Man Cold Progression

I am still alive. For this I am thankful even though my head feels on the verge of exploding like a Sigourney Weaver Belly.  Some new alien species is wanting to Zeus children out of my head.  But I ‘m cool with that.  My level of acceptance is marginally better. If I die today  it’s okay. My body will need to be cremated naturally.  We wouldn’t want whatever I have to spread.
My sinuses are definitely hooped.  No good.  Is my nose permanently inadequate as a result of my picking it.  Did my mother nocebo me a lifelong inadequate sinuses because they wanted me as a child to stop picking my nose as the dining room table.  Boogers show on the white table cloths.  You’re learning from adults you’re not supposed to flick these at your brother.  Next thing your undeveloped mind has demonized snot.  So everyone once in a while as an adult tthere’s a great revolution in the sinuses and snot escapes en mass to the outer world, like babies stripping off their clothes and running naked under garden hoses.
My cough is deeper descending. The invasion of alien microbes, the First Wave in this fight to the death between my humanoid self and these Lilliputian small man syndromed creatures.  I cough.  Laryngitis is the point of quitting. If I get laryngitis I throw in the towel and don’t go to work but wait in my bed for imminent death.  We’ve been at this rodeo before. I’ve come through these personal world war fights with sickness and disease minimized by the state and generalized as ‘common cold’.  It’s a lacklustre disease.  It’s ‘just the flu’.  It’s grossly under rated.  The Man Cold is the disease most discriminated against.
I’ve terrible gas. I fart something fierce. Bloating.  I feel on the verge of relief but on the toilet just make rude noises.
Outside the world is a reflection of my inner travail.  Snow and ice have coated the landscape, freezing and killing anything that was sentient without a warm place to hide from the incipient weather.  In the north we prepared for this.  In Winnipeg it comes and we know we’re in for the duration. In Churchill it’s expected.  It lasts for most of the year.  NASA sends their astronauts to Canada to train in our environment for life on the moon. If you can survive Winnipeg or Churchill or worse Sudbury you just might be able to live on Mars.
 We live with thanksgiving for summer and what facsimiles of spring and fall we are granted. But here on the West Coast in this unaffordable city of Vancouver, where criminal money from overseas and the billions of dollars of revenue from pot grpwing have jacked up all the prices so only the rich can afford housing,  this isn’t supposed to happen.  The Homeless are shocked. They escaped Newfoundland and Ontario and even Alberta to move to the Lower Mainland of BC believing they could survive on the streets, no longer having jobs to afford heating in Eastern Canada. The government has made each Canadian choose ‘food or heat’ .  So the fat are now lying outside on the streets of Vancouver hoping they made the right choice and their fat will protect them.
My car was frozen shut yesterday. I was tugging at the doors of the Miata after finding it first with snow brushes and ice scrapers. Then it refused me entrance.  I heard my little sporscar say to me, “I’m not working today. It’s too awful.”  It was a major therapy session with  me  the ice pick and the Miata not responding to anything short of a lobotomy.
Vancouver drivers and Vancouver cars are not prepared for snow and cold. Politicians have been building bicycle lands and trying to convince everyone that cycling in freezing rain and parkas and icey streets is a favourable thing to do.  These limousine liberals haven’t ever seen a bicycle themselves and expect underpaid Canadians to drive them from one pig fest to the next.
The all weather car tires aren’t meant for cold.  They’re all weather Ohio or Southern China.  I miss studs and chains.  There are accidents along the free way. I’m driving in a 120 km zone at 10 km.  It’s miserable.  And cold.
And I’m chilled.  I feel like I might have malaria because every so often my whole body shakes and I feel on the verge of seizuring.
I stopped thinking of suicide.  It takes too much effort. I feel this Man Cold will kill me soon enough.
Women are now talking to me in that voice they use for little children. I see them showing facial features of concern.
I want the world to feel guilty for what they have done to me.  Left me alone in this body to fight off the Borg of a Man Cold. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!"
I must be doing better than I think. I’m not in a fetal position. The fetal position is my fall back ploy. In a fetal position most of the vital organs are protected.  The head is out there available to be stomped but the rest of me is tucked in pretty good.
My head doesn’t seem of use to me. It aches and drips and whines.  I hate the whining. I can’t focus on anything but self pity and misery.
The water pipes are frozen in my home. I have a functional toilet at work. The blessing of running water gets me to head to work.
At work I pay attention to others suffering. It’s a useful distraction. Everyone seems to be sharing this collective meeting with Satan.  All week men have come in red nosed, coughing up green, throbbing headaches and telling me they’re dying. I’ve done the ‘this is just a virus and all you need is rest  and chicken soup tirade a few times’ but I’ve been broken by the sight of them suffering. I’ve written several prescriptions for antibiotics as they pleaded. “Dr. I’m dying. Aren’t you going to help me. I need medicine.”
I don’t have a lot of faith in medicine and a Man Cold.  I hold off on the Amoxil and zithromycis, the doxycycline and erythromycin.  The only fallback after we start on that route is the Vancomycin. And all the antibiotics make the diarrhea worse.  I ‘m still going for the antihistamines. I had a clam chowder soup yesterday.  White Spot.  Medicinal clam chowder soup. Followed by fish and chips.  It got me an hour more along the life cycle.
People want permanent cures. Life is a marathon. I can at best get from day to day. I hear people retrospectively complaining about a lifetime of misery and explain to them that I haven’t a clue as to whether or not yesterday even existed. All we have is today.  Really the misery of yesterdays doesn’t need to be remembered and stuck on the wall like a collection of dead insects, lost days , in a life time of struggle. I just have to get through today. If thinking about something positive will help me I’ll do it. It’s just too easy to focus on the negative. I see people revelling in their suffering.  Not me. I’m a stoic.  Ask everyone around. I’m just a regular Man Cold, complaining, whimpering, narcissistic dying person.
They don’t know that I am the sufferer. I have a Man Cold.  This is something even women can’t appreciate.  I am now fantasizing on running away to the tropics.  I have had enough of Canadian winter.
I am utterly tired of hearing about Climate Change from those along the tropics where the vast majority live in relative comfort and joy. They think ‘climate change’ is some terrible thing with the water rising a tiny bit each year. and the prospect of having to move from the coast to the interior a thousand years hence. They really just bitching about the declining real estate value on their multimillion dollar coastal view homes.
They are so very un Canadian. They hardly have seasons but demand billions now from the world to pay for their air conditioning units. They’re so very un Canadian. Here it’s either freezing our balls or burning our feet. We have annual climate change. It’s a real bitch. They should stop their weather girl bitching and get a real life.  All their Al Gore talk about the polar caps melting. 90% of the little Climate Change wankers haven’t even seen snow.
DiCaprio wet his pants when he encountered a Calgary chinook. These are sometimes weekly events. The Climate Change Twinkies are effete boys and girls who live in womb like worlds and are projecting catastrophe on the whole world because they had to buy a new air conditioner because their last one wore out a year earlier.  Make them  live in a real place like Canada and see how then maybe we’ll listen to what they have to say about weather.  But only if when the weather is freezing outside they get a Man Cold on top of that and still go to work, rather than having a government job where they stay home with just a sniffle.
It’s terrible out there.  My friend had my truck. He’d borrowed it. I begged him to bring it back. I can’t face another day going to work without my F350 Ford with snow tires, and a couple of winches. I’ve got a back up ATV in the box so if I can’t get out of a tough snow situation I can unload the quad and go overland.  I’m terrified of going to work in my little Miata. With the roads so icy I could slide out and hit one of those tragic little  Millenials wearing a Bernie ball cap  pushing their bicycle through snow drifts. .  So many Car2Gos  in the ditch.  Thera radio announcer keeps reporting another accident  closeing intersection. I’d get out and walk but if I slip I’d break a hip and the ambulances might not get to me for days.
Climate Change. The pompous little potato wants more money for this red herring when we all know the money is to put more gold in his multi million dollar Ssusex Drive Palace. He probably has heat floors.  Taxing the air and giving our countries hard earned money to wife beating pedophiles even more corrupt than him with his dictator friends and grandiose fantasies.  .
Meanwhile I’m full of self loathing.  I should have a real job where I didn’t have to work for a living.  It’s the Man Cold. I should have taken up a life of crime so that I could go out and kill an enemy when I’m feeling this way.  If I had another religion I could behead someone for not dressing the way I approve. I could have virgins thrown at me.  There are definitely  perks I’m missing out on.
Right now I have to get up and get a kleenex. The box of kleenex is just out side of my reach.  Snot is dripping onto my upper lip.  No body knows the troubles I’ve seen.

The Man Cold and Winter in Vancouver

I have a man cold. It has been said that only women who have delivered babies can fully appreciate the suffering inherent in a man cold.
The first night I considered making out a new will.  My head felt like it had suffered all the media lies and disinformation it could and my brains wanted to escape to some other galaxy.  How can you open the door when the pounding is from within.  My squinting eyes were watering with pain.
When I swallow my throat feels like I've radiactive sand lining the trachea. The worst is the sinuses.  I want to take a Dewalt Sawsall and cut a new drainage system into my face.  Skip cosmetics. Just 'git er dun'.  "Drain the swamp".  '
Satan is inside of me and I need exorcism.  There are demons hiding in my sinuses. Liberal socialist demons.  They're tearing up the membranes of my face and sharing them out among their corrupt regulatory beaurocratic soul. 
I may die. 
I had diarrhea.  The diarrhea surprised me.  I was glad I took the precaution to sit on the toilet to express my opinion about Canaadian politics. I was surprised by the extent of waste flowed out of me. 
Now I'm non human.  I'm a chemistry experiment. I've taken a cup of hot daytime COLD FX and rather liked it.  I'm binge sucking Ricola Mountain Herbs like they were nipples.
I popped several multi vitamins for men or 50 as well as elderberry tablets.  I been spray my throat with combination of Echinacea and zinc.
Zinc is in all these cough medicine.  Yet zinc is a sexual restorative, remembered as such by the catchy jingo, Zinc Zinc good for the Dink. It's also good for baby's bottoms as a barrier cream.  I don't care. None of this is terribly scientific.
I just walked into the pharmacy and grabbed anything that looked like it would help with "colds and flu'.  Were it not for the Canadian health care waitlists I'd go to a walk in clinic for a head transplant. Not that my body with medieval torture wracking pains is anything to keep but the head is really congested and a replacement head with all the Jihad activity couldn't be worse than this damaged mind processor.  I just want to whine.
Meanwhile my water lines frozen and I had to ration water last night.  My propane heater ran out but I had a spare I changed in the night and the propane delivery comes today. 
I have so much to do.
I've come to work because the sneaky 'infectious' period of viral illnesses is at the onset. Once you are symptomatic it means your body is fighting it off. It's most contagious when the symptons just show, like a couple of days ago when I just felt more out of shape and fatter and uglier sort of depressed and anxious. This was the 'early warning signs' that 'fear mongering' memes of liberal Climate Change nutbars had got through my force shield of intelligence and I was succumbing to the sheer masses of stupidity.  I had taken one too many hits of hearing about our boy Prime Minister, Justine Trudeau, "little potato', the communist, giving billions more of tax payer money to foreign corrupt governments and beaurocratic institutes.  It laid me low. 
But this yellow green snot I hork up with half a lung is evidence of the forces of good rallying to stop the invasion of free loader parasites.
There is hope in mucus. 
I am praying a lot too. Since I may die any moment from this 'man cold', I am arranging with God to get my own 'mansion in heaven'.  I will dance those gold lined streets in a new young body and be able to smoke again. I truly believe that smoking will be allowed in heaven, healthy smoke, not the stuff that leaves you susceptible to weather change and causes you to years later, despite 20 years of not smoking, to cough up a lung.  I miss the Liberal thinking I had back then when I'd smoke a menthol cigarette with a cold somehow thinking that this was good for me because it seemed so. I miss my youth at times, when my intellectual genius overrode all common sense and scientific data. Ah to be 20 years old with a stiff woody and a mind full of communism hanging out with Bernie and Karl and ignoring reality because the wine flowed free, the air was full of smoke, we had flowers painted on our faces and the women were 20 years old and magnificently loose.  The birth control pill was panacea back then and no one had AIDS. The Liberals promised everything 'free' and we had 'free' love.  God I miss the delusions "free" love and "free lunches" and everything "free".  Justin Trudeau is taxing Carbon and Carbon Dioxide but the scientifically illiterate Canadians don't realize he considers life a disease and is taxing the air we breathe.
Not that I know anything about air, wheezing and trying to suck in breaths through a dammed up nose..

My friends recommend whiskey. There just isn't enough on the planet to treat a man cold.

I'll just suffer through, soldiering on. whining. Whining helps a man cold.  It's about the only thing that does. 

Levi Jeans, The Bay

It’s amazing what 2 inches does to one’s sense of well being. With the other pants I was wearing I was constantly reminded that I had expanded my girth. Coming into the Christmas season I was definitely anxious and concerned.  Yet just buying a pair of stretchy levi’s 2 inches larger at the waist has comforted me.  I can return to complete denial about the need to avoid pastries, chocolates and all those other Christmas treats I live for.  I imagine walking around the city as exercise.

The best part is I no longer fear my lower half is going gangrenous when I sit.  

It was these Levi’s or the increasingly city street quality sweat pants. Polo has a pair in 1X size which were so seductive I almost fell for temptation.   But no, these Levi lept out at me instead. The Bay saleswoman, very attractive indeed, recommended I take the smaller size in with the larger one insisting I really was my former girth.  

“Really, “ she said when I returned with the Fat Size Levi’s, “I really would have thought those would be too big on you. Art you sure they won’t slip down”  

Colour and blood was flowing into my lower regions at this time. I’d just changed and kept the larger sized Levi’s on.  I don’t expect I could have got back into the others. I’d fight tooth and claw for these new ones.   

The saleswoman was increasingly attractive.  I was reminded of how unappealing an earlier 20ish  saleswoman  was.  She had asked me what I did for a  living. Then when I told her I was a physician, she asked if I was still working.  White hair. Expanding girth.  Wrinkles and jowls. Still I recognized the ugly head of  ageism.  

So there I was screaming Agist Agist and shouting Old Lives Matter staging a one man Riot in a department store.  In my mind.

That’s the difference between young women and older women.  The package was pretty indeed but the  older woman at Bay Levi was downright sexy. 

Laura knowing men, quickly commented too, “You look slimmer in them than in the smaller size jeans.”  I began to perk up and strut little with such incredible women about.   I could also feel  my feet. Sensation was coming back.  The blood was returning upwards.

“Thank you, Ladies,” I said, happy to proffer my Bay card and get the 50% sale.  

Now I’m enjoying the maple do nut at Tim Horton’s. God Life is good!

Sunday Gratitude

Thank you for my sleep last night, my dreams, the bed, the warmth. Thank you for Gilbert, my dog, his little body curled up against mine when I awoke. Thank you for Laura and her apartment. Thank you for the Sunshine. Thank you for coffee and yoghurt and toast and jam. Thank you for Mr. Bean.
Thank you for my iPhone and computer. Thank you for God and Recovery. Thank you for my car and meetings. Thank you for all the gifts of recovery and all the blessings of life.  Thank you for work and reward and meritocracy and service. Thank you for my health. Thank you for the relief from pain. Thank you for the hope on the horizon. Thank you for my nephews and sister in law. Thank you for my extended family, all Dad’s brother’s children now growing old, my mother’s sister’s children and all the cousins in Scotland Ireland and New England.
Thank you for trucks and RV’s and ATV’s. Thank you for BC - God’s country.  Thank you for the ocean and the streams and lakes. Thank you for the mountains and valleys. Thank you for the resilience of the earth, the constant renewal. Thank you for science and homeostasis and the laws of physics. Thank you for chemistry and neurotransmitters and psychopharmacology. Thank you for medicine. Thank for all the learning I”ve been graced to know and the hard work of study and the struggle of years of grasping the basics then years more of understanding and then finally the insights.  Thank you for the decades of experience and the constant study and constant learning. Thank you for the colleagues and the process. Thank you for the research and research training and researcher’s eye. Thank you for the joy of realization, the aha moments.
Thank you for chips and dip.
Thank you for sex and orgasm and good food faste buds, full stomachs and good shits. Thank you for exercise and the hope that I will regain my once athletic body now I can no longer use injuries as excuses. Thank you for walking again without pain. Thank you for bow hunting this fall. Thank you the restoration of my balance and the ability to climb hills of rocks and logs and safely come and go in the woods. Thank you for hunting friends and Gilbert and Charles.
Thank you for logging companies and exploration roads. Thank you for the miners and the excavations. Thank you for the industry and planes and helicopters. Thank you for rockets. Thank you for the space Station and space flight and planets and astronomy.
Thank you for the fall of communism.  Thank you for the pushing back against the dictatorships and totalitarian designs of the UN. Thank you for Israel. I loved visiting the Temple in Jerusalem and long to go again. Thank you for history and the study of history and geography and the study of geography.
Thank you for my yacht and may I soon be on another expedition.  Thank you for my sailing buddy Tom. Thank you for the SV GIRI.  Thank you for the Coast Guard and the Navy and the Military all who keep the land and see free and safe.  Thank you for our RCMP and Vancouver police.
Thank you for my feet and hands. Thank you for the babies and children of my friends. Keep them safe and well. Thank you for the joy of my family and friends. May it increase.
Help my patients in their trials and struggles. Help them succeed and overcome their limitations and disabilities. Help them succeed and become free of whatever binds them.
Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for church. Thank you for sacred spaces. Thank you for glorious music.
Thank you for great theatre.  We are so thainkful for Pacific Theatre and Ron Reed. Thank you for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheum. Thank you for such incredible music and great composition and the genius of talent and work of these amazing musicians. Thank you for all those who are disciplined and persist in learning great arts and skills. Thank you for Schools of Music. Thank you for BCIT and MIT and thank you for the University of Winnipeg and University of Manitoba and University of British Columbia.
Thank you for this day.  Thank you Lord.

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Our night at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra was a total delight.
Laura and I dressed for the occasion.  She put on her formal mauve dress and I wore my new blue sports jacket and black trousers.  I drove us downtown in the immensely maneuverable Mazda Miata getting the perfect street parking spot right in front of the Orpheum Theatre.
The last I’d been to the Orpheum Theatre was with Marc and Aim for the Izzie Izzard comedy show.  Aim was just finishing her Political Science Thesis and I don’t think Marc and her had even married. Now Aim is a full professor at Sydney University and Marc and she just had their first child.
The last VSO I attended was their fabulous Christmas series with musical director Bramwell Tovey.  I love the brass at Christmas but the violins were divine that season.
Then it was with my dear friend Anne who herself plays violin and flute. Her remarkable husband Ivan was still alive, himself a conductor.  Laura and I and they had the  most enjoyable night at the VSO, Ivan and Anne enlightening us during intermission about all manner of things our rock and roll and country music dulled ears had missed.  It always is best to attend the finest in culture in the company of those who aren’t just tourists to the form.
Before the show, Laura and I had dinner at the  Creperie on Granville. My childhood friend Kirk had first introduced me to it. It’s just the perfect light repast for pre show dining.  Not at all too heavy.
I always fear nodding off during a symphony performance. When I was very young I was attending a symphony  in Milwaukee with my first wife and her very sophisticated family.  The lights dimmed and I may well have had a glass of wine and been disco dancing into the wee hours the night before.   Whatever, I woke to being heavily prodded in the ribs by my darling wife.  I thought she was very rough and incredibly rude.  But then I noticed where I was and that  all the audience was staring at me. The conductor had interrupted the performance because my snoring apparently drowned out the horns.  When I awoke, he turned back to the silent orchestra and said in rather haughty voice, “We can begin.”  I was mortified.
That kept me from enjoying symphony for several years.  At the time I was in medical school and call was having a terrible effect on my sleep patterns I could sleep almost anywhere. A return to the  darkened symphony hall with rhapsodic music seemed just the ticket and had my second wife shaking me awake before the show was interrupted. We left early.
I truly love classical music and have  bought all manner of recordings,  especially Bach, Handel and Morart, thoroughly enjoying the music in the safety of my home.
After I left general practice and delivering babies and all night calls I actually  returned to the symphony though  never alone.  Laura is commissioned to slap me awake if she needs to and do anything to stop me snoring should the occasion arise. Naturally it hasn’t. I enjoy a double expresso at the show and that just seems to do the trick. That and my increased appreciation with greater maturity and knowledge of the performers and performance.
Tonight there was a Prelude Concert Program showcasing the VSO School of Music’s Sinfonietto’s String Ensemble directed by Carla Birston. The musicians were so young but so incredibly talented. We really did enjoy their Vivaldi and Bernstein.  I texted a rock and roll friend at intermission to tell him that the symphony now had an opening band.  His band had opened for many other artists but never made the main stage.  I don’t think the VSO will be contacting him but I did think he’d appreciate the genre of the opening band was elevated to this more illustrious sphere.
The Orpheum is a wonderful hall.  I love the venue.  I love the great dome painted with symphony and conductor. We really enjoyed most the visitting conductor Mikhail Agrest. He was thoroughly engaging describing the Dvorak Othello Overture.  The VSO was just magnificent. When the music began, all those incredible performers filling the hall with their gifted playing, it was a bit of heaven on earth.  Each musician is not only an extraordinary athlete with the intricate performance of the finest muscles and nerves but they are artists too. That they can do this together like a flock of birds and the conductor can direct and contain their exuberance is a thing to behold.
I really can’t seem to tire of the wonder of it.  I think how much I enjoy a band like the Guess Who or the Beatles yet they are only 4 musicians and the words of the songs detract from the limitations of the music.  Here it’s just the music, so refined as to cause one to shudder and truly hope that aliens from other galaxies would hear the VSO rather than the speeches of our politicians. There’s something divine in the music of symphony.  It’s all so glamorous and sophisticated.  Laura loved the black outfits and Simone’s fabulous gold and black gown.
Simone Porter was the violin soloist who played the Bruch Concerto No 1 in G minor. What a performance!  I was impressed with the speed of the bow and her fingers and the sounds of her solo violin as it spoke in conversation with the greater orchestra.  Of course the audience applauded forever.
But then came the Tchaikovsky and yes, this is what attracted me. As a major ballet fan for over 40 years I’ve loved Tchaikovsky whose music for ballets’ is legendary.  I loved Mikhail Agrest’s  introduction and discussion of the Orchestral Suite No 3 in G major.  I’ve been to St. Petersburg and his comments reminded me of the beauty of the Winter Palace and the grandeur of the river and the bridges.  The piece itself was indeed more complex and refined than I remember his dance numbers. I loved the brass and the wind instruments. The strings are always so enjoyable but this piece seemed to highlight every instrument even the triangle which reminded me of our Gr 3 band.  Mikhail Agrest became more and more excited as the piece crescendoed till at the end he was nearly jumping up and down like a punk rocker. But was  was okay because the band was in the groove.   The music was just so extraordinary and the VSO so utterly amazing.
When it was over we all stood in the audience. It was an unforgettable performance and we applauded and shouted and applauded and shouted.  Tchaikovsky himself would have loved the VSO this night.  I was transported to St. Petersburg and saw the glory of the city before the Bolsheviks destroyed an era.  Now that the USSR has returned to the Russia of old and the communists are all but gone it’s a delight to listen to the glory of Tchaikovsky and wonder what great art might be achieved if there was less war and less greed.
I was thankful for this performance, that the music of this master was saved for all time.  I fear the destruction of ISIS today and their lack of appreciation of what is truly refined and what is the greatest of culture. The VSO and the composers whose works they perform are artistically akin to the Astronauts who walk on the Space Station. They are the greatest of musicians performing the best of all music, the most complex and most difficult and closest to the divine, yet utterly human.  I  walked out into the streets of Vancouver uplifted by this performance of true greatness. The rain had stopped.  Downtown Vancouver was buzzing as we walked the short distance to the car to return home.

Holy Mo, a Christmas Show, by Lucia Frangione

Holy Mo, A Christmas Show by Lucia Frangione, playing from Dec. 2- Dec 31 at the Pacific Theatre 12th and Hemlock is promoted as a ‘reverently irreverent re-imagining of the Nativity’.  In notes from the playwright, Lucia writes that she first wrote the play Holy Mo with Rene Joshi and Marie Anderson 24 years ago.  She describes it as ‘zero budget and three fools’.
In the play the Hebrew people are the Heebees and Herod is the King of the Juices, the Babylonians are the Babblers and the Romans are the Row Mans.  It’s very avant garde and performance art with hilarious twists and great costume changes. I really believe the wagon should get set design of the year award for originality and multiple use.
This is just the latest version of Holy Mo. I really believe that I’ve seen it three times and Lucia mentioned the 1997 version which really blew my socks off. I was talking about it to friends for weeks.  This is a totally re written one in which I personally think the Magnifi - Cat takes the show.
Kerry Van Der Griend is the director of the three stars,  Folly played by Lucia Frangione, Buffoona played by Jess Amy Shead, and Guff played by Anita Wittenberg.  It’s an amazing work of chaos and order that comes off as theatre just when one thinks the whole thing is about to dissolve into madness.
I loved the advent candles.  The songs throughout were grand to beautiful. It really could be termed a musical if the songs were not so brief. Row Man was my favourite with all the audience participation and the sense of being at a hockey rink
Yet there was the Story.  In the midst of all the fun and laughter the story is retold.  I liked that.  I really could see Holy Mo over and over again. It’s like  Handel’s Messiah to me in that way.  A special addition to my Advent season that reminds me of what really does matter at Christmas.  I think every Christian adult and child should see Holy Mo. Obviously non Christians would enjoy it but the subtleties or not so subtle subtleties such as  Maggie, the Magi, would be lost on anyone who doesn’t already know the story.  That doesn't hurt Alice in wonderland. Still I’d suggest at least a reading of the original before attending for anyone not cognizant of who Manny might be.
Thank you for another wonderful play experience, Lucia.
(It was also great for Laura and I to see our young friends Kevin and Anna and Hannah and Caleb, both couples whose beautiful church weddings were so unforgettable. )
(John Fluevog’s Shoes (fluevog.com) is one of the many supporting advertisers.  Laura thinks Fluevog’s Shoes situated on Granville Street are the finest in Vancouver.  She calls them “works of art”,  so I’ve offered to buy her a pair,  given they support the finest theatre in Vancouver.)

Emotional Problem Solving

I always wondered why my parents talked about the weather so much but now I know.  Grandad was a rancher and dad was an engineer.  Grandmother was a farm woman and mom was a journalist home maker.  They had a whole lot of experience between them.  They paid attention to the world around them and people.  They drew on this  vast wealth of ‘traditional’ and ‘conventional wisdom’ .

When something wasn’t right with them they first considered the WEATHER.  They didn’t think that they should kill themselves, divorce or change their jobs.  They just knew that commonly people are affected by the Weather.  It’s even been shown that on Wall Street trading increases on sunny days and decreases on rainy days.  It’s really not rocket science.
Next thing the old people talked about was the GOVERNMENT. Whenever anyone felt badly and were uncertain of the cause they considered the influence of Government on the overall well being of people.  Government decisions can make or break a country and can destroy individuals lives with their wars, tax programs, corruption, graft and deceit.  Throughout history next to the natural catastrophes caused by Weather, Government is the greatest source of catastrophe and illness.  That said we all know that if the Government is good and respectable and responsible there really can be peace and love in the valley.  When Governments are mature and thoughtful and productive not wasteful the society as a whole improves with general well being spreading through the land.
Old people also realized that FINANCES were a major source of anxiety and depression.  Not only research but common sense tell us that the poorer one is the more one is at risk for negative events and the more negative events one encounters.  This was truer before the social ‘net’ of modern societies which ‘catch’ people when they fall.  There’s loans, disability, welfare, food lines and charity, all manner of resources that protect one from the ravages of starvation and ‘debtors prisons’.  In some Moslem countries slavery still persists so it’s really not in some distant past that financial problems lead to really bad outcomes.  We really take this granted often simply because our education has been basically shoddy and substandard.
Naturally most of these social security developments in the First world are not present in the Third World. Their development also did not occur in a variety of cultures and historical societies but are increasingly taken for granted in the present day democratic societies most of which began in the enlightened Christian cultures which believed in ‘second chances’.  By contrast this was not a part of the ‘law of the jungle’ or ‘social darwinism’.  It’s a whole separate history to follow the rise of ‘charity’ for ‘strangers’ not just family and tribe but ‘outsiders’ and consider this by culture and religion because again it’s something most simply take for granted not realizing how unique and extraordinary this is.
That said there’s a serious issue of ‘relative wealth’ in that people adapt to certain ‘incomes’ and ‘financial capacities’ and experience loss of ‘status’ with any reduction in FINANCIAL SECURITY.  So old people had savings and made sound investments and recognized that ‘bad times’ could come. Farmers had to save for bad weather years, the droughts, and families ‘saved’ for sickness as sickness was commonly associate with loss of work capacity.  When a person felt badly they commonly recognized that they were fundamentally anxious because of FINANCES and set about remedying this by reducing unnecessary spending and looking for ‘extra work’ to increase savings and security.
HEALTH is commonly discussed by middle aged and older people. Young people are generally healthy unless they have chronic illness from childhood. Most take their ‘good health’ and lots of energy and ability to go without sleep or meals for granted yet as they get older commonly they don’t realize that their well being is directly related to their overall physical HEALTH.  When a person sees a psychiatrist the first thing the psychiatrist considers in investigating a person’s anxiety or depression is whether there is a physical cause for negative change, how long that negative change has been developing and if this might not just be a product of a temporary illness, like a flu or ‘something that’s going around’.  Old people with a variety of chronic illness, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, bowel diseases, lung diseases will simply consider that a bad day or week or month may be because their physical illness is worse. Chronic physical illness, like all psychosomatic illness responds to external stresses but can be it’s own source of stress.  When I’m well a hemorrhoid might not bother me but when I’m already anxious or depressed the bleeding hemorrhoid, a really minor health problem, may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It’s because of this that people faced with general malaise, anxiety or depression, or just a lack of well being and a sense they’re not happy as they might be, commonly go to their general practitioner and discuss their health concerns with them or talk about their HEALTH with their friends and family.  Maybe an antibiotics which cures a urinary tract infection is all that is necessary to right the problem. Maybe a change in diet or exercise or an increase in an anti inflammatory medications is sufficient.
Successful people faced with lack of happiness, a sense of feeling that they are not enjoying life, feelings of emptiness, or too much anxiety and maybe a sense of depression consider early their RECREATIONS.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. The World Health Organization took Freud’s simple definition of Mental Health, ‘the ability to work and love’ and extended it over two full pages but really only added that Mental Health is the ‘ability to work, love and play”.  A lot of people have really barren personal lives yet somehow expect they should be happy. The adage is ‘Misery Loves Company’ and as we are ‘herd animals’ we need social outlets. Maybe our work is not that social or our family just not enough. A major proportion of todays’ divorces occur because young people want their partners to be their ‘all’, (friend, parent, therapist, lover, cook, parent, cheerleader, etc ,etc).  We all come from a tribal society where everyone was interconnected and all had close to dozens, a hundred or more people to turn to.  Today often people’s lives are sterile.  They work and eat and sleep and wonder why they suffer anxiety or depression.  Really , they need to get involved, take up some ‘sport’ even if it’s just, walking with a group.  There are countless clubs, activities, ‘MEET UPS’ on the Internet, and community organizations, and schools, churches and temples.  Really, commonly a person’s life is ‘boring’ because they are ‘boring’ and don’t have any activities in their life because of their narcissism and selfishness and unwillingness to ‘SHARE THEIR TIME”.  These people are time hoarders but like most entitleed people want something for nothing.  Yet a problem shared is a problem halved and loneliness in modern society is so often described as ‘anxiety’ or ‘depression’.
FRIENDS are either as source of joy or a drain. Some are down right ‘soul suckers’ and others are chronic ‘kafetches’.  Many are ‘takers’ and ultimately one has to seriously consider how much time one has to be an emotional cheer leader of those who haven’t a minor or occasional problem but have a chronic recurrent unrellenting series of crisis.  In life saving the lifeguard is taught to swim out to help but not let the drowning person pull them down with them.  Whole communities are alcoholic or drug addicted and frankly some people need to get right out of these hell holes to get away from those who would drag themdown.  In Canada and in communist countries in general there is a phenomena called the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome which means that the ‘group’  because of some ideology actively stop those around them progressing.  They chop down the ‘tall poppy’ or ‘chop off the heads of others to make themselves look taller’.  In some tribal communities those who are doing well will have their homes broken into and wealth stolen or even have their house burnt down.  Many communities of ‘friends’ are gang like where the expectations of the ‘group ‘ is for the ‘individual’ who succeeds to ‘share ‘ his success yet this ideology destroys initiative.  Why should one person ‘work’ at an extra job and then share the reward with those who didn’t put out the effort.  A lot of individual lack of success is associated with ‘friends’ who are negative and ‘belittling’.  Being around people who say ‘nothing is going to change’, ‘life suck’s’ and various other ‘depressive statements’ is Depressing.  By contrast those who succeed and are happy commonly are surrounded by positive people. People who are enlightened are generally encouraging and supportive of those who wish to learn and excel but shy away from those who live by stealing and fawning relationships.  It’s often that we don’t have to  ‘end’ a relationship but rathe that we need to ‘distance’ ourselves or ‘spend less time’ with people who are ‘wallowing’ in their negativity
WORK is often a source of anxiety and depression but few throughout history had the LUXURY of NOT WORKING or even CHANGING THEIR JOBS.  So many accepting that work is principally to pay for the physiological needs, and provide fundamental food, clothing, and shelter simply accept their work.  They stay in less than perfect jobs because they see that those who jump around from job to job commonly ‘take their own selves ‘ with them.  PERSONALITY DISORDERS are primarily identified by the inability of an individual to stay at one job for a year. A red flag goes up with those who are workers when a person can’t last a year in the ‘class’.  Our school system was supposed to provide this basic capacity.  4 seasons, one job.  Admittedly there’s many factors to be considered but there is a direct correlation of “success’ and ‘happiness’ and ‘general well being’ for those who ‘stay’ at a position. There’s even a thing called ‘position authority’ which gives status to even a bull frog in one pond that stays rather than jumping from pond to pond.  Work is not only associated with activity which by itself is healthy but its a place of socialization which is also healthy. Buddhists even designate ‘RIGHT LIVELIHOOD” as essential to enlightenment recognizing that a lot of jobs intrinsically are depressing, risky, unhealthy or simply dehumanizing.  Prostitutes collectively are unhappy even though many ‘chose’ the job for quick wealth  It just doesn’t have the long term benefits that teaching children has.  Survey a hundred prostitutes and a hundred school teachers and the evidence is overwhelming that prostitution isn’t a very ‘high quality’ job.  The whole job world is laid out in terms of education, financial reward, risk, and effort.  Entrance level jobs have the real advantage they need low education but they commonly lack security and rarely have long term financial reward.  One has to seriously consider their work in light of what they want and what their present and future desires and needs are. All too often people have been satisfied with a particular job and had a whole lot of short term benefits from that job only to find that one day the job didn’t have longevity. This occurs with athletes and commonly with dancers.  If one doesn’t have a fall back plan or a plan to progress then it’s not uncommon for crisis to arise which could well have been foreseen and prepared for.  In today’s world it is expect that people will have three careers minimum in a lifetime and those who are “coasting’ will likely encounter job problems. While the ‘coasters’ are blaming everyone and everything for their loss of work, the rest have been upgrading their skills and taking extra training at night anticipating that their job as a ‘steam engineer’ is less than permanent.
FAMILY is a fixed ingredient. Those who are fortunate are born in loving families and learn the ART OF LOVING (see Erickson) and know that LOVE Is not something that just “HAPPENS” but needs to be nurtured and maintained.  Successful happy families pass on the SKILLS for happiness to their children and commonly this learning leads to generations of success whereas the poor believe the success is only a product of the individuals in this segment of society starting with a ‘financial nest egg’.  If this were true then those who won LOTTERIES would be similar examples of personal and societal success.   However,  commonly those who ‘win lotteries’ lose them just as quickly.  One of the reasons AID works so poorly is that it doesn’t ‘teach’ people how to produce more successfully but only cares for their needs that one day. Often what a family teaches is the cornerstone to the success of the members whereas equally so a family can be perpetrating ‘self defeating’ ideologies.  It is important to remember if we had sent Einstein to a tribe of Cannibals they would have thought him a tough rooster at best and learned nothing about energy and relativity because they were simply not capable of appreciating the genius of the man.
 Therapy was not about ‘rejecting family’ or dishing parents but about sorting out the useful teaching from the commonly once useful but now outdated ideas.  A mother might teach her daughter to avoid black men because when she grew up black men were migrant and poor but today that very statement might be a limiting ideology if the majority of black men in the community were hard working successful individuals.  If a person is a live today it’s thanks to the parents simply not killing them when they were vulnerable.  Since life if fundamental and without it all else is nothing all parents are 50% good.  Fish eat their eggs and reptiles leave them to fend for themselves.  Therapy isn’t supposed to be about ‘blaming’ but rather about understanding and learning from the past to make the present and future better.  Therefore each individual must recognize the contribution of history and not dish it outright.  Further today people commonly judge the past by the yardstick of their own limited understanding.  Dickens said, “it was the best of times and worst of times’ and this is true for all times. The trick is to be selective, learn from and make valuable alliances. Family are the main stay of society and the STATE is threatened most by family. Alone individuals are likely to perish but the capacity to form networks and communities is central to the happiness of individuals. This begins with the family.  When I worked with the most mentally ill they commonly had the worst family relationships and least social skills.  If the family can be strengthened most commonly success for individuals follows.
The LOVED ONE, the PARTNER, the most intimate sexual partner has through all cultures and classes been associated with the greatest joy and happiness at some time.    Many a person has said that their life is made by the finding and nurturing of their soulmate.  This is the person they marry. This is the person we have sex with. Sexual relationships are limited to those who we are willing to be most intimate with, most vulnerable with, closest too.  A ‘casual relationship’ is never truly casual but marriages and long term sexual relationships define emotional landscapes for all.  The Loved One is the most important person in a person’s network of relationships. That person is commonly the father or mother of the children, the most important person in the family, and the one who can most affect a person’s emotional life positively or negatively.
IF mental health is the ability to love, work and play, then it follows that a person without work or school, without a Loved One or Family or Friends would at most register ’30’% generally on a happiness scale. Those who lack that most important cherry on the happiness cake , the loved and loving one, at best might only approach a “B” grade  in the overall likelihood of general well being. There are clearly exceptions, saints, heroes, hermits but generally speaking our sense of well being follows from this simple analysis.
Now the must successful and mature people do not ‘change’ their ‘loved one’ or their ‘job’ first but progress through an analysis of what is lacking in their lives by starting at the outside.  Maybe it’s just a bad hair lousy weather day and that one could consider buying and umbrella or taking a vacation to the hot spot or improving the use of sunscreen.  There’s a whole lot of solutions to the ‘weather’ problems. I took up cross country skiing when the ‘weather’ was forcing me to curtail outside activities and I felt a prisoner in the winter city.  My general well being improved immensely. My friend has made a point of cycling and winter swimming at Wreck beach at least twice a week ‘getting outside’ and ‘facing the elements’ and their sense of well being and decrease in anxiety is amazing to see.
Recently a whole group of people rioted because they didn’t like the government but studies showed that 70% hadn’t voted.  Most of these government activist complainer types commonly don’t even join a political party.  A friend is a professor of political sciences and I watched her acquire her wisdom and generally amazing calmness around matters political by gaining in depth knowledge about the mechanisms of government, anthropology, sociology and the misinformation of media and propaganda.  When she was a student government most upset her but today she’s probably the least ‘upset’ person I know in this regard because she is actively participating in government, making things better for herself and other individuals.
Countless times I’ve seen people’s general malaise and depression a product of something so simple medically as hypothyroidism.  Depression and anxiety are commonly the presenting symptoms of countless treatable illnesses. Increasingly most depression and anxiety I see has it’s roots in addictions, substance abuse, alcoholism, pornography, eating disorders.
Work problems arise in every job and in every life but rather the ‘take this job and shove it’ over the years mature individuals have formed unions, discussed the negatives of their job with co workers, counsellors and even the boss.  These minor changes in a person’s life can reap amazing results in solving emotional problems
Obviously spending less time with a ‘soul sucker’ , that constantly ‘needy’ , person always bitter and always complaining, will lead to less stress and more room for positive relationships.  Maintaining contact with family but modulating the time and distance of the relationships is a sure fire way of improving one’s happiness simply because these are the template of all relationships that follow and the source of so much joy for those whose lives are most successful.
Finally the most mentally ill commonly admit to having their longest intimate relationship as under a year, under five years, or under 10 years.  Relationships are like vehicles and if you keep crashing or trading in your primary vehicle for relational happiness then you really would benefit from seeing a psychiatrist not to discuss what the partner is doing wrong but to learn what others do right and what you are doing wrong.  The Gottman Institute “love labs’ studies successful happy couples and unhappy couples and scientifically came up with a set of rules that are simply not rocket science but really do give a decent basis for  setting up or repairing broken relationships before they get trashed by this ‘throwaway unhappy society’
The main reason I wrote this though was to simply encourage people to consider problem solving from the weather inward to work and loved one rather than dumping the job and life partner only to find it El Nino was all that was wrong and if you’d waited a year the weather would have improved and you could have saved the cost and pain of trashing work and love.
Finally spirituality is associated with the greatest happiness and joy for most people.  Research shows that spiritual people are overall happier and more prosperous with greater security and success. This doesn’t mean any one religion or any one moral prescription is right but it does tend to challenge atheist political idealogies that reject the spiritual community lives of the most successful individuals in society.  Perhaps when all else fails or earlier ,one might consider, as Victor Frankl, the psychiatrist who survived Auswitch, encouraged, asking yourself "what is the meaning of life”.  What is your relationship to God   Or  perhaps change the word, God, to  the GOOD.  What is the Good to you or what is the GOOD LIFE.  Often emotional problems solving follows ‘reframing’ the question'.
In the end it’s your life.  Enjoy.