Friday Morning, Madigan, Laura, Cleaning Ladies, Slept In

Laura is coming over. It’s been a month since we saw each other.

The cleaning ladies are coming and it’s been a month since they were here.

I’ve lots of propane for heat and Kelvin of Travco heat taped the water hosel I arrived home to snow and a cold spell. I loved that there was no disruption of pay and dozens of clinic demands.  With limited work I’d kept work happy and flowing.  I liked that.  Getting the water and light on when I came home was a minor inconvenience. The heat was an issue. It took a lot to warm up and at first the furnace wasn’t cooperative so I had to rely on electric heat.  When later in the week the really cold spell and snow hit I felt how drafty and chilly my place can be.  Working in the garage I needed a space heater and slippers,

Now I’ve done another week and having collected a couple of cheques restored the accounts to an orderly world.  I had to use the work visa to pay the taxes then pay the visa with the first cheque.  I’ve paid off one visa completely and have just a little left on the other visa .  I could have done better with using personal account and it looks like I used my US dollars account too.  It’s flowing right now and that’s what counts. When I get my next cheque I’ll be able to get another RRSP though I’m not sure they do anything. 

I’m continuing my experiment in transgender.  Would it be better to be and old man or old lady?  It feels distinctly anti male in Canada, especially anti old white male. I’m afraid and just want to go ‘gently into that still night’.  I’m tired of fighting the censorship, intrusiveness, bullying, lies and corruption.  I stood up to the killing and lies younger and was a whistleblower and stopped my little pocket of evil but at the end of the day I see that those who were co-opted are living a good life.  Is it worth it to wait for heaven.

My sore back had affected all desire to fight and I now can appreciate. Dick Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency where the Gods like Thor have gone into nursing home for warmth clean sheets and Netflix. I’m half way there.  Homelessness scares me. So the jury is out on feminization.  On masculine days I want to get in my sail boat and sail to Capetown.  Then I reasonably think I should sell the boat.  I have the RV and can get the advanced license or trade this in on a bus.  I will have my camper back and frankly that’s sufficient for us.  I can envision travelling about southern us with my camper, maybe going to Mexico. I’d like to tour Mexico and South America with my F350 , Adventurrr Camper and Vespa Motorcycle.  

I have a toyhauler and a Mini Cooper. I stress my mind thinking first world thoughts as to whether to trade the mini in on a country man, or downsize the Harley Electroglide to a 1200 Harley.  I think of changing toyhauler. I think of travelling with Laura but we’re both working. She has less time off than me.  I hope to do 3 month next winter.

This month in the south has done wonders for my mood, missing the gloom and doom of November,  I don’t mind the sunny winter right now, mild temperature, the rain gone.

I’ve been going to meetings.  

I’m a Shaman healer and writer/poet/ sailor.

Madigan ids a character, my adolescent dependent, mischievous dog. Glad Laura is coming to help in the parenting.  She spoils him.  

We’re off to the Bach Choir singing Handel’s Messiah at Orpheum tomorrow night.

Life is good. Thank you God for warmth, fresh water, a home, Laura, Madigan, coffee, soap, showers, shampoo and conditioner. Computers, wifi, sunshine, mild days, Thank you God for life.  

Autumn and home

I just returned from walking Madigan.  There was a definite nip in the air. We noticed the mornings were chill in Clinton. Here in Vancouver it’s the same though the weather forecast is another week of sunshine and heat.  Cool nights and hot days then.  

I’m waking with back pain but not the sharp kind of falling down pain, rather the ‘sore’ dull ache.  I wondered if someone was stabbing me in the back and I was psychically experiencing the betrayal.  Then I considered the self pity pain of Atlas , carrying the weight of world on my shoulders. The fact is I don’t stretch enough and did a lot of lifting carrying gear to and from the truck.  I might guess I”m getting older and am being rewarded with the karma of not being sympathetic to my father who complained of back pain in later years.

I associated with ‘the man’.  Men have back pain, women have pelvic pain, the old cliche.  

Laura has an extra day off and has risen.  I think her plan was to drive home today to get a parking spot near her building so she can unload her gear easily. There’s so little parking in the west end.

I’ve a couple of days of virtual clinics then another weekend of hunting. The challenge will be getting the tent and camping gear together to truly ‘rough it’.  It’s been a few years since I slept on the ground. The question will be how hard it will be to get up and moving in the morning.  I’ll be closer to game and may even be on a lake to go swimming in the day.

Last night I barbecued steaks on the new Weber barbecue.  The potatoes we picked up at the roadside Hilltop Fruit Market were delicious with butter and sour cream and the creamed cauliflower.  We watched John Bateman a BBC drama about an English trader, formerly with the East India Company, living in Delhi 1790.  It was fascinating and engaging. Having been to India and Delhi it was all more more enjoyable,

Good to be back in my bed and returning to the routines,  Hard to believe we’d been away 6 days just adding extra days to the already long labour day weekend,

Izek shot his first deer on the weekend youth hunt as well as shooting grouse.  The Bustards are having fun.  

I’m feeling somewhat isolated and alienated with the sense of what am I going to do when I grow up. Looking forward to the heat and dry of Yuma, working but hoping this inflammation will be helped by the climate. Also thinking of my lungs and the fright of not being able to get breath a couple of years ago.  Like the scuba diving accident but in this case just a ‘flu’.  I’ve loved this year with the break of Europe and summer though late was so relaxing simply enjoying sun bathing in the back yard and walking the dog.

Madigan is curled up against me He’s been totally absorbed with Laura this week and it later today it will be back to being my room mate.  We’ll miss her.  

It’s been a good end of summer and now autumn which I enjoy so much.  

I remember my Mother

I remember my mother
Holding me, wrapping her  loving arms around me
And pulling me close in to her soft warm body
I remember my mother
Protecting me from all harm when I was little
Always watching over me
Always being there to run to
Always being there to come home to
I remember her grilled cheese sandwiches
Fishing with her
Going for walks and holding her hand
Snuggling beside her in bed with her and Dad
I remember mother
Sitting upright in church with a colourful spring hat
Listening to the minister then standing and belting our gospel hymms
I remember mother making meals upon meals upon meals
(especially Red River cereal, and venison hash and moose roasts, pan friedfried pickerel)
For my father brother and me (and the dog we fed meat bits under the table)
I remember mother crocheting, knitting, quilting, mending.
I remember mother gardening, eating fresh home grown vegetables, especially the carrots
And her purple lilacs, and lots of daffodils .
I remember my mother arguing with the teachers and principals
About me and how she didn’t like the when they hurt me
I remember mother wailing out at me when I was bad
I remember hiding under the bed to get away from a spanking
And her laughing and getting me finally after a wild chase
And the spanking not hurting very much at all.
I remember sleeping soundly and dreaming forever play dreams
Knowing my mother and my father were there in their room
And my brother was beside me.
I remember my mother taking me weekly to the library
And reading books with me until I could read on my own
I remember my mother taking me to school my first day.
I remember camping with my mother and father and tenting and boating.
I remember riding on trains with my mother and visiting my family out east.
I remember long car rides with my mother and her making up games and songs
I remember my mother taking me and my brother to and from outdoor hockey games
In the coldest of winter and always having an oreo cookie for us on the way home
I remember my mother’s glorious red hair and her talking on the phone on the wall
I remember her typing up columns for the newspaper in the sunroom with her Christmas cactus
I remember her cheering in the stands and watching and encouraging as I played baseball poorly
I remember my mother helping with my homework and making sure assignments got done
I remember my mother coming to graduations and being very proud
I remember her calling us in from play in summer as the sun went down
I remember watching tv and eating kraft dinner with her and dad and my brother
In the living room with the dog and mom laughing because dad blamed the dog for farting
I remember my mom caring for my grandmother until one day my grandmother died in our home
I remember my mother taking in our cousin after her surgery and nursing her back to health
I remember mother as a peace maker resolving disputes between us boys and us and Dad
I remember mother making turkey thanksgiving dinners with her sister and all of us enjoying celebrations
I remember Christmas and birthdays because my mother remembered them and celebrated them.
I remember my mother laughing and crying and singing
I remember my mother teaching me to pray on my knees beside my bed
I remember  my mother always supportive and always encouraging and always forgiving
I remember my mother dancing with my dad and loving my dad and my brother and me
I remember complaining that Dad wasn’t at a hockey game and mom scolding me and saying
“Your dad is working hard so we can have a roof over our heads and food on your plates so don’t you ever complain about your dad"
I remember my  Mother screaming in the little plane Dad’s friend took us flying in like she did on the  fun rides at the fair
I remember her making rhubarb pies and giving my brother and me one orange each watching tv in winter
I remember mother making the NHL hockey nights special for us watching black and white tv with my brother and I in team shirts
I remember us all watching Lawrence Welk and Ed Sullivan on evening tv and listening to CJOB Beefs and Bouquet  morning radio
I remember my mother loving my brother marrying my sister in law and proudly telling everyone how smart she and Ron were
I loved when she had grandchildren and how she beamed and smiled a continent wide with joy for the babies
I loved that she was always there for me when I was sick, rubbing vapour rub on my chest when I was young
Bringing me soups and stew when I was old.
I remember my Mom always inviting me in and often telling me not to tell my father when I told her  some trouble I was in
I remember my father telling my brother and I not to tell my mother about some adventures we had together
I remember her listening to my woes and then making me tea or a sandwich and saying that it was going to be okay
I remember my mother helping out at the community club, game and fish, church and the local parades.
I remember my mother always helping out always remembering things others forgot and always making sure everything worked out
I remember my mother writing letters to me when we got older talking about the same old things, gardening, the neighbours, church, and stuff
I remember her coming over for dinner when I was married and Dad had helped me pick out a house and she was so happy for me
I remember my mother being so generous and gracious with the women in my life loving each one and showing them kindness and goodness
I remember her remembering my friends names and asking me about Wes and Keith and always loving Kirk and Garth.
I remember my mother getting old and sharing pictures of the cruises Dad took her on and pictures of her with natives in foreign lands laughing
I remember her in hospitals visiting her and her smiling and asking how I was
I remember my mother in her last year in a wheelchair, Dad pushing her in a big circle around the outside of hospital spring and summer, fall and winter
Dad told me she liked to hear the birds and I remembered all the bird feeders she had over the years especially the one outside the kitchen window
I remember her shovelling snow to get out to it so she could keep the bird seed full in the coldest times of the year when the birds needed her seeds most
I remember her and my dad, her in the wheelchair, my Dad standing bent over beside her, tucking in her scarf, her hands bundled in mittens on her laps
The two of them were the greatest love story I have ever known and my mother made my Dad and her sons happier than anyone else could ever know.
And I remember her dying last days and her telling me she was tired and she wanted me to let her go.
I remember my mother loving me. I remember my mother always loving me even when I made her angry or sad.
I remember my mother as love incarnate
I remember my father and brother and I bereft at her passing, my father who never cried, crying like a baby.
I remember my mother.I will always remember my mother.
On the best of days I dream of her and my dad and my brother and my aunt  and the dogs waiting for me
Often I feel her close to me.I remember my mother.
She was always there for me.
And now she is always here for me.

Red Sun and Carlton Square, Vancouver

The forest fire smoke has invadedthe city.  First there were the wild animals. The racoons. The coyotes. Always there were the rats.  But now bear are walking about the city.
Driving to work in the Miata, I hear  conservation officers facing downs tons of fur and claws.  No one wants wild animals as neighbours. Not even the animal activists. Their anxiety doesn’t extend to beasts and  snakes.  Just the warm and cuddly.    Now the forests are ablaze. Everyone is fleeing. The world over people have been huddling together in the city.
Climatologists are smug with satisfaction. These new age prophets foretelling gloom and doom are rubbing their hands with glee thinking of the money.  Prophecy has always been as lucrative as prostitution.   See I told you so.
The eerie haze is causing asthmatics to stay inside. The sun is red now.  Red faced.  What shames a sun. It might as well be Mars returning our call.  The very planet come to visit after all our probes.  That's eerie.
Nearby a young Asian woman walks by, short shorts, push up bra, silk top, heels. Her legs go on for ever. There is no mortality to her youth.  She has pride of fertility.
I am old.  I look away from her to the red sun.   She may be smoking but here in Vancouver the smoke is everywhere. The renewal is happening in the hills we live in.  Burnaby Mountain. Burning bush. Burning forest.  What will God dream of next.  The irony is that the parking lot pavement is finally saving us.
Now a vixen and child have stopped. She is taking an iPhone picture of the red sun. This is no time for selfies. There's a red sun, she tells her child.  So much is new to them they will only realize the novelty years hence when people tell them and they admit they were there.
 There is no relative certainty.  The globe is hanging there, alien. Ghostly like a moon. The very sun we live by is bleeding. Blood red.  Climatologists smugly shout  the world is ending.
Silent Spring was written in my childhood.  Millennial Madness of computer fall out is gone. The music died. Belushi died.  Kennedy is long forgotten but Munroe lives on. Elvis lives on.  
Growing up in the Cold War and daily threat of  nuclear annihilation toughens one up.  Todays terrorists are pansies compared to Russia and America.  They're just cells.  Bits of metastatic cancer. We're just mopping up.
The great Satan, Russia would rise again.  But then so might Hitler, Old Bony. Nothing would surprise me.
Consciousness is permanent.  Time passes in a blink of an eye.  Sleep is the rub.  Subjectivity and objectivity are illusions.  Two sides of the same coin.  Memory is mutable.  Neuroplasticity and relativity compete. You are my lover in another dream. But she is too young now.  I am older.
My dog is happy on the street.  The red sun is nothing to him. His nose perhaps wrinkles with the smoke smell. What it does to doggie bitch butt can only be imagined.  Smoking.
It’s weed city.  Wow man.  Crime really does pay.  The forest smoke conceals the skunk smoke.  It's actually pleasant not to smell the rancid.
I’ve done a day of work in the heat of a new office.  I left at noon and bought a fan. The air conditioners and fans were sold out at Walmart. Canadian Tire still had a fan or two but the air conditioners were gone as were bigger fans.  I got a little fan. I liked the breeze it created.
I got through another impossible withering day.   I am traumatized by the disruption of moving. I can’t find records. I can't find books. I long for an end to the chaos. I fear the coming deadlines. So many demands. Finances are always a struggle.  The high cost of change, imposed or chosen.  I empathize with Greece but they’ve had their holiday.  I could have gone to Tunisia. It was on the list.  God is good. God is great. There are alternative realities. I'm thankful for mine.
This lighting is eerie.  I could be on another planet.  One with a red sun.  The picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s red, like lipstick.  But not sexy.
It’s that kind of day.  I’m jet lagged perhaps.  Just tired from Monday.  Shell shocked emotionally individually.  I"ve listened too much to the the terror of individuals struggling with marginal existence. My work is a life on edges.  I long for the smooth and seamless.
I’m having trouble cheerleading. I find it difficult to rally.  There’s a sense of never ending crisis.  The media makes a civil war seems imminent.  No a real war.  Not religious war.  A Canadian sort of war.  Civil.  Mannerly.  Polite. No bang. Just a sizzle.
It’s better to laugh. It’s better to see the humour. There’s no more news. Just propaganda.  In face of which we pray.
Little girls are walking down the street. They’re impossible tiny for maturity.  Precious.  Immigrants can be that way. Different sizes. Different shapes. They tend to dress the same though. 21st century women.  I suspect they're aboriginals from South America.
I’m considering moving along. I only stopped for a coffee. The black hole of work had sucked me into the centre.  I felt such relief at the end of the day when I could pee. Now, with a coffee and a juice I feel almost human. Except this isn’t the earth.  The sun is red.  The light is different.  I can smell the burn. Not like flesh.  Not that horror. A light scent.  The eau de cologne of distant mountain burning. Not a bad smell.  If one didn’t know what it was.
Life is like that.
Renewal.
Phoenix rising.
My day has aged.  I was young this morning.  Now I’m old and weary.   I will head home soon.  Maybe watch tv, mindless like an old man, in a nursing home.  The life of man in a day.
Only last week I was in Ireland.  How good does it get?  Now I’m sitting in Vancouver. Contemplating a red sun.  It's all coming home.

Mother's Day poem

I remember holding your leg
And hiding in your skirts
I miss you and those days you protected me
Ferociously

I remember your grilled cheese sandwiches
Lunches at noon on school days
Telling you what I'd been doing
And your really wanting to hear

I remember your love of Dad and family and flowers
I remember going to church you and your sister
I remember the picnics
And times in the boats
I remember your bringing me soup
When I was sick in bed

I remember you at graduations
And weddings and awards ceremonies
I especially remember you and Boris' dad
Standing outside at our hockey games
The only parent spectators there in the bitter cold

There's too much to remember
Then you were Old
And I was sitting time and again by your side
The winkled withered smile
That reminded me then of your mother
Who stayed with us in the front room
Till she died
As you died
Quietly, bravely
Trusting in Jesus.

Dad and my brother and I cried
When Dad died I saw you coming back inside
Saying I've come to take your father home
And I know you'll be there to take me too
But I'm alone now
Lonely now remembering
Still Often afraid
Missing your writing
Missing your tales
Missing your rapt interest in mine

All my life is just the product of your love
All that is good and true
I've learned from you and Dad
The rest I've learned
Has just been extras
I'm so very thankful

Sad remembering
But thankful
So very thankful
And blessed by your love
Till we meet again, Mom
In His home.