Friday Gratitude

Thank you Lord for Friday. Thank you for this day at the end of a week of work. Thank you for my work. Thank you for my family and friends. Thank you for the light showing now in the early morning sky. Thank you for the shadows. Thank you for the forest. Thank you for my neighbours. Thank you for Gilbert who likes his tummy rubbed. Thank you for bananas and farmers and trucks and boats and stores and shop keepers. Thank you for law and order and banks and police and jails and asylums and doctors and nurses. Thank you for the rules which are mostly very very good. Thank you for judges and politicians who have a hard job of compromise. Thank you for those who take thankless jobs. Thank you for plumbers and rectal surgeons and paper towel and spray cleaner for cleaning up vomit piss and shit. Thank you for the people who do that in airports and truck stop rest rooms.

Thank you for clean air. Thank you for clean water. Thank you for intelligence. Thank you for empathy and compassion. Thank you for meetings and churches and temples. Thank you for houses and apartments and RV’s. Thank you for tents. Thank you for summer camping. Thank you for hot tubs. Thank you for running water and indoor plumbing.Thank you for silk and satin and denim. Thank you for cotton and electric blankets. Thank you for toothpaste and mouthwash and soap. Thank you for carpets and blinds. Thank you for cars and bicycles and motorcycles. Thank you for all your blessings Lord. Hallelujah. 

Politics and Spirituality

I study the peaceful warrior path, the gentle soul journey, I am a lover not a fighter. Give peace a chance. I was a hippy with love painted on my forehead in San Francisco dancing in the streets with flowers in my hair. I was with the most beautiful woman in the world. We were beautiful people. We marched for peace.  Later I’d get a sliver of the Nobel Prize as a member of Physicians against Nuclear War.

Today I’m older. 

I still meditate. I still believe it’s good to be slow to anger and I know that anger is really fear. There is only fear and love, love and fear.  I’m a lover still but I’ve been a fighter. 

 Jesus taught, Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  Christianity is the religion of Love. The church is connection. Spirituality is God made. Religion is man made. Religion must bow to the war state and spirituality does not need to.  The spiritual can be martyrs but the religious make better administrators. 

It’s all okay to dance in the streets and camp in tents and love one another but what next. The longest running ‘commune’ out of the 60’s has degenerated into a scolding paranoid community after years of seeing slackers, psychopaths and sociopaths steal and not return.  The socialism of the Apostle with the awe inspiring presence of Jesus aincarnate floundered immediately with members withholding and stealing communal funds. 

 It was funny listening to a documentary of commune by BBC and considering how they sounded just like the towns, islands,   villages and aboriginal reserves where I’d worked as a family physician and psychiatrist.  Well intentioned but quickly Balkanized.

Politics.

I admire my friend Aim who is a professor of politics. One of the most diplomatic people I know. Buddhist upbringing. Gentle old soul. earth mother. 

I met the Dalai Lama.  Nice man. Peaceful.  Calm.  Intelligent.

When the Chinese invaded Tibet the greatest peaceniks of all time sat cross legged in the path of Chinese tanks and troops and meditated.  Like John Lennon and ,wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, Yoko Ono sitting in a 5star hotel with maid service on a bed made for them, the sheets washed by laundry women, except in the front lines.  All the stupidest greatest ideas of delusional leadership come from the farthest from the front.

“OM...Give Peace a Chance”.  The Chinese, todays modern equivalent of the Vorgon of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Communist Binary Marxist mind being the stupidest lowest common denominator, so attractive to the thug, and lizard, fundamentally the ‘paranoid position of psychiatry’. Us and them.  Tribal. Kill them before they kill us. You’re either with us or agin us. 

The Chinese Aetheist communist socialists mowed down all the Buddhist priests and avatars and hippies.  Just like they’re doing today in Hong Kong. Just like the Russian Communists did in the USSR where they killed a hundred million in as many years.  Hitler and Fascism were just National Socialism. Communism was international socialism. Godless loveless Aetheist constructs, powerful and powerless. The re-enactment of the God emperor and peasant construct under facetious language and pseudoscience and pseudo intellectualism.

After the leaders of the Tibetan peace community were killed en mass in the beginning of the genocide which continues today, the second class monks, the ‘B’ students,  remembered the British Enfields and grabbed those and shot back at the Chinese with their tanks and machine guns. They died too.

My friend, a Buddhist psychiatrist, used to forget to ask about suicide. “It’s a personal intimate matter,” he said. “Easier for a Buddhist to ask a woman about her masturbation and sexual fantasies than to ask her about her suicidal ideation.”

The Buddhist monks had a ‘good death’ creating delays to allow the child Dalai Lama, the incarnation of God, to escape to India who gave the Dalai Lama asylum while the Chinese communists continued to do their boorish stupid uncivilized rape and pillage of Tibet where they have planted countless Chinese Colonies. The Chinese make the European Imperialists look like saints and choir boys. The Chinese Communists are the ‘running dog Imperialists’. Thugs ,thieves and pigs. Xi Jinpeng is this generations Hitler or Lenin, whichever mass murderer you prefer from history.

The Communists are todays Nazi. Marx was an aetheist Jew, a kafetch, with an Inferiority Complex and grandiose delusions.  Lenin was a lover of murder and bank robbery and with Stalin, Molotov and Trotsky began the Bolsheviks with murder assasination and bank robbery, destroying the Parliamentary Democracy of Russia, killing off and threatening the Mensheviks and re writing history to obscure the Patricide of the day. At least the French Revolutionaris were more transparent as Robespierre indulged in patricide with his guilotines. The Enfant Terribles of history.  Matricidal and Patricidal revolutionaries. Politics. 

Mohammed’s Muslim religion, the Hadith and Koran,  like the Torah of the Jews is a tribal religion.  God is ‘my god’. And the People are ‘my people’.  The Muslim lie is that Islam is a religion of peace. It’s only killing competitor is the aetheist communist religion.  The Catholics hardly killed so many. Ghengis Khan and Alexander certainly did but they were fighting armies and overtly conquering nations. Mohammed and his Warrior Priests did that, killing all the Jews and Zoroastrians and Christians of the Middle East who wouldn’t convert until the Crusades stopped his progress.

 The Muslim hoards were turned back in Spain and at Venice.  We know the names of Patton and Monty, Constantine, Eisenhower but we’re not reminded in history of the Battle of Tours 732 when Christian  Charles Martel,  precursor of King/Pope/Emperor Charlemagne,  defeated the Muslim invasion of Western Europe or the Battle of Vienna 1683 King John III Sobieski defeated the last Muslim invasion of Europe. These are events as significant as the Berlin airlift defence against godless aggressive communism or finally the fall of the Berlin Wall and the freeing of hundreds of millions from Aetheist communist tyranny.

 We’re now in the midst of a ‘migration war’ which was the normal precursor of the great wars of history.  Before the muslim poor of Europe are clothed and fed their countries are providing resources for Mosques and other such staging areas if history is to be recalled.  The Nazis invaded Austria in defence of the Germans there who were the fifth column of WWII. Politics.

Love your neighbour as yourself.

Love your enemy. Spirituality.

Justin Trudeau, our pot head leader whose intellect has been described as the ‘depth of a puddle’ actually said, “If you kill your enemy he wins.”  No. Idiot.

Love your enemy doesn’t mean let him kill you. That turns him into a murderer and you into a suicidal. Better to defend yourself from the dangerously insane. 

I was in the peace movement and often irritated by the girls who had never fought and been protected all their lives by their fathers and boyfriends and thought like any Huffington Post Bimbo that sentimentalism is going to rule. These are the all style no substance hoard of the Kardasian reality tv slut world. These girls and boys get their ethics and morality off pornhub. 

 History tells us that Homo Sapiens were the successful Human species because they wiped out their sometimes peaceful neighbours..  They killed their neighbours, destroyed any men who where a threat, turned the women into sex slaves and made the children slaves warriors. This continued till a few hundred years ago as the Muslim mode of conquer.  The Muslims in India killed 250,000 Sikhs in one day. They infiltrated the Hindu south and then with treachery and war invaded and took doing just that. The British Empire with superior naval resources established a more economic colonialism like China is doing now in Africa but leaving some autonomy over social affairs with the locals. Politics.

The Spanish won the war against the Aztec of Mexico and South America not by sheer forth. Columbus had a few hundred men and his followers who went on to conquer and steal all the gold of central and South America despite being up against against millions of  armed natives.  They won because a whole lot of people were angry at the rulers stealing their virgin daughters and killing them en mass. They welcomed the Spanish and made an unholy alliance which overthrew the rulers of the day, a blood thirsty lot who favoured ripping the heart out of the chest of living victims just for starts. Politics.

Aboriginal Plains Indians didn’t introduce scalping as Hollywood history and misinformation propaganda declared, Whites introduced scalping, but the plains Indias did favour castrating their enemies and burying them in ant hills. The native women were the best of histories’ torturers only competing in the torture Olympics with Count Vlad who spiked his victims on his lawn leaving them to die over days as their bowel acids destroyed them from with in. With the stake up their anus and gravity they dies slowly impaled ever more as they flailed about.

Not a happy history. Politics.

Not many years ago Communist Pol Pot murdered half the nation of Cambodia killing millions. His concentration camps were very effective providing food only for work and starvation resulting for any slackards. The Gulags were also an educational enterprise like Neo Pagan Nazi socialists’s  Auswitch

In the Hindu Bible, the Bhagad Gita, sometimes shortened to the Gita, Arjuna, the boy king says to Krishna the god, ‘the war is going on but the combatants are all my family.’  Krishna replied, ‘that is always the way, “so the only decision is ‘whether you participate or not’.  

In India, the Brahman, meditators, peace nicks , merchants, all had a class of body guards, the caste of warriors.  CS Lewis, the great Christian teacher writer had the British Empire and army.  Trudeau who talks shit (reminds me of my self when I taught drama, did sports, and chased women other than my wife and talked swank, but I was in my 20’s,  not nearly 50 like he is, but nonetheless very similiar to my own youthful stupidity and cupidity so very mirroringly repugnant) has a half dozen body guards.  I never had body guards. The trust fund babies always had adult baby sitters. He still has today so can talk gun control for everyone but his fraternity/sorority bro’s. The elite always have weapons, or body guards or armies.

Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.

The reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo. 

The principle protection from attack of the monk, like St. Francis, is that they had nothing to steal. The Vikings raided the Irish monasteries for the gold crosses but the individual monks were little more than target practice.  The good looking women were always raped first whether they wore a nun habit or a princess’s robes.

Jesus ‘s disciple chopped off the ear of one of his attackers who came to take Jesus. Jesus restored the ear and went with his capturer,  the established church of the day , whose coffers were being affected by his new brand teachings. 

 Religion is a brand and an industry.  Marx said ‘religion was the opiate of the masses’.  The tribe is divided into a war faction and a religious healing faction. The “hearts and minds’ approach of the war machine is to use religion and health care and economic benefits to get the people on the side of the ‘war machine’. 

 Jesus wasn’t so pacifistic as obedient and was following his father’s orders.  He was to die and besides if the authorities wanted to kill him anytime they could.

 Herod , the Jewish king had killed thousands of babies when he felt threatened, and the Romans introduced the term ‘decimate’. If anyone resisted their invasion they killed every tenth man, woman or child in the village from which the ‘terrorist/freedom fighter’ came from.  The Italians continued this into WWII.  

Jesus was not an advocate of gun control.  Stalin, Mao, Trudeau and Hitler are gun control advocates.  Jesus’ people had knives and swords otherwise the women would be raped and the children stolen. Today’s Christians prefer Colt’s Smith and Weston’s.  A really pious Christian pastor has an AR-15. 

The key o Jesus’s teaching was to be ‘slow to anger’. Forgive ‘70 x 70’ not indefinitely but a lot, a limited amount, but a lot. That said, the Quakers and Mennonites, the original hippy Christians escaped to America, served in all the most dangerous jobs in the war, as stretcher bearers and now that earth remains hostile will en mass be the first to man space ships to Mars to escape the murderous and godless.

An eye for an eye is the first law of Mercy.  If you hurt the Hay family of Scotland the whole clan hunted down every member of your tribe and killed you centuries thereafter. Today we cry ‘wipe out the enemy’s genes strain and see ourselves in defence as arbiters of the Worlds Darwin Awards. The Stuart’s are little better and the Irish collectively are as vengeful as Scottish clan individually. To this day most Scots are still suspicious of Campbells because they killed the Macdonald’s, their allies in their sleep.  Dastardly Campbells.  Cowards and whores. Politics. 

Tribes are about revenge.  

Most tribes called themselves ‘the people’. Inuit means the ‘people’.  Eskimo is the southern forest aboriginal’s name for theie northern neighbours - Eskimo means ‘fish eater’.  When the anthropologists were in Samoa they asked the tribe they encountered what they called themselves and they said ‘the people’ so they asked what they called the others who weren’t the people. “The edible ones’ they replied. Cannibals are alive and well and live among us. They are generally held in bad taste. 

Mathus said world population was controlled by starvation, war and disease.

The Modern Era has been the greatest time of history with the greatest developments, prolongation of life, reduction almost completely of starvation, disease prevention and control with greater longevity and reduced infant mortality. War continues but it’s limited.  

Thanks to the British Empire and then the AMerican Empire , Canada is relatively unique in that it has not had war on its soil for hundreds of years.  

Now Alcoholics Anonymous was said to be a ‘spiritual program’ but it’s been highly effective in the military and Americans in AA stayed sober while killing Germans and Italians inthe WWII campaigns. They weren’t into gun control or being Peace nicks back then because they’d not had television propaganda or been protected from reality by a variety of addictions offered to ‘useful idiots’ todays - tv, internet, sex of every sort, shopping,  gluttonous delight with take out and phone in, avarice wealth with stock market gambling and casino gambling. These are the best and worst of times.

Cappadoecia with it’s underground churches in the middle of Turkey and Meteora with it’s Monasteries on the tops of Greek flutes , both were over run in time. Tibet was the last escape and the Chinese Aetheist Communists wouldn’t let anyone alone. They’ve developed surveillance systems the likes of which the KGB, CIA and Staci all are envious.  Obama and Homeland Security infiltrated even the leaders of their allies. Zuckerberg is the great angriest traitor to the world of all times when it comes to confidentiality and his promises. He’s watching me right now. Everyone is under surveillance. There is nowhere to run. That’s the real message of Bin Laden. 

Steal a little and they put you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king.  Dr. Johnson

Everything is now stolen and the carbon tax is the taxing the air we breathe. Big government is huge. Big Brother and Big Sister are the Vorg. They are ‘one world government’.  A few hundred elite billionaires in the west and as many trillionairs in the Muslim dictatorships and communist aetheist dictatorships.

When I am “political’ on Facebook or in ‘debate’ I’m actually in a kind of ‘sophisticated’ ‘war game’.  I’m using language and gesture and ‘rhetoric’ and ‘logic’.  Animals have ‘mock displays’. This causes lesser beasts to back down without engaging. It’s a peaceful technique. All this ‘anti hate speech’ in fact increases war because it removes this ‘dance ‘ and ‘drama’ that causes the majority of actual encounters to be less.  Verbal warfare restricted, leads to actual warfare. The government is always into ‘divide and conquer’ increasing civil strife so that more government is  ‘necessary’.  Normal dominance hierarchies are established without bringing in the state. The whole death of Jesus is an interesting lesson in the ‘offended’s’ use of authority.  The child fighting with the sibling goes to the parents and lies. The parent engages and favouritism increases warfare.

Sports and debate are stylized warfare without carnage. Competition is central to evolution but increasingly denial looms among educational cretans confirming the old adage, ‘if you can’t do, teach’. Let’s give every kid a ribbon. Let’s reward the loser. That was Hitler’s ploy elevating the Brownshirts, todays low brow masked Antifid’s.

But the Security Council, France, Britain, China, Russia and America, the leadership of the UN is there purely to sell weapons and compete with arms and keep the others down.  The Desert STorm Arms Bazaar was a war weapon competition and the American capitalism and reward of the creative and ingenious beat out the Russian dictatorship weapons. Russians and Chinese have depended on mostly stealing technology.  The Desert Story Arms Bazzarrd beat the aetheists.  Constantine made his empire Christian because Christians were the greatest warriors and told the truth and kept secrets best. Aetheists are the worst and Muslims aren’t much better.  Corruption thrives where there is no God or where the dictator, king or committee is an autocrat. Fear drives dictatorships.  Patriotism drives democracy.

Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.  Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Spiritually, to love my enemy, I’m to think that Hitler was ‘sicker’ not evil. I’m supposed to ‘pray’ for my enemies’.  Mostly this relieves me of obsessing about them and the genetically tried and prove trait of creative vengefulness. 

On Facebook I should be kind and nice to devious elite sociopaths like Greta Thurnberg a chip off Trudeau’s shoulder. Yet I know Climate Change as a political economic lie to create more government power and to tax Canadian middle class more for the elite wasted life style of Trudeau and his ilk.

Or do I engage in ‘verbal warfare’ , debate and the dance of ‘court room’ ‘rhetoric and media rhetoric and logic much like the idea that politics is the sport of the intellectual. These are irrational times and marketting knows that 19th century reason doesn’t sell consumer good. A picture is with a thousand words. 

Or do I withdraw for my peace of mind. The monk or villagers. 

I went to sea and had 25 days away from people, alone with my dog and cat, a luxury of all time. I had a ham radio but no telepone, tv, internet. I used my satellite phone only for strict emergency communication.  I used it once to get assistance with equipment failure repair. 

I visited monasteries and saw as Thomas Merton did that they were’ communities’ .  None of this ‘fool on a hill’ thing. The last Hermit in Canada was killed by the RCMP for isolating.  You can’t get away from the state. On land I’ve been able to build my own road back into the wilderness and get a week before others followed my off road trail. I’ve hiked into the mountains and had a week or so isolation before a ‘curious’ person appears..  It’s hard to ‘retreat’. Our backs are against the wall.

Especially since China, Obama and Zuckerberg began to spy on everyone.  Effectively. 

The Canadian Supreme Court Judge wanted Transparency for the courts but the courts want everything behind closed doors.  That was the British way, a public face and a private action.  Mr. Trump promises to drain the swamp but WW2 was won as much by gay Turing as straight Patton. Vegetarian drug addict Hitler never had a chance.

We don’t even know the richest of the richest people.  Fame and Fortune. Fame and poverty can go together but Fortune can and does buy anonymity and even some degree of isolation.  The king and queen have an inner sanctum. The people are out on the street. They even closed the asylums so on the rich had their personal lunatic wards and modern dungeons. 

Spirituality and politics.  

If I am a monk I can withdraw from the politics of this world but then I am stuck still in the politics of family and monastery. I’ve been reading a bout a monk who was expelled from his monastery.

If I am a part of the world then I can engage in ‘verbal war’ but not ‘physical war’ but my country under Trudeau is using every means possible to establish a dictatorship in Canada and suing comedians and denying confidentiality to everyone is all part of a move that’s terrifying.

Jesus said ‘Do not be afraid’.

The rule is the dictator always win if freemen remain silent. Need I be afraid? A slow painful death of agin or a bad day on the cross or a bad few day with Count Vlad. The sixties series, The Prisoner, like One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest is the modern torture, the isolation chambers of jails, Quntanamo Bay detention camp, forced to listen to Canadian music day and night. 

Perhaps the war will come after I die.  I was hoping people could talk instead of fight but the Islam is a religion of peace which demands everyone be Muslim and Sharia law rule so everyone can have peace. Aetheist communism is a religion of world peace which demands that everyone be communist so there can be world peace.  

We are in the midst of a world war.  I love chess where everyone moves their peices about. I truly believe Hillary would have caused a world war because all women leaders have lead their countries to war, matriarchies historically most violent in history, but we’re doing well without world war but increasing impoverishment of the only sane class, the middle class. The destruction of the middle classs is the rule of Communism and Islam. Dictatorsships are binary with Elite and Peasants. The trinity of the three classes with a middle class of unions and professions and the elite white collar welfare and peasant blue collar welfare is being destroyed today.

But I don’t know. I really don’t know. Is it better for me to remove myself. I’m of a retirement age. Maybe let the war games begin and the alliance of England, France and China against Russia and America or even England France and China and Russia against AMerica take place. Trudeau has alligned Canada with godless communists and muderous dictators against America, our greatest ally, and today our protector.

Germany, Italy and Japan alliance of WW2 is like the Aetheist Communists, Muslims wahabees and Socialist/communist Europeans like Germany today and Brussels. America has Poland now and many other allies like other democracies though Canada under Trudeau no longer is voting for democracy but rather going for Climate change destruction of economy while China and India build more and more coal mines and use excess oil.  

How can I love my neighbour and talk with idiots. Should I hold my tongue and live in fear. Canadians are known for their apathy and servility which masquerades as polite society but appears more like the mannerisms of inmates of jails or asylums. 

Gandhi was highly destructive with passive aggressive strikes and aggressive civil disobedience. If you stand up you make yourself a target. 

Can spirituality and politics coexist.Can a spiritual person be a politician today? However does one do it? Spirituality is the opposite of cowardice but there is nowhere left to retreat. 

Please God guide me. Let me be true but not so true as to be a martyr. 

Mostly I want to say Beam me up Scotty.  Uhura, Spock, Bonhoeffer  St. Joan of Ark, Anyone?

Morning Journal December

My near death, exotic Asian male cold, that had me on three antibiotics and coughing non stop 24 hours producing the colours of my forefathers, persists like a nagging collection agent.  I slept through the night after a weekend of mostly sleeping and resting and doing nothing of note except entertaining my dog, reading and taking care of business.

I returned from India sick a week ago and have only been able to complete half days at the clinics, my coughing, brought on my talking stress, soul sucking, anxiety, whatever, begins to worry the waiting room and I leave.  

Meanwhile someone has introduced Christmas and I’m still back in Halloween and Remembrance Day.  I didn’t make it to church or may have had the advent candles to kick me into the present. I’ve been jet lagged worse than I can remember. My back and shoulder hurt. My knee is a whole lot better. One joint improves and another atheletic traumatic memory takes over it’s place. My body and I have entered a bargaining phase. I beg and cajole activity when a lot of the time all it wants is the couch.  “The couch! The couch!” My knee used to scream but not it’s just my back and throat whimpering.

We’ve been discussing chronic pain recently.  There continues to be this ‘acceptance’ of ‘physical illness’ as if ‘physical illness’ is ‘without blame and shame’.  Meanwhile I consider everything psychosomatic and ask myself constantly what have I done to cause this, how can I change this, what can I do to make it better. I avoid seeing MRI”s of my joints because they invariably look permanently damaged while I know we’re self healing beings. Neuts grow their severed tails. We’re constantly killing cancer cells on a daily basis. My skin is renewing itself ever matter of weeks and my blood is replaced every couple of months, all the cells renew every 7 years.  It’s a dynamic milieu but my binary limited ego mind reduces everything to good and evil or broken and fixed and if shown an MRI of my back, would simply act as a “NOCEBO”>

A nocebo is a ‘curse’. 

A placebo is a ‘blessing’. In the materialistic world of aetheist medicine , placebo or ‘self healing’ has been denigrated.  The consumer medicine group can’t bill for it and the heiarachical world we live in with big and little, leaders and slaves, and all the hidden agendas, survival of the fittest, priviledge and blame and shame, placebo is denigrated. I believe everything is self healing. I believe as a doctor I’m facilitating the process. I’m like the artist who says he’s letting the sculpture out of the rock. I’m a gardener weeding. I believe God wants good and I’m doing God’s work. So I believe that we have a whole collection of self limiting thoughts and beliefs that stop us from levitating, flying, and saint like behaviour. We hear and know of these individuals but then our propaganda denigrators education system and media constantly ‘discount’ miracles. Miracles and the sacred are going on all the time.

I’m not paying attention.

I’m easily distracted by lust, gluttony,anger, fear, selfishness. I’m struggling daily to be a better person. I look back and see I’ve been writing and saying and doing that for decades with limited benefit. My intention has been perfection and God’s will but like St. Paul said, “I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I want to do.’

I”m aware I’ve overweight and would benefit from hours in the gym. I listened to some people in a coffee shop, these ladies and young men, talking about their daily gym times 1-2 hours. “What the fuck are you, professional athletes!”   I encouraged my patient to meditate 15 minutes a day. She’d come from a retreat where they wanted her to meditate 2 hours a day. “What the fuck do they think I do all day!”

So I’m supposed to write the great Canadian novel. it was supposed to be written decades ago. Instead i blogged and journaled and wasted away in oblivion bitching and complaining.

My alarm goes off early each morning. Why is it dark outside!!!!!  The alarm song is ‘It is well with my soul ».  The ipad has the ‘Creed.’It’s a good way to wake. 

I was dreaming of India. I was with a group of people meditating and having coffee and generally hanging out. I often find myself in churches and holy places in my dreamS.  

Gilbert my Guru was beside me . He’s taken to liking the electric warming blanket and lies up against me and it.  Would never admit it. Old dog.

So I started the day great with a hug and belly rub. I gave Gilbert the belly rub.  A lot of my life I’ve woken with gorgeous women in my bed. I’ve looked over and been shocked at the beauty of my bed mate. It continues now even some days, though Gilbert is the constant. I’m really blessed. Now I’ve a happy little dog who is blind and having a bad back now  accepts being helped down from the bed. He has a combination of a clean clothes pile piles suitcases and foam stairs.  He gets up but likes a hand down.

I meditated. I speak to God. I pray. I have this ongoing relationship with God that’s kind of authoritarian 911 guy, a bit like my father as a kid, and a bit like my mother and best of all when he’s a friend. I like the song I have a friend in Jesus.  I just have difficulty relating to this guy’s guy who hiked everywhere in robes and the dessert. I sometimes find a more fitting relationship figure that’s less austere.  It’s my perception. God within. God will come again. I like the name Lord. « L iveor D ie. » I find the God path is life.  Evil spelt backwards is good. I’m reaching.  I’m trying to awaken that within me that has always known god, The child within.  I believe life is a forgetting.  Then we die and we’re reunited.

In my prayers I prayed for my teachers, and mentors and family and friends. It can’t hurt. I have been blessed and so often I feel alienated and alone and detached and afraid.  

I like being alone in the woods. I miss sailing.  I miss the distance from government. I couldn’t have been awake a half hour when I was thinking about the Climate Change nonsense and the diabolical tax fraud claiming to tax us as punishment to redistribute wealth to Equatorial Countries. I’m freezing my butt off. I had to pay $60 for propane to heat the place this week. It’s so cold here. This is the coast. It’s the best it gets in Canada. I spend decades in Winnipeg and northern Canada.  Meanwhile I’ve just returned from where the sun always shines and the people can live comfortably on the street. That doesn’t happen here. 

I’m always upset when I feel someone is taking my money or earnings. I work really hard. I have got up and gone to work and worked 12 hours a day all my life and looked around at white collar and blue collar welfare, people coasting and wanting me to support them. Meanwhile I like supporting people I choose. But I don’t like the government stealing from me to support their nefarious cronies. That’s my viewpoint. It’s worse in the Equatorial countries. Just read the history of Libéria.  All the bullshit about ‘racism’ in the Media and no one is talking about race. It’s not race or gender.It’s good and evil and corruption. Like this massive redistribution scheme to destroy Canadians and I think it’s occurring because our leader is a coward and a slut.  I think the screws were put to him by the big boys in the UN> Take our slaves and peasants or we will cut off gas to Quebec.  We won’t sell our goods cheap says China unless you get on board with forgetting about the Hong Kong freedom movement.  

I think we should be allied with America. They’re the best bet. Trudeau’s father joined with France . France contributed about 1% trade with us while America contributed 80 %.  It’s all above my pay grade.

But there I was meditating, at peace and getting ready to go to work.Thinking politics and bullshit.

Not gratitude.

I really have to focus on gratitude. Praise and thanksgiving.I’ve got this great parka. I know how to live in 40 below zero weather. It’s only 4 below here. I’ve this magnificent dog. I roasted a whole boodle of green Ethiopian coffee beans and had the best coffee. I actually had instant porridge and had prepared for my going to work by boiling eggs on the weekend. I had a delicious boiled egg for breakfast.  It’s a paradise. I’ve this great little dog who always looks for the best and just wants to sniff fee fee ass, eat treats, and drink toilet water, and piss everywhere. Life is a dream. My GURU Gilbert.  

So I’ve got to get showered and dressed. I have running hot water, great propane heat warmth and electricity warmth.I »ve this internet connection to the world, friends all over, I’ve this ipad computer that is beyond NASA a decade a go. I’ve a Dick Tracy watch. I know there’s no intelligent life in the capitals of the world and keep asking to be beamed up and one day I will dematerialize and appear somewhere else. God will take me home. I will meet my mother and father, brother,  aunts and uncles and grandparents again and the friends who have gone before. Today I’ve got to get suited up and try to be kind and nice and do the next right thing.I’ve got this great little car. I remember when I played all day with a dinky toy and thought life would begin when I had an actual car. Now I do. I have everything but my mind forgets. I am blessed and instead I focus on the weak knee or the computer program that bounced me off it earlier this morning. I focus on the fact that I had intended to start writing a book but instead babbled. 

Oh well.

Thank you Jesus. Thank you Lord. Thank you Creator. Thank you God. I will put on the armor of the lord, remember St. Francis, God beneath, God beside, God above, God in front, God behind, protect me and be thou my shining light. May I do thy will.  Let me know thy will. Thy will be done. Lift up my eyes. Raise me on eagles wings. Thank you Jesus!

Mumbai Pictures

We only had a day in Mumbai, enough time to check into the Emerald Hotel and eat a great meal from their vegetarian restaurant. I walked around the neighbourhood having lots of flashbacks and reminiscences of when I’d been in Bombay about 35 years before. 

I’d taken the trip as a reward to myself for completing psychiatry. It was also a question whether I’d come back. I think I might have been socially suicidal at the time.  I know my family was worried but I sorted things out in my mind and returned. I was in a divorce dealing with trauma and rebuilding a life.  I’d divorce again, quit alcohol and smoke, get more degrees, see thousands of patients, sail across an ocean,  and continue to write and take photographs. I was drinking and smoking tobacco and dope, a young intellectual, confused and suffering with a lot of pathos, seeking God.  Here I was back again not drinking and not smoking, definitely more mature, and more with God than not. 

I was back in Mumbai with a horrible bronchitis , popping antibiotics and coughing green sputum. I was exhausted with a couple of nights of not sleeping and flights and coughing all night. But it was good.  Laura liked the Best Western Emerald Hotel, the family owned boutique hotel. She liked the view from the window and the birds.  We joked that she was becoming one of the “neighborhood watch” grandmothers. She napped while I explored.

I felt safe in Mumbai. I have so few recollections from 35 years ago but those I have are so poignant, the Indian friends I made, the wonderful Chicago businessman, the doctor who worked with Saint Theresa’s , Singing Hey Jude harmonies in the carriage ride in the park, the airport crisis, the Sheik, dancing, the hole in the wet dirty floor toilet,  Elephanta Island, discussing Buddhism with the Indian doctor, visitting the hospital with the psychiatrist, lunching with him, doing consults, the husband and wife doctor team, the Bombay Bicycle Club, and walking. I walked everywhere enjoying the safety and friendliness of this foreign country where people spoke English and were so engaging. Here I was walking again and enjoying all the sights and sounds and the colours and the variety of people. It’s that Indian and English thing that is Mumbai for me. I didn’t feel it so much in Delhi despite New Delhi.  Delhi is more like New York while Mumbai is a bit of London to me.  It’s all that crazy mix of India. The Juxtaposions of rich and poor, fast and slow,  modern and ancient,  all side by side and mixed together.  

After walking, and a Tuk Tuk ride back,  getting antibiotics at the chemist,  lozenges and listerine gargle I left with Laura , I took a taxi ride around town eventually ending at Asian Crafts. There I bought gifts  for Laura and I to bring home. Laura was pleased. I was glad to have had a bit of tour. We repacked our bags and had a few hours of sleep despite my continued cough, plugged sinuses and tight chest.  

Early morning taxi. Long flight home. I was sad to leave Mumbai. I’d gladly return. I’d only planned on staying a week when I’d come in the late 80’s  and stayed a couple of months, there just being so much to see and do. 

Now I want to return to India.  I’d fly into Mumbai and head to the Punjab and wander down to the Ganja, maybe visit Tibet.  I could spend a lifetime in India and keep coming back. 

I was glad to be returning to Canada though. I really missed Gilbert, the clean air, and the outdoors. White Spot.  I also like my friends and family here so, full of the exotic and strange, I was glad to return to and appreciate the familial and mundane. Laura remains a wonderful companion. These are some of the pictures I took there.

Home after India

We flew from Cochin to Mumbai arriving at The Emerald Hotel early afternoon. Laura was tired and happy to stay in while I joyfully walked around my neighborhood reminiscing on my last time in Bombay 35 years before. I’d walked everywhere then. Now I enjoyed the walking again, enjoying Bombay, with its mixed English/Indian feel and it’s sense of history and modern.  I love the juxtapositions of this city.  I’d have a last day shop for gifts too.

I was coughing. I’d begun a fever and was producing green sputum.  The air had been bad in Delhi. I’d picked up a dry cough there from the smoke but it only became productive my last day in Kochi.  I began the Zithromax I had for diarrhea.  In Mumbai at the chemist I picked up doxycycline but it too had no affect on the fever. I read that there’s a 70% resistance for animal and human infections in India due to the over use of antibiotics. I had Clindamycin left over from the dentist and though I was still coughing sputum on the plane home the fever broke, the profusive sweating stopped, my sinus cleared and the sputum turned white in 24 hours. 

No one complained about the 50 or so babies on the flight from Heathrow to Vancouver, 10 hours of misery, because the fat old white guy’s cough was disturbing everyone’s sleep. 

At one point I couldn’t breathe with my nose, was claustrophobic and couldn’t seem to get a breath, added to my claustrophobic panic that sometimes adds to my flying experience.  I had an aisle seat so could stand up and did. The feeling passed.  My racing heart slowed. I was able to breathe slowly.  

Back in my bed I loved home.  Safe. I slept.  Waking to breathe but loving my own bed.  In the morning Laura left and I tried to return to work.  No such luck. A couple of hours and I was drained and the coughing which had been better returned from deep in my chest.

It was idyllic to be re united with Gilbert. I love that little bundle of joy.  He barked and did his turns then stayed close and at home cuddled. I slept for hours and days cancelling another day of clinic. I walked Gilbert slowly.  Everything was slow.  Time even slowed. My mind was mush. Jet lag.  I just moved through the motions. Like getting back in sync with an out of sync world.  I liked the familiarity., It was almost like India was a dream.  I saw some patients and was pleased I was of use, signing prescriptions, filling out forms, reassuring.  I was delighted my patient still lived who I’d feared would die. I spoke with some who seemed to be uplifted with the contact. I liked that.  I made it through most of a day before the coughing and fatigue took their toll. I returned home, walked Gilbert then slept through another evening and night. I was able to sit in the hot tub one evening. I showered and dressed and picked up fish and chips at White Spot. I’d thought of White Spot fish and chips in India. Now I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Friday morning I did my tour of duty seeing lots of people for a routine repetitive general practitioner type purpose. I felt good with the duty. I liked the duty.  I like being dutiful. It’s not a popular concept. But I was paying my way.  Going to the post office, going to the bank, paying bills.  I was astonished at how quickly I was connecting.

Laura fell asleep dressed for a play we’d planned.  Christmas Presence. It’s as stooge. I’d thought it was the guitars and stories at Pacific Theatre.  Stooge was great but required attention. Ron Reed is a genius. I nodded off fighting coughing and sucking on sedating lozenges. I felt I’d missed a lot but I’d been there. Filled a seat. Suited up. Showed up. Had felt moments of Ron’s brilliance but despite second act coffee was fading in and out. I’m not in this time zone.  Glad to have been there. Feeling it was therapeutic. The Christmas doesn’t seem to be in place.I’m in India and still getting over Halloween and Remembrance days. Holidays and themes are racing at me. I’m stumbling forward on a Delhi Road.

Laura was beautiful.  Pearl necklace. Sweater. Polka dot dress.  We had after theatre dinner at West Restaurant on Granville.. The consommé was a taste sensation.  I loved the salmon steak. Even the bread and butter tasted wonderful.  I was sorry to let her off at her apartment and drive home alone. I’d been listening to Daya Mata satsanga’s about SRF and Paramahansa Yogananda. The driving time is not wasted.  Before sleep, I read another western, the good man theme.  Simple.

On Facebook the chaos of politics competes with the spirituality of dogs and cats and humor. I enjoy my friends.I wonder about my snide remarks. I’ve increasing doubts about this clever place of expression where I make comments about Justin Trudeau, elite stoner, playboy, name brand, intellect of a puddle, above the law. He represents everything that offends me. Un Canadian and the lies.  But then I think ‘some are sicker than others’. I need to pray for him as we needed to pray for Hitler and Stalin. They’re sick not bad.  I admit I think of the evil forces and need to be less binary.  

I actually slept more in the day, but cleaned the sticky galley flor, shook out the rug, did filing, walked Gilbert, a couple of times, got banking done, picked up mail, generally took care of business, slowly, steadily, with naps. I roasted Ethiopian coffee, did all the actions bringing me back into life. Syncing.

Now I’m early for a doctors meeting. I missed my home group this week, collapsing and sleeping through it after a half day of work fatigued me to the point of sickness. Now I’m here early and ready to go now.  A walk and a little thought and I’ll settle down to the warm feeling of welcome in this group of doctors I admire and am thankful they include me.  

Thank you Jesus. 

Sohum Spa, Crowne Plaza, Kochi, Keralla, India

I just returned from the most incredible massage I’ve ever had.  The Indian gentleman was truly a master.  I actually trained formally as a swedish masseuse and learned basic chiropractic techniques when I was a family physician.  I performed many massages and physical treatments until a quarter century ago when I simply stopped.  I’d gone to all the best masseuse in the day as the way to improve technique and train is to experience a variety of massages.  I’ve known deep, Swedish, Acupressure, Thai and a variety of others.

I almost died when I had the masseuse of a NFLfootball team  He was obviously not used to little muscles and almost pierce my body with his iron fingers. On another occasion, one woman couldn’t understand that I really wanted ‘just a massage’ as her skills lay elsewhere.

This was interesting in that it began with me sitting up and him doing a chair massage on my neck and face. Then I lay on my stomach to have the most advanced back, leg, foot, hand, arm, shoulder massage possible.  Technically one is moving lymph fluid back to the heart while also tapping trigger points of muscle tension. He did that but in addition had moves which I expect are related to chakra mobilization. Some of what he did reminded me of acupressure techniques I’d once learned.  

He was also using these long deep strokes made famous in Swedish massage but adding a number of variations which again seemed distinctly different and I assume are the ayurvedic components. It was all simply wonderful.  

I think I looked like Gilbert looks after the girls give him a massage. My ears were floppy and my eyes rolling about in my head.  I was kind of whoozy and he assisted me standing.I was directed to a steam room with a shower. I was told how to turn the steam off and advised that it would be best not to use the soaps but to leave the oils on. I could soap up if I wanted but best not to.

 I didn’t last long in the steam room. Somewhere I wrote of my experience in the steam bath in Istanbul, the Hamman.  I consider that one of my near death experiences. The other was the time I went with the girls to Calistoga in California where the hot mud baths promised to remove all one’s toxins. The girls, true beauties in the day, came out looking refreshed and alive whereas I felt half dead. I need my toxins. After a cheese burger and a beer I revived somewhat.  

When the steam got hot I turned if off and showered.  Dressing I can never understand how I can put a good rifle grouping in a target at 300 yards but can’t seem to get my foot through the hole in my shorts without falling over.

The cost was miniscule compared to Canadian massage and spa treatment. No wonder people come to India for Ayurvedic Medicine. I simply wished I’d taken advantage of the spa on the first day rather than the last.  Laura didn’t want the spa, enjoying being away from people. Her greatest joy has been watching the river out the wall to ceiling window.   She loves the view and all that’s happening, the boats and birds, colours, lightning  and shadows.   

“Three eagles are circling,” she just told me when I came in. 

“Something smells like curry.” she said.

“I think it’s me.” I said.

“It’s a nice curry smell.” she replied. “But its’ making me hungry.'

“Ill order room service."

’That would be great. I’d like to pack for the plane tomorrow. You really are making me hungry."

We’re waiting for curried fish and mushroom pizza and more lime soda drinks.  I’m feeling wonderful.  Kind of like that changeling on Star Trek.  I just need a bucket.  I have the consciousness of play do.

  

India - journalling

I live in small spaces usually. For a decade or more I lived on a sailboat and then in RV’s.  When I travel I don’t feel guilty for having large rooms with nice views.  I do this with Laura along mostly.  On my own I’m not as likely to choose luxury but truly I do appreciate it.  With Laura I’m happier to be in the room that ranging all over trying to see and experience everything.

This last few days here in the Crown Plaza has been like my university days when the work was easy, light patient loads, lots of meetings, lots of time in the office and long vacation and study times paid for by the university or government.  In private practice I only make money seeing patients individually and when I’m not at work I’m not making money. Further other than the tax ‘write off’ for study abroad I am not paid to attend conferences in general.  I used to be a speaker and get handsomely paid but frankly it’s not appealed so much. When last I was a conference speaker I couldn’t relax and enjoy other’s presntations till mine was over.  This conference was so full of original ideas and material  I was glad I could give it my undivided attention.

I like being surrounded by specialists in my field. In my work I’m blessed to be around generalists but thoroughly enjoy communing with ‘my own’ odd and peculiar tribe who sees things in a wholly different way I did when I was a generalist  I’m actually disappointed, and joined 'like minded doctors" because my field was facing  ‘reductionism’ and coopted by corporate industry and government. The patient was decentralized and the doctor was no longer a professional but a ‘health care worker’.  Increasingly, as in all communist countries, the lowest common denominator professionally, but the one who espouses the “fashionable politic’,  is being put in charge.  Health care is likened to other consumer items and mostly seen as an ‘entertainment’ ‘commodity’ in the ’service industry’.  When I talk about morbidity and mortality and 'change' in my community I'm looked at oddly whereas here internationally it's what it's all about. It really is but 'lies' are more profitable. 

I’ve left all those negative thoughts behind for weeks uplifted by the science, research and psychiatry and medicine being spear headed around the world.  

Our life expectancy is increasing.  Thanks mostly to infant and child care and public health measures like clean water and vaccinations people are living longer. A friend has developed a heart condition which mere years ago would have caused early death but now responds to treatment development in my life time.  So many I know with cancer are livings decades longer than they would have a decade ago thanks to advances in medicine.

I’m treating depression and stopping suicide and addiction and extending life while improving the quality of life as well.  Not only am I treating present conditions I’m preventing worse future outcomes and the spread of disease. It’s so uplfiting to be among epidemiologists and scientists rather than beurocrats and politicians whose motives are corrupted by power and money.
I’m not saying that we’re immune but each day I experienced that thrill I had when I first began in medicine wanting to help.  I have helped.  As doctors and scientists and clinicians we have helped, a great deal.

The engineers who developed a cheap efficient reliable 125 cc Honda motorcycle helped just as the first to build a bicycle did.  The world is a better place for technology and science despite the fearmongering and Luddite litanies.  So much emotionalism these day in the news and so little logic, science or truth.

I’m here looking out the window at a magnificent view of the backwaters of Kochi, Keralla.  That beautiful woman, Laura, is in the next room having her bath. She does love the quiet and alone time of bathing.  I expect her morning routine saved her when her children were small.  Even Gilbert sometimes sits at the door waiting for her to come out so he can play with her. 

We’ve booked a car for the airport for tomorrow at 530 am. We’re flying to Bombay where we’ll board an international flight home.  We hope to buy trinkets and stuff there.  In an hour we’re taking a boat ride along the backwaters, a famed tourist activity. I’m looking forward to seeing the fawna and flora. From our 14th floor window,  we’ve been watching the boats go by below us. Now it’s our turn.  When I think of the boat rides I’ve done over the decades of travel I’m impressed with yet another. 

Friends are retired.  I actually miss my work. I miss the staff and the routine. I miss duty and service. I really feel doing medicine is ‘right livelihood’ in the Buddhist 8 fold path. it’s also what Jesus and other saints did, healing. I’ve thought of myself as a healer. Being coopted by courts and insurance as a lie detectors and to validate their money occupations I've felt less enthusiasm.
Hearing of another our age dying and once again reading the philosophies of passing through, I realize I’ve become attached to ‘creatures’ yet again. Just like I have to empty my storage locker I’ve re acquired some mental baggage, laughing to myself at my ‘future plans’ when I hear a friend died who never did learn to live for today. I’m living okay.
When I travel I keep returning to my first love of being with Gilbert by the side of Canadian stream. I really like my truck and camper with the motorcycle on the front and a boat of some sort along. Laura likes this too. My sailboat is another truly happy place despite the countless near death experiences.  Countless Canadian guys with campers and trucks  can’t be wrong. My father loved this life in retirement, camping with his van and his canoe, fishing.  My brother had his house on the lake and went kayaking.
I’ve these books to write and nothing to stop me but general apathy and laziness, nothing a writer isn’t well versed in.  I need to exercise more, watch tv less, eat better, and meditate and pray more deeply.  This trip completed the research I needed for one. 

Otherwise life is good.  It’s certainly been a wonderful time of self care. I love learning.  I love museums and libraries.  I love nature. I’m looking forward to seeing the birds alongthe river.
I’m enjoying photography. The Iphone 11 has been a godsend and the Nikon Coolpix 1000 has worked out very well The Gopro 7 Black has been alot of fun. it’s often seemed like one is down and I’ve been glad to have two back ups. It’s not like I’ll have a chance to get another picture next week.  

Breakfast was perfect this morning. The unbeatable cappuccino and a man made me a perfect omelette as I watched.  Other mornings, the breakfast comes with the room and is a huge smorgasbord, I’ve enjoyed mostly East Indian food, but today I enjoyed omelette and hashbrowns pancakes, yogurt, and pastry.  Decadence.  A lot of serious travellers survive on the one meal aday they get with their rooms, maybe having a light snack late in the day.  The nutrition has been great.
I’ve been a lot more active than normal and enjoying food more.Too often I eat as a nervous addiction watching thriller movies.  Here Laura and I actually share a sit down meal and we mostly resist looking at our phones and if we do share with the other what we’re finding amusing.  I love the amusing bits on facebooks.  Funny dog and cat and burro videos, pictures of friends vacationing, baby pictures.  The politics doesn’t change and bores more now that the dictator had taken control and is setting in motion the destruction of Canada as a democracy and land of the brave and free.  The lies are so thick but the baby pictures and kittens and puppies off set the gloom and doom.  

I am so thankful to God and creation.  I’m not lucky. I’m blessed.  Thank you Jesus. Thank you God of Gods. Thank you Holy Spirit. Thank ‘god of my understanding.

Guide me today and be with me and watch over , protect and aid my family friends and patients.  Thank you lord.