April 28, 2020 Covid 19 Quarantine

I reviewed the genetic information and was still not convinced that it wasn’t engineered. Truly it could be a natural virus but again, the lady protestest too much. It’s the same kind of ‘science’ that we were bludgeoned with by the UN IPCC.  Another agenda more alligned with money and power than with truth seemed to fuel the denial.  On FB the geneticists whose work I uploaded has been removed.  The explanation was simply ‘our fact checker disagrees’.

It’s frustrating. I’m a curious person and yet when there is such a massive expensive cover up which persists I am frightened.  The question raised today was ‘why was Beijing immune?”

How dare you question!

I’m reminded of my times as a child at home and at school where I corrected parents and teachers and was severely punished.  It’s not a matter of what is right as to who is saying it. Do not question the king!  Bill Gates and Justin Trudeau are Gods. Heil Comrade Xin Jinping.  The Balkanization of the world trade and corporations with politics making strange bedfellows.  The media graphs are even grossly biased.  The Goebbels propaganda techniques by CBC say 1984.

Now the virus is mutating. 30 strains.  The nervous system is being attacked.  First lungs then heart and blood and now nervous system. Children sick with new mysterious diseases.  We told them not to tamper with nature.  We will survive of course. Most of us. I once tried to eliminate rats in a chicken coup and became impressed with reproductive resilience and the adaptation of survival.

I’m happy here. Locked in my room. I’m seeing patients in a virtual reality. I’m walking the dog. I’m again testing the limits of no skin to skin contact with another human 30 plus days.  I’m assailed by erotic thoughts of all kinds and don’t believe it’s Satan talking.  The image of God and Adam from the Sistine chapel comes to mind.

Already I notice people normalizing the experience. Lovers in the time of cholera.  The reopening of normalcy is beginning.  The social distancing and masks remain but the false belief I’ve survived this long without sickness, perhaps I’m immune. Perhaps I’m immortal.  Even in WWI the soldiers talked about the sense of ‘normalcy’ in the midst of hell.

I loved the “We’re Living in a Ghost Town ‘. song by Rolling Stones.

I miss naked bodies entwined, soft summer nights.  I miss my youth.  Yet I am safe here.  The obituary will read, he was a quiet person and he lived a safe life till the end. I know so many women living lives of quiet desperation ‘safe’ in their luxurious apartments, alone.  The men are more rangy. A bit like alley cats. The families are faring well. When I was married I needed no one but my lover and wanting nothing but children to expand this contentment. I was upwardly mobile , a bright light, outshining my cohort, but never quite right with my partners who struggled for dominance and we eventually parted because I preferred my own company. We all create myths to survive.Sometimes it was their families and friends. Once we were just going in two different ways. What we want could not be found in the same town. Perhaps my continued suspiciousNess of government stems from then.  The burocratic nonsense that separated love and made it near impossible for us to remain and work in the same city.  So many people have their jobs separating them. 

I ‘m reading and hearing now of old married couples being separated by institutions. Yesterday I learned of a 75 year old who visited his wife of 60 years not being allowed even to see her.  They talk through alien technology now.  So much tragedy and the Chinese communists are flush with the cash they are making and rub their hands with glee because they simply lack heart. It’s a developmental stage that requires freedom.  Collectively they are barbarians.  Ant hills of greed and fear.

I would be no different.  I’ve been blessed to be raised Christian in a god loving home to be surrounded by people who loved freedom.  I am a dying breed.  I’ve ridden horses and sailed oceans. My grandfather taught me about ranching and my father about machines. My mother and brother taught me to cook. There are apartments now without kitchens and few men know their way around a garage. They don’t even know what they don’t know.

I wonder how much longer I have to live and expect it’s decades. The very question of the future seems to extend it.

It’s all in God’s hands. Rejoice.  Gilbert and I had a great barbecued steak dinner last night. I loved watching his joy in chewing on the bone the rest of the evening. There are cherry tree blossoms and the gay mallards have returned with the wood duck family. Some new birds are making a nest in the tree outside my window. I must find the bird book.  In a prison somewhere a man sits watching a spider trying to remember taxonomy and phylogeny. 

Thank you Jesus for this day. May I be of service and fulfill my duties to the best of my ability.  Thank you. 

Friday, Covid 19, Quarantine

This thing began in Wuhan China end of November.  It came here in late December.I’ve been in self quarantine for, I think, three weeks.  I’m here with Gilbert in my home. Gilbert doesn’t tell time. He ‘s never learned to use a calendar or a watch.  Heis world revolves around this meal, next meal, this ball, next ball, lets go sniff for Fifi. I’d lost some of my sense of smell but seem to be reflecting on my dog and getting some of it back.  There’s something right in the expression, ‘you’ve got to stop and smell the roses’.

This quarantine is a major ‘halt’.  Crashing in through the back of my skull and right up through the centre of my heart are a lot of thoughts and feelings that I’d forgotten or lost or just not paid much attention to.  Really positive nostalgia thoughts today.  I’m grateful a lot.  I can be so whiny and needy so as not to remember all the wonderful times and gifts I’ve known. I take so many things for granted.  Gatherings of people.  Moments of comfort. Joy. The smile on a face of a friend. The dog cuddling beside me sometime near dawn.  Walks.

I’m not sure about the whole ‘return to normal’ thing. It’s not going to happen. I don’t want to go back.  It was already in transition and I’m moving on to the next chapter. This stop seems to have given impetus to creating a new person and planning a new adventure.  Life is a journey and an adventure. It’s the metaphors we live by that give it meaning. It’s so much more about perception.  Just because its been some way doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.  We can change.  

I’m always asking about this Godness. It’s a word, an idea, a feeling. C.S. Lewis said, stop looking for the architect in the wall. There’s a beingness to God, a creator, that sense I got with my first child microscope of looking into a huge world in a drop of pond water.  It’s all perspective.  The Creator is one of the many names of God.  I’ve considered so many and settled on Jesus, friend, love.  The idea of stoicism and hedonism mirror. I’ve been given a life to live. I don’t remember asking. I may well have designed this particular life myself. Each life has it’s inherent merits. Others see what we don’t see. I’ve envied the relationships of poor people, the mutual dependencies and they’ve envied my freedom not appreciating the terrible loneliness. In turn I don’t appreciate the stifling bonds of family, friends and community.  The oldest law of the world is the ‘Chinese law of the fish: there are big fish and there are little fish, the little fish must be fast and numerous.”  

‘Stand up and you make yourself a target’.  ‘Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.”  I fear the hierarchies and the authoritarian realms.  I don’t quite understand how I’ve survived, frankly.  Not only must there be a God that loves me there must be people in power who appreciate variety. I know there are those who like the goose dressing masses to be dressed in drab.  But I’ve not been as successful as the ‘obedient’ while I’ve not been unsuccessful.  I can’t truly imagine which way my life had gone, looking back, today if I’d not done what I’d done at the time, often against conventional wisdom. 

Now it’s time to carry on.  An attitude of gratitude is very fine.  I’m thankful today for so much, even this time, of reflection and lack of busy-ness. The dog thinks these walks are spectacular. I might have left him at home and headed downtown for some non essential errands. But now I’m going to do the essential shower business, get dressed and have an essential walk with my friend.  He’s blind and old and has a sore back but he loves to listen and sniff, making the best of what he has.  I don’t think he thinks about his loss of vision. I’m sure he doesn’t think how he appears to other dogs either. He just keeps on trucking, sniffing and listening.  I’m going to try to focus on having God and Dog in my life, being sandwiched between the unseen love and the seen love, and maybe listen more.  And smell.  I really must savour fragrances, especially in spring when the world is blossoming anew.  

Hallelujah!