I’m up. I’ve walked the dog and he’s shat. Blue sky and clouds. It was a chilly night. Woke 5 am. Chilled. Must put out the electric heater or electric blanket. Or wear a sweater to bed. I’d like this if I was tenting. Normal for the lake. Just a little brisk for home. I did love the little guy cuddling up against me for warmth this morning. Rubbed his belly and felt connected. Prayed.
Now the banana has helped. I’m thankful for food. The heater is doing a great job. I was standing over the vent making coffee. Now eating bread and jam. Already answered crisis calls. Big question is whether to ride the motorcycle or sports car to work. Feeling vulnerable I pass on the motorcycle. Feeling courageous I ride it. I’m experiencing this cautionary streak. Taking least risks. Concerned about health and fearful of injury. I don’t have it often. I know others live lives like this. I just shake it off and face my fears but now it’s different.
I’m Treading Time.
Gilbert’s begging and i’ve showed him away. He doesn’t like bread. Would lick the butter off but leaves the bread.
Thank you Lord for this day. Thank you for coffee. Thank you for the rains. Thank you for the blue sky and clouds. Thank you for the light. Thank you for work. Thank you for communication. Thank you for utensils. Thank you for plates and cups. Thank you for the electric kettle. Thank you for pecan bread. Thank you for rhubarb jam. Thank you for sleep. Thank you for a night with pleasant dreams. Thank you for the tv series Dark Matter. Thank you for the tv series Humans. I enjoyed watching episodes last night. Thank you for Apple and I tunes . Thank you for Wind Wi fi. Thank you for my book. Thank you for my computer. Thank you for family first. Thank you for friends. Thank you for work. Thank you for showers and hot water and soap. Thank you for shampoo. Thank you for work. Thank you for my office. Thank you for my assistant. Thank you for physicians. Thank you for my teachers. Thank you for books . Thank you for vehicles. Thank you for birds and animals. Thank you for tables. Thank you for couches. Thank you for beds. Thank you for taste. Thank you for eyes and sight. Thank you for this comforting heat. Thank you for the laundry and clean clothing. Thank you for the Bible and for Jesus. Thank you for St. Teresa and St. John. Thank you for the coming hunting season. Thank you for trucks and quads. Thank you for boats and lakes and oceans and rivers. Thank you for pens. Thank you for indoor plumbing.
Time to get moving
Monday, July 27, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Church - Sunday
It’s 10:30 am. That’s the time church starts. I’m sitting on the couch in my housecoat. Gilbert is lying on the couch at my feet. I’m not going to make it to church. It’s been raining heavily. Gilbert and I ran in the rain this morning. I’m aching. My church, St.James Anglican, is in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. l just moved my office out of that area after 5 years of being there. Driving down there has been a true nightmare. Zombie like drug addicts staggering about the streets, sirens and police angry at their impotence desperate to ticket a tax paying citizen because the local criminal and drug addicted population is a revolving door group that knows the law so well they invariably set up police for internal affairs and human rights commission investigations. I personally got tired of the screamers. The noise pollution is horrid. Couples drunk or on crystal meth would walk down opposite sides of the street screaming full volume at each other about who spent the money on the last fix. Needles littered the street. And politicians promised to make it easier for the locals to use and provide more ’stuff’ for them under the auspices of ‘harm reduction’.
I became cynical. I was disheartened not by the victims of the drug dealers and the agencies, but rather with the horrendous waste of tax payer dollars and the corruption. It was also sad. A tragic war zone.
I’m feeling I did my time. It was like a tour of duty. A kind of non combatant military Afghanistan placement in the centre of Vancouver, one of Canada’s most beautiful cities. I still work a day downtown but my lease came up and I was forced to move. So now my office is further along Hastings in the suburban zone, out of the downtown eastside. My first day there I was shocked by the quiet. There was no one screaming outside my window. There were no demonstrations. No honking horns. No sirens every hour. There was quiet. I’d forgotten what it was like. I know it from weekends. To survive I’d gone out to nature, either the woods or the sea every weekend possible to cleanse myself of the work. But now I’m not at all exhausted in that way after a week of work. The work is as demanding even more it seems at times but I took a walk in my neighbourhood. It was so different. No one was bullying me. I didn’t have to wonder whether some scruffy guy selling cigarettes was going to move for me to pass through. I used to be fearful crossing Carrall at Hastings because a whole bunch of people close together on drugs and alcohol and their dealers congregated there disrupting the flow of walkers. I felt sorry for businesses because all the tourists who’d love to walk to China town turned around before this army of near do wells.
Inside the Supervised Injection Site has created a police no go zone so dealers up the street work in the open. No surveillance of the clinic or surroundings is allowed. So all manner of criminal activity and gang meetings go on around that there. Millions and millions of criminal dollars pass through this 8 block radius. Nothing stays. It’s just drug city and deals are made here. Heroin and BC Bud. Now that the marijuana is legalized there’s more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks in the city. Most of them are around here. There’s prostitutes as well. And guns. Not the guns the government tries to outlaw but criminal guns with serial numbers filed clean. Hand guns, not long guns. Bodies show up in the dumpsters in the alleys.
I’m more relaxed now. My vehicles were broken into annually. Once I was walking down the street a block from my truck and saw my dirty laundry. “Hey, that’s my underwear, “ I said. Sure enough, in a snatch and grab someone had grabbed my laundry and rifled through it as they continued down the street. I picked my stuff up for a block but hated cancelling patients to get the truck into the repair and having to cancel more to pick it up. When my computer was stolen it took months to restore the applications and files and get it back to where it was previously. Thankfully today iCloud gets past that kind of abuse.
Now I love my church. I came when a man made a dramatic scene kicking my dog and girlfriend out of church where we’d gone for over a decade and even had the dog blessed by the bishop. He’s a therapy dog. A great little cockapoo but my girlfriend was humiliated and I just think that anywhere that doesn’t want my dog really doesn’t want me. We’re pretty much a like. At the same time I understand that some dogs and some owners aren’t socialized. There’s a need for ‘rules’ and there’s a need for ‘exceptions’. I remember when children were excluded from a lot of places. Then there was a time when Jews weren’t allowed. Then there was a time it was blacks and then Chinese. Then it was gays and now it’s still transexuals. But really it’s dogs. People have a way of creating ‘legalities’ and living in ‘legalism’. It’s evidence of an inherent desire to exclude and to dominate and control. I could even accept that dog owners need special insurance to take their dogs in ‘special places’. I don’t buy the blanket statement by health departments against animals given how uncouth so many people are. I’ve also been in civilized advanced countries where dogs are welcome in restaurants and churches.
So I was thankful when the former minister told me that “your dog is more than welcome, but I’m not sure about you.” he said jokingly. There’s a general consensus that my dog is better behaved that me. And I loved Father Mark and his wife. I loved their children and dogs. I began to love individuals in the church, especially Alice. I loved that my friends Elizabeth and Karen introduced me to the church. I loved that Anna was there with her kids. I loved several people I met there. I especially loved the jams at tea sales and the lunches and the coffee. The music was great. Father Mathew was an inspiration . My hearing is not as keen as it was so the sound system bothered me. I had to move around to get my better ear in a better location. I don’t know if it was the rock and roll or the hunting that’s caused the right ear to be increasingly selective but mostly I noted after Father Mark left that those giving the sermons were angry with the mikes rather than loving technology. So when Father Mark left I was a little less keen.
Now I’m not a summer Christian at the best of times either. I’m usually sailing or camping on weekends. I’ve never had so many weekends home in years. The trip to Istanbul in the spring and Ireland a few weeks back has had me really enjoying sleeping and hanging out at home. I would say I’m ‘isolating’ but I have no depression or lack of joy in my fellows. I just feel a little bushed. I’m off to see my brother next week and to Virginia after that so I’m travelling a lot and enjoying any down time.
I don’t like going into the DTES now. I don’t like driving there. I’m a bit off driving perhaps after the intense Ireland driving on the wrong side. It’s just I don’t want to deal with people walking on the road and Vancouver drivers lack of skills training. There’s forever someone who hasn’t been toilet trained to use his signals. Then there’s this weird macho competitiveness that holds up traffic all over the city because people don’t let people flow in but want to keep everyone else out of their lane. The traffic jams occur as a result. I think this is a product of multi culturalism, my bias, too many people trying to be number one and working out their issues on the road rather than cooperating together and moving with the flow. it’s also the drug addicts. and the cell phones. A lot of drivers are disconnected from reality and in their own stinky petty worlds. The chaos in the DTES might make it worse. I just don’t have any desire to get in a vehicle and go into town on the weekend for any reason. Commuting has caught up on me. I’m a half hour to an hour every day each way going to work and the commutes are getting more and more ludicrous with police blocking two lanes to stop someone rather than taking them off the highway so traffic continues to flow. There’s so much insanity out there that yes I like the safety and certainty of my suburban home on the weekends right now.
So no I didn’t get to church. I’m better at getting to church in Winter and spring. I love church but wonder if it’s time to find a new church. I went to the nearest one here but the preacher was kind of teleevangical happy happy and the people were mostly old women. The other church didn’t like dogs. I may have to phone about. It’s not on my list of priorities. I feel spiritually uplifted by my time with Archie and George. I really should get out to be with those guys more often. I’ve been enjoying walking and running with Gilbert.
I will sort everything out after Kingston and Norfolk. Each year when I get together with the psychiatrists and we say the serenity prayer en mass I seem to find my direction. Right now I’m just crawling into the home plate. Marking time. I’ve got too much work and not enough money and want to work less but can’t see how I’ll manage because of the increasing costs and the inflation. The projects I have are already delayed by lack of funds so I have to find more acceptance. This city is so expensive too that I fear stepping out the door costs money. I’ve paid for this ‘parking place’ for my body and Gilbert’s so it’s a ‘safe zone’. I don’t feel I can afford to leave in a way. I haven’t taken my boat out this summer because I don’t want to risk costs. The moorage I’m at has shrunk so I haven’t room to dock solo. The fear of hitting another boat returning has me simply not wanting to take my boat out.
I love riding my motorcycle because its so cheap yet at the same time I’ve had this fear of injury as I still intermittently deal with the ankle injury I got when I dumped my bike in the intersection. A true nutter Vancouver driver slammed on his breaks crossing as a kind of epileptic seizure without any reason causing me to slam on mine. I had too much front brake and not enough back brake in the turn so my ankle twisted holding the bike up. I realized the guy had this idea he’d cross two lanes and get into a shop but realized it was impossible and had done this bizarre stop as traffic was coming at us and me looking at the oncoming traffic not expecting him to stop with a clear lane ahead and no reason not to complete his turn. The ankle swelled up something fierce and I was thankful that George, who’d corralled me in church, didn’t think it was broken and the X-ray he insisted on confirmed it. The fact was that soft tissue tears aren’t nothing and it was a year of healing and still occasionally I’m bothered by it. Indeed all the old injuries are flaring up with weather, all the sites of traumatic arthritis. So on lilly livered days I’m find the idea of curling up in fetal position in bed attractive. Not from depression but just a bit of anxiety about whats out there. I’m a little agoraphobic at times despite all the years of adventure. Shell shock.
Now I have to trust in God. I’m praying and I need to meditate more . But I need to floss and do sit ups too. Maybe I’ll go over to the pool and swim. I don’t like all the kids in summer. It’s best to get to the pool early morning or late at night. I like the winter months better. We’ve had some good guy meetings in the hot tubs. Talking about nothing. Not now with screaming teens.
I’m enjoying movies. I watched Sword of Vengeance last night and really enjoyed it. Gilbert and I missed Laura. She’s baby sitting a bird this weekend. We’re just comfortable around her. She makes Gilbert happier. Tom visited last week and it was a great evening meal. Gilbert was ecstatic with all his friends. I’m alone and that’s good at times but I like the company too. All a matter of balance. I’ve got a couple of friends here Dave and Mac and we were both talking about how much we enjoy being alone with the dogs. Guys and their dogs. But it’s good when the girls are over. Aging is a kind of return to late adolescence. Hanging out, dating. I have difficulty generating activities occasionally. I’ve got this full schedule. I collected laundry yesterday, did some cleaning on the boat, bailed the dinghy, dropped off stuff at the storage locker and that was Saturday. I got a computer repaired on Friday yet I feel like I’m not doing anything. I work a full week. I’ve written chapters in a book. I’ve dealt with a half dozen emergencies in the evening. I ‘ve cooked my own meals and cleaned. I’m self sufficient. I ‘ve walked the dog and managed him. I’ve showered and prayed, read , completed another book, watched some movies. It’s not like I’m a slouch but I feel like I’m not getting the important things done.
This time on earth is to come closer to God. God acts through people. There are Godly things. I’ve done a lot in life. In Ireland and Turkey I was uplifted by visiting the shrines. I’m talking with god. I read inspirational books, Richard Rohr, Emmett Fox, right now. I’ve been reading so much theology over the year. I got the master of divinity and am working slowly on a book on spirituality. I’ve one trip left to complete the travels I’ve done specifically to form the basis of a Christian book on the dispersal of the message. I would go on perpetual pilgrimage.
Then I’d be happy to be an emperor in a brothel with a maiden feeding me grapes. I would even at times have a valhalla heaven where I fought with swords all day to feast and fuck all night to start all over again. I like lust and gluttony and sloth and all the character defects and don’t have a whole lot of discipline these days against ice cream. I remember when younger I flogged my body till I was a provincial champion athlete and then flogged my body a whole lot more to bicycle across europe and sail across oceans. I am content right now on this couch with the dog beside me and the toilet nearby. I think I’ll move to relieve myself then make another cup of coffee and face the challenge of whether to watch a movie or read a book.
I’m thankful for this. Sometime today I’ll move further than the fridge. It seems to happen. I’m active for several hours on my days off doing applied activities when I was really doing nothing like the chores of yesterday, maybe 4 to 6 hours in total. When I was sailing it was common for me to do at least 3 to 4 hours a day on some applied thing, maintenance, chores whatever. I expect if I was retired that would be the pattern. Working now I’m doing 10 hour days. Wouldn’t it be great if I could be paid the same as I am for 10 hours for half the time. This would be human. I’m a workaholic, wage nigger as it is. It’s not the money that drives me as much as history. It’s just the way it’s been but now I’m older I’m having to rethink things because I ‘m tired more. While a change is as good as a rest, I’m more into resting on weekends these days than I am in getting out and doing something.
The things I could do
1) Go through the storage locker and get rid of anything that is no longer being used. Get the boat stuff on the boat. I’m not living on the boat so I might as well get all the boat stuff I moved off for space back on it. I could even get my scuba gear on it.
2) Get out in the woods on the 4x4 and set up targets and do some target practice. I have joined hunting clubs but the rifle ranges are full when I’ve gone so rather than pout get out in the gravel pits with pieces of plywood and get the rifles precision firing. The rifles are sort of entered but you really could use the practice and it’s a gas to ride about on the 4x4
3) you should be fishing. You’ve got the equipment and licenses but you’ve not gone this last year.
4) You haven’t used your golf clubs in years. Just because they don’t accept Gilbert on the courses doesn’t mean you couldn’t leave him at home and get out to a driving range. You love driving ranges.
5) Dancing. Now that you’re running and walking with less pain you could get out dancing. You’re still a bit fragile but a night of dancing would do you good. The guys are always encouraging you.
6) You have to learn Biblical hebrew and you should keep up with your spanish. Your spanish speaking friend wants you to visit and you’ve been meaning to get down there again. Your’ spanish speaking teacher has online courses. You should keep this up. Maybe read ST. Theresa and ST. John in their spanish language.
7) You really have to get on with writing the books you’re working on. I know it seems to be enough to get 2 or 3 pages written and that exhausts you but you could do more.
8) You have to visit some friends. You don’t see John enough.
9) You’ve not been playing guitar either. And you certainly could use lessons.
10) Theres the job of getting the files digitalized. You have to get started on that. You have so much to do and you’re just not moving very fast on anything.
All in good time. God is good. I’m so thankful for all I’ve done and all that is in progress. I’ve not made it to church but I’m thinking about God. I imagine God with me and imagine all is God. I would be his eyes and nose and fingers too. Right now Gilbert is licking my feet. Jesus washed his disciples feet. Gilbert is God like in many ways. I don’t know what the ball fixation is. Is this an earth metaphor? Now he’s stretching and hoping I’ll take him out where he can sniff butts. He’s giving me that look. One paw on my arm. He thinks a lot of what I do at the computer, the iPhone and various screens is not nearly as good as walking him. I could do that more. There’s a sedentary compulsion that takes over. I think I’ll get up. Enough of this.
Praise the Lord. yes.
I became cynical. I was disheartened not by the victims of the drug dealers and the agencies, but rather with the horrendous waste of tax payer dollars and the corruption. It was also sad. A tragic war zone.
I’m feeling I did my time. It was like a tour of duty. A kind of non combatant military Afghanistan placement in the centre of Vancouver, one of Canada’s most beautiful cities. I still work a day downtown but my lease came up and I was forced to move. So now my office is further along Hastings in the suburban zone, out of the downtown eastside. My first day there I was shocked by the quiet. There was no one screaming outside my window. There were no demonstrations. No honking horns. No sirens every hour. There was quiet. I’d forgotten what it was like. I know it from weekends. To survive I’d gone out to nature, either the woods or the sea every weekend possible to cleanse myself of the work. But now I’m not at all exhausted in that way after a week of work. The work is as demanding even more it seems at times but I took a walk in my neighbourhood. It was so different. No one was bullying me. I didn’t have to wonder whether some scruffy guy selling cigarettes was going to move for me to pass through. I used to be fearful crossing Carrall at Hastings because a whole bunch of people close together on drugs and alcohol and their dealers congregated there disrupting the flow of walkers. I felt sorry for businesses because all the tourists who’d love to walk to China town turned around before this army of near do wells.
Inside the Supervised Injection Site has created a police no go zone so dealers up the street work in the open. No surveillance of the clinic or surroundings is allowed. So all manner of criminal activity and gang meetings go on around that there. Millions and millions of criminal dollars pass through this 8 block radius. Nothing stays. It’s just drug city and deals are made here. Heroin and BC Bud. Now that the marijuana is legalized there’s more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks in the city. Most of them are around here. There’s prostitutes as well. And guns. Not the guns the government tries to outlaw but criminal guns with serial numbers filed clean. Hand guns, not long guns. Bodies show up in the dumpsters in the alleys.
I’m more relaxed now. My vehicles were broken into annually. Once I was walking down the street a block from my truck and saw my dirty laundry. “Hey, that’s my underwear, “ I said. Sure enough, in a snatch and grab someone had grabbed my laundry and rifled through it as they continued down the street. I picked my stuff up for a block but hated cancelling patients to get the truck into the repair and having to cancel more to pick it up. When my computer was stolen it took months to restore the applications and files and get it back to where it was previously. Thankfully today iCloud gets past that kind of abuse.
Now I love my church. I came when a man made a dramatic scene kicking my dog and girlfriend out of church where we’d gone for over a decade and even had the dog blessed by the bishop. He’s a therapy dog. A great little cockapoo but my girlfriend was humiliated and I just think that anywhere that doesn’t want my dog really doesn’t want me. We’re pretty much a like. At the same time I understand that some dogs and some owners aren’t socialized. There’s a need for ‘rules’ and there’s a need for ‘exceptions’. I remember when children were excluded from a lot of places. Then there was a time when Jews weren’t allowed. Then there was a time it was blacks and then Chinese. Then it was gays and now it’s still transexuals. But really it’s dogs. People have a way of creating ‘legalities’ and living in ‘legalism’. It’s evidence of an inherent desire to exclude and to dominate and control. I could even accept that dog owners need special insurance to take their dogs in ‘special places’. I don’t buy the blanket statement by health departments against animals given how uncouth so many people are. I’ve also been in civilized advanced countries where dogs are welcome in restaurants and churches.
So I was thankful when the former minister told me that “your dog is more than welcome, but I’m not sure about you.” he said jokingly. There’s a general consensus that my dog is better behaved that me. And I loved Father Mark and his wife. I loved their children and dogs. I began to love individuals in the church, especially Alice. I loved that my friends Elizabeth and Karen introduced me to the church. I loved that Anna was there with her kids. I loved several people I met there. I especially loved the jams at tea sales and the lunches and the coffee. The music was great. Father Mathew was an inspiration . My hearing is not as keen as it was so the sound system bothered me. I had to move around to get my better ear in a better location. I don’t know if it was the rock and roll or the hunting that’s caused the right ear to be increasingly selective but mostly I noted after Father Mark left that those giving the sermons were angry with the mikes rather than loving technology. So when Father Mark left I was a little less keen.
Now I’m not a summer Christian at the best of times either. I’m usually sailing or camping on weekends. I’ve never had so many weekends home in years. The trip to Istanbul in the spring and Ireland a few weeks back has had me really enjoying sleeping and hanging out at home. I would say I’m ‘isolating’ but I have no depression or lack of joy in my fellows. I just feel a little bushed. I’m off to see my brother next week and to Virginia after that so I’m travelling a lot and enjoying any down time.
I don’t like going into the DTES now. I don’t like driving there. I’m a bit off driving perhaps after the intense Ireland driving on the wrong side. It’s just I don’t want to deal with people walking on the road and Vancouver drivers lack of skills training. There’s forever someone who hasn’t been toilet trained to use his signals. Then there’s this weird macho competitiveness that holds up traffic all over the city because people don’t let people flow in but want to keep everyone else out of their lane. The traffic jams occur as a result. I think this is a product of multi culturalism, my bias, too many people trying to be number one and working out their issues on the road rather than cooperating together and moving with the flow. it’s also the drug addicts. and the cell phones. A lot of drivers are disconnected from reality and in their own stinky petty worlds. The chaos in the DTES might make it worse. I just don’t have any desire to get in a vehicle and go into town on the weekend for any reason. Commuting has caught up on me. I’m a half hour to an hour every day each way going to work and the commutes are getting more and more ludicrous with police blocking two lanes to stop someone rather than taking them off the highway so traffic continues to flow. There’s so much insanity out there that yes I like the safety and certainty of my suburban home on the weekends right now.
So no I didn’t get to church. I’m better at getting to church in Winter and spring. I love church but wonder if it’s time to find a new church. I went to the nearest one here but the preacher was kind of teleevangical happy happy and the people were mostly old women. The other church didn’t like dogs. I may have to phone about. It’s not on my list of priorities. I feel spiritually uplifted by my time with Archie and George. I really should get out to be with those guys more often. I’ve been enjoying walking and running with Gilbert.
I will sort everything out after Kingston and Norfolk. Each year when I get together with the psychiatrists and we say the serenity prayer en mass I seem to find my direction. Right now I’m just crawling into the home plate. Marking time. I’ve got too much work and not enough money and want to work less but can’t see how I’ll manage because of the increasing costs and the inflation. The projects I have are already delayed by lack of funds so I have to find more acceptance. This city is so expensive too that I fear stepping out the door costs money. I’ve paid for this ‘parking place’ for my body and Gilbert’s so it’s a ‘safe zone’. I don’t feel I can afford to leave in a way. I haven’t taken my boat out this summer because I don’t want to risk costs. The moorage I’m at has shrunk so I haven’t room to dock solo. The fear of hitting another boat returning has me simply not wanting to take my boat out.
I love riding my motorcycle because its so cheap yet at the same time I’ve had this fear of injury as I still intermittently deal with the ankle injury I got when I dumped my bike in the intersection. A true nutter Vancouver driver slammed on his breaks crossing as a kind of epileptic seizure without any reason causing me to slam on mine. I had too much front brake and not enough back brake in the turn so my ankle twisted holding the bike up. I realized the guy had this idea he’d cross two lanes and get into a shop but realized it was impossible and had done this bizarre stop as traffic was coming at us and me looking at the oncoming traffic not expecting him to stop with a clear lane ahead and no reason not to complete his turn. The ankle swelled up something fierce and I was thankful that George, who’d corralled me in church, didn’t think it was broken and the X-ray he insisted on confirmed it. The fact was that soft tissue tears aren’t nothing and it was a year of healing and still occasionally I’m bothered by it. Indeed all the old injuries are flaring up with weather, all the sites of traumatic arthritis. So on lilly livered days I’m find the idea of curling up in fetal position in bed attractive. Not from depression but just a bit of anxiety about whats out there. I’m a little agoraphobic at times despite all the years of adventure. Shell shock.
Now I have to trust in God. I’m praying and I need to meditate more . But I need to floss and do sit ups too. Maybe I’ll go over to the pool and swim. I don’t like all the kids in summer. It’s best to get to the pool early morning or late at night. I like the winter months better. We’ve had some good guy meetings in the hot tubs. Talking about nothing. Not now with screaming teens.
I’m enjoying movies. I watched Sword of Vengeance last night and really enjoyed it. Gilbert and I missed Laura. She’s baby sitting a bird this weekend. We’re just comfortable around her. She makes Gilbert happier. Tom visited last week and it was a great evening meal. Gilbert was ecstatic with all his friends. I’m alone and that’s good at times but I like the company too. All a matter of balance. I’ve got a couple of friends here Dave and Mac and we were both talking about how much we enjoy being alone with the dogs. Guys and their dogs. But it’s good when the girls are over. Aging is a kind of return to late adolescence. Hanging out, dating. I have difficulty generating activities occasionally. I’ve got this full schedule. I collected laundry yesterday, did some cleaning on the boat, bailed the dinghy, dropped off stuff at the storage locker and that was Saturday. I got a computer repaired on Friday yet I feel like I’m not doing anything. I work a full week. I’ve written chapters in a book. I’ve dealt with a half dozen emergencies in the evening. I ‘ve cooked my own meals and cleaned. I’m self sufficient. I ‘ve walked the dog and managed him. I’ve showered and prayed, read , completed another book, watched some movies. It’s not like I’m a slouch but I feel like I’m not getting the important things done.
This time on earth is to come closer to God. God acts through people. There are Godly things. I’ve done a lot in life. In Ireland and Turkey I was uplifted by visiting the shrines. I’m talking with god. I read inspirational books, Richard Rohr, Emmett Fox, right now. I’ve been reading so much theology over the year. I got the master of divinity and am working slowly on a book on spirituality. I’ve one trip left to complete the travels I’ve done specifically to form the basis of a Christian book on the dispersal of the message. I would go on perpetual pilgrimage.
Then I’d be happy to be an emperor in a brothel with a maiden feeding me grapes. I would even at times have a valhalla heaven where I fought with swords all day to feast and fuck all night to start all over again. I like lust and gluttony and sloth and all the character defects and don’t have a whole lot of discipline these days against ice cream. I remember when younger I flogged my body till I was a provincial champion athlete and then flogged my body a whole lot more to bicycle across europe and sail across oceans. I am content right now on this couch with the dog beside me and the toilet nearby. I think I’ll move to relieve myself then make another cup of coffee and face the challenge of whether to watch a movie or read a book.
I’m thankful for this. Sometime today I’ll move further than the fridge. It seems to happen. I’m active for several hours on my days off doing applied activities when I was really doing nothing like the chores of yesterday, maybe 4 to 6 hours in total. When I was sailing it was common for me to do at least 3 to 4 hours a day on some applied thing, maintenance, chores whatever. I expect if I was retired that would be the pattern. Working now I’m doing 10 hour days. Wouldn’t it be great if I could be paid the same as I am for 10 hours for half the time. This would be human. I’m a workaholic, wage nigger as it is. It’s not the money that drives me as much as history. It’s just the way it’s been but now I’m older I’m having to rethink things because I ‘m tired more. While a change is as good as a rest, I’m more into resting on weekends these days than I am in getting out and doing something.
The things I could do
1) Go through the storage locker and get rid of anything that is no longer being used. Get the boat stuff on the boat. I’m not living on the boat so I might as well get all the boat stuff I moved off for space back on it. I could even get my scuba gear on it.
2) Get out in the woods on the 4x4 and set up targets and do some target practice. I have joined hunting clubs but the rifle ranges are full when I’ve gone so rather than pout get out in the gravel pits with pieces of plywood and get the rifles precision firing. The rifles are sort of entered but you really could use the practice and it’s a gas to ride about on the 4x4
3) you should be fishing. You’ve got the equipment and licenses but you’ve not gone this last year.
4) You haven’t used your golf clubs in years. Just because they don’t accept Gilbert on the courses doesn’t mean you couldn’t leave him at home and get out to a driving range. You love driving ranges.
5) Dancing. Now that you’re running and walking with less pain you could get out dancing. You’re still a bit fragile but a night of dancing would do you good. The guys are always encouraging you.
6) You have to learn Biblical hebrew and you should keep up with your spanish. Your spanish speaking friend wants you to visit and you’ve been meaning to get down there again. Your’ spanish speaking teacher has online courses. You should keep this up. Maybe read ST. Theresa and ST. John in their spanish language.
7) You really have to get on with writing the books you’re working on. I know it seems to be enough to get 2 or 3 pages written and that exhausts you but you could do more.
8) You have to visit some friends. You don’t see John enough.
9) You’ve not been playing guitar either. And you certainly could use lessons.
10) Theres the job of getting the files digitalized. You have to get started on that. You have so much to do and you’re just not moving very fast on anything.
All in good time. God is good. I’m so thankful for all I’ve done and all that is in progress. I’ve not made it to church but I’m thinking about God. I imagine God with me and imagine all is God. I would be his eyes and nose and fingers too. Right now Gilbert is licking my feet. Jesus washed his disciples feet. Gilbert is God like in many ways. I don’t know what the ball fixation is. Is this an earth metaphor? Now he’s stretching and hoping I’ll take him out where he can sniff butts. He’s giving me that look. One paw on my arm. He thinks a lot of what I do at the computer, the iPhone and various screens is not nearly as good as walking him. I could do that more. There’s a sedentary compulsion that takes over. I think I’ll get up. Enough of this.
Praise the Lord. yes.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Journal - Saturday
I couldn’t believe it. Gilbert let me sleep in. Everyday, around 6 or 7 am he lays his little body across mine. This weight wakens me and when he sees I’m away he attempts to squirm forward and lick my face. I counteract this and push him away. Normally this results in a delay. He lets me sleep a few minutes or a half hour later. It’s the snooze bar on Gilbert. When he comes back the next time, he slinks in and goes right for the sloppy face licking alarm clock routine. During the week when I have to go to work this usually works and I get up before the actual alarm. Gilbert is ecstatic at my wakening and jumps on my chest and crotch making the getting up part for me a tad complicated.
This morning I only recall pushing him away once maybe twice. I never got the face licking. I got up when he was lying on top of me and got through the happy dog gauntlet. On the other side of this morning welcome I looked at my watch and found to my surprise it was 9 am. I’d gone to bed around 10 to 11 so I must have been really tired. As I ‘ve aged the long days at work, sometimes still 10 and 12 hours really whack me. I get home and collapse after making and eating dinner. My mind feels like my body used to feel when I did construction. By Friday I’m drained. Often I have difficulty concentrating on detailed numbers and avoid doing reports Friday now, fearing making errors in complex details. My work week continues to be about 50 hours of patient contact. There’s administration and research and calls on top of that. I can’t get over how the paper work has multiplied and ads so much to the burden of work. I’ve dozens of faxes from mostly pharmacists and then there’s all the reports that are necessary. My assistant is always on me for notes. The courts and college have an endless demand for more detailed notes and more irrelevant reporting. So much doesn’t serve the patient or me but is the political correctness beaurocratic ‘fashion’ of the week. When I see these latest demands for documentation I am certain without a doubt that the committee that came up with them didn’t have enough work of their own to do or they wouldn’t expect others to do such petty and ridiculous recording.
The failure of the legal system of the west is found in the fallacy of the ends against the middle. One person burns themselves in one location on a too hot cup of coffee and everyone everywhere has to have a ‘beware of hot coffee’ sign written on the cup. One day in the future the scientists will conclude that space flight and colonization of the solar system, all poverty and all disease in the world would have been possible before 2000 if it weren’t for the stupidity of the peace time legal and beurocratic systems that continue to work as if time was not a factor in their activities. Where all judgements occurred in hours to at most a week, judges today take years to come to a decision. Beaurocracies work at snails pace. Government works move at a tenth of the pace that those in private industry work. Some have said that wars exist to revolutionize the legal and beaurocratic systems which become increasingly ineffective over time. Work at the legal and beaurocratic levels expand to fill the time available. As someone else usually is paying in the court and the bureaucracy there’s no incentive to move at anything faster than the slowest speed. Only in war is this changed when the winners of wars usually are those whose legal beaurocratic processes were superior as much as technologically.
This is a resentment. It’s an institutional resentment. Defensive medicine accounts for as much as may 90% of the cost of health care. When I look back on my life I see this onerous costly soul destroying process of interacting with legal beurocratic systems that seemed primarily to parasitize the central process of doctor and patient and the ‘medicare model’ . The frustration of my work for a decade has been getting patients what their illness warrants by fighting individuals and systems who have grown with the pure intent of delaying. Legal beaurocratic systems are principally covert aggressive systems. They become rich by attrition and siege. I can’t recommend anyone go into medicine anymore because the frustrations far outweigh the compensations. If I was young again in this present system I’d do what so many of the young doctors do, which is the least possible. Increasingly medicine and psychiatry are defined by reductionist processes and cherry picking and avoiding sick people is the most rewarded. Indeed the richest doctors increasingly are doctors who don’t actually see patients but focus on administration, policing, and business aspects of care, not the clinical basis.
Now where the hell did this nonsense come from. I was just thankful that I slept in. I was really happy to that I got dressed in shorts and t-shirt and runners and ran with Gilbert for a couple of miles. Maybe it’s a mile. I don’t know. It’s about a half hour of running and I used to walk 5 miles an hour. When I was younger I ran a ten minute mile. More and more I’ve been actually running the whole distance. Today I walked for a few minutes halfway because Gilbert met another dog. I pull him on a leash. He wants to piss and sniff everything which we do when we walk but running is all about forward motion. Today I was dragging the poor little guy, thanks to his crying wolf stops before that, and here I looked back and he was of course squatting and trying to shit. We have his daily walk for a shit in the early morning which he’s very happy with but the long walks or the runs are an added delight. I feel badly though when he gives me that face he gives me when I realize he’s stopped not because Fifi left a love message but rather because his bowels are active.
I have been thinking about the boat and the RV and houses. I write more on land. I loved sailing and anchoring but I ‘m not as relaxed and able to work in the sailboat as I am when I’m on land. I do my writing here. I can do reports and work on land better. I can read and watch tv and relax and journal a bit on the boat but I don’t tend to do the kind of writing that I do on land. Flying I’ve written a number of short stories that went on to be published. I’ve been blogging for a few years and naturally I can do that. But I’ve also been working on books and that doesn’t seem to progress on the boat. I used to hate stationary living but I’m beginning to really enjoy it.
When Laura’s been over for the weekend I’ve really enjoyed sitting outside with her and the simple cooking and cleaning around the RV. I find myself incredibly nostalgic about my first house, a little 2 bedroom bungalow with yard and one car garage in Riverheights Winnipeg, that my Dad helped me pick out. It was so very functional and not that different from the house I grew up in. I’ve had huge houses and acreages since but that’s the one that I think I enjoyed the most. I did love the acreage and turkeys and chickens with the clinic on site but today I’m just enjoying this RV and think a lot about that first house. I’ve not particularly liked apartments though my last one I have fairly fond memories of. I think my feelings about it began to change with the crazy neighbour coming around and complaining about noise when I hadn’t been home. Then getting away every weekend the storage locker and the elevator problems in a first class apartment buildings, it all got to me. I loved living on the boat after that. The condo I had was really nice. I loved the elegant living. That was in Riverheights in Winnipeg too and I liked it better than the house in Shaughnassey.
Now here I am after a run, having really enjoyed the morning coffee, having had a shower, dressed in t shirt and underwear, my favourite clothing combination next to t shirt and sarong or skirt. I just loved wearing wraps in Mexico and the Marianas Islands. My favourite all time clothing was my worn sailing shorts. That’s all I wore sailing in the heat and it was freeing. We sailed nude in the Sea of Cortez but kept our wraps handy for chance encounters with other sailors. Nudity is great. But I’ve resisted the temptation and kept out of jail or public records. I loved the halloween costumes and dress up as a kid. I fully understand the kids and adults who are running around in superhero costumes. My favourite halloween costume in recent years has been the witch. That came out of a costume I wore for a night at Rocky Horror Picture Show. The most fun was when the girls and they guys all got into costumes and went to dances and parties. There’s always been someone socially incompetent who doesn’t dress for the occasion but more and more there’s been participation in the those who are good sports. Even at hockey games it’s seen in those who go the extra little bit and wear team colours. Gilbert had a canucks sweater which he doesn’t like to wear. He doesn’t like to dress up at all. My nudist friends have said how onerous it is to get back to clothes after a weeks retreat. I wish I’d done that when I was younger and my body was toned. It’s not really about that though. It’s a state of mind. It’s about maturity and freedom. I miss the YMCA days when we all swam naked as guys. The best times were the nude swimming with the girls in our 20’s and 30’s . The girls were so beautiful in the moonlight. I remember those times so fondly. It was fun too. I imagine if I ever stop working and retire I’ll get back to the simpler life and times, those camping and canoeing weekends and weeks. Now I’m outfitted with RV’s and quads and trucks and motorcycles. Then it was hiking with a back pack or canoeing. My father got into canoeing again in his 70’s and 80’s loving it until it was too much trouble to get the canoe off the van. I imagine seeing myself doing that. There’s a fellow I met who had sailed the Atlantic ocean back and forth a few times in his 80’s. He was so inspirational. 85 years old when I met him. I imagine doing that. I hope I can do that.
My lifestyle is fairly expensive today yet I had the finest time in my student years. Travelling on bicycle and staying in youth hostels was incredibly inexpensive. I suppose when I quit work I’ll scale down and have time to breathe.
I reflected last week on work and realized that there are hundreds of people right now whose lives I make easier. I’m not indispensable but I’m an integral part of their lives. I have a lot of very sick people I care for and have known for many years. Theres’ importance to this longevity and reliability. I’m wanted. I’m the known substance. I’m trusted. I might not be the best but I am far from the worst. I’ve been reliable and often I’ve ‘saved’ lives. I’ve certainly gone above and beyond the call of duty, and always been unconventional. I regret this some days because I could be a millionaire today if I had done what I was told rather than doing what I thought was needed. Certainly more people would have died but I’d be richer and more successful. I’ve given far more time to people than the system paid for. I even have some people who think they’re very clever in taking more time than allotted insisting on it only as an entitlement but we’re working on that trait. It’s been a problem of how I see myself. The woman at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC condemned me for caring so much for my patients insisting ‘It’s just a job, Dr. Hay”. I had this weird sense of ‘calling’ and have always thought the profession was more than a ‘job’ but those who treat medicine and psychiatry as “Just a job” have become rich and been promoted to the highest ranks. Those who practice the ‘business of medicine’ giving the ‘least for the most reward’ and focusing on the ‘maximum profit’ are now the ones who mock me. I’m a has been and my life is a waste.
Then I think of how my marriages failed because I focussed on my work over my home and if I’d just gone to work like it was just a job I could have been a better husband . I could have had more money to buy women gifts and had the time to meet their demands for attention and luxuries.
I’ve roughed it a lot in my life. Living on a sailboat for years. Living now as trailer trash. I wonder now what my life would have been like if I’d just stayed in that first house. Sedentary. None of the adventure and experience. Safe. None of the risk and perils that I’ve known. But at the end of the day when friends and family seem more important I find myself nostalgic for high school reunions and family suppers. This moment I don’t even want to get in the truck yet I have to go over to the boat to pump the water out of the dinghy. We have had a lot of rain these last couple of days. It’s necessary for the vegetation and to stop the forest fires. It just means I have to make a trip to the boat when I’d rather lie about and maybe watch tv like we did as kids on a saturday when the black and white westerns were on. We didn’t do it often but it was a treat like going to the BDI ice cream parlour, the hike there along the river bank making the ice cream sundaes even better.
Now I’ve written a chapter of the book and blogged this drivel. It’s time to get dressed and do something else, or maybe just lie down for a bit and read more of Cornwall’s Waterloo. I love historical fiction.
Yes I think I’ll make lunch and read. Apart of me is counting the days till IDAA, the annual addiction medicine conference I attend where I get together with mentors and colleagues and celebrate working and being alive another year.
This morning I only recall pushing him away once maybe twice. I never got the face licking. I got up when he was lying on top of me and got through the happy dog gauntlet. On the other side of this morning welcome I looked at my watch and found to my surprise it was 9 am. I’d gone to bed around 10 to 11 so I must have been really tired. As I ‘ve aged the long days at work, sometimes still 10 and 12 hours really whack me. I get home and collapse after making and eating dinner. My mind feels like my body used to feel when I did construction. By Friday I’m drained. Often I have difficulty concentrating on detailed numbers and avoid doing reports Friday now, fearing making errors in complex details. My work week continues to be about 50 hours of patient contact. There’s administration and research and calls on top of that. I can’t get over how the paper work has multiplied and ads so much to the burden of work. I’ve dozens of faxes from mostly pharmacists and then there’s all the reports that are necessary. My assistant is always on me for notes. The courts and college have an endless demand for more detailed notes and more irrelevant reporting. So much doesn’t serve the patient or me but is the political correctness beaurocratic ‘fashion’ of the week. When I see these latest demands for documentation I am certain without a doubt that the committee that came up with them didn’t have enough work of their own to do or they wouldn’t expect others to do such petty and ridiculous recording.
The failure of the legal system of the west is found in the fallacy of the ends against the middle. One person burns themselves in one location on a too hot cup of coffee and everyone everywhere has to have a ‘beware of hot coffee’ sign written on the cup. One day in the future the scientists will conclude that space flight and colonization of the solar system, all poverty and all disease in the world would have been possible before 2000 if it weren’t for the stupidity of the peace time legal and beurocratic systems that continue to work as if time was not a factor in their activities. Where all judgements occurred in hours to at most a week, judges today take years to come to a decision. Beaurocracies work at snails pace. Government works move at a tenth of the pace that those in private industry work. Some have said that wars exist to revolutionize the legal and beaurocratic systems which become increasingly ineffective over time. Work at the legal and beaurocratic levels expand to fill the time available. As someone else usually is paying in the court and the bureaucracy there’s no incentive to move at anything faster than the slowest speed. Only in war is this changed when the winners of wars usually are those whose legal beaurocratic processes were superior as much as technologically.
This is a resentment. It’s an institutional resentment. Defensive medicine accounts for as much as may 90% of the cost of health care. When I look back on my life I see this onerous costly soul destroying process of interacting with legal beurocratic systems that seemed primarily to parasitize the central process of doctor and patient and the ‘medicare model’ . The frustration of my work for a decade has been getting patients what their illness warrants by fighting individuals and systems who have grown with the pure intent of delaying. Legal beaurocratic systems are principally covert aggressive systems. They become rich by attrition and siege. I can’t recommend anyone go into medicine anymore because the frustrations far outweigh the compensations. If I was young again in this present system I’d do what so many of the young doctors do, which is the least possible. Increasingly medicine and psychiatry are defined by reductionist processes and cherry picking and avoiding sick people is the most rewarded. Indeed the richest doctors increasingly are doctors who don’t actually see patients but focus on administration, policing, and business aspects of care, not the clinical basis.
Now where the hell did this nonsense come from. I was just thankful that I slept in. I was really happy to that I got dressed in shorts and t-shirt and runners and ran with Gilbert for a couple of miles. Maybe it’s a mile. I don’t know. It’s about a half hour of running and I used to walk 5 miles an hour. When I was younger I ran a ten minute mile. More and more I’ve been actually running the whole distance. Today I walked for a few minutes halfway because Gilbert met another dog. I pull him on a leash. He wants to piss and sniff everything which we do when we walk but running is all about forward motion. Today I was dragging the poor little guy, thanks to his crying wolf stops before that, and here I looked back and he was of course squatting and trying to shit. We have his daily walk for a shit in the early morning which he’s very happy with but the long walks or the runs are an added delight. I feel badly though when he gives me that face he gives me when I realize he’s stopped not because Fifi left a love message but rather because his bowels are active.
I have been thinking about the boat and the RV and houses. I write more on land. I loved sailing and anchoring but I ‘m not as relaxed and able to work in the sailboat as I am when I’m on land. I do my writing here. I can do reports and work on land better. I can read and watch tv and relax and journal a bit on the boat but I don’t tend to do the kind of writing that I do on land. Flying I’ve written a number of short stories that went on to be published. I’ve been blogging for a few years and naturally I can do that. But I’ve also been working on books and that doesn’t seem to progress on the boat. I used to hate stationary living but I’m beginning to really enjoy it.
When Laura’s been over for the weekend I’ve really enjoyed sitting outside with her and the simple cooking and cleaning around the RV. I find myself incredibly nostalgic about my first house, a little 2 bedroom bungalow with yard and one car garage in Riverheights Winnipeg, that my Dad helped me pick out. It was so very functional and not that different from the house I grew up in. I’ve had huge houses and acreages since but that’s the one that I think I enjoyed the most. I did love the acreage and turkeys and chickens with the clinic on site but today I’m just enjoying this RV and think a lot about that first house. I’ve not particularly liked apartments though my last one I have fairly fond memories of. I think my feelings about it began to change with the crazy neighbour coming around and complaining about noise when I hadn’t been home. Then getting away every weekend the storage locker and the elevator problems in a first class apartment buildings, it all got to me. I loved living on the boat after that. The condo I had was really nice. I loved the elegant living. That was in Riverheights in Winnipeg too and I liked it better than the house in Shaughnassey.
Now here I am after a run, having really enjoyed the morning coffee, having had a shower, dressed in t shirt and underwear, my favourite clothing combination next to t shirt and sarong or skirt. I just loved wearing wraps in Mexico and the Marianas Islands. My favourite all time clothing was my worn sailing shorts. That’s all I wore sailing in the heat and it was freeing. We sailed nude in the Sea of Cortez but kept our wraps handy for chance encounters with other sailors. Nudity is great. But I’ve resisted the temptation and kept out of jail or public records. I loved the halloween costumes and dress up as a kid. I fully understand the kids and adults who are running around in superhero costumes. My favourite halloween costume in recent years has been the witch. That came out of a costume I wore for a night at Rocky Horror Picture Show. The most fun was when the girls and they guys all got into costumes and went to dances and parties. There’s always been someone socially incompetent who doesn’t dress for the occasion but more and more there’s been participation in the those who are good sports. Even at hockey games it’s seen in those who go the extra little bit and wear team colours. Gilbert had a canucks sweater which he doesn’t like to wear. He doesn’t like to dress up at all. My nudist friends have said how onerous it is to get back to clothes after a weeks retreat. I wish I’d done that when I was younger and my body was toned. It’s not really about that though. It’s a state of mind. It’s about maturity and freedom. I miss the YMCA days when we all swam naked as guys. The best times were the nude swimming with the girls in our 20’s and 30’s . The girls were so beautiful in the moonlight. I remember those times so fondly. It was fun too. I imagine if I ever stop working and retire I’ll get back to the simpler life and times, those camping and canoeing weekends and weeks. Now I’m outfitted with RV’s and quads and trucks and motorcycles. Then it was hiking with a back pack or canoeing. My father got into canoeing again in his 70’s and 80’s loving it until it was too much trouble to get the canoe off the van. I imagine seeing myself doing that. There’s a fellow I met who had sailed the Atlantic ocean back and forth a few times in his 80’s. He was so inspirational. 85 years old when I met him. I imagine doing that. I hope I can do that.
My lifestyle is fairly expensive today yet I had the finest time in my student years. Travelling on bicycle and staying in youth hostels was incredibly inexpensive. I suppose when I quit work I’ll scale down and have time to breathe.
I reflected last week on work and realized that there are hundreds of people right now whose lives I make easier. I’m not indispensable but I’m an integral part of their lives. I have a lot of very sick people I care for and have known for many years. Theres’ importance to this longevity and reliability. I’m wanted. I’m the known substance. I’m trusted. I might not be the best but I am far from the worst. I’ve been reliable and often I’ve ‘saved’ lives. I’ve certainly gone above and beyond the call of duty, and always been unconventional. I regret this some days because I could be a millionaire today if I had done what I was told rather than doing what I thought was needed. Certainly more people would have died but I’d be richer and more successful. I’ve given far more time to people than the system paid for. I even have some people who think they’re very clever in taking more time than allotted insisting on it only as an entitlement but we’re working on that trait. It’s been a problem of how I see myself. The woman at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC condemned me for caring so much for my patients insisting ‘It’s just a job, Dr. Hay”. I had this weird sense of ‘calling’ and have always thought the profession was more than a ‘job’ but those who treat medicine and psychiatry as “Just a job” have become rich and been promoted to the highest ranks. Those who practice the ‘business of medicine’ giving the ‘least for the most reward’ and focusing on the ‘maximum profit’ are now the ones who mock me. I’m a has been and my life is a waste.
Then I think of how my marriages failed because I focussed on my work over my home and if I’d just gone to work like it was just a job I could have been a better husband . I could have had more money to buy women gifts and had the time to meet their demands for attention and luxuries.
I’ve roughed it a lot in my life. Living on a sailboat for years. Living now as trailer trash. I wonder now what my life would have been like if I’d just stayed in that first house. Sedentary. None of the adventure and experience. Safe. None of the risk and perils that I’ve known. But at the end of the day when friends and family seem more important I find myself nostalgic for high school reunions and family suppers. This moment I don’t even want to get in the truck yet I have to go over to the boat to pump the water out of the dinghy. We have had a lot of rain these last couple of days. It’s necessary for the vegetation and to stop the forest fires. It just means I have to make a trip to the boat when I’d rather lie about and maybe watch tv like we did as kids on a saturday when the black and white westerns were on. We didn’t do it often but it was a treat like going to the BDI ice cream parlour, the hike there along the river bank making the ice cream sundaes even better.
Now I’ve written a chapter of the book and blogged this drivel. It’s time to get dressed and do something else, or maybe just lie down for a bit and read more of Cornwall’s Waterloo. I love historical fiction.
Yes I think I’ll make lunch and read. Apart of me is counting the days till IDAA, the annual addiction medicine conference I attend where I get together with mentors and colleagues and celebrate working and being alive another year.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Morning, Friday, July 24, 2015
I’m awake. Dreams were a mix. Walking in shit one moment, being with friends the next. No feeling of dread on a wakening. But not that deep spiritual peace either. I love those dreams where dogs I’ve loved joined me or I’ve been with family now passed over. I love the big meeting dreams and the adventure dreams. I have this recurrent sailing dream associated with a river and a peninsula. It’s always an adventure and every time I dream that dream I’m further ahead or some aspect of the puzzle is fulfilled. Last night I slept well too.
I’d watched Jerry Maquire on tv. I don’t know what’s happened these last months but all these old movies are enjoyable to watch again. Especially loved the Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara made in 1952. Usually I’m interested in the latest. I’ll see the new Bond movie for sure. I even like going to the theatre to see a movie on opening night. There’s a buzz that’s happening then like being in the front row at a rock concert.
I used to pray the times of the monks. I’d wake early and read the Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. I’d recite my rosary at those special times. Then I’d know that there were thousands maybe millions of us worshipping together. Prayer is this beyond time and space experience. I loved going early to church in Saipan with Dr. Willi Gutowski and praying. Morning prayer is the best. The birds are wakening and the sun is coming up. But there’s Compline too. So many times I’ve enjoyed going to Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver to listen to the chanting and join in that special time of prayer, Evening prayer. Now I say the Lords’ prayer on wakening and going to sleep. Sometimes it’s just enough to say please and thank you. A day in my life has become it’s own life. I try to live as if this is the day.
I’ve been worrying lately about loved ones. Praying hard. Sometimes crying. Having conversations with the universe about my will and thy will. Sometimes I feel the burden of the universe is on me. I feel a failure because I can’t resurrect the dead or walk on water. Perhaps I can and perhaps I have but this moment I’m moving through molasses, fearing I’m off and missing something. There’s too many moving parts. Then it’s okay.
Today it’s raining. I normally walk the dog first thing and he has his dump after I’ve had mine. He hears the rain and lingers in bed. Such a suck. I opened the door and he turned around and went back to bed. I think it’s Laura’s spoiling him that’s made him such a luxury lover. She rubs his chest and back slowly for ever. Looking at his eyes you can see he’s just melting in side. His tongues lolling to the left. Totally decadent. Now it’s raining and this tough hunting hound therapy dog goes back to bed.
I’m glad. I’ve had my share of softness in life,as well as the hardness so I’m glad to have my coffee sooner.
I’ve gone through the mail and Facebook. The political propaganda is filling the pages before the election.
I’ve been fond of posting what our Prime Minister is doing. Our media only presents partisan critique so I don’t get the first message of what the event or activity was, just constant opinion. The media presents the country as a civil war yet we’re a democracy and this is our elected. Had I not signed up for the 24/7 ‘news’ from the PM I’d not know that we’d signed trade agreements with Israel, South America and European countries. I’d not know about the meetings with India and Ukraine and Poland. I read BBC news because it’s a more reliable reporting of Canadian news and tells me what ‘events’ are going on around the world. I’m tired of these ‘opinion’ pieces masquerading as news. I’d like the facts. There are no facts in that old time sense but at least the stating of events. Like Canada signed a trade agreement with Poland. Not the evil politician trying to gain votes and wasting taxpayer money ignoring he plight of women and children and especially aboriginals was serving the rich corporate interests on a pleasure jaunt in Poland. I’m forever left wondering what the hell is going on in my own country because I’m not in on the Ottawa CBC jokes, the sides that their overpaid out of touch, fat cat CEO pushes. Oh well I can wax poetic about the failure of the news department of our national media to inform citizens of ‘news’. Their reporting is so utterly unethical that they make any government look saintlike. The filthy kettle calls all stainless steel pots black.
I’m late. I’ve got to run. Shower. Drive to work. Grab umbrella.
I’m thankful for the day. The rain is a godsend for the forests and firefighters. Hopefully people’s homes will be protected and wildlife will be saved by the rain. I don’t care about lawns. I liked the recent joke, what do you call the guy with the green lawn on a block of brown lawns, “Grasshole”.
Thank you God for this day. Thank you for family and friends. Thank you for work. Thank you for Gilbert. Thank you for the air and the water and this glorious little blue planet. Thank you for all your blessings. May I serve you and my patients today. Help me do the best I can and be of most use to others this day of Grace.
I’d watched Jerry Maquire on tv. I don’t know what’s happened these last months but all these old movies are enjoyable to watch again. Especially loved the Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara made in 1952. Usually I’m interested in the latest. I’ll see the new Bond movie for sure. I even like going to the theatre to see a movie on opening night. There’s a buzz that’s happening then like being in the front row at a rock concert.
I used to pray the times of the monks. I’d wake early and read the Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. I’d recite my rosary at those special times. Then I’d know that there were thousands maybe millions of us worshipping together. Prayer is this beyond time and space experience. I loved going early to church in Saipan with Dr. Willi Gutowski and praying. Morning prayer is the best. The birds are wakening and the sun is coming up. But there’s Compline too. So many times I’ve enjoyed going to Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver to listen to the chanting and join in that special time of prayer, Evening prayer. Now I say the Lords’ prayer on wakening and going to sleep. Sometimes it’s just enough to say please and thank you. A day in my life has become it’s own life. I try to live as if this is the day.
I’ve been worrying lately about loved ones. Praying hard. Sometimes crying. Having conversations with the universe about my will and thy will. Sometimes I feel the burden of the universe is on me. I feel a failure because I can’t resurrect the dead or walk on water. Perhaps I can and perhaps I have but this moment I’m moving through molasses, fearing I’m off and missing something. There’s too many moving parts. Then it’s okay.
Today it’s raining. I normally walk the dog first thing and he has his dump after I’ve had mine. He hears the rain and lingers in bed. Such a suck. I opened the door and he turned around and went back to bed. I think it’s Laura’s spoiling him that’s made him such a luxury lover. She rubs his chest and back slowly for ever. Looking at his eyes you can see he’s just melting in side. His tongues lolling to the left. Totally decadent. Now it’s raining and this tough hunting hound therapy dog goes back to bed.
I’m glad. I’ve had my share of softness in life,as well as the hardness so I’m glad to have my coffee sooner.
I’ve gone through the mail and Facebook. The political propaganda is filling the pages before the election.
I’ve been fond of posting what our Prime Minister is doing. Our media only presents partisan critique so I don’t get the first message of what the event or activity was, just constant opinion. The media presents the country as a civil war yet we’re a democracy and this is our elected. Had I not signed up for the 24/7 ‘news’ from the PM I’d not know that we’d signed trade agreements with Israel, South America and European countries. I’d not know about the meetings with India and Ukraine and Poland. I read BBC news because it’s a more reliable reporting of Canadian news and tells me what ‘events’ are going on around the world. I’m tired of these ‘opinion’ pieces masquerading as news. I’d like the facts. There are no facts in that old time sense but at least the stating of events. Like Canada signed a trade agreement with Poland. Not the evil politician trying to gain votes and wasting taxpayer money ignoring he plight of women and children and especially aboriginals was serving the rich corporate interests on a pleasure jaunt in Poland. I’m forever left wondering what the hell is going on in my own country because I’m not in on the Ottawa CBC jokes, the sides that their overpaid out of touch, fat cat CEO pushes. Oh well I can wax poetic about the failure of the news department of our national media to inform citizens of ‘news’. Their reporting is so utterly unethical that they make any government look saintlike. The filthy kettle calls all stainless steel pots black.
I’m late. I’ve got to run. Shower. Drive to work. Grab umbrella.
I’m thankful for the day. The rain is a godsend for the forests and firefighters. Hopefully people’s homes will be protected and wildlife will be saved by the rain. I don’t care about lawns. I liked the recent joke, what do you call the guy with the green lawn on a block of brown lawns, “Grasshole”.
Thank you God for this day. Thank you for family and friends. Thank you for work. Thank you for Gilbert. Thank you for the air and the water and this glorious little blue planet. Thank you for all your blessings. May I serve you and my patients today. Help me do the best I can and be of most use to others this day of Grace.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
End of day, new office
I’ve done more than a day’s work but I’ve had a lunch hour. Normally today I’d drive out to a meeting but I didn’t wish to face traffic. Besides Gilbert was here so we stayed together. Angel has brought a new Bosch coffee maker that takes the Tossimo coffee packs. I bought some cafe latte last week and had the first this morning. It tastes like the coffee my sister in law, Adell makes me at her place. I’m drinking a second cup now.
I don’t know why I woke at 4:30 this morning. Friends and patients described the exact thing. Something in the atmosphere or matrix. I’m tired today. A long day of work but not as tired as yesterday. Wednesday was a tough day. Not surprising it’s called the ‘hump’. Today was definitely downhill. I’m sorry I got behind and people waited. I wish somehow decades ago I’d learned to be harsh with time, kicking people out of the office at the strike of the clock. I wish I was more regimented, more military, more businesslike. Looking back I realized I passed over so many opportunities for money and power squandering my time with patients.
The lung surgeon I worked with told me that. “You’re an excellent doctor, great hands. You’ll make a great surgeon. You just have to spend less time with patients." He’d do his rounds before the patients woke, waking them with his good bye. A smart man. A rich man."
The administrative doctor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons told me I had to stop caring so much about patients, “It’s just a job, Dr. Hay’. I feel like I never have enough time. I feel like I have to make sure the patient is not going to kill themselves.
When I took the job the government promised me there’d be beds for emergencies. There haven’t been. They promised me that there would be nurses and community workers for support. There haven’t been. They promised every patient would have a family physician. That’s a lark. For ten years I’ve done as much general medicine as I did when I was a family physician but the government doesn’t pay. I’m a mark. Why pay doctors when they won’t strike, won’t let their patients die, won’t stop caring.
Give all the money to the bankers, administrators and judges. You have to pay them because they wouldn’t work for free. Doctors, nurses, teachers, and even lawyers work for free. The police do too. Now I’m juggling to pay for surprise expenses and resenting all the past mistakes. God will provide. God always has. This too will pass. I have no real reason to be afraid. I have wealth beyond my wildest dreams. There’s endless resources with God. I will pray.
Others are working hard these days. There’s Greece and a whole bunch of countries struggling with the financial situation. Austerity and depression are being written into the history books. I just came from Ireland where they were starving in the potato famines. Always there have been times of disease and need. I’m growing old like the rest of the baby boomers and we’re looking seriously at death. Perhaps we’ll dream an immortality, call ahead a resurrection, watch the planet transform into a spiritual dreamscape of love.
Otherwise it’s the same old same old and as the day goes it’s more and more tiring. Vancouver is a costly city. I’ve done a day of work and will pay an ounce of blood in taxes. The white collar and blue collar welfare are a burden that can break a man. There’s all the demands. Then times of easy sailing. l resist decisions, delay and because of delay face more challenge.
There’s nothing I can or will do today. Time to go home. It’s been nice though in this new office, sitting at my desk, writing. I think how my fingers have been worn out for bureaucrats and legal documents. I’ve typed a lifetime of mostly silly drivel and I thought my fingers would have been much better employed writing a play, like the one we saw in Abbey City.
I’m coming to an age where my fingers are already hurting and I might not ever want to see a written word again. I’m used up in the beaurocratic endless increasing demands. When I began I wrote one word, a diagnosis and a billing code.
Now they threaten me and call me a liar. The courts are bullying doctors and the pay master. We should have had a union that held out insisting that we’d not write only a line for a thousand, like the new CEO. I learned they’re making $5 to 6000 an hour. There’s never been an equivalent productivity in public sector performance.
But it’s so easy to scapegoat the father, scapegoat the parent, blame the CEO , blame the government, throw out the king, kick out a president or primeminister
We just want ‘Change’.
The politicos learned years ago that nothing need change except the face on the coin. I’m weary. These thoughts assail me when I’m tired. In the morning I do gratitude lists but now before dinner I’m just weary.
Self pity and resentment are common at the end of the day. Addiction flare for the working man. The drunk stops at the bar on the way home from work and misses supper with the kids. I myself worry and fret and write drivel that in summary is just self pity and fear and negative and envy.
Character.
That’s what I need.
A little back bone. A little more character. A little more stamina. A little gratitude. Don’t compare with the few rich above you but compare with the masses. Somewhere there are millions of people that only made a couple of dollars today. You’re going to eat like a king. You’re going to ride in a car. You have a pet. You’re here after a day of work writing on a computer that’s connected to high speed internet.
That’s why I’m here. I want to download a movie at work with high speed internet and play it on my apple tv at home. That’s a cadillac problem. I found out that it would cost me $500 to get satellite wifi and if I wanted satellite tv I couldn’t move my RV.
So here I go trying to find a way to watch a new movie. Poor me. I have netflix but those are old movies and I’ve seen so many. And Turner Classic Movies is on my tv. I watched so many of those in Saipan. But I downloaded ex machina right off the presses for $5 and would love to do that again. It’s like being at a friends with shaw cable rent a movie or being in a hotel room or on a plane. Luxury.
That’s my challenge to day, to get more luxury and I’m complaining. Poor me. Right, you idiot.
Thank God for Grace.
I don’t know why I woke at 4:30 this morning. Friends and patients described the exact thing. Something in the atmosphere or matrix. I’m tired today. A long day of work but not as tired as yesterday. Wednesday was a tough day. Not surprising it’s called the ‘hump’. Today was definitely downhill. I’m sorry I got behind and people waited. I wish somehow decades ago I’d learned to be harsh with time, kicking people out of the office at the strike of the clock. I wish I was more regimented, more military, more businesslike. Looking back I realized I passed over so many opportunities for money and power squandering my time with patients.
The lung surgeon I worked with told me that. “You’re an excellent doctor, great hands. You’ll make a great surgeon. You just have to spend less time with patients." He’d do his rounds before the patients woke, waking them with his good bye. A smart man. A rich man."
The administrative doctor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons told me I had to stop caring so much about patients, “It’s just a job, Dr. Hay’. I feel like I never have enough time. I feel like I have to make sure the patient is not going to kill themselves.
When I took the job the government promised me there’d be beds for emergencies. There haven’t been. They promised me that there would be nurses and community workers for support. There haven’t been. They promised every patient would have a family physician. That’s a lark. For ten years I’ve done as much general medicine as I did when I was a family physician but the government doesn’t pay. I’m a mark. Why pay doctors when they won’t strike, won’t let their patients die, won’t stop caring.
Give all the money to the bankers, administrators and judges. You have to pay them because they wouldn’t work for free. Doctors, nurses, teachers, and even lawyers work for free. The police do too. Now I’m juggling to pay for surprise expenses and resenting all the past mistakes. God will provide. God always has. This too will pass. I have no real reason to be afraid. I have wealth beyond my wildest dreams. There’s endless resources with God. I will pray.
Others are working hard these days. There’s Greece and a whole bunch of countries struggling with the financial situation. Austerity and depression are being written into the history books. I just came from Ireland where they were starving in the potato famines. Always there have been times of disease and need. I’m growing old like the rest of the baby boomers and we’re looking seriously at death. Perhaps we’ll dream an immortality, call ahead a resurrection, watch the planet transform into a spiritual dreamscape of love.
Otherwise it’s the same old same old and as the day goes it’s more and more tiring. Vancouver is a costly city. I’ve done a day of work and will pay an ounce of blood in taxes. The white collar and blue collar welfare are a burden that can break a man. There’s all the demands. Then times of easy sailing. l resist decisions, delay and because of delay face more challenge.
There’s nothing I can or will do today. Time to go home. It’s been nice though in this new office, sitting at my desk, writing. I think how my fingers have been worn out for bureaucrats and legal documents. I’ve typed a lifetime of mostly silly drivel and I thought my fingers would have been much better employed writing a play, like the one we saw in Abbey City.
I’m coming to an age where my fingers are already hurting and I might not ever want to see a written word again. I’m used up in the beaurocratic endless increasing demands. When I began I wrote one word, a diagnosis and a billing code.
Now they threaten me and call me a liar. The courts are bullying doctors and the pay master. We should have had a union that held out insisting that we’d not write only a line for a thousand, like the new CEO. I learned they’re making $5 to 6000 an hour. There’s never been an equivalent productivity in public sector performance.
But it’s so easy to scapegoat the father, scapegoat the parent, blame the CEO , blame the government, throw out the king, kick out a president or primeminister
We just want ‘Change’.
The politicos learned years ago that nothing need change except the face on the coin. I’m weary. These thoughts assail me when I’m tired. In the morning I do gratitude lists but now before dinner I’m just weary.
Self pity and resentment are common at the end of the day. Addiction flare for the working man. The drunk stops at the bar on the way home from work and misses supper with the kids. I myself worry and fret and write drivel that in summary is just self pity and fear and negative and envy.
Character.
That’s what I need.
A little back bone. A little more character. A little more stamina. A little gratitude. Don’t compare with the few rich above you but compare with the masses. Somewhere there are millions of people that only made a couple of dollars today. You’re going to eat like a king. You’re going to ride in a car. You have a pet. You’re here after a day of work writing on a computer that’s connected to high speed internet.
That’s why I’m here. I want to download a movie at work with high speed internet and play it on my apple tv at home. That’s a cadillac problem. I found out that it would cost me $500 to get satellite wifi and if I wanted satellite tv I couldn’t move my RV.
So here I go trying to find a way to watch a new movie. Poor me. I have netflix but those are old movies and I’ve seen so many. And Turner Classic Movies is on my tv. I watched so many of those in Saipan. But I downloaded ex machina right off the presses for $5 and would love to do that again. It’s like being at a friends with shaw cable rent a movie or being in a hotel room or on a plane. Luxury.
That’s my challenge to day, to get more luxury and I’m complaining. Poor me. Right, you idiot.
Thank God for Grace.
Soul
We are all interconnected. That connection is in the infinite. The infinite is God and our part of that infinity is called our soul. All else is finite.
My brain is an anatomical structure. It’s an advanced animal model but insects have a rudimentary brain as well. Some people have bird brains but they look human. Others are quite brainless but thanks to a soul they to are human. Being human means having a soul. Being homo sapiens means having a brain at least. People with bigger and more efficient brains are smarter and more clever.
The mind can be best understood as the brain with soul. Wisdom is a coupling of the separate finite individual computer brain system with the infinite.
The heart is an organ for pumping blood throughout the system. The heart was once thought to be the seat of the soul. This is the ‘nous’. We continue to refer to the ‘heart’ in the sense of the nous despite using the same term for a structural anatomic organ. Just as we vaguely associate the brain with wisdom so we associate matters of the heart with the heart. It’s the ‘centre’ or in Eastern terms the chakra or energy centre associated with love. People described being heart broken and loss of a loved one can cause death through heart attack or myocardial infarction. The autonomic nervous system relates to the chakra system and to the acupuncture meridians.
It’s an intuitive centre and is associated in history with emotions. The emotions today are understood however in the brain in the limbic system, i.e. the amygdala, hyppocampus, thalamus, cingulate gyrus etc. But even a child would more likely point to their chest when asked where love is, or where to you feel, rather than pointing to their brain.
The heart is mostly associated with love. The love referred to when we speak of the heart is that of brotherly, sisterly love and agape, the highest love. Erotic love is thought a combination of heart love and the love of the loins or lust. In eastern systems there is a lower chackra centre and acupuncture addresses loin issues in this region which coincides with another junctional area of the autonomic nervous system.
Oswald Chambers famous meditational book was called “My Utmost for His Highest”. These were his ’soul’ thoughts. Theology has had much to do about the rational ideas about God whereas religious ‘rituals’ and “practice’ have more to do with heart matters. The best known 'practices' are prayer and meditation. Scientifically they have been shown repeatedly as highly beneficial.
The soul is eternal. When we die it’s thought that all that is organic dies, of course, but our soul goes on. In computer terms this is considered as a program that will join a greater program intact like a usb stick memory drive or an ‘iCloud’ memory. There is no reason to believe that we don’t continue. It’s not essential to intelligence or advanced science to conceive of a non material core being of ourselves persisting with immortality. Increasingly sciences sees the world as energy matrix and communication. Religions collectively speak to this ‘after life’. It is the soul, already a part of the immutable, a part of God, that persists.
With the soul goes love and wisdom. Those who have near death experiences, and these have been post death of heart and ceasing of brain waves. No one knows where the ‘self’ or ‘consciousness’ has gone but it comes back. These individuals report experiencing their whole life much like we would a memory card. What they were fearful about here was in that post death state somewhat silly because of the eternal all loving nature of existence as they now understood it. So fear is temporal. Fear is finite while love is not.
This is why we say we are spiritual beings living in a material world. This is the perennial story. This is the central journey.
My brain is an anatomical structure. It’s an advanced animal model but insects have a rudimentary brain as well. Some people have bird brains but they look human. Others are quite brainless but thanks to a soul they to are human. Being human means having a soul. Being homo sapiens means having a brain at least. People with bigger and more efficient brains are smarter and more clever.
The mind can be best understood as the brain with soul. Wisdom is a coupling of the separate finite individual computer brain system with the infinite.
The heart is an organ for pumping blood throughout the system. The heart was once thought to be the seat of the soul. This is the ‘nous’. We continue to refer to the ‘heart’ in the sense of the nous despite using the same term for a structural anatomic organ. Just as we vaguely associate the brain with wisdom so we associate matters of the heart with the heart. It’s the ‘centre’ or in Eastern terms the chakra or energy centre associated with love. People described being heart broken and loss of a loved one can cause death through heart attack or myocardial infarction. The autonomic nervous system relates to the chakra system and to the acupuncture meridians.
It’s an intuitive centre and is associated in history with emotions. The emotions today are understood however in the brain in the limbic system, i.e. the amygdala, hyppocampus, thalamus, cingulate gyrus etc. But even a child would more likely point to their chest when asked where love is, or where to you feel, rather than pointing to their brain.
The heart is mostly associated with love. The love referred to when we speak of the heart is that of brotherly, sisterly love and agape, the highest love. Erotic love is thought a combination of heart love and the love of the loins or lust. In eastern systems there is a lower chackra centre and acupuncture addresses loin issues in this region which coincides with another junctional area of the autonomic nervous system.
Oswald Chambers famous meditational book was called “My Utmost for His Highest”. These were his ’soul’ thoughts. Theology has had much to do about the rational ideas about God whereas religious ‘rituals’ and “practice’ have more to do with heart matters. The best known 'practices' are prayer and meditation. Scientifically they have been shown repeatedly as highly beneficial.
The soul is eternal. When we die it’s thought that all that is organic dies, of course, but our soul goes on. In computer terms this is considered as a program that will join a greater program intact like a usb stick memory drive or an ‘iCloud’ memory. There is no reason to believe that we don’t continue. It’s not essential to intelligence or advanced science to conceive of a non material core being of ourselves persisting with immortality. Increasingly sciences sees the world as energy matrix and communication. Religions collectively speak to this ‘after life’. It is the soul, already a part of the immutable, a part of God, that persists.
With the soul goes love and wisdom. Those who have near death experiences, and these have been post death of heart and ceasing of brain waves. No one knows where the ‘self’ or ‘consciousness’ has gone but it comes back. These individuals report experiencing their whole life much like we would a memory card. What they were fearful about here was in that post death state somewhat silly because of the eternal all loving nature of existence as they now understood it. So fear is temporal. Fear is finite while love is not.
This is why we say we are spiritual beings living in a material world. This is the perennial story. This is the central journey.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Wednesday Morning 7 am
I don’t know what to write. I woke at 6 am. It didn’t feel like I slept much. It was chilly. So much heat in the day and chilly at night. I was in bed early enough. Tired from the day. Stress having it’s toll. So many demands. So much to do. Confusion. Muddling through. Moving in molasses. And always the self pity gnawing at my heart like a cockroach. I would walk in the light. Gravity has it’s hold on me though. I’d be weightless and lift off.
I’ve been running. It’s a joy that I can. For the last few years injuries made all activity acutely painful. The knee injury and ankle injury and foot injury. The feet still hurt. Funny for a dancer to have sore feet but this from a crush injury. Orthotics and new shoes and physio all served to restore me to walking pain free (relatively) and now running. But the body is fat and older and complains with exertion. I can only run a couple of times a week. The period in between is recovery. I ran last night. I was in shock after. My body watched tv in paralysis. We’d only just exercised on Saturday. My body was utterly unprepared. A surprise run. Trying to sleep at night my eyes wouldn’t close. Open staring up at the skylight crying, ‘why me, why is he doing this to me.’ I’m confronting sloth. There’s a war within. One part of me wishes to curl up in the fetal position and eat hagen daz till I die while the other says this exercise thing is good. I was doing tai chi in the woods too. My knee is shouting out it’s concern angrily. Parts of me are in rebellion. My waist is smug though. Not budging. I do have more energy. I feel more alert. I’m less likely to be suicidal with all this cardio. If I have to be homicidal I’ll be more effective.
I guess I slept. The night before I dreamed of sex and was young again. Last night I must have been in a futuristic war zone. I feel all beat up.
Now the coffee has helped. I’ve put on the heat. I’ve walked the dog.
I’m supposed to write. I told myself I 'd write. I tell myself to write. I'm my own robot.
I was meditating on Julian of Norwich, remembering something St. Theresa said that was the same. An intellectual I know annoyed me as I whizzed through the hundred or so emails and references. I have less and less time for conceit and drivel. I’ve been deleting arbitrarily, withdrawing from face book ‘interests’. I’ve found I’m increasingly less interested. The fact is I’m just a tad grumpy. The self pity is palpable. It’s like a shark now rising out of the unconscious. Big teeth. The very big teeth of self pity and the gaping maw.
I’m supposed to be working on the great canadian novel. How will it ever get finished if I don’t contribute. Instead I’m blogging. I’m a modern day ‘diarist’. This was a thing of the 18th century and before. Self indulgent wandering mental vomitus on page.
I could comment on the news. There are forest fires. There have always been forest fires. But these forest fires are said to be worse forest fires. They’re the worst forest fires. The media is hysterical. They are even saying it’s a drought and those farmers who didn’t put in irrigation equipment are demanding that we the tax payer bail them out.
I’m unprepared for my day. I want a bail out. I didn’t become a banker. I could have been a lawyer. I could have focused on the lucrative aspects of medicine. I was wrong. Assassin would have been a more monetarily fulfilling term. I compare myself with others financially. I’m a mere doctor. I could have saved better. I could have bought houses. I could have focused more on finance. Read financial magazines rather than comic books. The price of meat is three times what it was. Fuel prices are up now that the environmentalists have destroyed Alberta and want to return us to the communes of the 60's. I didn't like the communes of the 60's . I've done my time tenting. I wanted to die quietly in a fine nursing home with clean sheets like the Gods of old England in Dick Slaterly's Holistic Detective Agency.
I wasted so much time I could have spent on becoming an evil materialist genius. I'm unprepared for old age. My generation were meant to die in the Cold War. Silent Spring promised that we'd be a burnt out planet in 10 years. We've survived all these catastrophes. I should have died from an STD. My penis should have fallen off from masturbating. I should have gone to hell for thinking about women'. I should have gone to hell by now. The Rapture didn't take me. I'm not supposed to be alive. Aliens abducted others. I paid attention to everything about Roswell. I wanted my own space ship. I astral travelled. I sought nirvana as a pretzel. I prayed for salvation. I sat twisted up in search of samedhi. I was with the greatest women the earth ever knew. Cleopatras and Dulcineas have been my lovers. I've known the best of men. But I wasn't supposed to live this long. If I did there was supposed to be a cyborg body or I'd be lisfted up into a Tron universe. Why must I continue with limited income when others have helicopters and old small countries and private armies. I don't think CEO's should be paid more than hockey players. I had just adjusted to hockey player getting paid so much then I realized there were golfers too getting a whole lot and rock stars and I was the doctor whose salary was fixed and everyone loved 'rent controls on doctors' but I was poor. And yet I wasn't. I was rich in experience. I was driving my Miata sports car and living in a trailer park. I have all I could want but for a private jet and a mansion in the south of France and a rocket launcher. I have been blessed beyond my wildest dreams but I'm haunted by self pity.
I could have done scams. Instead I was a wastrel. That’s one of the terms my self pitying mind throws up for me. I ‘m on austerity in the diet compartment and austerity in the budget compartment. Greece is withering beneath the gaze of haute germany. Hollywood is putting out constant television about it’s worst excesses. I have no tv that reflects on me, leave it to beaver, seinfeld , friends. I can’t relate to the Kardashians. All they bring to mind the idea that physician assisted suicide is necessary. Imagine an hour in the company of such drivel. Death would be better. Yet they show that there’s something wrong with Hollywood, like Michael Jackson sleeping with boys. Pedophilia is now being called a ‘sexual orientation’. Are there no limits.
The skies the ceiling.
Pluto pictures are coming back from NASA’s probe. The Mars studies continue. Tesla is said to have communicated with aliens. The geniuses thought the aliens were friendly, not like our human neighbours. ISI keeps beheading. Syrian refugees increase. Boco Harem keeps stealing virgin teen age girls. China kills more dissidents. All over Christians are persecuted. There's a whole lot of really stupid people in the world and the self pity tells me it would be better for me if I didn't know so much. The corruption that perpetuates the insanity en mass is mass manufactured. It's probably not their fault that they're so stupid. They probably realized in high school what a racket it was. Better to focus on fast food and fucking that politics and changing the world. There's more substance in a hamburger from Wendys.
The Canadian elections are coming up and the politicking continues. So much bombast. So much deceit. So many people wanting more taxes and I don’t want to pay for more corruption. All I’ve seen of government is corruption. My 5 years of Downtown Eastside was an incredible drowning in city and provincial corruption. Now 46 pharmacies and pharmacists have been closed down. So few arrests. The weed wacker goes through and the stalks come up again. No one addresses the sources. NDP corruption is the worst and yet so little of it gets to the media. The profit is in drugs and guns. Everybody is pushing marijuana. It's at the highest state levels.
And Troudeau wants more taxes. I wish they'd drug test politicians and Supreme Court judges like the do athletes.
I loved the surfer who punched the shark while the soccer players get thousands for falling and crying on tv. So much corruption. No wonder old time ruler cut off hands and penis'.
And Harper is vilified. Scapegoated for everything. This is an anti father society. The problem is always the man. Blame it on daddy. But the provinces are in charge of health care and instead of putting their money into health care waste that money on million dollar Supervised Injections Sites building palaces for the drug addict society and claiming that housing is health care while letting contractors steal more millions of government money. Every slum land lord has his hand in the pot. it's a feeding frenzy. And how many millions spent on residential schools and pig farmers and revenge and past redresses while children go hungry and people die today of diseases that could be cured if the talkers and the pontificators and arguers didn't want the lions share of money.
Now in the US there’s more election developments with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren facing off in the new sports spectacles of democratic shuffles board. While the Republicans might have someone but so far all I’ve heard is Donald Trump. It’s a circus. There seems to be little more than reality tv to all the entertainment called politics especially in the lies of the ecology and the false pretences, with corporations the new medieval lords and the elections relevant only to the vestiges of left over citizen states.
I am grateful for coffee. I’m grateful for cars. I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for my friends. Thank you especially for Gilbert. He licked my face this morning. Thank you for the alarm clock in the iPhone. Thank you for the iPhone. Thank you for this apple computer. Thank you for my fingers. Thank you for my breathing. Thank you for the air. Thank you for my sight. Thank you for my arms and legs. I especially like my asshole. Thank you for the shitting. I feel sorry for those who bloat and have obstruction. I’m so thankful for a dump. I really appreciate peeing too Lord. Good engineering. I don’t know why there wasn’t a separate function button for these but then you also used my nose for breathing and smelling so I suppose there were some design decisions. It’s been a pretty good package. Probably a beta version. I am enjoying the robots themes on tv and realize that this particular human model has gone a hundred thousand years with lmitted glitch fixes. Certainly the brain has had it’s moments. I’m concerned about my heart. I seem to have less intuitive and compassionate function these days. I’m tired too so thank you for the sleep function but please make the necessary adjustments so that I can awake feeling young. I’d like that sexual passion function returned. I’m kind of disinterested . I’m more afraid and I’d like the stupid courage function beefed up. I am thankful for everything Lord. God is one , three in one, and we are all in God and God is love and God is good so all is love and all is good so thankfully I can surrender to your love and trust and feel less sustained dread.
Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the blue sky. Thank you for the work. I like that I have a place to go thats no longer so chaotic and disorganized. Thank you for the sorting out of all the chaos. Thank you for my assistant . Thank you for the movers and workers. Thank you for telecommunications and wifi.
Please heal my family members. Help them in their illness. Heal my patients. Help them in their illness. Guide me that I might better do thy wil. Help me be a better doctor. Help me to say and do the right thing. Thank you for the journal articles and the web studies and the conference in Ireland and the coming conference in Virginia. Thank you for my colleagues who I learn so much from and who inspire and sustain me. Thank you for these years of experience and that the challenges are wholly different than what they once were. What was once a race that seemed a sprint is now a marathon and much beyond. Help me as I travel this new terrain.
Thank you for doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, bureaucrats, police, lawyer, judges, the military, our leadership, journalists. Thank you for all the guilds and artisans. Thank you for the entertainers, artists and dancers. Thank you for sobriety, Thank you for spirituality. Thank you for God.
Thank you for the colours Lord.
Thank you for the flowers my brothers photos remind me to see.
Thank you.
I’ve been running. It’s a joy that I can. For the last few years injuries made all activity acutely painful. The knee injury and ankle injury and foot injury. The feet still hurt. Funny for a dancer to have sore feet but this from a crush injury. Orthotics and new shoes and physio all served to restore me to walking pain free (relatively) and now running. But the body is fat and older and complains with exertion. I can only run a couple of times a week. The period in between is recovery. I ran last night. I was in shock after. My body watched tv in paralysis. We’d only just exercised on Saturday. My body was utterly unprepared. A surprise run. Trying to sleep at night my eyes wouldn’t close. Open staring up at the skylight crying, ‘why me, why is he doing this to me.’ I’m confronting sloth. There’s a war within. One part of me wishes to curl up in the fetal position and eat hagen daz till I die while the other says this exercise thing is good. I was doing tai chi in the woods too. My knee is shouting out it’s concern angrily. Parts of me are in rebellion. My waist is smug though. Not budging. I do have more energy. I feel more alert. I’m less likely to be suicidal with all this cardio. If I have to be homicidal I’ll be more effective.
I guess I slept. The night before I dreamed of sex and was young again. Last night I must have been in a futuristic war zone. I feel all beat up.
Now the coffee has helped. I’ve put on the heat. I’ve walked the dog.
I’m supposed to write. I told myself I 'd write. I tell myself to write. I'm my own robot.
I was meditating on Julian of Norwich, remembering something St. Theresa said that was the same. An intellectual I know annoyed me as I whizzed through the hundred or so emails and references. I have less and less time for conceit and drivel. I’ve been deleting arbitrarily, withdrawing from face book ‘interests’. I’ve found I’m increasingly less interested. The fact is I’m just a tad grumpy. The self pity is palpable. It’s like a shark now rising out of the unconscious. Big teeth. The very big teeth of self pity and the gaping maw.
I’m supposed to be working on the great canadian novel. How will it ever get finished if I don’t contribute. Instead I’m blogging. I’m a modern day ‘diarist’. This was a thing of the 18th century and before. Self indulgent wandering mental vomitus on page.
I could comment on the news. There are forest fires. There have always been forest fires. But these forest fires are said to be worse forest fires. They’re the worst forest fires. The media is hysterical. They are even saying it’s a drought and those farmers who didn’t put in irrigation equipment are demanding that we the tax payer bail them out.
I’m unprepared for my day. I want a bail out. I didn’t become a banker. I could have been a lawyer. I could have focused on the lucrative aspects of medicine. I was wrong. Assassin would have been a more monetarily fulfilling term. I compare myself with others financially. I’m a mere doctor. I could have saved better. I could have bought houses. I could have focused more on finance. Read financial magazines rather than comic books. The price of meat is three times what it was. Fuel prices are up now that the environmentalists have destroyed Alberta and want to return us to the communes of the 60's. I didn't like the communes of the 60's . I've done my time tenting. I wanted to die quietly in a fine nursing home with clean sheets like the Gods of old England in Dick Slaterly's Holistic Detective Agency.
I wasted so much time I could have spent on becoming an evil materialist genius. I'm unprepared for old age. My generation were meant to die in the Cold War. Silent Spring promised that we'd be a burnt out planet in 10 years. We've survived all these catastrophes. I should have died from an STD. My penis should have fallen off from masturbating. I should have gone to hell for thinking about women'. I should have gone to hell by now. The Rapture didn't take me. I'm not supposed to be alive. Aliens abducted others. I paid attention to everything about Roswell. I wanted my own space ship. I astral travelled. I sought nirvana as a pretzel. I prayed for salvation. I sat twisted up in search of samedhi. I was with the greatest women the earth ever knew. Cleopatras and Dulcineas have been my lovers. I've known the best of men. But I wasn't supposed to live this long. If I did there was supposed to be a cyborg body or I'd be lisfted up into a Tron universe. Why must I continue with limited income when others have helicopters and old small countries and private armies. I don't think CEO's should be paid more than hockey players. I had just adjusted to hockey player getting paid so much then I realized there were golfers too getting a whole lot and rock stars and I was the doctor whose salary was fixed and everyone loved 'rent controls on doctors' but I was poor. And yet I wasn't. I was rich in experience. I was driving my Miata sports car and living in a trailer park. I have all I could want but for a private jet and a mansion in the south of France and a rocket launcher. I have been blessed beyond my wildest dreams but I'm haunted by self pity.
I could have done scams. Instead I was a wastrel. That’s one of the terms my self pitying mind throws up for me. I ‘m on austerity in the diet compartment and austerity in the budget compartment. Greece is withering beneath the gaze of haute germany. Hollywood is putting out constant television about it’s worst excesses. I have no tv that reflects on me, leave it to beaver, seinfeld , friends. I can’t relate to the Kardashians. All they bring to mind the idea that physician assisted suicide is necessary. Imagine an hour in the company of such drivel. Death would be better. Yet they show that there’s something wrong with Hollywood, like Michael Jackson sleeping with boys. Pedophilia is now being called a ‘sexual orientation’. Are there no limits.
The skies the ceiling.
Pluto pictures are coming back from NASA’s probe. The Mars studies continue. Tesla is said to have communicated with aliens. The geniuses thought the aliens were friendly, not like our human neighbours. ISI keeps beheading. Syrian refugees increase. Boco Harem keeps stealing virgin teen age girls. China kills more dissidents. All over Christians are persecuted. There's a whole lot of really stupid people in the world and the self pity tells me it would be better for me if I didn't know so much. The corruption that perpetuates the insanity en mass is mass manufactured. It's probably not their fault that they're so stupid. They probably realized in high school what a racket it was. Better to focus on fast food and fucking that politics and changing the world. There's more substance in a hamburger from Wendys.
The Canadian elections are coming up and the politicking continues. So much bombast. So much deceit. So many people wanting more taxes and I don’t want to pay for more corruption. All I’ve seen of government is corruption. My 5 years of Downtown Eastside was an incredible drowning in city and provincial corruption. Now 46 pharmacies and pharmacists have been closed down. So few arrests. The weed wacker goes through and the stalks come up again. No one addresses the sources. NDP corruption is the worst and yet so little of it gets to the media. The profit is in drugs and guns. Everybody is pushing marijuana. It's at the highest state levels.
And Troudeau wants more taxes. I wish they'd drug test politicians and Supreme Court judges like the do athletes.
I loved the surfer who punched the shark while the soccer players get thousands for falling and crying on tv. So much corruption. No wonder old time ruler cut off hands and penis'.
And Harper is vilified. Scapegoated for everything. This is an anti father society. The problem is always the man. Blame it on daddy. But the provinces are in charge of health care and instead of putting their money into health care waste that money on million dollar Supervised Injections Sites building palaces for the drug addict society and claiming that housing is health care while letting contractors steal more millions of government money. Every slum land lord has his hand in the pot. it's a feeding frenzy. And how many millions spent on residential schools and pig farmers and revenge and past redresses while children go hungry and people die today of diseases that could be cured if the talkers and the pontificators and arguers didn't want the lions share of money.
Now in the US there’s more election developments with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren facing off in the new sports spectacles of democratic shuffles board. While the Republicans might have someone but so far all I’ve heard is Donald Trump. It’s a circus. There seems to be little more than reality tv to all the entertainment called politics especially in the lies of the ecology and the false pretences, with corporations the new medieval lords and the elections relevant only to the vestiges of left over citizen states.
I am grateful for coffee. I’m grateful for cars. I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for my friends. Thank you especially for Gilbert. He licked my face this morning. Thank you for the alarm clock in the iPhone. Thank you for the iPhone. Thank you for this apple computer. Thank you for my fingers. Thank you for my breathing. Thank you for the air. Thank you for my sight. Thank you for my arms and legs. I especially like my asshole. Thank you for the shitting. I feel sorry for those who bloat and have obstruction. I’m so thankful for a dump. I really appreciate peeing too Lord. Good engineering. I don’t know why there wasn’t a separate function button for these but then you also used my nose for breathing and smelling so I suppose there were some design decisions. It’s been a pretty good package. Probably a beta version. I am enjoying the robots themes on tv and realize that this particular human model has gone a hundred thousand years with lmitted glitch fixes. Certainly the brain has had it’s moments. I’m concerned about my heart. I seem to have less intuitive and compassionate function these days. I’m tired too so thank you for the sleep function but please make the necessary adjustments so that I can awake feeling young. I’d like that sexual passion function returned. I’m kind of disinterested . I’m more afraid and I’d like the stupid courage function beefed up. I am thankful for everything Lord. God is one , three in one, and we are all in God and God is love and God is good so all is love and all is good so thankfully I can surrender to your love and trust and feel less sustained dread.
Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the blue sky. Thank you for the work. I like that I have a place to go thats no longer so chaotic and disorganized. Thank you for the sorting out of all the chaos. Thank you for my assistant . Thank you for the movers and workers. Thank you for telecommunications and wifi.
Please heal my family members. Help them in their illness. Heal my patients. Help them in their illness. Guide me that I might better do thy wil. Help me be a better doctor. Help me to say and do the right thing. Thank you for the journal articles and the web studies and the conference in Ireland and the coming conference in Virginia. Thank you for my colleagues who I learn so much from and who inspire and sustain me. Thank you for these years of experience and that the challenges are wholly different than what they once were. What was once a race that seemed a sprint is now a marathon and much beyond. Help me as I travel this new terrain.
Thank you for doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, bureaucrats, police, lawyer, judges, the military, our leadership, journalists. Thank you for all the guilds and artisans. Thank you for the entertainers, artists and dancers. Thank you for sobriety, Thank you for spirituality. Thank you for God.
Thank you for the colours Lord.
Thank you for the flowers my brothers photos remind me to see.
Thank you.
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