Morning Limbo

I’m in limbo today. The aftermath of a full Halloween weekend with lots of exercise and activity.  I thought of going to church but remain ambivalent. I don’t know what to wear. 

I woke at 530 from a frightening dream.  A low life troll character in a beat up old car had stopped on the bridge, probably Granville.  He’d tried to steal my hard maroon  combination brief case. It was the one I had as a student. At this time i didn’t know what was in it. My valued student things from then, the Texas Instruments calculator, notes.  Or it could be Secret papers.  Stacks of money. My life savings.  I’d escaped the initial lunge and was rapidly backing up glad he was alone

When I woke suddenly I felt my physical vulnerability. The tenuousness of physical reality.  ‘Fear of economic insecurity will leave us,” hasn’t fully worked with me. I still have that fear that at times tormented my father in his final years as he worried about being cut off his pension.  He deeply mistrusted the Trudeau government. 

I also had that sense that I’d again been less cautious in public.  Showing any kind of success or wealth in this world attracts parasites. It’s the DTES on large scale. I’d enjoyed going out to the restaurant dressed fine wearing gold, trusting.  I’m older and a target for the theives.  I was lucky in the dream. There was only one. He had ropes too but his interest was money.  Kidnapping and theft and extortion. I’ve been in my head too much and not as situationally aware as I can be. The letting up of Covid restriction.  Going out to a restaurant and to a movie, being in the city, all are novel and I’ve not maintained the vigilance that was previously second nature. I think that was what the dream was saying. Also reminding me I like my ‘things’.  I’m still a materialist though spiritual. That brief case represented hours of extra work that allowed me to buy something that really was attractive and executive appearing but perfect for my needs at the time, carrying my notes and book and calculator and pens.  I have many little things like that whose value is in their functionality and selection.  I have one Swiss Army knife and one Leatherman that after countless trials of a life time are just the ones that suit my needs now. To another they are just a means to another hit of crystal meth or crack.

My next dream was apocalyptic. We were a group in my peninsula on the ridge where the hunting is. We were two groups in camps.  The other group was a family and I was with just a couple. We all had rifles and the other group had a collection of pistols. I’d been hunting meat and they’d been teaching their kids to shoot pistols target practising. I’ admired their weapons cases and a large amount of ammo.  The woman had asked me to transfer pictures of her kids to a different medium.  I had a computer base with Hamm and satellite.  It was post apocalyptic and I enjoyed the woman and the family. I’d not been able to do all she wanted there but would be able to do that more at  base camp with more equipment.  We were secure but someone was always on look out. The trucks were loading.  We were splitting up for the return to base camp. They  were up earlier and ready to go. I with my colleagues were late rising and waiting for coffee.  They were more vigilant with their children.  I was calm and not concerned.   Normally I’d been alone in the wilderness or with immediate friends and family out patrolling and aware of the danger. Now I felt I wasn’t alone but that others, like this family, we’re becoming aware and preparing. 

The dog jumps on my face and wants me to get up. Our routine is for me to to take out the garbage and walk him till he poops. .It was very chilly, clear sky, frosty. He pooped and we came home. I actually meditated for a little time, did stretches and sit ups. Now I  am on my second cup of coffee and feeling better.  

I feel in limbo.  I’m at that end of career pre retirement place. I think another 5 years of work would be fine but I want a longer break and I don’t. I’m content doing the same old same old routine, work easy like an old shoe. The difficulty is getting there,  Getting dressed and out is the difficulty.  Day by day I do the next right thing.  I want to travel more but that is all. Whether it’s here in Canada or the US with truck and RV or flying overseas doesn’t matter. I’d like to go to Aberdeen.  It’s an arbitrary calling.  Visit the land of my grandfather then return leaving as he did.  I had thought to leave the coast and return to the east or interior but right now I’m relatively content here. No place seems that much more secure.  

People I know and care about are dying.  The lights go out.  I miss Jean and John and George and Ron. There are others too.

In my uncertainty about the future I’m not quick to make new friends The friends that are dying are people I’ve known decades , the new friends I have are mere years in making.  I”m slow to trust with reason.  

I simply don’t know what more to do.  At one point this morning I woke and had a blank slate. I felt like I would likely feel retired.  I have nothing that needs doing today. I’ve a meeting but I skipped church and could skip the meetings as well though I look forward to the checking in as I once did on our Hamm radio off shore net. 

Everything else I could do is arbitrary. I have some chores and projects but they’re minor and nothing stops them from being put off.  I was pleased I got up and walked the dog. Now I’ve journaled.  I’m sluggish, My back hurts and I could go to the hot tub where there’s great relief or pop some naproxen or ibuprofen and feel relief as well. I don’t want to experience an upset stomach which occurs with the NSAIDS in time but I have some Tecta.  I can more than manage.  

I had a red dress I planned to wear for Halloween but couldn’t bring myself to go out to the Halloween party or the dance last night.  I watched Free Guy enjoying it from my couch, the dog happy I was home.  

I might have a nap and wake more ambitious or just read this morning,  Uncertaity and lack of direction,  The Meme said the ‘purpose of life is developing a relationship with Jesus Christ’. I’m certainly talking to him and listening, praying daily.  I’d meditate longer but cross legged my back hurts and yet the sitting is good for my knee and back. I think the riding so far on the Vespa yesterday strained it along with the extensive walking.  I’m stiff this morning. It’s a good stiffness.  

I suspect the elite have back aches but don’t realize them because their naked Asian masseuses give them a massage before their coffee. I would not feel pain if I rolled from bed into a hot pool then was greeted with a petite naked masseuse waiting  to walk on my back. Then I’d met with physiotherapist and chiropractor . Then maybe a swim.

I suspect my back wouldn’t ache in the morning if I was wakened to morning sex.  It’s a minor irritation that I focus on because of the lack of distraction. 

I’m weary with generating activity. I feel at times as a kid on summer vacation when I’d like to ask my mom what should I do today but she had chores as an answer.  I wanted fun.  I could go to the art exhibit but then I think of Madigan. He mostly wants to walk which I may feel like doing more after the morning shower. Cadillac problems.  

Right now I’ll lie back and read.  

Thank you Jesus for this brief reprieve.

Buying Madigan a new jacket at Mr, Pets because it got so cold last evening after early dinner on Commercial at Kitchen Whisky Cafe. We had to wait for a taxi. We rode  down to Metro Vespa to leave the Vespa for a part replacement and tune up. The service department is great there.

Then we walked up to Commercial and ate burgers outside at Kitchen Whiskey Cafe. Great food, great service, great people watching. . It got chilly sitting.  A jazz band began to play in the park across the way .  I was texting with Laura about Evie being sick and on antibiotics.  Madigan was beside me enjoying his ‘extra patty’, He actually climbed into and sat in his morocyce box I’d been carrying by hand.  I was dressed for Halloween in leathers with red lipstick.  I saw a tiger and a princess and jester go by on Commercial. I got a thumbs up from those I passed.  I dress this way sometimes when it’s not Halloween. 

I’ve wondered recently at all the costumes I wear.  I’ m many characters or roles.  Even within each role there are variations, the sports jacket and jeans to three piece suit, the cammo jacket and pants to shorts ,the off shore sailing jackets and the shorts, the skirt and gown.  

Within all these I’m myself, talking to God, asking direction and protection. Show me the way Lord.

Dreams in a Pandemic

Covid 19 continues like fires that raged last summer.  Each day there is new news.  Finally borders closing.  Corrupt politicians insider dealing with the information. Lies coming out of Communist China. Fakes news and rotating narratives.  Each day we feel better.  Only a few weeks of this high alert. The wave will hit us and pass in one to two months. Reminds me sailing solo in the middle of the Pacific waiting for the hurricane to hit.

I was booked for the Transgender medical conference.  It was cancelled.  I was booked for Esprit, the annual May transgender conference. I’d  hoped to be going. Lighter hearted. Less afraid. I’d bought a baby blue spring jacket for the occasion.  I wonder when and where I’ll wear it. These times are more pyjamas at home or cammo in the streets days. Not a time for high heels. Big girl panty times. Where’s the fun in that.   

There’s that fear that something will burst. But there have been no riots.  Order prevails.  Our local government with Mr. Horgan and Mr. Dix are doing admirably.  Nationally the government has been as silly and out of step as funny walks of Monty Python but provincially we’ve been saved by reason and maturity. Even the Vancouver City mayor is hearing the concern of the majority of citizens and reassuring us that there will be order.  Our Vancouver Police are the best.

The tension is palpable. The city is a ghost town. All the seasons tickets to theatres and concerts have been cancelled till June. I have front row seats to the Guess Who in July. I’m so glad. I watched and listened yesterday to Burton Cummings doing a real time on line concert from his home.  “I will sing a rhapsody”, he sang. .  How beautiful and uplifting.

I went by the meat store and bought a week or so of protein provisions for my adopted family.  The man is so hard working.  Each day despite the times he goes out to work construction necessary for the city.  So many workers like him now being recognized as the unsung hero’s.  We must have roads. His beautiful wife is home with the children and the new baby. I loved seeing Gilbert’s little friends. It was sad that they couldn’t play. The little girl wanted to hug him and me but we kept our distance.  I drove away thinking that in these tough times one family will have a feast.  So much extra home costs and runs on stores a concern.  I had my own steaks too.  Barbecues will work even after infrastructure lapses. My freezer is on electricity and propane.

Gilbert and I had the best charbroil steak with potatoes and butter and sour cream. I drank tonic with quinine.

More texting.  Calls to patients.  Refilling prescriptions. I’d done the methadone clinic already that morning keeping the essentially medications to my patients most at risk. Helping pharmacist serve this most debilitated population. 

I’d been to the ophthalmologist and obtained my new RX. I was down to my last pair of glasses. Now thanks the One Time Optical folk I’ll have a couple of new pair next week.  Less squinting. I’m thinking of things like this. If the city closes down or disease quarantines us or there’s shortages for months, what essentials do I need.  Glasses.  I was glad to get my laptop to my friends. I’ve a new one and didn’t need the old one. I have a back up ipad and they had one everyone used. Now they are more secure with more entertainment choices for the children.

Having sailed solo on oceans I’m used to survivalist thinking. I have a hand held Hamm radio in storage. A trip to the locker might be an idea.  I’ve hand held radios.  I tell families that you don’t want members going off without a cell phone or a radio.  We need to keep in touch. Survivalist thinking. The real thing, not the often silly tv drama. 

I keep my gas tank in the car filled.  I have the motorcycle. I’m going to check out the bicycle soon.  Grease it up.  It’s good to think ahead. Get essential repairs done while shops are still open. Certainly the local businesses can use the work and all one has to do is maintain social distancing but only for essentials. I told my friend to phone a garage and drop off the car leaving the keys and walk home paying by credit card and picking it up later.

It’s a slower paced world.  I am walking more and its healthier. I may return to a svelte shape rather than the pear I’ve become.

Last night I dreamed wonderful dreams. They were my recurrent place.  I’ve these places that I go to in my dream world .I believe they exist in the afterlife and the parallel world.  This one is the peninsula where my sailboat is. I’m sailing and at a marina. In this dream I’m actually flying in a balloon looking down at the expanses of ocean where great wooly sheep are running in the hundreds on the water or perhaps in shallows. The feelings I’m having are like the ecstasy I felt trade wind sailing all alone in the middle of the South Pacific. Back at the marina the men all have rifles and scopes and groups are going out hunting moose.  There’s so many moose in the hills. I walk by a female and talk to a fellow who respects my age and maturity and says, “It will be my first moose I’ve shot.. Nothing new for you in this.”  I smile.  A bit like my father smiled at me. The young man learning and the old man teaching.  Sharing knowledge.  The great gifts.  Wisdom not things.  I’m comforted in the dream by the families and mutual care. I’m with a woman I think I know , but she comes and goes in my dreams, probably afraid to stay.  I’m a fairly dangerous dude in all ways. I think I’ll shoot a moose in the afternoon. I hear one in my mind talking to me.  He’s told me where he is.  I don’t have to go yet. The young man hopefully will find him but I’ve oiled my gun and put it in the quad by my sailboat. The snow capped mountains are beautiful in the morning sun .

Last week I was given cherry cake in my dream and it tasted like ambrosia in my dream. I can’t remember tasting in my dreams but this was exquisite. I imagine older with death staring at us all , war and rumors of war, the haunting streets, the anxiety and all the heightened awareness which comes with anxiety, I’m escaping in my dreams. I don’t fear death and am wondering if I’m preparing to come back as a woman in a next life. Maybe this is just self soothing. As a man I’ve always been provider protector always caring for everyone. We only played dress up in good times or safe in side. Outside among strangers it was always suited up, even armed. The men’s suit jacket based on the 19th Century British military jacket. Now old I prefer to live in pyjama bottoms. Not the satin of Hefner, more the red tartan flannel of the scot.

I believe early Christians believed in reincarnation. I’m living in a multi verse now.  My mind is not reality.  Reality is this present. The dreams may just be escapism. I’m so exhausted after the days of tension that I love my bed and falling asleep.

Today I’ve woken without cough or sore throat or fever or tight lungs. I love that I don’t have to be with the sick and can go about my day like I normally do on the weekend, avoiding people. During the week I’m too much with people so this is not new.

More cures announced. The science is amazing. The speed of research light years ahead of my youth experiences of previous epidemics. . Advances in technology. So much fun watching Moore’s law real time.  

Good leadership from Mr. Trump. Singapore and Taiwan so brilliant.  I love their hand held temperature scanner. A patient told me they have them in construction work.  Dr. Bonnie  Henry doing really well.  Great BC CDC site.  I think there’s more that Mr. Trump and the western world know about this Communist China created virus.  There’s war within war.  I wouldn’t put it past the communists to try to collapse the economy to get “One World Order’ with the greedy power hungry UN dictators in control.  

I joked yesterday when I heard that China might have the first vaccine.

  “Sorry,” I said.  “They probably made this virus. I woudn trust a vaccine they made. I’ll wait for one MADE IN AMERICA”.  

The truth be told I’d love the one being made in Saskatchewan.  But the Israelis and Aussie New Zealanders have them. In the meantime the treatments just keep rolling out of the research labs. Anti virals and hydroxy chloroquine. 

Maverick Truck Camper Chronicles Day 3

I woke from a good dream.  I’ve had more of these of late. The last year has been especially grand for sleep.  The lingering sense is that these dreams are of a future place, as best I can tell, my afterlife.  It may just be a future in this life but I seem younger more vital. It’s as if I’m in my 20’s and 30’s again, the decade and more I was a student apprentice.  It was good to be at the university.  I look back at that time of immense learning with great fondness. The lovers and friends are part of that university era.  I’m really so grateful for those years no matter how hard they seemed then.  I acquired such learning in medicine, so many skills, all of which enriched and sustained my latter years.

Now in my dream I was again in a great place of learning. It was Graecian like. Marble columns outside. Beautiful view of the sea in the distance.  On a great hill, perhaps like the Acropolis. Different but with that feel.  There were different rooms in the building I was in each the size of a grand study hall with hundreds of us gathered in white and black attire. Seating was like a restaurant with all of us ushered in.  I saw friends who were so glad to see me. I felt like I do at IDAA.  Surprised that they are happy as I am and I am happy at their happiness and greeting.  Recognition and remembrance.  Nothing negative sullies the experience. Like actors in the green room, we greet each other with animated smiles.  

Each dream is different. There are family and friends in some.  Beautiful young people in others.  The best have my dogs visiting. Last week my deceased friend George was there, leaning against a wall and saluting me with a touch of his hat and that whimsical story telling smile.

Today Tom was seated behind me and Elizabeth was seated near me. I remember Julie catching my eye as well. She looked every bit the ballerina. And Elizabeth was delighted with the words, some ancient, some Latin. We had a tablet each and they scrolled before us as we sang together.  Julie caught me mouthing the words trying to appear like I knew this ancient hymn that had some almost Druidic bits, a song of praise and thanksgiving but with nature interwoven in the meaning.  Thomas Merton had written it but the name he’d used was Boucher. At least that’s what I thought. It was all dream like. 

I love these meetings in the sky.  The whole of this gathering could be on clouds.  I’m childlike with happiness.  Lightness of being. I’m so glad to be apart of.

When the song was over we were streaming out of the building into the sunlight with bright blue sky overhead.

In other dreams in this place I’m sailing.  Sometimes I’m playing ball.  The ones I love I’m in a room of older women and I’m a child again hardly as high as the table, utterly safe, wandering about in curiosity as they chatter above me around the individual tables in this great space.

I feel so connected and wake happy.  At peace.  Reassured.  This too will pass. That future awaits.  I can carry on.

Today I’ve woken to a marvellous site, situated beside this fast flowing river, the sound delightful.  Gilbert woke me at 3 am wanting to come up on the bed. It’s a truck camper and he can’t get up but stands on the couch with his head at the foot of the bed, harrumphing. Not loudly but just enough to waken me. I got up and bumble about for a light. Then found my flip flops and his leash and lifted him down the back . The stairs are difficult enough for humans.  It was clear he’d only wanted up on the bed, to lie beside his love , Laura, having been lonely in the night but this getting a walk was beyond his wildest dreams. I needed to pee and enjoy marking my camp.

I’ve been wandering around at night without even a knife.  A blind cockapoo is not much protection.  Yet I feel safe. Tenting I have a shot gun loaded by the bed but in this truck camper I feel like I’m in a house and haven’t even taken the rifle I have along out of it’s locked case. I did noticed I had only a heavy flashlight, not even a knife last night.  The night was tranquil, gnarly Douglas firs.  I relieved myself beside one.  A full moon peaking in and out of clouds passing by.  In the darkness Gilbert’s blindness less a handicap.  The quiet was special. I was only in a tshirt and it was warm. Alone without other campers around I might have stripped and danced naked in the clearing.  Moon dance.

Tonight I just lifted Gilbert back into the van.  I took off the light red light I’d clipped to his collar and the leash.  He wanted to climb up on the bed but I lifted him down into his little bed and he seemed to accept that, thankful for the entertainment.  This camper is all new to him.  Laura was back to sleep as I crawled back into bed to dream pleasant dreams, enjoying so much my new mattress.  The sheets and new duvet we got yesterday at Fields made for really comfortable and warm sleep after the previous nights chill.

I’m thankful for the new Lordco deep cycle battery I bought and installed .  Despite the refrigerator running on it all night and the water pumps and lights   , this morning there’s good charge left and the lights are bright. I’m glad for the generator and later when others are awake and about I’ll recharge the system.  I’ve not been able to get the refrigerator running off the propane because there’s epithet a shut off valve I”ve not found or more likely air in the lines from not having been used in so long.  All the other systems are functional.  At Home Hardware I was helped by the gentleman salesman who came out and looked at the strut telling me there was a special tool that came with campers to manually raise and lower them.  I found it in the cupboard and sure enough I was able to free the stuck strut on my own. What a relief.  We’d bought the mugs and pot and extension cord I”d needed there. I love they are so friendly with dogs. Gilbert loves the lady who gives him a treat each time he come.  Laura remembered the pot holders.  

After we’d sat outside at Thomasina’s and had turkey pot pie a lattes .  We checked the internet and I uploaded yesterdays musings.  I’ve not got the pictures incorporated. I’m using the Apple I pad to write but haven’t figured how to reduce the pictures to add to the blog.  To date I’ve been adding them to the editing on line whereas there is a way I can add them off line but the size is too large when they’re uplifted. These computer problems seem micro problems to the macro problems of moving this little house through space.  I’m so happy to be here by the river. I’d thought of this place.  I’d love to go to Chain lake again with the boat to go fishing. I’ve got the rod and some tackle from the Princeton Outdoor store.  I’ve been visiting the couple that run that store for decades. I remember buying the layered cameo parka and pants from there and later the binoculars plus ammo and tackle.  I like seeing the familiar faces wondering how long we’ll still be greeting each other , now I’m of an age when so many are retiring. 

I remember Dad saying in his 90’s that all his friends, everyone but my brother and I that he’d known in his life had died. He’d made good friends from the services in the home but he grieved the passing of all those others , especially, mom. I remember looking through the old black and white albums with my now passed brother and the two of us not recognizing these friends of my mothers and fathers from before us. We were in later pictures as babies and toddlers but they were a couple that had obviously been friends for a decade or more in Toronto and been left behind when our family moved west.

I’ve been so blessed with friends. The best are those that make me a better person than I am.  

I’m reading another Rimmer book of Rhodesia and South Africa. It’s such a moving history.  The scourge of socialism and communism. The destruction of society and civilization. The families that carried on.  The aspirations of the people and the trials. I love the writing and am sad to read of all the loss but the love affairs, marriages and children persist inspire of all the changes in the world over the decades of the novels.  Rimmer is such a fine author.  

Laura and I talked of travel.  She’d been out for dinner with some older doctors, a couple who’d been avid world travellers and now think twice of venturing forth. It’s the breakdown of law and order. When young I probably should have feared more murder, theft and rape but now I do fear fights and kidnaping and theft.  I’ve a hankering to see Egypt and Ethiopia.  I want to follow up on the Coptic Christians.  I imagine writing about the diaspora and spread of Christianity with the variations by region.  I’ll be at the conference in India this coming spring and have a chance to follow up on St. Thomas.  I’ll be happy too to see the Sikh and HIndu temples again.  I like to pilgrimage to holy place and love to see my friends on Facebook following in the footsteps of the pilgrims of Europe. I’d love to travel there as well.  Work still seems worth it, the sharing of knowledge, the solving of puzzles the usefulness and comraderie. I like my men’s meeting.  I’m content here and imagine more expeditions to the local wilderness with truck and camper. Gilbert likes this the best so happy to be a part of road trips. He’s not up for flying and I have all the equipment.

Last night we boiled Yukon yellow potatoes and had them with salt and pepper and butter. So delicious with the great steaks I barbecued on the picnic table.  Gilbert loved the tid bits and it really was a glorious repast.  I imagine it’s time for another coffee. I sat and meditated for a bit and prayed.  It’s warmer today and there’s some blue sky.  The campers ahead of us have mountain bikes and a large tent. Two girls and two or three guys. Younger , in their thirties. Behind us are a couple of older couples our age in a large RV with lighted orbs around their area, a demarcation of territory. They built a great fire and sat about it last night.  I’ve brought the wood from Chain Lake and we’ll have another fire.

I’ve not dared to take the camper off the truck fearing I’d not be able to get it back on . I figure I’ll unload it at the storage lot where the owner would be able to help me if I got into trouble. It’s lining up the truck to reload that has me a little concerned .  More steep learning curves.  I imagine I’ll need to get one of those folding trailers to haul the quad on for hunting season. They weren’t too expensive but I don’t know how I’ll have room for that. I keep considering a rack on the front of the truck for a motorcycle.  But if I shot a moose how would I get it home.  With Bill Mewhort we pulled a trailer and brought the moose home in that.  

It’s Sunday.  I would like to be thinking of God and singing holy holy holy in my mind but this is what goes on instead. I do chant. I do say the lord’s prayer many times a day, the serenity prayer, and ‘all shall be well’.  I’m stressed at work but here the stress is dropping off, especially with the sound of the stream and the quiet of the sparse forest.  I’m relaxed again.  Slowing down.  So much terror and hostility at work, so much bullying and threat and politicking petty marionettes abusing authority and power.  So many liars and sociopaths.  Here I’m alone with Laura and Gilbert.  And God. Thank you Jesus. Thank you God of Gods.  Hallelujah. Words of joy and praise.  I would sail between molecules fly through the fabric of this energy matrix, a grand garden you have created for man. Thank you for the colours. Thank you for the scents.  Thank you for the wind and breezes.  I imagine I’ll bicycle and fish today but for now I’ll have another coffee and read more of Zimbabwe.  There are lions and rhinos in that tail which is exotic to me but here there are great bear. Thankfully no snakes and scorpions but enough mosquitos for sure.  It is temperate here now but the real test of this land is the winter and the snow.  So little can live.  In Africa they have heat and constant warmth with deadly life that has had millenial to develop defences.  I enjoy the relative safety here. I know these wilds. I’m even feeling safe enough to walk about at night without a knife. That’s been a while.  As a boy we ranged through these woods but even then I had a pocket knife.  Man is the most dangerous of beasts.  But I’m growing older and feel less capable of punching bear in the nose. 

It is dry here.  The grass brown and green.  Above us there is a camp with a half dozen motorcyclists.  That’s the modern horsemen. It’s definitely horse country here.  I miss my motorcycle.  I’ve ridden this area before having my honda 230 here one year.  Time for another coffee . This really is a decadent luxurious way to camp. This may as well be a little cabin I move about.  It’s so pleasant and self contained.  Another coffee it is.  35 gallons of water and room for 9 gallons of waste.  I filed up the water yesterday when I filled up with gas and we dumped the little bit of shower grey water. The black water will likely limit the time we can spend here except we do have outhouses. I used that this morning.  Rationing and managing the available containers and fuels.  

Another coffee will be good. Laura is asleep with Gilbert curled up beside her.  God life is beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Sunday, May Long Weekend, Cabin Life, Princeton BC

Gilbert fell off the bed at three in the morning.  The crash had both Laura and I up worried the blind little guy might be hurt. I sleep with a flashlight, iPhone and large Bowie knife by the bed.  In defence the heavy flashlight might be best.  In the light Gilbert was standing there with his stick.  His stick had fallen off the bed and he had followed it over.  I looked at my watch then and saw that Naomi had had ber baby Faith and Derek had texted us before midnight. We’d gone to sleep at ten.  Fat fingers fumbling with the little screen I pressed the stock message, ‘in a meeting, will get back to you’ and thanks.  I found iPhone then and texted congratulations and hallelujah.  ‘In a meeting’ so inappropriate for such a sacred herald.  The stock phrases on iwatches need to be upgraded.

In bed Gilbert pushed Laura over and Laura pushed me over and I clung to the edge of the bed all night.  For a little guy he hogs a lot of the bed.

It’s sunny today.  Blue sky. Fresh air. Riverside cabins.  A pleasant retreat.  I’ve made espresso coffee and had my second cup. I’m not satisfied till I’m trembling.  The day is a blank screen to write a tale on.  I’ve suggested omelettes again at Thomasina.  Laura’s in the shower now.  Gilbert’s asleep in his bed. I’ve gone out in the court yard and with the wifi there downloaded mail and facebook.   Rodeo pictures of Anna and the god kids.  Faith, the new baby, looks most healthy and very pretty indeed.  The Royal wedding is still in the news.  Rev Peter Elliott vacationing in  Europe was pleased with the American sermon at the English wedding.  A letter with pictures of the half naked stars of Cannes came today from a friend, all looking more like harlots and  pole dancers than professional actresses. The post had  the title, ‘they complain they’re sexually harrassed’.  The news says that the name Melania rises daily in popularity as a baby name.  She speaks so many languages and is more educated and refined that the carne talk show hosts whose jokes are now 2 years old.  The American embassy in Jerusalem is a big deal. The peace talks between North and South Korea are incredible as well.  

I’m doing nothing but reading historical fiction novels in the sun.  I finished the Brignanshaw Chronicles by the Incredible writer Peter Rimmer, a new Wilber Smith. I’ve read three of the series and now must wait for the 4th to come out.  Great history of family and Rhodesia.  Now I’m reading about the 14th century John Ball peasant revolt over the outrageous taxation of the people.  Apropos with PM Justin Trudeau impoverishing Canadians to pay off terrorists, Pakistan while spreading abortion and communism.  The price of gas is obscene today.  

I am thankful though that I got a cabin rather than tented. The rain last night and wet ground would have dampened tenting. I’ve done it so many times and lived under tarps and slept on the ground but Laura who has been a trooper through so many of those adventure deserves this space she enjoys with kitchenette and hot and cold water showers.  

She’s content to read and lie about. I feel ‘restless’.   Not so ‘irritible’ and less’ discontent’ but I do feel I ‘ought’ to be doing ‘something’.  I expect I’ll get in the truck later and drive about the backwoods shoot targets and watch for a bear wanting MAID.  I’d just as soon shoot a rabbit.  I’ve become more sentimental than I was younger.  And lazy.  But it’s always godly in the hunt. There was a veritable otherworldly halo about the deer I shot last year. I almost heard the angels singing ‘this is a gift for you’. Shooting is natural for food.  It’s more intuition than reason and not at all emotional except for the hungry.

I dreamed I was on a new ship. I’ve a penisula where I go and there are friends and family from throughout my life that are there. Sometimes a meeting o the old women and I’m a little tike, more often I’m a young man with other young men and women in some warm climate with my sailboat and I’m in harbour.  This time I had a magnificent sailboat not 40 feet but more like 100 or 200  feet or more. The state room could seat 20 around tables bolted to the floor, lovely china tea cups. . I was also in a room with all kinds of books but mostly children’s books and sitting on the floor I was excited at the thought of having time to read these once a gain. The deck and cockpit were magnificent with excellent rigging and a well cared for engine. A couple of friends were helping with odd jobs.  One room looked like my storage locker and I was having help sorting it out.  

I’d dreamed of my mother. She was beautiful as only a small boy could know. Her red hair and freckles lovely in the sunshine.  I am happy when I dream of visits from the family. Sometimes the dogs who have gone before are frolicking too.  There have been so many deaths of loved one these last years. I am thankful that I just see this as another room.  Many mansions.  Quantum reality. A kind of heaven.  In my case I’ll have a boat and meetings rooms prepared for me.  

Waking is kind. This weather is sublime.  So much green and the relative quiet of country. Small town reality.  I talked with a neighbour who rode in on a n 850 cc Yamaha motorcycle. Old men pleasantry..  Another man with two boys and I talked about dogs and sons.  These traveller conversations a day brings.  Casual communication.  Waiting for Godot.  Walden Pond simplicity.  Outside the screen door there’s a tall lilac bush. We’ve been enjoying the scents.  At night we burn the sage soy candle and it fills the room with sweet fragrance.  

Laura is out of the shower. My turn.  I bought another knife yesterday. Locally made from found factory steel and antler by a local old man. I felt good about supporting the local economy, useful artistry.  Over the years I’ve given away knives and Bibles among other things.  I once gave a way the finest pens.  Gifting lets me replenish myself and gives me comfort.  Now to the shower.  Then the omelette and then I don’t know what I’ll do.  I’m not making it to church. I’m a good winter Christian but in summer I’m more Constantinian especially when the sun is out.

3 AM Lougheed Highway

For several weeks now I’ve been waking periodically at 3 am.  I remember Paul Simon and Garfunkel’s album 3 am Bleecker Street. I think that’s what it was.  3 AM comes to mind. It’s since I returned from New York City.  I put it down to the jet lag at first. Then it was just the stress of closing an office and trying to find places to put the bodies.  Where can I see people and how can I schedule them.  It’s been stressful.  All the while January and February as the most difficult months for psychiatric patients.  I’m in the midst of the fentanyl overdose crisis as well.  The deaths disturb me.  It’s not the same as the suicides. I felt those more deeply in my early years of practice when I didn’t understand the nature of anger.  I saw so much depression back then as simple sadness.  Now I know it’s true nature much better.  I’m less likely to see people die as I attend to the anger and hence the fear.
We are afraid.  Many do a lot to block this out.  The rage about the “change" in politics is so ironic.  The very people who cried out for ‘change’ , now facing it are desperate and alone. Minority in despair.  I am at least hopeful. I’ve been worn down by the weight of taxes and the burden of doing the work of a half dozen men and women while watching so many grow rich off my labour.  Yet I’m not ‘suffering’ in the area of ‘things’.  I don’t have a house, not any more.  Women in my life took those things leaving me with what I wanted, the vehicles.  I have to admit I love vehicles far more than I like the boxes that people live in. It’s childish in a way. The whole system is geared to the ‘little tricky tacky boxes’.  Yet I’m living in yachts or on wheels unable to commit to the insanity of the city.  I’ve committed so much, my time, my life.  I’m now even deeper into the denseness of humanity.  Once working mostly alone I’m now in the depth of clinics with lots of people and bodies about.  It’s so much like my first general practice. This business and hustle.It’s invigorating.  I’m leaving a monastic zone in a way. There’s less couch and more stainless steel and sterile environments.  I’ve examining tables and the accoutrements of medical equipment all around me.  I ‘m tempted to do surgery again. I miss cutting out lumps and bumps.  I really enjoyed the office procedures.  I like the ER and the scope procedures. The cutdowns and the lumbar punctures. I’ve come full circle.  I’m back in the setting I began.
I’m still asking questions. Still recording.  Still offering answers.  I’m ordering tests.  MRI’s and EEG’s and blood work. Tomorrow I get to see the results of an ultrasound I ordered. I’m interested in that. I’m writing letters advocating for my patients despite the outrage of the judge and the bureaucrats who couldn’t accept that I’d taken an oath as a doctor to be an advocate for my patients.  The Judge and the Bureaucrats were so far removed from the human reality that they’d left their own oaths far behind. It didn’t matter that years later I was vindicated. I paid a horrible price for allegiance to the sick and dying.  The robust are such bullies.  I am afraid.
For a year a man who threatened outright to kill me and kill my dog roams free and continues to threaten me.  It’s a wake up call to the death of the country. The systems failure blazes bright in the death threats of a lone stranger.  Nothing is more poignant to me than the system is in crisis and people en mass are more and more afraid. I don’t blame them. So am I.  I look over my shoulder and sometimes carry a knife. I need the pliars for my various vehicles but the knife is there and it sometimes comforts me.  So much of my tax dollars goes to protection and I’ve known so little protections. I have been robbed repeatedly , white collar crimes and blue collar crimes and here my life continues to be threatened.
No wonder my patients are insane.  I like the the expression that the inmates are running the asylum. That’s certainly my take on the world today.  The judge was peculiar and there was no real system to address his peculiarity.  The impairment of individuals is tested in the world of medicine and flight and yet so many areas that should be considered ‘safety sensitive’ are left to the jungle.  The expressions of anyone are like the tip of an iceberg. So much rumbles underneath. I listen all day to the inner worlds and am truly amazed that the world unfolds as it should. That judge might simply have had a brain tumour or liver disease more likely and yet there he was red face and in rage shouting in the court at me who to my mind was simply doing my job. And no doubt he was doing his as he saw it too.  But arrogance and fear exploded.
I don’t know what to make of so much of my life as I look back. It’s so often been about bullies and then I have to in humility wonder why I didn’t walk around the shit in the street.  I keep coming back to that.  Now that I learn weekly if not daily of those my age with disease or dying. There’s little time left and I’ve never figured it out and it really doesn’t seem much different than when I came on board. More confusing really.  More troubling.
I’m waking in the middle of the night.  I’m immersed in long days and it hearkens back to internships and other times in my life when I worked 12 hour days and was up in the night.  I have gone so many nights without sleep, Delivering babies. Midnight calls of suicidal.  I answer calls most days now. I like that so very late in the game I’m being paid for things I did for free for 30 years.  It’s about the money for so many and yet it wasn’t for me and now it is.  There’s so little time it seems.
And I bought the truck. I accepted the debt.  I felt I needed to drop an anchor. The temptation to run away to sea was getting ahold of me.  My dog is sick, an eye gone blind and he does like trucks.  Mine had been so unreliable at times.  It wasn’t the trucks fault. It just was old and this year the diesel mechanics didn’t find the problem I took it in for until they’d had the truck three times and I’d lost days in caring for it. I love my Miata on warranty with the Mazda shop maintaining it with amazing professionalism. It’s the same with the Harley dealers, Trev Dealy. Now I’ll have a truck that’s on warranty and the manufacturer will ensure that it’s running for me and I can trust them as I’ve done in the past and did with this truck till the warranty ran out last year.  It was just the trouble light in the end.  Nothing wrong with the machine but this light would come on and I’d respond.
I’m like that with beepers and alarms. Too many nights of being awakened by alarms and minutes later being at the side of some one injecting drugs or bagging them. It’s 20 years since I did that. At least 5 years since I was at a near death event.  If I wasn’t a psychiatrist I’d call this ptsd.  I’m thankful the nightmares are silent now.  I don’t know what wakes me.  I go to sleep at 10 or 11 and get several hours of restful sleep and then I’m asleep again for a few hours. I’m tired in the day though.  It’s wearing.
Psychiatry is being in the room with despair and grief scratching finger nails on a chalk board.
It’s no wonder people are like this.  Look at that Judge.  The power he had and how much he abused it.  Look at the beurocrats I’ve known and how much they’ve abused their power. And I’m no better. If I point a finger I must see that three are pointing back. I couldn’t have made that judge’s job easy, interfering as I did in his killing of my patient.  Dragging the process out.  In his mind if I’d not have got involved they could have killed her earlier quicker.  Alternatively he probably thinks that my involvement killed her.  I doubt he thinks. He didn’t seem to have much capacity left but then I was blinded by my own partisan ship.
That’s what transference and countertransference are about.  I am always looking at my own face. What I see in the judge is what I reject in myself.  He represented the State, the Emperor, the Bastille, the God and I represented the patient who long ago had spent all her money and her family’s money fighting a Borg.  I often have thought of ‘identification with the aggressor’ when I’ve come up against these beurocrats and officials who Kafka wrote so well about in the Castle. They were equally well described in the Trial of Camus.  Maybe even 1984.  I think of suicide.
Then I remember Patton who upon hearing Hitler say that ‘our soldiers will die for the fatherland’, answered “that’s exactly what I want them to do.”  Now I could same the same for the judge and beurocrats but I don’t because spiritually I know I ‘attract them”.  I stand up and make myself a target. I wear bright clothes and I attract the blood sucking insects. I wave the red flag at the bull and call it out of the shadows. I'm a distraction. I show the sickness to the world and then the world chooses or chooses not to deal with it. I've learned more about corruption by the 'cover up' than any other means.
I buy a truck and the thieves will be watching me.  I see it as reliable and able to the do the job and a debt I must pay which will keep me working for a while longer when I really should be running off to sea. I could put the dog on the motorcycle and take to the open road.  Done. Not coming back. I'm out of here.  Take that Jack.  Hit the road Jack. Paul Simon's songs keep coming back.  I’d like  to join a circus if I didn’t think I was already in one.  The politics of the country astonishes me but so much is a consequence of seeing the world through the eyes of journalism and so many of them are seriously insane and drug addicted and serving what big money partisanship wants to hear.  It’s like knowing the workings of the internal combustion engine.  Once just driving the machine not knowing how motion was achieved.  Today I understand what is happening under the hood and yet it’s all still just energy and motion.
I am awake at 3 am . I was on Bleecker Street. Now I’m near Lougheed Highway.  I’ve eaten some left over pizza.I’ve gone to the bathroom a couple of times.  I’ve drunk some juice. I’m feeling tired again. I tried reading but the history I’m reading of the Sumer and Assyrian empires and now the Persian empire is just dull. It doesn’t put me to sleep. I’ve read a dozen books about that region this last year.  One was a history of Armenia. Another was a history of the Ottoman. I really do like Ataturk.  Another was a book on the Christian church before they were conquered and all the priests killed and a million or so murdered or forced to convert.  I read a history of Egypt too and one of Ethiopia. I’ve read so much about the region and  I've seen so many people who once lived there but now have come here.
City dwellers are at home no matter what city they are in, as if city’s are just different houses now. They talk of ‘culture’ but the culture to my mind is in the land. It’s in the mountains and streams and flora.  Cities are symmetrical.  They lack so much that I only find when I drive a truck out to the country and camp and hunt and fish.  It’s been too long since I was in the woods.  I understood this in New York City where so many never leave that space ship place but I’m a product of the wilderness. I’m too long without being in the outdoors.
I’ve walked this week by the river in the park where men live rough in the woods. These wilderness places in the city. They’re sordid compared to the wonders of the truly wild Canada. We’re planning on going out there again in a week or two. Maybe this weekend.  I worked this last weekend and many weekends before , not all the weekend but enough , paper work and forms and reports.  And people just say ‘it’s just a little bit of writing' and object when I say they have to pay since they see that I ‘m 'free' , a government service that the government no longer pays as it pays itself.  I languish whenever I wait in government offices where the pace is that of a snail. I miss the courts where there’s that pre scientific revolution sense, pre industrial age, the age of old men in wigs and cigars.  But today its’ the smell of pot.  these places are all the traffic jams in the modern world. Passive aggressive and covert aggressive bastions of pout power.
I am ‘law and order’. I was so thankful that in dealing with judges I knew, dozens that were outstanding and only two, the lecherous divorce judge who couldn’t keep his eyes off my ex’s crotch and breasts and lied through his teeth as I was told so well he would; and this other fellow.
And my addicted mind doesn’t focus on that other brilliant man whose mind was truly a wonder. That was a judge to behold.  Here in Vancouver. He’d been head of the Law Society I was told. What a truly brilliant fellow. There was so much material to understand and he summed it up with an erudition of genius. Then he gave a judgement that would have impressed Solomon. I liked the lady judge who tried another case I was involved in. Her questions were so insightful.  I really truly admired her.  I loved the Mark Twain like humorous brilliant American judge I lunched with often best. My father's friend was a judge.  Then there was that drunken judge who lived down the street.
Yet my mind doesn’t focus on these or the dozens more incredible judges I’ve known who I most admired. Tonight it’s a resentment. I’m thinking of this man, this one judge,  who I was told later whether it was true or not, was a notorious drunk ,which certainly would explain his ignorance and buffoonery.  He hated my patient for her long term sobriety and had utter distaste for me while all I was trying to do was educate him about the gross deceit and utter devilry of the psychologist whose report killed my patient more than anything else.  But then her lover did too but that’s too simple.
The suicides wake me in the night. I used to see their faces like stacks of cards angry and haunting. All were calling to me and demanding why I didn’t save themselves from themselves. I awoke hundreds of times to their accusations. I’ve never done enough.  I’ve failed them.  I’ve failed life not being able to sell life to the dying. It’s not like I’ve had any help from this government.  Since PM Trudeau has come to power it’s been all about the killing of the spirit and the bodies. Physician assisted sucide and pot and sharia communism.  “Don’t get me going” he said when he did that show. photo op number about quantum computers showing he didn’t know Shroedinger’s cat from a neutrino. What an idiot! But then I’m tried to ignore the idea of my own description of genius.  I’ve denied the high IQ and the education and the different take. That’s been not about superiority but about difference.
I talked to another Mensa today and loved how he descried his disability and how our government and society have never understood our “difference’.  A low brow thug wouldn’t grasp the ‘difference’.  There’s such a trade in disability and hidden deficits.  I loved hearing Candice say how difficult it was to be beautiful.  The ugly are so full of envy and anger and fear.  I loved Leonard Cohen’s line “We are ugly but we have the music”.
The judge was a thug that day but for all I know his wife was dying or more likely cut him off sex long ago when she caught him with some barnyard animal.
Trudeau reminds me of the stupidity I had 25 years ago when my father tried to caution me about the bullying of the French Canadians and how they had always stolen from the west, Montreal is built on the imperialism of their relationship with the west. It's been going on since the fur trade days.
But then the cities today are just the same with the rural regions. Imperialists.  It’s a really silly lens , this ‘privilege’ and ‘racism’ lens, These paranoid ideologies of I and me.
My task is to know God.
I’m one in the father. I’m one in the spirit. I’m needing to get myself out of the self pity and out of the division within. I have to identify with Carl Jung’s collective unconscious. I have to pray that I am more able to help my patients. Some are battling with cancer and I wasn’t able to help my brother.  But that’s my selfishness. I just feel alone and afraid.  It’s like when we were told to climb under our desks and put our hands over our heads and I asked “but what about the radiation’.
The pretty teacher ran around like a top in a circle screaming and ran off to get the principle who came back and badgered me and my friend Kirk saying we weren’t supposed to talk about radiation and look how we’d upset the girls.  The men and boys  weren’t supposed to upset the girls. But the girls have the vote. Meanwhile the teacher was crying,   I was just thankful they didn’t give me the belt again.   The principle liked using the belt.
I remember the teacher throwing the wooden hammer at my head and hitting me so hard I fell down. The egg I had on my head lasted days. My mother complained to the principle and school board but they all said I deserved it because of the questions I asked .  The kindergarten teacher pulled down my pants in front of the class and hit my bare bottom with a ruler saying I was disruptive.  "all you boys are disruptive.  Billy you're just the worst today'.  And i took my turn being stripped and caned as a child as the girls giggled and giggled and another different boy got his bum bared another day.  They loved the spectacle and these women teachers loved to impose punishments but I can't tell which were worse.

It's sad that I remember the beatings and the canings and the belts and the hammers and all that negative stuff when there's so many days I just loved to learn and how I loved the library. I loved the library. I met Leonard Cohen and Souster and C S Lewsis and Ray Bradbury and Plato and Jesus and so many more incredible people in the library.  And the librarian was always nice and some of the finest people I knew in the world were teachers. Only one threw a wooden mallet at my head. Only another one caned my bare ass in class. All the rest were fine.  Really  But the principle liked the brutal ones best.  The principle was a devil.  I learned that when I was a professor and understood better how he did his work. The school was a major success thanks to him and he didn't sweat the small stuff. Not when he expelled me.  Overall I'm thankful for the teachers he brought in and the education I had. I was the fortunate one.

Did you know that Einstein asked that same question about vacuums, he said to me after the class had all laughed at my question before they knew I was the highest scorer in physics. I liked chemistry better. I could see the molecules in the air. Everything was the periodic table for me at one time. I would see the world as if through an electron microscope and it was so beautiful.
I miss the meditation. I miss the early morning hours with the symphony cello player, the lawyer and the businessman sitting silent as the sun came up, our minds focused on the breath and the awakening of a new day.
I miss so much in my life.  The love making as a young man with a young woman.  My first wife is still the beauty she was back then. My mom and dad and brother. The dogs.  The home in Fort Garry. I can be wistful and in tears with all the love I’ve known and how much I took for granted.
Today I have to force myself to see the glass half full. The doctor said I was going deaf and wants to take an MRI. They ‘re find there’s nothing there or their pictures will show a brain tumour that’s been a hidden secret. I wouldn’t want to lose it. They’ve taken so much of me. I'm probably just a cancer that's not been cured.
EE cummings talked about them too. And Thoreau.  He knew them.

It’s a problem of perception. This identification with the aggressor, the externalization of the fear.  God is love.  All is love.  All is peace.  “I am the bubble make me the sea.” Yogananda.
“Do not be afraid’ Jesus said, not as a suggestion but as a command.
When the man pulled the gun on me I made him put it away. How. I talked to him.  Another time I pulled a knife on the young man with a gun and chased him back to his friends with their motorcycle.  It was a very little knife.  I always carry a steel pen since the solder held me hostage and said he’d kill me.
the plane crash was something.

I’ve been blessed with experiences. I’ve had an adventure this life.
And my friends let me breakfast with their sons and daughter and my nephews actually wanted to play with me.  I always am amazed at my good fortune.
I am blessed beyond my wildest dreams. Not really. I wanted a spaceship. But this earth is just a really big space ship hurtling through space.
I ‘m enjoying the old star treks on netflix.  I watch them at night when I come home remembering how I watched them after school as a boy.
My mom made me a birthday party with a star trek theme.  There’s a picture somewhere.  My fondest memory.

I’m tired.
Sleepy.
Maybe I’ll get a few hours before the day and the time i suit up and jump into the ‘chute’ to slide into the day of people coming with requests and mysteries.  I have so much to learn, so very much to learn.  So very much to learn.  So very very much to learn.  Do not judge the stupid.  you are one.   The more I know the more I know how little I know.  I struggled today with an old antidepressant drug and it’s dangers. It was from when I began. A dangerous compound like cancer medication but this one had kept this person alive. “It saved my life.”  I had to agree. It was potent. Even now I’d hold it carefully. How easy it killed back then. I saw the challenge in it.  It was all we had.
We saw people suicidal and gave them medication that could kill them with just a handful of pills . It was years before the new medications came , the ones with a large margin of safety. You’d have to take a bushel to overdose and die not like the medications I trained on.  Loaded guns and we’d wait and wonder and it would be months before we’d know and all along the person would be threatening to kill themselves and I’d be in terror they would and struggling to find any reason for them to live.
Now I’m old and it’s not so important now.  I feel truly that my government wants to kill me. I really do.  For a year or so I’ve felt the globalist agenda is to kill millions according to UN Agenda 21 and that this PM is the one to be the executioner and he will kill the western canadians  before his beloved Montreal lot.  I’m tired now.
I can go back to sleep and be thankful .  Really gratitude is the key.

God is love.  Thank you Love.

I liked how the English waitresses said that to me, in cockney, after I paid for my bit of eggs and hash and left a wee tip.  Thank you Love.

Rainy Day Vancouver

There needs to be a new diagnosis for depression for Vancouver.  Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is related to the loss of sun with seasons.  I think there's a need for a DSMV "Rainy Day Blues" diagnosis.  The treatment would be staying in bed till the rains stop and the sun comes back.  On Facebook there was a post from Scotland with a picture of the 'one sunny day' of summer.  I'm feeling summer deprived here in July.

Also Gilbert's back is sore.  He was hurt again at the groomers and hasn't been able to jump since last Friday. All he does is lie about appearing to not want to move because of pain.  Having traumatic joint arthritis myself I'm "feeling the weather" in my bones today too.  I've gone to work. I brought a little bed for him to lie under the desk here so he'd be more comfortable.  I may take him back to the Vet's again.  He injured the disk last year jumping out of the truck and then doing more harm jumping down from the ATV.

Adapting to my poor little dog, so he won't jump up or down from waist height, I've traded the Yamaha Quad in for a Honda 500 Pioneer Side by Side.  That way Gilbert can step in and out just like in the car.  Of course as I'm hunting more with Tom and taking Laura along more the passenger seat is a must.  Also there's a roof and windshield and roll bars so it's an upgrade.  It was occasioned by Gilbert though.

Today he couldn't even climb into the low lying Miata. I've been picking him up and carrying him whereever there's stairs.  He sleep on the floor beside the bed rather than on the bed like he usually does now despite my making a ramp for him to get up.  Poor little guy.

My disappointment with the groomer is simply that, he was well before, and he was lame again after. So something happened. Possibly playing with another dog or resisting getting his ears trimmed. Whatever a part of me believes that something happened and that someone noticed but in our sick society no one notified me. It's possible they didn't know.  I don't even know if they were notified of his back being sensitive.  Still, because I don't know I can't use that groomer again.  The 'unknown' makes the place more dangerous.  Avoidance is a great coping mechanism.  I just can't risk another injury to Gilbert.  The weekend was spent caring for him and now there will likely be a vet bill possibly because someone was careless. I don't know.  I feel all those helpless and guilty feelings that parents feel all the time.

On a rainy day I find any excuse for 'self pity'.

"Self pity' is that go to place that the mind is seeking an excuse to find.  Daily I resist the alluring temptation of self pity by constantly reciting "All shall be well, All shall be well. All manner of things shall be well.'

I let a weasel of despair into my mind on the way to work.  I'd heard the Trump and Obama speech copy and thought how very sad that 'speech writer's' can make such an important error.  I can see how it happens. Nothing is new.  Everything has been said.  I found myself wanting to go to the tombs and find who had said Obama's lines which Trump had apparently copied.  The Stair Way to Heaven debate just finished. The whole "intellectual property' debate is a mine field.  Harlequin Romances are factory produced 'storys' endlessly repeating.   The University Professors are constantly facing 'plagiarism' these days, whole essays lifted from the internet.  The Media is the worst.  Repeatedly we've seen that whole stories are copied over and over again like human reports are Celtic Monks rewriting Reuters copy, the human photocopy machines.  Yet these narcissistic hypocrites go all politically correct "I'm offended" when a woman with English as a second language repeats three sentences which were not that original in the first place.  I recognise one 'phrase' and another 'sentence' and really would like to know where Obama plagiarized that from given the limits of originality.

It's a rainy day so the image of the petrie dish with the man's brain removed from his body and placed there by his arch enemy.  A good scientist and his wife are struggling in this horrifying future movie to wonder how they will reconnect this disconnect alive brain to some body or even a communication device. He continues in his dream chasing his love.

I'm that man on rainy days.  I'm in this life which the Biblical Ecclesiastes writer describes as "All is Vaniety."
___________

I just did some distracting work at the office.  The essence of depression is narcissism. In the care of others I am distracted from my own suffering.  Kiekegaard said 'Life is Suffering Unto Death".  And the more I focus on myself, the more mental masturbation I do, the more I let my ego be the determinant of reality, the more depressed I am.  In the act of caring for another I am "enlightened'. Little Prince is a book about a little boy on an Asteriod caring for a Rose .   It's in caring for the Rose that he loves.  Love is an action verb.  Little Prince is one of true classics of love. Unfortunately mutuality seems lost in this day.  (See the self pity meme slips in, unwanted.)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is all about 'replacing' or 'blocking' the negative 'memes'.  The word 'meme' is like 'gene' but refers to a make up of the mind rather than the body.

Each of us carries a collection of these 'Mutated Memes", memes that induce sickness rather than wellness.

"Things may be going well now but that's just life fattening me up for the witch to eat me."  ( forgetting the children 'escape' from the Gingerbread House and just focussing on the beginning of the story and all the variations of that."
"I loved her once and she was a bitch so all love is going to end badly"
"The rich and elite have success all sown up and I'm never going to get ahead."
"The only way to succeed is by crime so the best way is to lie, steal, cheat but don't get caught'.
"It doesn't matter.'
"All is Vanity'
"Might as well kill myself."
"No one cares".
"There is no God"
"Life is just meaningless"
"The one who wins is the one who dies with the most toys"
"Women only want you when you're rich."
"Men are always cheaters."
"Women are always cheaters"
"We are all oppressed".
"The Government is all lies and theft."
"You're no good."
"You're a loser".
"Alien lizards have taken over the planet"
"We're all just wage niggers."
"The Bankers have fixed the game"
"They're put poison in our food so we get cancer."
"They're trying to kill us off."

The list goes on.

I've been listening to psychotic thinking for 30 years or more.  I've heard every new insaniety meme as it appears, They're like flu viruses.  My favourite is that I'm in feed back meaningless dream loop with no escape.  Watching the science fiction movies and reading the horror stories helps one understand the mind of genius and insaneity.  I don't judge my patients when they jump off high rises in hope of flying.  Maybe when they splat they are flying in a parallel reality.

I'm stuck here in rainy Vancouver.

I could walk out.

I could walk away with my injured dog and just see how far I get. Maybe take the Harley.  The geographical solution to bad weather. Go south.  End up in Hollywood. Get a job as an aging busboy in some off beat diner and wait to be 'found'.  I love the optimism of the Jim Croce's working in a car wash song, "I should be smoking a big cigar".  Everyone wants the manger job. I want God's job.  I loved the various omnipotence stories, the best being Doystoyevski, Brother's Karamasov, or better perhaps is Job in the Bible.  We're always 'defining' deity.  Yet the fact is that there might just as well be an eternal arbitrariness. The creative claim they want originality but faced with the true unknown, even Moses, as good a follower as there is, shields his face.

To know the face of God, the see the face of God is to be lost.  We hold onto our separateness. The self is the little self and the Self is the greater Self.  But the ego is the part of me that sees myself as disconnected. I am an escapee from the group mind.  I fear being absorbed. But that is Nirvana and Samadhi of the Hindu/Buddhist meme.  "I am the bubble make me the sea."  Being more Christian I'm struggling with what Paul Simon of the Old Testament called the "mother and child reunion.'  Looking back over my shoulder I'm a baby banging on the woman's vagina begging to be sucked back into the womb. I think of Leonard Cohen with that image. But Prince Charles said it best when he said "I want to be your tampon".  Really, admit it, I want to be back in the womb.  The vagina is just the edge.  Imagine effortless sustenance, mother's feel good hormones channelling through you, dreaming.

Are any of born?

The "Born Again" movement, being born in spirit. The Spiritual rebirth, sadly so intellectural and emotional for many, when there is a dream of something transcendent.  Let me out of here!!!!
Beam me up Scotty!!!! Where's the fucking Rapture when I need it?

It's just a rainy day in Vancouver. I'm at the Downtown East Side clinic waiting for the next heroin or fentanyl addict to come in.  I prescribed methadone.  "It's too dangerous out there." He said. "I just want to get high. Take a vacation from my mind. I don't want to die. What's going on. Whose killing off their customers."

The police have traced the bad fentanyl to the Chinese. The Chinese military hacked into all of Canada's computers on a few occasions.  Justin Trudeau and his father Pierre Trudeau before him are in league with the Chinese. The United Nations Agenda 21 is a document for killing off the poor. Get rid of anyone but Liberals and Democrats and those who believe in One World Order.  Bring on the Totalitarian State. The great Corporate Consumer Paradise.  The Catholic Church tried this. The Roman Empire and all the African and Asian empires. Now there's Brexit.  Allah is all. Everyone must be Islam. Kill the jews, destroy Israel, the followers cry and another Jihadist attacks a soft target.  Trudeau, Obama and Merkel blame Christians and white people and trucks and guns.  Whose buying these puppets.  It's like the days before WWII when Goebels was writing script for the Nazis.  Marketting and advertising selling some crazy dreams. Eventually Freud said "Maybe the paranoids are right."

My back is sore. My dogs back is sore. We are Atlas.

There is Existential Angst.  The Scream on a wood block sums it up.  I just saw the movie  Cell. It's a variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I met a schizophrenic man who had Capgras Syndrome. He believed everyone he knew, his closest family had been taken over by aliens.  I met another man who had the opposite syndrome, he believed he'd been taken over by an alien while everyone else was well. Reminded me of Metamorphoses. Kafka.  I am a cockroach.

They say if there is a nuclear blast sufficent to wipe the earth clean, a cataclysmic WWIII then the cockroaches will still survice. Maybe our consciousness will switch to the insects and two cockroaches will be chatting each other up in a futuristic cockroach bar.  Einstein said that if we keep having World Wars we're eventually devolve to fighting with sticks. He was optimistic. I'm already considering fashion accessories for Cockroach Vogue and GQ.

It's just a rainy day in Vancouver.

The tough question was whether there were as many Jesus incarnations as there are liveable planets in the galaxy multiplied by multiple universes. I had my first encounter with my own insignificance when I got a child stethescope kit as a birthday present and looked in my first drop of pond water.  How can any one be arrogant and grandiose after the sudden realization of oneself as a drop of pond water in some bigger stethescope of some bigger kid.

I am insignificantly significant and significantly insignificant.  I coined t his meme or affirmation for my bipolar patients who struggled with 'right size'.

I just gravitate to self pity.

The more intelligent one is the greater the risk of depression.  That was the message in the most brilliant computer in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  :"I am so depressed".

Another rainy day in Vancouver.

This too shall pass.

Hope

I woke from nightmares.  It's a fairly common phenomena in my life times. My dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.  When I'm feeling threatened the old themes come back.
In this dream I was passing through a building in my childhood city.  Just wanting to get across this area of the city where there was no road and I had to pass through this building.  The city is a city that appears often in my dreams, on a hill surrounded by water, rivers and oceans or lakes. I've sailed round it, travelled through it. It's a kind of template for the numinous dreams. Jung described as numinous those dreams that had a deeper sense as if somehow connected to God. I often find them pointing to something.
In this dream I'm talking to a group of men. They're criminals and addicts. I'm just letting them know that I'm passing through.  I sense threat and say that the police are my protection and they laugh.  They have no fear of the police. I realize then that even mentioning the police to criminals is a sign of weakness to them.  That brings out the savage.  There's a security guard in the building and I turn to him. He works for the gang, obviously. But I keep holding onto childhood beliefs in symbols long invalidated.
Next I'm fighting with the security guard trying to escape the building with one of the first men following me.  I've a wallet full of money and a ring. I don't know what the ring is, perhaps from the Hobbit, or a depiction of lost marriage and the death of love, as a protected and respected 'institution'. The money is at question:
I find myself going through a quick checklist of what I could do which wouldn't show more weakness and invite more attack. This is while I'm circling these two the one having done all those jumping and kicking ninja things and i've fingered the knife I'm carrying in the back of my jeans.
It's the Crete knife of the man there.  I picked it up travelling, a bull's horn handle. The whole symbolism of dreams is that the isle of Crete men always carried a knife for self protection and protection of their family.  I was there to see the oldest western palace, the home of the Minoans.
I'm reading the story of William Wallace.  When the English illegally invaded Scotland by manipulating the law then breaking promise after promise, Wallace with the support of the supreme Scottish Bishop Wishart protected the people from the depradations of English soldiery.
The principle tactic of these villains was to bring a false witness against a scottish home owner, then imprison him to take his land and by the way raping his wife, sons and daughters.  William Wallace gathered these 'Greens' to Selkirk Forest and poured down vengeance on any English who 'bore false witness' to steal the land from the Scots.  It's one of those tales I was raised on and later saw Braveheart. This is Jack Whytes, historical fiction, Forest Laird.
In a fist a cuffs these young men are superior. Disarming the citizenry always disarms the old. I get injured more easily and the injuries take months or years to heal today if they do.  I have the same brute strength of youth and a determination that once raised won me free from gangs leaving bodies in my wake. But I was only in my teens and 20's then and learned not to fight but over the years I've had so many bullies and guns and knifes thrust at me and survived.  Only 2 years ago I escaped from a group of muggers elbowing one in the face after having my gold cross ripped from my throat.
So this dream is a replay of that. Only in this dream I have a knife.
When I was in Mexico a young man pulled a gun on me and demanded I give him my camera and money. I had a knife then so pulled that and lunged at him. I'd put a whistle I carry for such purposes in my mouth and was blowing that as I did. The young man ran and jumped on the back of the little Honda motorcycle they'd driven up on with me chasing the pair.
In this dream the two men are older and tougher.  I don't think a knife will dissuade them and if I pull a weapon I must always be willing to use it.  Which I am but those who aren't are the ones we hear of killed by their own 'bluff'.
In my dream I run through a half dozen scenarios of offering half the money only to have them attack me once I showed weakness so they could take it all, as it's always 2 or more against one, dealing with criminals, they're 'nests', and depend on numbers like wolves.
In another scenario I've pulled the knife and slit the throat of one so the other runs.  I once hit a kid in the head with a rock and the other bullies dispersed. I pulled a knife on a gang in a northern fight, one of the guys had a bicycle chain, and they backed off but I was with two friends similarly armed though outnumbered 3 to one.  I always laugh at the city boys and girls who haven't worked beyond the law.  My male friends usually have experienced bullies but some of the women have , their experiences more often one on one whereas ours are weapons and numbers.
The courts and lawyers are symbolic warfare. They're supposed to replace the battlefield because of the higher code of diplomacy and compromise.
But the English courts of Wallace were corrupted to the core. And St. Francis confirms the failure of the courts of the world to do anything more than serve the interest of the bullies.  Diplomacy and justice were satisfying because they were valued for their own right. They maintained peace because the rich would occasionally pay. There was the basic 'eye for an eye'.
I felt in court as so many of my peers feel these days.  I was called a liar and a cheat and the man who was a liar and cheat and a bully of the lowest order was preferred.  Of course the crown can declare black is white.
Edward the Plantagenet did just that with the Scots.  Might is right.
Ours is an age of lies, cover ups and confusion. I find it hard to be loyal to the crown when the crown so cavalierly supports the psychopaths and sociopaths.  Locally where I live the drug dealers are the richest and those in power are beholden to the dirty drug money.
I hear the Mafia may take out a hit on St. Francis.  The political story of Jesus is actively being removed from school curriculums because it is simply too revolutionary. Better to replace it with hindu or buddhist slavery.  The western liberal decries St. Paul's words about slaves being good to their masters but overlooks the centuries of untouchables and foundation of the 'religious caste' system, which maintains the status quo far better than even Constantines rewriting of Christianity for the sake of empire.  So the secular world prefers the slavery of African paganism or the slavery of the east to the Western world with it's rich and poor and the poor at least hopeful of achieving citizenry through American Idol or the Lottery.
And if I kill my attackers the court has a means to kill me.  Self defence was no defence in Scotland in the times of Edward.  Wallace's wife's family were killed but he was the villain for revenge.
The first rule of state according to Jared Diamond, anthropologist, in Traditional Society, is that the 'keeping of the peace' is the duty of the king.  Yet the King today is showing little capacity even to address the admitted law breaking dope smoking of his opposition.
If I can smoke dope I can defend myself and kill my attacker, says the vigillante.
And the citizenry turn to the police who are no longer tasked to protect them but rather have "task forces" or some such nonsense that leave the streets unsafe for common citizens.  As night falls in my neighbourhood I feel less safe walking the streets. I don't feel unsafe in any other sense than that I would be faced with the dilemma of my dreams.  I know women of character don't come into my neighbourhood at night.  I felt safer in the strange city of Singapore than I do in my home.
So where is their hope.  I would put my hope politically in Harper for his mandate is to help the elderly but then I'd see hope in Mulcair too whose mandate has long been support of the elderly.  I don't feel safe with Justin as he doesn't seem to know my dilemma and could never comprehend the tale of Wallace or Jean Val Jean.  I watched Chretien on the news last night and enjoyed seeing that old rogue I met so many years ago. I trusted him like one trusts General Patton.  When I met Harper I felt the same as I did when I met Pierre Elliot, in the company of senior statesmen, very smart men, and I believe Harper is wise.
But I'm backed to the wall in a dream trying to escape a building, just wanting passage, the very thing that the Romans maintained their empire with, the 'right of passage', the 'right of same passage', 'safe streets'.  I don't feel safe on the streets older.  In my dream I have to pass through a building controlled by thugs and have money and a knife.
My nephews are playing games.  I played Duke Nukem and Diablo and some other role playing games.  Life is cheap in these games but the young are faced with my dilemma day in day out a thousand times in games ,and the one who hesitates loses.
I'm reading Parker's latest book with Marshal Virgil and Deputy Hitch. It's the same issue of shoot first or be shot. The zombies are another metaphor.
I'm a healer.  All scottish warriors serve as healers first. The navy seals learn first aid to care for their fallen.
I've always put my faith in the RCMP and Vancouver Police. They live and work within such restrictions. In their game, they play hockey according to the rules whereas the criminals can bring AK47's onto the rink anytime they want but the RCMP and Vancouver police are expected to win the hockey game with only sticks and skates.
The rule of law is failing since 'truth' is like 'rule'. If you and I come to the game and you bring an AK47 and I bring a hockey stick then it's a whole different game.
St. Francis is hope.
For the old death is hope.
I know that my brother and sister care less for their lives than they do for their children. The baby boomers and the yuppies are of the age where their own lives count less than the future and their children.
There is hope in that.
I sat at a table in Vancouver where one of the rulers of the society, rich and powerful, complained of having to have his men shoot a union agitator.  I think of the mothers and fathers today who have sent their children to universities and now find that they could have saved themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars because the sons and daughters of the drug cartels of Canada didn't need an MBA since they could buy a lawyer and they had AK47's and knew how to use them.
I'll fee safer when women carry purse guns again.  I'm tired of protecting them disarmed. They're so unhappy. Yet every Hitler has an Eva Brawn.
There is hope in St. Francis. There is hope in court reform. There is hope in the fear of the guillotine.  In the end William Wallace died like Jesus.
Scotland is vying for independence today.  Krishna said to Arjuna that the war among family and friends will always go on and the only question is whether we join or not.
I've already been poor and naked and raped and I've always wanted to be a missionary so maybe the way out of the building is naked and walking, or dead , or simply with blood on my hands.  We all have blood on our hands in the west.
The Enders Game movie is out. My nephews have seen it. "not as good as the book'.  We all could use an alien war. Everything is civil war now the Space Station has given us Major Tom again.  That's why zombies and the fight with nature and science and biology have more mean.  I like that Gates is facing up to disease. It's the most manly of fights.  Wrestling with the devil or wrestling with God. In the background Cain kills Abel.

Loss at Christmas

It's coming up Christmas.
I was woken from sleep at 3 am. Nightmares.  Again.  Wet pillow.  Tears.
I was reminded today of a woman who had the courage to refuse an abortion and how she was hounded for years after and abused terribly till she was no more.  Everyone who tried to support her was attacked viciously.  I feel I've come close to pure evil again and was strongly reminded of this today.
I found myself missing a lawyer friend, Dugald Christie. We sat in church and talked about God, love, ethics, morality, society on drives to the jail where he got  me doing pro bono work.  I was blessed to know him.  He was killed.
I learned of another patient who died today. HIV and drug addiction.  I talked with him of his whole life.  So many fine chapters in that blessed book. These last few pages were miserable and his death is a kind of blessing. I'll miss him.  Another patient hung himself earlier this fall. He'd been turned away from the hospital and refused services.  We did our best in the community but it wasn't good enough. We have no resources and we are punished for caring.  Our thinkings is wrong because we're not looking at things from the perspective of profit and these people simply aren't profitable.
There's more talk of euthanasia for the elderly.  Legalize marijauna, give them cake, have everyone stoned and it's Matrix and the Holocaust all over again but now we'll all be 'high' so it will be okay.
I feel so alone at times.
I miss my mother and father and aunt and grandparents.  They're dead and I'm old and it sometimes seems so sad.  I pick myself up and pray and pray. I meditate and I try to exercise. The pain gets to me more some days.  I'm blessed beyond belief but I grieve.
Loss is loss. There's no getting around it. I miss people who have gone.
I miss Jesus. I think of him being killed by Herod and Pontius Pilate and Peter being crucified upside down by Nero and stupidly I'm reading about William Wallace tortured and quartered by Edward Plantanget.  These are the real morality tales.
I should be reading about birds and flowers.  I think adults who have children have a buffer, they get to read all the fairytales over and over.  I miss the fairytales.
I don't have answers or solutions.  Mostly questions.  I dare not ask why anymore. Mostly I just ask, where?  'Where are you Jesus?'
The great lie of the secular world is that atheists are foisting the notion that theists are killers but the only religion of atheism is communism. Russian Communists killed 80 million people in very few years. Chinese Communists killed 120 million people. And I just came from Cambodia where Cambodian communists, the latest generation of atheist government, killed 3 million in record time, 4 years, more than a third of the countries population of 8 million.
I swore on a Bible today.  I liked that,  It felt good under my hand.  In a break I read psalms.  They were comforting as they always are.  Still I'm sad.  So very very very sad. But this too will pass. It's just a hiccup. I could take a drug, smoke some grass, have some wine, not 'feel', 'numb' myself out. I tried that years ago after the divorce, after being held hostage, the life threats and the deaths, so many, back then. HIV and suicide.  "Man up!!!"  "Shake yourself out of it."
I remember the shame and embarrassment I felt kneeling and crying in the hospital corridor when the boy died despite all I did to save his life. He died because he stopped taking the medication that was keeping him alive and here I am years later, still crazy after all these years, trying to stop people from taking drugs that are killing them.  Will I ever float down stream?
I sat with a colleague and felt his fear at the threat of being hounded in retirement. He's scared about the babies he delivered. He did his best. I know. He's the best doctor I know but we're not perfect and now there's so much money to be made by destruction. No one's into creation. It's out of vogue.  Bankers even bid on insurance against collective suicides they've engineered for power and greed and we're pawns in the insanity of politics.
I'd rather be in a storm at sea alone than in the crush of media hype hysteria. First they built enough bombs to kill us all a hundred times over then they were supposed to stop that and needed a whole bunch more money to clean up the mess they made and then some of that clean up didn't work and Syria has gassed its people and it's no long global but regional and we're supposed to make sense of it with all the false prophets and misinformation.
Trust me I'm a politician.  Trust me I'm a reporter. Trust me I'm a government representative. Trust me I'm a lawyer.  But if I say 'trust me, I'm a doctor', everyone thinks that's funny.  Weird and twisted humour this planet earth has.
I probably should walk the dog more along the river where I take pictures of the beautiful birds that live there year round.  I could lie on the beach.  I could sit a lot longer in Rome churches with the smell of incense and the place of worship.
I'm an ecumenicalist.  I believe that all spiritual seekers are on the same path.  I pray to the 'saints of all religion' and believe that Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Jesus all were further along the path than their followers. I see these spiritual men walking out at the front where God is calling to his son and all his children, to come home.  And death is that home for me but I can't get there till I love this gift of life to it's fullest. And I don't feel I'm living life as lovingly or as meaningfully, gratefully or graciously as God would have me.
The irony is I'm as likely to meet Spongebob in the afterlife.  Divine Comedy is what it is.
I'm kind of slouching towards Bethlehem.  I've got way too much attitude. I'm dragging a whole lot of luggage that's negative and resentful and poor me.  I'm so full of lust, sloth, gluttony, greed, and downright stupidity that I can't feel the wings of eagles or be lifted up to my Lord in Heaven.  I'm a slug wallowing in the dirt, hiding in fear a lot when I should be a kid in sandbox throwing the dirt in the sky.
I want to dance without pain, sing without hoarseness, laugh till tears stream down my cheeks.
I want Jesus.
The basic story is God was born man and killed by man. What could be simpler as metaphor.  Now I have to believe that God resurrects.  There is life after life and life after death and my family who have died, my friends who have died and my patients who have died are still alive, not just in my memory but where I can meet them again, like long lost friends, like high school reunions and comings home from distant lands.
Mary was like my mom, like every mom and Jesus was like me, like every baby.  And they had friends and they suffered governments and taxes and intolerance and greed and the powers of this world.  I've lived twice as long as Jesus and my mom lived longer than Mary and all of us have been living this metaphor myth story in our own lives as the cosmic Christ is within all of us.  God is born. God died. God will come again.  The trinity of father, son and holy spirit.  The beginning middle and end, Parent, child, holy spirit. But it's not linear. It's stellar
Contemplating the Christmas story. Advent and the coming of the king.  The servant king.  The message that God is a lover.
I have no children but my brother shares the men he and his wife created with me.  They're fine men.  I was with a friend and his sons. They're fine men too. They're all moving into marriage and having families.
The cycles go on.
I delivered a hundred babies, stopped an epidemic or two on Indian villages, saved a dozen infants with meningitis from brain damage.  All those nights without sleep. All those terrible unknown diseases. Being held hostage. Being attacked, The deliriums and dementias and the teams of people, teachers and friends.  I've been blessed to be a healer among healers.
When I studied buddhism and was a disciple and yogi in my 20's I learned about right living.  I figured that what Jesus did was right living.  So becoming a healer was okay and it's been okay.  It's been good.
I'm not allowed to do that so much anymore.  I feel I've been hi jacked for other purposes.  I keep thinking of missionary work.  But then I like my things.  I 'm a fat cat yuppie who lacks any real compassion, self centered, self serving, complaining, whining, twittering and face booking with my luxury computer and luxury I phone communication devices, and designer clothes and glorious motorcycle and fast sports car.  I worry about losing this hard won hard earned bit of the Canadian dream.
But I've not had heat secure for weeks and the water hasn't been sure. Basics like electricity are never things I can take for granted in my world. This cold snap caught me off guard, fighting beurocrats with too much tax dollars and not enough real work and no real life experience to learn humility.  I've no house and the really rich think I'm rich but my riches are my dog and a fishing rod and rifle.  I 'm a survivalist.
I can live off the sea or off the land. I haven't had much faith in governments and stupid people in groups not to crucify the citizenry collectively and have us all nuked and having to defend ourselves individually from zombie groups of marauder gangs.  I fear the break down of civilization and yet I've prepared for just that eventuality.  Boy Scout motto, always be prepared.
The core fear is what Pascal described as the God shaped hole inside me.  I can't find the architect God in the wall of the building. I have to find the light within that is the source of the light without. Easy enough to say and easy enough to talk about.
But
But
I pray and meditate and meditating am distracted by a myriad of 'things' in that quiet time when I listen for the wee small voice of God.
I would know you more fully, more surely more really. Let me be like you Jesus. Let me know you but lets accept you did the cross bit and that was for all of us so I can get down off the cross, take the nails out of my hands and feet that I keep putting there and use the wood to build a house.
I loved the 150 year old St. Thomas church where Steven Bell sang and played guitar last month. Now there was some mighty fine wood.
Maybe I can sleep again. The little dog is sleeping beside me.  I pray I'll be with God in my dreams. I love when I dream of family and dogs and friends who have gone before. I love the dreams of meetings and especially love the old ladies.  I'm walking towards the light, Jonah like, stumbling and twirling and back stepping , getting swallowed by whales,  staggering, side stepping, sashaying, skipping, hopping and crawling.  Sometimes it's so slow and other times its way too fast.
Thank you God for hope. Still my fear and comfort me in the loss.  Thank you for these days to come and Christmas.  Hi Jesus,  baby God.