Yuma, Day 8

It was a wholly productive day of completion of things I wanted to do.  I actually made it to Mexico.  It’s hardly an hour from here. Crossing the border was a non issue.  I was just waved through. Once across the border I was immediately waved into a parking spot by an English speaking man I thought was customs.

‘ What are you here for? ». 

« I want to find a pharmacy for female hormones . »

‘ This is one here, » he replied pointing to essentially the first store across the border ».

He helped me park by holding up traffic while I parked. I had realized by then that he worked for the pharmacy.  

‘What do you want? ». 

« Estrace.  Estradiol, » 

« Yes we have that. »

So just like that I had feminizing hormone pills and more voltairien emolgel cream for my back pain.  

I had left Yuma at 3:30 pm only expecting to look about and here I’d achieved a major goal. I drove about the town.  So many dentists.  A ‘medical tourism’ bus drove by full of old people., I saw so many health care places, cosmetic surgery, Botox, laboratories, laser treatment, physician offices, pain specialists.  By and far the dentists were most represented.  I had not wanted to be in Mexico after dark which begins around 5 pm.  I’d driven about for a half hour seeing that the paved roads were only main thoroughfares and all the others were unpaved sand and gravel. There were no lights so intersections were a bit of a challenge. I think everyone else was wise to the alternating traffic but I had difficulty knowing when I should go and fearful of hitting another car.  However I’m anxious and tend to catastrophize . It all went well but I didn’t want to be doing it in the dark. The trouble was when I went to the border there was a 10 block line up. I don’t know why so many people go to the US at the end of the day but they do. The line moved along just fine, only a half hour, with people walking along trying to sell stuffed toys, toy guns with coat hangers attached, clothing, hats, belts and hot food.  I said no gracias to all.  Madigan stopped barking when they approached the car after the first one.  

At the border I was only asked what I had been doing in Mexico.

‘Buying medication. »

What type?

« Feminizing hormones. » 

« Okay »

I was back in America.  Beside the entrance was a large parking lot where RV’s were. I speculated that people stayed there so they could walk across he border for various treatment like implants which would take days.  There was an opitician offering same day service for making progressive lens at $99 US.  I’d paired several hundred for my last pair so thought about getting another pair of glasses next visit.  

It was night as I returned the short distance to Yuma. The sky was pink with the radiant dessert sunset.  

I stopped at a drive through fast food place, This was a really good soup and sandwich place. I’ve been having burgers and fries since arriving, a couple of meals, and deep fried chicken fingers. No wonder there is an epidemic of obesity in America. I did get some food at Target so have had morning breakfast of sausage and eggs with Best Western , peanut butter sandwiches at noon and a microwave meal or two that was probably healthier. There’s nothing like take out Macdonalds’ for coming hone to watching movies,

Last night it was the Godfather 1 and .2.  The channel changer doesn’t change channels but is stuck on the movie channel and so far I’ve enjoyed the reruns.

My back is slowly improving but I still get excruciated bolts of pain walking. I’m still unsteady on my feet.  I just feel it’s better, steady low grade dull wearying ache and the severest pain with walking especially on uneven ground,  I’ve been doing the back exercises in the « The Essential Lower Back Pain Exercise Guide, by Morgan Sutherland LMT. 

So many of my patients suffer chronic pain and I can appreciate how debilitating it is and how it cause depression.  I was bed ridden the second time my back was injured in a car crash. I still pray for the fellow speeding and being such an irresponsible driver.  I did a 180 pitch pole then a roll another 360 landing the Toyota Corolla upright.  I didn’t believe I could live through a pitch pole and still remember that belief I would die.  I then was shocked to be alive and checked the other  car driver and passenger were fine as they’d gone off the road behind and beside me without rolling or pitch poling, an old boat of a Buick.  

I feel all pain is psychosomatic,  Now I feel I’ve been carrying the world on my shoulder and known so many betrayals mostly by the women in my life but others too. I feel that now I’m being stabbed in the back by government. I’ve been so utterly and deeply disappointed by the Trudeau crime family and their allegiance to Communist China. It’s been overwhelmingly demoralizing.  I’ve listened to countless complaints about the lockdowns and inflation and mostly they are good people. Mostly social work problems and political problems.  Meanwhile I’ve been working from home and while I was walking the dog an going swimming regularly I wasn’t doing enough yoga and tai chi which I’ve done for many years and it’s prevented what I’m feeling now.  My sedentary life style not going out doing less rather than more, coasting, surviving has contributed so much to the present pain. I’ve been in pain for over a year now,  I was eating ibuprofen daily when I took Laura to Europe.  I was uplifted in mood by seeing the highlands and the museums and art galleries of Edinburg, Oxford, London and Paris,  

I’m getting old and feel the aches and pains are increasing and this has been a serious wake up call to my growing limitation, I have a worsening tremor in my right arm add to the back pain.  I’ve hearing aids and glasses with worsenign sight and hearing, I lost a lot of my sense of smell and some of my sense of taste.  I don’t have the enthusiasm or enjoyment or even joie de vivre I once had, On the other hand I’m grateful for a full life though I feel the lack of children and grandchildren,

I realize the church is for family and I’m not willing to be a monk yet. I may any day take that route but I’m entertained by the transgender experience.  I don’t feel safe or valued much as a man.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I ve been hurt often having sex on top and yet women collectively, older ones especially, seen to not like being on top.  Blow jobs are fine and life is okay but I’m faced with a week of back pain after sex and cialis or viagra leaves me with gastritis and stomach pains and IBS.  Getting old is not for the young. Ive seen a few doctors and they’ve reassured me that it’s not anything worse and encouraged me to keep moving.   

I don’t think it gets better but thankfully it doesn’’t get worse for a while.  I worry about my mood and am pleased that I can lessen the drive to provide and protect. Theoretically I should have sough to have children to give me life and purpose , some younger woman who isn’t filled with Trudeau hatred of family.  Yet I’d tried and enjoy most my older friend. I am one of those single people who identify with the single celibate transgender and older gay folk who being single and celibate aren’t ready to be no sexual and aren’t offended by sexuality and seem to be accepting. I laugh because au femme I’m accepted or avoided whereas au drab I’m routinely hit on or faced with men especially institutional losers bullying,  I am so weary of the bullying I’ve experienced especially wh the the authorities back outright lying psychopaths against me and my idea that I’ve been good serving member of society contributing and not falsely accusing others or bullying. I’m too old to fight and am thankful for ODAAT. I surrender.  I would self castrate like Origen .  My uncastrated dogs aren’t a threat to other dogs in day care but rather the castrated dogs attack him.  The envy is even at the dog level.  I was manly and now the weak men like Justin Trudeau are a scourge on men who are unanimously called ‘radical right wing’ and for me estrogen seems a solution.  Any day now I’ll naturally stop testosterone production and slip into oblivion,  These are stop gap measures,

I thought it funny that I started estrogen on Remembrance Day.  Lest we forget.   Im Klinger,

I loved hearing Elon Musk, when asked what is the greatest risk he sees , and he answered ‘population collapse’.  The whole overpopulation lie was debunked.  I’ve held that position for decades pointing out the catastrophising of the media and government and the constant theft and lies.  Oh well. I sailed and was silent for so much of my life, in the wilderness.  Fool on the hill or monk.  

It’s been a good life and new chapter is beginning for now. I don’t know. Today I do the next right thing and what feels right.  I’m believing I’m continuing to contributing. I’m still being of service.  There is overt scarcity but mostly because of Marxist mismanagement rather than the actual case. It’s has long been apparent that we have a ‘peace time army’ of expanding management layers and layers of incompetence with the front line workers like myself overburdened, understaffed and blamed.  

I tend to self pity.  I tend to catastrophisme. I know so many who are partying because they are rewarded beyond their competence while we who know are expected to be perfect lead by leaders who don’t lead but rather order and stand at the back shooting any who slacken .  

I have a resentment to authority.  Governnent killed Jesus.  

All is God.

I ask for God’s will, I’ve meditated today and prayed.  I am now going to shower and dress.  Poor madigan hasn’t been out for a walk. I may have to get some sweats or shorts for that task. I only brought summer dresses and have to shower before I take him out. A hoodie might allow me to do that task before showing,  Today I even had a coffee after shaving and doing exercise on my Matt. I had to take ibuprofen to stand in the shower.  Standing has been painful, Thankfully sitting isn’t painful and I’ve been able to do virtual work. There’s some pain after sitting too long, Getting out of the car is difficult.  But now I’ve had a coffee and three ibuprofen I’m ready to shower. I might even be able to get breakfast. It’s Saturday so I’ve broken from the routine i have during the workdays.  

He’s so excited when I put on his leash and he loves to go out with me,

Shower then dress and dog walk if the pain isn’t too bad

Remembrance Day and St. Barnabas Anglican Church, New Westminster, BC

I loved to go the Remembrance Day services when my RCAF father was alive.  One of my fondest memories is of him sitting with the WWII vets at the Vancouver cenotaph. I was so proud.

Yet the Rembrance Day  services were outside ,I was down with flu, and back pain made standing for a service level less appealing. Attending church seemed the more physically wise decision.
Laura and I like St. Barnabus Anglican Church because they are dog friendly.  It was the right decision.  Gilbert and I had met Rev. Emilie Smith but Laura hadn’t.

 “I really liked her.” Laura would later say.  “She’s so uplifting but also so down to earth.’  Gilbert liked her dog and Laura liked that her dog had it’s own pillow bed.  The congregation was small and intimate.  There’s a sense of community.  We’re outsiders but we felt welcomed.  

I loved that Rev. Smith talked about the ‘war to end all wars’ and that Remebrance Day was not to glorify war but to honour the men and women who made such sacrifices for peace.

In a very inspired and moving moment, Rev. Smith walked away from the altar to the walls where there were plaques recalling the men of St. Barnabus Congregation who had fought and some who had fallen in the war. She read the names. She shared of her own experience of Remembrance Day growing up in BC Interior and asked others to share of their experience of those who’d been in war.  Some did.  In her sermon she spoke of the women and orphans and the call to Christians to care for the widows and orphans.
I felt at home as she spoke of love.  I felt the living water of Christian spirituality wash over me.  Grace.   I enjoyed the Prayers of the people. During the service Laura pointed up as we heard the planes flying over as part of the Remembrance Day fly overs.  I thought of my RCAF father and mom and all the air shows we attended as children. My neighbour Mack who had attended the Langley Remembrance Day service would name off the old war planes that had participated. I told him Laura and I had heard them in church.

The piano was vibrant.. I loved the hymn ‘Come and Fill Our Hearts.’I was sorry we arrived late as the first hymn’ Be Thou My Vision’ is one of my all time favourites. Seeing it chosen gave me the sense I really was in the right place that morning. 

Gilbert loves the Peace when everyone greets each other individually. A little girl clapped her hands and greeted him.  He was also able to get enough leash to sniff the reverends dog.   Laura and I smiled and shook hands with all the fine and welcoming people.  

Eucarist.  Communion. Breaking of bread.  Partaking of the Blood and Body of Jesus. Finally the Sending out.  Reverend Smith, said “Go forth in peace and love, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.’ And we all said, “Thanks Be to God”. 

There was coffee after and I was tempted but with a cold and feeling tired I was glad when Laura said another time as we had to get home today.  

Such was another great Sunday service.  

Dysthymia, Adjustment Disorder, Major Mood Disorder, Bipolar, Melancholy

I'm feeling blah.  Vaguely disgrunted.  The technical term for this state is 'dysthymia'. I'm off. It's that Monday morning thing but it's Tuesday morning.
It's not an intrinsic thing. It's not autochthonous. It's not 'fixed'.
I haven't been continuously like this fo 2 weeks or more.  It's not like I have a major mood disorder. On the weekend with Laura, walking about Vancouver, playing tourist in my own city,  I felt really good. With a major mood disorder that wouldn't happen.  The depressed feeling would be more continuous.  I was enjoying something I'm interested in whereas with a major mood disorder I'd not enjoy things or people I usually do. I usually enjoy Laura and I certainly enjoyed her this weekend.
It's not that I have mood swings, either. Technically "mood swings" represent spontaneous shifts in mood independent of my environment. I felt good on the weekend because I was walking about town with a beautiful woman on a sunny day.
Today I feel blah and probably can come up with some pretty good reasons.   My concentration and memory were just fine on the weekend and they're fine today.  I was highly motivated on the weekend and I still am.  I certainly don't feel like there's no reason for living.  I wouldn't rather die. That's what one feels with  severe depression.
It wasn't melancholy either. If I had melancholia, Laura, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren all couldn't put humpty dumpty together again.  Winning the lottery or getting a months vacation in Hawaii wouldn't lift melancholy.  Melancholy is the deepest depression and its independent of environment.  Severe major mood disorder doesn't get better with environmental rewards though with a mood disorder one can fake it a bit and smile. Not with melancholia. There's no faking it with melancholia.  Major Mood Disorder is fairly common.  I've only encountered a very few cases of melancholia.  The principle reason for so few of the latter is the success of modern psychiatry.  The cases of melancholia I saw had begun as major depressions but just got worse and worse without treatment until a couple of  people were mute and catatonic.
My minimalist blahs seem more related to the coming of winter, the routine, the stresses daily living and working in a city like Vancouver living, the same old - same old, aches and pains, aging, injured dog, self pity.
It's more an adjustment disorder sort of thing though not  even important enough or at the level to get that label.  Adjustment disorder is an exaggeration of a normal response to life stress.  One's reaction can be so negative and prolonged that an Adjustment Disorder can become a major mood disorder. But the standard adjustment disorder with depressed mood or mixed emotions can be related specifically to a significant event like loss of a job.  My blahs are too general for that.
Dysthymia is a lower grade  but more chronic thing. It can be permanent. Cognitive behaviour therapy says clearly we feel what we think. So negative thinking begets dysthymia.  Hemorrhoids do too.  Lots of things contribute to the dysthymia. Mostly it's self centeredness and bad coping habits. Personally, physiologically, I've not been getting to bed on time. So I've had a couple of days with an hour or so less sleep staying up later watching tv. That's all it takes when you're older to have a bad disposition.  A little more rest and I'll probably spring back.  
I've been isolated more this last couple of weeks. Misery loves company. Because my dog has been injured I've missed  church and meetings I'd other wise attend.  I'm in the midst of a slow process of change with a new office and staff.  Change, positive or negative, is experienced physiologically as stress.  I've had a lot of changes recently.
Where I might other wise have taken a course to "energize' me, I've just been 'taking care of business'. I'd forgotten how much stress is involved in a move. It was kind of negative stress too. Forced upon me by management.
There is  nothing like a positive new activity to perk up a dull life.  For years I took evening school classes till I had a Master of Divinity.  That really made the winter months fly by.   I might never use my M Div officially  but the learning was really exciting. Before that I'd done my Ship's Captain studies in Navigation and Offshore Sailing. I certainly used that learning.  Life is more an adventure when one is learning new skills.  The same held true when I took Spanish Classes and Hebrew.
The blahs are a bit like 'boredom' or 'ennui'. They're a bit self centered.
If I want to feel good, I must do good.  So I have to make changes. Maybe I'll go swimming tonight.  I always feel better after I exercise (never before).   I cleaned my place a few months back when I was feeling listless.  Nothing makes one feel better than scrubbing the house down.  I may have to put up the rack I got which will unclutter my kitchen. Anything that gets oneself out of oneself will take care of the blahs.  I'm not sure I'm feeling bad enough for such a drastic intervention as house cleaning but I know it would work.
I haven't been able to go for runs or long walks like I did with the dog since his injury so that's contributing.  Sloth and sedentary living are a major cause of all depressions.
With the sunshine lessening I probably should get the SAD Lite out.
It's also  Remembrance Day tomorrow. So this is an anniversary.  I 've felt sad every year at this time. As a child I was talk gratitude for  the soldiers for their service to Canada. As an adult I've been priviledged to help so many.  I've heard the most harrowing stories and never wanted to change places with guys who've been in the front line. Sure a good office job far from the front looked seductive as anything but nothing 'out beyond the wire'.   Without the Canadian Army, Navy, and Air Force we could all be like the Syrians or Afghanistanis.  My dad was RCAF .  I was honored to meet alot of military folk because of him.  Men who'd been in our army, navy, or air force in WWII. With Remembrance Day tomorrow I can't help but think of him.  I miss him too.  This alone could explain a day of the blahs. Grief. Grieving Dad.  Grieving all those soldiers who sacrificed their life for my freedom.

Remembrance Day

This morning is a hard start.  Hard start refers to an engine that won’t turn over.  It refuses to spark.  I’ve slept in.  First time in months.  Usually I’m in this robotic routine that gets me up and out of the house to work approximately on time.  Thousands of days of work. Thousands of before dawn days.  Today the sun is shining.
I got up and moved to a chair to meditate. My mind wasn’t on God, or Peace or Bliss. I wasn’t ‘mindful’.  I wasn’t even able to focus on prayers.  My soul had attention deficit disorder.  The monkey mind staggering through its various concerns.  Nothing compelling. Just distracting. No energy apparently to focus.  I lack the passion for God. I want my bed instead.
I am the monk who went back to bed.  
I napped on the couch.  Eventually,  the dog, impatient,  climbed all over  me.  I'm a dog mat.  He  licked my face.   Alright, already.
I got up again.  I let mutt out.  It's a crisp day.  He peed,sniffed,looked about and came back in when I called.
I have the day off. A tabala rosa day.  Remembrance Day. November 11.
Remembrance Day.  My father was RCAF.  World War II Royal Canadian Air Force.  Thanks to the sacrifice of the soldiers I’ve lived  a life of relative peace dealing only with self righteous smug and power abusing bureaucrats rather than facing the more judgemental nature of bullets and bombs.  All I have to complain about is the silly grade school officiousness of the stupid and arrogant.  Elsewhere, outside of Canada, children are being killed by random suicide bombers with bad hair and bad attitudes. Mothers and fathers are keening.
I remember my father at the cenotaph.  I was with Laura then.  The RCMP were resplendent in red serge.  Dad was proud to be among his fellow soldiers. He was a west coast bomber in WWII.  He said they  thanked him for bombing a submarine.
“I think it was a whale”, he said. The fog of war.  The humility of my father.
I’m thankful for the privilege of the years working with Veterans Affairs. I saw the old men and women,   heard their stories of being young.   They told me they knew no better than to do as they were told.  They followed orders and nearly died rescuing friends.   It was a hellish time.  They were heroes.  They held their heads high.  They knew the meaning of friendship.  They had solid values. Their houses were built on strong foundations.
Now the veterans I see are more often from forgotten wars of other countries where petty tyrants fought their neighbours, all of it more like medieval jousts with people as peasants.    They saw no glory in their service. Their countries have forgotten them. Regimes have changed.  They escaped.  They live here now.  In Canada.
Here the silly and stupid  forfeit the very rights my father fought for.  The leaders made promises. They've reneged on them now.  They hide behind  the fashion political correctness. They're all up the skirts of girls using them as puppets.
“We’ve aborted more of our own people than the Nazi killed in the war,” she said.  The nihilism of the atheism of our secular age is so in contrast to the robustness of the last generation.   I look around and see the  Germany or Russia of  1930’s.  Except we have shopping malls.  The cathedrals and temples go empty but the parking lots are full.
Dad believed in the working man.  He didn’t know his creed was ‘meritocracy’.  Reward those who work for the common good.  He actually liked the politicians of his day.  Mother celebrated the city leadership.  There was a pride in achievement.  They worried about the greed of their neighbour and were furious about the encroaching taxes. Overall they enjoyed life.  They were  family.
 I was a part of family, still am, even though I fall apart.   It's just the way I'm wired or maybe it comes with my work.   The existential angst.  The scream on a wood cut bridge.  I have some sort of spiritual seizure disorder. I see myself flailing about when everyone else seems a happy cabbage in the happy cabbage patch.
Right now I've attached my discontent to growing old. I could as easily stick it on a political party or a winter season, a lover or just about any fact of life.
Who is that hairy white bearded straggly haired wrinkled thing I see in the mirror.
I don’t think my father wondered at the mirror. His was a more accepting bent.  He complained about the aches and pains of labour but he wasn’t concerned with mirrors. His wasn't a selfie generation.  The facade was critical.  Their generation had the lawns and picket fences. Ours has plastic surgery.  No one is without pretention.  Even the priests like their gold laced robes.
I’ve saved a lot of lives.  I’ve been present and trained for a lot of crisis, emergency and mystery. I’ve repeatedly, thousands of times now ,convinced people not to die, either by cutting out something, physically tying off something, stopping the actual bleeding or starting up the lungs again by thumping on a dozen chests or more.  Sometimes I just took away a bottle of pills, or  hid the knifes. I've been forever convincing people it’s worth it to live.  I've fought morbidity and mortality daily sometimes hourly for 35 years.   I do hope I'm right.
When I die I could meet a whole lot of angry people in paradise hating me for keeping them in their jobs and marriages, paying taxes and supporting the latest liberal regime.  In that personal nightmare of mine it doesn't matter how you got 'there' .  There are no conditions. You just have to get out of 'here'. The babies are the greatest winners in that afterlife. In that dream I'm the greatest evil there is. Satan selling life in this materialist secular Platonic shadow world when over the hill in the promised land, with no conditions. Unconditional love for all. Kill yourself and you still get a harp. Everyone has a personal cloud. There is no hell.  No hell. No purgatory. No loss or grief. But rather you awake in wonder and hate that 'fucking psychiatrist' who kept you chained to misery all those years.  And here I thought I was a saviour when really I was nothing more than a prison guard making sure everyone filled their allotted sentence, my own fear of death, holding others here.
Mostly these days I use all my training in motivation, analysis, hypnosis and pharmaceuticals to convince people to let go of the needle. I counteract the slavery of the pin prick.  It's all in the ritual. The blood letting, the injecting, the heating, the transaction, the sleep, the passion to avoid the pain.  The myth of Sissyphus. And then again the vultures come to pluck at the eyes of another Graecian hero.  They’re as fixated on their self made myths as my dog is fixated on his yellow tennis ball.  Their lives are reduced. Obsessions.  Compulsions.  Addictions. Slaves to the drug dealers.  I ride in on my white pony, more a jack ass, a harley davidson actually. I wrestle the man from the dealers. The dealers are actually kind of  glad to give him up now that they've taken his house, his home, his wife, his kids, his job, his dog, his health. There's so little money and will to live that our struggle for this remnant is ritual itself. They're interested in a new loser. They want a celebrity or a banker, maybe a doctor, or a lawyer, a younger heiress. That's who they'd rather devote their time to. So they let this one go.  I good samaritan him back to wholeness and hope he doesn't look back knowing he'll turn to salt if he does.
And I must reassure myself that I should live each day.  Each day I must reaffirm life. Sometimes many times in the day I must do this.  All day long my office is an argument for defeat.  It’s about suicide or addiction or leaving a marriage or a relationship or getting into another abusive marriage or relationship or not working or working in an abusive relationship with a satyrical boss or becoming a terrorist, or slashing.  Losing direction or faith and not knowing where the detour occurred. I come into the abyss and join the darkness to find you thn hope we  find our way back together.  You bitch and complain all the way and when you get into the light and have the strength to stand on your feet you will curse me forever for taking you out of your rabbit hole. There will be enemies of mine who will join you. Those are the ones whose finances I've affected by criticizing their hypocrisy.   I believe I'm  helping rebuild in a world bent on destruction.  I'm  helping lose  the needle back in the hay stack.  I'm suggesting we look for love and work instead.
What is the meaning? What is the reason?  
Death is stalking me.
I’ve been in the shadow of the valley.
I’ve held the dying in my arms. Now I am the dying. We always were. But didn't think of it that way. A daily dance.  A song of songs.  A cruel or kind embrace.
I’ve known the last words.
I’ve been the last face.
I’ve had little reason for doubt in those times.
There is a certainty in reality. I’m among ideologues, talking heads who can’t find their ass with both hands.  I’m unduly judgemental. I know their fear is like fingernails on glass. There’s a whine and screech I hear. I see it in their bodies. Their hypertension and the organ failures speak to the war they’re waging. It’s hard for everyone to go on.  I don't imagine others can know the sheer volume of experience, the screech of emotions as they talk and shout so many things, yet really think they're being 'discrete'.  The ones in uniforms are the loudest. They have the shortest fuses.  They judge themselves as they judge others. Harshly.
Even the rich and privileged come to their ends, face death.  The money men and women lack the equanimity of philosophers or poets.  "You can’t take it with you.", they even say ,unknowingly.   I hear their screams in terror in the anger of their skin. I see the pulsations of troubled arteries. The vessels in their eyes betray them. Their pupils are worth a thousand words.  They lie to themselves.  There is such terror in the death of materialists.  I’m bolstered by my spiritualism. I’m comforted by my faith.  The faithless flounder before life and death.   Lies no longer serve them in that last encounter.
He hung himself.  I knew him well.
I knew him and could not convince him that there was more to life than a needle in his arm.  I failed him as much as I failed the woman when I held her dead baby in my hands.  Oh I know there were others.  It takes a village to raise a child. The baby was dead before I was called to the hospital.  I was only there to witness. I recorded the man's passing as well. Our conversations about the 'culture of addiction' and the need for 'self medication', his 'right to die' and all that other stuff.  Armchair philosophers love to talk. He was a wonderful man.  So young. A mere 50 year old. Old for the dark ages but so young today.  So sad. Such tragedy.  The dealers had long ago stopped giving him money and fast cars. The good time girls had gone.  He was so sick he hardly stole enough for his needs.  He was alone in an SRO when they found him.  Hanging.
So many live their lives in jail or asylums. I don’t know how I could go on with out the wilderness or the sea.  I escape to these empty wild and full reaches where sometimes hardly a bird or an animal interrupts my solitude. The hum of the anthill city is far away. The illusion of the substance of crowds is behind me. I’m hanging on a mast or sitting in a clearing with a rifle watching and waiting.  The solitude washes over me healing like gentian violet.  The sickness leaves for a while.  The suffering is less. God the chimney sweep has taken away a load of soot.
Desire remains.
I miss her scent, her nakedness, the loveliness of her.  I miss the dying between her legs that resurrected and restored my faith as much as any time in the wild.  Before she lost her faith and way.  Before we slid apart.  Sweat is slippery.
He told me of the men on the upturned life raft in the North Atlantic, the freezing numbing cold, others slipping into the dark, then later the sharks.  He remembers the faces of the men..  He didn’t know why held on or why he lived.  Remembrance day is special for him.  He gives thanks and mourns his comrades long lost.  One day he expects to meet with them again.
I don’t know why, he says. I don't know why I never let go.
She thought it was all ‘luck’.  Mine was good. Hers was bad.  She was a victim. I was a victimizer.  I just remember the work.  I don’t like that they deny the work today.  Fatalism.  I prefer ‘karma’ and ‘retribution’.  Yet I really don’t know why I was born to parents who loved me or why I decided to always to work for the benefit of my fellow man while she set out to serve herself and her own and today is lonely.  I explain today it's for the money. That's the reason they understand.  It's only when I explain how to make money they see the reason in my serving. Was it only about the money?  How can they understand that it was little about the money. If you can save a life you can make a million but what's a million to a dying man.  I dream of being alone at sea again crossing oceans facing challenges and adventures, but going where.  It's always here.
I don’t know why I didn’t rest when there was ‘enough’. Like my grandfather and father I worked longer for the times of trouble and saved as they did.  All around me there were parties.  All around me there were ‘easy schemes’ but instead I just got up before dawn and went to work and returned long after dusk.  When I was "taking time off" I was learning other skills.
The government gets votes with redistribution schemes.   Steal from the rich and give to the poor.  More and more I see my counterparts working under the table,  working scams.   The rewards gone out of honest work. The sacrifice and work are no longer  redistributed.  Only the rewards are redistributed. The pay off is in the complaining.   The thugs steal the potatoes of the farmers till all is like Africa where no one ‘saves’ because ‘savings’ are stolen.  Like children.   It’s become that here with the banks and the greed of bankers.  My father told me of the men who hid coins in mattresses because they couldn’t trust the banks of his day.
Only the nouveau rich flaunt their wealth.
I’ve stored my earnings in education and now am aging towards dementia.  All the lessons of survival and success I’ve learned will be fore naught when my mind is lost.  Forget about the banks.  Insaniety erodes all much quicker.
So what is dementia. Not the silly materialist explanation. But Lethe.  What is the forgetting.  The stupid are always happier than the smartest.  There’s blessings in mediocrity that the mediocre cannot know.  Intellectuals are a morbid lot.
God doesn’t want our ideas as much as he loves our dance.
It’s not called the ‘song of creation’ for naught.  The celestial spheres make music.  I may lose my mind but I’ll not lose my inner ear.  I’ll always dream.  To dream that is the rub.
These days my dreams have been happy and adventuresome.  The nightmares still occur but less so.
I did like this coffee.  What a miracle the world of distribution is.  This global product is my miracle. My fridge is sacred. It runs on propane or electricity.  I have this wonder of a gas stove I’ll light again and make another cup. To savour a morning cup of coffee. This is true wealth.  It’s not the myriad of things but rather the ability to enjoy them. To have the presence and peace of mind to languish in the moment and love the celebration of creation. That is the elixir of youth.
What will I do today?  I’ve been reading this brilliant book by a new French Canadian author. I’d surely like to finish it before I see him next.  The dog definitely wants a walk.  There are meetings to go to, church services and gatherings of those who are honouring our soldiers.  It’s Remembrance Day.  I can’t help but remember my father.  I miss him.  We all missed my mom when she went first.  I was such a fool when I was younger.  There was so much I wanted to know.  But he knew I’d learn it soon enough.  There’s somethings one can’t learn with words alone.  Experience has taught me his wisdom.