South to Sun, 2024, day 3 am , Alder Dune Campground, off 101 Oregon, just north of Florence

I woke at 4 am.  It’s been raining hard all night long.  It’s like sentient alien water drops are landing on the camper roof and seeking a way into the dry and warm interior. I’ve slept well despite the cacophony of heavy static sounding raindrops.  I see Madigan is still sleepy. I use the toilet and return to bed.  

I’m not able to sleep.  I’m thinking of the AT&T new phone and my old phone number and how am I going to get back on Telus so I have two phones because everyone knows to call the old phone number. It’s also the one use in 2 step verification.  But with the phone broken I can’t see that. I don’t like going back to the little phone either. My fingers are too big. Of course I can sort all this out at an Apple Store in LA.  

I also thought of the 60’s horror show, probably Twilight Zone where the sailors come upon an old ship cover in dripping fungus. They board and look about but bring the fungus back to their ship and become another floating fungus garden. The crew first noticed patches on their skin then they are slowly devoured.  It’s that rainy and wet here.

I’ve also had “worthy is the blood of the lamb” , chorus of a Christian evangelical song playing in my mind.

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I remember a capsule headed to what I think today is Mars but something , perhaps a big asteroid knocked it off course and I landed on earth. I always felt strange. Mom and Dad were wonderful and lovely but I felt peculiar. When I was particularly scared as a child in bed I saw an angelic couple above my bed, spiritual mom and dad, telling me all would be well. Mom appeared then and the world restored to normal though I’d have out of body experiences when I’d visit friends and do all the other things that shaman books describe.  I certainly felt good with animals and especially loved the family dog.  We were on the same wave length.  

Later I’d think we were souls who had to learn to control our minds and impulses.  The spiritual world was instant gratification but what one thought of that became. Like my memory of the Fungus ship. I feel for Steven King and his wonderful horror stories.  He drank and the darkness no doubt was the source of his writing.  I am only now beginning to clear mind mind.  I learned from St. Paul to ‘pray unceasingly’.  I’m old now so perhaps this journey is coming to a close and another beginning. I might make it to Mars yet.  To do so I must have ‘peace of mind’.  Marijuania and Alcohol and other drugs make this near impossible.  

From an early age I sought spiritual guidance.  The church leaders were mostly about morality.  I had great advice from Dad and Mom but was so egotistical when I was a teen.  I was on a journey of discovery hoping to make sense of my physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual world.  I was raised Baptist and studied the Bible first as comic books and later as the book iteself.  I liked going through the 365 day Bible reading a bit each day though another time I just read as much as I could and completed it in about a year too. I studied it at University in English Literature.  The Bible as stories and later I’d study it as myth and eventually as a key.

‘Worthy is the blood of the lamb.”  Sacrificial messages and codes.  

The ministers talked mostly of morality and ethics and their prescriptions were like those of public health while I was searching for a personal message.  I wanted a ‘friend in Jesus’.  

The Trinity according to the Chancellor of Regent College, professor of Spiritual Christianity, described it in terms of 3 persons in one.  The mystery.  Of course there was God the father , God of Gods, Creator, omniscient omnipotent omnipotential, the very fabric of reality, the omnivores, alpha and omega, everything and nothing. I liked to say that in the Beginning there was God and he created the Heavens and the Earth. There wasn’t God and Building Blocks.  The one bccame many.  I saw the holograph and later the DNA as evidence of the At OM ness of the one , the true Home, the Self.  

This did explain the binary relationship of Buber’s I and Thou.  First I and the other then I and I and then with humility and a true appreciation of Grace, I and Thou. I struggled with friends ideas of fate and free will. When things went well they claimed responsibility but when things didn’t they blamed anything but themselves.  I however had the benefit of studying eastern religion, first though Emerson and Vivekianada and later Paramahansa Yogananda.  I enjoyed Herman Hesse and the Glass Bead Game.  So much of what I learned was the writings of authors not religious leaders per see. “I sing the Body Electric,” by Walt Whitman, the poets, and writers like Mark Twain.  Their ideas about the universe and themselves and heaven and earth.

In the Trinity the Son is Jesus or the Messiah.  He is the advocate who was God becoming God being crucified and resurrecting.  The caterpillar butterfly image. The lost and now I’m found story beyond the Hubris of the Wall Street Gods or the Graeco Roman competiont gods driven by time. They are all over the on line games. I met them first in Duke Nukim.  It was like the fool on the hill. I’m fine alone and meditating.  I’m the movie ‘a boy and his dog’.  The difficulty is the Holy Spirit.

The job the son is to obey the father.  It’s taken me most of my life to appreciate the wisdom of my earthly father and poor Jesus didn’t live long enough to get back to carpetntry. I’ve lived long enough to re visit the worlds my father introduced me too when I was a child.  I’m living his dream and my own dream.

But what of Mom.

When I told Willie, my evangelical mentor that I thought the Holy Spirit was the female he was annoyed. I realize now that in his world men are men and women and women.  His Holy Spirit is masculine i anything. But I’m of the era and age where the Borderline is the cross over.  Where as in the world of the 50’s the extrovert personality disorder were described as Narccisistic , Antisocial, Historionic and Borderline. Mostly men were described as antisocial and sent to prison while women were described as borderline and sent to the asylum. The gay and lesbian commonly were sent to the aslum. It was part of the men’s era and intent. Men were intentional or not

Kate Lister the brilliant author of Curious History of Sex said that Freud described the female as the ‘dark continent’.  It was appropriate she said because he was obvious lost and afraid of the natives.

So the Holy Spirit is this sense of connectedness which I equated with the sense I had that my mother always knew what I was doing.  Somehow there was my conscience which game me the right answer and may choice which was wrong but good.

Freud’s idea of the ‘ID” was that it was something primitive like the idea of the untamed ,dis organized, the early man free to follow urges and like an animal sensual and not controlled by a higher power or such.  Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel makes it very clear that the primitive man was not the impulse seeking sensate of the 60’s mod scene but rather one dominated by taboos and restrictions.  To put it bluntly he wasn’t free.  Nor was he the ‘noble savage’ which is being white washed and paraded out again by none other than the ancestors who like the Nazi once did in their ‘ancestor worship’ , perhaps the oldest religion.

By contrast, Milton Erickson, father of American Psychiatry and Hypnosis said Freud was afraid of the unconscious . I’d argue that Jews and Arabs and those who are tribally connected by genital mutilation at an early age might well have good reason to fear as such. But then another might just speak to the birth trauma.  Personally I’m Caesarian Section so I didn’t want to be here and was dragged forth while others escaped the mother at an early age. I liked the umbilical cord and boom box heart sound.  This world has been tough by comparison.  Erickson said that when someone fell their unconscious righted them, indeed much of their systems of safety were on automatic , eating sleeping and all so the ID or primal unconscious was protective.  Jung described Freud in also afraid of the unknown.  He was an empire builder and a genius but needed to be in control and striving to be ‘number one’.  

Personally I’ve just been glad to be on the team.  I am thankful to be invited in and given a place by the fire.  It’s cold out there and warm in here.  I believe I was very young when I realized the challenge was beating my yesterday self not my opponent. I saw losing at chess as my mistake. I also learned in my study of martial arts from an early age, my friend Kirk and I doing Jugitsu together in the back yard after my dad taught us boxing in the basement with the boxing gloves he brought home one day.  In Zen the master is said to be the one who kills you and so doing teaches you the secret you will carry into the next life what will save you for being kllled that way again.  

Reincarnation is central to the east and west.  In the East the Jews knew it or they’d not be confused as to who was resurrecting.  Similarly for Christian’s it was Constantine the Sun worshipper who excluded reincarnation at the Council of Nevis when Christianity became the ‘STATE’ Church,  

Now I’m living ‘One Day at a Time’. So reincarnation is a daily experience. When I wake a new life begins. The past is memory and the future is yet to come.

Willie, reverend, doctor, psychiatrist, said that Jesus said over and over again ‘Be not afraid’.

When asked to sum up the scripture he said that the key was ‘Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself”. 

‘Worthy is the blood of the lamb”

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It’s 630 am.  I got going yesterday at 7.  The rain and dark are still here. I was on the road about an hour before it got lighter and at 9 am we stopped at Macdonalds’ for breakfast on the run. 

Time to stow.

Thank you Jesus. 

Princeton Vacation, Facebook news, Stranger than fiction, Weather reports,

It’s hard to keep track of the ancient and modern Gods with so much mythology and fake news.  Obama and Trudeau gave China money to make the Wuhan lab according to Macron’s plans.  The Batlady killed the Bat Girl testing the SinoCan vaccine on the Covid 19 virus which was leaked to destroy the economy of the west so Xi Lingping could foreclose on all the money he leant investors by keeping the Communist Chinese people as veritable slaves.

Meanwhile George Soros whose history is destroying economies to bet on the competitor to make stock exchange gambling millions has invested in Yen and pulled all his money out of the Dollar economy. He backs the Marxist Black Lives Matter and Nazi ANTIFA to create economic chaos while Democrat leaders to win the election play fiddles and watch the US burn hoping the voters will blame the Republicans who have been fighting a war on two fronts. 

The Communist Chinese have invaded Hong Kong, India and are doing war exercises to invade Taiwan. Iran , their ally is threatening to nuke Israel while denying they have nukes.  Communist China has threatened to cut off pharmaceuticals to India and the west. Kennedy who fought communism is watching from his grave while all the communist playbook stated by Kruschev is being played out.  Rioters and looters wear Che shirts and call for the killing of police.  

Trudeau gives money only to those who vote for him and to Isis terrorists.  He wants the wise to shut up and die. The nearly extinct Canada goose is making a come back and there is hope for the Beaver.  Trudeau continues with his totalitarian plans to disarm citizens outlawing parliament. With freedom of speech gone and CBC ,the China Daily or New Pravda, Trudeau makes daily appearances when his staff can straighten him up enough from whatever party goes on in his palatial basement. Some days he looks worse than the DTES junkies being killed by hundreds a day overdoses by Communist Chinese Military fentanyl.  

Japan has bought islands in the China sea where Communist China has anchored two air craft carriers and continues to attack Vietnam. African black babies are facing starvation  by the millions as BLM continues to disrupt the food supply chains destroying black business indiscriminately.

I”m here on vacation only getting news from what Zuckerberg allows.  Most truth is now banned. I look at it all like ancient Greeks looking at the skies for signs and discussing the sexual habits of Gods. All the leaders, except Trump and Pence, went to parties on Epstein’s private island. Paterson’s fiction about New York cannibalism is actually taking place in Hollywood where jaded drug and alcohol addicted wealthy celebrities import babies for hoer d’oeves between lecturing the rest of the world on morality. 

The Climate Change Doomsday Cult have overnight switched to the Covid 19 Doomsday cult.  

I listen to Schizophrenics for a living and none of them are as zany as Ottawa right now. Freud eventually said ‘maybe the paranoids’ are right. Leonard Cohen wrote ‘there is a war ....a war between the odd and the even.’ 

I’ve been passing time reading westerns and science fiction, walking the dog, riding my KTM motorcycle in the rain in the backwoods and into town. I’ve shot targets and might again today.  There’s something satisfying in accuracy,  simplicity and meritocracy.  There’s not a lot of appreciation for straight shooters anymore.  You can talk all you want but it’s not a bull’s eye unless it’s a bull’s eye. I’m pleased with the groupings.

I’ve been on holiday long enough that I’m looking forward to return, mostly for laundry, mostly for a different routine. It’s been a great vacation when I’m ready to go back to work.  This experience of weather, rain, and chill and hot sun, daily fluctuations is something. I miss my womb like experience lying on my couch.  

Gilbert is a joy. Laura has been easy company and beautiful.  I love this camper but I’d rather be travelling through Arizona or New Mexico. I’m ready for dry sunshine. I get that way every year in the rain forest of BC.  I”m short on hot.  We had some great sunny days last week but this week it’s been a bit weak.  Laura has been reading the weather. I remember my grandfather explaining things by the weather report.  All the farmers and ranchers talked about the weather.  I’m doing that now.

I made bacon sandwiches for Laura first thing in the morning.  Now I’ve had coffee and will go back to more.  It’s a sort of “turn down day. Nothing on my mind’ and I ‘dig it the most.”
All the drama is at a distance. The Gods are crazy in their orgies. Nothing happening here locally. 

We’ve taken to watching our neighbours here. A woman came in last night and set up a huge tent in the pouring rain taking a couple of hours to do it. She just has her car. This morning she’s walking about in pj bottoms and sweater. All night she was shouting into her cellular phone. We’ve been speculating about her story.  You know you’ve had a great holiday when your mind becomes mush. 

Thank you God. 

Burnaby Rain

When I first came to the West Coast as an adult, I stayed in Burnaby.  The magnificent hues of rich green foliage, shrubs and grass amazed me.  Canada’s rain forest.
Today I remembered that as I heard the heavy rain falling on my roof. I pushed the button that extended the awnings on my home and a deluge of water poured off. It had  been trapped in the folds.
I turned on the electric fire feeling the warmth challenging the chill. I'd left the outside door open with only the screen door to keep the cat and dog from escaping.  I lit a lavender incense stick enjoying the rich fragrance as it joined the heat.
Then I brewed some Sambucca tea and  poured the rich exotic elixir into an elegant grey and white tea cup . I added a dab of honey and savoured the fragrance as I swallowed the sensuous creation.   It reminded me England, the time I lived there,  My latest memory was of Ireland. I always think of Britain when I have tea.
I was putting pictures up that I’d previously had up in my office, before it closed. Cherished photos, etchings, paintings and engravings.  So many memories.  Oxford, Singapore, Saipan, Scotland, Ireland, St. Petersburg, Mexico, the SV GIRI.  I couldn’t decide. How high, where. Holding the St. George engraving my friend George came to mind.  I had to sit. Each picture holds a favoured memory.  I found I couldn’t even decide the placement of the cross I’d brought back from Rome.  Jesus.
I thought how I’d once imagined myself this old, smoking a pipe, drinking Irish whiskey, sitting in an old house with a fireplace and writing desk, looking out on a forest scene and lake or sea. Now I’m lightening up, giving stuff away. I don’t even smoke or drink anymore.  I’d rather wear a skirt than sport a moustache or beard.  I especially like a cup of tea.
So often the rain was an enemy at sea, obscuring vision, making the deck treacherous, my glasses fogged, the north Pacific seas in winter,  rain  freezing on the rigging.  I didn’t like it either motorcycling year round , squinting into the face hurting sleet praying my tires would maintain their grip, hoping the distracted signal impaired Vancouver drivers would see me.
Here in Burnaby the plants thrive and literally sing in the rain.  They are alll a glow with new found wonder. This is their time. This is their season.  I can’t pout in face of such celebration.
However, I can’t say it sounds like pitter patter. Heavier.  Like an invasion of Lilliputian paratroopers.  I fear for my roof.  The water seeks to get in everywhere.  The soldiers who’d been to Afghan told me the sand was like that.  Invasive.  I’ve always associated sand with vacations.  I first met this Burnaby rain on vacation.  I imagine that’s why I like it so much better than Vancouver rain and work rain.  So often I ‘ve fought the rain to get to work.
Here I can sit in the warmth of my home looking out my window at the magnificent forest sipping my delicious tea as I thank God for all the wonders of sights and sound, and smell and taste. I am especially thankful for this weekend.   I am  waiting for my friend. She’ll help me hang things.  She’s wise that way.
And luscious like the foliage.  And tasteful as the honeyed tea.
We have dinner and a movie planned.  After hanging memories.
She reminded me to get the pop corn and I did.
What a wonderful way to enjoy a Burnaby rain.
Indoors, curled up on the couch together, with the dog and the cat.

Burnaby Victoria Day journal

I'm here in my motorhome with Laura and Gilbert. We'd planned to go away hunting and fishing but because of a minor financial shortfall with taxes and high overhead I didn't feel up to spending money on travel. We'd planned to go to Clinton and frankly I didn't feel much like driving up the canyon towing the motorhome.  It's serious scarey business.  People die on roads.  Towing means all the concentration of driving my Harley without the sense of freedom. I feel like a water buffalo in the truck towing my RV whereas on the Harley I feel like a free spirited stallion.  I just have to concentrate a whole lot more.  The Mazda Miata is a gelding compared to the Harley but much more responsive to the touch and a joy to drive.  I don't have to worry about Gilbert beside me whereas when he's behind me on the Harley I always worry if he's okay.  Laura loves the Miata and the motorhome.
I love Burnaby.  Came here circa 1970 after the Strawberry Mountain Peace and Love Festival in the Colorado mountain.  True hippy ecological peace and love event where you had to back pack up the mountain and there was only acoustic guitars, gorgeous girls, tents and hugs. After that we hitchhiked to San Francisco wearing flowers in our hair, marching through the streets by the 10 thousands and dancing.
 Then we came to Vancouver for a European songfest. Thousands of voices singing of peace and unity.  Most had been written between the wars, after the War to end all Wars before Hitler then Stalin tore up the world with megalomaniacal dreams.  We were all afraid Vietnam was the beginning of WWIII and a nuclear holocaust.  Easy to think back now and see that things didn't turn out that way.  I like to think the peace movement had its influence on the industrial war complex.  Caused them to rethink war.  Okay to keep blowing up foreigners but had to figure out a way to kill less of one's own.  After Vietnam the world needed popular wars.
But Stalin had enslaved most of the world then and it wasn't even possible to think of the Berlin Wall just coming down.  Later that year we'd be in London with IRA bombings and all the talk would be about Carlos and terrorism. We never envisioned 9-11.  The terrorists just scared us and made us thankful for our own laws and order. Government by suicide bomber.  Later I'd learn all the ammunitions, studying physics and chemistry with an appreciation I'd not have had were I to stay in a suburb, go to a university and not ever encounter the Europe of the 70's when such skills seemed necessary as we all might have to fight terrorists with  their own tools.
I was raised by cowboys.  Long gone were the days of honor and men fighting one on one.  It was a dark world of shady deals and gangs on one.  No heros.  Just survival.
Burnaby at the time was the house of a family friend with all the loveliness of my mother's home. Quilting and embroidery and gardens and family and fine meals.  I loved the greenery outside the window. It rained the whole weekend that I recalled. But it was lovely rain.  Like the rain today.
There's something special about rain when all around there's grass and trees and bushes.  In Vancouver downtown the rain is an irritation because there's just concrete and parking lots. The city doesn't need bike lanes. It's needs boulevards and more sky trains.  I love Stanley Park but it's out of the way.  I don't get over there enough.  Maybe I should get an apartment off Denman so I can use the park. I did when my sailboart was moored near there in  Coal Harbour. Every day I'd walk around the lagoon. Stuart loved the walks in the park and I loved taking pictures of the ducks. The swans laid eggs that year.  The year before vandals had destroyed them. What kind of people destroy the eggs of swans.  It's always a reminder that port city hide trolls and psychopaths.  It's why Vancouver and New Westminister have so much drug traffic whereas Burnaby is relatively free of such sordid insaniety.
I've just come from swimming in the pool. Earlier today I walked Gilbert for an hour along the Brunette River.  Yesterday I spent hours researching medical legal topics, reviewing the literature regarding patients cases, trying to stay up to date this year, 2012, when only last month I read the report of a rich administrative doctor who'd not cracked a clinical text in 30 years or more by his recommendations, yet he was still practicing and telling others how to practice. It's all the rage to get MBA's instead of specialties.  Money is more important that learning yet I want my patients to get better and maybe there's something new I can learn. Always learning. Always driven to study and go to lectures, go to conferences, search the internet.  I miss working overseas when I could read for an afternoon and be available for the hospital at the same time. I was on so many physician discussion sites back then.
These days its hard to keep up again.  I feel behind and know it's at most only months.  There's no money in knowing the latest or doing the best.  All the riches go to the businessmen not the clinicians.  There's no bafflegab in the life and death questions.  And I realized that I haven't done what I set out to do when I entered medicine. I wanted to lazarus and be like Jesus, heal by touch and raise the dead.  Now I'm a cog in a wheel.  Anyone who actually questions the system is called a 'disruptive person'.  Anyone who wants to cure cancer really is called 'grandiose' and delusional. There's such negativity and heavy weight in the overly beaurocratized system of non believers and pay cheque seekers.
And I'm not much better. I'm older now.  I sometimes find myself working for weekends. After a year or two of being caught up with morons, psychopaths and criminals in the system I'm only happy seeing patients and trying to figure how to save just one.  What can I do for this person. Mostly it's just band aids now.  So little time, no resources and a deluge of sick and dying, the aging, like me.  Too many of the people I thought were heros too have retired and I don't know the young who are smarter into 9-5 and overtime.  I never was paid for over time.  Millions lost in service when she told me "it's just a job'.  The doctors call them clients today and even customers.  I gave my pound of flesh.
There's nothing in self righteousness or self pity.  Both are dirty urinals.  I have to raise my eyes.  Climb another mountain. My friend still does the Grouse Grind.  I wonder if my knee could do it. Its been several years since I could climb stairs without pain.  I always feel better in the desert. Loved being in Arizona and Texas.  The rain is beautiful today but it's hard on the joints.  Something about barometric pressure.  The joints love celebrex but the stomach doesn't
I'll go back to my book. It's about India and terrorists.  I just learned 70,000 Indians died in WWI and 9-13 was the Mumbai equivalent of 9-11.  Hundreds killed by terrorist bombers.  One character commented on the Pakistan Indian War.  Another talked about the War of Independence. They're trying to protect athletes in the games from terrorist bombs.  Canadians aren't described as good sports.  Helicopters and Chinese near Kashmir.   So many of my patients or their parents are immigrants. I read histories of the areas where they come from.  So many have been tortured or jailed, some from refugee camps, boys who sold themselves, a woman raped dozens of times by roaming gangs.  I see the soldiers who have nightmare about what they can't forget but would like to forget.
Just had some Murchies Golden Jubilee Tea - Queen E II 1952 to 2002.  Laura says her diamond jubilee is coming up.  Today is Victoria Day.  British empire and the queen who said, "we are not amused'.  I  listened to the CBC podcast Divine Blake and read some William Blake poetry after listening to Bob Smiley the hilarious Christian comedian.  We ate elk curry I made a couple of days ago and put away for a rainy day in the freezer. Laura's daughter just got some baby goats. We pray each day for the baby that is coming too.
God the rain is beautiful with all the green around. Thank you Lord for this day and for this life. Thank you for the challenge and prividge of medicine and healing.  Help me through another week and help me pay the taxes and not regret all the nights and days and weekends I worked for free.  Instead God make the monetary system a 'calling' and let them work for free for a change.  I'd rather that than think the materialists are all headed for hell and I'm going to be in heaven with saints and me a sinner knowing even Jesus supped with tax collectors while Paul was as much a beaurocrat as a tent maker.  Let me be less critical of groups and focus on the individuals who make Darwin's Awards so appealing to even Christians who otherwise have no use for such religion.
It's a short work week and I'm already worrying about all that needs to be done and how little time there is to do all that others say you must so they can be idle.  Lord let there be more Indians and fewer chiefs.
I talked to Dad today.  That was good too. Thank you Jesus for caring for him.  I read my brother's blog and enjoyed his pictures. Thank you for family Lord.   It was sunny there.  Dad was glad to hear of Gilbert and his always wanting to play ball.