Pressure

It’s the weekend. I usually recuperate on the weekend.  I’ve had a little relaxation.  Of all things at the hair dresser. Chatter’s. Good place. Good vibe. “You are beautiful’ on the wall.  My grey turned to platinum blonde so I can avoid stereotypes as ageism strikes.  Is it better to be an old man or an old lady.  Trips to the hair dresser and nail professionals versus hunting and fishing. I’m becoming rather slothful in my future desires.  

This weekend I’ve been faced with taxes.  I’ve collected all I need but this year I’ve been doing it ‘digital’.  The difficulty now is generating  reports for Anil. 

I have further been unable to access the Scotia banking app.  It requires a password but my Pw had been facial recognition.  I have the app on the ipad and it’s working but I’ve not had it working on the new phone. I was afraid to change passwords because the absurd password function requires me to give them information that is really bizarre from within the account I am trying to access.  I had this same problem when I started the app.  It required a phone call.  The problem with the phone calls is that the wait time is a “over 20 minutes’ . I gave up after a half hour or closer to an hour realizing that the bank isn’t watching call need with staff.  If ever there was a time to hate bankers it’s now as the elite make obscene profits off Covid.

Meanwhile I’m struggling with my thoughts and their tendency to drift into that cognitive behavioural mire of ‘self pity’ and ‘anger’.  I’m overwhelmed by this subpoenae to court by the greedy and elite.  I’m dealing daily with life and death and these lawyers in the interest of greed are demanding I leave my practice for a day to be available to discuss a report I wrote a decade ago. The case fell down because the people wanted more money.  I was fired and it was all chaos. My positive report at the time served them and was reasonable but I have no idea where things are today and this 19th century legal lie about ‘memory’ is fundamentally archaic.  The conventions that exist in the law and politics are 19th century and frightening.  I’m having nightmares again nightly faced with the prospect of going to court.I can’t stand the court anymore after a judge in a hissy fit or error and rage and corruption tried to destroy me in his error given he’d chosen the errors of a junior to condemn my patient.  The judge was corrected for his error and I was just doing my job. I was telling the truth and doing the next right thing and this awful human being called me a liar without proof and defended a coke dealing sociopath to the cost of my patient and her family.  Some personal vendetta, some karmic event where the dirty man had dirty money and paid a fortune to spite the little girl who had nothing.  She’d become addicted to coke getting her coke from lawyers and doing coke with lawyers. I saw her and helped her bccome clean and sober. Her coke partner stayed on coke with illegal money and set out to hound her to her death. When she died his judge and lawyer came after me and everyone who had defended the little girl.  It was the greatest evil I’d seen in court.  The courts here are 90% okay but corruption is rife. The marijuana industry was 80 billion a year. The fentanyl and other drug industries are more. The money laundering in the city is 400 billion one estimates.  Gang wars leave bodies dead in the streets.  The Pistons cannibalism and missing girls and pedophilia are all alive and well but obscured by the censorship of the press.  This all doesn’t happen without corrupt judges.  I just think I was lucky that 90% of the judges I came before were really okay.  I wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for my oath to help my patients and the requirement for me to serve them.  I decided that my patients who were head injured and traumatized needed me to know enough about the law and injury so I even attended courses and prepared reports for my patients.  The forensic lawyers are some of the highest paid in the profession. I wasn’t .  I’ve always ended up at the lower end of income because I’ve worked with those most in need or with the highest risk least desirable.  

In the world of AA and NA there’s all this angst but the fact in patients with drug addiction and even in recovery are the least desirable of patients because they’re the most entitled and angry and complicated .  So I’m working with these people every day.  It’s supposed to be because I’m empathic and because I binged drank.  I never drank more than my colleagues who still drink and do drugs. There was a group of us. I sought help because my ex wife had become dangerous in her addiction and at times wholly dysfunctional when she wasn’t doing the most bizarre behaviours.  She refused to go into treatment and refused to stop doing drugs and refused to get help. So I sought help. I accepted that I couldn’t drink and often slipped and said ‘my wife is unmanageable.’  I’d actually said “I could treat a hundred insane people and get paid or spend the day with you alone and not get paid but I couldn’t do both.  She was actively suicidal at the time. And I asked physician help for help.  Their agenda was to separate us and treat me.  I was struggling with my marriage failing after my last marriage failed after I was raped and drugged with my supervisor a famous doctor from a famous doctor family, all above the law.  I’d begun to drink after that or when I was taken hostage or when I was in the plane crash and mercy flight.  It was all trauma but the friend of the psychiatrist who abused me said I was schizophrenic and delusional about those claims ….eventually I’d be seen by other pscyhiatrists who were not part of the sex with student gang and not related to the original psychiatrist and they all said I was okay. No schizophrenia.  

I concluded that with the world so scared I couldn’t afford to drink or smoke a joint because these people in charge who owned the world would do terrible evil to me. I’d go on to work pro bono for a good lawyer righting wrongs in the legal system, helping prisoners falsely accused and terribly wronged and I knew and was afraid of what I saw being done here. The only balance was when I worked for the refugee system and saw how much worse it was in other countries.  The religious dictatorship of Iran and the South American dictatorships and communist dictatorship.

I’ve made some progress, accessing the bank app on the iPhone 13. I’d had it on the iPad but can’t download reports. Have to get tax data to Anil.

I get distracted by Amber and Billy stories and pictures. I want to create a book and self publish as well as the psychiatry book and travels with cockapoo,, I could expand it to dogs including Shinto and Stuart.

I really would like to do a few month trip with camper through southern us, maybe even drive into America. It’s all too dangerous. I don’t think Amber thinks like an old lady or Billy like an old man. These fictions characters of fiction are both at most 40. I’m curious at how I’ll be after this vacation and birthday. Laura seems to be aging well and more anxious about the adventures I plan. I don’t think she is happy at the idea of heading up to Alaska or down to Louisiana. She seems happiest with her sister and they had their adventures young and now are growing old more gracefully. I even thought of riding my motorcycle down to Argentina but now fear accidents. I’d sail my sailboat down to the Caribbean but fear the cost of damage to the boat. I’m mostly thinking of fears of cost or harm to body. I once just jumped in. I miss the bravery. I miss the adventure. I love in a strict routine, working, producing money and paying off the mortgage. 

I love the spring and summer and camping and already am looking forward to it but don’t like the idea of winter next year and would gladly head south and spend three months working virtual out of Arizona. I like Arizona. 

I’d like to get my boat where I could use it. This having it up on land isn’t good, paying thousands for storage isn’t good but if I sell it now I lose in tax, better to sell things when I’m not working. I can’t have RRSP’s next year so more tax. I don’t think I’m working smart and not really enjoying work so much. Covid, lockdown, election, politics make everything difficult and confusing.

Work is taking up too much of my mind with this subpoena and all the Beurocratic and administrative demands and government a predator. I’m afraid to retire given the rank abuse of the elderly. I’d like to write and travel and succède as a writing making money to carry on but fear cases like this 10 years old and me being subpoenaed to appear and play the lawyer game where they act like they know memory and what occurred a year ago is changed by politics and time. Retrospective falsification and fashion all the social court matters.I’ve already had to deal with a judge who argued Moynihan’s Law existed forever when in fact it was created and didn’t take into account the oath a doctor takes to serve his patient. Unbelievable. I am an expert witness and assist the court but my first duty as a doctor is too my patients so here was anew law which attempted to put the judge above the covenant of doctor patient. More Trudeau dictatorship. It would be easy to sell out the patients but the fil political college demands that the doctor perfectly please the patient and popular doctors don’t get complaints. Smart doctors avoids addicts and borderlines because they complain. Because I refused to give drugs to patients they complained the the college whose process cost me $1000 destroying private practice and prejudicing doctors against mentally ill and addicted. 

I want to go somewhere I can treat patients and be judged on the morbidity and mortality not gossip and political correctness. I am afraid of patients too. I faced the guns and knives they brought into the office and threatened me with, but now I know the college will back the criminals and liars and psychopaths. The man threatened to kill me and his dog and his employers and his lawyer and I was faulted by the utterly incompetent cowardly ignorant college for critic ing me for not seeing and bêlaient his lies. I read when they built the walls of Jericho the enemy would attack so they had to half the workers and make them guards. All I have is time and the beurocrats and lawyers have time and are paid forever while I and my patients are without time or resources and I feel time and resources are finite and I’m being punished forced to appear in court, unpaid, bullied, threatened, cancelling a day of work all so everyone else can make a killing. It’s just about their money and I’m punished for proving above and beyond the care and time till I was fired because I wouldn’t lie or and now they want me to face the same old dilemna where I’ll be in court with a judge who has already proved he’s an enemy of physicians and I’ll risk answering truthfully a question that could upset the the family because they are so greedy and will blame me if they don’t get more more more and the family never was mp patient and the family refused to see a psychiatrist and I don’t know but fear my patient will suicide because that’s what happened the last time a judge didn’t care or know about mental health and from his 19th century mind and given he listened to a corrupt ignorant reprehensible junior I’ll trained wrong person created hell. I’m having nightmares and my mind won’t work as it keeps sliding into the past despite all I do to think positively and skip the triggers. I’ve asked for help and the junior person is well intentioned. My fears are catastrophic and each day I go to work I feel because I’m not getting sleep and am so anxious and depressed I can’t be perfect like the college demands of all doctors. Be perfect because we’re not. Their hypocrisy and arrogance are so pathetic but we have a little ignorant elite bully pervert in PM office kowtowing to the murderous corrupt Communist chines.

I don’t know. I’m enjoying sun and walks with the dog around the neighbourhood. I burnt my meal last night and ate it.

Im enkyoying tv.

This new massage mat has helped my psychosomatic back pain. I was cane and strapped in school and  raped at university and always I was blamed. I love God and sometimes just want it to end but know that’s just crazy because my life is great and only my mind is the problem. I have to get it into the present. 

My dog has his paw on my side and the sun is shining.

Get your head in the same room as your ass.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?:
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
Oh my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night and am not silent.
I opened my Bible to this page. Today I thought I should use my new big print edition Bible for this exercise. I just open the Bible somewhere and reflect on the words that first appear to my eyes.  This is what I saw today.  The fact is my Bible is worn from use. It is likely that I’ve come to this page over and over again. The Bible falls open here. It’s the opening of Psalm 22, the first words of which were said to be the last words of Jesus on the cross.
I have to be cautious though because this is a verse of self pity. In my narcissism and isolation I am prone to self pity.  I work as a healer, I’m a physician. My humility is that I insist the medication and charms and incantations cure but somehow I believe still that it is in the relationship.  I love the St. Francis prayer “Make me a channel”.
I feel this as I’m healing. At the end of a day of work I feel like I’ve had all the strength and energy drawn out of me. I can work differently. I can be removed and have the beurocratic boundaries up around me like the barriers lawyers and businessmen erect. But I don’t. I took an oath and I do the best I can to heal.
In psychotherapy it is as if we share spinal columns.  There’s a merger that is borderline in the pathological but yet is akin to walking a mile in another’s shoes.  In shared stories and vulnerabilities I meet the defeated in their wound.. I find the pain and shadow and go there. I am one with the nightmare. I find the nightmare within myself.  Then I reassure.  I rally. I cheer lead. I exhort.  I see disease as an enemy and I’m the Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Commander encouraging men and women to go another day.  I have magic potions. I have special ‘tests’ and ‘rituals’.  I have ‘names’.  I am Adam in the garden. I have a wealth of experience and secrets.
But now government has lost faith.  They are dishonourable.  They admit to defeat for the country. Like Nazis we find they have put their money overseas and are running to Argentina. That have plunged the country into inexorable debt and given themselves wages. They are spending recklessly overseas and buying future homes to flee to.
First they brought abortion and killed the children of our forefathers rather than paying mothers a living wage.  They lied and cheated and defiled.  They gave their Order of Canada to the greatest Nazi killer of our time Morgentaller, a survivor of Auschwitz who identified with his aggressor and hating catholics encouraged their abortions.
Today abortionists make more than those who deliver babies.  I am punished for keeping people alive. I am a fool. I am ridiculed in high places. They have stopped seeing patients and gone to committees. Everywhere committees gather to discuss the other. But no one wants to see the other. They take the money for the other and give themselves awards and celebrate each other in an amazing circle jerk but all the other has are waitlists.
Bombs are where the money is and dreams.  It’s Matrix all over.
Now we have physician assisted  suicide.  In Holland euthanasia began in compassion and then it developed into a profit centre like our jails.  Corruption is everywhere.  Especially in Quebec. The Liberal government of Ontario has the greatest world debt for a sub nation. I am sent letters upon letters for finding brain tumours with MRI challenged to justify my spending on the war against disease.  My patients can’t afford the medication.  The sick are impoverished while the leaders of democracy strut about like Czars and emperors.  The new Napoleon with his Sophie are a Hollywood favourite with million dollar jaunts and flaunting their wealthy living like Rothschilds in the 30’s .
And the UN has given us Agenda 21 wanting to kill off billions of people rather than celebrate the life we have.  People are the enemy.
Or so it seems.
I cry to God because my brother has cancer. My patients have cancer. And we’re all aging and death is nearer in years than ever before. I didn’t think of death like this since I worked with Aids patients.  Now in the epidemic of luxury I work with the drug addicted and they die.  I know them personally intimately and I am up against a wall.
My spiritual teaching is ‘surrender’.  I am to ‘accept’.  I pray the serenity prayer. I acknowledge my lack of omnipotence. But Jesus resurrected and resurrected Lazarus. He healed the unsealable.  I believe in miracles.  I have known so many. I have seen so many patients live who others said would die. I have truly known and walked in the sacred.
All around me the atheists are loud and they reduce everything to the limits of their own imagination. I am a scientist but their pseudoscience and their science business frauds are rampant. I am gifted in my theism by the science I have learned. I walk in Heisenberg and Planck and enjoy the multiverse and immortality. Yet as I withdraw and observe I recall Arjuna talking to Krishna about the war.  It’s not about the war but it’s about ones own participation.
I pray for my brother.
My dogs back was hurt and he was near the point of needing to be put down. But today he is well enough. I fear for his future. His hind legs lack the strength they once did but he is older as I am and my back legs lack the strength.
My life is harried. I am always trying to do so much. I’ve overwhelmed. I’m daily encountering emergencies. I’ve worked for decades in the areas of greatest need with the most vulnerable alone, without so little support.
I saw a couple of men yesterday and introduced them.  They had both suffered catastrophic brain injuries and were never thought to be well in anyway again.They really belonged in institutions but somehow struggled on the outside. I saw them.  I read literature night after night, studied journals attended seminars, asked colleagues, and did my best. It’s beyond anything I ever learned in school and there is no clear answer. Each is unique.  I was thankful for the wisdom of colleagues. Only a few of us work here and it’s not my thing though everyone says it is. It’s just so hard and no one else wants to do it.  Over and over gps tell me the called dozens of my colleagues and they’ve been turned down. There is no wealth in seeing sick. Everyone is cherry picking the well. But a decade later I watched these two interact and so enjoyed their laughter. A couple of soldiers who shared a common battlefield. I love their families. I love the community. I love health care. They epitomize all that is good.  I was so glad to be apart of it.  But there’s been so many tears.  I cry myself to sleep at night unable to help.
The rich and well get the first tier of care. There is Betty Ford for them and now they’re just opening places for the other to inject their existence away.
I am thankful. The sun has come out again today. I was so sun sufficient. For weeks now coughing all day and all night, exhausted, chest hurting from the work of coughing.  Pain in the intercostals.  Feeling in the morning like an elephant has sat on my chest.  Thinking I’m dying. Every night at 3 in the morning thinking I’m dying.  One night dragging myself to the couch and finding the phone and preparing to phone an ambulance but then I could breathe.  Breath, like everything I take for granted. Going to work embarrassed by the cough. Wondering if it’s a cold or just allergies.  Suffering and feeling the suffering of those I try to help with so few resources.
Always there are critics. The parasites abound. They are so far from the front lines but in their space station air head wisdom they can criticize but they are utterly incompetent in face of danger and lack the humility to admit to the depth of their cowardice. They are dying to. Their fear is ever obvious in their attempt at control.  I watch them cross their legs , the wrinkles at the edges of their eyes. They are in shock. I ‘d like to talk to them, reassure them. but they have gone to hide in their positions.  They have lost their humanity and take solace in the machines they worship. It’s the money. I can not but envy them. They are driven by the rankest of forces. Money buys them.  And I am little different.
I say I would be sailing if I were rich. But I am able to flee to the sea and still I linger asking myself how come God doesn’t heal me. I only ask for a miracle. A cure for cancer. I will die but let them live longer and suffer less.
I am suffering for not. I am on a cross and friends are calling, get down we need the wood. I am here another day.
There is another complaint.  I never had a complaint when I worked as a general practitioner. I never had a complaint when I worked as a general psychiatrist. I was so admired when I was in surgery and community medicine.  But now I’ve worked for years with the addicted and alcoholic and criminals, sociopaths and psychopaths.  I am alone so much in the community, one to one in a little office.  I have been attacked. Guns have been pointed at me. I’ve been held hostage. I’m afraid more easily.  A young man told me that some doctors get more complaints. I spoke with the forensic psychiatrists about ‘rate your doctor’ and how their patients loathed them.  I spoke with the head of addiction and physician care and he had two complaints against him and one to the human rights.  So I thought it was the field. I’ve had a complaint each year this last five years and each has been because the patients drug addiction has caused them to be denied work.
The last two have insisted that because I ‘named’ them ‘substance abuse’ and that because I did the urine test that showed positive then that was why they were given a DUI and that was why they were not allowed to work.  I’ve known dozens of doctors who covered for patients, colluding with their addiction and causing them to be a risk to others. There are no complaints of ‘sins of omission’.  I’ve done exactly what I was required to do and this young doctor , incredibly inexperienced, working in a beurocratic job suggests that I could somehow know better how not to get a complaint.
So it’s ‘blame the doctor’ and I really don’t want to be one any more.  It’s the soldiers fault who gets wounded in war. There’s someone in Ottawa or Washington who is avoiding the frontline themselves but studying grafts and showing how certain soldiers are the ones that get wounded.
I know this is a resentment.  The young man is a grandiose arrogant idiot but then I am the one who is suicidal. I’m the one who wants to go back to working in a hospital with all the dozens of people for every patient and the resources and the gang approach to medicine and the immense waste of resources. I miss the intensive care where no one was expected to live and they didn’t so no one could complain. I miss the years I did psychotherapy like the psychologists and wonder what is it that wants me to work where there is the greatest difficulty.
Why couldn’t I just sail a little boat in English Bay but instead sailed solo across the pacific at Christmas facing the greatest fears. What made me face 40 foot seas.  Why do I push myself to the limits. Why not get on a committee and work well within the ‘wire’.  If only I avoid the ‘other’ stay safe, play it safe, don’t rock the boat.
I really want to .  I wonder at a life with complaining hurting dying diseased people. I wonder at a life of despair.  The money isn’t good enough for the abuse I get. Accountants make a whole lot more and don’t have people pulling guns and knives on them.  I am threatened routinely. If you don’t write what I say to write I’m going to lose my job and you’re going to be sorry. I refuse to collude.  I am increasingly being the fall guy for insurance companies that didn’t want to pay in the first place but now blame the doctor and the patients complain that the doctor won’t say they’re in a wheel chair when they’re not. Increasingly there’s this lie that is being perpetrated. We’re been consumed by the bureaucracy which takes the fat and leaves nothing for anyone else.

They’re fighting for crumbs under the table.
And I’m grateful.  I can breath. My chest is only a little sore. I bought a lot less. I’m here in the sun. I”ve walked. I’m not dying myself. But I have no miracles. I pray and I can’t seem to convince God that my patient and my friends and family need to win the lottery.  I am insignificant.  A speck of irrelevance.
My God, My God.

I am thankful for the view. My little dog is looking out on the street. A young woman just walked by with perky breasts, tight summer clothes and barefoot.  I’ve been enjoying taking pictures of flowers. There is so much joy and pleasure to be had right here. I am thankful for this day. This is a Saturdayl Most days I’m just recouping for the onslaught of sickness and disease.  The horrors of addictions.  Livers coming out of the bodies like Sigourney Weaver’s aliens.  Rashes and unknown diseases. And contagion.
I know a famous specialist who told me she avoids people with disease as she is afraid of their germs.  She was glad to get through medical school and residency so she could avoid seeing patients. She writes books and others do her touching for her.  The trick in medicine is to spend the least amount of time in direct contact with illness.  And yet contagion hides for days before it declares itself.
My brother is told to avoid crowds.  The Chinese were wearing masks on planes .  The new handshake is touching knuckles. In church when they say the peace they no longer touch.
Insanity is infectious.  Like addiction.
I love the sun. I am so thankful for this reprieve.  I am so very thankful that I am able to sit here and have this table, this chair, this bible this light and this place to journal.
Journalling is like squishing the puss out of my brain. I bleed out of my ears. And then with it gone from my thoughts inside I can carry one. I can rally.
I cleaned my home.  I made my bed .  I shook out the rugs. I washed down the bathroom. I changed the sheets.  I cleaned the toilet.  I have oils burning and fans running the scents through the home.  The windows are open. I am thinking now of lying in the sun and hoping to rejuvenate some.
Let the self pity go. Let the resentment and fear go.  Pray for enemies.  Find peace of mind.  Welcome the coming of death.  It’s only years or days or hours that I have .  I liked that we walked today for hours and I remembered that last year I had such injuries and pain I couldn’t have done that. There are always blessings. It’s always perception.
Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.  Forgive me for my lack of faith. Forgive me for my whining and complaining. Forgive me for my inadequacy. Teach me yours ways. Help guide me in what it is I am to do. Show me the way.  Help me to be more helpful.  Help me be less afraid.  Let me sing praises and pray and and celebrate the wonders of the sacred. Let me see the dance of love in all creation.  Thank you God.

Post Election Feelings

It’s post election.  Justin Trudeau is the new Canadian Prime Minister.  Everyone is excited that he’s young and that the cabinet he will be picking is young.  There’s that Rock Star equation that’s reminiscent of his father.  I voted for Pierre. Met him even.  Admired the intellectualism.  But looking back, can’t say in the long run I was right.  The red flag with eastern Canada’s maple leaf and the extortion of Quebec Separatism, the colonialism of western Canada raped for it’s resources, the legal theocracy of Charter of Freedom and Rights: they’re just a few of things that seemed so right at the time but now looking back seem so wrong.  Communist Canada.
I was hopeful for a while.  We have three parties and each takes about a third of the vote.  Each also wants the whole of Canada to agree with it.  It’s a trinity and it’s an earthly one.  Father Son and Holy Spirit.  Conservative, Liberal and NDP.  But in heaven they live in love. In Canada they war and belittle and main each other.
That said, we muddle along.  I’ll put up a picture of Justin Trudeau in my office.  I don’t think it’s right to have a picture of another country’s monarch.  Justin is more my leader than the Queen though I do love the monarchy. It’s the blue taint in my red blood.  They called me a red tory and when I was a whig I was centre of left.
But this election has pained me.  I just said I chose one team. It was all like sports for intellectuals and I voted for my home team. But the anger and the malicious attacks on my character and sanity were rife.  I have seen the same in the ‘climate change’ debate.  To listen to the climate change catastrophizers they are the only ones that can be right. There’s this royal arrogance among the most vulgar and common.  It’s fueled by declining ethics and morality and loss of direction in a consumer society.  The seller is a predator and the buyer is a consumer.  The seller is the bourgeoisie and the buyer is the proletariat.  Everyone meanwhile is relatively poor in these immensely rich times.  All the third world wants parity with the first world while the billionaires and above are spread through the world loving most the places of greatest security. If you want a billionaire make that place safe. Meanwhile the tyrants of the old world are toppling.
I have been distracted.  None of these political platforms have benefited me.  Politics is about money.  All around me I see people on the gravy train.  I’ve gone to work for more than 30 years doing 120 hours of work or more a week.  I play hard.  My time off is a ‘change’ rather than a rest.  I do what I do to gather the state of mind to face the negativity that it is my life to face.  I am hopeful in face of disease.  But now with aging and dying I am burnt out and worn thin.  Even now I must explain a death to superiors who ask why a man who is multiply addicted with a myriad of diseases dies.  The demand for perfection from these back benchers who have long ago failed to face the front is painful to say the least.  I have thoughts of my own death, think of suicide whenever I am faced by these people because they seem so impossible incompetent and stupid as to be a certainty that the world does not deserve to exist.  I must learn to forgive them for they know not what they do.  Kafka and Camus painted their pictures better than I can.  But my grief is ruined by their arrogance and superiority. They are the cancerous waste on human creation. I laughed to watch Tomorrowland and realize that even a movie has been made to address the smegma of their existence.
Yet I’m merely afraid.  I have seen first hand the abuse of power of these diaper wearing tyrants who come in single coloured committees.  I have shown them the killers personally and watched them cover up and cover up. I know they can not have passion or know depth for their shallowness is deep.
And the election has like that interfered with my peace.  It’s phony. It’s a facade. The distance from the front to the back  lines is ever greater. The leadership is no longer in ivory towers but on space stations.  The money that goes to corruption is no longer millions but trillions.
And I wait for death.  I meditate to come back from the abyss.  I have wallowed in the human struggle. My team lost.  And even now they belittle and shame and blame and kick the man that is down.  And it’s all just Scapegoats and 4 years until we get to turn around and piss on our enemies and shame and blame and kill in effigy like the Golden Bow.
I long for the buddhist end to life cycles now. I pray for Christian salvation. I wonder if I should suicide myself now that the supreme court has warmed to thanatos and introduced ‘physician assisted suicide’ for the poor and difficult.  I feel the look these days.  I’ve only been tolerated but now I can be removed.  I have been too honest. Too outspoken. I’ve stood in the way of ‘progress’, they once called it. “Change” they call it now. I’m a dinosaur. I’m a dying breed.  I’m a has been.  I’m an old man in a youth culture.
All around me I see the men and women I most admired attacked by committees like hyaenas.  I read Psalms and nothing is new.  Politics is just another soccer game.  It’s war in symbolism.  The silliness of power.  It’s King Lear and the Glass Bead Game.
I’m tired.  I don’t know why I have spent a life time joining the losing cause.  I have served the billionaire and the poorest of poor and sickest of sick.  But there is no hope for the centre.  It’s in the dichotomy that riches are made.  I am afraid to ask my richest of neighbours how many people they killed indirectly to afford their house. They increasingly come from poor countries with obscene wealth.  I am a boy scout and there is no place for boy scouts in this world.
Self pity is always there like a great demon waiting to devour the joy of my life.  Defeat is irrelevant. Death is certain.  I believe in after life as only those who have done their duty and service can.  I resist hedonism and murder equally.  I know tears and think it’s just the beginning of the rainy season.  The season is depressing with rare moments of photographic beauty.  The world is crying with us.  A huge cleansing time. It is only in soul wracking tears that we can release the demons to the atmosphere and shed the sadness of the ages.  In our despair and laughter we are freed from the lifetime of mutual restraint. We hold ourselves in check.
But who am I to speak for other than myself. I hold myself in check. I don’t say what I think. I moderate myself to the nth degree yet try to find the source of sickness in the other. With emotion I probe the heart of sadness and laugh.  Halloween has gone. The chance to jump worlds has passed. We now move towards Remembrance days.  Red poppies like our red flag.  Dead leaves and dead flowers.  The Remembrance of the stupidity of government.  Large groups of people have stupidly killed each other with greater brutality and efficiency.

Today I’m not laughing. Praise and thanksgiving are hard for me today.  There is sickness close to home. My dog limps. His back is injured. I’m in constant pain myself from similar injuries. He’s young and I’m relatively so but we’re a couple of old warriors who have come back from the weekend in the mountains and woods worn out.  I feel terribly old. I was hardly able to climb the ravine let alone the mountain. I couldn’t lift a deer and it was short years ago I butchered and cleaned moose and elk alone pulling them from the woods by myself .  I feel frail.  Fat out of shape.  Chained to a desk fighting to my last breath.  I was cold in the north.  I was shivering. The rain was horrid. I wanted silk and incense and soft beds and movies where I could transport myself to another world without the harsh feelings of actually being there.  Everything was tough and rough.  Lifting gas and diesel cans onto the truck. Driving the ATV.  Constant vigilance. Shooting the cannon to sight. Everything dangerous.  Realizing one is hours from hospitals.  I’m back from the wilderness.  Humbled.  It’s always humbling to leave the inner hive of the city and get out there where all is dangerous.  Each trip is tougher.
This time we returned wounded. Even the dog was injured.  Equipment broken.  Cuts and bruise to body.  Ego deflated.
I pray a lot.  All day.  I meditate.  I want some peace. It was silly to engage in the debate. Nothing that was being promised affected me. I just didn’t want more government and more taxes.  I am a walking meritocracy and I have a life time of caring for the mediocrity, giving it blood and sweat.  I carry the world on my shoulders.
The self pity is an insect that creeps under the skin. The comparison is a boil.
I am blessed. I am alive. I have air and water. I have warmth right now. I have over coats and clean underwear. I have a shower. I am thankful for all these blessings. Praise and thanksgiving.  Forget about how high the peaks seem where you are going and look back at where you have been.  You were imprisoned.  You paid the ultimate price for truth.  You sacrificed your freedom for love.
So much of what you feel is loneliness.  Godlessness. Anxiety is a measure of our distance from God.
Self Pity masquerades as depression.  Sloth and gluttony and greed don’t bring joy.  Joy is a choice.  It’s an attitude. It’s a search for the good and avoidance of the bad.  Now it’s time to Thank God the elections are over.  Thank God you are focusing again on the spiritual and character development.  You did your time in the asylum. You came out of the place of hiding and joined the fray.  Arjuna said to Krishna that his family was on either side in the war.  And Krishna replied that is always so. The only question was whether you would participate or not.  And I participated.  Jesus said there would always be war.
It was Facebook that made this election so personal.  All the attacks and mean spirited ‘ad hominem’, the rage couched in caring. The people who had something actually to win and their rejoicing.  They won the lottery.  I lost.  Win or lose - does it matter when the game is played in back rooms and the table is rigged.  It’s better here than elsewhere.  But I’d say it was rigged if I won.  It’s a casino. A crapshoot.  I”m not negative about the game. The game is the game.  This world is a gambler’s paradise. I’ve played on all three teams.  I know the game.  It’s not the game that bothered me as much as the rage and threats.  I took it personally.  I must have loved. I must have been less aloof than I claimed because I didn’t like that when I said I was voting for the other guy I was maligned and threatened and hated and portrayed as un Canadian.
Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. I really thought I was Canadian but it appears a third of Canadians, the majority, see me as a scoundrel.  I understand why there is so much apathy here. I understand why people are afraid to vote or share their ideas.  There’s a viciousness that is Canadian.  We don’t discuss anymore. On the global stage we call each other names.  You’re a denier.  It’s not that we disagree but you are psychotic.  It’s not that we vote different but you are a fiend to vote that way.
I saw the 46 year wall in Belfast.  When the Berlin wall fell I rejoiced. But there are more walls today.  I actually live in a sort of gated community myself.  Trailer trash that I am.  Membranes not boundaries divide us.

Thank you God for this day. Thank you for all of life. Thank you for this election. I pray for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals that they may lead our country to greater prosperity and protect us from the uncivil civil wars that consume the world.

Saturday Morning Journal

Rain on the roof of the RV all night.  Gilbert let me sleep in till 10 am then lay on my chest as his way of telling me he wanted to go out to pee.  I dressed dog walking fashion. It’s a style that’s in with dog owners but for some unknown reason never shows on the Milan Cat walks.  Flipflops, sweats, t shirt, overcoat , half asleep face, dog pulling on leash, watering trees. Gilbert dumped half his body weight almost immediately.  I had doggie bags but should have brought large green garbage bags.  It was a momentous occasion.  They relieved of onerous weight he danced about sniffing nature with alacrity.  I followed. I’d long since let him on the leash in defiance of the leash law watching for strangers so I could leash him up again.  No one came. We walked a long ways and circled back.
Morning coffee. I ground the beans.  The noise was loud.  I’m rested. The month long flu which went and came and went is clearing with rest.  My ear ache and cough have all but gone this morning. The lethargy remains. I’m uninspired. I go through the day doing rituals but the brain isn’t sparking.  I am on automatic pilot.  I sometimes see myself saying and doing the right thing and am amazed. I think of government jobs and union jobs and sick leave and remember that every winter as long as I can remember I get the west coast sinus infection with or without the flu shot. I think the flu shot helps.  It’s a placebo thing in my mind.  I think I was sicker before I got it. I took a week or two off work a few years back but now I only lose a day or two.  But every weekend and evening I’m ‘recuperating’ . There are no holidays, just work and recovery, over and over again for weeks. And I try to maintain the schedule and meet the commitments and half to pay the rent and overhead and fear homelessness.  We’re all only months away from it except those in the elite with the security once promised but now no longer.
I could be depressed.  All day long people are angry with me because I’ve no magic wand.  More and more they want me to help them get money from some agency that withholds and like a circus masters makes the once great free beasts of the forest jump through beaurocratic hoops and take the whips.  I learned to jump years ago.  I’m an indoor nigger.  I try to help people stop running into glass walls, show them doors, encourage them to stop howling at the moon, save your breath.
Mostly I’ve been told there is no life after medicine.  16 years we must hold our files and wait daily for someone to complain and a lawyer to get rich when we’re demented and can’t remember what the cultural mores were of the day.  Over the years I’ve said whatever needed to be said to stop people from suiciding and know that now suicide is no longer a ‘bad” thing but the “in thing’ so for sure somebody is going to complain I convinced them to live another day. All those folk I convinced to not smoke marijuana are going to be forever angry now that smoking marijuana is all the rage.  I’m a very bad man and hated and despised for thinking ‘morbidity and mortality’ were what I was supposed to addressing rather than political correctness. The doublespeak of 1984 is commonspeak today. I’m a dinosaur and dying breed.  I hoped for some place I could go to lick my wounds and die quietly but know they always want to put people like me in carts and drag us through the streets of the New Rome.  I had thought 10 years I could wait for peace but if I retired at 65 and now it’s 16 years it’s not going to be till I’m 81 that I can be free of medicine.  I can’t recommend anyone be a doctor anymore and wish I’d never gone into this field where today we’re being told that killing people is the goal.  I took the hippocratic oath, do no harm and understood why that was the ideal but that was then and now ‘cure’ isn’t in the ‘lexicon’ of ‘health care spending’. Only the rich can afford old age and I made the mistake of focussing on keeping people alive and measured health as function and worked with the most angry and sick and defeated and psychotic who no one wanted to work with. I gave up the lucrative cushy jobs to work with the dangerous and insane and the addicts and try to help them to be free but now I’m told I’m wrong. Even calling a patient is wrong ‘nomenclature’.  They’re ‘customers’ .
Yet if the climataloogist fear mongers are right we’re be dead next week or the week after. They say we’re going to be extinct.  And the Rich want us to kill ourselves off so the rich can inherit the earth.  But I’m not rich and I’m just sick and tired at the end of the week. By friday I’ve run out of steam. I used to be able to work in the evening. I did university courses and studied till midnight but now I’m feeling age or fatalism and I’m exhausted by 6 pm and my brain seems not to work on friday.  Saturday like today I’m just trying to rest, walk the dog, do anything but think.  I can vomit my brain but I can’t analyze or understand. I feel like my poor head injured patients. There’s just been such a bombarding of desperation on one side and then insensitivity and uncaring on the other side. I’m in this middle place and feel like a soldier on a battlefield with his position over run and the administration saying we have to sign and counter sign for bullets and really we shouldn’t need bullets but should commune with them and besides they’re no longer the enemy.  People are trying to get HIV to ‘show solidarity”.  I’m told drug addiction isn’t a ‘disease’ but a ‘culture’.

(The Cognitive Behavioural Distortions of the above thinking include - Emotional Reasoning - based on my feeling physically sick and run down, i.e. depressed, I project that depressed thinking on the future and Selective Reasoning - chose to Awfulize and Catastrophise - a particular loop then occurs in my thinking to 'confirm' the obvious irrational thinking.  Any number of possibilities can occur tomorrow or the future - projections (especially all those 'media accounts' are notoriously erroneous.  Politically who would have 'guessed' ISIS.  Syria was never 'predicted'.  The climatologists can't even get the weather right weeks ahead and generally speaking the FUTURE IS BRIGHT but the fact is WERE ALL GOING TO DIE so it's right to be concerned if you are in DENIAL about DEATH.  So I don't know the future.  I'm just tired and exhausted.  It's always been a tough time of the year. End of winter, Spring slowly coming along, work overwhelming because life is even more difficult for those with less of anything. )


Sometime today my head will clear. I can only hope.  A nap. Distraction and then I’ll be in the hot seat again with no hope of reprieve.  Even if I left today I’d face being called to accountability for ancient history in a rapidly changing world. I’m in a society of historians ignoring the reality of the present and playing mind games with their selective versions of history for personal profit.  It’s group insanity.  The world is bizarre.  Meritocracy has died in Canada and it’s just who you know. I’m called a hater because I don’t agree with public corruption and waste of resources. I don’t like money for the poor spent on limousines.  It’s all name calling now and logic doesn’t count because the main stream is ‘ends against the middle reasoning’ and obfuscation.  Bullying is everywhere in suits and pseudo kindness.  I’m killing you for your sake.  You’re right to want to die. Let me help you. And can i have your organs too.  No of course I won’t give you anything that would make life more palatable.  I’ll just take the money to write a report.  We’re all paid to record and no one anymore is paid to sit and hold the hand of a person alone.  But this is just the negativity of tiredness and silliness. I must rally. I’ve only hours and a day at most before I must drag myself back to work thankful the coughing has stopped and the pain in ear and throat is less. But the weakness and tiredness how much longer. At least I can sleep now. My nose isn’t stopping me from breathing.
But thank you lord for the sleep I had last night. Thank you for the restfulness. The companionship of my friend and dog. Thank you for the work since lots of it isn’t as I colour it. Lots of what I do makes some sense. I’m pleased to see the smiles return to the faces and the light return to eyes. I’m thankful to be there. I’m glad to have an answer. I ‘m glad for the science I know. I’m thankful for the opportunity to reduce some suffering. I’m too sensitive. My heart is too wounded but please Lord don’t let me ever be closed hearted or hard. Thank you for empathy. Thank you for the colours. Thank you for the scent. Thank you for the wonderful times I had with friends this week. Thank you for the incredible joy I had watching Gilbert and Matty his little girl dog friend down the office. Thank you for the god children and the delight I see in their wonder at life. Thank you for the good parents I know who care so much for their children and are raising them to know science and music and to be good and kind and moral. Thank you for all those who are walking towards the light. Thank you for the politicians and beaurocratts and courts and judges and the police and military and the space cadets and space station. Thank you Lord for hospitals and nurses and doctors and technicians and all those incredible breakthroughs in medications and solutions and genius. Thank you for the wonder. Thank you for the stories. Thank you for the books and entertainment, the music and movies and tv. Thank you for bed. I love my bed and my couch and the comfort my back feels in lying. I love the showers and the heat and the walking. Thank you for mobility and feet and knees and the ability to use my hands . Thank you for my health  Lord. Thank you for my eyes and clothing and indoor plumbing. Thank you for refrigeration and the space heater. Thank you for taps and pressure and running water and reservoirs. Thank you for home delivery Canadian Meat Lover Pizza and internet and telephones and communication. Thank you for skin. Thank you for guitars and song. Thank you for breath. Thank you for the galaxy Thank you for all human endeavour. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for the sunshine we’ve had and that will return and remind me always that blue moods are so much just a product of the rain and that I simply like the sunshine and dry and every day we’re getting closer to more and more and more of that.  The last weeks were glorious so I could drive with the hood down. Thank you for convertibles.  Soon I’ll be sailing and the boat will be out and the motorcycling will begin but thank you for the day and the knowledge that I have to live in the present to truly be with god.  Help me more and more be thankful for everything now and to have less regret and less worry but focus always on what I have right now. Thank you for this computer, these fingers, the friends and all the blessings and those I see and don’t see. Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.

Work breaks, back logs and psychosomatics

I'm a week back from a couple of weeks in Istanbul and Turkey.  It was an incredible learning experience with daily touring and education in mosques, churches, museums, art galleries. I really felt like I was in an "immersion" program, far more intense that my medical study programs.  I had read extensively and taken multiple audio courses before going. Then while I was therein addition to have a guide I was reading and writing daily.
Returning home I was most afraid of the dreaded post overseas airplane 'flu'.  So often I've caught a cold travelling. Once I returned from the third world with dysentry but mostly I've just developped winter colds because of the stress of long flights and contact with so many different people in closed spaces.
Many doctors I know and many businessmen don't take time off from their work, simply because the back log is overwhelming when they return.  I've resisted the temptation to stay in the harness and cope with the excessive daily work.  Instead I take these study breaks and even go on vacation.  Extended weekends don't cause much back log but whenever I'm away from the office more than a week it's bedlam when I return.
When I return from Russia last spring my staff had left and returned to inform me they'd decided they didn't want to live in Vancouver.  The backlog combined with staff turn over was murderous. I worked weekends for weeks and late into the night each day.
There haven't been sufficient psychiatric resources in Vancouver in decades.  If people with physicial disease had to face what people with mental illness do on a daily basis they'd go insane themselves and add to the overwhelming backlog.
When I graduated I saw people weekly and had a waitlist of a month or two.  Now I'm more likely to see people at 1 to 3 month ,sometimes 6 month, intervals and had a 2 years waitlist till I limitted patients to my very specific subspeciality area and also more commonly accepted patients from family physicians I knew.  Increasingly general practitioners and especially walk in clinics want to cherry pick their patients and 'dump' more complex or complicated cases (see psychiatric cases) on the specialists.  All the 'cream' has long been taken from medicine by the midwives, psychologists, counsellors and health food stores.  The 'worried well' just aren't the issue they once were in the standard medical practice.  Probably because they want 'strokes' and only the 'alternative health care folk' have the resources of private funding to entertain the 'worried well' or 'walking wounded.'  Too often the public health care system is serving only the most desperate.  Everyone that pays taxes should have access but often government health services 'triage' resources for the most desperate meaning everyone else is waitlisted months to years.
When I began in psychiatry my patients rarely had more than one or two diagnosis.  Today it's more common for my patients to have multiple psychiatric and physical diagnosis and often major social and financial issues.
When I go away there's no one I can refer to.  It's been 20 years since I could have another specialist 'cover' my practice.  Last year I saw several patients from practices of my cohort clinicians who were simply 'orphaned' when their doctor retired.
In the British Columbia model every patient seeing a specialist must be referred so when the specialist is away the family physician is supposed to provide the care alone.
The irony of this is that only last month it was made public that Quebec doctors on average were seeing only 10 or 11 patients a day whereas the physicians in the rest of Canada were seeing at least 30 patients a day.  Most GP's I know are seeing more like 50 a day in Vancouver.
There's just not any 'fat' in the frontline systems.  Of course this doesn't speak to the Monday Morning Quarter backs.  The Canadian health Care system compared to the German Health Care system has 20 x the administration with no evidence that any of that administration is improving health care delivery or services.
I think I'm just belly aching because despite my best efforts I fear I may be getting a 'cold'.  A facebook cartoon went around about the "ManFlu" with the proverbial woman asking the sick guy in bed, 'can I get you anything, orange juice, soup, kleenex, your balls, maybe?"
I got back last week and all I could do was face the deluge of work that was waiting for me. I was in the office till 7 or 8 each night and missing lunches and hardly taking time to pee.  I had a series of other obligations but the emergencies and despiration demand just took precedence. All I could do was go to work, 'put one foot in front of the next', 'do the next right thing', then get home and sleep. Jetlag was a problem because I was waking at 3 am.  I'm thankfully back to a good nights sleep but now I've the dreaded post nasal drip.
People have cancer, bullet wounds, bankruptcies and alien abductions. Meanwhile I'm here swallowing to see if the throats any rawer.
The fact is it's all psychosomatic.  I'm a whimp. I have 'self pity' at having work, I should be grateful and thankful and glad to have a purpose and use. So normally when I 'overwork' I get sick because as a child being 'sick' was the only way I could miss school.  There were no 'mental health days'.

I have a resentment at the government services too. Alright I admit it I've a resentment at Billionaires. Inflation being what it is I want Bare Naked Lady to put out a new song, If I had a billion dollars, just to keep up with the times.  There's just so much waste and misuse in the system and no one asks me to be Sultan or Emperor. Instead we have millions being made on heroin and cannibis and I'm here like the proverbial dutch boy trying to get people off drugs when the real money is getting people addicted.  Self pity.  Poor me.

It's the January in BC blas and I've been on vacation. Imagine the poor sods who just have to live through January.  Worse is those Climate Change Deniers in Winnipeg and the prairies who have lost all faith in spring with the snow deeper and streets dirtier.

All I've got to complain about is post nasal drip. But I'll milk it.  I'll whine.  Tonight I'll go to bed early. I missed the first week back onslaught of disease but fear I've taken a shot on the second week.  Soon I'll be in medical student ichthitis, convinced I'm dying and certain I've a new Canadian ebola strain when all I have is at best the 'manflu'.  It's so embarrassing.
The other thing that gets me is lice and scabies.  I'd rather run from polar bears. Except I'm feeling lethargy.


Well I'm here, not contagious, not coughing, but sharing my evil thoughts rather than singing hallelujuahs and praising the Lord.  Maybe a trip to Japan for a little radiation would save me from that horror of horrors, the 'man flu'. A man flu can need a dose of Chernobyl.

Really I just think I should have a nap. Nap time should be mandated for all over 50.  A little nap would be good right now.  If I wasn't self employed I'd get the union to lobby for comfy cots and afternoon nap time.  Imagine as a kid I didn't like the kindergarden 'nap time'.  What a fool I was.

I think this blogpost started out as something meaningful and now has devolved into something pitiful. Patients have come and gone and between them I've added disconnected lines. Gilbert is groaning below the desk.  We've had a walk together.  I just "think" I may be getting a cold.  I can't remember how many times, this time of the year, I've been gargling vinegar, dousing myself in vitamin c, sometimes on antibiotics and always gargling and drinking endless soup.  Maybe I've got PTSD from living years in Winnipeg in January and just have flashbacks out here on the coast.
I got the flu shot.  I prayed. I'm a good man.  Why am I being punished? I can feel that tickle in the back of the throat like jalopeno snot just building there.  I remember when I would switch to smoking menthol cigarettes when I had these 'throat ailments'.  It's the big scnoz weakness. If I had a smaller nose maybe I could keep infection out better.

Can't I just go back to bed, pull the blankets over my head and come out when the crocuses and tulips come out.  Here that's only next week or the week after.  I'll shake this off somehow.  Typically, I'll think I can't afford to be sick.  Get thee behind me Satan.  I cast the demons out of the schnoz and pray for healing sleep tonight.  Maybe it was just the propane heater last evening.  Another source of self pity.  They're cleaning the mould in my winter home.

 Maybe I'll get some Vicks and wrap my psychological throat in socks and remember my mother caring for me when I was a kid.  Those were great days and I didn't fully appreciate them at the time.  I miss my parents and aunt as I get older. I think a good reason for death is to get together again with all the folks that have gone.  Grand dad and grandma were others I took for granted.  Now I'm older I wished I'd talked and listened more to them.

Morning Pages

Julia Cameron in Artist’s Way encouraged people to write, without censorship, ‘morning pages’. This was her exercise to help people get their ‘creativity’ ‘flowing’.  She felt ‘creativity’, especially as a writer, was a spontaneous childlike process that had been stymied by years of criticism and restriction.  So she said, ‘write each morning, whatever comes to mind’.
In Recovery, it seems that often the twin vultures of fear and resentment are sitting on the bedside ready to begin their days attack on our peace of mind. Hence, for me, morning pages, when I practiced this process seemed a kind of way of ‘squeezing the shit out of my mind’. I wrote down whatever was troubling me first.  Today that’s change of staff and a contractor making a mistake that will not only cost me thousands more dollars but lose me thousands and require me to conjure up a half day of my time out a week already squeezed full by the 8 or 9 days expected out of 5 work working days available.
I’d really like to wallow in self pity. I’d like to whine and blame someone else for my troubles but frankly no one cares.
That raises it’s whole other sort of issues. I’m in the last third of my life and feel like I’ve let everyone else through the door, actually helped them, and now chivalry is dead and I’m left standing at the rear in a culture of agism and misogyny.  So there’s a whole new source of self pity.
I”m normal. I liked to suck on the tit of self pity. I want to cry to my long dead mother. I want someone else to shoulder my burdens.  I want Jesus to get down off the cross and make me breakfast. I mean, really!
I was happy to hear these last few days that when a man 100 years old was asked how he felt, he answered 20.  I don’t feel my age.  Like my still gorgeous friend who told me in her 40’s she was leering at a young man who wasn’t paying any attention when she had the insight that she was looking out at this young hulk from the inside of a corpse. She had this realization halfway through life with a body and beauty many would die for. I’m there now.  I describe myself more and more as the ‘fat old white guy’.  This is in a hip slick world of self help talk gurus who says things like ‘it’s a privilege to be getting old’.
Sure, but it doesn’t seem to help getting laid.
I’m a master of the quick retort when anyone wants me to get off the nipple of self pity or better still the other nipple of fear and resentment.  Notice how the metaphors of vultures and breasts intertwine.
It came up when a patient told me that the Conservatives had passed a bill outlawing men seeking to pay women for sex while making it legal for women to sell sex.  Meanwhile I answered that I thought it remiss that last year there was no laws against prostitution in Canada and somehow I’d missed that memo.  It all brought to mind the famous comedian joke which went, when I was a young man I was disgusted at the idea of paying for sex, but now that I’m in my 50’s and begging is no longer working so well, I don’t think the idea is such a bad one.
Meanwhile the proponents suddenly began talking about teenagers (young women) being ‘exploited’ and evil male ‘pimps’ abusing ‘women’. And I found myself involuntarily retching like I do when I hear the Quebec separatists get on their soapbox.  This is when women are in fact the ones who are confronting this ‘bill’ because they say it will ‘interfere’ with their ‘business’.  But these ‘older women’ who are indeed the ‘madames’ must be stopped because they’re ‘obviously exploited’ by some as yet undiscovered ‘men’. I used to ask radical feminists how can they actually believe their rant about women having nothing when Queen Elizabeth was our monarch. I just listened to an Australian woman going on and on and on, the way they do, when I asked her if she happened to know that the richest most powerful 'person' in Australia was a woman.  These people seem truly gender blind to Hillary Clinton while they ignore the 20 year old male hookers offering blow jobs at half the price of their female co workers in a tough street market.
I guess, sitting at the Red Square last week in a MacDonalds enjoying a Mc Cafe and egg Mc Muffin I kind of hoped that “social communism’  might eventually fall like the Berline wall.  All this  “I”m the poor proletariat and you’re the bad bourgeoisie”  rant should somehow end. I hoped that seeing a shopping mall in the Red Square might shut up all the 'rhetoric' of that old dead 'regime'.  I'd seen the phoenix rising in the church revival in St. Basils. I'd seen the new life infused in the very heart of the death culture of the old communist world.  Yet I came home to Canada to hear this old debate still couched in the old language of the 'victim' and 'victimizer'.  Meanwhile it's just 'me and them".  I'd just listened to the song 'ding dong the witches dead' and watched the children running about the village playing again and the bells ringing only to return to the Conservative Government of Canada spouting communist rant about 'exploited women' while wanting us to buy their 'market approach to the world' .  This is insane!!!
One day, in the 90’s, it was recognized that those who were always ‘helping the exploited’ were, well, like Hitler who went to the ‘rescue’ of the poor Austrians, or Stalin who invaded his neighbours to ‘help’ them.  The 'exploited' never get better with the activists and the hand outs but rather they get better with community and helping each other. I don't even want to talk about this anymore because the world is 'caregivers and victims' and the 'caregivers' will kill me if I even question their corruption. I just watched the millions of dollars of government corruption called the 'Portland Hotel Society' and the major benefactors who stole the milk right out of the babies mouths got off with a handshake.   MP Jenny Kwan actually blamed her 'man' .
So, forgive me, but I see the people ‘protecting adult women’ from ‘evil men’ as essentially ‘exploiting’ the prostitutes.  The legislators want a cut of the action. They're the 'dirty men'.  I remember too well when the women prostitutes of Paris marched through the streets and shut down the city because they didn’t want these pompous ‘daddies and mommies’ to interfere in their ‘business’.
In the ‘metaphor’ of ‘capitalism’ , “my body is my own’, means I can be a mercenary or a prostitute.  Historically men risked their bodies in work or war whereas women risked their bodies in sex or childbirth but today men and women die in war and men and women work the sex trade. Men and women ‘sell their bodies’ but all the language of the 'bill' about prostitution was disgusting gender biased so there was little talk of 'men' and no mention whatsoever about the most outcast in todays society, the 'transexuals'.
There's always been a 'trade' in 'blood'. I sold my blood to pay for my tuition to medical school.   Right now everyone is up in arms about ‘sale of body parts’. Meanwhile just like health care, the 'local's' are denied services whereas  the elite 'shop for health care globally'. The 'elite' go overseas for postitution and buy babies they bring back to Canada where women are told "your body is your own' but the fact is the 'state' and the 'courts' especially ,own your body.  There is supposed to be ‘suppy and demand’ but the ‘law makers’ and ‘judges’ in this business world are introducing sanctimonious stupidity into an area where all acknowledge the need for ‘regulation’ not ‘censure’ ,because ‘censure’ simply doesn’t work.  It drives the industry into the black market and removes it from taxation and medical attention.
The next three people I spoke to about the Conservative government’s prostitution bill immediately mentioned ‘young girls’.  Girls and boys are not considered men and women in Canada until they are 19 and maybe even 21 or 25 because they can look older but until they’re about 25 or 30, men can go to jail for having sex with them because our child protection laws are the most stringent in the world. So the prostitution bill has nothing to do with ‘girls or boys’ but says instead we will put adult women out of work who are in the sex trade by arresting their johns because ’women’s bodies in Canada are not their own’ but rather a woman’s body is the ‘property of the state’.  Meanwhile a national woman's magazines carries an article by a new executive woman complaining about the lack of gigalows available for her sexual needs at the end of a work day when she is travelling. And a major Vancouver newspaper carries the several page story of the 50 years prostitute who finds that the 'money' makes the 'work attractive' because she can 'set her own hours' and only bemoans that fact that the younger' competition' can get 10x the rate of pay. The story sounds as much like any aging sports athlete that I thought it would do well to be in the sports pages where the 'body worker's' get paid and complain about the 'young talent' put them out of work middle aged. Meanwhile brain workers like me complain about different shit but try to sound more intelligent about it than they do on the sports pages.  Meanwhile pole dancing, a wholly different matter, is showing up as the latest medical solution to an increasingly gluttonous and slothful generation all the while old men and old women in parliament are devoting their attention to lust in what was once considered a place where the state had no business, i.e. 'the bed rooms of the nation'.  Now the State , which reads your every email, wants to shake down the man who leaves some money under the pillow while claiming that they're really not interested in shaking down the woman that leaves money under the pillow or god forbid the gay man or lesbian that leaves money under the pillow or god forbid even more a 'transexual' that leaves money under the pillow. The language of the bill is so 'sexist' it should cause an adult to retch. No wonder we have "Wrecking Ball" songs.
So the whole feminist ‘my body, my own’ argument goes out the window. Right? Really?
Which may be okay because that was  the pillar that ‘abortion’ was built on. So if the state doesn’t allow women to ‘control their vagina’ and it certainly is already against women being ’surrogate mothers’ for hire in Canada there is no longer any ‘basis’ any longer for "personal' abortion.
Hence from the perspective of ‘pro life’  todays ‘prostitution law’  is truly revolutionary.
Seen otherwise, it would just be more post communist ‘rant’ in an age that is so far beyond bourgeoisie and proletariat.  While these old tenured London School of Economics red  ’sillies’ were squabbling in another centuries debate, usually smoking dope and wearing paisley bellbottom flower power earmuffs, the world moved back to the medieval days with the ’super elite’ new world order. We're no longer in the Beougeoisie and Proletariat wrong ideology but rather we're in the Emperor, Senate, Citizens and Slaves reality.  There’s no proletariat and beougeosie. We’ve devolved politically to a pre Marx reality, all the while the irrelevant ’separatists’ and their other 'ist' die hards, are being used by those who always benefit from ‘divide and conquer’ for their own ends and the stupidity of scaredy cat tenured fat cat academics with their Marxist rhetoric.
Personally, I’m certainly not the emperor and I’m not even a senator. Further my pay cheque excludes me from being a ‘citizen’ because today’s ‘citizenship’ isn’t defined by ‘landowner’ or ‘vote’ but rather a more ‘elaborate’ ’status’ indicator. It’s obviously about ‘money’.  To be a citizen I think one needs first to be a millionaire or multi millionaire but at least a ’net’ millionaire.  I think if you even have to ’think’ about the cost of any purchase you wish to make short of lear jets and rocket ships, you’re not a citizen.  Further, a real 'citizen' can't 'work' in a Marxist sense. They're rather more likely the 'Wolves of Wall Street'. A citizen should 'gamble' for money, perhaps or buy and sell slaves or something but not actually 'make' anything.
I’m a wage slave, myself.  In Russia a ‘worker’ was a person to be admired. Work was admired and skills and talents were admired.  Slaves, like monkeys, are ‘cute’ when they do things but the Chinese emperor had long fingernails because long fingernails are the outward manifestation and symbol of not needing to work.  The elite don't 'work'. They don't 'sweat'.  They 'play'.  In the movie Elysium they were so far above us they lived on space stations.
Corporate leaders today are not ’national’ but ’transnational’ which is why the word ’nation’ has become an adjective.  Corporations can be good or bad but the best make the most money for their stockholders so as Robert Hare says they are judged little differently than we judge snakes and other reptiles. Corporations aren’t ‘warm blooded’. Nations once were or at least aspired to be.  Nations were 'tied' to land and history.  Corporations are unearthly and make history. There is no ‘idealism’ surrounding the ‘brand’ whereas the very word ‘culture’ in its highest form derived from the very best a nation state had to offer. There is no need for 'locality' to corporations. Indeed right now all the wealth of the world is to some extent 'offshore' or 'off world' but specifically 'off the grid'.  There is no privacy in the bedroom but there continues to be no end to the privacy of banks and the elite whoever they may be.
One world order is empiric. Intrinsically it’s digital and paranoid. It’s us and them.
Unfortunately for me, I always feel like a ‘them’.  Indeed even when I’m an “us’ I feel for the ‘outsider’ and working as a physician give myself and my services to everyone irregardless of whether they are ‘us or them’.  Indeed I've been told over and over again by various authorities especially in government that I should treat 'them' in such a way as keep my distance and 'select' the most 'profitable' relationships as opposed to working in the 'old fashioned way'.
The Syrian government and other governments are now arresting doctors who don’t agree with the master race paranoia. Neitze is in and St. Paul is out.   The new fascism says not only Jews require extermination but we all need ‘euthanasia’ because we’re doing the ‘jews’ a favour. Would you want to be a jew, or an ‘outsider’?  Aren’t we being kind to kill them.  Like aborting babies, isn’t this ‘good’. Aren’t we doing the child ‘good’ by protecting it from entering this ‘cruel’ world. Don’t we have to ‘protect’ the ‘planet’ like we would ‘protect the fuhrer’.  The language has shifted but it's still the same old same old. Today the Jew is still the Jew but the Jew is also the gypsey and anyone else who disagrees with, well, you know, disagrees.  Is disagreeable. Doesn't pop a pill to 'feel' good about the 'group think'.
In the end I guess I should be thankful that with the economic crisis continuing my government, in it's wisdom, with these new prostitution laws has perhaps, in it's generosity, offered me the right to prostitute my ass, legally.  Perhaps looking on the bright side, I can hope that they're done with my ass.  They won't even prosecute me for trying to sell my ass, at my age, but if some poor John or, god forbid, a Jane, offers me money for my ass, they're protect me from being 'exploited' by those bastards.
So the trinity of fear, resentment and self pity disturb my peace. I write them down and then hopefully my humpty dumpty ego will feel I ‘listened’ and I heard’ all the fine intellectual arguments that the ‘sky really is falling’ and this ‘really is a steep wall’to fall from.
But gratitude in contrast is all. God is great. So thank you lord for this day. Thank you for my breathing. Thank you for my fingers. Thank you for my dog. Thank you for my life. Thank you for my work. Thank you for my refrigerator with food for breakfast there. Thank you for my shelter this day and my rent being paid this day and all the taxes paid this day in all the hidden and convoluted ways that I am taxed. And thank you for my enemies and thank you for my friends. Thank you for my enemies so that I might better appreciate my friends. Thank you for the rain because the sunshine is so much better. Thank you for the art and industry and technology and all the solutions to all the apparent problems that exist in this ever loving always growing expanding metaphysical spiritual space of coexistence and temporary adventure. Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for my stomach. Thank you for the coffee I’m about to make.
Thank you for morning pages. Thank you for all your blessings.  Thank you Lord.  Thank you especially today for my ass and my government.  I am so thankful that my government is protecting it from future potential exploitation by scaring away whatever customers I might possibly have ,at my age. I hereby let all and sundry know that I am a prostitute and that if you interact with me, especially younger nubile women, I will expect token financial payment, for which you will be duly rewarded but unfortunately you will be considered a 'john' and subject to prosecution, even if your name is Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie or Ellen Degeneres.  
Now I'll get back to prayer and meditation.  Thank you Julia Cameron for 'morning pages.'  I can  focus on God and Jesus and Creativity and Love and work and gratitude. Thank you.

Christmas 2012

I don't have a wife and children. No matter how much marriage I did I didn't get a family which I took for granted would come out of marriage. My generation, Canadians collectively, my age anyway, are more of a 'divorce' culture. I've watched others take more pleasure and interest in divorce than weddings. The whole matter of dating has left me bitter, with legal bills, horrendous financial burden, loss of direction, displacement and the shame of it all. My friends who avoided the whole matrimony thing, had kids, paid the bills and lived together or didn't did better in the long run, except maybe those older than me. There's still a Rockwell picture in it for some.
50% divorce rates, higher rates of failure on second and third marriages. The legal lottery of divorce pays the highest to the best lawyers whereas the East Indian marriages survive often because of mutual jeopardy and the requirement that with divorce the wedding gifts are paid back. The only marriage in Canada anyway is the 'prenuptial aggreements', the courts showing little respect for the state or religious marriage contract. A third of the children of parental DNA test show that the children aren't the fathers who has often paid untold child support to a woman who can without abort a father's child leaving him feeling as I have felt, bereft, powerless, unmanly, devastated and disheartened.
It's been called a 'death culture', not just for the celebration of divorce that gives fetal Murderer Morgentaller the Order of Canada. It's like putting Hitler on the cover of Time. There's no rhyme or reason to these days. I'm jaded.
That's Christmas for single people. I celebrate my family and the winners in the social sports. I feel a loser this time of the year. I long for the parents past and the aunt and the family scenes of nostalgic childhood and Christmas dinners, and fireplaces. Friends have been great. They've even shared their families and homes and hearth with this silent scrooge. It's not polite to bitch and rant about Christmas, the social celebration, the consumer image and brand.
I'm just glad it's over. I have too much pain from the Christmas's that followed the years of separation and divorce and the death of family and the thought of the abortion of life.
I'm a recovered alcoholic too. 15 years ago I partied with the best of them, partnering with drug addicts and drunks but I got clean and sober and made amends and left that scene which was for this binge drinking, monumental at the Christmas New Year's hub. In the darkest nights of the year I lit up. We wouldn't drink for half a year but Christmas was a time of parties that began Christmas Eve and ended with the January hangover. Today I just don't like the drunks driving on the road and the smell of booze on breath and the chaos of the consumer frenzy with all the inducement to drunkeness. It's a time of the year I often go solo sailing to the islands. Just to get away. I have a dog who loves his extra treats, the bones and squeaky toys. He's never seen me drunk and I don't like the memory of arguments with drunken women or hung over women. I don't like dry drunks either, those short fuse, critical judgemental people with lots of blaming others for their unacknowledged depression, anxiety and anger. I don't like the angry entitled young men either with testosterone and expectation of respect for stupidity. I don't like going out at night on the streets even during the Christmas season. Mornings are great.
I love the church today. I love the trumpets and horns and caroles and the warmth of congregation. I love meetings too where we huddle together against the cold of the year.
This year Gilbert and I left the precarious heat and water of the sailboat and took a luxury hotel in Seattle. I had showers with endless hot water, turned the heat up high, watched the recent movies on pay tv and ordered in room service. The Alexis Hotel was extremely dog friendly and Gilbert met friends everywhere and the staff called out his name. I loved it. It was decadent. I listened to Michael Smith on the Message driving to and fro Seattle. I attended Trinity Episcopal Church and was delighted with the welcome Gilbert and I received in this loving inviting church. I opened the gifts from my family and friends Christmas Day and I didn't cry. I can nurse self pity with the best of them and think it's something more than just self absorption. I took delight in a friend volunteering her services caring for others this Christmas. It reminded me of the years I've worked Christmas and Hannukah because I didn't have children and could cover for those who did have family. It's often where us single people gather, helping others.
This year I had a cold and was glad to get over the bronchitis with rest and relaxation.
I know it's Christ's birthday. I know that Jesus wasn't born this day but that mid winter was a holiday the church tacked the birth of Christ too. Good a time as any since no one knows when he was born and even the year is suspect. Some question Bethlehem as his birthplace. I don't. I was there and whether it's the spiritual centre for millions of worshippers or a special place of historic significance, Bethlehem will ever remain a sacred moment in my memory. I really must get back to Israel. If ever my faith falters there's no better place to be. Walking in the steps of the man who was a 'servant king' who washed the feet of his disciples, raised the dead, healed the sick and preached the Good News, the Gospel.
I have a family in the church. I know that. I have a family in my nephews, neices, cousins and friends. I know that. But I'm Canadian so I define myself but what I don't have and what I'm not. I'm not American and I'm not European. We're all immigrants here, even the First Nations. Maybe only in the Middle East do people belong which is why they kill each other more over any piece of land than any other. A space ship probably landed the first Australians there and they bred with the locals giving rise to Atlantis or cro magnons whichever theory suits. They still can't explain why a Chimpanzee with more years than the Big Bang could never play Mozart. Alot of weasel room and fudge data in the theories that become political fights once people get mixing up the 'facts'.
I'd like to be levitating. I'd like to be singing Hosannah with arms outstretched but mostly I'm trying to block out the complaints to the college. Every Christmas I get a complaint to the college, mostly from drug addicts or alcoholics who I've refused to sign their chit. They get pay back. For every doctor a complaint to the college costs thousands of dollars and hours of time and only the most mediocre of doctors, those most protected, the best business men, the least risk takers, the ones who avoid the psychiatric patients, the prisoners, the sociopaths and psychopaths, who look on medicine as a good job, like the good administrative jobs that are so safe and well funded and pensioned in medicine, not the frontlines where disease exists. We're lead from behind. There are no leaders who lead their troops. There are none anymore who put themselves in harms way. They're all Monday morning quarter backs. No doctor can show pain because that's where they poke you if you do. They say open up and let your defences down, solely to know your vulnerability, while they hide in 1950, living lives of ivory tower perfection and delusional. I pray for them. Ee Cummings called 'them' , 'thosepeople', one word. It's the 'other' and Martin Buber said the great question is whether to love or fear them. I work on loving them. I love them and know they fear and hate me and I love them more wondering always if this is a good idea because sainthead seems to attract crucifixion and I'm too much coward and softee to want to tweak the nose of the beast these days. I want to slip away into old age or die quickly with my boots on. I 'm afraid. The future isn't trusty. I've done pretty good with mine so far but there's a lot of doubt in the air. Media, doubt, booze, economics, terrorists, talk of war, all that is hard to keep outside all the time especially with all the beggars and theives grabbing at one.
I can slip into a rant like the great Canadian Mercer. He calls politics his spectator sport. He's concluded the leadership should just stay home as they're increasingly irrelevant.
It's that time of the year. I'm going to get into gratitude for New Year's Eve,
I'm grateful, really. I read the secret. I know that my thinking has caused all the pain I've had. It's all my fault as my mother would say. I've also read Job and shit just happens because shit can.
Hallelujah! Hope is what Jesus brought. Hope not in this life. This life isn't real. The next one is. Heaven is real. This is just a kindergarden or training ground. This is where we learn that what we do has consequence and there is a thing called Karma. It's called divine retribution too. It's the number two law of Jesus. Number one was Love God. Since God is Love and Love is everything we really have to love even our enemies, bitch that that is. So much for fear, anger and self pity. That's all the doubt that sinks a Peter walking, preventing him from walking on water. I feel like that. Everytime I feel like I'm walking on water I think . It's like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Anyone can walk on air if you don't think about it. Then Jesus says "Love your Neighbour as Yourself". The price of gold these days and that's still called the Golden Rule. It's the law that Trumps Donald Trump and Einstein and Newton and all the laws of this world. It's tough because I'm here learning love , probably sent to earth as an interdimensional insane asylum. That's the best explanation for The Lord of Flies leadership ideas I encounter in the committee room geniuses who live above real consequences.
Bodily disease is what we think. As Jesus says it's not what you put in your mouth but what comes out of your mouth that counts. This is from the guy who avoids uttering profaniety but is cursed with vulgarity by the truly vulgar who don't know the difference. No surprise the Rapture left me behind.
I've hauled a hundred liters of diesel down to the boat for warmth. I'm going to exchange a gift for the right size. I've got more cleaning to do. I'm praying. I'm asking God what I'm supposed to do with this life. I'm begging him to point the way and give me direction. I'm feeling like I'm sitting on the bench a bit but that's another thing that happens mid winter. I'm always restored by the crocuses and they're only weeks away. It's like the morning after the dark night of the soul. There's always a dawn. The day Jesus was born the universe knew a new dawn. God entered creation. In the east they have saints escaping life, becoming God like and no longer having to do another term on earth. But Jesus was God coming to earth, the second Adam. Eve was Mary too. Eve the slut became Mary the virgin. Both gave birth to the human race, one secular, another sacred.
Some people life flat liner lives, like drug addiction and lizards. It's all concrete with no inner life, no emotional life and no spiritual life and no unconscious and conscious. The man with the most toys, money, power and lust objects and addictions wins. But without Love you have nothing. Love is all. Thank you Jesus.


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Grave Robbing

Emmett Fox warns against 'grave robbing'. He describes grave robbing as bringing up negative events and times from the past and going over them in one's mind. Reading this the smell of putrefaction came over me. It wasn't bad enough that the poor times of the past were revisitted but in the enclosed space of my mind the stench was almost overwhelming.
In therapy we 'share' and 'review' events together that we have commonly perceived erroneously alone. What we think is a failure is merely a 'bike lesson'. One falls down often to learn to cycle. Just as a child learns to walk by falling so we learn to love and grow in so many ways.
When I extract events in isolation from my past and nurse the pain of them I'm 'graverobbing'.
It's often dwelling on 'resentments' too which allows me to wallow in self pity and then behave in the most uncivilized and immature ways because I have a 'good excuse'. I rationalize my behaviour today based on ancient history. Grave digging serves this purpose.
What I need to do is focus on the present and on loving. Grave robbing is seriously sick and at the very moment these negative past remembrances try to invade my mind I must stop them on the beaches with love or simply ignore them by distracting my monkey mind with higher more important matters such as those of the present. It's called the 'present' because it is God's gift to me and to you.


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Journal - Aug. 14, 2012

I was dreaming of a big barge of an old chevy. There was a 50's girl there, decked out in wide brimmed hat, half veil, long white gloves and a form fitting three quarter length skirt. I was wearing a white suit and fedora, classic detective clothing from the 30's. I remember her saying he was 'hunting for something'. Then I awoke.

Rolling over, I encountered a little dog head attached to a little dog body that came alive licking my face when he realized I was awake. Then he was jumping from the bed to bring me a toy. I up stumbling across the floor jumping one leg at a time into sweats while slipping into sandals I fastened on the stairs. He was flying out the door and down the dock a head of me. He still had his chewy in his mouth. Happy dog.

What a glorious day in the city! Sunny blue sky. Early morning sounds. 7 am. I was taking the dog for a walk. He was happy. My body was 'slouching towards Bethlehem". I said the Lord's Prayer to myself. Seagulls flew overhead. Already the man with the shop was working on the rear end of his GT. He's up early. No one else was a bout. None of the usual traffic. Nice walk in an industrial neighbourhood. Dog doesn't care. I'd like trees and grass. He poops on the one stretch of grass we encounter.

There's not much happening here. Not much happening inside. I'm thankful for the sunshine. August. Summer almost gone. No July to speak of. No June. Now the glorious days of August. I fear the winter. Can't think ahead to the cold rain and misery of despair. The suicidal springs and the loss of all hope. It's an annual tsunnami of grief. I wonder if I'll be up to facing it again this year. Want to somehow offer more.

Find myself missing San Francisco. Lots more mornings like this. Memory anyway. Then the endless summers of Winnipeg come back, open skies and dry heat.

I'm content here. My mind jumps about like a fish on a line. I'll be fishing this weekend. I have the capability. One step ahead of the Hound of Heaven.

Thinking of Dad. A good visit. Wanting to return to see him again. A rock in a changing world. Sitting in the sun with him talking nonsense really. Words just music to the shared time in sunshine. Connections.

Gilbert lying at my feet, happy for the walk. I'd done that religiously before I went away and now am re establishing good habits. He's curled up in a little ball. My buddy. My friend. A companion happy just to be along. No criticism, no expectation, glad to share the time and food. He does like eating my food.

We've been enjoying the toaster oven recently. Lots of cheese sandwiches. Summer grazing food. Loved the elk Roast we had at Laura's. Loved Art's elk jerky in Orlando. Already looking forward to bow hunting in a few weeks. This weekend sailing to Salt Spring Island.

I've thought about the meaning of life. I've also thought about the disparity. The economic crisis looms large with the last couple of years one after another person talking non stop about the financial difficulties. I complain about the high taxes here and two kinds of welfare, those snakes that suck the life from the top looking only to siphon off resources from government plans to line their pockets uncaring of the projects only interested in sounding like they're doing something, mostly interested in spending money and the blue collar welfare folk, those who could work but won't. Both groups free loaders and parasites on the real thing, making a supposedly lean machine swollen with lethargy and sloth. I feel like I carry the weight of the world. Struggling and supporting working more than 3 or 4 men and women and tired of the years of long hours, sacrifice and service.

The welfare system takes money from taxes to pay the fat beaurocratic wages and all the CEO's while the church donations do the major work of service. I'm doing way too much for free and pro bono and am called a 'mark' for my 'generosity'. I curse generosity. The lending of money over the years in the range of tens of thousands and every time I'm burnt like now by psychopaths whose mothers didn't raise them not bite the nipple or bite the hand that feeds.

The mind seeks a place of self pity. Self aggrandisment and self pity are always waiting to pounce on thought and steer the ideas into their direction. Self centered and selfish. Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink.

It's a glorious day. I'm drinking a cup of coffee. I've just had a great walk. I've a day of work that's bound to please the bank. I can hope a motorcycle sells today and some of the stress of finance is lifted. Maybe someone who owes me money will pay. Maybe the outstanding collectibles will come in. I'll work longer hours and more days and in the end I'll have the same Canada pension as those who didn't work. I served the government all my life but there's no pension and older I see the future and today go without to have more money should I live in a town where I can't afford to live wondering why I'm here save for relationships.

I look up and I'm confused. I keep my nose to the grindstone and life is good. Where am I supposed to be. Here I guess. What am I supposed to be doing, this I guess. It's a "living". as they say. But I look about and it seems that the scoundrels I knew who killed and maimed for profit, the liars and the cheats are now flying about the world visitting other countries and letting them see what Canada is like. I am Canadian. This is a grand country.

Self pity and self aggrandisement, twin vultures on thought. Jealousy, envy all lying beneath the surface. Run behind all the journalistic reports I read.

I'm praising God and seeking closer relationship. Should be meditating. Singing praise. It's a good day. I'm about to shower in hot water, put on clean clothing and drive a marvellous little sports car into a fine office to sit all day and serve in work. It's a priviledge and an honour. I'm blessed in so many ways. Thankful. God is great. God is almighty. I am a child of God and my role and purpose is to know God more. This is a sojourn. I'm a tourist here, an eternal being just passing through. This is a kindergarden. I'm in God's sandbox. Love is what counts. I am to be a lover not a fighter. Healing is good. Celebration of life is good. Life is good.

Thank you Jesus. This is the day the Lord has made and I am thankful for that. Hallelujah!


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