Feb.20, 2009 - The Changeling

I wanted to watch Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino but arrived too late for the evening show at the Scotia Theatre. Maybe if I'd had the Harley instead of the Honda Scooter I could have got through the Granville Street construction traffic. She wasn't impressed with the back lane bumps either. Alot of grunts and groans and rib grabbing as I careened around corners trying to get to the movie on time.

"Okay, I guess it's DVD and pizza." I said getting back on the scooter and waiting for her to mount so I could roar off into the night with 50 cc of power under my butt. "We could watch Mama Mia." she said in my ear. "Another night, not after I wanted to watch Clint." I shouted back to her. At Giga DVD , she showed me the new release, "Here's Changeling with Angelina Jolie and John Malkavich, " She said. Images of Star trek, Angelina Jolie in some vampire killing half naked costume and the mad Malkovich. "Sounds great," I said. Bento boxes from the Japanese store next to Giga DVD. Last lightning fast run home on the 50cc scooter. In the door past the attack cat.

Opening scenes. Incredible period piece. 1920 and 30's. Great old cars. Angelina Jolie looking beautiful as always but....."This isn't a science fiction movie, is it?" "No," she said. "But Clint Eastwood directed it." That made it alright, I guess.

Angelina Jolie can act but thise was Oscar performance. Malkovitch was terrific as always and not mad. In fact the movie was about getting the women out of the asylum. I thought the mental health laws here today were the most draconian in the western world but they were clearly worse then. The corruption was wholly believable. The blond nurse Amy Ryand could have stepped out of the worst night mare of any psychiatric inpatient. "A real sadist," she said. "Yea," they're still around. " I said.

No good doctors unfortunately. All believable bad ones, but not one good one. The dentist saves the day. Bad cops, for sure. The worst in fact, but a really endearing Michael Kelly good guy of a cop and great lawyers and judges. But the boys. What gut wrenching performances. I wanted Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion," to be playing in the back ground. It was all so touching. So heart wrenching. So real. A mother's search for her lost son and the police cover up.

Axes, shot guns and hanging for sure. Non stop drama and all out emotion. Ron Howard was a producer true. A true story about Christine Collins starting in 1928 written by J. Michael Stracynski.

Given that the Changeling wasn't about the species from Star Trek, and I'd not got to see Gran Tarino and it looked like it was going to be a chick flick, the movie made a great comeback. It had me in tears at times and at others feeling simply glad to be alive. A fabulous movie, a horribly true story, best actors and director and just all round goodness. Mother's love. Thank you Angelina.

Feb.18, 2009 - Out of Africa

The epic movie, Out of Africa, the memoir of Karen Blixen, the Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, in Kenya, stars Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Redford has always been my favourite actor playing such a diversity of characters with incredible depth and charm. His performance in this brilliant movie, which won 7 Academy awards, is unsurpassed. Meryl Streep, in contrast has grown on me. I did not recognise her genius early but have come to see her as the finest actress of our age. Out of Africa with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep immediately brings to mind African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. There is truly glory in great art.

Does God Exist?

Does God Exist?
-by William Hay

This question may as well be phrased, Do I exist?
The Zen koan goes, “Does the butterfly think the philosopher or the philosopher think the butterfly?”.
Descartes, the French philosopher, spent considerable time on the question of existence and concluded with his famous line “Cogito ergo sum”. “I think therefore I am.”

When Moses in the Old Testament asked the speaking burning bush, who he was. The response was “Yahveh”, ie “I am that is who I am.” God’s response was that he was ‘being’.

Ironically, as these wordgames often appear, man is called ‘human being’ which was translated by a witty schizophrenic (?philosopher) ‘who man being”.

C.S. Lewis, the Christian philosopher said that God is creator and all else including man, his thoughts and her actions is ‘creature’.

The sense one finds in deepest solitude is of not being alone.

The Jewish philosopher Buber wrote a book called “I and Thou”. The sense of the Other or what has been called at times in Catholicism as the ‘mystery’ is the sense of duality and the sense that one is not alone.

Further the sense of “I and It” becomes for Buber the sacred moment that the ‘it’ becomes “thou”.

The Trinity of Christianity encompasses this view with reference to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit where the latter may well be called the linguistic ‘and’ in the equation of I and I. Jesus does say that “I and the Father are one”. “I and I” is the Caribbean depiction of Godness speaking to the central relationship of duality. Yet, that duality has a sense of the ‘sacred’, mystical, miraculous and awe inspiring. Carl Jung has spoken of this numinous experience. The first relationship of a child is to the mother and developmental psychiatrists have spoken to the “mother –child’ bond as the primordial relationship.
Fear has been described as the emotional response to an external threat. In contrast anxiety is the internal experience of fear where there is not an immediately identifiable threat. Anxiety has been described as the measure of the distance from God or another, and equally a measure of one’s humanity.

That sense of separation is fundamental to the awareness of individuality and in various terms has been described as the ‘dark night of the soul’, ‘existential angst’, or any number of metaphors in the equation of movement from baby to adult. It’s also the death alluded to in the phoenix rising mythology. Orgasmic realization is associated with that sense of supreme belonging and unity and loss of ‘self’ or loss of ‘separateness’ associated with immediate return to sense of ‘separation’ or ‘aloneness’.

As to creation, the question then arises , is there a Creation point or is there “always”. Creator or creation point can merely be a means to beg the question of who created the creator or who created the creation point. The big bang beginning of science could simply be one of the recurrent big bangs of the Hindu calendar. Further our ethnocentric perception can be merely the idea that our world is not just something Lilliputian to something else as occurred when the microscope found other worlds in the pond water and telescopes expanded our previously bounded universe. All of this depends on perspective.

Given that thought itself is not instantaneous but limited by neurochemical transmission the question has arisen as to whether our perception is ever anything but ‘reaction’. That gets back to the creator-creature analogy.

Fate and free will are themselves constructs and no one has ever satisfactorily resolved the determinism versus free will debate. Mostly people ‘act as if’ and in the Buddhist dogma one is encouraged to avoid praise, blame and regret though more commonly people attribute praise worthy activity to their ‘free will’ and blameworthy activity to ‘fate’.

In the beginning there was God and God created the heavens and the earth is a key example of the Creator theme. The Creator or beginning implies that there was God alone not God and ‘building blocks’. While an omnipotent God can create something from nothing, as that is the implicit meaning of creation, it is equally plausible that the Creator created the Creatures from him/her self. The best of science to date does indeed suggest a universal ‘star stuff’ to creation. The word “atom’ was usurped to speak to this meaning by phrasing it as ‘at one mind” Mystics using the analogy of sound saw “OM” as the one sound from which comic creation came forth. Certainly electromagnetic and light dynamics with their complex wave and particle theories haven’t added a lot metaphorically to these early impressions of the ancient mystics and philosophers.

The notion of relationship is scientifically first and foremost ‘association’ not ‘causation’ . I and the other is a perceptual reality explicit in the subject object relationship that one has with the world and with the unknown.

The movement from I and it to I and I or more importantly I and Thou is really the greatest journey and that is what most people would think of ‘faith’ as fear is natural for one alone, separate and quite frankly lost. Whereas the sense of belonging and being apart of is the essence of a relationship of love. Faith is the foundation for believing that the other is loving rather than fearful.

Humility is at the core of contact. Quite possibly I could destroy the other as a way ward child thoroughly unaware of how precious and sensitive the other is. Little Prince is an allegory of a space man and a rose discussing at length the relationship of aliens, or lovers or self and soul. Alternatively one must let go of the paranoia that says that I am not in control and this ‘creator’ may well be malign and have ‘malign’ or even cannibalistic intentions.
The whole subject then of the ‘nature of god’ is a separate discussion well addressed in a little book called “Your god Is Too Small”.
E=MC2 tells me that energy is ‘light matter’, that I cannot readily see ‘energy’ but accept it’s existence, but can appreciate spiritually and poetically that matter is ‘frozen starstuff” or 'frozen energy'. Time is of essence to the equation in the understanding of the concept of speed yet time may solely be a construct of a bimodal brain dualistic where reality like God may be solely omniscient. If Love could be ‘measured’ would it still be love?
For now I have faith God exists and believe God is loving.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy
I intuitively understand that I join with them often searching miles down cold dark corridors to where they are really hiding. I pass the mirrors and gargoyles. We play the hide and seek games and sometimes wrestle till agape’s embrace.
Then I must pull away to perform the pirouette then walking back trust them to follow. Thanks to my teachers, I have taken thousands home . It doesn’t work to hold their hands else they would not trust the steps of their own way out.
Home is where I like to live. Home is the special place called community. There is sunshine and warmth. Ugling ducklings do become swans. Friends share stories of their own faraway places.
Sometimes there's one who doesn’t want to come. Just last week I looked over my shoulder a last time at a man who walked away back to the darkness alone.
Today I shiver at the hearth of a fire my mother and father built when I was just a baby. I feel more the draft. The journeys just a little longer . The light at the end of the tunnel sometimes flickers.
But you, my love, wait at the end of day. When I am late I feel you calling.

Davie Street: The Centre

I moved into the West End 3 years ago. It's as close to New York, Toronto, or LA as you're going to get in Vancouver. The rest of the city is a suburb. Robson Street is shopping. Davie Street is diversity. Beach is, well, English Bay. Denman Street is funky. Granville Street is movies and grunge. Georgia Street is Christ Church Cathedral, the Vancouver Museum, the Bay, pretty much uptown. Burrard is a thoroughfare with Virgin Records, ScotiaTheatre, Swan Laundry and Giga DVD. The bridges bring people from the outside to the inside.

The Centre is at Bute and Davie, across from Hamburger Mary's and the Blenz coffeeshop. Little Sister's bookstore is half a block a way. I've been going to a noon hour meeting at the Centre often for a couple of years, now. I like the people. It's a 12 step group. The first fellow I met there turned out not to be gay. He told me he and his wife just lived down the road. After that I didn't know what anybody was. No one jumped me either. I was a little disappointed. I'm of a 'certain age'. My women friends say they'd beg for a wolf whistle. The stereotype for gay men is naked and groping. It's been a decades since I've come close to being groped. No one has been naked at this meeting. Some guy occasionally wears a dress. Others are just colour coordinated. Lesbians are supposed to be angry. If the friendly women there are lesbians, they're not angry. Everyone I've met instead has been warm, kind, open, accepting and welcoming. There's a wealth of stories at the Centre and it's an institution on Davie. Activities going on there all the time. Drop ins, groups, counselling, clinics. I just like reading the ever changing pamphlets. The bowl of condoms reminds me a lot of the first street clinic I worked in Winnipeg back in the late 70's. When a guy approached me for 'gay affirmative' therapy I didn't know what it was so sent him to the Centre. That began back in the 80's or 90's. I didn't like the West End back then. Too busy. Too many people. Too crowded. Then I lived in the country and on an island for a while. When I returned I figured if you're going to be in a city at all you might as well be at the hub. 24 hours a day I can walk out of my apartment and find something open and probably even meet a friend. That's what comes of getting together with others in the neighbourhood. Pretty soon you're not alone. I like the people here . We make a point of overlooking the differences and focussing on the similiarities.

The International

I told her because it was Valentine's we'd get dressed up and I'd take her to Frederico's Dinner and Dance Club on Commercial. Everyone says it's the best. Best food, best service, great little dance floor, fabulous music and very romantic. So of course everyone made their reservations for Valentine's way before I thought to phone on Thursday.

Now I've been wanting to see the International for months since the first trailers came out. Clive Owens starring. Director Tom Tykwer. Writer, Eric Singer. A dirty bank. Dirty bankers. More dirty bankers. Dirty government. Dirty police, dirty governments, mystery and intrigue. Scotia Theatre on Burrard serves Hot Dogs and Nachos. That's a dinner, isn't it?

So I picked her up on the ruckus scooter. At least I told her this time not to wear her little black dress. I was thoughtful. She had jeans and leather jacket and her helmut. I'd finally been paid so I bought the tickets. That's thoughtful too. And I sprung for the hot dogs and nachos.

The International was worth it. She even said, "I loved the intrigue. The scenery was magnificent. Milan, Instanbul, New York." Definitely panoramic and well worth seeing at the theatre. A really big movie with big action. Kind of Serpico and Bourne Identity mixed with National Geographic. It also had the kind of satisfying political education that Nicholas Cage's character in Lord of War exposed us to. Having a very personal relationship with the taxman I found the movie very cathartic.

It's easy to believe that 75% of adults today don't believe the lies their government tells them. What is hard to believe is that in the 50's 75% of Americans did believe. Of course, ignorance is bliss. So are we further ahead? There is some comfort watching characters like Clive Owens and Naomi Watts break from the orchestrated slavery the movie exposes. "They control your money. They control your government. They control your life. And everybody pays." is the succinct review of the International Movie Database.

Clive Owens acting is incredible and for my vote he should be picked for the next James Bond. Naomi Watts is real woman character for a change, wholly believable and yet extraordinary. The villains are the best since the Nuremberg documentaries. Kind of reminds you of the cast of corporate heros who continue to populate the modern news.

Not quite Valentine's Day material though. It did come as a surprise to me that I didn't have hot dog sauce on my shirt for a change when the lights came on. That was a plus. She said she liked the nacho hot sauce. I've never known what to believe from women on a date.

Despite all odds we survived driving home on the scooter through the police sirens, drunks and drug addicted drivers of Vancouver's Saturday night streets. If there was love in the air I missed it trying to avoid being smacked by chocolate frenzied female drivers .

My friend is excited about attending a 5 year old's birthday party tomorrow. The ballet, Carmen and the Goldberg Variations is next week. She says it's okay we went out and saw explosions and blood and guts on Valentines. It's the thought that counts, right?

Henry Poole is Here

Henry Poole is Here (2008) is directed by Mark Pellington. This stellar comedy opens with Henry Poole, (Luke Wilson) buying a house near his childhood home to spend what he believes to be his final days. His devout catholic neighbour (Adriana Barraza) however finds a miracle in his backyard she wants the world to share. Lacking faith and wanting to be left alone, sad and angry Poole is moved by child star (Morgan Lilly) and through her touched by the beautiful, Radha Mitchell. The sound track features Bob Dylan, Badly Drawn Boy and Eels. Rarely have lyrics and music so complemented action as this deeply amusing movie touches chord after chord. Where else can reference to Noam Chomsky enter a script that would have Mohammed, Moses and Jesus all chuckling. Albert Torres, the writer,can only be applauded for this happy heartfelt romp of a love story.

The Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. David Hume 1711-76 Scottish Philosopher