Saturday Morning

I’m up drinking coffee. I’ve just eaten the two croissants I bought last night on the way home from work at the East Vancouver Bakery. I spread Canadian butter on them, then this truly marvellous blueberry marmalade I bought at the church bazaar last month.
I’ve thawed some frozen curry chicken soup from the lovely church lady who makes these too.  Later I plan to warm it up.  It’s so comforting to have home made preserves and soups, being a single man, as I am, who cooks for himself and buys fast food, but is absolutely touchéd to eat the fare of these older beautiful women who share the pews with me at St. James Anglican.
When I first awoke there was rain on the roof.  The light came through the windows though, telling me morning was well advanced. It’s Saturday. I liked that I’d slept in. I normally these days wake in the dark for work and am only seeing light on my way there.
I’d dreamed too of my sailboat in a special harbour.  Jung calls such dreams nuministic.  My special harbour is a 'safe harbour' and dreams of it are comforting and spiritual, packed with meaning, much of which I only unravel, in some future, when this dreams 'comes true'.  It's spiritual and with this particular harbour I often wonder if it's not a bit of the heaven I'll find after death.  It has that Mark Twain heaven quality about it.  
I was swimming in the dream,and towing my ship easily  to turn it in a tight space.  There was a lovely older woman lying on a mattress on the deck. The relationship was no more than a friend.  So often in these dreams there are people who I feel intimately connected to but there is no carnality. The nuministic dream worlds are without dichotomy. They are like the places the Franciscan Richard Rohr speaks of, and/or.  Places of possibility without judgement and criticism. Places of acceptance.  Having repositioned the sailboat I too went back to sleep on the deck, waking to this world I’m now in.  I dream often of that place where my sailboat is in a bay and a tiered city is nearby. There's a river and rapids and ocean or big lake, other boats, and houses ashore.   It’s a heavenly place, a place of rest.  I'm never troubled there. I'm doing things, moving boats, going ashore, doing things, but the feeling is  reminiscent of those perfect fair sailing trade winds days when I crossed an ocean.  I'm light hearted.
There is a man and a woman inside me. Jung called them the anima and animus.  I’ve given each their ‘duties.’  When I’m doing ‘pink’ things I feel the female ascendent and when I’m doing “blue’ things the male is ascendent.  Many things lack such differentiation. The differentiation itself is decided purely by childhood roles, I believe.  When I’m cooking I’m more feminine, the great chefs of my life being the women I’ve known growing up, my grandmother, mother, aunts, and mothers and grandmothers of lovers and even lovers.  I suspect if I was a woman whose father was the chef and the men in her life cooked the best then she’d feel manly when she cooked as I feel manly when I fix the car. I’ve never been with women who did automotive mechanics though I know a couple. It’s just that when I personally have worked on cars it was with my father, my brother and always other guys.
The Political Feminists are so painful, 30% of the medical school class was women in the 30's.  No one is stopping women from entering in the trades. I've always known some extraordinary woman who became a surgeon or a plumber or a carpenter or welder but the fact remains fewer women want to do these jobs whereas there's no limit to the women who want to complain about men.  Instead I admire men and women who can 'do' things as well as 'speak', these 'activists' and 'politicals' are the thinnest of soups in my mind, too full of themselves when they claim to be there for society, representing the planet, or saving some one of somebody that never gave them the mandate and usually finds them as troublesome as I do.
In my medical class there were 50 women and 50 men.  The outspoken loud complaining trouble causing feminist was one of 50 and the loud complaining trouble causing political was one of the 50 men.  Neither were very good doctors and having worked with both I'd not want them treating my family.  They've become rich and famous by playing to the media but among their peers their very own behaviour did little for their causes.
Internationally feminism has it's place today but locally the change of society was dictated more by the technologies of birth control, the move to the city, smaller families, and widespread education. Education, about math, and science, and practical matters, like medicine, has done more for women and any group really than all the political manifestos put together. I met Communist doctors whose education was taken up with half their time spent studying marxism and half studying surgery. They might be good comrades but they were dangerous surgeons by Canadian standards.  This was not true for Russian doctors I met who only paid lip service to the ideologues and were as fascinated as I was with biology.
Weekdays and work is often masculine to me while weekends and relaxation are feminine.  When I’m active and task oriented I find I’m more masculine too, the fighter, the journeyman, the goal directed.
A female pornographer talked about male and female attraction in an interview once, saying that when she'd made movies with men lying about which hadn't sold.  Certainly a man finds a woman attractive who is lying down ready and waiting and not demanding a chase but she found women were more turned on by men carrying tools and wearing work related hats or bits of uniform. That reminded me of a math professor I knew who was annoyed that his career hadn't given him a 'sexy' uniform that would attract women. He bemoaned the fact that  girls seemed to be turned on by uniforms. He thought even the bus driver uniform had more appear than his college math professor ruffled tweed jacket look.
From a Christianity perspective,I think my Martha is a man whereas my Mary is a woman.
We are all said to be feminine before God.  God is the prime mover and we receive Grace.  This is a masculine God ‘idea’ but it’s the same ‘process’ mystically in another religion I know intimately where the God is not so masculine as feminine.  Indeed God is beyond Gender and duality but I wonder how those who say speak of the Goddess experience the mystical acceptance of God through the opening and letting go of oneself.
Relationship with God is through all aspects, so that God is mother, father, daughter, son, lover, friend and on and on.  God is all and no thing.
This morning as I sat to meditate, a little dog came and put his paw on my crossed leg and leaned his head against mine.  I was praying and petted him a while then returned to focus on my quiet but was distracted by his snuggling sleeping body lying across mine.  I can’t say I spent the ‘requisite’ time this morning in prayer and meditation. Instead I began throwing ball and delighted in the happiness of this little roommate who is so easy to please. He also forgets slights so quickly.  And when there’s nothing happening of interest he naps.  He’s napping right now. I think he’s probably a saint whose sleeping form is really deep meditation.

Now I’ve a day ahead. I’ve a truck to pick up and a car to drop off so I’ll take a taxi between two places.  I’ve thought of more storage locker sorting and purging but it’s a rainy day and I could seriously choose something more feminine and indoors and less associated with hefting and heaving and rummaging and lifting and hauling.
I’ve found my tv is a marvellous distraction these last couple of cold weeks.  Watching tv is neither masculine or feminine but wonderfully stupid.  Reading a book is either or depending on the content. I’ve just started a ships captain thriller.  I finished the Outlaw Biker book I picked up for the plane ride. It was so so.  I am less interested in those who struggle outside the law than those who rise above it’s limitations.  I like the British Navy Ships Captains hampered by all manner of tradition and restriction who win over elements and foes by adding to the soup a new spice rather than throwing out the broth and claiming to make their own.

I don’t like arrogance in women or men.  Arrogant women abound these days as they did in the times of Isaiah who called them “long necked women’.  They claim their ‘causes’ justify their rudeness and bullying.  Arrogant men are nothing new, I've dealt with them since grade school, when they'd pick on those smaller or gang up. I've fought them one on three and one on six as long as I can remember. They're cowards at the core. I think of them more and more like insects. They come in 'nests'.  Their devolution is lower than the lizard.  
I’ve been more fascinated  by the power of their women, these Eva Brawns who work the back rooms.
When it comes to the woman behind the man, at a higher level of relationship, I loved the powerful pout of Obamas wife in the news recently suggesting finally who truly wears the pants in that relationship.  I’ve always admired Old Lady Bush because you just knew her boys all towed the line so she must be one truly powerful lady regardless of how much one fear the old George. The Hillaries are a brother sister duo and I'd love to be a fly on the wall in their disputes.  I look forward to heaven if only to find out what really happened to Kenney, to meet Elvis, and to learn the secrets of what Hillary said to her girlfriends when Clinton said he'd not had sexual relations with Monica.  Not that any of this is important. The French President this week was caught having an affair and his ratings went up. To us the leaders of America are the entertainment that the Queen and Royals offer the Commonwealth. They may as well be Zeus and Athena.  I wouldn't  be surprised to see a cow or a swan raped on the lawns of Washington.  At least the media would let us know. The leadership of China are obviously all chicken and pig fuckers but no one will ever know what they're up to because their dirty secrets are so utterly dirty that no one is allowed to know. The SS were pedophiles and Stalin and his gang liked dead girls so it's likely the tyrants and gangsters of China are into sex with dead children.  We're as 'sick as our secrets' and those who are the most anxious about their privacy as commonly as not have the most to hide.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The tyrants of moslem countries are widely abusive of teen age girls and boys.  If you can 'think it' , it's likely going on 'behind the closed doors' of those in power in totalitarian societies.   The Pharoals of Egypt were into all manner of incestuous behaviour as were the orgy loving emperors of Rome.
Prime Minister Harper is a saint compared to the leaders of other countries he meets and the American and European leaders of democracies with freedom of press are fairly conservative by comparison with the tyrant leaders who commonly hold positions of influence in the United Nations.  It's hard to respect a man or woman in the United Nations when you find out as one leader to another , that your fellow member, likes sex with lizards or fish, whether they are male or female.  I know we're all supposed to be 'accepting' and 'multi cultural' and 'inclusive' but one doesn't get respect when they've had their way with a guppy, or a child, or a slave.  The women leaders and male leaders of medieval days were as twisted as each other though men tend to be more inventive.
We're only now addressing the gambling addictions, and the alcohol and drug addictions, among the leadership of the United Nations, what will we learn when we look at the sexual addiction.  The sex addicts anonymous groups which have women and men though men tend to be more common would see a membership rise if 'transparency' were required in the upper courts and back rooms of the leadership of the United Nations.
I like that Prime Minister Harper, and locally Christy Clark, and even Gregor Robertson though I can't be sure, don't seem to be the types to be having orgies with animals or children on the weekends.  I know this is unlikely because the CBC was all over Duffy when he spent $90,000 which the conservatives paid back. The spending was for housing. Last I heard even sexually attractive sheep weren't likely to stay hidden expense on the Prime Minister's modest salary. By comparison warlords of the world, especially the communist ones, like the Pol Pot who murdered millions a year, they can buy the whole of the Texas Cheerleaders for a night and kill them in the morning without any ripple politically.  No one has a clue as to how many people the Chinese are screwing and killing even as I write. We can guess based on what we've learned of Stalin and his crew, his sex dachas and such.  Puttin isn't just romantic and a 12 year old virgin isn't going to have her story told on Utube after a Saudi prince finds her desirable.
I think of these things when I'm critical of CBC and the western media.  Even the perverts of Hollywood aren't anything compared to the tyrants of Asia.  It's perspective and relative.
I'm thankful to be a Canadian even if our leadership is mostly so boring that when Justin's mom smoked dope and hung out with a sixty's rock band it was 'news'.  Even Justin Beibers stupidity and childishness isn't all that bad. It's not like he killed a prostitute and got his goons to cover it up as would happen in Russia or China today or countless other countries in the United Nations.
The South Sudan Christians (Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world today) weren't just mutilated.  The somen and boys were raped vaginally and anally.  Just because we don't do that thing routinely here in  Canada it's not that it's not being done all over in the United Nations nations.  it's so easy to forget.  I talk to refugees and immigrants.  I don't want the politics, and religions that they're leaving.  I like what I've had in Canada and am afraid at times to see us losing it.  I am especially troubled by atheists who criticism religions for their errors but forget that the only religion of atheism to date is communism and communists have killed more people faster than any religion in the history of the world and have done more killing than any nationalism.  Capitalism can't compete with the killing machine of communism.  I don't know that multi culturalism will be a lasting fashion given it's failure in England and Germany.
Diversity is good but if it's your culture to have sex with children it's not my culture so I'm going to have kill you if you rape my baby.  Silly people don't know that this is how 'culture' has come about with it's hierarchies of values and laws.  There's a lot of wiggle room but it's important to read the fine print on the contracts that atheists and polytheists and the United Nations tyrants and warlords are offering.  For now I like Canada.  I like the 'culture' of the Canada I was raised in. I'm concerned about the direction some would have us follow but then I'm not smoking dope. If I was smoking dope I would think everything is relative and who cares anyway. Let them eat cake.  It's just a party.  What's wrong with sex with fish. All we have to do is get the fish a lawyer to protect their 'rights'  and if the lawyer says the fish agrees the guppy sex is cool.  Right, man?  Just don't flush the fish in the toilet after, okay.  Too many dead fish clog up the sewers and that's  bad for the planet.  And don't get those fish farm fish, you got to get a wild fish from the organic farms or it's not right. If you know what I mean.  And man you should try this Sativa bud.  The poor folk smoke that other shit. This is what the yuppies call the champagne of dope.  Given our jobs and positions in authority you don't want to be smoking any old shit. We've got to have the best shit. Otherwise whose going to respect us.  



My mom and dad were a tag team when we were growing up.  As a kid I didn't like a lot of their rules. They were 'square' but in retrospect, especially as I've grown older I've come to appreciate so much of who they were and what they taught. Even when they appeared to disagree they were in agreement.
I feel sorry for the single parents and their children who miss out on the richness of these complex interactions that helped me understand that so often the face on power was not the one who wielded the fist. I think that those who come from even larger families and intergenerational families are often better accommodated to the politics of office and community.
My friend George gave me the book David and Goliath and I’m reading with interest the relationships of present day power and relationships of people compared  to the world they grew up in. Its by the same author who wrote about Outliers and he’s now discussing the third of those who have won despite apparently overwhelming odds.
I learned about these first when I studied sociology.  The idea that ‘poverty’ created poverty and that negative environment destroyed futures was indeed a factor but the worst place in America was ‘Hell’s Kitchen.”  A paper I read 30 years ago demonstrated the fallacy of this contention by following up all the millionaires, judges, researchers, doctors, politicians who had begun in this place in America with the greatest density of pedophies, rapists, ex convicts and poor.
Only a half of my medical school class came from the upper middle class and rich.  The man who wrote Logotherapy survived Auschwitch and said that Freud was wrong, that the character of people defined their behaviour more truly than the environment they inhabited. The two were important, not just one. The age old question of free will and fate, or breeding and environment, is simply that it’s ‘both’.
BBC just notified us that Former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon died today.  I'm saddened by the names of icons of my life time dying. I'm of an age where each week some household name goes out like a light bulb in the house.  I don't know who replaces them.

The rain has become heavier.  Maybe I’ll watch some tv before I even go out to return my car and pick up my truck.  Or maybe I could have a shower, dress for the rain and run about and do the errands then waste the rest of the day lying about being a slouch.
I thought the other day if I just watched sports all day as opposed to drama I’d be mainstreaming a section of America.  I’m an in between sort. I know there’s an acceptable slouch, truly pilloried in the comics, who has a beer gut and with his guy friends, lives on the couch and watch sports. Their’s his female equivalent who eats nachos and is fat and watches soaps with a tissue kleenex.  I’m the odd duck watching Turner Classic black and white Sci Fi movies, like the Forbidden Planet.  The yuppie couch potato claimed he wasn’t like the mashed potatoes, being instead a herb touched scallop potato who watched ‘old movies’ and defined himself, not as a tv addict, but rather as an aficionado.  I see the drunks with their expensive bottles of wine considering themselves superior to their plunk drinking relations.
Well, I’m no better than those who watch Jerry Springer just because I prefer Jerry Seinfeld.  I’m hearing how heavy the rain is and rather than set up a laboratory on the kitchen table and find a cure for cancer I’m really temped to join Gilbert on the couch, curl up and watch some tv until the rain lessens and I can go about my tasks. I do have some boxes to go through in the garage. I sorted through a couple last night.  Maybe I should just try to make it to the shower.
Showering and shaving should be the goal. I think I’m up to that. But I’ll need another cup of coffee and maybe I’ll just see what’s happening in hockey.  Yea, right.  Don’t kid yourself.  Touch that tv channel changer and the bed is not going to be made.  Better to head to the shower. Dressed there’s a slight possibility you’ll feel good about what you’ve done today.
Self esteem is about doing esteem able acts.

Gratitude Jan. 2014

Thank you Lord for Mayor Robertson and the City of Vancouver. Thank for Premier Christy Clark and the Province of British Columbia. Thank you Lord for Prime Minister Harper and the Government of Canada.  Thank you for our institutions, all of them. Thank you our agriculture, logging, mining and fisheries. Thank you for our manufacturing. Thank you for our health care system. Thank you for our law courts and judges and lawyers. Thank you for our banks and bankers and clerks. Thank you for all of the trade agreements and the export and import facilities and personnel..
Thank you for the workers and unions. Thank you for police and all the other front line workers like customs and bedside and street nurses, and social workers and counsellors, all those who work face to face with the great people of this great land. Thank you for our churches, and synagogues and temples and the ministers and priests who care for their congregations. Thank you for the detox facilities and the drug and alcohol treatment centres and alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous, gambling anonymous, debtors anonymous, codependents anonymous and sex and love addicts anonymous.
Thank you for our libraries and all the wealth of learning and education.  Thank you for internet and the world wide web.  Thank you for our schools and universities and colleges and teachers. Thank you for the media, the newspapers, magazines, radio, television and CBC and Province,  National Post, Globe and Mail, Readers Digest, New York Times,  Guardian Weekly, Economist, National Geographic, Science, Nature, and Scientific American. Thank you for all the research facilities and laboratories and scientists. Thank you for the National Space Station and NASA and the Mars expedition. Thank you for technology and technologist. Thank you for industry and industrialists. Thank you for computers, computer scientists,  electronics, electricians and all technicians.  Thank you for engineering, engineers,  mechanics all those who work with their minds and hands for creation and maintenance in this material world.  
Thank you fashion and clothing industries. Thank you for shoes and orthotics and all the age old genius that has gone to making materials and suits for all manner of terrain, scuba, sailing, sky diving, fishing, uniforms, and finally the Hazmat suit. Thank you for paramedics and baby care. Thank you for mothers and fathers and the whole support network of parents and children.  Thank you for our highways and transportation industry and the airlines and shipping magnates and all the various means that we have, and  the people involved in helping humans move from place to place with their goods and services.
Thank you for all these institutions and all those human institutions that I have missed out through only limits of my memory and imagination.
Thank you for the military and coast guard and all peace keeping forces in Canada and abroad.  Thank you for the Commonwealth and NATO and Great Britain and the United States of American. Especially thank you for Scotland and Ireland, the celts and poetry and song and all the musicians in the world especially the guitar players and violinist and pianists and all the vocalists. Thank you for the choirs especially the church choirs.
Thank you for all the institutions that protect the animals for our companions and service and food. Thank you for the highways and tour industries and all the housing and hotels and resorts and builders.  Thank you for the construction workers, architects and city planners. Thank you for all the  organizational structures and administrators that make all these vast systems of interconnecting industries and services work together with the least amount of friction.
Thank you for my family Lord. Thank you for my friends and all the networks and relationships that I am so blessed to be apart of and share in.
Help me to never forget that I am but a part of a great organic and wonder filled miracle of living dynamic matter energy and relationships. Thank you Lord for yourself and knowing you and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And thank you for all that is the finest and best of the best and most uplifting and beautiful and goodness filled. Thank you for culture at it's highest and for all the very lovely and loving contributions to existence that men and women and children have given to this existence. Thank you for Love.  Thank you for this New Year, 2014

Clear Mind

I don’t present myself as having a clear mind.  I don’t edit as I write or even edit after I have written in this ‘blog’.  I have been interested in the stream of consciousness writing.
With ‘stream of consciousness’ I reflect on the ‘process’. I long ago learned I could ‘create’ a pretty piece, even produce a worthy work.  But these were outside of myself. What I wanted was to know the source.  In the source was purity and light.
I felt that if I could express myself purely and tap into that ‘channel’ then I could be one with God. God is all beauty, all greatness, all goodness, and the source of all.
I have in blogging wished to write without the ‘editor’.  Creative writing begins this way.  We write and later edit if we are creating masterpieces in the traditional sense.
But I’d bought a camera. Not only did I  frame and produce the shot I had a darkroom where I even more modified the picture. One day I concluded that I was seeing the world, my life experience, through a camera lens of ‘framed’ and ‘edited’ shots. I wasn’t experiencing reality as reality but rather changing it to suit my needs and purposes.  I bought a movie camera and instead recorded my experience without editing. I’ve now countless 8 mm tapes and super 8’s I am finding these days in storage lockers. I’ve never looked at them again.  Life has been too full to return to movies of the past.
At times I look back in this truthful way, at the original tracks, not the selected and modified bits I store in my memory.
Then often I enjoy the bits of pieces my father took with his camera.  I pass 20 or 30 years of time and find myself rummaging among old pictures of childhood with aunts and cousins, curious about these black and white still photos and snippets of film taken years past before high fidelity. There’s a truth there that seems to be captured in the process of discovery.
I think I’ll have to write again towards some goal. I’ve a novel in mind. I’m editing short stories now , many of which were published in magazines and are merely being collected for my next book. I don’t even know what to call it.
My poetry book, so recently launched, called “Love between the Sacred and Profane”, was so easily titled as if by a muse or angel.  I have no such clarity about a title for the collected book of short stories.
I meditate.  Sitting cross legged I consider my breathing, sometimes linking ancient sounds to in drawing and out going breaths. I always begin these days with the Lord’s Prayer. It’s comforting and focussing. I sometimes say the All Shall Be Well prayer and the Serenity prayer and the God I offer myself to Thee prayer.  Then I watch my thoughts becoming more and more the observer.
I’m the observer now, watching these words unfold as I watch my fingers before the screen.  I am aware of my surroundings.  My mind so often cluttered with fears about work and relationships and worries about the future and regrets about the past, stills.
I like the psalm line, Be Still and Know That I am one.
I let that run around in my mind for a time too.
I wait to feel the ‘yes’ inside coming forth, struggling through the darkness and greyness of the murky mental mustiness. A light and lightness return. The heaviness and darkness dissipate.
I am in this space I’ve come to day after day year after year for half a century. it’s a place I find in myself like the sleep place I find in my bed.  I am sitting and my mind is clear, uncluttered, tidy, clean.
I long to find that clear mind place in writing.
But I also have often wished to share the unadulterated, the un reduced, I’ve wanted others to find what I’ve found and been less self critical because they feel their mind is untidy and their writing is raw.
There is a man I know and he knows one book very well.  If we talk about that book alone he is able to quote page and verse. He seemed at first to have such mastery but then I asked him about other books and he was without knowledge of them even though he’d hoped his one books memorization might bring him to the source of all books.  I didn’t see that.
Paul Simon wrote a song years ago in which he talked about the One Trick Pony.
I’ve been a one trick pony in my way.
But my search these days is for miracles.  I don’t want to manipulate the God stuff but to know ‘thy will be done, not my will’.  I want to follow the path that’s straightest to God.
In writing I want to get to the point.  But the point of the stream of consciousness ‘sharing’ was to allow those who were unafraid to understand that they too could share their ‘thoughts’.  The ‘blog’ was that sort of space.
At first.
Then there were those who had an idea of money and wanted to make a ‘writer’s journal’ into a masterpiece.  And I wanted money.  I wanted fame and babies named after me and street names as my own.
And I wanted others to see the monkey mind.
My friends favourite flower is the dandelion. It’s lovely green and yellow. It’s called a ‘weed’ and those with tidy lawns and golf courses go to no end of trouble to remove it. It’s amazingly resilient.
I wanted the child within, that bit of god stuff and star stuff , that spark of life to shine forth, in the writing and have it called ‘humanity’.
I wrote in this ‘process’ and ‘stream of consciousness’, typing without editing, eschewing paragraphs and commas and such, because I liked the ‘raw’, not as much because I was lazy,but because I wanted the first look to be pure and I wanted the unedited untampered with, creation.
There is judgement in me.  I judge the man who throws paint at a way and calls it art.  I throw words at a canvass and call these art.
I have boxes of journals written daily for years until my ex wife and the courts conspired to steal and destroy them. Society, my community, the place I lived , gave no value to ‘art’ and had no respect for the work of years.
I’d hoped to with time go back and take those unedited works and transform them into money. I’d find in my artist notebooks the great canadian novel and even better the great american novel.
I met a man whose wife in a fit of rage destroyed hundreds of paintings he’d done over a life time. The judge who valued nothing without a price tag, as so many judges lack the grace of Solomon, did not sentence the wife to prison or repay the man. Nazis destroy art all the time as do Communists and Pagans.  It even goes unnoticed in history when it is a Rembrandt.
Even today there is a man somewhere and a woman regretting that they discarded the child’s gift of a painting given to them in a classroom by a young Picasso.  Who could have know that Shakespeares scribblings as a child could make an adult rich years later when Shakespeare was not just another writer, another artist.
There are millions of bloggers.
There are billions of minds.
They are cluttered together and leaving hieroglyphs in time.
I just learned that the Phillistines were from Crete, Minoans or Mycenaeans, like the Gallations who were Celts.  Despite the one book being in translation to English the names didn’t register because translations of names are often variable.  Eskimo are inuit but some day somewhere one may be confused.
The clear mind is not just ‘om’ but all the monkey mind and more.  It’s the space between words., the white page, the journey.
I am on a quest.  It’s called life. I am seeking to know what it is I am supposed to know and do before I die.  I’ve been born and have come aware in this world with relationships and family and friends and all manner of toys and things and scripts and rules and dictates and taxmen and police and superiors and inferiors and a whole lot of strutting and uniforms and shouting.
I’ve enjoyed the loud parties at times.  When there were guns I’ve usually preferred the naked bodies and streams and quiet to the loud and rancourous.  I’ve seen guns as only helpful for hunting, happy as well to use a bow. I don’t wish you dead.  But I know that there are those who wish me dead and wish us dead.  It’s a duality I can’t forget.
In the clear mind I’m one.
In the world I’m in dichotomy.
When times are best it’s a dance.
I share this with you if only to reach out and touch another in that place of clutter knowing it will be okay.  God love you.  And me. I know, because the Bible told me so.  But also, because I know.
I’m less concerned about alzheimers than I am about spiritual alzheimers.

Sunday Journal

I feel lacking in motivation. I’m watching tv and am satisfied with life on the couch.
I got up this morning and the water line was off. I’ve water in the trailer so had enough for washing. Plan to shower and use the hot tub and pool later today.
The propane tank had gone off in the night so it was chilly in the morning.  Chilly and no option to shower.  I shared a long email with friends trying to be grateful and positive.  I love being a physician and helping patients but the context is increasingly frightening. Perfection and pleasing everyone isn't something that's possible but that's the new job description.
I got dressed though. I drove to church and felt guilty arriving at the end of Father Mathews sermon.  I felt guilty about that.  Father Mathew runs a street mission and I admire his work.  I wanted to hear more of his sermon.  Gilbert goes to church with me.  After church we went downstairs for coffee. There were three other dogs.  I chatted with a woman pianist who had her own piano in storage. I was talking about thinning out my storage.
A guitar player said he thought about giving old pianos to the homeless.  I commented it would be difficult to push a piano and a Safe way cart.  I forget to get into the spirit of ‘good intentions’.  We’re supposed to be safe in church.  Inanity is acceptable.  Sarcasm isn’t.
I told them I was “lightening up’ by unloading my storage locker excess.
I drove over to my storage locker and filled the back of the truck with old camping gear, sleeping bags, propane lanterns, battery operated lanterns, tarps, chairs, lounge chairs, folding tables, cutlery, camping pots and pans, water bottles.   Vivian goes to a sundance festival each summer and wanted camp gear for the festival.  I’m glad to donate.  More ‘lightening up’.
I gave away my Harley cover from my old bike with some gas tanks to one of the other bikers.  The cover doesn’t fit my new electroglide but fit his fatboy.  We talked of Sturges.  He hopes to go one day.  I shared my experience.
Gilbert had me throw the tennis ball at each stop though I didn’t let him out of the truck at Vivian’s. Too much traffic. And I couldn’t forget how sad Vivian was when her dog bolted from the apartment and was hit by a car.  Gilbert makes me laugh.
I told Father Mark that Gilbert had been blessed by the bishop.  Father Mark said he thought as much seeing that Gilbert has a purple leash.
We were all saying, Happy New Year. It’s still the ‘season’.
Now I’m back at the RV. I’ve taken Gilbert for a walk along the river and chatted with a couple of other dog owners.  I’ve ‘socialized’.  I’ve also taken a bunch of books over to the laundry room book exchange.
I ate the porridge I made this morning but realizing I was running late left to eat later. Love microwaves.
I got some of the sun on the walk.  Now I’m watching Blue Bloods.  It would probably be more respectable if it was hockey or football but I prefer drama.  Maybe I’ll clean up more later.  A nap might be another thing to do.  

Sons of Anarchy - 5th season

Katie Sagal and Ron Pearlman continue to amaze me.  Kurt Sutter has created  wonderful study in sociopaths. They really explain how some children grow up twisted.  Personally they’re great actors so it’s not them but the Biker Old Lady and ex Biker President they play.
All the lies and cover ups and betrayals.  All tribalism and empire. It’s better than any survival series.  This must have been the way early anthropological empires developed with racial gangs and territories.  I’m reminded of the Old Testament and Athens and Sparta.  Only here the only religion is money so it’s the new corporate America with the Roman Empire being the Feds.  The local police and CIA and prisons are all grey.  No one is black or white in this often racial drama.  Even one of the stars has to conceal his black father to be a member while the Irish and Italians challenge the Mexicans and blacks. All the while ‘legitimate’ business is being enacted in the mythical town of Charming, California without so many guns but just as much attitude.
I love Maggie  Siff as the Pediatric Surgeon mother whose in love with Katie’s son Jax , now the leader of the SONS, having taken over from Clay, played by Pearlman.  There’s cat fights and fist fights, murders, suicides, executions and mayhem.  Every minute there’s another bike chase or shooting with the sale of guns and the sale of coke.  Land deals and pornography.  I love all the locations, the street, the biker club house, the Sagal and Pearlman, old lady and ex press home and the Siff and Hunnan, now Pres, new home, the prison, the dockyards, the ex chief of police’s trailer, the call girl centre and the country.  It’s a truly moving adventure.
I’m in winter where sunny days are rare but I’ve been on a marathon watching this series in one sitting, with minor breaks here and there. The sun is setting outside and I think of all the errands I could have run, the things I could have done but here I’ve been, just eating up the action and drama.  I’m too old for this much "business" in life. It’s readily apparent watching the old guys and gals in this 3 age generation show,   that they’re all too old too.
Now if anyone asks, I’m just watching this as a ‘study’ in anthropology and social psychology. I’m not really loving this series. Every once in a while the gang is riding along on a nice road in summer. That’s when I can relate as a Harley rider.  I love the open highway and the maneuverability of the big machines.  I totally appreciate the lure of the big motorcycle and the attraction of the ride.  But being shot at, I’ll pass.
It’s like sailing in storms on the ocean. I thought that was more than exciting enough and when I thought of sailing vessels shooting cannon at each other I thought them crazy.  There’s more than enough to just riding a motorcycle on the open road without having to dodge bullets.  If there’s going to be bullets, give me a tank or an space craft escape vehicle.
But as a television series, from a biker perspective, it can’t be beat. I’ve yet to be able to just watch one episode.  All 5 seasons I’ve got in single seasons DVD and watched the whole seasons almost non stop. It’s definitely a marathon event when Sons of Anarchy is on. I don’t know how anyone can watch it on tv and wait for the next week to find out what happens to Bobby or Juice or if Katie stays with Ron or goes with the new latin lover.  I just loved the IRA blasting the 50 cal machine guns. The SONS have silencers for their pistons but that beauty was catastrophic in sound and damage.
The stuntmen in this series with bikes flying off roads, crashing people and cars, are incredible.  Great make up artists for the blood shots and body parts.
As I said, I’m not really watching this as entertainment. I may be entertained but this is really ‘serious’  educational material.  I just hope I don’t repeat any of the language I’m hearing.  That could prove very difficult in the wrong circles ( i.e. almost all circles).
And yea, I recommend it.  Totally.

Ad Hominem - Against the Man

Ad Hominem - "against the man" , is perhaps the most famous, most common and diabolical of logical fallacies.  A fallacy is a rhetorical 'argument' that is by nature seriously weak on logic and hence seriously lacking in validity and truth. 

The following is an example of ad hominem.

Person 1 - "The world is round."
Person 2 - "That's not true. The world is flat.  You only say it is round because you're a liar and a pedophile."

A person may be a liar and a pedophile but this may have no relevance to the discussion of the geographical nature of planet earth.  Note that the 'respondent' has indeed given no 'evidence' to support his position that the world is not round. 

The term 'toxic politics' has come into play to describe the present nature of the world political system as it devolves into tribalism and banality. 

Some examples of ad hominem in present day politics:

"You don't believe in global warming and climate change because you're a Republican." 

The term "unpack' is used to break down these complex argument which are indeed simply 'name calling'.

The term 'global warming' was initially used but then there was a recent identified period of global cooling. Therefore the new 'term' was 'climate change'.  Everyone knows that climate change occurs even hourly or daily, so to accuse a person of 'not believing in climate change' is like accusing a person of not believing in weather. 

Further 'to believe in climate change' carries with it an acceptance of a whole set of actions which may be as convoluted as answering a person who says, "You don't believe in Jesus Christ." I, personally, might believe in 'climate change' but be unwilling to accept that I should 'buy' your wind generator at exorbitant profit to you, underwritten by my own taxes, and sold by China as some sort of political economic terrorism.  Further, I might not want to ride my bicycle to work in Canada or do a whole list of other things which follow my 'agreement' with you that there is weather.  Further, though I may believe in Jesus Christ I might not want to become a celibate priest or give my lifesavings to your church. 

I can believe something and not 'act' in a way, different from what you believe is the correct action associated with a particular belief.

Ad hominem couples and links 'beliefs' with 'actions' in a peculiar way.  In the example above, a person may be a republican, which is a belief system, vaguely associated with Conservatives in Canada and Tory's in England.  Having that belief does not mean that one shares the 'other' belief which is 'climate change'.  Being a republican one can believe in 'climate change' but historically would not believe that the country should raise taxes to build a multi billion dollar freezer unit to stabilize climate and encourage American know how and engineering. 

Today, 'toxic politics' is also historically what psychiatrists called the 'paranoid' position in the psychotic extreme. 

In this regard "I'm okay; you're not"  becomes 'I'm okay. I'm right. I'm God's representative on earth. I'm the future of man and woman kind, I'm the saviour of civilization. I'm the only one with the answer to everything, I'm the ONE, You are wrong. You are not okay. You are the devil. You are going destroy the planet, kill women and children, polute the galaxy, you don't have an answer for anything."

Shaming refers to 'ad hominem'. To shame is to say you are intrinsically a bad and evil person, not that you have a 'wrong idea' , or did a 'wrong thing'.

Ad hominem attributes "wrongness" or "rightness"  to an intrinsic value such as  your 'character', 'personality', 'race', 'sexual preference', 'religious affiliation' , 'colour of your skin', 'language', 'birth origin', 'genetics', 'nationality', 'culture' etc. 

Rhetoric in arguments is a magician's hat trick.  The idea is to 'distract' you from the issue at hand and emotionally move you into an area where your 'instincts' will confuse you.  Rationally it's obvious that in the above example there is no logical association between whether the earth is round and whether you are a pedophile.  However, the 'word' 'pedophile'; like most labels as an explosive device in an argument.  This 'irrationality' moves the 'discussion' about "what" is right or wrong into 'who is right or wrong. 

Women and now men do this today by suddenly stating."You don't love me?"

Of course the answer is 'fish fly.'  Right?

Happy New Year 2014

First walk of the year for Gilbert and me.  The first excitement was seeing a ‘fish’ swim up the little side river.  I had my D5000 Nikon with the new Nikkor 18-300 mm lens and the new 2x multiplier.  The shutter didn’t work.  I tried every button till miraculously it worked.  There’s a stunning picture of the fish, maybe a steel head trout or an old salmon, hard to tell.  (It’s dead centre in the picture).
Then a mallard appeared followed by a merganser then a bufflehead.  I’m sure about the green headed mallard but the red headed merganser is a question mark simply because I can only find the field guide to wild flowers. I’ve been moving and nothing is where I know it will be one day. So I’m just guessing about the bird names.  There should be a similar ‘guide’ to acquaintances.  That would make life easier.
I met a  northern farmer with a female Gorky named Billy. I'm sure I met him last year. Gilbert and Billy frolicked while the old guys walked and talked about early days in Winnipeg.  Apparently it’s as cold there again as it was when we were growing up there.  Imagine our mothers sending us out as children to school to walk through the freezing winds of Winnipeg tundra. Today we'd be removed, unless that was their hope in those days too.  We’d all be foster children today raised in loving Mexican homes were times different.
I included a picture of Gilbert from a couple of weeks before when the snow was heavy on the ground where we were today. The snow is all but gone now.
Then there’s shots by the SV GIRI from yesterday.   I loaded 6 bags of clothing and stuff in the truck for donation.
Now I ‘ve just chosen to watch Will and Grace over Jerry Springer. I did catch the end of the world being destroyed and the elite getting away on arks Jan 1, 2014 morning movie.  Was that a hopeful harbinger thrown out to the powerful status quo?
Gilbert is cuddling on the couch beside me.  The gift venison is thawing in preparation for becoming chilli in the cuisinart pressure cooker.
I love to start the year with a busy demanding schedule.
I have to fit pool and hot tub, more television, some reading perhaps, and another walk into this day, just to make it complete.
 I’ll read mail, Facebook and twitter. That’s not something I did a decade ago. I actually remember using a phone on the wall to call friends New Years Day. But that was a whole other technology era away.
I've already added prayer and meditation but a wiser man would do more of that while I'm thinking of the chocolate I've surprisingly left over from Christmas.
Happy New Year!