Logan Lake, Wednesday, Day 5

With not city noise and country fresh air, peace and simplicity, I slept well, with comforting dreams.  Family visitted. Friends surrounded me. I was in my favourite places exploring visitted. I woke refreshed.  I dressed and took Madigan for his morning walk along their trail to town then a little bit off leash beside the lake.  I had a major poop and I cleaned it up with a striped plastic bag I carried.  

Back in the camper I’ve made a coffee with Ethiopian Sidamo beans I roasted myself and ground with the hand grinder.  It’s hot and delicious. An eagle is swooping off the dock. It’s caught a fish!   It appears to have taken it back to the nest I saw high above the point below which I swam yesterday. What a majestic bird!

I had trouble dressing this morning.  I’ve had to change three times.  I’m working in another hour virtual so have to consider how I’ll be seen, Then I may hear my truck is ready and have to ride my electric bicycle over to pick it up. I’m hoping they were able to finish fixing the brakes yesterday. I’ll be glad to have the camper back on the truck. I do love how I can break this up in parts. The Nightster motorcycle is off the hitch rack and standing beside the camper.  Off the truck this camper is tiny home on stilts.  On the truck its a caravan.  I’m truly blessed and thankful.

A woman and her old dog are walking by.  I admire her hair.  She’s combed it back and pinned it elegantly.  Meanwhile she’s wearing a sleeveless black top, light ankle length blue jeans and white low sneakers.  The contrast between the well coiffed hair and casual summer clothing speak to her character and personality.

Here I am in the present watching the scene unfold around me

The Steely Dan song continues to pass through my mind, “I”m never going back to my old school.”  I didn’t go the reunion.  I would have like to have seen old friends had a trip down nostalgia lane, visitted the old neighbourhood,

I was expelled from school for playing guitar and rap talking a poem I composed before rap and after beatnik.  

‘Hey man what a fuck up

Running bout like non loved chickens

The shepherds screw their sacred sheep

The price of meat is far too steep

Hey man, what a fuck up”

Danny Donahue was playing guitar. It was a lunch event, outside of school in that sense.  I was performing about the city in coffeehouses.  Edgy, obviously.  The conservative establishment was clearly upst. I’d played in a church basement only a week before and a young pastor had tacked me on stage.  Thanks to the quick thinking of another musician my guitar was rescued as this old man he must have been all of 30, was wrestling me down on the floor,. I was 17 at the time and other teens pulled him off.  

I think there was a line , ‘from afar a stoned god watches’ in that poem too.  I don’t think I’d done acid yet but believe I’d smoked a joint by then.  I know I was listening to Dylan and reading Leonard Cohen.  I’d read Lenny Bruce too.  He was the one who got banned for saying ‘fuck’.  I didn’t know George Carlin back then but loved later learning the 5 things you couldn’t say in public.  Stonewall only took place in 1968 in New York. Homosexuality was illegal and Ontario police were paid to drill holes in men’s washrooms and film men in privacy.  Later boys and girls would pay their way through college by putting up cameras through their apartments so men and women could subscribe to watch them naked going about their daily routines. It was years before the perversion of government were exposed.  Even today the Jefry Epstein list is undisclosed.  

Obviously I was a confused young man.  I was depressed then because my girlfriend, a creative genius and darling who had hair down to her bum and wore tinted granny glasses like George Harrison. We met in acting classes.  She was my first true love and first intimacy.  She was in college and I was still in high school but ironically getting out of class to teach creative dramatics to teachers in another school division where theatre was to begun as a project but no teachers had any experience with improvisation or theatre sports. I’d organized a group of us and was getting gigs about town to perform and participate in festivals.  

I suppose being kicked out of school was a life changer even though I returned weeks later to mostly complete the year.  I’d been slapped down by the ‘man’ and everyone knew it.  The book Good Time Charley’s Back in Town was in the making at the time. I’d become a roady for a band that summer instead of preparing for university as I’d planned or assumed,  I’d later make up the credit I needed to graduate and took a detour in life,

I think of nodal points in history.  The fall of the Berlin Wall, the Berlin Air lift. These are far reaching events that were like many such events in history that only looking back did they seem even more meaningful than they were at the time.  History is a multiverse and lines meat in the web at these ultra dense nodes where multi potentials occur but a single path resolves the paradoxes.  17 was such a time for me.  Poetry, song, the word ‘fuck’, getting fucked , getting more fucked.  I loved reading a celebrity recently saying that the word ‘fuck’ was all used up and he felt there was a need for a new word that was stronger.  We’ve developed a tolerance for the word like folks will develop tolerance for medications.  That’s so true with antidepressants,  Either the depression just gets worse or the therapy isn’t strong enough.  

She left me for an older boy who had a car. I rather liked him when I met him.  I didn’t drive till I was 25.  I was totally into bicycles and would bicycle across Europe.  Before that I’d convinced a group of guys to bicycle a hundred miles to the lake one summer weekend making an incredible adventure and expedition. Many followed but cars were the thing. My brother had a motorcycle and years later confessed he preferred cars but couldn’t afford one then.  I was working as a waiter, short order cook and busboy back then.  The theatre gigs paid too.  I lived in a middle class home but was always hustling for money.  I also remember growing as a teen ager and loving girlfriends because they made me sandwiches.  

I wanted to kill myself after we broke up,  I argued with my parents and one night they took me to the emergency. I wrote ‘fuck’’ on the white walls of the hospital emergency But some kids were in a car crash and I gave up the room I was waiting in to help the nurses move gurneys.  Eventually a doctor talked to me.  He looked at my art work on the wall.  He talked to my mom and dad who I know now were crazy with love and fear and just wanted what was good for me.  They were afraid I’d kill myself. Days  later we’d come back to see the doctor and he’d tell my mom to stop trying to hit me and stop shouting at me. She was Irish and furious with my adolescent rebellion. Dad supported the doctor I believe because I got some space and life moved on.  The nodal point was passed. I heard she moved to the coast became an interior designer and had a couple of kids with that same guy.  The one I’d liked.  Her mother ran off with the local priest leaving her father a local famous businessman.  Life wasn’t easy for any of us adolescents with the war in Vietnam continuing and Woodstock happening.   

I am gladd I survived.  Seeing the eagle catch the fish this morning was incredible.  

Book of Mormon, Prince of Wales Theatre, London

The Book of Mormon is playing at the Prince of Wales Theatre in the same block as our Thistle Hotel.  I’d heard it was hilarious and that young Mormons loved it but the church officials considered it suspect. Institutional folk especially the old have never been known for their sense of humor.

Erickson described the Parental, Adult and Child aspects of the mind.  Institutional folk like police and beurocrats and the officious in general have clearly overdeveloped Parental functions to the detriment of their child function.  The play actually dealt with this.

It was simply hilarious. There was so much absurdity that really only a child could appreciate the truth of it. The songs were catchy modern mixes of African American and the dance, which I love, was cutting edge.  The play was Constantinian Christianity or Cargo God, a challenge to all who worship the ‘book’ of any kind, especially those who cherry pick and somehow miss something.  

Exclusivity and inclusivity. The gay debate and the slave and women issues of St. Paul.  It didn’t speak to the book of Islam but it was by no means limited to the Book of Mormon.  

All the First World  religions  were there in this microcosm of a  Mormon American ministry to Uganda.  What a fabulous interface.  Warlord’s ,Aids, superstition and the dreams.  Hollywood pantheon versus the Greek pantheon and the saints of Christianity and the Joseph Smith

All around us were young mormons thoroughly enjoying the play.  The audience was primarily young people but that could just be my perception.  Nothing funnier than hearing a missionary passionately talking about ideas to a man who responds “I’ve got maggots on my scrotum.”  

The prevalent problematic machismo African belief that intercourse with a virgin cures aids leads to infant intercourse but is cured by displacement  to fucking frogs.  It’s so bizarre with Star Trek and Darth Vader incorporated.  I loved it.  Nothing is funnier than seeing what the village believes they have been taught.  The church officials are beside themselves. 

Is God man made or is man God made?It’s a breath mint and a candy mint. Only time separates but to the omniscient there is no black or white.

 Did you get the ‘hell dream’. The hell scene is priceless.   The right and wrong of childhood becomes the corporate curse  of the American underbelly.  The future is Africa.  

The cast was black and white.  I loved it. Laura loved it.

“I couldn’t stop laughing, ‘ she said after. I’d heard her literally snorting behind her mask beside me.  

So no it wasn’t sacriligious. I’m not Mormon.  But I don’t have a problem with Jesus appearing in America or on any planet after crucifixion. I don’t keep God in a box ,even a shrodinger box.  The Collective Consciousness is the ‘in the beginning was the Word’.  This play is so funny it should  be required reading for all religions.  Maybe it would stop girls having their clitorus removed. The baptism duet was perfect.  It’s today’s Life of Brian.  

  

The Wolves - Pacific Theatre Play -Oct. 19-Nov. 10

The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe was a fantastic play about a college girls soccer team.  Incredibly intimate writing, I was reminded of the Quilters.  Sometimes I was taken back to teen years eves dropping outside the girls’ locker room. Not really getting half the nuances.

 My friend Laura said, “the estrogen of all those young women was overpowering. I was timid and shy as a girl and the atheistic women with all their energy kind of frightened me at times.”

 It was the energy, a  brilliantly crafted play.  The choreography of running and warm up and passing ball and  dialogue between stretches a masterpiece of art.   A powerful drama driven by exercise and relationship.  

I loved the transformation of the girls as they moved from reserve  to friendships to a team.  There was  a whole array and depth  of emotions  sparked with silences.  

Director Jamie King got the timing and pathos perfectly.  So much going on.  I was riveted. 100 minutes and no intermission. An emotional roller coaster of ideas and theatre.   The spell wasn’t broken once.  Magical.   The final darkness and  audience bursting with applause.  Now that’s theater. 

Nicole Weissmiller, the lighting designer, got it just right.   I felt I was in a foot ball stadium the whole time. The green Astro turf glistened.  

Danielle Klaudt and Paige Louter were the producers.   Victoria Snashall did an awesome job as stage manager.  

The costumes were simple but more than met the eye.. The beautiful girls despite the sexual content of some conversations never were ‘sexy’ thanks to the clunky school sports uniforms.  Throughout they were team mates,  sisters,  daughters.  So much depended on the costumes.   Matthew Macdonald-Bain did sound.  Again it was just right, perfectly in sync with the emotion.  Everything came together to maintain this amazing surging flow.

Kim Larson, Amanda Sum, Danielle Kaludt, Georgia Beaty, Jalen Saip, Ali Watson, Montserrat Videla. Shona Struthers and Paige Louter were the actresses. The Wolves.  The young women.  The Team. Each was distinct , endearing and an incredible character.  I loved them all. Tania Dixon Warren the soccer mom was amazing.

Wow.  

Thank you Pacific Theater and Rumble Theatre for an unforgettable play.  

Outside Mullingar at Pacific Theatre

Laura and I enjoyed another rare and precious Pacific Theatre play, Outside Mullingar.  An Irish play set in the farms of the parents of a man and woman who grew up next door to each other, went to school and church together and casually talk of events of their neighbours decades before.  The parents are delightful as they talk of their children. It’s that kind of old world family thing.  Generations and tradition.  So absent in television reality.  A marvellous written by John Patrick Shanly with exquisite directing extraordinary acting.  I felt like I was back at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  Leaving the theatre I was truly uplifted by great art done so very well.  Thank you Pacific Theatre.
Now it’s time to order season’s tickets for next year.

Valley Song at Pacific Theatre

 Magnolia and Cherry Blossoms were in bloom today  After many weeks of rain the sun was shining again in Vancouver.  I’d been driving with the top down on my Miata.   Ladies on the street,   lighter without umbrellas and overcoats. sported jackets of spring fashion.  

Laura and I had heard from friends how much they’d enjoyed Valley Song by Athol Fugard. Tonight was our theatre night.  We have season tickets at Pacific Theatre.  

Set in the year following South Africa’s first free election 1994,  the play focused on the relationship of Abraam “Buks” Jonkers and his granddaughter Veronica Jonkers.  Buks is 76 and in love with the land, his valley, the village and the crops.  Veronica loves her grandfather, singing and is drawn to the city.  The story includes her dead mother, Caroline and the dead grandmother Betty. Buks spoke to the ghosts them when he was alone. Change was coming to the valley.  Buks was for the old.  Veronnica’s dreams and Johannasberg were the change.

David Adams played Buks passionately. Sereana Malani played Veronica touchingly.  David Adams also played the author, the white man who had come to the valley to escape the city.  Veronica broke into her own songs, remarkable feeling pieces of home, her life  and the valley, original music by Cathy Nosaty.

I cried. I laughed.  The acting and song couldn’t be better. Even the set by Drew Facey couldn’t be improved on. Director Jovanni Sy is incredible.  I was drawn right into the story with the fingers of the writing getting a hold on my heart, tight, the acting stirring my soul.  

I liked the talk of land,  planting pumpkin seeds and prayers for rain.  The play was full of metaphor. As spring was coming here to Vancouver  the play of change and renewal in another land and time..  A play of immense depth. It reminded me of the old plays that first fired my love for theatre, Death of a Salesman,  I Remember Mother.  Yes, I loved Shakespeare but it was the Chekov and Noel Coward that really captured my imagination.  I wanted to be a play wright when I was younger but settled for a love of theatre.  This play, these actors, this theatre, the director, the whole creative team made me thankful tonight again for live theatre.

The applause went on for a long time.  Laura loved the play as much as I did.  She'd been crying and laughing too. The last theatre we’d been to had been a few months back on Broadway in  New York.   In it’s own way this little theatre production was just as good.  We are truly blessed to have Pacific Theatre for it’s character and excellence.  

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Returning to Vancouver from New York City

Laura and I returned home from New York at 3 am this week.  First we were very thankful that we got to JFK on time. Redbury Hotel staff were very helpful and the taxi driver was a delightful Punjab young man who discussed spirituality and humour the whole ride with us.
Next we were thankful to get through security without trouble.  In the past it’s been a  major kerfuffle when they've found Laura or I carrying guns, ammunition, or hunting knives in our baggage. Laura really likes having her own luggage now and resists borrowing any of mine. .
I was thankful to have my aisle seat. I do like to stretch my long legs. Having been in a plane crass I always feel less claustrophobic. Older I like to pee and remember this young woman on a flight back from London saying to me, “Do you have to go again. You just peed.”  I had got up twice in an 8 hour flight and did not kill her outright because she was young, stupid, ugly,  and unlikely to be good eating.
I was thankful too to have our luggage overhead and the Philippine Airline Staff so helpful and pleasant and solicitous.  It was really gratifying when the plane took off so well and we didn’t have to Scully in the Hudson River. I really just wanted to have an uneventful flight.  They even served us a lovely meal.  Philippine Airlines is truly delightful to fly with.
I slept some. Watched a couple of television episodes. Took a couple of trips to the loo.  5 hours passed before we knew it.  I was then thankful that the unloading went quickly and smoothly and that customs didn’t delay us.  The best part  was getting our luggage off the carousel. It arrived in tact.  I am just really thankful when I see my luggage and feel the relief that comes with that.
Vancouver from the taxi looked great. It was all still there.Ugly with snow and ice but known.  When I’ve been in  the strange I feel really good coming home to the known.
I actually got a few hours of sleep before finding enough clean clothes to go out to work.  I loved driving in my little Miata.  It’s just such a friendly little car.  Then I was at work and all the people there were great to see. I really am blessed to work with some of the finest doctors and staff around.  It’s comforting and reassuring.  I liked seeing my patients and getting back into the routine.
I was thankful then to see my home was still there. No terrorists bombs, fires or floods had taken it away.  There was heat.  The water lines weren’t frozen.  I changed the propane tank and turned up the heat  to make the place cozy and warm.  It hadn’t been burglarized.  It was still untidy and disorganized and desperately in need of a cleaning lady. I blame Gilbert but his contribution is only to the toy and ball strewn floor.
Then Kaloo Kalay I drove over to pick up Gilbert from Mida.  Mida Hannah and Hannah’s brother,  the whole family and his dog girlfriend Hacchi had cared for Gilbert while we were away.  Gilbert was excited to see me as usual.  He’s a bit shocked for a moment and then goes nuts.  Lots of barking and running about in circles.  Lovely to see Mida. Just great to be reunited with Gilbert.
In the car ride home he was licking my ears and snuggling. A real suck. At home I was throwing ball and he was fetching. Then he was lying on top of me whenever I tried to read. He slept the night with his little body pressed up against mine.
I was thankful too for the electric blanket. I turned the heat down. The electric blanket is a god send.  It really was cold outside. I
I was thankful for sleep. While I loved the Redbury Hotel and the modern shiny bathroom it really was great to be home with my own toilet and sink and shower.  It’s comforting. I especially loved making my own stove top expresso coffee and sitting on my own couch and relaxing before getting ready for work.
I’ve said a whole lot of prayers and meditated a bit too.  It really was a blessing to go to New York. It was a wonderful vacation and a thorough joy to see the amazing creativity of my fellow man and woman in the shows and museums and galleries. I still can’t get over telling people how millions of people from every race and culture interacted together with respect and civility. We were wall to wall in bodies but no one was having road rage or being obnoxious. It was wonderful.  Some of it was the Christmas season. People were collectively thinking of the baby Jesus. But even in the Pagan New Year’s celebration there was no attacking of women en mass like they did in Cologne. The New York police were the very best in the world.  New York is an amazing city.
I really am thankful to be back in Vancouver. Despite the perfection of the shows in New York I really can say I love the Symphony, Opera, Early Music, theatre and our Art Gallery really does have excellent visitting works. We have shows like U2 that come here. There’s culture and art and It really is world class.  There’s a profound ‘excellence’ that one encounters in New York, an A+ team of the best of the best on Broadway but we get glimpses of that here and overall aren’t deprived.
I remember a story my friend ,who was Canada’s leading ballet dancer, told me 40 years ago.  “I was standing in a Broadway audition line feeling pretty sure of myself as the foremost dancer of Canada until I asked the guy ahead of me, what he did. He told me he was the lead dancer for the Russian Ballet and the guy behind me was the lead dancer for Germany.  It turned out everyone of the hundred people in that line were the leads from their countries. Frankly I didn’t feel too badly I didn’t get the job. Getting the audition was a pretty big thing..”
CATS in New York will forever be the most ‘perfect’ production I have ever seen.  The dance and song and acting were simply incredible.
I loved the architecture of New York.  I loved the churches of New York: Trinity, St.Paul’s, St. Patrick’s and Riverside I loved the galleries and museums:  the MET, the Neue, the Guggenheim, MoMA,  The Museum of Sex was fun as well.  I loved being able to go into the historic and beautiful Trump tower.  I loved standing again on top of the Empire State Building.  I loved the Ferry Ride to Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty. It was moving to  visit the 9-11 memorial. I loved walking around New York, 5th Avenue,Park, and Madison, Central Park, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Bowery, Midtown.  I loved our Redbury Hotel and the local Bread and Butter,nearby MacDonald’s and the Churchill.  I am so thankful the weather was so good. I’m thankful for the taxi and subways.   I am so thankful for sobriety,spirituality and service.
I am very thankful to have such a beautiful, exciting, caring companion in Laura as well. Her joy and enthusiasm and good spirit made everything so much richer.
There was one thing I haven’t seen in Vancouver that I appreciated in New York, and London and Dublin before. It’s ‘big theatre’.  I love the excellence of little Pacific Theatre but was thoroughly moved by Chekhov’s Present with Cate Blanchet. Part of the charm was the number of characters,all of who were great and I realized I’ve not seen such a memorable play here. The other thing that really moved me was the Lincoln Centre. What a truly outrageously perfect opera and symphony centre.  I expect Vancouver would do well to consider an arts and cultural centre because we truly have the talent.  Enough with the bike lanes!
Yes, I’m thankful to be back.  I was really thankful to see my friend George. It was great to see Dave. I love known faces and the reassurance that comes with realizing after such novelty of vacation, that here I have friends.   I liked talking with my nephews and loved getting another  wonderful warm sweater from my sister in law Adell. I’ve been feeling truly cherished every time I wear Anna’s hand made scarf and realize how much love I’ve been blessed to know.  It’s a good life.  Getting thousands of miles away and returning really does wonders for gratitude.
No doubt bureaucrats and wankers will begin again to suck the very life out of me, people will threaten my life and my dog, liars will tell lies, takers will take,  but at least for a day or two I really  can feel relaxed and  alive again.  Today I  am truly grateful for this life.  I think some of the relief too is getting through the ‘holiday season’ when the drunkeness and drug abuse in Vancouver maxes out.  I’ll never forget Laura saying how much she enjoyed New York because there wasn’t marijuana smoke everywhere.  I loved the smell of fine perfumes and colognes walking through the crowds and sitting on the subway.
Now I’m thankful for this Saturday and the sunny blue sky day.  My truck engine wouldn’t turn over. I have to  jump the battery.  That means I have to get off this couch.   Maybe I'll make another coffee before showering and shaving. But really, isn’t God great.
Thank you Jesus for all your blessings!  Thank you Thank you Thank you.