  Little boxes made of ticky tacky.  I’m old. I’ve had my hands in guts and brains suturing and cutting and stuffing back together. I’ve picked up slippery bowels sliding acrosss the floor after a dehiscence.  I’ve known the futility of pressing a chest  once more, after too long has gone by for life to remain.
I’ve failed but won so many.  I lost my brother. Only I was to blame.
When I came home after the summer of 69 it was he I talked to. My father wasn’t talking to me. I’d left his home with him shouting.  “Don’t ever come back,”
 “I told you I’m leaving first, old man.” I’d shouted back.
It began well.  Three artists in an apartment. An organists, a bass guitarist and a writer. The woman who’d go onto be a lawyer was stopped from joining us  by her father. She’d later make candles and sell them on the west coast, a pretty little hippy girl who’d become hard as nails and more afraid.  We were fearless back then or just naive.
The bass player went onto be famous.  I hear him sometimes in the back of AM tracks.  His sound was distinctive in an era of distinctive sounds. The organist  married and taught children’s music. A obscure  existence for an egotist.  I gave one for the team. I could always be counted on to give one for the team.
“He won’t publish the record unless we give him a boy. He only produces bands with a young guy who will fuck him. He’s an old queen. He’s got all the money he needs. He just does this for the sex. One of us has to take it for the team.” Lonny said.
Lonny was a psychopath.  He was an american draft dodger with a mean voice singing with the band, carrying a gun in his glove compartment box  in Canada.  He was trying to convince the organist to put out.
“I’m too old for his tastes,’ said the drummer. We were teens, Lonny and the drummer were in their 20’s, old guys.
I wasn’t with the band really.  The roadie at most. I’d not wanted to get involved with these guys. Lonny was anything but cool.  Dirty little pervert always hitting on the young girls. Made the girls we brought around feel ‘creepy’.  There was a lot of booze. The drummer grew pot and drifted in and out. We were all having sex with girls. It was a big party zone.  Our apartment was a moveable feast.  The first party we’d had we’d blow up the furniture. It was cheap inflatable furniture that had all died under the assault of cigarettes and joints.  We bought second hand couches,. Back alley tables.  I don’t know where we got our beds.  Three to a room.  Old springs. Loud. No privacy.  Rotating beds. Lots of laughter. We were young.
“I don’t want to go. I’m not going to do this. I’m not gay. I’m not even in the band. There’s nothing in this for me.  It’s not what a friend asks a friend to do.” they browbeat me all day or for days over a week. Then, “just come, there’ll be food and drugs. You won’t have to do anything. Just be there. Nothing has to happen.”  The bass player disappeared that week.
I remember the organist saying something to Lonny  Then the old bald guy  asking Lonny if I was good with it and Lonny saying, ‘yea, he’s good with it.”
There were a lot of drugs and booze that night. I’d not been eating much because I was giving the organist a chance to come through with the money he owed me.  He had big dreams and promises.  Wanted me as the roadie so I’d be around for us to work together.  The organist was writing a rock opera with my words.  But mostly it was drugs and girls.  Nothing was happening. There’s that lull before the storm I’ve begun to know.
I woke up on the couch with the old bald guy’s  mouth on my cock. It felt good.  The tv had all manner of sexual images playing on it,  men and women, women and women, men and men, animals, children.  Pretty soon I was following him into the bedroom and finishing it there.
I remember Lonny out on the balcony looking in.  He went back to the guys and told them.  They had a deal.
The record was made.  I’d bought the band their album.  They were ashamed around me after that.  I’d been the virgin sacrifice.  I went back to the old bald guy. He had drugs and hoer d’eves. He gave me record albums.  There were other boys.  I was at parties where there were only men and boys.  I was a writer and wanted to experience everything. All I wanted to be was a writer. All I wanted to do was write.
There was something sleazy with the guys in the band. There was something open with the guys around the old guy.  I wanted to experience it all.  Eventually I was fucked up the ass.  I left bleeding from my bum and had anal tears that didn’t heal and needed to be repaired. I remember the old guy saying he was sorry. He didn’t know the guy would be like that. But everything soured rather suddenly.
There wasn’t enough money for booze and drugs.  The roadie gig wasn’t working out. I’d fought off a half dozen guys defending the equipment. I was always carrying a knife. I couldn’t understand why I was doing all this stuff for these guys and at night going over to the old guys who’d feed me and give me drugs.  The guys in the band never paid me.  Stingy.  Promises. Lies.
I was eating slops when I called my brother.  We met in a diner. He paid.  I told him what was wrong. The rape, if one wanted to call it that, had happened.  The doctor said I needed anaesthesia and  surgery to repair the tears.  I’d had shots for the STD's. I told my brother what occurred. I was crying. He listened. Said I should come home. I told him I couldn’t come home.  He said he’d speak to Dad.Dad talked to me. after that.  He was gruff and ex military.  I could see he was hurt. He could see I was hurt.  He told me I had to come home.  But on his rules. In before midnight.  Working or going to school. No drugs or alcohol. No friends crashing in my room.
The prodigal son returned.
I’d lasted 2 months on my own.  I’d stay at home another year before heading out again.  It took that long for the wounds to heal.  Not that they ever healed.
I couldn’t stand to hear the band on the radio.  It had cost me too much. They didn’t amount to anything. Broke up. After all I’d done. They couldn’t even keep it together. Losers.
Every once in a while I’d see the old guy and say hello. He really was concerned. Twisted still but charming.  I’d become a dancer and our paths crossed in those days.  Dancing was a regular gig with money.  I never went back to his bed.  I was back with my family then on my own.  I got a steady girlfriend after I told her what had happened.
I didn’t have anything more to do with the band.  The police were after them.  "Good Time Charle’s Back in Town" was the book written about the era, about the drug busts by the undercover RCMP lead singer. The drummer had been smoking a joint with the under cover lead singer  before he turned everyone in.  The band couldn’t get a gig after that.  Black listed.   The band broke up even as their record was playing on the radio.
The organist went east.  All the promises and dreams had gone up  in smoke.
Lonny left too. He was shot dead soon after. Some dispute over drug debts with liquor involved.   I met the drummer and he was still smoking dope. His parents had died, left him the house and some money.  He got by.   “Crazy guy,  that Lonny,” he said,   "Totally fucked in the head, but he had a voice.”  
My brother and I became closer  that year.  We never talked again about that time until he was dying.  He reminded me then I was a woman.
I was the guy who went on to hospitalize guys in fights, protecting women and underdogs,  hunted bear, and rode  big motorcycles.  I’d stopped drinking and drugging too.  My brother never had anything to prove.  He was always a good man.
A few days later,  the last thing he said to me was, “thanks for fighting for me.”

The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

My goodness, this is the most awesome museum.  Rated alongside the British Museum and the Louvre it’s a masterpiece of it’s own.  The Winter Palace was begun in 1754 by architect Rastrell.  Catherine II purchased Gotzkowski collection,  first collection. The little Hermitage and then the great Hermitage were built, 1764 to 1787. 1852 was the opening of the Imperial Museum of the New Hermitage. 1865 Leonardo Da Vinci’s  Madonna and Child (Litta Madonna) was purchased. 1914 Leonardo Da Vinci’s Madonna with Flower was purchased.
Vlad, Barrett’s brother in law, accompanied us.  Through translation I learned from Barrett that ,”he likes to go to art galleries to improve his mood.”  I thought that as good a reason as any. I’d just told Barrett I thought a walk in a museums and art gallery was as close as one could get in the city to a walk in the woods in the country. I love museums and art galleries and have been truly blessed to have enjoyed many of the world’s finest.  It was when I was a young man working in London I made a point of using my lunch hours to stroll the British Museum. No wonder I was thin back then.
Today we hiked for hours and miles. We mounted the famous Jordan Stairway first.  Then there was just an endless collection of art and not enough time to see it all.  Vlad asked what I most wanted to see and I said, the da Vinci, Picasso, Rafael. He said he liked the Medieval period most..  On the way to the da Vinci he pointed out his favourites, mostly religious scenes. There was so much.  The Leonardo Da Vinci is of the mother and child, the child suckling.  It’s is a moving portrait. Later I’d learn I walked right past the only Michelangelo there. I was looking at the Rodin sculptures and missed the Michelangelo. I can’t say how much I missed but what I saw was truly inspiring.
I love the Manet.  More Picasso Blue Period.  We’d walked and walked and were hungry and wanting lunch when Barret asked if there was anything else I wanted to see. I’d been reading about the Hermitage and it came to mind that this was the place where Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son was. I’m a big fan of Henri Nouwen’s Prodigal Son writing and loved the idea that there are two sons, not just one that returns.  It’s really an amazing discussion of Faith and Works, or more importantly Grace.  I’m moved personally by the story.  And there was the painting. What an amazing portrayal.
More Matisse, more Gauguin, Flemish school, French, and finally leaving some Roman and Egyptian floors. We’d fluttered about and come to nest here and there but so much had just been wall art which we’d passed as if it were elevator music. It was beautiful. The whole of the museum is that. There’s everything, from great wooden carved desks to massive bowls and intricate porcelain.  It makes one admire the human capacity for transcendence.  I loved it all and feel my mind has had a marvellous cleansing, a rite of purification, a morning and afternoon, of being pointed upwards.  I know I’ll go back to dragging my knuckles but the memories are there. I love the line from Cohen in Chelsea hotel, “We are ugly but we have the music”.  Well, I may be ugly but I’ve got the most beautiful memories. 

Deuteronomy and Democracy

A self proclaimed minister burnt the Koran last week.  It caused some moslems to kill in reaction to the attack on their religion.  Two wrongs don't make a right.
The Old Testament, the Bible shared by Christians and Jews and Moslems, has it's own questionable recommendations.  I am however thankful that my father and mother didn't take the Bible literally.  However now that I'm older and more impatient and irritable,  I can see some merit in the recommendations of Deuteronomy.
"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious.  He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard."  Then all men of his town shall stone him to death."
Note that the authority structure in this model is a "top down" authoritarian structure. It is neither patriarchal or matriarchal but authoritarian. It's the opposide of democracy. Authoritarian structures  put the power into the hands of the born with power, those older and those more powerful together, than one alone.  It's the rule of the military assigned  or the judge. The 'elders' can give the death penalty to the young.  As 50% of the prisons here are thought to be filled with people who have had problems with drugs and alcohol it's of interest that the son to be stoned to death is a 'drunkard'.
Alcohol and drugs are associated with 'anti authoritariasm".  Do to their effects on the devolution of the brain, they create a desire for 'license' , not freedom. The "license to kill' means you can kill anyone without consequence or accountability. The 'freedom to kill' is something we all have but 'freedom' comes with consequence and accountability.
The greatest leaders have been the greatest followers.  Learning involves first obedience.  It also involves listening.   It also involves learning.  Arrogance is the trait of misplaced pride in which a person believes they 'know it all' and need not learn further. It's not uncommon among the young.  Right now my young dog wants to run across roads to sniff Fifi without any knowledge of the power of cars.  Much of the authority in the world especially related to the young or to others ignorance is for theirown  protection.
It's not possible for everyone to know everything in a society of specialization.  A notice says don't go in the broken nuclear reactor. Historically it didn't need 100 pages of legal documentation which is written in the arcane language of unreadable 'legalese' for people to decide, "yes, I won't enter the broken nuclear reactor."    Some adolescents would have everyone stop and explain to them 'why'.  Some journalists are like this, as well.    It's the 'arrogant" who feel that they have a right to being 'taught' for 'free' what others have spent years understanding.  Lawyers and their ilk would have one read all the legalese that comes in catalogues attached to 'firehoses'. My suspicion is that the nuclear reactor problems all can be explained by technicians stopping to read the legal 'small print' before turning the 'off' or 'on' buttons at the nuclear reactor stations in crisis.  I believe too that those who have written much legalese with a sense of 'license' will be held accountable in the higher court of 'freedom'.
When I was younger I never understood why older people were more amused at the Darwin Awards than I was.  Now I find myself chuckling each year when the Darwin Awards are declared.  More and more I find myself saying, "Don't go into the broken nuclear reactor."  Then when the person wishes to discuss this and argue with me and there's no group of elders who will stone this person for me, I hear myself saying, "Don't say I didn't tell you." It's then I remember my father's and mother 's voice.  Much to my surprise there are things that 16 year old don't know that 50 year olds do.  I love my parents more every year I survive to remember the basics they instilled in me as a child.
In Canada too many people believe democracy is about being able to drink Labatts beer instead of Molsons. They further think democracy is about being able to smoke marijuana and have free heroin.  Alot of people are getting stoned in Canada but not by the elders.
A minister who burns the Koran claiming to be holier than now would likely kill an adolescent first chance he got as well.  That ministers regime is what the 'pro democracy' forces around the world are fighting against.  That minister doesn't understand 'freedom' but instead wants 'license'.  He's arrogant.  He lacks respect.  He needs to serve a term or two in Kundahar, outside the wire.
The Holy Bible is not a hot house plant.  It doesn't need to be the only book on the bookshelf.  All over the world countries have banned the Bible and burned it because Jesus was  the greatest revolutionary. He was the democractic leader of all times, the first small 'c' communist.  What he said that so upset the authorities was  that  the name of God the Father was Abba, that is "Papa." or "Daddy".
I'm sure my Father would have gladly given me over to the elders when I was a profligate drunkard adolescent.  Papa kept me in his home instead. My Daddy took me back when I came home later, the Prodigal Son.