Westcoast Motorcycle Ride to Live 2013

it was a rainy day but Gilbert and I didn't let that stop us from joining the West Coast Motorcycle Ride to Live. We were up at 6 am and thanks to the Harley Electraglide down at Trev Deely with time to spare for registration and getting into line.  We were at the national Ride for Dad when it began and this local Ride to Live is still raising money for Prostate Cancer and research.  I like that the Police, Military, Fire and Rescue riders all join in.  I saw Gospel Riders and Sober Riders so it was a great community event with hundreds of motorcycles.  A lot more women out on bikes than ever before.  And all sizes of bikes with the smallest being a Honda 90 trail bike.  Harleys, Dukatis, BMW's, Victory's, Yamaha's, Honda's, anything with 2 wheels and some with three. I missed the opening prayer but enjoyed the incredible singing of Oh Canada which brought a tear to my eye.
The parade lead from Trev Deely to Port Moody with escorts a staggered motorcycle rows of two. Very impressive.  Gilbert was a champ.  He saw his neighbourhood friend Emory there too.  The two of them were the only dogs I saw.  The ride from Port Moody went on to Canadian Tire in Mission, then Fort Langley and back to Cloverdale.  The rain was only a drizzle but it required more attention driving.  I loved the camaraderie.  I followed a couple of bikers, one on an orange harley and the other with his son wearing the Baptista jacket on a Ducati.  I'd told them I'd got lost a couple of years before  and they actually waited when I was cut off from them by a change of lights. That sort of behaviour characterized the ride.  Everyone friendly and communicating and respectful of the road and other drivers.  Great country riding too.  Fun to be part of a rally and seeing all the other bikes flying the Ride to Live flags. 

Scuba Diving Whitecliff

It was a great day with a mix of sun and clouds.  Not too hot.  I met Mike, the Master Diver, at Rowand Reef and we drove in our separate vehicles to Whitecliff. I've this new dry suit that I've only tested in a swimming pool. After years of scuba diving with a suit (other than my bathing suit) it's taking a little getting used to the change in buoyancy.  The swimming pool is fresh water and I'd need more weights in salt water.
There were at least 50 other divers at Whitecliff. I'd done my original drysuit training here. I'd also done my first night dive and the grid and compass training.  Visibility can often be a problem and were heard it was today but that wouldn't affect my equipment check. I signed up for a weekend dive in Barkley Sound so want to be equipment problem free when I'm out there.  My Hubb had all it's seals re conditioned as well so it was going to be a test of this at 100 feet pressure as well.
Mike is great fun. A young guy who also works Fire Rescue.  There are some advantages to being an older man.  Well bred young men are more helpful and solicitous.  When he offered to lift my tank for me to get on I wasn't complaining.  Gearing up is a bitch.  All this gear.  When finally suited up and geared up I felt like Colonel Chris Hatfield. I was ready for any environment and looked around for the guys from Bare Naked Lady to join in a fitting song with.
It's a bit of trek down to the beach from the parking lot.  Mike had us go right in, stopping only a moment to put on dive hood and goggles.  Then I was in the water with  my BCG inflated and struggling to get my fins on.  "Can I help you with those,"  Mike asked.  Sure.  It feels a bit like having a mother help you put on your shoes to go to kindergarden but why not.  Mike's line, "That's what dive buddies are for."  He had let me help him zip up his suit probably just to make me feel a bit useful.
We swam out to the deeper water then.  We'd gone over our PADI hand signals in the parking lot so I knew to go down but when I pressed the button to let the air out of my BCG I didn't descend.  Mike had extra weights but neither he nor I could get them out of the pocket in his pack. TThe gloves keep one's fingers warm but aren't good for fishing in pockets for slippery balls of lead.  This necessitated a swim ashore. Tide was going out and I had weights on my ankles.  I'm out of shape.  Rolling the ATV a year and half ago with all the injuries and the excuse to lie around eating and watching tv hasn't helped. I 've been getting more active the last 6 months, swimming 20 length of the pool each week, hiking with Gilbert, but those weights on my ankles were killers. I couldn't swim on my back because my feet just went straight down so I swam on my side with some successful.  A long surface swim.  Exhausted I stumbled coming out of the water and Mike kindly helped the old guy up.
In this struggle for decorum I lost my old mask and snorkel.  Ashore I sat, wondering if I was getting too old for scuba diving.  Mike meanwhile ran back to his car for more weights.  Firemen. He at least had the courtesy to leave his tank but I don't doubt he'd have been able to run up the hill after that swim with his tank on.  I was glad to sit on the beach in the sun watching the other divers.  God was good too. A girl came out of the water and couldn't stand.  Her buddies had to help her get her tank off as she knelt in the water.  I told her she shouldn't have watched my entrance. It's not the way it's supposed to be done.  Pay attention to these other guys. She stood up after that laughing.  There's no doubt this is all a whole lot of fun.
Mike stuff more weights into my Hubb pockets.  And off we went again. This time it was letter perfect.  I pressed the button and descended smoothly.  There wasn't much visibility, maybe 6 to 10 feet, but just enough so I didn't lose Mike. He had a light and I'd forgotten mine. I'd left my dive computer and light on the boat having intended to leave from there but not going there in the morning at all just picking up the major part of my gear from the storage locker. I really must get a checklist for this.
I loved the glorious white anemones at the bottom. Great mushrooms looking things on stocks. There were crabs and greeling fish and a big cod.  I love fish. Seeing fish I'm back as a kid who raised tropical fish but now I'm inside the tank.  
I'd forgotten to bring socks so my feet were cold.  Having used up air originally trying to descend and swimming ashore I was glad it was a short dive. I signalled to mike when I was at 1500 and we headed back.  At 1000 I let him know and but as I was beginning to ascend air in my suit pooled in my feet and I shot up to the surface feet first for the last 10 feet . When we'd begun our ascent we were already at about 30 feet.  My exit from the water at the end though wasn't elegant.  Mike said that my ankle weights were probably a good idea. I'd taken them off after the surface swim.  Now I'll wear them again unless there's any surface swimming planned or at least I'll know to take them off for that.
A harbour seal was sunning itself on a rock beside us.  The sun was glorious.  I was really happy.  I'm always happy to be alive after a dive.  It's not at all dangerous but it somehow makes one feel how wonderful it is in one's own domain. I'm sure the space astronauts feel the same when they come inside from outer space.  I'd just been 20 minutes in the original domain.  Amazing to that we all came from the sea so there's that revitalization that comes with returning to land.  I'd been down there with the fishes and a part of that world but now I was climbing up the beach without the sprawling tripping previous exit.
All round a terrific time.  We were scheduled for 2 dives but I told Mike I only wanted one, simply because my feet were cold and secretly I was tired.  Enough for a day.  I could have done another dive but the gearing up would have been more exhausting. Just hauling my tired as up to the hose on the side of the hill was enough .The cold fresh water on my face was spectacular.  Mike offered to carry my weight belt when his keen fireman eye saw that it was that or have to carry the whole of me over his shoulder. What a wuss I am.  I accepted the offer gladly. 35 lbs was all I needed lightened to ascend the hill to my truck looking very dignified indeed.  Pulling the weight belt ass backwards hauling it like a snake across the grass must have caused Mike some embarrassment. There's a whole lot of these master divers around making it the safest place to dive in all BC.  Mike's amazing with his Fire Rescue skills and all his dive skills and his willingness to accept that maybe one day when he was twice his age he'd look as happily tired as I did.
What a day!  I was out of my gear and shaking hands with Mike before heading back to Burnaby for the excited reuniting with Gilbert who had guarded the home while I was away.
I'm that much fitter and a whole lot less anxious.  A lot of of the tiredness is fear. I was admittedly a little concerned about testing new gear at 100 feet.  My friend Tom told me that parachute packers are required to use the parachutes every 100 packings to maintain the high standards there. I knew I was going to be a guinea pig for my gear and I don't like being a guinea pig.  Once I was under water swimming alongside Mike I was in the heaven that scuba diving is. It's so exhilarating to be weightless and moving along in this underwater paradise with fish looking me right in the eye inches away from my face mask.  I love it.  Another dive.  And I'm even getting used to the dry suit. It's a whole lot better in the tropics but then my friend who skied in a bikini once said that was her favourite day snow skiing on the mountain.  I'll wear socks the next time because I didn't even like having cold feet, physically.  The felt suit I wore inside the dry suit kept the rest of me totally warm but I have to remember some thermal socks for inside the boots.  No water gets in the whole outfit.  Amazing.  Once I was stripped down I just got into my street clothing.  I like that a whole lot better than the neoprene suit I had before.
A great dive. Thank you Mike.  Thank you Rowand Reef, Granville Island, Vancouver.

Right Livelihood

The Buddhist 8 fold path includes "Right Livelihood" as one of the central precepts.  I studied Buddhism in the 1970's reading various leading texts and eventually coming under the influence of a leading medical doctor who was also a Buddhist.  I'd first read the life of Buddha, as Siddhartha by the nobel prize winning writer, Herman Hesse.  I'd loved his "Journey to the East" and around the time I was reading this the Beattles were off in India.  The East-West fusion was well under way at the time.  I had read the Bhagadva Gita and studied Paramahansa Yoganada but found the 8 fold path, years later,  written in my journal I had well living in London England.  I was working as a bar tender then and remember thinking that this was not 'right livelihood'.
Being a bar tender wasn't my only job.  That was what I did in the evening.  During the day in London I worked as an Executive Assistant to the head of a mercantile bank, a leading lawyer and a telecommunications engineer. At the time I didn't call myself an "executive assistant'.  I just thought of myself as 'office help' or 'typist' or 'fetch' or whatever derogatory term I used in those days for work that wasn't what I dreamed of being, at that time, an actor and  play wright.  In retrospect all those jobs in London, which I saw also as solely paying for my being able to study dancing with the world champion Latin dancer, served me well.  I wanted to be a writer, specifically plays, and here I was learning a whole lot about different fields and people but disparaging my time not sitting in bars drinking guinness talking to my friends or specifically scribbling in my note book.  Life was coming at me and I was as selectively biased as a teenager though by then 20 something.
The Noble 8 fold path is one of the principal teachings of Buddha.  Buddha developed this as a means to end suffering.
1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration.
With regard to Right View and Right Intention these refer to the wisdom of the teachings of the Buddha and various followers over the year.  Personally when I practiced Buddhist doctrine I did so with a hope of gaining enlightenment and somehow 'escaping' from the world I was in.  I've always wanted a space ship and if I couldn't get one in the outer world was content if I could go inward to get away from the apparent insanity of the world.   I was a major proponent of the "make love, not war' philosophy. Of all the Buddhist teachers I liked Trungpa the best when it came to Right View and Right Intention.  The Tibetan Book of the Dead was a favourite of mine back before I devoted my time to biochemistry and neurology.
Right speech was always best achieved by my Aunt Sally, the Baptist saint in our family who no one could ever remember saying anything unkind about another.  Personally I've had as much difficulty with Right Speech, as Pierre Elliott Troudeau,  in that I'm prone to profanity and find that the truly evil today are the 'politically correct', speaking so smoothly as the Aboriginals would say 'with forked tongue'.  Perhaps too I've let my 'brand' carry a certain sea farer 'saltiness' and biker 'street cred' with it knowing that those who only speak 'committee talk' would be targets outside of their boardrooms, not surviving a week on the streets where I've worked or the wilderness where I've lived.  Other days, I regret this and wish I was more the 'social chameleon' that the true psychopaths are.  I envy their slick slithering and admire their hard skins, scales and  capacity to survive though I'd not want their 'little reptile brains' and their lack of capacity for 'empathy' or 'spirituality'.
The idea about right speech is to be inoffensive but if one is a Christian that means telling the truth and telling the truth is 'offensive' to the liars and cheats and often many of the very powerful.  An eastern proverb gets around this by saying, "he is a fool who cannot conceal his wisdom'.  Right speech is far more than 'political correctness' and Buddhist monks spend a lifetime in their terms in the kindergarden of this endeavour. Many take vows of silence so that when they talk every decade or so for a sentence or two they get that 'sentence' right.  Indeed, if one only spoke the name of God or the one word one might well achieve Right Speech easier.  Buddhism like all human endeavours, like religion, philosophy, and exercise classes has it's multitude of controversies.  I love to tease my thoroughly beautiful and quite sainted younger Buddhist friend by pointing out that even today Buddhists are fighting over a temple.  When the Chinese invaded Tibet putting Buddhism to the ultimate test, after the first monks were slaughtered by the Chinese Communists, the remaining ones fired back, thoroughly unprepared, with bolt action Enfield Rifles before being slaughtered by the 50 cal Chinese machine guns.  The Dalai Lama, one of the sweetest finest men I have met,  has been bitching and complaining since. So much for Buddhism ending suffering.  Reality sucks? Fortunately Buddhism has a lot to say about how to 'suck up' suffering. The Dalai Lama at least didn't have a hissy fit and create more suffering through 'wrong action'.
Right Action is not what the Chinese Communists are doing but then politically there's a lot of question about who is doing 'right action'  Theoretically, make peace not war is a universal bottom line.  The 'light' religions of the world encourage 'love' though there are 'dark' religions of the world that encourage nefarious matters that are the subject of horror movies.  Buddhism expounds peace and love and lu lu lemon yoga wear.  I enjoyed later reading Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, writing about his Eastern brethren.
That brings us to Right Livelihood.  I'm a healer, a physician, a psychiatrist, and addiction medicine specialist so I've got 'right livelihood' covered nicely today. I eventually stopped being bar tender because I didn't think that was 'right livelihood' even though I enjoyed the working men's pub in South London,  all the cockney characters, the soccer fans and the drunken stumbling home after drinking my "tips' after closing with the other bar tenders and manager.  Dancing, creativity, being an assistant to bankers, lawyers, and engineers didn't even spark a question mark when it came to right livelihood.  Everything I was doing in regards to 'work' and 'money' was okay except being a bar tender. Assisting people to get drunk didn't sit well with me.  I remember studying the buddhist 8 fold path and it was clearer than my Christian teachings I'd literally got through mother's milk.  Yet I knew Jesus wouldn't approve of what I was doing for a living in the evening.
Today I have questions about 'harm reduction' therapy. I work in a methadone clinic and give methadone to heroin addicts as a stepping stone to their achieving abstinence. The Salome Project is going on with some my patients being given heroin  in that clinic. There they'll giving Heroin to Heroin addicts.  Personally I think it's all very well because it's literally retrieving human beings from the dark clutches of the criminals 'slaver's' whose sole interest in these individuals is to suck them dry of all money and self respect and leave them homeless on the street often prostituting and stealing for their next fix. What we're doing is 'redemptive' work. What Salome is doing is the same in it's own way, hopefully.  Years of 'punishment' of drug addicts has only made dealers richer and given the police forces justification for bigger guns. Meanwhile our biggest banks are laundering the money of drug cartels making being a banker decidedly no longer any more 'right livelihood' than being 'a bartender'.  I love Dylan's paraphrase of the Dr. Johnson, "Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king".  Everything is clearer to the adolescent mind than it is to the adult mind.
Marx, womanizer, kafetch and antisemitic Jew, said "Religion is the opiate of the masses'.  In Buddhist countries the poor are encouraged to be vegetarians while the leaders of industry in those same countries who are overtly buddhist eat meat.  The warrior classes have always been prone to meat eating.
I like that Sarah McLaughlan's net worth is 35 million dollars and Bill Gates net worth is 70 plus billion.  Both are creative individuals and their income has come from 'right livelihood'.  Living in British Columbia where the biggest industry is marijuana production and distribution, a multi billion dollar business coupled with the trafficking and cross border heroin and cocaine distribution, I don't think is conducive to  'right livelihood'.  Further along the 8 fold path of buddhism is the term 'right concentration' and I know no one who has 'right concentration' on drugs or alcohol.  By prescription there's a 'sweet point' in the treatment of pain where a person's pain is reduced from 8/10 to 2/10 and their concentration may increase as a result but in general all 'pain medication's and 'mood altering medications' affect 'right concentration'.  Certainly marijuana impairs right concentration for weeks after one toke yet so many of the lu lu lemon yoga mat set would argue marijuana is a 'herb'.  Buddha didn't smoke marijuana and neither did Jesus. We don't even know that Jesus drank but there is a concern regarding his mother and that raises the spectrum that Jesus might have had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Any guy who walks into the Lion's den and doesn't Daniel himself out of it is suspect in the eyes of his Jewish friends whose great toast is 'L'chaim'  "To Life'.  Yet Jews have been martyring themselves since before Christ and tragically even more after.  Jesus was a Jew and if any Jew thinks him stupid for letting himself get killed, well, the seed doesn't' fall far from the tree. Given my own Scottish Irish heritage and a long history of ancestors martyred by the English and Romans I'm not quick to judge others.
Buddha in contrast after living a life that Hugh Heffner would have admired went on to old age.
I'm not saying smoking marijuana is wrong for everyone. Paul McCartney's net worth is a hundred million dollar and it's well known that he was using his Scottish farm for mass production of cannibis at one time.  It's just that this wouldn't be called 'right livelihood' and certainly wouldn't result in 'right concentration' .  There's a price to be paid for deviation from the healthiest paths. That price is called 'suffering'.  Paul McCartney's problems with women were even worse than my problems with women when I smoked marijuana with them.  I discourage all men from smoking marijuana with women or doing drugs and alcohol of any kind.  Indeed for both men and women it might well be wise to consider drugs and alcohol only a 'same sex' activity as it once was.  I was a bar tender in a 'men's only bar' where women were only allowed in on the weekends as long as they were accompanied by a man.  There's a reason for old traditions.
When I reviewed the richest men in the world, all multi billionaires I was interested to note that none were overt crooks. Watching television one would almost think that success required being criminal.  Yet Helu the mexican multi billionaire's success began with brilliance in the telecommunication field. Bill Gates was a genius and his development of the computer industry is a business fairytale but it doesn't involve back room killings and threats to the families of coworkers. That behaviour is the behaviour of drug cartels. I don't doubt there's a lot of shadiness in industry but no more than what we see in the Canadian Senate.  It's just that to hear so many the 'rich' are only 'rich' because they're criminals and 'corrupt'.  I don't think so.
The richest woman in the world is Gina Hope Rhinehart, Australian mining magnate, at over 100 billion net worth making her possibly the richest person by some estimates.  Christy Walton, once the richest woman,  inherited the Walmart fortune.  Warren Buffet , inherited his initial wealth too, in his case from his father, U.S. Represative. He's to be admired for having held onto his money so long. From the millionaires I've known, and I've not yet had the privilege to meet a billionaire like these folks, seem to have had as much trouble holding onto their money as they have had making it.
It's an amazing lesson in human behaviour and guarantee to change one's basic attitudes towards 'money' and 'livelihood' when one looks at the follow up lives of the winners of lotteries. So many are poor rapidly after and so many are dead.  When the First Nations folk got their millions especially in the land deals in Alaska so many were  back to being poor shortly after too.  The wealthy not surprisingly have a tendency to come from 'good families'.  It's not 'necessary' since there are certainly examples that are not such yet it clearly helps as even a simple study of race horses shows the value of genetics but more importantly the importance of gentle but firm parenting.    I've been especially interested to note that the most successful are usually a part of a very successful group.  Freud and his associates are an amazing group of men who changed our very understanding of ourselves and the mind and all were quite successful following.
Money is a spiritual energy.  I like to spend money.  Some people like to make money.  My brother, wiser than I in the ways of money, likes to manage it. He loves seeing money get the most value.  I barely understand this but know that 20 richest women in the world who controll a combined 250 billion dollars know much more about money management than I do. Hence a local lottery winner a year later after an amazing windfall was drunker than he'd been before the windfall, broke and complaining vehemently about his poor luck.
Theoretically, Right Livelihood would be associated with a good income. I'm delighted to note that Bill Gates and Melinda are principally 'philanthropists' today like Oprah.  In contrast to me, they are giving money away but with immense wisdom and eschewing 'giving pearls to swine'.  I am reminded of the two women I hired who stole from me and nearly destroyed my practice in their piggish behaviour, shitting all over the lives of others in their stupid pursuit of self interest. My poor judgement put money in their hands.  I hired and gave respectability and credibility to a couple of sows in the metaphor of pearls.  Whose fault was that?  Mine. My poor judgement. My poor concentration. I married women and we didn't live happily ever after because of my bad choice and bad behaviour.  I tire daily of people who blame their 'fortune' on others.  In that case Bill Gates fortune would be the 'fault' of others rather than acknowledging that our fortunes good or bad are a major part our own doing.
I love the serenity prayer, God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  Central to this is the realization that one needs courage mostly to change ones self.
A major Christian parable is the one about the master and three servants. . The master leaves them each with seeds. The first puts his in a vault. The second trades his for a donkey and the third plants his.  When the master returns the first man can only show mouldy seeds, the second an old donkey while the third gives back the masters seeds ten fold.  So the master gives more seeds to the man who planted them. The master isn't stupid.
Oprah started a school in Africa for young women.  It's not based on the public school model we have in Canada and the chaotic public school models in the states where teachers are often feeling their lives threatened but rather it's based on a private school model with the girls in uniform and taught to be well mannered and courteous and respectful to their elders.  Her school is producing amazing graduates.  Oprah has shown what is called 'discernment' in Christian literature.  The Buddhists might call it 'right concentration'.  Philanthropy is certainly 'right action' .
The greatest philanthropist of all time was Dale Carnegie. I love to pass his library on the way to work each day.  I am forever thankful to the libraries of my life.  My friend spent her life as a librarian and I know that that was 'right livelihood'.
Proverbs in the Bible has a collection of sayings that overlap with the teachings of the 8 fold path. The 10 commandments that Moses brought down the Mountain from God overlap clearly with the 8 fold path.  Jesus's teachings make it pretty clear that being a drug dealer isn't 'right livelihood' for a Christian.  I don't know of any 'spiritual' tradition that would support that 'right livelihood' is being a torturer or a thief or a murderer.  Self defence is a very different matter from pre meditated murder.
Like all great questions of life, the issue of 'right livelihood' comes around again and again.  If I as a doctor in Canada am required to do abortion or promote abortion or even direct people to abortionists, or similarly with euthanasia, would it be 'right livelihood' to be a physician in Canada. I loved studying Bonhoffer and his life in Nazi Germany. Most of the religious leaders of the day got it completely wrong in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.  Bonhoffer was an exception though not in all eyes.  The Hitler physicians in the camps weren't practising 'right livelihood' and the same question was asked about 'Michael Jackson's physician'.
I'm thankful to the Buddha for giving us the very idea of 'right livelihood'.  I like that he and Hugh Heffner lived to be old men.  I still believe there's merit in the adage, "make love, not war'.  War has always been a failure of diplomacy.  

Morning Dream

I woke from a dream
Of the perfect house
Made of wood with all the boxes and tables
And chairs built into wood walls
So polished and open and free
Looking out onto nature
With nearby hills and valleys
And friends as neighbours
I almost thought I'd like to live ashore
But I'm still too young for that life
What would I do without the smell of the sea
Where would I be without the wind in my sails
What would I think if there wasn't the
Ever present threat of storms
And just a little hole sinking a very big boat.
I might move ashore, Lord
And forget
That all I really have is you
At sea I'm always close to you
And the knowledge that all is Grace
There is no certainty in sailing
There are no absolutes or promises
Except that of change and uncertainty
Even at dock the storm may find you
Yet there is no better place to be
When winds are fair
And seas are calm
Then I feel lifted as on eagles wings
And know you are with me always.

Money and Stevie Nicks poetry

I never used to think about money. My parents did. I remembered being upset as a kid if I didn't have something but I didn't think in terms of money. I always believed when I was older that if I did the right thing then the money would come. I never thought of getting the money first  and then doing the right thing. I never considered one right thing versus another right thing in terms of money.  I took jobs because I wanted to learn something at first and naturally was happy to be paid. I wasn't negative about money. I worked to get money and didn't like debt. My parents had taught me that good people avoided debt and if they were in debt they paid their debts.
I remember consciously considering work in terms of leadership and taking orders when I was working in my first construction jobs. I thought I'd rather go to university and get an education and have a higher level job than spend my life working for the kinds of people I was working for.  I had one particular boss who was stupid and ill mannered and slightly sadistic. I thought I could avoid working for such an individual by getting an education and getting a superior position in the hierarchy.  I was wrong about this.  Hierarchy's always have that sort of individual throughout and at different levels.
Rags to riches in three generations and riches to rags in one.  So the genius in a family may raise the family wealth to high level but the idiot belligerent bully might reduce the wealth within their one generation. The bottom line is folks individually and as families go up and down the hierarchy.  Hence you can't get away from the idiots by going further up the ladder since there may be an idiot on the way down.  I didn't know this when I entered university.  I thought education and intelligence would 'elevate' me.
I remember consciously thinking that there was a difference between chess and poker. I thought that the element of 'chance' was reduced with chess which demanded greater skill whereas poker always carried a whole lot more 'luck' options in it.  The casinos certainly know this.  I was a chess player. I liked skills.  Chance was something I 'trusted' to a large degree and equated more with my relationship with God. The closer to God I was the more likely I'd have good fortune however I was also concerned that the saints often met gnarly ends and I knew a lot of good people who I wondered if they weren't making a 'virtue of necessity' because they seemed good and spoke all manner of religious platitudes but didn't do much good it seemed and weren't much blessed.
It's not very clear what one does exactly to be a success.  There's a multitude of competing opinions when one is growing up and especially when one enters university.
I loved learning.  The reward in learning is not money but learning.
I considered pure science and pure arts and was concerned that if I got a phd I 'd not necessarily have a job. I would have learning and I'd possibly have a greater understanding of life and all manner of good friends and such but I wouldn't necessarily have a job.  I was pragmatic when I was younger. I wanted my education to be associated with my eventual work.  To this end I considered what did the world always need and what education was necessary for survival in a community.  I remember thinking that sciences were more necessary than arts and that there was a lot of politics in arts whereas science was more what I called 'hard facts'.  I remember thinking that the arts were a lot about 'fashion' and who was the winner decided what fashion was in.  I realized that we were a product of military might and that if the Nazis or Commies won we'd not be calling ourselves the 'free world' and enjoying the freedom to consider whether to go on to be a playwright or a scientist.
I remember praying about this.  I was meditating a lot when I was in university. I was a different person not easily fitting into any 'group' and yet mixing well enough with a variety of 'groups'.  I always seemed to have my own agenda and that agenda was tied to learning something and usually helping someone. I liked to take on causes on behalf of others. I really believed in service.  From a young age I was raising money for charity by organizing friends to do carolling. I 'd go on to organize coffeehouses, improvisational teams, plays and adventures.  Later I'd employ people in small businesses and organize folks in building and creating things.  I was a leader from a young age but not particularly interested in leading. I was mostly interested in learning and seeing how something worked.
I had a 'calling' to enter medicine. It was a product of prayer in the University of Winnipeg chapel.  A series of events followed that put me in medical school. I thought at the time that this was good because I 'd concluded I couldn't be a renaissance man with my own laboratory in my home because the cost of technology was too utterly exorbitant but I could write in my home and work in a lab in the day. I loved medical school learning. I loved biology. I loved quantum physics and biochemistry. All of the exciting things we did studying electron microscopy, X-rays, and surgery seeing the parts of the body anatomy at work was exhilarating to me.
But I remember thinking that while I was living utterly poor as a student taking jobs to buy books and stethoscopes and living in a bachelor suite studying around the clock, I felt that I'd have a 'job' when I graduated.  It was comforting to be studying 'applied sciences'.

Law is 'applied arts' in the way that medicine is 'applied science'.  I was happy with the money I was making as a doctor too not really considering it though my wife was very involved in wanting a house and fixing it up.  I had friends who were millionaires then but I didn't really register that their car was a bmw and mine was a chevy or that their house was in a better neighbourhood and bigger than mine.I was thoroughly happy with what I had and wholly involved in trying to save the lives of my patients. All night long I was studying and I had a wife who was emotionally disturbed as I saw it .  I thought it was my job to 'keep her happy' and 'please her' and 'make her life easier' and get her all the money for all the things she wanted. She always wanted more money and more things and I was enjoying my life but feel excessive demands from her for things.
I remember married I wanted more money, but I didn't do more than work longer hours. I didn't decide my future based on money.  My fwife left me when I went into psychiatry. She was always more aware of money and more capable of getting it than I was. I'd started out in surgery but when I went into psychiatry the writing was on the wall. This is from this slice of perspective.  Our divorce is best described as a product of my irrelevance and irreverence.  There's no 'pat' explanations for love and war.  She was a saint. I'm interested here in the issue of money.  I was mobilized then by what  I wanted to do.  I wanted to go to Mexico so I got some money to go to Mexico.  I had a job which allowed me to buy a house and have a a car and work and have friends. I was a comfortable yuppie at the university but I didn't think about money much.  It followed the 'right decision'.
After the divorce I thought about money. The divorce caused a horrendous debt and I couldn't work for months because simply 'a broken heart to a psychiatrist is like broken hands to a surgeon'.  Women are devastating.  Actually girls are devastating.  Boys and girls destroy, men and women create.  There were no children. Children are associated with couples and individuals wealth. The wealthy have children though so do the poor but in my world the children have usually moderated the parents and made them more likely to consider money and security and such matters.  Most men I know are really a whole lot happier working for their 'daughter's' than their wives and no woman will work as hard for her man as she would for her child.  I never had children.
I took care of a lot of people.  When I stopped drinking I was in a treatment centre and everyone there with criminal records and major drug and alcohol problems told me how much they enjoyed people like me because I was a 'mark'.  People loved to let me pick up the bar tabs, the restaurant tab and play poor in my company and encourage me to support them. I've picked up bar tabs for the poor and the millionaires.  I have always paid my way.
Each divorce left me with a debt burden that all bankers and accountants told me I should simply declare 'bankruptcy' and start over over. I didn't. I paid off all the debts the girls had run up and all the losses that the divorces occasioned.  In retrospect I probably would have been a multi millionaire today if I'd taken the advice of the 'money' men, declared bankruptcy, screwed the creditors and got a clean slate and started over. As it was I made a fortune for people in the 'interest' I paid.
It's said to be 'character' building.  I remember saying to women, if we make this investment , we have to be together for 5 years or we'll lose our shirts. Under no circumstances can we break up or whatever'.  Naturally I gave them sufficient reason to rue their agreement but I was the one who lost my shirt.  They'd say they lost their pants.  I was interested in sex and love and rock and roll all my young life.
It really was a good time.  I can't say I have regrets except for the hurt I caused my parents I suspect. I really didn't give them more time and love though they were very impressed with me as a family physician and no one has ever understood what I see in psychiatry.  Even today everyone tells me I should stay away from the addicts and drunks and schizophrenics because they're trouble. Lawyers and beurocrats and bankers and accountants tell me to keep my distance from the mentally ill.  Our medical profession and the legal profession is all about telling us to erect boundaries and put in bigger desks and spend less time with the downtrodden and the losers.
Smart people don't do what I do.
I identify with the losers.  I'm like Jesus in that way. I wash the feet of the poor and a whole lot of the time make a save in an impossible place. My friend works with the dying and she's a Christian. The 'money' isn't in the dying.  The money is in the funeral , right after the death, when people are feeling guilty.  The surviving have the money. The dying often use up their resources in their last days.
I think about money these days. I began thinking about money when I turned 60.  I realized I didn't have a pension. I realized that I was tired more often than not and I realized that people didn't care for the old and sick like they once did.  I worried which I should n't do.  I'd hired a couple of women and they'd cost me $50,000 by their lies and theft.  I smiled when I learned that Leonard Cohen's manager had stolen 5 million from him and at 70 he was down to a hundred thousand net worth.  I don't think my net worth is that today because I have rapidly depreciating vehicles like motorcycles and boats which fascinate me with the motion and travel. Buckminister Fuller got me interested in the means of travel. And I was fascinated how flying into a city altered wholly my perception of the city as compared to sailing into a city or riding in on a bicycle or motorcycle.  I'm fascinated by the experience of travel and travellers before me. Canoeing I was forever considering the coeur d bois and sailing into Vancouver Island I landed where Captain Vancouver landed and was engulfed in the richness of human history.
Im more interested today in spiritual things. I'm interested in money as a spiritual energy. I remember my friend thinking rich people were bad .  Possibly he'd 'identify with the aggressor' as commonly we are receiving that which we're attracted to whether through hate or love.  So many people become like the ones they hate. They're literally caged in their emotions so that the revolutionaries just switch heads for tails. The feminists did that promising us a better life after he revolution but only switching heads for tails and saying the world was better. I 'm watching every little group go for the Pink Floyd meat grinder and getting a little bored by the repetitiveness of it. But then I see a child learn to ride a bicycle for the first time and I'm as exhilarated as I was when I did that.  So it's okay if I'm the audience. I"ve been the audience most of my life.  Sitting listening and watching. In latter years I chose to share wisdom, actually tell people what I was thinking. It seemed that I was of an age with sufficient experience that I could impart wisdom, save people from errors that are so obvious to the older, detours that lead no where. I like working with addictions now. Getting people back from the abyss and restarted on the journey around the evil people, the drug pushers.
I saw Stevie Nicks with Fleetwood Mac this weekend. I later googled the net worth of the band members.  There's this site, celebrity net worth.  I'd heard a joke this weekend.  'What are a group of millionaires sitting around the tv watching the NHL called? " the Canucks and I was thinking about millionaires. I've made millions but never been a millionaire. My brother was here this weekend and he's wise with money, never spending it unnecessarily because he knows it's value in work and would rather go for a walk than sit at a desk taking orders.
I found that Stevie Nicks net worth was "65 million'.  I always love how the feminists convince us all that women all are poor especially in Canada where we still have a Queen and she's one of the richest humans on the planet.  My wives were richer in the end than I was so I have lost sympathy for social communist causes where one group arbitrarily calls itself the 'proletariat' and the other group is the 'beourgeosie'.  I think there are rich men and women (period).  Only a fool would think that Eva Brawn had nothing to do with Hitler's evil.  Had Hitler been married to Mrs. Churchill we might never have had WWII.  Power is more often to do with groups and technological advantage.  I am impressed over the years looking at various groups like the Bloomsbury Circle and the Huxley Family.  Individualism misses the core of things. We are our relationships.
Bill Gates said his success began with being born in the Pacific Northwest.  We grow from our roots . Whatever success I have today is as much a product of my parents and teachers as it is mine.
Fleetwood was a friend of George Harrison's.  That's a fairly elite group. He and John McVie worked together half a life time.  Fleetwood's net worth is in the 80 million range with McVie's in the 40 million range.  The amazingly talent singer, guitarist, writer, producer Lindsey Buckingham has a net worth of 50 million.  I listened to Stevie Nicks individual records. They're great but not the magic of the groups production.  There's something 'family' and 'applied' to the Rumors album. We heard it with the Beattles and though we love George Harrison and McCartney, Ringo and John Lennon and Paul McCartney it was the group that was the magic.
I like the movie and story of the baseball players and the cornfield. Build me a field and the game will come.  I think that Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles were greatest when they were poor and had a vision. When they were rich they were still good but I still believe that if being rich was what created riches then only Elvis songs would be played today, the ones he did in Vegas, not the ones he did when he was a young man with a vision.
Money is a spiritual energy.  I just looked up Stevie Nicks 'net worth' because Fleetwood called her 'our poet and angel'.  As a poet, among other poet's we are always bemoaning the fact, we believe that poets aren't paid what they are worth.  But there's Stevie Nicks.  65 million dollars. Not bad for a poet.  I was a poet before I was a doctor and left poetry for medicine.  Maybe if I'd stayed a poet.
I say this because life is as much like poker as chess and there are kids out there causing their parents to pull out their hair because the kid just wants to be a rock star or a hockey player.  I think they should be thankful. Things could be worse. Their kid could want to be a poet and end up with 65 million net worth. Not bad for a poet.

Fleetwood Mac - Vancouver 2013

I first heard Fleetwood Mac in Jon Cowtan's car on our way to whitewater canoe Winnipeg River. He'd just bought the cassette. It must have been the late 60's,  early 70's.  I believe it was the first album.  Jon's a guitar player, in addition to being a computer geek and all around great guy. His taste in music though was impeccable and I remember asking him who was playing on the cassette.  "Fleetwood Mac," he said. And I've been listening to them ever since, even if a few days later Jon also convinced me to eat green steaks, which really well barbecued turned out to taste pretty good after all. We didn't have a cooler on the canoe trip.
I saw that Fleetwood Mac were coming to town and got a ticket. I didn't know it was going to be in the middle of the long weekend or I might not have.  My friend, Malcolm's funeral was today, so I stayed in town for that and got to see Stevie Nicks, Linsey Buckingham, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood in concert. It was awesome.

"Go your own way!" was a show stopper.  The whole of Rogers Arena packed full for the concert stood with a roar.  I loved Stevie Nicks, her voice, her movements.  Lindsey's guitar playing was spectacular.  Mick Fleetwood, drummer extraordinaire, wore red shoes.  McVie, the bassist, was the classic traditional guts of the band.
They didn't play it tonight but I learned that this British American band  wrote "Black Magic Woman", a blues number that made Santana famous and that I danced to at Ken Mathew's dance studio with Baiba.  What a small world!  And the best 'trivia' of wikipedia was that Fleetwoods wife was sister in law to George Harrison. The ins and outs of the music world.
Now I learn Stevie Nicks was in detox twice, first for cocaine at Betty Ford, and second for Klonopin (benzodiazepine - like long acting vallium)  prescribed to her by her psychiatrist.  What an inspiration for 'recovery' her life is!  She was once obese like Momma Cass but tonight was healthy and attractive.
She and Buckingham were a couple on and off. Indeed it the band wanted Lindsey as guitarist and he said that he and Stevie were a package. On stage tonight, she thanked the 'boys' for having her come along on their journey.   Lindsey sang a wistful song of what could have been.  Sparks still fly whenever Stevie and Lindsey stood near each other on stage. The four of the group are amazing but they've also got keyboards and another guitarist and back up singer. Dozens more have been with the band over the years.
Stevie Nicks said "it's been 35 years'.  She was thanking the audience for the relationship.  And they together have such a relationship even longer. She and Buckingham go back to College years.  Amazing.
There were both young and old there but lots of white hairs.  A couple of people were smoking up. It smelled more like crack than pot which given the cocaine past was probably fitting. I didn't like second hand smoke and the young woman beside me was waving her hand thoroughly annoyed.
It's a long time since I had a turn table and played my Fleetwood Mac vinyl so last night when I got home I went to Apple Itunes and with one finger press downloaded the best of Fleetwood Mac. I expect I'll get their latest too given how great the songs they'd just recorded were. I got Stevie Nicks solo album too. It's a combination of nostalgia and inspiration.  Love too.

Fleetwood Mac was of an era when we all believed in youth and eros and held onto so many "illusions" that Lindsey's song tonight rightly said we need to let go of to move on.  Though Stevie Nick's shadow song of the haunting lyrics 'you can't save me' was as dark as any I've heard the whole message of the band was hope and love, still love.  And fun, as the joy on Mick's face showed.  Stevie at times looked like a little girl, this extraordinary woman.  What a wonderful band and what a great 35 years!!1  Thank you Fleetwood Mac!

Star Trek - Into Darkness

I saw Star Trek - Into the Darkness last night at the Silvercity Coquitlam VIP 3d theatre.  I'm a trekky but even if I wasn't I think I'd love this movie. The characterization and relationships were as good as the visuals and action scenes.  I was tele transported to a galaxy far far away.  What I loved most was the young new characters who seemed almost like they were the grandsons and granddaughters of the old cast. Incredibly refreshing.  Chris Pine made a great Kirk.  Zachary Quinto was perfect as Spock.  Zoe Saldana was a new generations heartthrob Uhuru.  Benedict Cumberbatch was a major intellectual improvement on the old Khan.  I loved the slickness of this show. There was a lot of brawn and bashing in the original Star Trek.  Chris Hatfield is a real astronaught and these new series of characters are in a way like him, athletic, lean, but sensitive and very intelligent.  The women were naturally gorgeous with character. Simon Pegg was priceless as Scotty and Karl Urban was a really good Bones.  Anton Yelchin made Chekov shine as did John Cho as Sulu. Alice Eve was definitely brilliant candy while Peter Weller was thoroughly believable as Marcus.  Bruce Greenwood was a perfect Pike. He's a consumate actor and his eyes appear 3d without my even wearing the glasses.
I love Star Trek and I loved this glorious romp. Hats off to writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and the genius J.J. Abrams. The audience was very old and old with lots of young and very young.  Makes me think that Star Trek will be coming to us until we actually meet the Vulcans and Virgin gets beyond tourist space hops and actually takes us to the stars.
After the movie I got on my Harley Electraglide with 1600 power beneath me and loved the ride.  It could only be improved on with a hover function like one of the great city machines in the movie.  Now that would be even more cool.  It always astounds me that the world I'm living in today with internet, cell phones, jet flight, international space stations, missiles and solar power is all 'science fiction' of my childhood with Dick Tracy communicators and all the other innovations we have today but take for granted.