I just heard on the radio that for the last one hundred years girls have done consistently better than boys in school, and...I hope you are sitting down...in all subjects. Who knew? Or rather, why has it taken it this long, a century, for them to admit it? I have always known this, and I bet you have too, gentle reader, whether you be gentleman, lady, or other.
Who else remembers as I do that throughout school the girls were always the best students. They paid better attention, were listening to the teacher instead of goofing off, did their homework well, did great and well presented projects and usually pulled most of the A's. On TV (I'm thinking of the Sixties) we were presented with quite a different image of women: dumb blondes, ditzes and sex bombs, submissive (if scheming and passive-aggressive) housewives, and house moms who gleefully accepted their inferior status and taught their own daughters the same.
My most intelligent friends (sorry guys) have always been women. I have come to believe that my male gender has knocked a few points off my own IQ status. Why. even England's best, smartest and most level headed, as well as long-lived, monarchs have been all women.
I have been calling myself a feminist since I was in my early twenties. Throughout my life my best friends have often been women and most of them I have always admired and respected as perhaps not more intelligent than me, though I'm sure some of them are, but certainly brighter than a lot of my male friends. (Okay, even if I am bright I'm not exactly humble. Or truthful.)
It has always been, to me, self-evident, that women are smarter, stronger (even physically if you factor in pregnancy and childbirth, not to mention that monthly nuisance), more rational, more peaceful and more careful of details. There are men who are like this as well. Ghandi was a man. So was Martin Luther King. So was Jesus Christ. But little has been written about Ghandi's and Mr. King's wives (though his widow, Coretta Scott King has done a lot to change this trend, but only since her husband's untimely death) and we know precious little about Mary Magdalene or the other women connected to Our Lord, and of course that was a different time that was not at all kind to women and these things were almost always written and recorded by men.
I'm not sure how many of the men whose intelligence is inferior to women but I'll bet you pesos to tamales that the ratio, if we ever learn it, is going to embarrass an awful lot of people. Anyway your guess is as good as mine. Of course these are rather broad categories and I know that I am making sweeping generalizations here, but really don't expect me to know any better. Being a man I may not be the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer.
On the other hand, I don't mean to brag, but my IQ does put me in the top two per cent. And if you believe this may I also remind you that men, as well as being dumber, are also usually liars.
Wednesday 30 April 2014
Tuesday 29 April 2014
What Are You Insinuating?
Actually, I don't insinuate, or as I told one of my bosses today (one of many), if I have anything to say to her she's going to get it served straight up. I still have a job, in case you're wondering. What we were talking about was whistling and noise sensitivity. I am quite noise sensitive, especially to the high pitched pigs being slaughtered squealing of children in the playground and prolonged whistling (which is to say, prolonged beyond five seconds). She, my boss, immediately began to apologize for her sometimes frequent whistling, which on occasion I have noted, but today that would have been the furthest thing from my mind. I told her that even if it does bother me I'm not going to tell you. You're my boss. I was again reminded that I live in a culture where it is still not considered proper to say what you think. So everyone insinuates, beats around the bush, and hints and evades because Canadians do not do directness well and we still largely are pusillanimous (you'll find it in the dictionary) and passive aggressive.
These are traits I have never developed or cultivated. I could blame, or credit, my mother for this, who always spoke her mind. Or the effects of my development and faith as a teen age Jesus Freak. We always tried to speak the truth, not always in love, but our ideal, our objective, was to learn this. Hinting, insinuating, were considered dishonest and cowardly. Sinful.
Even long after the Jesus People disintegrated I continued on my quest towards full transparency and brute honesty. Even now, no matter what I do to soften the impact, others at times still find me blunt, tactless. I do not mean to be, and I struggle hard to consider other people's feelings, but it seems to be beyond my ability to speak anything but the truth except for extreme situations where personal survival or the wellbeing of others have called for concealment or a creative handling of the facts.
In the course of my walk with God I have always lived as though hidden and concealed from the culture I live in. I never learned to lie. I never learned to conceal and now I find myself having to know when to say nothing, when saying anything at all will cause nothing but trouble. But this sometimes too can be cowardly. Thinking of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, his martyrs beginning with Stephen and so many others who did not shy from speaking truth to power and suffering the consequences I am cautioned to not escape from this ultimate cost of discipleship.
I am not comparing myself to them and I know that more often than not my truthful utterances must be anything but inspired and the consequences that I suffer have often been well deserved. But not always. And as I mentioned to a friend today who raised the question that perhaps I should be a little more careful sometimes about what I right (I mean to say "write". How's that for a Freudian slip?) in my blog, given my inevitable bluntness, because people are going to misunderstand and get upset. But I think it's worth the price. Yes, as I replied to my friend, buttons at times are going to be pressed and it is important to remember that people, well, all of us, are seldom ever really rational in our behaviour. We tend to react emotionally without thinking, even when we think that we are thinking. Dontcha think?
These are traits I have never developed or cultivated. I could blame, or credit, my mother for this, who always spoke her mind. Or the effects of my development and faith as a teen age Jesus Freak. We always tried to speak the truth, not always in love, but our ideal, our objective, was to learn this. Hinting, insinuating, were considered dishonest and cowardly. Sinful.
Even long after the Jesus People disintegrated I continued on my quest towards full transparency and brute honesty. Even now, no matter what I do to soften the impact, others at times still find me blunt, tactless. I do not mean to be, and I struggle hard to consider other people's feelings, but it seems to be beyond my ability to speak anything but the truth except for extreme situations where personal survival or the wellbeing of others have called for concealment or a creative handling of the facts.
In the course of my walk with God I have always lived as though hidden and concealed from the culture I live in. I never learned to lie. I never learned to conceal and now I find myself having to know when to say nothing, when saying anything at all will cause nothing but trouble. But this sometimes too can be cowardly. Thinking of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, his martyrs beginning with Stephen and so many others who did not shy from speaking truth to power and suffering the consequences I am cautioned to not escape from this ultimate cost of discipleship.
I am not comparing myself to them and I know that more often than not my truthful utterances must be anything but inspired and the consequences that I suffer have often been well deserved. But not always. And as I mentioned to a friend today who raised the question that perhaps I should be a little more careful sometimes about what I right (I mean to say "write". How's that for a Freudian slip?) in my blog, given my inevitable bluntness, because people are going to misunderstand and get upset. But I think it's worth the price. Yes, as I replied to my friend, buttons at times are going to be pressed and it is important to remember that people, well, all of us, are seldom ever really rational in our behaviour. We tend to react emotionally without thinking, even when we think that we are thinking. Dontcha think?
Monday 28 April 2014
My Father
I am not going to mention his name here, partly to protect his memory and also to protect the feelings of any family members who might stumble across my blog. His surname is not the same as mine since I legally changed my name in 1995 as indicated in an earlier post. This I believe was the point at which he disowned me. We did not discontinue contact and I still thought of him as my father. To me it wasn't a personal strike against him that I changed my name but a desire to secure an identity that did not involve my biological family. Rather than saying "I disown you" I was stating "I own myself."
On the whole I think that he always hated me, our truce in the eighties and nineties notwithstanding. When I was a child he began to sexually molest me I think after it became clear to my teachers at school that I was a gifted child with an above average IQ. My father did not like intelligent or educated people. He didn't trust them and that one of his sons would turn into such for him was an unforgiveable affront.
My father had a hard life. His family was poor and growing up during the Great Depression and the Second World War he had to leave school very early in order to work. He did well as a working man and was always able to provide well for his family.
He always favoured my brother, older than me by three years. My only sibling was the child he wanted and he never disguised his pride in my brother. As well as periodically abusing me sexually my father, an alcoholic, would taunt me with cruel names such as Elephant Belly (I was overweight) and Super Crab, which he would spare for when his name calling reduced me to tears.
The divorce nearly destroyed him. Twice he attempted suicide with pills and liquor. When I was thirteen I visited him in hospital. He was conscious, lying in bed and crying. As he recovered, with pressure from my mother, he tried to befriend me. He soon gave up then disappeared from my life for three years, except Christmas and one unfortunate visit when I visited him and he was drunk. I was fifteen at the time. Lying on the couch, poached with whisky and beer he was semi conscious and asked me to kiss him on the forehead before I left. Remembering when he tried to slow dance with me one night at home when Mom was out working and I pushed him back, calling him a "homo" (he let me go but ordered me to never call him that again) as well as his unwarranted touching when I was younger, I shrank away and he left me alone. It was a Sunday afternoon in November and I took the bus to English Bay where I stood on the beach near the water's edge trying to compose my emotions.
At seventeen, Mom farmed me to my father and his girlfriend so she could move to another town with her new boyfriend. I lasted there four months, narrowly avoided a beating by escaping barefoot and hitch hiking from Richmond into Vancouver where friends sheltered me for the night. I was kicked out and went to stay with my mother and her new boyfriend, a violent alcoholic with a criminal background (he was serving a sentence at the time in a minimum facility) and I twice had to bring in police to rescue my mother from getting the shit beat out of her.
When I finished high school that year I had no option but to leave. Mom sold the family home a year and a half before, no relatives would take me in so I stayed with friends, found a job in a factory and my own apartment. My father offered the occasional guilt offering.
Very slowly, under pressure from my mother, my father and I tried to develop a friendship from the late seventies (when I was in my early twenties) till her death from cancer at the age of sixty in 1991. He was sobre then and for a while we actually liked each other, but as friends.
I still wanted my father. He did not want a son.
He was kind enough to shelter me part time while I was homeless and cruel enough to emotionally abuse me. When I finally got away and found affordable housing I saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with post traumatic stress disorder, brought on by my father's sexual and emotional abuse.
He is dead now, my father. I lost contact with him in 2001, then the next year I entered therapy and couldn't see him. Two years later, while still in therapy I tried to contact him but without success. No one in the family contacted me and I didn't know where any of them were. To them I was and remain dead.
In 2012, in February, an aunt, a sister of my mother's phoned me. Lanice my step cousin, whom I recently memorialized here following her death last month from cancer had given her my phone number. The conversation was brief. Among other things she told me my father died from Alzheimer's three years earlier. This past April 24 was the fifth anniversary of his death. I have not spoken since to my aunt, who is pushing ninety and may no longer be alive for all I know.
I believe that my father, favouring my older brother, was unconsciously driven by a primal and demonic force to undermine and destroy me so that my sibling would retain pre-eminence and prosper. My brother followed suit by frequently beating me savagely then ultimately rejecting and abandoning me. They helped make me ill with post traumatic stress disorder and this in many ways disabled and hobbled me. They did not break my spirit.
I am well and recovered now. I love them both and I have forgiven them and moved on. My father I may meet again in the after life and perhaps my brother as well. Gladly, and with peace, love and joy in my heart I walk alone, but full of the love of God and surrounded by a company of angels and saints. I have friends.
More than anything, I have peace.
On the whole I think that he always hated me, our truce in the eighties and nineties notwithstanding. When I was a child he began to sexually molest me I think after it became clear to my teachers at school that I was a gifted child with an above average IQ. My father did not like intelligent or educated people. He didn't trust them and that one of his sons would turn into such for him was an unforgiveable affront.
My father had a hard life. His family was poor and growing up during the Great Depression and the Second World War he had to leave school very early in order to work. He did well as a working man and was always able to provide well for his family.
He always favoured my brother, older than me by three years. My only sibling was the child he wanted and he never disguised his pride in my brother. As well as periodically abusing me sexually my father, an alcoholic, would taunt me with cruel names such as Elephant Belly (I was overweight) and Super Crab, which he would spare for when his name calling reduced me to tears.
The divorce nearly destroyed him. Twice he attempted suicide with pills and liquor. When I was thirteen I visited him in hospital. He was conscious, lying in bed and crying. As he recovered, with pressure from my mother, he tried to befriend me. He soon gave up then disappeared from my life for three years, except Christmas and one unfortunate visit when I visited him and he was drunk. I was fifteen at the time. Lying on the couch, poached with whisky and beer he was semi conscious and asked me to kiss him on the forehead before I left. Remembering when he tried to slow dance with me one night at home when Mom was out working and I pushed him back, calling him a "homo" (he let me go but ordered me to never call him that again) as well as his unwarranted touching when I was younger, I shrank away and he left me alone. It was a Sunday afternoon in November and I took the bus to English Bay where I stood on the beach near the water's edge trying to compose my emotions.
At seventeen, Mom farmed me to my father and his girlfriend so she could move to another town with her new boyfriend. I lasted there four months, narrowly avoided a beating by escaping barefoot and hitch hiking from Richmond into Vancouver where friends sheltered me for the night. I was kicked out and went to stay with my mother and her new boyfriend, a violent alcoholic with a criminal background (he was serving a sentence at the time in a minimum facility) and I twice had to bring in police to rescue my mother from getting the shit beat out of her.
When I finished high school that year I had no option but to leave. Mom sold the family home a year and a half before, no relatives would take me in so I stayed with friends, found a job in a factory and my own apartment. My father offered the occasional guilt offering.
Very slowly, under pressure from my mother, my father and I tried to develop a friendship from the late seventies (when I was in my early twenties) till her death from cancer at the age of sixty in 1991. He was sobre then and for a while we actually liked each other, but as friends.
I still wanted my father. He did not want a son.
He was kind enough to shelter me part time while I was homeless and cruel enough to emotionally abuse me. When I finally got away and found affordable housing I saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with post traumatic stress disorder, brought on by my father's sexual and emotional abuse.
He is dead now, my father. I lost contact with him in 2001, then the next year I entered therapy and couldn't see him. Two years later, while still in therapy I tried to contact him but without success. No one in the family contacted me and I didn't know where any of them were. To them I was and remain dead.
In 2012, in February, an aunt, a sister of my mother's phoned me. Lanice my step cousin, whom I recently memorialized here following her death last month from cancer had given her my phone number. The conversation was brief. Among other things she told me my father died from Alzheimer's three years earlier. This past April 24 was the fifth anniversary of his death. I have not spoken since to my aunt, who is pushing ninety and may no longer be alive for all I know.
I believe that my father, favouring my older brother, was unconsciously driven by a primal and demonic force to undermine and destroy me so that my sibling would retain pre-eminence and prosper. My brother followed suit by frequently beating me savagely then ultimately rejecting and abandoning me. They helped make me ill with post traumatic stress disorder and this in many ways disabled and hobbled me. They did not break my spirit.
I am well and recovered now. I love them both and I have forgiven them and moved on. My father I may meet again in the after life and perhaps my brother as well. Gladly, and with peace, love and joy in my heart I walk alone, but full of the love of God and surrounded by a company of angels and saints. I have friends.
More than anything, I have peace.
Sunday 27 April 2014
Rolling In The Deep
Or, to quote the legendary Queen of Nastiness, comedienne Joan Rivers in her riff on Adele, "Rolling in the deep-fried chicken" Ah yes, Liz Taylor has died and gone to her reward so the Duchess of Cosmetic Enhancement has to find someone to publicly mock for being fat. Except Adele isn't what I would call fat but perhaps, Rubenesque? Not that any of these women interest me really except in passing and perhaps when I am desperate for finding material to blog about as I am tonight.
These are of course all very famous and very notable and talented women. Liz for her beauty, her acting prowess, Richard Burton and her other seven husbands, her yo-yo dieting, and later in life, her chronic and disabling illness and her campaigning on behalf of AIDS sufferers. I saw her recently in the movie "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", while flying home from Mexico and I have to say this film has aged really well. I also recall reading the satire in Mad Magazine when I must have been, say, eleven years old? It was titled "Who In Heck Is Virginia Woolf."
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the parody:
Mad Magazine published a spoof of the film, entitled Who in Heck is Virginia Woolf?! At one point, it is remarked "This is an art film, so the censors have to let us talk dirty!" Most of the swearing is replaced with grawlixes: when Martha asks George "%$?" and he replies "What kind of profanity is that, Liz?!", she says "I was just asking what percentage of the gross we're getting!" Their son turns out to be real, and to George and Martha's dismay, a clean-cut non-dysfunctional bore, in keeping with Mad's tradition of altering the endings of the films that they parody.
As an eleven year old I was fascinated if mystified by the many references in the satire and really more than anything wanted to know more about this enigmatic Virginia Woolf. Then, when I was just nineteen and leading a very different manner of life, the paramour of a paramour who was writing his thesis on William Blake blamed his ennui de jour on having read too much Virginia Woolf today. When I was twenty I bought one of her later novels, "The Waves", and was immediately hooked. To this day there remains always in my personal library a copy of this sadly underrated tome which deals with, in her inimitable stream of consciousness poetic prose the lives of six childhood friends over the decades in the first half of the twentieth century. I have heard this book called unreadable or difficult and that one is advised to stick to the legendary Ms. Woolf's more "accessible" works such as "The Voyage Out", or "Mrs. Dalloway", or "Orlando", all of which I have also read and none of them hold a candle to The Waves in my humble opinion.
Adele first appeared on my radar in the spring of 2011, when it seemed that almost every radio station was playing her platinum hit "Rolling In The Deep". I was transfixed from the beginning, which says something for someone who is ordinarily indifferent towards pop music. Her voice, the music, the beat, the vibe, I had never heard the like. At first I thought she was black and had questions about her gender given her rich and robust contralto, and was shocked to learn that she was still only twenty-two when she made the recording, is white and English. To me she clearly suggested as she still does a young Aretha Franklin, but still a lightweight by comparison.
Rolling In The Deep became for me my soundtrack and for me added to this sublime sense of seamlessness that I seemed to experience throughout that year and into the next. It was as though, even if it wasn't always an easy, and sometimes a downright challenging and complex time, that in a deep way all my ducks seemed to be in a row and then some big fat cosmic bowling ball came rolling in to scatter them to the far corners of the universe. This I think occurred when I was in Chiapas in Southern Mexico, and became severely ill. It was as though I went through a kind of spiritual death and that it has taken since then two years for the aftermath to sort itself out. It feels now as though my ducks are once again getting all lined up and even if my last couple of weeks since returning from Mexico have been difficult and even traumatic I am looking at this as a rite of passage as I eagerly anticipate the blessings ahead.
These are of course all very famous and very notable and talented women. Liz for her beauty, her acting prowess, Richard Burton and her other seven husbands, her yo-yo dieting, and later in life, her chronic and disabling illness and her campaigning on behalf of AIDS sufferers. I saw her recently in the movie "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", while flying home from Mexico and I have to say this film has aged really well. I also recall reading the satire in Mad Magazine when I must have been, say, eleven years old? It was titled "Who In Heck Is Virginia Woolf."
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the parody:
Mad Magazine published a spoof of the film, entitled Who in Heck is Virginia Woolf?! At one point, it is remarked "This is an art film, so the censors have to let us talk dirty!" Most of the swearing is replaced with grawlixes: when Martha asks George "%$?" and he replies "What kind of profanity is that, Liz?!", she says "I was just asking what percentage of the gross we're getting!" Their son turns out to be real, and to George and Martha's dismay, a clean-cut non-dysfunctional bore, in keeping with Mad's tradition of altering the endings of the films that they parody.
As an eleven year old I was fascinated if mystified by the many references in the satire and really more than anything wanted to know more about this enigmatic Virginia Woolf. Then, when I was just nineteen and leading a very different manner of life, the paramour of a paramour who was writing his thesis on William Blake blamed his ennui de jour on having read too much Virginia Woolf today. When I was twenty I bought one of her later novels, "The Waves", and was immediately hooked. To this day there remains always in my personal library a copy of this sadly underrated tome which deals with, in her inimitable stream of consciousness poetic prose the lives of six childhood friends over the decades in the first half of the twentieth century. I have heard this book called unreadable or difficult and that one is advised to stick to the legendary Ms. Woolf's more "accessible" works such as "The Voyage Out", or "Mrs. Dalloway", or "Orlando", all of which I have also read and none of them hold a candle to The Waves in my humble opinion.
Adele first appeared on my radar in the spring of 2011, when it seemed that almost every radio station was playing her platinum hit "Rolling In The Deep". I was transfixed from the beginning, which says something for someone who is ordinarily indifferent towards pop music. Her voice, the music, the beat, the vibe, I had never heard the like. At first I thought she was black and had questions about her gender given her rich and robust contralto, and was shocked to learn that she was still only twenty-two when she made the recording, is white and English. To me she clearly suggested as she still does a young Aretha Franklin, but still a lightweight by comparison.
Rolling In The Deep became for me my soundtrack and for me added to this sublime sense of seamlessness that I seemed to experience throughout that year and into the next. It was as though, even if it wasn't always an easy, and sometimes a downright challenging and complex time, that in a deep way all my ducks seemed to be in a row and then some big fat cosmic bowling ball came rolling in to scatter them to the far corners of the universe. This I think occurred when I was in Chiapas in Southern Mexico, and became severely ill. It was as though I went through a kind of spiritual death and that it has taken since then two years for the aftermath to sort itself out. It feels now as though my ducks are once again getting all lined up and even if my last couple of weeks since returning from Mexico have been difficult and even traumatic I am looking at this as a rite of passage as I eagerly anticipate the blessings ahead.
Saturday 26 April 2014
Lucky Number Seven
I was told yesterday by someone who practices numerology after calculating my date of birth while we were out on a walk that I am a life path number seven, which means that, among other things I am spiritual and enigmatic. Here is the full text from a Google search I just did:
Seven is another cerebral number, and those with a Life Path number 7 have a loner quality.
Hmm... This has often been true, whether I've liked it or not. I like being surrounded by people I love, sometimes.
They need to learn to have faith. If they do not have faith they tend to become very cynical and escape through drugs, alcohol, work, and geography. They have a love of natural beauty: ocean, green grass, plants, flowers, etc. . .
All true. I learned at an early age to have faith and to not simply believe but to know Julian of Norwich's famous and eternal words: "...that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." I think that for this reason I never ran afoul of addictions. My love of natural beauty is at times embarrassing. Yesterday when I was in transit with a couple of coworkers I was transfixed by the red Japanese azaleas coming into bloom and they thought I was talking about a motor scooter that had just gone by. It turns out they had never heard of azaleas and likely wouldn't know one if they were peeing on one, which I unfortunately suspect they might have done from time to time.
Sevens have an air of mystery and do not want you to know who they are. Intellectual, analytical, intuitive, reserved, natural inclination towards spiritual subjects, aloof, loner, pessimistic, secretive, and insecure; are some of the qualities of those born into the Seventh Life path. A person who is a Life Path 7 is a thinker. If your Life Path is a 7 you are wise and studious. You seek truth and wisdom in all that you do, and search for the underlying answers in everything. Your tendency is to be a perfectionist, and you expect the same from those around you.
It is more that a lot of people who meet me get frustrated because they feel they can't figure me out and I generally don't have a clue what to do about this. And I am not pessimistic, being a glass is half full sort of guy. I am a selective perfectionist. There are things I want to do not only well but excel in and I am quite indulgent towards the mediocrity of my fellows. (no, I am not going to type in a smiley emoticon but my dear reader is most welcome to visualise.)
Because you are most comfortable by yourself, a loner or introvert, you happily give up the stress and turmoil of a busy life in favor of a quiet, peaceful life of solitude. 7 is a spiritual number, and most 7's are drawn to spiritual pursuits.
I like people. Not all the time, but I do like other people.
Your love of solitude can make it difficult for you to form close relationships. While you value your independence you may often feel lonely or isolated because you lack closeness with others. Because you spend so much time alone, you may lose your consideration for others and become inflexible. One of the challenges for you is to find a balance between maintaining your solitude while not becoming completely isolated. Seven represents spiritual focus, analysis, being original, independent; If you have this number people often feel like they don't know you; you are a mystery, and some may see you as eccentric.
Having long known these things about myself I have worked hard at balancing. If anyone calls me eccentric I simply smile and say "Thank you, that's very sweet of you."
Life path number 7 is the number of a higher awareness, a wider point of view. When all around you are admiring the trees, you're absorbed in the forest. Your lesson is to train yourself to see both. Below are some key points you might want to take into consideration to help you on your path …
Advice well-taken. You may be afraid of heights, but your heart soars like an eagle. You probably will always see more widely than most around you. Oddly enough, this can also lead to a seeming lack of attention to detail. Don't ignore the details.
This inability with detail along with being a slow worker has cost me many a jot. Still working on it.
Another way to describe your view of life is that you're frequently in touch with "the force." The energy of the world can seem like a pond with a mostly smooth surface. Watch the surface for ripples; many of them are caused by opportunities coming within reach.
Some of those ripples have nearly drowned me!
You have a stable core, but the exterior can keep your friends and family guessing. You'll more than likely have several careers during your lifetime, or you'll find a way to keep it different and refreshing while you're doing it. If you owned a restaurant, the menu would probably change monthly, even daily.
I think this is true, though I could never imagine myself owning a restaurant.
Make your vacations into mini-adventures or learning expeditions. Take a workshop on something you've always wanted to learn and immerse yourself in it. Or visit a place you've always been curious about and do the same.
This is exactly the way I travel. For me, if you're bad and you die you go to an all-inclusive.
There's a good chance you'd love learning to fly.
I don't know about that one. This is an almost chillingly accurate analysis of my personality, or up to a point.
Here is a selection from astrologer Suzanne White's analysis of people such as myself who were born in the western sign of Pisces during the eastern year of the Monkey:
The merry monkey finds a new, more elegant external image under the influence of unrestrained Pisces. The Monkey is normally level headed. His job in the Chinese Zodiac is to solve problems, big and small. Monkeys are born with common sense. Monkeys are natural leaders but not power seekers. They have cunning and stability. A rare combination. Pisces lends spiritual grace and beauty to the nimble and spirited Monkey. The result is a handsome person whose reputation for charm precedes him or her everywhere. This person is also very kind and charitable and giving.
I think this is largely true, but just following this selection it starts talking about our sex lives and, well, I'm asexual, so it really is buyer beware.
All having been said I would say there are so many influences, some so subtle and mysterious that no one can even guess what they are, that form our character that I would have to say that our cosmology consists of such a complex and kaleidoscopic multiverse that it is probably for the sake of our mental health that we are not able to even perceive it. The human self is still a largely unexplored frontier and we are all so strangely and wonderfully made!
Seven is another cerebral number, and those with a Life Path number 7 have a loner quality.
Hmm... This has often been true, whether I've liked it or not. I like being surrounded by people I love, sometimes.
They need to learn to have faith. If they do not have faith they tend to become very cynical and escape through drugs, alcohol, work, and geography. They have a love of natural beauty: ocean, green grass, plants, flowers, etc. . .
All true. I learned at an early age to have faith and to not simply believe but to know Julian of Norwich's famous and eternal words: "...that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." I think that for this reason I never ran afoul of addictions. My love of natural beauty is at times embarrassing. Yesterday when I was in transit with a couple of coworkers I was transfixed by the red Japanese azaleas coming into bloom and they thought I was talking about a motor scooter that had just gone by. It turns out they had never heard of azaleas and likely wouldn't know one if they were peeing on one, which I unfortunately suspect they might have done from time to time.
Sevens have an air of mystery and do not want you to know who they are. Intellectual, analytical, intuitive, reserved, natural inclination towards spiritual subjects, aloof, loner, pessimistic, secretive, and insecure; are some of the qualities of those born into the Seventh Life path. A person who is a Life Path 7 is a thinker. If your Life Path is a 7 you are wise and studious. You seek truth and wisdom in all that you do, and search for the underlying answers in everything. Your tendency is to be a perfectionist, and you expect the same from those around you.
It is more that a lot of people who meet me get frustrated because they feel they can't figure me out and I generally don't have a clue what to do about this. And I am not pessimistic, being a glass is half full sort of guy. I am a selective perfectionist. There are things I want to do not only well but excel in and I am quite indulgent towards the mediocrity of my fellows. (no, I am not going to type in a smiley emoticon but my dear reader is most welcome to visualise.)
Because you are most comfortable by yourself, a loner or introvert, you happily give up the stress and turmoil of a busy life in favor of a quiet, peaceful life of solitude. 7 is a spiritual number, and most 7's are drawn to spiritual pursuits.
I like people. Not all the time, but I do like other people.
Your love of solitude can make it difficult for you to form close relationships. While you value your independence you may often feel lonely or isolated because you lack closeness with others. Because you spend so much time alone, you may lose your consideration for others and become inflexible. One of the challenges for you is to find a balance between maintaining your solitude while not becoming completely isolated. Seven represents spiritual focus, analysis, being original, independent; If you have this number people often feel like they don't know you; you are a mystery, and some may see you as eccentric.
Having long known these things about myself I have worked hard at balancing. If anyone calls me eccentric I simply smile and say "Thank you, that's very sweet of you."
Life path number 7 is the number of a higher awareness, a wider point of view. When all around you are admiring the trees, you're absorbed in the forest. Your lesson is to train yourself to see both. Below are some key points you might want to take into consideration to help you on your path …
Advice well-taken. You may be afraid of heights, but your heart soars like an eagle. You probably will always see more widely than most around you. Oddly enough, this can also lead to a seeming lack of attention to detail. Don't ignore the details.
This inability with detail along with being a slow worker has cost me many a jot. Still working on it.
Another way to describe your view of life is that you're frequently in touch with "the force." The energy of the world can seem like a pond with a mostly smooth surface. Watch the surface for ripples; many of them are caused by opportunities coming within reach.
Some of those ripples have nearly drowned me!
You have a stable core, but the exterior can keep your friends and family guessing. You'll more than likely have several careers during your lifetime, or you'll find a way to keep it different and refreshing while you're doing it. If you owned a restaurant, the menu would probably change monthly, even daily.
I think this is true, though I could never imagine myself owning a restaurant.
Make your vacations into mini-adventures or learning expeditions. Take a workshop on something you've always wanted to learn and immerse yourself in it. Or visit a place you've always been curious about and do the same.
This is exactly the way I travel. For me, if you're bad and you die you go to an all-inclusive.
There's a good chance you'd love learning to fly.
I don't know about that one. This is an almost chillingly accurate analysis of my personality, or up to a point.
Here is a selection from astrologer Suzanne White's analysis of people such as myself who were born in the western sign of Pisces during the eastern year of the Monkey:
The merry monkey finds a new, more elegant external image under the influence of unrestrained Pisces. The Monkey is normally level headed. His job in the Chinese Zodiac is to solve problems, big and small. Monkeys are born with common sense. Monkeys are natural leaders but not power seekers. They have cunning and stability. A rare combination. Pisces lends spiritual grace and beauty to the nimble and spirited Monkey. The result is a handsome person whose reputation for charm precedes him or her everywhere. This person is also very kind and charitable and giving.
I think this is largely true, but just following this selection it starts talking about our sex lives and, well, I'm asexual, so it really is buyer beware.
All having been said I would say there are so many influences, some so subtle and mysterious that no one can even guess what they are, that form our character that I would have to say that our cosmology consists of such a complex and kaleidoscopic multiverse that it is probably for the sake of our mental health that we are not able to even perceive it. The human self is still a largely unexplored frontier and we are all so strangely and wonderfully made!
Friday 25 April 2014
Olivia And Me
I am reading Olivia Chow's autobiography, "My Journey" and this isn't always easy reading. It isn't badly written and it is not at all boring, but to look at this woman's laundry list of achievements and accomplishments by the time she was twenty-one is, shall we say just a little bit daunting? Perhaps I am envious? Olivia immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong when she was thirteen. They were poor and her father, suffering from mental health issues, used to beat her mother. Yet, she worked herself through university while establishing herself as a working artist (sculpture) and racking up experience as a suicide and crisis counselor while busting her ass at I have forgotten how many jobs, not to mention her already daunting experience of wilderness survival training. Where I have just left off she is twenty-one and an activist/worker on behalf of settling the refugee boat people in 1979. Her tone is anything but modest and I already have the sense of a high octane, driven, mega-achiever whose ambition knows no limit. Small wonder she is a politician!
I am referring here of course to the widow of the legendary Jack Layton who led the federal NDP to official opposition status in 2011 just before his untimely and tragic death from cancer. I have since been intrigued by this woman since she became a focus for national sympathy only to encounter someone so able and frighteningly competent and made of tempered steel that I now find it very difficult to think of any reason to feel sorry for her. I am certainly in awe of her, though as is almost always the case with politicians I must say that I also find her a little bit annoying.
It goes without saying that Olivia and I are two very different people. There are similarities: she is but one year younger than me, we are both Christians, we are both artists, and we both have backgrounds and ongoing experience in working for social justice. And we have both had to do well in the midst of very difficult and at times impossible circumstances. But here the resemblance ends. We have different genders and gender identities, and my gender is yet even something more distinct because I do not identify as specifically male but as androgynous. She is immigrant Hong Kong Chinese, I am a born third and fourth generation Caucasian Canadian. She successfully made it through university, I fell off the boat before I finished my second year of college. She always enjoyed a loving and supportive family and I am not going into my own family background here but let's say that it is through miracle upon miracle that I have turned out this well despite my abusive family.
The way we relate to our Christian faith is very different. I have never tried to use God or the church as a platform for my personal advancement but have always tried to put Jesus first in everything, to the sacrifice of having a career, a well-paid profession and absolutely none of the perks, benefits and comforts of a middle class life style. I have survived mental illness and work my butt off as an underpaid mental health peer support worker and but for the blessing of government assisted housing right now my sorry ass would be warming the sidewalk or a sleeping mat in a low barrier shelter.
Every single door that would somehow advance me as an artist or in a professional sense or help me complete my education has either been locked or has been slammed in my face.
I have not even learned how to drive, but you know, I don't even count that as a loss. In my teens I was acutely aware of the impact of vehicle emissions on the environment and opted not to participate in that particular dance of death. I am proudly not car dependent and this has actually made me all the more resourceful and has done much to enrich my life as I participate with the many others in public transport.
I do not know Olivia but I do trust that despite our very different paths in life, and very different kinds of successes, that we have both arrived at a sense of universal love, peace, acceptance and joy, and whatever path it takes to get there, that is the destination we should all train ourselves towards.
And I sincerely and surely hope that she kicks Rob Ford's extremely fat ass in the Toronto civic election this fall.
I am referring here of course to the widow of the legendary Jack Layton who led the federal NDP to official opposition status in 2011 just before his untimely and tragic death from cancer. I have since been intrigued by this woman since she became a focus for national sympathy only to encounter someone so able and frighteningly competent and made of tempered steel that I now find it very difficult to think of any reason to feel sorry for her. I am certainly in awe of her, though as is almost always the case with politicians I must say that I also find her a little bit annoying.
It goes without saying that Olivia and I are two very different people. There are similarities: she is but one year younger than me, we are both Christians, we are both artists, and we both have backgrounds and ongoing experience in working for social justice. And we have both had to do well in the midst of very difficult and at times impossible circumstances. But here the resemblance ends. We have different genders and gender identities, and my gender is yet even something more distinct because I do not identify as specifically male but as androgynous. She is immigrant Hong Kong Chinese, I am a born third and fourth generation Caucasian Canadian. She successfully made it through university, I fell off the boat before I finished my second year of college. She always enjoyed a loving and supportive family and I am not going into my own family background here but let's say that it is through miracle upon miracle that I have turned out this well despite my abusive family.
The way we relate to our Christian faith is very different. I have never tried to use God or the church as a platform for my personal advancement but have always tried to put Jesus first in everything, to the sacrifice of having a career, a well-paid profession and absolutely none of the perks, benefits and comforts of a middle class life style. I have survived mental illness and work my butt off as an underpaid mental health peer support worker and but for the blessing of government assisted housing right now my sorry ass would be warming the sidewalk or a sleeping mat in a low barrier shelter.
Every single door that would somehow advance me as an artist or in a professional sense or help me complete my education has either been locked or has been slammed in my face.
I have not even learned how to drive, but you know, I don't even count that as a loss. In my teens I was acutely aware of the impact of vehicle emissions on the environment and opted not to participate in that particular dance of death. I am proudly not car dependent and this has actually made me all the more resourceful and has done much to enrich my life as I participate with the many others in public transport.
I do not know Olivia but I do trust that despite our very different paths in life, and very different kinds of successes, that we have both arrived at a sense of universal love, peace, acceptance and joy, and whatever path it takes to get there, that is the destination we should all train ourselves towards.
And I sincerely and surely hope that she kicks Rob Ford's extremely fat ass in the Toronto civic election this fall.
Thursday 24 April 2014
On The Existence Of God
This is a conversation I almost never have with people and for many reasons: first and foremost it is a matter of respect. Some many years ago the friend of a friend tried to get me into this kind of debate. I had mentioned about being willing to go wherever God wanted to take me, not to start a conversation on the subject but simply in an off-handed way. This man tried to engage me on the existence of God and I replied that for me this is something very personal and I am not comfortable discussing it. He rather snorted like a proud German shepherd dog that had just been scolded and our mutual friend appeared less than pleased with me but we did leave it there.
This morning I was reading an article on CBC Online about British premier, David Cameron, and the controversy surrounding his comments about Great Britain being a Christian nation. I briefly scanned some of the comments and when I saw one where a particularly miserable atheist referred to Jesus as a fabricated fiction I nearly replied. I held back, mostly because this is not my argument. An online forum is the worst possible setting for discussing religious faith and I say this because it is such an intensely personal matter and a deeply personal experience. No one commenting online has any way of knowing anything about the personal history, life, sufferings and experience of other commenters and vice-versa. And you know something else? It is impossible to confine a full and comprehensive discussion about faith, religion and spirituality, unless the holistic experience of the whole persons involved in the conversation are taken into full account, and this is impossible on an internet forum.
While I was out for a walk with one of my clients the subject of our shared humanity somehow came up and I mentioned what an absolute marvel it is that on this small planet, sustained by a tiny insignificant star in our galaxy, not only is there life, but such life that would produce human beings with this incredible capacity for thought, consciousness and self-perception. I almost, but declined to, add that the very fact that we are able to ask ourselves that question confirms the reality of the existence of God. Because of our professional arrangements, and out of complete respect for my client, since I know nothing of his spiritual or religious beliefs or proclivities, I wisely remained silent.
A bit later I found myself browsing in Chapters, our gigantic chain bookstore. There was a book on display titled "Living With A Wild God". I cannot remember the author's name but I briefly scanned the dust jacket. She was an atheist for many years who then had a spontaneous experience, or revelation of God. I am hoping to read this book in time. I did think as I took the down escalator (I said it's a gigantic bookstore) how believing in God comes greatly through experience and often has little to do with skeptical or intellectual inquiry. I recall reading something of Blaise Pascal's defense of the existence of God and found myself thinking, "how unnecessary."
I did not come to believe in God through intellectual inquiry. I wasn't even consciously seeking a religious or spiritual experience when I was converted to Christianity. For me it came absolutely unexpected. I was open and ready. I was not simply seeking meaning in my young fourteen year old life but to grasp the heart of the reality of what is good, true, pure and lovely. No amount of research, reading, intellectual or philosophical inquiry would have accomplished this. A loving, humble and open heart desiring to understand others and help heal the miserable wounds of our world, alone, could do this for me.
I think this is why I am not interested in spiritual exercises, nor of how-to books and dissertations about prayer, meditation and contemplation. God is not accessed through technique, nor by applying the right recipe with the correct ingredients. But, a humble and broken heart he will not despise.
This morning I was reading an article on CBC Online about British premier, David Cameron, and the controversy surrounding his comments about Great Britain being a Christian nation. I briefly scanned some of the comments and when I saw one where a particularly miserable atheist referred to Jesus as a fabricated fiction I nearly replied. I held back, mostly because this is not my argument. An online forum is the worst possible setting for discussing religious faith and I say this because it is such an intensely personal matter and a deeply personal experience. No one commenting online has any way of knowing anything about the personal history, life, sufferings and experience of other commenters and vice-versa. And you know something else? It is impossible to confine a full and comprehensive discussion about faith, religion and spirituality, unless the holistic experience of the whole persons involved in the conversation are taken into full account, and this is impossible on an internet forum.
While I was out for a walk with one of my clients the subject of our shared humanity somehow came up and I mentioned what an absolute marvel it is that on this small planet, sustained by a tiny insignificant star in our galaxy, not only is there life, but such life that would produce human beings with this incredible capacity for thought, consciousness and self-perception. I almost, but declined to, add that the very fact that we are able to ask ourselves that question confirms the reality of the existence of God. Because of our professional arrangements, and out of complete respect for my client, since I know nothing of his spiritual or religious beliefs or proclivities, I wisely remained silent.
A bit later I found myself browsing in Chapters, our gigantic chain bookstore. There was a book on display titled "Living With A Wild God". I cannot remember the author's name but I briefly scanned the dust jacket. She was an atheist for many years who then had a spontaneous experience, or revelation of God. I am hoping to read this book in time. I did think as I took the down escalator (I said it's a gigantic bookstore) how believing in God comes greatly through experience and often has little to do with skeptical or intellectual inquiry. I recall reading something of Blaise Pascal's defense of the existence of God and found myself thinking, "how unnecessary."
I did not come to believe in God through intellectual inquiry. I wasn't even consciously seeking a religious or spiritual experience when I was converted to Christianity. For me it came absolutely unexpected. I was open and ready. I was not simply seeking meaning in my young fourteen year old life but to grasp the heart of the reality of what is good, true, pure and lovely. No amount of research, reading, intellectual or philosophical inquiry would have accomplished this. A loving, humble and open heart desiring to understand others and help heal the miserable wounds of our world, alone, could do this for me.
I think this is why I am not interested in spiritual exercises, nor of how-to books and dissertations about prayer, meditation and contemplation. God is not accessed through technique, nor by applying the right recipe with the correct ingredients. But, a humble and broken heart he will not despise.
Wednesday 23 April 2014
Nothing Witty Or Insightful
Today is William Shakespeare's four hundred fiftieth birthday and I haven't finished reading Twelfth Night, and I can't promise that I will. Instead of reading after dinner I fell into an hour and a half nap, more or less which rather limits my reading time this evening. I still haven't decided to leave my church, since I don't want to make this kind of decision while I am upset. Or could this be akin to a battered wife refusing to leave her husband because she wants the emotions to cool down so she can make a responsible decision?
I have been traumatized by last weeks events and one of the symptoms of trauma is in exaggerating dangers and risks and overblowing situations and I believe that I have been doing this. Taking naps can be much more effective for getting over these things than reading Shakespeare but there could even be room for both.
It is always disappointing that friends cannot or will not be a little bit present when I am going through this shit and once again I really find myself wondering about the depth or strength of my friendships though I cut people slack for being incredibly busy at work as is often the case with me.
Despite all, work went incredibly well today.
I have nothing witty or insightful to add.
Good night.
I have been traumatized by last weeks events and one of the symptoms of trauma is in exaggerating dangers and risks and overblowing situations and I believe that I have been doing this. Taking naps can be much more effective for getting over these things than reading Shakespeare but there could even be room for both.
It is always disappointing that friends cannot or will not be a little bit present when I am going through this shit and once again I really find myself wondering about the depth or strength of my friendships though I cut people slack for being incredibly busy at work as is often the case with me.
Despite all, work went incredibly well today.
I have nothing witty or insightful to add.
Good night.
Tuesday 22 April 2014
Olivia
Here is an interesting bit of timing. Yesterday while listening to On The Coast on CBC Radio One I was also reading the opening pages of Olivia Chow's autobiography, "My Journey." I didn't buy or seek out this book, though Jack Layton's widow does interest me. It was given me on loan on Sunday by a friend I was visiting over a cup of chai. He said he couldn't get quite into it, that he had won it as a kind of door prize at a writer's festival and suggested that I give it a go since, contrary to the advice of a friend of his, it was not the will of the universe that he read it. So, just as I was reading the part about Olivia being so named by her father because he was a lover of Shakespeare and wanted to name her after the heroine of the play "Twelfth Night", Stephen Quinn, the host of On The Coast, announced that Wednesday April 23 will be William Shakespeare's four hundred fiftieth birthday and invited listeners to call in about how they are going to celebrate. On the moment I thought why not try to read Twelfth Night between today and Wednesday, in conjunction with Olivia Chow's book.
I have the complete plays and sonnets of Shakespeare which I came across in a free box in the east side of Vancouver some ten or eleven years ago. I was enjoying a summer or perhaps late spring walk in one of my many favourite Vancouver neighbourhoods: this is a sheltered enclave of quiet leafy streets just east of Victoria Drive between Napier and William Streets, of beautifully unpretentious late Victorian and Edwardian era homes with lush gardens spilling onto the streets and families and households of kind residents who love to throw block parties in the nice weather. It was on one of these streets where I found Shakespeare.
I have always had trouble reading Shakespeare, even if I did remarkably well in high school when we were studying Macbeth in grade eleven and Hamlet in grade twelve. This probably denotes my own intellectual laziness because I know that when I apply myself to Shakespeare, even the words and phrases that mean nothing to Twenty-First Century ears ring pithy and resonant and suddenly I know exactly what the Bard wants to tell us and believe you me not all of it is suitable to young audiences!
I will probably always struggle with Shakespeare. He is not meant to be easy. But like any caper or romp the struggle is always part of the joy, and perhaps is the joy of reading these four hundred year old masterpieces of wit, wisdom and salacious good humour. And I found his plays in a box, given to me free, a gift from the bard which though hardly read will always enjoy a place of privilege and esteem in my personal library.
I have the complete plays and sonnets of Shakespeare which I came across in a free box in the east side of Vancouver some ten or eleven years ago. I was enjoying a summer or perhaps late spring walk in one of my many favourite Vancouver neighbourhoods: this is a sheltered enclave of quiet leafy streets just east of Victoria Drive between Napier and William Streets, of beautifully unpretentious late Victorian and Edwardian era homes with lush gardens spilling onto the streets and families and households of kind residents who love to throw block parties in the nice weather. It was on one of these streets where I found Shakespeare.
I have always had trouble reading Shakespeare, even if I did remarkably well in high school when we were studying Macbeth in grade eleven and Hamlet in grade twelve. This probably denotes my own intellectual laziness because I know that when I apply myself to Shakespeare, even the words and phrases that mean nothing to Twenty-First Century ears ring pithy and resonant and suddenly I know exactly what the Bard wants to tell us and believe you me not all of it is suitable to young audiences!
I will probably always struggle with Shakespeare. He is not meant to be easy. But like any caper or romp the struggle is always part of the joy, and perhaps is the joy of reading these four hundred year old masterpieces of wit, wisdom and salacious good humour. And I found his plays in a box, given to me free, a gift from the bard which though hardly read will always enjoy a place of privilege and esteem in my personal library.
Monday 21 April 2014
After Care
Anybody keeping track of this blog, at least over the last three or four posts, will realise that I have been having quite a rotten run of luck over this Easter and I expect that things are going to improve. I was moved and felt buoyed by the expressions of care and support by others when I reported the cyperbullying and the assault that resulted in a sprained knee. Then I had that unfortunate Easter Sunday yesterday at church followed by an unsympathetic response from a co-parishioner. It has taken me some time today, while taking a long walk (more than seven miles so it is pretty obvious that this knee is healing fast!) but I understand now just why I got so upset at church yesterday. As well as feeling swamped by rather unsympathetic looking strangers, no one at church who knew anything of what had been happening to me bothered to check in to see how I was doing. No one even gave me the time of day for Chris' sake! (pun intended) No wonder I was pissed.
I suppose that people thought that since I had shown the person who had assaulted me clemency that all was forgiven and I would be feeling just tickety-boo. But it ain't necessarily so. I just referred to him today to a tenant in my building in the elevator as an asshole, and right now I am venting some really volatile emotions. These things do not vanish overnight, nor does the need for support from others. Judgment, by the way, is neither necessary or welcome.
I attend an Anglican church and there is a disproportionate ratio of Anglicans who work in public libraries and related fields and I believe this to be for one very simple reason: the Anglican church tends to attract egg-headed introverts. By and large thinking people, contemplative and considerate individuals. People full of insight and wisdom. And yes, some very compassionate people. But remember, a lot of them are egg-headed introverts. It isn't that they lack social skills, they are just very slow at applying them. So, I do not doubt that people care, but it does irk me somewhat that absolutely nothing has been done, since some nicely-written emails, to express care.
As I have already mentioned, it is also possible that no one has imagined that I might still need support. But loss, assault, forgiveness, trauma and after care is a cycle that really needs to be understood, even by church lay persons. I am emotionally exhausted following what I have just been through, preceded by a bad cold and the death of a family member and close friend. I need people I can debrief with and they don't have to be professionals. This is what friends are for, after all. Friends? Huh? Get real, dude, you are alone, on your own, and you are going to have to get used to this.
Funny, that one of my friends sent me a very well-intentioned email suggesting that I spend some time with a friend to help me debrief and try to have some good times. I have just explained to my dear friend that whenever I am going through difficulties none of my friends are ever available.
So, to the rest of you, if you consider me a friend then it certainly won't kill you to do something to prove it. I am going through a crappy time. Yes, I'm a seasoned hardass and I've been through and survived worse, and I am getting through this but it is always nice to know that there are others routing for you, eh? Do we always have to walk alone? Huh? I can't hear you.
I suppose that people thought that since I had shown the person who had assaulted me clemency that all was forgiven and I would be feeling just tickety-boo. But it ain't necessarily so. I just referred to him today to a tenant in my building in the elevator as an asshole, and right now I am venting some really volatile emotions. These things do not vanish overnight, nor does the need for support from others. Judgment, by the way, is neither necessary or welcome.
I attend an Anglican church and there is a disproportionate ratio of Anglicans who work in public libraries and related fields and I believe this to be for one very simple reason: the Anglican church tends to attract egg-headed introverts. By and large thinking people, contemplative and considerate individuals. People full of insight and wisdom. And yes, some very compassionate people. But remember, a lot of them are egg-headed introverts. It isn't that they lack social skills, they are just very slow at applying them. So, I do not doubt that people care, but it does irk me somewhat that absolutely nothing has been done, since some nicely-written emails, to express care.
As I have already mentioned, it is also possible that no one has imagined that I might still need support. But loss, assault, forgiveness, trauma and after care is a cycle that really needs to be understood, even by church lay persons. I am emotionally exhausted following what I have just been through, preceded by a bad cold and the death of a family member and close friend. I need people I can debrief with and they don't have to be professionals. This is what friends are for, after all. Friends? Huh? Get real, dude, you are alone, on your own, and you are going to have to get used to this.
Funny, that one of my friends sent me a very well-intentioned email suggesting that I spend some time with a friend to help me debrief and try to have some good times. I have just explained to my dear friend that whenever I am going through difficulties none of my friends are ever available.
So, to the rest of you, if you consider me a friend then it certainly won't kill you to do something to prove it. I am going through a crappy time. Yes, I'm a seasoned hardass and I've been through and survived worse, and I am getting through this but it is always nice to know that there are others routing for you, eh? Do we always have to walk alone? Huh? I can't hear you.
Sunday 20 April 2014
Easter Sunday At Church, Or, Why Bother?
I went to church this Easter Sunday morning only to remind myself of why I shouldn't. As it was noted by one of our announcers we had twice the usual congregation because of the many visitors, or should I say, people who will not darken our door until Christmas Eve or next Easter. The real deal in Anglican churches for Easter, it is known, is the Easter Vigil service late Saturday night. Outsiders generally don't know about it. I used to attend but I'm older now and late nights no matter how worthy the cause just don't cut it for me any more.
This morning, but for the familiarity of the rector and a few individuals I hardly knew where I was, I was so surrounded by strangers. There were a number of regular attenders, many whom, I suspect, had been to the Vigil service late last night and likely were feeling tired and socially fatigued this morning, which showed on many of them, and I do not blame any of them for not being friendly towards me and I hope I will be forgiven for not reaching out to anybody. Neither do I have a problem with strangers or visitors, but somehow the whole PH of the church was transformed and the newcomers seemed to have taken over. I was in a different and unfamiliar church and the environment felt somewhat hostile. This also kicked in a kind of controlled panic or survival instinct for me that I often feel if I am visiting a new church. Generally others are not friendly because a lot of churches seem to be simply full of unfriendly people, though this is not likely always the case, but a reaction due to the perceptions of the unfamiliar and the fear of being rejected. Be that as it may, this was no longer the friendly parish that I know and love because most newcomers to our church simply have little or no concept of being in a friendly Anglican church and like many traditional Anglicans they tend to have their heads stuck up their backsides and it is understandably very difficult for them to reach out to strangers. Surrounded by strangers who were, not necessarily hostile, but simply not friendly, kind of transformed me by osmosis into an unfriendly stranger in my own church. And I saw this happen with people I know, some who are usually close friends, in the church, and who were likely too tired and burned out from last night to venture outside of automatic pilot.
Worse, there was no coffee hour today for reasons undisclosed and hot cross buns were distributed on the way out. I didn't accept one because I don't like hot cross buns and wasn't hungry but also because I was not going to be bought off nor am I going to be prevented from writing about it in my blog this evening. And, by the way, Church narthex' are not congenial for socializing. They have a very transient quality and if you need time to sit and relax if you are going to be social, as is often the case for me, it is not an environment suited for holding court.
Being a stranger among strangers, except for those who came with their own families, loved ones or friends, it seemed pointless to stay and I think that for a change I was the first one out the door. Easter, like Christmas, has been highjacked by families and for those who, like me are alone, especially in church it can be lonely and painful. Good thing that I had a friend to visit for a cup of chai afterward whom, for good reason I believe, hasn't attended church in years. I do have one thing to say to those visitors who won't be back till Christmas: STAY HOME if you cannot shit or get off the pot.
Christ is risen indeed.
Happy Easter, indeed.
This morning, but for the familiarity of the rector and a few individuals I hardly knew where I was, I was so surrounded by strangers. There were a number of regular attenders, many whom, I suspect, had been to the Vigil service late last night and likely were feeling tired and socially fatigued this morning, which showed on many of them, and I do not blame any of them for not being friendly towards me and I hope I will be forgiven for not reaching out to anybody. Neither do I have a problem with strangers or visitors, but somehow the whole PH of the church was transformed and the newcomers seemed to have taken over. I was in a different and unfamiliar church and the environment felt somewhat hostile. This also kicked in a kind of controlled panic or survival instinct for me that I often feel if I am visiting a new church. Generally others are not friendly because a lot of churches seem to be simply full of unfriendly people, though this is not likely always the case, but a reaction due to the perceptions of the unfamiliar and the fear of being rejected. Be that as it may, this was no longer the friendly parish that I know and love because most newcomers to our church simply have little or no concept of being in a friendly Anglican church and like many traditional Anglicans they tend to have their heads stuck up their backsides and it is understandably very difficult for them to reach out to strangers. Surrounded by strangers who were, not necessarily hostile, but simply not friendly, kind of transformed me by osmosis into an unfriendly stranger in my own church. And I saw this happen with people I know, some who are usually close friends, in the church, and who were likely too tired and burned out from last night to venture outside of automatic pilot.
Worse, there was no coffee hour today for reasons undisclosed and hot cross buns were distributed on the way out. I didn't accept one because I don't like hot cross buns and wasn't hungry but also because I was not going to be bought off nor am I going to be prevented from writing about it in my blog this evening. And, by the way, Church narthex' are not congenial for socializing. They have a very transient quality and if you need time to sit and relax if you are going to be social, as is often the case for me, it is not an environment suited for holding court.
Being a stranger among strangers, except for those who came with their own families, loved ones or friends, it seemed pointless to stay and I think that for a change I was the first one out the door. Easter, like Christmas, has been highjacked by families and for those who, like me are alone, especially in church it can be lonely and painful. Good thing that I had a friend to visit for a cup of chai afterward whom, for good reason I believe, hasn't attended church in years. I do have one thing to say to those visitors who won't be back till Christmas: STAY HOME if you cannot shit or get off the pot.
Christ is risen indeed.
Happy Easter, indeed.
Saturday 19 April 2014
Why I Am A Hard Ass
Well, first of all it runs in my family. All of us, I mean, and I was the nicest of the batch (so I am told) so you can only imagine the others. My mother also was nice, in her smiling hard ass way. There are reasons for this, good reasons. Both my parents grew up poor during the Great Depression. Struggle was for them the only way of life. The word lifestyles had not been invented and if they had heard it they would have given you a rather vacant and bewildered look. My mother was the daughter of German farmers whose parents immigrated from Crimea. My father's Scottish parents came to this country separately, as small children. There was no social safety net, no welfare, no public health care and Canada was monoculturally white and British-French. University education was a privilege for the upper classes and the moneyed, and you had to work hard to survive. Then came the Second World War which defined my parents' teenage years. The soldier hero giving up his life for his country against the Germans and the fear of being overrun by them and the Japanese mentored my parents towards young adulthood. Unless it was anger, any emotion that was shown was a sign of weakness and considered verboten so everyone drank. My father became an alcoholic.
My brother and I were born during the prosperous fifties and grew up in the more prosperous and socially and politically turbulent sixties. We were carried away by drugs and rock and roll and I particularly by the hippies, then by the Jesus Freaks. I was considered highly sensitive and emotional by my family, therefore I was considered weak and genetically inferior. By my school I was considered highly gifted. My family environment was abusive and unstable and my conversion to Christianity at fourteen was complete and irreversible.
Meanwhile my parents divorced and my brother's beatings subsided as he became more distant from the family and when I was fifteen I already enjoyed total independence. Like many kids during the early seventies I got around by hitch hiking, which at times did put me at risk and I learned very quickly how to negotiate with weirdoes and perverts and get out of their vehicles alive and untouched. Heaven on Earth, in the form of the Jesus People fell through within eight months when I was fifteen and became absorbed into a dangerous cult from which I escaped in three days. At sixteen one of my best friends was a twenty-six year old woman, divorced from her radical left husband, and she herself was a Jesus Freak, former radical leftist and still politically engaged with a tongue and a vicious wit that would make Joan Rivers blush. I also learned about vegetarian eating and natural and organic food and how to eat well on very little money. When I was seventeen my father kicked me out after four months because he could not cope with a long haired hippy Jesus Freak with radical leftist values for a son. I finished high school in a town on Vancouver Island with my mother and her violent alcoholic boyfriend. Twice I had to get the police over so that he wouldn't beat the shit out of her. Did I tell you I was seventeen? Eighteen?
When school was out I was told by Mom that I had to leave because she was going to be dumping her boyfriend's sorry ass in a month. I stayed with friends in a very rundown communal house in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver while finding work in a leather factory and eventually got my own apartment, the top floor of an old house in the Little Mountain area of Main Street.
For less than two years I fell into a glamorous and decadent lifestyle, rediscovered my Christian faith, then had to cope with the rigid and self-righteousness of the Christians with whom I aligned myself. I was told to leave. I had struggle in order to survive. At twenty-two I was unable to finish my post secondary education because I had to work to pay the bills and had just been expelled from another Christian community. Over the following twenty years I became a street involved Christian, seeking to live the gospel of Christ while befriending prostitutes of all genders, drug dealers, addicts, and other marginalized folk, while working caring for the elderly, the disabled and the dying for a low wage and no opportunity for advancement. I started a Christian community and for a while we lived in absolute poverty and had to trust God to provide even toilet paper for a while, then came into money. I was taking care of the dying, trying to mentor the people in my community and coping with my own mother's impending death from cancer.
When I was thirty-five and it was 1991 and my mother was dead I inherited some money and went to Europe for two and a half months, hoping to settle in London. I was accompanied by a rock star wannabe with a drug addiction and appeared to be in the advanced stages of AIDS. He was also implicated in an unsolved murder in London and I encouraged him to fly there with me to help clear things up. After extorting me of several thousand dollars he disappeared back to Canada within just over a week, leaving me hanging in Edinburgh. A few weeks later in Amsterdam I was robbed at knife point, and the next day I was stalked and followed. I returned to Canada, changed, hardened and wiser and in a sense somewhat darkened as I stuck it out with what remained of our Christian community trying to keep in line a mature female member with a romantic and erotic penchant for young drug addicts with mental health issues.
I became an artist and met with some success and procured an agent and ended up travelling to Costa Rica in 1994, just after narrowly escaping the Canucks riot in Vancouver. The community broke up and I lived alone unable to make ends meet while continuing to paint and write and participate in public poetry slams. I was soon cracking at the seams and in 1998 became homeless with full-fledged post traumatic stress disorder. I stayed between my emotionally abusive father in Robert's Creek and various friends in Vancouver. Most of my friends eventually became abusive and exploitive and turned against me. I ended up back in Vancouver in a shared living situation and was on welfare. My living situations were unsafe and with some helpful connections ended up living in BC Housing and have now worked as a mental health peer support worker for ten years.
I'm going to leave it there but for those of you who have wanted to know why I am a hard ass I'm sure you'll have here all the information you need and more. There is a lot that I haven't said and probably won't because, you know, every hard ass has his secrets, or to put it another way, It's none of yer goddamn fuckin' business!
My brother and I were born during the prosperous fifties and grew up in the more prosperous and socially and politically turbulent sixties. We were carried away by drugs and rock and roll and I particularly by the hippies, then by the Jesus Freaks. I was considered highly sensitive and emotional by my family, therefore I was considered weak and genetically inferior. By my school I was considered highly gifted. My family environment was abusive and unstable and my conversion to Christianity at fourteen was complete and irreversible.
Meanwhile my parents divorced and my brother's beatings subsided as he became more distant from the family and when I was fifteen I already enjoyed total independence. Like many kids during the early seventies I got around by hitch hiking, which at times did put me at risk and I learned very quickly how to negotiate with weirdoes and perverts and get out of their vehicles alive and untouched. Heaven on Earth, in the form of the Jesus People fell through within eight months when I was fifteen and became absorbed into a dangerous cult from which I escaped in three days. At sixteen one of my best friends was a twenty-six year old woman, divorced from her radical left husband, and she herself was a Jesus Freak, former radical leftist and still politically engaged with a tongue and a vicious wit that would make Joan Rivers blush. I also learned about vegetarian eating and natural and organic food and how to eat well on very little money. When I was seventeen my father kicked me out after four months because he could not cope with a long haired hippy Jesus Freak with radical leftist values for a son. I finished high school in a town on Vancouver Island with my mother and her violent alcoholic boyfriend. Twice I had to get the police over so that he wouldn't beat the shit out of her. Did I tell you I was seventeen? Eighteen?
When school was out I was told by Mom that I had to leave because she was going to be dumping her boyfriend's sorry ass in a month. I stayed with friends in a very rundown communal house in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver while finding work in a leather factory and eventually got my own apartment, the top floor of an old house in the Little Mountain area of Main Street.
For less than two years I fell into a glamorous and decadent lifestyle, rediscovered my Christian faith, then had to cope with the rigid and self-righteousness of the Christians with whom I aligned myself. I was told to leave. I had struggle in order to survive. At twenty-two I was unable to finish my post secondary education because I had to work to pay the bills and had just been expelled from another Christian community. Over the following twenty years I became a street involved Christian, seeking to live the gospel of Christ while befriending prostitutes of all genders, drug dealers, addicts, and other marginalized folk, while working caring for the elderly, the disabled and the dying for a low wage and no opportunity for advancement. I started a Christian community and for a while we lived in absolute poverty and had to trust God to provide even toilet paper for a while, then came into money. I was taking care of the dying, trying to mentor the people in my community and coping with my own mother's impending death from cancer.
When I was thirty-five and it was 1991 and my mother was dead I inherited some money and went to Europe for two and a half months, hoping to settle in London. I was accompanied by a rock star wannabe with a drug addiction and appeared to be in the advanced stages of AIDS. He was also implicated in an unsolved murder in London and I encouraged him to fly there with me to help clear things up. After extorting me of several thousand dollars he disappeared back to Canada within just over a week, leaving me hanging in Edinburgh. A few weeks later in Amsterdam I was robbed at knife point, and the next day I was stalked and followed. I returned to Canada, changed, hardened and wiser and in a sense somewhat darkened as I stuck it out with what remained of our Christian community trying to keep in line a mature female member with a romantic and erotic penchant for young drug addicts with mental health issues.
I became an artist and met with some success and procured an agent and ended up travelling to Costa Rica in 1994, just after narrowly escaping the Canucks riot in Vancouver. The community broke up and I lived alone unable to make ends meet while continuing to paint and write and participate in public poetry slams. I was soon cracking at the seams and in 1998 became homeless with full-fledged post traumatic stress disorder. I stayed between my emotionally abusive father in Robert's Creek and various friends in Vancouver. Most of my friends eventually became abusive and exploitive and turned against me. I ended up back in Vancouver in a shared living situation and was on welfare. My living situations were unsafe and with some helpful connections ended up living in BC Housing and have now worked as a mental health peer support worker for ten years.
I'm going to leave it there but for those of you who have wanted to know why I am a hard ass I'm sure you'll have here all the information you need and more. There is a lot that I haven't said and probably won't because, you know, every hard ass has his secrets, or to put it another way, It's none of yer goddamn fuckin' business!
Friday 18 April 2014
Making Sense Out Of Senseless Brutality
This has not been a good Friday for me and certainly it has shaped into a rather bad Good Friday. My right knee is sore and stiff and bandaged and likely sprained, and the young native person who tripped me so that I fell on my face on the sidewalk is in police custody. I have told one of the officers that I am not going to lay charges as this is something I do not want on my conscience. My knee is stiff and inflamed, probably sprained and I will be facing some walking difficulties for a while anyway. Last night a comment I put on the CBC website about the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author whose writing has never thrilled me, simply an innocent statement that his writing has bored me in two languages, gained me at least three incredibly abusive replies. One was rather mild, and it was suggested that I might prefer reading the Toronto Sun or Tom Clancy instead. I responded, naming two Latin American authors I enjoy in Spanish (Isabel Allende and Colombian author Laura Restrepo) and another Nobel winner, other than el don Marquez, Doris Lessing. This gave rise to two especially vituperative comments and I am still recovering. One said that both my Spanish and English are equally lousy and that no one cares what my reading preferences are and that I should get psychiatric help. The other was even worse. I was told that my mother should have aborted me since I make this person and alleged others want to throw up.
Both the last comments were posted in Spanish without English translation and I am assuming the two cowards who posted them were hoping that along with the anonymity of posting online they could also hope that the CBC moderator didn't read Spanish. I went back online and translated the comments for the benefit of the moderator and others who don't read Spanish, satisfied that those abusive cowards needn't feel too protected in their anonymity.
I was extremely upset by this, and I would say, traumatized and felt upset, depressed, disoriented, and had difficulty sleeping. Today I still feel bad. I attended the noon Good Friday service in my Anglican parish church where I was one of the readers (four lines, big deal!). I really wanted to stay home. I am glad now that I went, if for no other reason than to pay homage to one who suffered incredibly more than I did and for much greater cause and purpose, but also because of the seamless beauty in this service heightened by a very moving sermon from our rector.
Following a walk in Stanley Park I picked up a small bag of groceries and stopped at a favourite café on Davie Street for an ice Americano and to spend some time drawing. I still didn't feel well as I walked the rest of the way home and had more than average second hand smoke to avoid on the sidewalk. As I turned onto Granville Street from Davie I stopped to let one smoker gain a safe distance between us. Then, three young aboriginals, a man and two women were walking more slowly ahead of me, smoking and I did not want to end up choking on their smoke. I tried to trot past them. One of the women would not let me pass, so I said excuse me as I tried to squeeze between her and the male who stuck out his foot and tripped me. I fell flat on my face and since I was already upset about the online bullying I started weeping and I shouted out "You asshole! You deliberately tripped me." I was suddenly surrounded by all these kind compassionate people asking me if I was alright and helping me up and others shouting to the coward ahead of me "Hey asshole, come back and apologize." They of course neither turned around or slowed down. They walked into the liquor store (but where else would they go?) next door to the entrance to my building. I saw enough of them to be able to assemble a credible description to police. When I got home, after crying for a while, I looked at my knee which was skinned and bleeding and sore. Seeing it wasn't too serious I called 911, still crying, gave the police a description. They called me back a minute later and asked me to come down. When I got there they had the guy who tripped me in handcuffs.
This for me felt very awkward. I felt compassion for him even as they cuffed him, even as he verbally denied doing anything, even as they shuffled him into the squad car. I went back up to my apartment to continue dressing my wounded knee. The phone rang again and the same officer, a young lady, asked me to please come down to make a statement. When I got to the lobby a young male police officer was standing there. We talked together about what happened. He asked me if I was going to lay charges. I said no, I do not want that on my conscience. So the young aboriginal, who likely hates white people, gets a warning and is told not to go around tripping little old men and is allowed to go free. But I know what jail and prison do to people and I would rather trust God to do the work of change and correction and reform in this man's life.
I then went to the office to tell our assistant manager about what happened. She was very kind and gave me a chocolate caramel filled Easter egg and told me to check in with her tomorrow morning.
The support I have received in the face of this nastiness has been incredible and when I find myself despairing of humanity I am going to try to remember that for that one idiot who tripped me there are at least ten more good people who will help you if you are in trouble or danger.
Back to the cyber bullying. This is something very small compared to what drove teenage girls Amanda Todd and Retrea Parsons to suicide. Yet even those three small attacks were traumatizing to me and I'm a hardened mature man with experience coping with abuse unlike those two vulnerable little girls who were so relentlessly attacked and overwhelmed that they took their own lives. I tried to unsubscribe to CBC online last night because of this, then tried to delete every one of their emails from my file, only to realise that this is unhealthy and really what I needed to do was face it. This morning I renewed my subscription then had another look at the abusive comments and my replies to them. I felt proud of myself for responding with dignity, and respect for my attackers as well as for myself because rather than retaliate I explained why this kind of commenting is not appropriate and translated their abusive remarks into English as a way of exposing them.
This is also causing me to look at just what was said in the attacks. First, about this one Spanish speaker's desire that my mother had aborted me. Yes, a particularly nasty and ugly thing to tell someone, but why was this so effective for upsetting me? My mother had a couple of abortions, one before I was born and one when I was sixteen years old. I was very saddened about these abortions because I felt absolutely deprived of two brothers (both fetuses were male) but I also respected her choice and how difficult if not impossible it would have been for her to provide these children with a good home and that she just did not feel she could go on with the pregnancies.
I am also reminded of once, when I was thirty-two years old and supporting my mother through the early stages of her cancer diagnosis and she phoned me after eleven one night simply to explain to me at length why she was pro-choice. I was not clearly pro-choice at that time in my life, though I still respected a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy if this was something she couldn't or didn't want to go through. But I still thought abortion to be a great tragedy, and even though I now call myself pro-choice, I still think it's a huge tragedy.
I felt very upset by my mother's phone call. It was as though she was trying to invoke a very dark, ancient and primeval power in our relationship: her power to deny me existence, if retroactively. It was for me a chilling experience and it did for a while cast a shadow, that really had always existed, on our relationship.
I actually began to see myself as pro choice around the time I was already gathering a sense of acceptance of same sex marriage. I had befriended a radical Christian community of strident pro life activists in my church in 1997, when I was forty-one and my mother had been dead more than six years. I already had a clear sense that had my mother not chosen to terminate that first pregnancy of hers, she would not likely have met or married my father and I would not exist. This helped me see abortion and choice in context and I soon found myself in sharp opposition to my friends in this radical Christian community. As I said already, I still find abortion to be a huge tragedy, and if I were a woman finding herself unfortunately pregnant, or a doctor being called upon to do the deed for her, I really don't know what my response would be. But life is full of hard and difficult choices and trade offs as well as pyrrhic victories and there are some situations where there are no winners, only reduced harm and damage control and still there are casualties. I think we'll always have casualties.
In a deeply shadowed part of my soul I still mourn for my two brothers whom I hope to meet in heaven while thanking my mother for making that difficult choice, giving me life, and wanting and loving me while raising me the best she could. To that unfortunate individual who made that cruel comment to me I feel clear of resentment now and pray for peace, love and reconciliation for this one and that whatever would impel him or her and others and myself as well towards such cruel behaviour would be expelled and redeemed and healed.
To the person who thinks I need a psychiatrist for my inferiority complex all I can say is I saw a psychiatrist who mentored me towards recovery and no, I do not have an inferiority complex and I hope that one day, free from the cruel anonymity of the Internet, that you and I might meet again as friends.
Both the last comments were posted in Spanish without English translation and I am assuming the two cowards who posted them were hoping that along with the anonymity of posting online they could also hope that the CBC moderator didn't read Spanish. I went back online and translated the comments for the benefit of the moderator and others who don't read Spanish, satisfied that those abusive cowards needn't feel too protected in their anonymity.
I was extremely upset by this, and I would say, traumatized and felt upset, depressed, disoriented, and had difficulty sleeping. Today I still feel bad. I attended the noon Good Friday service in my Anglican parish church where I was one of the readers (four lines, big deal!). I really wanted to stay home. I am glad now that I went, if for no other reason than to pay homage to one who suffered incredibly more than I did and for much greater cause and purpose, but also because of the seamless beauty in this service heightened by a very moving sermon from our rector.
Following a walk in Stanley Park I picked up a small bag of groceries and stopped at a favourite café on Davie Street for an ice Americano and to spend some time drawing. I still didn't feel well as I walked the rest of the way home and had more than average second hand smoke to avoid on the sidewalk. As I turned onto Granville Street from Davie I stopped to let one smoker gain a safe distance between us. Then, three young aboriginals, a man and two women were walking more slowly ahead of me, smoking and I did not want to end up choking on their smoke. I tried to trot past them. One of the women would not let me pass, so I said excuse me as I tried to squeeze between her and the male who stuck out his foot and tripped me. I fell flat on my face and since I was already upset about the online bullying I started weeping and I shouted out "You asshole! You deliberately tripped me." I was suddenly surrounded by all these kind compassionate people asking me if I was alright and helping me up and others shouting to the coward ahead of me "Hey asshole, come back and apologize." They of course neither turned around or slowed down. They walked into the liquor store (but where else would they go?) next door to the entrance to my building. I saw enough of them to be able to assemble a credible description to police. When I got home, after crying for a while, I looked at my knee which was skinned and bleeding and sore. Seeing it wasn't too serious I called 911, still crying, gave the police a description. They called me back a minute later and asked me to come down. When I got there they had the guy who tripped me in handcuffs.
This for me felt very awkward. I felt compassion for him even as they cuffed him, even as he verbally denied doing anything, even as they shuffled him into the squad car. I went back up to my apartment to continue dressing my wounded knee. The phone rang again and the same officer, a young lady, asked me to please come down to make a statement. When I got to the lobby a young male police officer was standing there. We talked together about what happened. He asked me if I was going to lay charges. I said no, I do not want that on my conscience. So the young aboriginal, who likely hates white people, gets a warning and is told not to go around tripping little old men and is allowed to go free. But I know what jail and prison do to people and I would rather trust God to do the work of change and correction and reform in this man's life.
I then went to the office to tell our assistant manager about what happened. She was very kind and gave me a chocolate caramel filled Easter egg and told me to check in with her tomorrow morning.
The support I have received in the face of this nastiness has been incredible and when I find myself despairing of humanity I am going to try to remember that for that one idiot who tripped me there are at least ten more good people who will help you if you are in trouble or danger.
Back to the cyber bullying. This is something very small compared to what drove teenage girls Amanda Todd and Retrea Parsons to suicide. Yet even those three small attacks were traumatizing to me and I'm a hardened mature man with experience coping with abuse unlike those two vulnerable little girls who were so relentlessly attacked and overwhelmed that they took their own lives. I tried to unsubscribe to CBC online last night because of this, then tried to delete every one of their emails from my file, only to realise that this is unhealthy and really what I needed to do was face it. This morning I renewed my subscription then had another look at the abusive comments and my replies to them. I felt proud of myself for responding with dignity, and respect for my attackers as well as for myself because rather than retaliate I explained why this kind of commenting is not appropriate and translated their abusive remarks into English as a way of exposing them.
This is also causing me to look at just what was said in the attacks. First, about this one Spanish speaker's desire that my mother had aborted me. Yes, a particularly nasty and ugly thing to tell someone, but why was this so effective for upsetting me? My mother had a couple of abortions, one before I was born and one when I was sixteen years old. I was very saddened about these abortions because I felt absolutely deprived of two brothers (both fetuses were male) but I also respected her choice and how difficult if not impossible it would have been for her to provide these children with a good home and that she just did not feel she could go on with the pregnancies.
I am also reminded of once, when I was thirty-two years old and supporting my mother through the early stages of her cancer diagnosis and she phoned me after eleven one night simply to explain to me at length why she was pro-choice. I was not clearly pro-choice at that time in my life, though I still respected a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy if this was something she couldn't or didn't want to go through. But I still thought abortion to be a great tragedy, and even though I now call myself pro-choice, I still think it's a huge tragedy.
I felt very upset by my mother's phone call. It was as though she was trying to invoke a very dark, ancient and primeval power in our relationship: her power to deny me existence, if retroactively. It was for me a chilling experience and it did for a while cast a shadow, that really had always existed, on our relationship.
I actually began to see myself as pro choice around the time I was already gathering a sense of acceptance of same sex marriage. I had befriended a radical Christian community of strident pro life activists in my church in 1997, when I was forty-one and my mother had been dead more than six years. I already had a clear sense that had my mother not chosen to terminate that first pregnancy of hers, she would not likely have met or married my father and I would not exist. This helped me see abortion and choice in context and I soon found myself in sharp opposition to my friends in this radical Christian community. As I said already, I still find abortion to be a huge tragedy, and if I were a woman finding herself unfortunately pregnant, or a doctor being called upon to do the deed for her, I really don't know what my response would be. But life is full of hard and difficult choices and trade offs as well as pyrrhic victories and there are some situations where there are no winners, only reduced harm and damage control and still there are casualties. I think we'll always have casualties.
In a deeply shadowed part of my soul I still mourn for my two brothers whom I hope to meet in heaven while thanking my mother for making that difficult choice, giving me life, and wanting and loving me while raising me the best she could. To that unfortunate individual who made that cruel comment to me I feel clear of resentment now and pray for peace, love and reconciliation for this one and that whatever would impel him or her and others and myself as well towards such cruel behaviour would be expelled and redeemed and healed.
To the person who thinks I need a psychiatrist for my inferiority complex all I can say is I saw a psychiatrist who mentored me towards recovery and no, I do not have an inferiority complex and I hope that one day, free from the cruel anonymity of the Internet, that you and I might meet again as friends.
Thursday 17 April 2014
I'm Getting Paid For It
No, I'm not getting paid to write this blog and even if I was I'd still write it. I am thinking of a recent conversation I had with one of my supervisors. You might recall my reluctance to name my employer in this blog given that I might not be inclined to flatter them and this organization is notoriously vindictive towards its less than flattering employees. Especially when they are underpaid contract workers. I had mentioned that I would have to prioritize my availability for clients upon how soon they would be available to work for me. I have bills to pay and we are paid twelve whopping bucks, strictly by the hour, per client. My supervisor, wanting to sound supervisorial, especially in front of co-workers, intoned that we can only avail ourselves to our clients according to their needs and not to fit with our preferences. I informed my supervisor that since this is my livelihood and I do like paying my rent on time, for me this is going to remain a priority.
In my workplace, for contract workers, there is no sense of social contract. We are disposable and this is offensive as it is insulting and fortunately there are enough things that I like about my job that make it tolerable, despite this rather lousy attitude they have towards their contract workers where there is no job security, no guaranteed hours, and absolutely no opportunities for advancement or raises.
Finding another job at my age is not an option. I also like what I do. I sometimes ask myself if I had to do this for free, would I? Well, under certain circumstances. If I already had a decent income and didn't have to worry about shelter, food, clothing or transportation, then yes, I would be happy, in fact honoured to do this kind of work, supporting and encouraging others towards mental health recovery. Especially if I worked for a much nicer employer. And I do hope that when I reach retirement age in fewer than seven short years that I will still have my boots on. Really the idyllic boredom of full retirement would be just the death warrant I would not be seeking. I think I would try to reduce my hours somewhat since my pension will have kicked in and I trust there wouldn't be too many claw backs for hours worked. And of course I trust that my health will hold out since there are no guarantees in life.
Doing work that is as socially intensive as mental health peer support work, the boundaries between the personal and the professional can be easily blurred, especially, and this happens often, when I like my clients. On occasion I have had to tell a client that this is not a friendship since it all revolves around the clients' needs and it shouldn't take a genius to figure out the longevity of any friendship that would be completely one-sided. This is why, when I get home from work, I am often emotionally exhausted and not exactly in the mood for a lot of social stimulation. I also try to be very careful to not be an emotional burden on my own friends whom to a certain degree I treat also like clients, not with a clinical detachment but a genuine concern for their wellbeing. By the same token I treat my clients like friends, but I always draw the line at bringing my own baggage and problems into the equation. To work well in any professional supportive or care-giving capacity it has to be entirely and completely about the wellbeing, care, growth, progress and recovery of the client.
But I'm still going to make sure I get enough work to pay the bills.
In my workplace, for contract workers, there is no sense of social contract. We are disposable and this is offensive as it is insulting and fortunately there are enough things that I like about my job that make it tolerable, despite this rather lousy attitude they have towards their contract workers where there is no job security, no guaranteed hours, and absolutely no opportunities for advancement or raises.
Finding another job at my age is not an option. I also like what I do. I sometimes ask myself if I had to do this for free, would I? Well, under certain circumstances. If I already had a decent income and didn't have to worry about shelter, food, clothing or transportation, then yes, I would be happy, in fact honoured to do this kind of work, supporting and encouraging others towards mental health recovery. Especially if I worked for a much nicer employer. And I do hope that when I reach retirement age in fewer than seven short years that I will still have my boots on. Really the idyllic boredom of full retirement would be just the death warrant I would not be seeking. I think I would try to reduce my hours somewhat since my pension will have kicked in and I trust there wouldn't be too many claw backs for hours worked. And of course I trust that my health will hold out since there are no guarantees in life.
Doing work that is as socially intensive as mental health peer support work, the boundaries between the personal and the professional can be easily blurred, especially, and this happens often, when I like my clients. On occasion I have had to tell a client that this is not a friendship since it all revolves around the clients' needs and it shouldn't take a genius to figure out the longevity of any friendship that would be completely one-sided. This is why, when I get home from work, I am often emotionally exhausted and not exactly in the mood for a lot of social stimulation. I also try to be very careful to not be an emotional burden on my own friends whom to a certain degree I treat also like clients, not with a clinical detachment but a genuine concern for their wellbeing. By the same token I treat my clients like friends, but I always draw the line at bringing my own baggage and problems into the equation. To work well in any professional supportive or care-giving capacity it has to be entirely and completely about the wellbeing, care, growth, progress and recovery of the client.
But I'm still going to make sure I get enough work to pay the bills.
Wednesday 16 April 2014
There Are No Mistakes
I almost believe this myself. It doesn`t mean that I don`t believe in error, or in sin, or in misjudgement or poor judgement, or in the reality and consequences of being irresponsible. Rather, I think there is a certain stigma around the word mistake, as well as a kind of overuse and misuse and abuse of the word, such as the current mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford has famously indulged in rather than simply admitting that he has made wrong choices, and facing the consequences of his actions and moving forward from there.
It isn't that mistakes don't or can't possibly exist. Try to convince any math teacher that two plus two equals five. Or for that matter, try to convince me. What I mean to say is that anything can be redeemed and any and every one of our missteps, errors, miscalculations, and even the results of our most egregiously selfish and irresponsible and downright cruel and vindictive behaviour can be in a sense recreated and made into something good, beautiful, or at least something useful or serviceable.
I particularly know this through my work as an artist. Once I have let go of my particular plan or ideal of how a painting or drawing should turn out and have surrendered to that magical, organic process of being creative, I have often been amazed, not only at how I have been able to make good of my alleged mistakes, but even of how they could work into a finished work of art more beautiful, and more powerful and meaningful than whatever my original intent.
This is also an approach that I try to take in my work as a mental health peer support worker, as well as in my own life of ongoing recovery and increased and enhanced well-being. I celebrate trade offs, especially while facing the reality that in many ways, for a variety of reasons I have never been able to, in socially conventional contexts, live up to my full potential as they say. Rather than allow any resulting void in my life to swallow me alive I have chosen to celebrate this lack by developing my talents as an artist, as a writer, becoming fluent in Spanish and working well in activism for the poor and homeless as well as in a profession working in mental health which I treat as a life calling. Members of my family who ever cared for me are all dead. The others are long gone. Yet I have friends and in my church and with others community. Instead of obsessing over not feeling deeply loved I have opted to love freely and fervently, but without possessing or entrapping. By practicing gratitude every day I often feel that my life is overflowing with joy and goodness and also because of my deep walk with God and sense of his presence and purpose in my life.
I was never able to finish my post secondary education. Throughout my high school years my life was in a state of chronic upheaval begun by my parents' divorce when I was thirteen. I had neither the means nor the appropriate support to continue in college long enough to graduate, get into university and get a degree. The competing needs of paying rent and food combined with the lack of personal strength and endurance to be able to hold down a full time job while completing my studies was likely the cause of this. As well, because of childhood abuse from members of my family I lived through that time with undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder which did much to compromise my ability to move forward in life. Having limited post secondary education and little aptitude for most forms of low skill labour (but certainly not laziness or lack of motivation) my own life has often been marked with poverty and hardship. I have never owned a condo, townhouse, a house, land not even a car. On the other hand I have learned to be flexible and adaptable and grateful for the little I have and I have done very well with very little. I have acquired incredible budgeting skills that I don't think I would have gained had I always been well incomed not to mention a tremendous and intense empathy for the poor, afflicted and marginalized. Now, thanks to BC Housing I can live in dignity and actually afford the luxury of an annual foreign holiday lasting a month or longer as well as other various First World Problems while earning but twelve whopping bucks an hour.
This is not to say that I have never made poor choices, or that I have never been irresponsible or shown bad judgment or nursed toxic and destructive grudges towards others. What this does say is I have faced and overcome each and every one of my demons by accepting responsibility for my actions and their consequences. I feel incredibly rich for the depth and strength that I have gained and go on gaining because of this.
Our lives are works of art and we make this art in cooperation with God, with others and with life itself. We often wonder at the apparent mistakes that we make and things that have marred or even destroyed the beauty of our work but I say find in the mistake, in the blemish, the new tools that you need to work with and you will find that the end result will be more beautiful and more wonderful and more powerful than anything you could have dreamed.
It isn't that mistakes don't or can't possibly exist. Try to convince any math teacher that two plus two equals five. Or for that matter, try to convince me. What I mean to say is that anything can be redeemed and any and every one of our missteps, errors, miscalculations, and even the results of our most egregiously selfish and irresponsible and downright cruel and vindictive behaviour can be in a sense recreated and made into something good, beautiful, or at least something useful or serviceable.
I particularly know this through my work as an artist. Once I have let go of my particular plan or ideal of how a painting or drawing should turn out and have surrendered to that magical, organic process of being creative, I have often been amazed, not only at how I have been able to make good of my alleged mistakes, but even of how they could work into a finished work of art more beautiful, and more powerful and meaningful than whatever my original intent.
This is also an approach that I try to take in my work as a mental health peer support worker, as well as in my own life of ongoing recovery and increased and enhanced well-being. I celebrate trade offs, especially while facing the reality that in many ways, for a variety of reasons I have never been able to, in socially conventional contexts, live up to my full potential as they say. Rather than allow any resulting void in my life to swallow me alive I have chosen to celebrate this lack by developing my talents as an artist, as a writer, becoming fluent in Spanish and working well in activism for the poor and homeless as well as in a profession working in mental health which I treat as a life calling. Members of my family who ever cared for me are all dead. The others are long gone. Yet I have friends and in my church and with others community. Instead of obsessing over not feeling deeply loved I have opted to love freely and fervently, but without possessing or entrapping. By practicing gratitude every day I often feel that my life is overflowing with joy and goodness and also because of my deep walk with God and sense of his presence and purpose in my life.
I was never able to finish my post secondary education. Throughout my high school years my life was in a state of chronic upheaval begun by my parents' divorce when I was thirteen. I had neither the means nor the appropriate support to continue in college long enough to graduate, get into university and get a degree. The competing needs of paying rent and food combined with the lack of personal strength and endurance to be able to hold down a full time job while completing my studies was likely the cause of this. As well, because of childhood abuse from members of my family I lived through that time with undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder which did much to compromise my ability to move forward in life. Having limited post secondary education and little aptitude for most forms of low skill labour (but certainly not laziness or lack of motivation) my own life has often been marked with poverty and hardship. I have never owned a condo, townhouse, a house, land not even a car. On the other hand I have learned to be flexible and adaptable and grateful for the little I have and I have done very well with very little. I have acquired incredible budgeting skills that I don't think I would have gained had I always been well incomed not to mention a tremendous and intense empathy for the poor, afflicted and marginalized. Now, thanks to BC Housing I can live in dignity and actually afford the luxury of an annual foreign holiday lasting a month or longer as well as other various First World Problems while earning but twelve whopping bucks an hour.
This is not to say that I have never made poor choices, or that I have never been irresponsible or shown bad judgment or nursed toxic and destructive grudges towards others. What this does say is I have faced and overcome each and every one of my demons by accepting responsibility for my actions and their consequences. I feel incredibly rich for the depth and strength that I have gained and go on gaining because of this.
Our lives are works of art and we make this art in cooperation with God, with others and with life itself. We often wonder at the apparent mistakes that we make and things that have marred or even destroyed the beauty of our work but I say find in the mistake, in the blemish, the new tools that you need to work with and you will find that the end result will be more beautiful and more wonderful and more powerful than anything you could have dreamed.
Tuesday 15 April 2014
Change From Within
I have just finished reading the prologue to a book titled "Los Dos Mensajes del Islam", or the two messages of Islam by Spanish scholar Antonio Elorza. I cannot give a full account here but while reading about the tenets of Islam involving all people being subjugated, by force if necessary, to obey the law of Allah, it really occurred to me just how harmful religion is, when it is externally enforced. We cannot even make ourselves good, much less anyone else, but if we allow God to become for us real and living then change does happen from within. It isn't magical but if we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives and hearts then the Kingdom Of Heaven is being established here on earth.
I have a vision of living my faith and I would be the first to admit that this vision is highly personal and perhaps idiosyncratic. It is rather an updated version of bringing the spiritual reality, perhaps purity, of the early desert fathers into our post modern reality. Of living in and interacting with the world without being tainted by it. It is living out the reality of being salt and light in the world.
This is not something that can be organized and I don`t think it would even be possible to do this in the context of intentional Christian community without somehow distorting and corrupting the beauty of this ideal and creating a kind of Frankenstein`s monster. Having experienced several different forms of such community over the years I believe I can make this claim with some authority. This is not to put down such existing Christian communities where this is being attempted and to some extent successfully achieved. Regardless of where we find ourselves God will find us wherever we happen to be.
The image I sometimes have is that I am sequestered away in a cell somewhere in a desert and it is early morning. The sun is just rising and I am on the doorstep of my cell, facing the rising sun and reciting aloud from the Psalms. I have no idea how I live in this place, how I earn my living or find my food and water or what I have for a community, only this abiding image of an austere life of holiness in the desert.
This is not an ideal, or a caricature of holiness that I try to live out in every excruciating detail. True, my way of life is quite ascetic and simple but I would say this is more the fruit of seeking God than the means of doing so. There is something about this vision that helps ground me in the reality of living in God`s presence in the midst of a world that rejects him or is simply uninterested. It is also an abiding metaphor of the deepening, purging and refining work of the Holy Spirit in my life as I carryout my daily routine, obligations and errands.
I experience also through this vision a sense of security, not in external comforts and ballasts, but in knowing that God is real and ever present and that it is he and not I who does the work of changing and transforming my life, or that rather this is a work of cooperation between God and myself.
I have a vision of living my faith and I would be the first to admit that this vision is highly personal and perhaps idiosyncratic. It is rather an updated version of bringing the spiritual reality, perhaps purity, of the early desert fathers into our post modern reality. Of living in and interacting with the world without being tainted by it. It is living out the reality of being salt and light in the world.
This is not something that can be organized and I don`t think it would even be possible to do this in the context of intentional Christian community without somehow distorting and corrupting the beauty of this ideal and creating a kind of Frankenstein`s monster. Having experienced several different forms of such community over the years I believe I can make this claim with some authority. This is not to put down such existing Christian communities where this is being attempted and to some extent successfully achieved. Regardless of where we find ourselves God will find us wherever we happen to be.
The image I sometimes have is that I am sequestered away in a cell somewhere in a desert and it is early morning. The sun is just rising and I am on the doorstep of my cell, facing the rising sun and reciting aloud from the Psalms. I have no idea how I live in this place, how I earn my living or find my food and water or what I have for a community, only this abiding image of an austere life of holiness in the desert.
This is not an ideal, or a caricature of holiness that I try to live out in every excruciating detail. True, my way of life is quite ascetic and simple but I would say this is more the fruit of seeking God than the means of doing so. There is something about this vision that helps ground me in the reality of living in God`s presence in the midst of a world that rejects him or is simply uninterested. It is also an abiding metaphor of the deepening, purging and refining work of the Holy Spirit in my life as I carryout my daily routine, obligations and errands.
I experience also through this vision a sense of security, not in external comforts and ballasts, but in knowing that God is real and ever present and that it is he and not I who does the work of changing and transforming my life, or that rather this is a work of cooperation between God and myself.
Monday 14 April 2014
Sick
I'm afraid that my judgement is a bit clouded today to be able to write well. I have come down with the sort of cold that makes rest necessary, at least for a couple of hours during the day. Fortunately my afternoon client cancelled at the last minute so I could go home and rest and still get paid for it. There is precious little in the way of sick pay where I work and it is always up to the supervisor's discretion. Twelve dollars an hour, no benefits, no job security. Any higher paid positions are harder to get, the bar for applying is high and the competition is nuts. Everything else about my job I love and there is a lot to be grateful for. I was going to name my employer on this post, but they are notoriously vindictive so everyone is just going to have to guess.
Sunday 13 April 2014
I Have Pearls For Worthier Swine
Writing a daily blog is like life as a domestic oyster. There always has to be a daily irritant if you want to produce a pearl. Today's irritant occurred at church, following the service, at coffee downstairs while sharing a table with among others an elderly lady choir member who loves being the centre of attention and has to have a captive audience. A nice, lovely person altogether, but rather a bore. I mentioned in the course of our conversation my desire to continue working once I reach retirement age and out came that one cold, dank, just slightly chemical smelling drop of negativity: "You never know," she said more or less, "What's going to happen to your plans." She didn't quite succeed in pissing in my granola and I concede that up to a point she may be right. We never know what life is going to hand us, especially as we get old and frail, which I suppose brings on a sense of contingency about any long term plans that we make. And I have to admit that this is why I like to travel somewhere every year, now that I can afford to. I never know what life might end up handing me and I would like to be able to travel while I am still in good health and financial condition to enjoy it.
I draw the line at being pessimistic, unlike my friend at church. Two posts ago I mentioned obstinate joy, based in gratitude and this is the reality I have chosen to carry inside me. I have no idea what awaits me in the distant or near future. Cancer? Heart Disease? Accident? Stroke? Dementia? Permanent mental health relapse? I might be somehow in denial but I really don't think that any of these things are going to befall me, and even if any of these or other misfortunes befall me I hope to cultivate the grace, dignity and humility to bear well whatever is handed me.
In the meantime I am going to continue to dance and go on dancing. In the full sunlight. In an ecstasy of obstinate joy.
I draw the line at being pessimistic, unlike my friend at church. Two posts ago I mentioned obstinate joy, based in gratitude and this is the reality I have chosen to carry inside me. I have no idea what awaits me in the distant or near future. Cancer? Heart Disease? Accident? Stroke? Dementia? Permanent mental health relapse? I might be somehow in denial but I really don't think that any of these things are going to befall me, and even if any of these or other misfortunes befall me I hope to cultivate the grace, dignity and humility to bear well whatever is handed me.
In the meantime I am going to continue to dance and go on dancing. In the full sunlight. In an ecstasy of obstinate joy.
Saturday 12 April 2014
Those Little Thorns And Barbs And Piercing Sharp Spines Of The Day
Some days are full of them. Others not so much. But we notice them and often give them more than their due. Especially when one follows another and another and another in rapid succession. This can be particularly devastating after one of those days when everything has gone particularly well. And yet they are small irritants and only and exactly that. Small irritants. Today, for example, everything was going just smoothly, tickety-boo, following a lovely three mile walk through Vancouver's wealthy neighbourhoods, Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale, or Kerrisdull, as I like to call it, and while walking back along Angus Drive (or Anguish Drive as I also like to call it) I noticed three women on bicycles and one asking if they were still in Kerrisdale and I nearly replied, "Oh, Yes, we are doing the mean streets of Kerrisdale. It has also become a byword, to me anyway, for the phenomenon of gentrification that is stretching its creepy slithery tentacles into the poorest neighbourhoods in Vancouver. I call it Creeping Kerrisdale.
While admiring and revelling in almost everything (this time of year I particularly obsess over these tiny delicate flowers that grow in the grass, pale blue tinged with mauve. I do not know what they are called but I love these flowers and anticipate them with joy every spring. It seems odd to admire such gently coloured little flowers when in Mexico I get absolutely psychotic about the psychedelically hued bougainvillea) that there is to admire and revel in about a fine day in Spring, short of getting oneself hauled away and arrested for disorderly and indecent conduct I walked among the budding, leafing and flowering trees and gardens as far as my destination, a lovely Bean Around The World coffee shop in South Kerrisdale where I whiled away an hour and a half working on a full colour drawing of a peacock feather while savouring an iced decaf Americano served in a real glass (my insistence when I am in coffee shops. I will not drink out of paper or plastic, partly because I hate environmental waste and degradation and also because it is so déclassé when glass or porcelain are already available, then walked back even further, more than four miles to No Thrills, or rather No Frills to pick up a couple of things when I afterward missed two buses in a row and, anticipating a longer wait than what would seem fair, walked on to a different bus stop, cussing under my breath, lugging a ten pound sack of potatoes. I believe that I missed the buses because when I was at the check out at No Thrills, or I mean No Frills on Fourth Avenue I had to struggle and search diligently through my crowded knapsack for a recycled No Frills plastic bag to hold the carton of tropical juice I also bought. I try to remember to carry at least one reusable plastic bag with me in case I need to buy groceries and partly because I love the environment but also equally love having a bit of room in the cupboard underneath my kitchen sink I am trying my utmost not to accumulate any more plastic bags, which has made me very staunch about reduce, reuse and recycle. I also prefer the No Frills bags because they are particularly strong and durable and, being an obnoxiously bright shade of yellow it is very easy to locate one in my ridiculously packed knapsack. (It carries my paperwork from work, sketch book, sixty or so coloured pencils rolled up in my keffayah, which I no longer wear as a scarf, maybe because I just no longer want to be seen as taking sides on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It isn't that I no longer support the Palestinians, I still do, but I believe that the Jews have an equal stake in the Holy Land and vice-versa and I am still waiting to see people on both sides to come to their senses and make like grown-ups and actually learn how to share their famous and symbolically laden piece of real estate. Until that happens I am not wearing my keffayah, which suits me fine because it is quite dandy for storing coloured pencils. As well as that, I have two packages of coloured ball point pens, ten colours each. You see, I love to do art work while seated in cafes or in the staff room at work. There is also in my knapsack a novel, it is a Spanish Translation of Herman Hesse's Under the Wheel, which I tend to read while riding the bus. There is also a book on the art of living, in Spanish, which I bought from a vendor on the Metro subway train during my last visit to Mexico City. They generally have to sell stuff on the Metro and elsewhere because legitimate jobs tend to pay very little and people do want to survive and perhaps do a bit better than survive. I think there are also some other pieces of paper of reading interest, along with my pencil sharpener, a small photo album of photos of my paintings, in case I want to approach someone in a café about doing an art show or if someone is curious about what kind of painting I do or simply for the unfettered praise and adulation of what a wonderful artist I am, though I'm sure that sometimes they merely say what they think they want me to hear. It also contains two day timers, including last year's in case I need to refer back to earlier information about one of my clients, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer because the world is a dangerous place crawling with nasty little greebies, especially on the bus, and I'm sure my hands must smell now perpetually like a badly made martini. Anyway, while I was searching through my crowded knapsack for that offensively bright yellow plastic No Frills Bag to carry my carton of juice (a lovely tropical blend of pure pineapple, guava and passion fruit) out flew my pencil sharpener and the cap came off as it hit the floor and pencil shavings scattered everywhere. I did get home okay.
When I arrived on my floor I noticed that once again my Mexican neighbour across the hall, more or less, has her door wide open once again while cooking and entertaining her extended family. Naturally I can hear their racket and smell their cooking when I'm in my apartment, which is annoying, so I phoned in a complaint on the voice mail of our new manager and I hope he addresses her on this. Her excuse is that her apartment gets hot and stuffy but she does have a window and she can learn how to open it and if the noise coming from Granville Street annoys her she does have the racket from her extended family to distract her and drown it out. I wonder why she needs to do this. Perhaps force of habit? Maybe this is her way of boasting to her neighbours that she has a wonderful extended family, unlike the rest of us she has a life, and isn't she just so special.
I have had the kitchen exhaust fan on since I arrived home and the radio is playing a bit louder than usual so I haven't heard anything from her though every forty-five minutes or so I open the door to check if she's closed hers or not so I can turn off the fan but in the meantime I'm coping well, I had some of the pineapple-guava-passion juice and it is absolute ambrosia and I have just enjoyed a particularly great dinner: a salad made of a diced large tomato with wine vinegar, soy sauce and dried basil, half a baked potato stuffed with Asiago, leftover coconut yam, sweet potato and plantain curry with tofu made from scratch like everything else that goes into my pie hole, and steamed cabbage that I actually didn't burn (just very slightly singed) for a change and I am about to dig into some fresh strawberries.
Absolutely nothing to complain about.
My Mexican neighbour has finally closed her door.
While admiring and revelling in almost everything (this time of year I particularly obsess over these tiny delicate flowers that grow in the grass, pale blue tinged with mauve. I do not know what they are called but I love these flowers and anticipate them with joy every spring. It seems odd to admire such gently coloured little flowers when in Mexico I get absolutely psychotic about the psychedelically hued bougainvillea) that there is to admire and revel in about a fine day in Spring, short of getting oneself hauled away and arrested for disorderly and indecent conduct I walked among the budding, leafing and flowering trees and gardens as far as my destination, a lovely Bean Around The World coffee shop in South Kerrisdale where I whiled away an hour and a half working on a full colour drawing of a peacock feather while savouring an iced decaf Americano served in a real glass (my insistence when I am in coffee shops. I will not drink out of paper or plastic, partly because I hate environmental waste and degradation and also because it is so déclassé when glass or porcelain are already available, then walked back even further, more than four miles to No Thrills, or rather No Frills to pick up a couple of things when I afterward missed two buses in a row and, anticipating a longer wait than what would seem fair, walked on to a different bus stop, cussing under my breath, lugging a ten pound sack of potatoes. I believe that I missed the buses because when I was at the check out at No Thrills, or I mean No Frills on Fourth Avenue I had to struggle and search diligently through my crowded knapsack for a recycled No Frills plastic bag to hold the carton of tropical juice I also bought. I try to remember to carry at least one reusable plastic bag with me in case I need to buy groceries and partly because I love the environment but also equally love having a bit of room in the cupboard underneath my kitchen sink I am trying my utmost not to accumulate any more plastic bags, which has made me very staunch about reduce, reuse and recycle. I also prefer the No Frills bags because they are particularly strong and durable and, being an obnoxiously bright shade of yellow it is very easy to locate one in my ridiculously packed knapsack. (It carries my paperwork from work, sketch book, sixty or so coloured pencils rolled up in my keffayah, which I no longer wear as a scarf, maybe because I just no longer want to be seen as taking sides on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It isn't that I no longer support the Palestinians, I still do, but I believe that the Jews have an equal stake in the Holy Land and vice-versa and I am still waiting to see people on both sides to come to their senses and make like grown-ups and actually learn how to share their famous and symbolically laden piece of real estate. Until that happens I am not wearing my keffayah, which suits me fine because it is quite dandy for storing coloured pencils. As well as that, I have two packages of coloured ball point pens, ten colours each. You see, I love to do art work while seated in cafes or in the staff room at work. There is also in my knapsack a novel, it is a Spanish Translation of Herman Hesse's Under the Wheel, which I tend to read while riding the bus. There is also a book on the art of living, in Spanish, which I bought from a vendor on the Metro subway train during my last visit to Mexico City. They generally have to sell stuff on the Metro and elsewhere because legitimate jobs tend to pay very little and people do want to survive and perhaps do a bit better than survive. I think there are also some other pieces of paper of reading interest, along with my pencil sharpener, a small photo album of photos of my paintings, in case I want to approach someone in a café about doing an art show or if someone is curious about what kind of painting I do or simply for the unfettered praise and adulation of what a wonderful artist I am, though I'm sure that sometimes they merely say what they think they want me to hear. It also contains two day timers, including last year's in case I need to refer back to earlier information about one of my clients, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer because the world is a dangerous place crawling with nasty little greebies, especially on the bus, and I'm sure my hands must smell now perpetually like a badly made martini. Anyway, while I was searching through my crowded knapsack for that offensively bright yellow plastic No Frills Bag to carry my carton of juice (a lovely tropical blend of pure pineapple, guava and passion fruit) out flew my pencil sharpener and the cap came off as it hit the floor and pencil shavings scattered everywhere. I did get home okay.
When I arrived on my floor I noticed that once again my Mexican neighbour across the hall, more or less, has her door wide open once again while cooking and entertaining her extended family. Naturally I can hear their racket and smell their cooking when I'm in my apartment, which is annoying, so I phoned in a complaint on the voice mail of our new manager and I hope he addresses her on this. Her excuse is that her apartment gets hot and stuffy but she does have a window and she can learn how to open it and if the noise coming from Granville Street annoys her she does have the racket from her extended family to distract her and drown it out. I wonder why she needs to do this. Perhaps force of habit? Maybe this is her way of boasting to her neighbours that she has a wonderful extended family, unlike the rest of us she has a life, and isn't she just so special.
I have had the kitchen exhaust fan on since I arrived home and the radio is playing a bit louder than usual so I haven't heard anything from her though every forty-five minutes or so I open the door to check if she's closed hers or not so I can turn off the fan but in the meantime I'm coping well, I had some of the pineapple-guava-passion juice and it is absolute ambrosia and I have just enjoyed a particularly great dinner: a salad made of a diced large tomato with wine vinegar, soy sauce and dried basil, half a baked potato stuffed with Asiago, leftover coconut yam, sweet potato and plantain curry with tofu made from scratch like everything else that goes into my pie hole, and steamed cabbage that I actually didn't burn (just very slightly singed) for a change and I am about to dig into some fresh strawberries.
Absolutely nothing to complain about.
My Mexican neighbour has finally closed her door.
Friday 11 April 2014
It's All Chicken Shit
It must have been almost twenty years ago when I heard a friend, a seasoned punk poet, say these wise and eternal words: "There's two rules in life. 1. Don't let the chicken shit get you down, and, 2. It's all chicken shit." I love this quote, the words have lived and resonated in my soul and I have done my best in my own feeble, stumbling way to live by them. Today I tried to find the source of this quote on the Internet, but without success, so I am going to attribute it to my punk poet friend whom I haven't seen in more years than I can imagine.
Do I believe these words? Well, yes, more or less. There are some things that still pack enough gravitas so that they cannot be relegated as chicken shit, such as the death of a loved one, a cancer diagnosis, famine, a major killer earth quake, or a nuclear meltdown. Almost everything else is negotiable and therefore belongs in the category of chicken shit.
We seem to never fail at making things more important than they really are and few of us ever stop to wonder if this will matter in one hundred years, ten years, next year, or tomorrow. Usually we forget within minutes. Your boyfriend just dumped you? Aww, don't worry, it's chicken shit. Your girlfriend has banished you to the couch? Chicken shit. You broke a nail? Chicken shit. You were just gang raped by a gang of boy scouts? Hey, wait a minute!
Life is a complex dance with so many unscripted steps and moves that we often only wish we could sit it out by the punch bowl but that is never going to happen. We can take things very seriously, or not at all, or we can mock everything, or we can blindly plunge into the dance in a whoop of joy and sing along with the music until we trip, fall or otherwise get hurt. Then we get up, or someone helps us up and we limp back into the dance until the next fall. I think there is a continuum of obstinate joy that we have to learn how to cultivate, without which we cannot cope with the unexpected. There is another name for this obstinate joy. I call it gratitude.
Do I believe these words? Well, yes, more or less. There are some things that still pack enough gravitas so that they cannot be relegated as chicken shit, such as the death of a loved one, a cancer diagnosis, famine, a major killer earth quake, or a nuclear meltdown. Almost everything else is negotiable and therefore belongs in the category of chicken shit.
We seem to never fail at making things more important than they really are and few of us ever stop to wonder if this will matter in one hundred years, ten years, next year, or tomorrow. Usually we forget within minutes. Your boyfriend just dumped you? Aww, don't worry, it's chicken shit. Your girlfriend has banished you to the couch? Chicken shit. You broke a nail? Chicken shit. You were just gang raped by a gang of boy scouts? Hey, wait a minute!
Life is a complex dance with so many unscripted steps and moves that we often only wish we could sit it out by the punch bowl but that is never going to happen. We can take things very seriously, or not at all, or we can mock everything, or we can blindly plunge into the dance in a whoop of joy and sing along with the music until we trip, fall or otherwise get hurt. Then we get up, or someone helps us up and we limp back into the dance until the next fall. I think there is a continuum of obstinate joy that we have to learn how to cultivate, without which we cannot cope with the unexpected. There is another name for this obstinate joy. I call it gratitude.
Thursday 10 April 2014
A Dissertation on Neurosis
I promised a friend I had coffee with today that I will write a post about neurosis and whether or not it can play a role in healthy living, so I thought maybe I could explore this now. Neurosis in itself is an interesting concept. It doesn't exactly denote mental illness, but perhaps a complex of coping strategies in the face of an impending mental health breakdown. I am reminded of the joke about the difference between neurotics and psychotics. Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them, and the psychiatrist collects the rent!
I think of neurosis as a First World Phenomenon. It used to be the property of the middle and upper middle classes of Europe during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries but now that the general standard of living for most people who live in First World Countries is at a par or surpasses that of the upper classes of old this has definitely become a general phenomenon, in our countries anyway.
I imagine there are certain qualifiers for neurosis. First of all, there must be no immediate threat to personal or collective survival. To do well at neurosis, one must already be leading a relatively comfortable life. You are well housed, fed and clothed, enjoy certain social status and have a generally intact family and social network. In fact, what makes neurosis what it is, which is to say, neurosis, the fewer external problems or deficiencies the better.
It is my belief that we have certain primal needs and urges that relate directly to physical survival that have not died out despite the advances and comforts that we enjoy in civilized life. If we are not preoccupied scrambling to survive, to find food for the table, ensure shelter for the night, escape bombs falling from airplanes or to survive a nuclear holocaust we have no time or spare energy for neurosis. There is no time to obsess over relationships, or social status, or subtle details of health in our unusually robust bodies. There is no need to make mountains out of molehills while hiding from a sniper's bullets.
Neurosis is a buffer against boredom, or existential angst, or ennui. Or purposelessness. It is a channel for the primal energy of fear and resourcefulness that our primeval ancestors lived with as their norm for hundreds of thousands of years. A few generations of civilized bourgeois comfort is not going to change this. These instincts get driven underground. This really shows in professional sports. We no longer send our young sons off to war, at least not lately. In our peaceful times we channel our instinct towards armed aggression onto the hockey rink or the soccer field. Young, and no longer young, men have their masculinity revalidated while stuffing their pie holes with beer and pizza in front of the TV screen, and it has been shown too that their testosterone levels also go up while watching televised sports. Our complex social behaviour in the workplace is also a safe channelling of these primal needs, only we are no longer hunting and killing woolly mammoths and so the way we express the primal urges also is modified and sublimated.
Ten thousand years of civilization has done virtually nothing to really change us. It seems the better our quality of life the more anxious and worried, which is to say, the more neurotic we become. We are almost instinctively allergic to living in good peaceful times so instead many of us obsess over the end of the world through climate change, the end of civilization through terrorism, or the end of our lives through cancer and heart disease, not because these are real and present dangers (and after a fashion, they are real and present dangers) but because we have all this time on our hands to get worried, anxious and neurotic about catastrophes that still may never befall us. In the words of Judy Collins, we barter our lives to make sure we are living.
I would propose this as an antidote to neurosis. It involves our moving outside of and beyond ourselves, our families, social and professional circles, outside of our very comfort zones. It could mean becoming more familiar with the lives of those who have to struggle and fight daily to survive. I could mean working and organizing to further strengthen and improve the institutions and infrastructures that signify our advances and comforts, working for a sustainable environment, for the use of renewable energy sources, for peace and community and economic development in other parts of the world, for the welfare of refugees and victims of war and conflict or famine or natural disasters, for an eradication of homelessness and poverty in our own cities. The best solution to neurosis is selflessness, because neurosis, which springs out of irrational fear, is always selfishly based and for this reason it is also very toxic. No matter how good we have it, we can always improve further, we can always grow, and we can always go on learning and offering our hands to one another in help, need, friendship and love. In love there is room for everything except fear. And except neurosis.
I think of neurosis as a First World Phenomenon. It used to be the property of the middle and upper middle classes of Europe during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries but now that the general standard of living for most people who live in First World Countries is at a par or surpasses that of the upper classes of old this has definitely become a general phenomenon, in our countries anyway.
I imagine there are certain qualifiers for neurosis. First of all, there must be no immediate threat to personal or collective survival. To do well at neurosis, one must already be leading a relatively comfortable life. You are well housed, fed and clothed, enjoy certain social status and have a generally intact family and social network. In fact, what makes neurosis what it is, which is to say, neurosis, the fewer external problems or deficiencies the better.
It is my belief that we have certain primal needs and urges that relate directly to physical survival that have not died out despite the advances and comforts that we enjoy in civilized life. If we are not preoccupied scrambling to survive, to find food for the table, ensure shelter for the night, escape bombs falling from airplanes or to survive a nuclear holocaust we have no time or spare energy for neurosis. There is no time to obsess over relationships, or social status, or subtle details of health in our unusually robust bodies. There is no need to make mountains out of molehills while hiding from a sniper's bullets.
Neurosis is a buffer against boredom, or existential angst, or ennui. Or purposelessness. It is a channel for the primal energy of fear and resourcefulness that our primeval ancestors lived with as their norm for hundreds of thousands of years. A few generations of civilized bourgeois comfort is not going to change this. These instincts get driven underground. This really shows in professional sports. We no longer send our young sons off to war, at least not lately. In our peaceful times we channel our instinct towards armed aggression onto the hockey rink or the soccer field. Young, and no longer young, men have their masculinity revalidated while stuffing their pie holes with beer and pizza in front of the TV screen, and it has been shown too that their testosterone levels also go up while watching televised sports. Our complex social behaviour in the workplace is also a safe channelling of these primal needs, only we are no longer hunting and killing woolly mammoths and so the way we express the primal urges also is modified and sublimated.
Ten thousand years of civilization has done virtually nothing to really change us. It seems the better our quality of life the more anxious and worried, which is to say, the more neurotic we become. We are almost instinctively allergic to living in good peaceful times so instead many of us obsess over the end of the world through climate change, the end of civilization through terrorism, or the end of our lives through cancer and heart disease, not because these are real and present dangers (and after a fashion, they are real and present dangers) but because we have all this time on our hands to get worried, anxious and neurotic about catastrophes that still may never befall us. In the words of Judy Collins, we barter our lives to make sure we are living.
I would propose this as an antidote to neurosis. It involves our moving outside of and beyond ourselves, our families, social and professional circles, outside of our very comfort zones. It could mean becoming more familiar with the lives of those who have to struggle and fight daily to survive. I could mean working and organizing to further strengthen and improve the institutions and infrastructures that signify our advances and comforts, working for a sustainable environment, for the use of renewable energy sources, for peace and community and economic development in other parts of the world, for the welfare of refugees and victims of war and conflict or famine or natural disasters, for an eradication of homelessness and poverty in our own cities. The best solution to neurosis is selflessness, because neurosis, which springs out of irrational fear, is always selfishly based and for this reason it is also very toxic. No matter how good we have it, we can always improve further, we can always grow, and we can always go on learning and offering our hands to one another in help, need, friendship and love. In love there is room for everything except fear. And except neurosis.
Wednesday 9 April 2014
A Florist's Refrigerator
I heard someone chirp in the elevator today about how much a sunny day can cheer her day. I suppose she's right. It is nice and sunlight does have a beneficial effect on our emotions. I didn't want to pee on her granola by carping about how cold it still is, like being inside a florists' refrigerator, as an old friend of mine used to describe springtime in Vancouver. I also like sunshine, by the way, but my recent month in Mexico has conditioned me to associate sunshine with unpleasantly high temperatures, smog, difficulty breathing and walking like a ninety-five year old man climbing rather a steep hill. But it is nice to see the bright colours of the day and the bright blue of the sky and the fragrant clean air that blows off the sea. It never is quite perfect, but nothing is really. A lovely walk in a park in June can be often accompanied by a sore foot, or music sullied by an unpleasant memory. Our conditions will never be ideal, or as we think they should be, but it remains in our capacity to cultivate joy. As some of you know from reading yesterday's post, my step cousin Lanice has died recently and I am in mourning, given that we were close and I have been more inclined today to notice the cold air than the brilliant sunshine but I still notice the colours and the fragrance in the air and the furtive birdsong and even if I can't say that I am outlandishly happy, then shall we say that I know that I am blessed and that I will likely always have too much to be grateful for to write in one post on this dear little blog.
I have eaten and enjoyed today a lovely homemade dish of a vegetarian curry with yam, sweet potato, plantain, tofu and other good things with fresh strawberries for dessert to be followed with chocolate. I am one of the poor in my country and I live like royalty.
I have eaten and enjoyed today a lovely homemade dish of a vegetarian curry with yam, sweet potato, plantain, tofu and other good things with fresh strawberries for dessert to be followed with chocolate. I am one of the poor in my country and I live like royalty.
Tuesday 8 April 2014
Lanice Thorsteinson, A Memorial
Lanice is my step-cousin and the only member of my family who took the time to stay in touch with me. She is a true and real friend. I just learned today that three weeks ago, March 17, 2014, she lost her battle with cancer. She was sixty-five years old. The last time I talked to Lanice was on the phone less than a week before I went to Mexico March 1 for a month. In the week since I've been back I have been dragging my south end giving her a phone call and waiting to hear from her. I think that intuitively I knew she was already gone. It always seems premature. She sounded strong, hopeful and optimistic about the course of her chemotherapy when I last talked to her and I was expecting she would be around till at least August. As if I could set the terms and time of her departure. When I picked up the message on my voice mail today from her sister I wanted to protest that Lanice had till at least August and that she had died too soon. How silly and irrational we can be in the face of death.
Lanice is the only person in my family with whom I have ever felt that I have anything in common. I must have been almost seventeen the first time we met. She would have been twenty-four, I think. The connection was instantaneous. I saw in her a fellow adventurer. Another artist, another pilgrim, another happy fool dancing out universal truths through our interactions with every day life. A long time member of the BC NDP she was a dedicated human rights and social justice activist. She always tried to work at jobs that reflected her values. Like me she was always on the low income side of the spectrum. I always saw her as an irrepressibly generous and passionate soul. She always had a huge beautiful smile for me when we saw each other, the sort of smile that radiates from a very deep part of the soul.
She cared deeply and fervently about others, whether her family, her friends, or strangers on the street. She had a love and hunger for life and a curiosity about new and unusual things. We didn't always agree and even had a falling out that sadly lasted way too long but a few years later we ran into each other downtown while I was in transit between work assignments. I had no time to stop and talk but I gave her my card and soon we were back in regular contact and frequently meeting in coffee shops to keep our dialogue and friendship going. She also kept me up to date about the happenings in our blended families.
After not seeing each other for several months I ran into her last August. As always I was running between assignments at work but we had time to promise that we would get in touch and do coffee together soon. That opportunity never arrived and that turned out to be the last time I would see her. The cancer that she had been fighting so valiantly returned with a vengeance. She was too weak to meet me for coffee and I was either too busy at work or too exhausted on my days off to visit. We stayed in touch by phone. Always I found her integrity, her honesty and courage in the gathering shadow of death inspiring and simply amazing.
The world has lost too soon a real light in Lanice and it saddens me that her art, especially her delicately rendered flower paintings, never received the exposure or notice that should have been her due. I have lost a friend, a family member, and in many ways, a sister. I will not be able to join with the rest of Lanice's family to celebrate her memory but I hope that this post in my blog will honour her as she deserves. God bless you and keep you Lanice, and thank you so very much for your presence and for the amazing person whom you have been for me and for others. God bless you and keep you always.
I would like to conclude by paraphrasing one of the most meaningful things I ever heard her say. I myself was just recovering from homelessness and we had run into each other in front of the same welfare office where, it turned out, we were both clients. She said that the poor, the marginalized, the overlooked and despised of the earth are the very people who, because of their gifts of love, compassion and insight and wisdom are the very people whom the very society that despises them could never survive without.
Lanice is the only person in my family with whom I have ever felt that I have anything in common. I must have been almost seventeen the first time we met. She would have been twenty-four, I think. The connection was instantaneous. I saw in her a fellow adventurer. Another artist, another pilgrim, another happy fool dancing out universal truths through our interactions with every day life. A long time member of the BC NDP she was a dedicated human rights and social justice activist. She always tried to work at jobs that reflected her values. Like me she was always on the low income side of the spectrum. I always saw her as an irrepressibly generous and passionate soul. She always had a huge beautiful smile for me when we saw each other, the sort of smile that radiates from a very deep part of the soul.
She cared deeply and fervently about others, whether her family, her friends, or strangers on the street. She had a love and hunger for life and a curiosity about new and unusual things. We didn't always agree and even had a falling out that sadly lasted way too long but a few years later we ran into each other downtown while I was in transit between work assignments. I had no time to stop and talk but I gave her my card and soon we were back in regular contact and frequently meeting in coffee shops to keep our dialogue and friendship going. She also kept me up to date about the happenings in our blended families.
After not seeing each other for several months I ran into her last August. As always I was running between assignments at work but we had time to promise that we would get in touch and do coffee together soon. That opportunity never arrived and that turned out to be the last time I would see her. The cancer that she had been fighting so valiantly returned with a vengeance. She was too weak to meet me for coffee and I was either too busy at work or too exhausted on my days off to visit. We stayed in touch by phone. Always I found her integrity, her honesty and courage in the gathering shadow of death inspiring and simply amazing.
The world has lost too soon a real light in Lanice and it saddens me that her art, especially her delicately rendered flower paintings, never received the exposure or notice that should have been her due. I have lost a friend, a family member, and in many ways, a sister. I will not be able to join with the rest of Lanice's family to celebrate her memory but I hope that this post in my blog will honour her as she deserves. God bless you and keep you Lanice, and thank you so very much for your presence and for the amazing person whom you have been for me and for others. God bless you and keep you always.
I would like to conclude by paraphrasing one of the most meaningful things I ever heard her say. I myself was just recovering from homelessness and we had run into each other in front of the same welfare office where, it turned out, we were both clients. She said that the poor, the marginalized, the overlooked and despised of the earth are the very people who, because of their gifts of love, compassion and insight and wisdom are the very people whom the very society that despises them could never survive without.
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