Power Failure

What I am grateful for is that some of the outlets in my unit still work, most of the important functions are okay, except the bathroom light and fan aren't operating, so I will have to leave the door open till my building manager gets everything fixed tomorrow (today is still Sunday, if you haven't yet noticed, Gentle Reader).  My land line isn't functioning and neither is my computer.  Fortunately I have earphones and the computers in the tenants'common room downstairs are both available.  So, I can still bore you , darling, with my written sweet nothings while listening to a very entertaining current events program in Peru, thus getting my ration of Spanish for listening.  The only real inconvenience is that I have to do this outside of the comfort of my cosy little unit but I think it's good for us at times to be pushed out of our comfort zone.  There is also another tenant here listening to classical music.  He is a very pleasant fellow from Afghanistan.  There are a number of refugees living in my building and this really gives us a piquant international flavour.  On my floor of eleven apartments five are occupied by Latin Americans from Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, Honduras, and Colombia.

I expect that life has to be a perpetual alternating between comfort and, could I say the unexpected? Perhaps adventure?  Or perhaps just pure hellish discomfort and misery?  But I don't think so.  I really do believe that we are the ultimate creators and arbitrators of our own happiness.  I know there are many who can make things miserable for us and there are extreme circumstances, for example torture and sleep deprivation, where we really have little or no say over how we are going to react.

While I was busy typing some of this delightful drivel the Afghani tenant came over to ask me a question about immigration.  I might have taken the attitude that I did not want to be interrupted but instead I walked him through his limited English and answered his question as best as I could.  I also reassured him that we have a new federal government in Canada and that immigrants and refugees no longer need to live in fear as they had to under that odious Stephen Harper and his horrid little minions.  My neighbour seemed relieved and relaxed a little.  I am also well aware that he likely also just wanted to make friendly contact, something that wouldn't have occurred had I stayed in the comfort of my apartment.

A friend asked me in an email last night if I have changed my plans to travel to Colombia in March given the current zeka virus outbreak.  I cheekily replied that I don't expect to be in the family way soon, but really, I don't scare easy.  Well, not that easy, as I also have my moments of squeamishness. I think, rather, that I refuse to let fear run my life or prevent me from enjoying and learning.  In March I am going to Colombia where I will be spending the month hanging out in Bogota, reconnecting with some friends, doing tons of artwork inside charming cafes and taking long urban hikes.  I will also meet new people and speak tons of Spanish.  Is anything going to "happen"to me while I'm there? Will I be sent home in a body bag?  I highly doubt it and even if there is that danger I am still going to live my life.

No One Else Is Going To Do It

I was listening to one of the twee Saturday morning programs on the CBC Radio One today early shortly after I pulled my sorry south end out of bed.  It was rather a captivating little segment about decluttering, downscaling, downsizing, whatever you want to call it.  The gist of the matter is that a lot of people are afraid of change and find it very difficult to keep to noble resolutions for developing good and healthy lifestyle habits.  I listened with interest to this common and very popular of tired excuses: we really want to change but we are too (pick a lame excuse) scared, tired, discouraged, intimidated, set in our ways.

This is by the way a First World problem for people who can afford to spend tons of disposable income on stuff, stuff and more stuff without giving a second thought to the extra space in their big houses where they find all kinds of extra rooms, closets, crawl spaces and attics to cram it and leave it to moulder for posterity.  Even though I am one of the working poor, living in a First World country does not make me exempt from this character defect.  I have recently been through what I would call one of my most major declutterings ever.  For the past five weeks I have been taking a rest while also taking good care to not reclutter again.  I think soon it may be time again to resume, but this time more slowly and more thoughtfully.

Noble intentions are just that: they are intentions.  The paving stones for the road to you-know-where, Gentle Reader.  When we say that we really want to (pick a tired old project): quit smoking, join a gym, eat healthier, do yoga, walk five miles a day, be kind to strangers on the bus, what we really mean to say is that these are things we think, or even know that we ought to do.  If we really did want to get them done, however, then we would do them.  What could be more simple?

We are in thrall to Thanatos, or the forces of death.  First a little review of what and who is Thanatos:  Thanatos was the name of a minor god of death in Greek mythology.  He hated all life and all people hated and feared him.  In art he was generally portrayed as a naked beautiful youth with wings.  Thanatos is also the alleged death instinct, a theory promulgated by Freud and later dismissed.  I think that dismissing it has been a bit premature.  We are of course pleasure seekers and very concerned with short term gain.  Remember, Thanatos is beautiful and alluring.  This is an aspect of human nature that is often very slow and reluctant to mature.  I think that we are also quite enthralled with the poison candy that is so artfully wrapped in the beauty of short term enjoyment.  This has become very much the substance of the kind of culture that we live in.  It is a death culture made of grown up children who only reluctantly accept the responsibilities of adulthood while continuing to waste our lives in trivial nonsense.

Thanatos of course manifests everywhere: in our personal lives, our relationships, our families, our attitudes towards society, our employment, our impact on our communities and our larger impact on the natural environment.  Thanatos lures and tempts us with the instant gratification of gluttony, easy sex, drug and alcohol use, legal addictions (cigarette anybody?), our indulgence in unhealthy eating, our lazy attitudes towards passive entertainment (TV and YouTube).  How about fossil fuels?  The alarm is being sounded over and over again about global warming and climate change and not only are people still driving cars, but buying new ones and building new highways and bridges for, guess what?  More cars, more fossil fuel use, more pollution, global warming, climate change, species extinctions and further endangering our own existence as a human species.  And don't get me started about the meat industry.  Are people in droves becoming vegetarian, knowing that cow farts are causing global warming?  Didn't think so.

I think that if we really do want to see our lives improve and to grow as complete human beings in the fullness of adulthood then we are going to have to take stock.  We are going to have to admit to ourselves that we really do not want to change.  We have no desire to grow or improve.  We simply feel obligated with perhaps a shadow of yearning to become something better than we already are.  I say admit it, accept it.  Don't dwell there and don't wallow.  Reach out to God, or to whatever you have named or not named the Higher Power and admit this: "I am not perfect, I am far from perfect and even though I say I want to change really I don't want to.  But I also acknowledge that I need to change and that if I don't then my soul is going to die.  Please fill me with the desire to change, the will to improve, the will towards the good."  Say this every day for a while and determine that you are going to mean it.  The will plays a pivotal role in change.

Last night I was emptying my compost pail, which finally got so full that there was nothing I could do to pack it down anymore without the lid of the bucket coming off.  On my way back up in the elevator I commented to another tenant that I have a magic formula for getting things done that I don't really want to do.  I simply repeat the words "No One Else Is Going To Do It."  It's like magic!

Try it sometime!

"Hot Chicks"

Before you touch the mouse, Gentle Reader, this is not going to be a sexist, male chauvinist, misogynistic rant.  I am only trying to get your attention even if this means having to appeal a little bit to your, um, lower nature?  Ah, she stoops to conquer. 

I was on the bus this afternoon following work.  Well, not exactly following work, since I had just been to the Shoppers Drug Mart at Granville and Thirteenth to purchase necessities (milk, toilet paper and laundry detergent, if you must know)  True there is a Shoppers Drug Mart just one block from my apartment but I really don't much like the people who work there.  I have found them to be inappropriately nosey and pushy about their damn points card, which I returned to them and refuse to get renewed.  I said to the acting manager that I really did not want to be held hostage to having to shop every day at a store I don't like that much just to save a lousy ten bucks every year.  He was gobsmacked, giving me that proverbial deer caught in the headlights kind of stare. I really don't care much for point cards unless they're at an establishment that I am going to patronize nearly every day, such as the No Frills supermarket (watcha see is watcha get!) but I generally find their prices to be so low and reasonable that I still haven't bothered to apply for one of their cards and besides the staff there are always polite and respectful about it.  Unlike at Shoppers.  Even at the Shoppers at Granville and Thirteenth the young lady at the checkout almost tried to push it, perceived my less than pleased vibe and immediately backed off.  I thanked her for letting things proceed so neat and quick.  I also twice nearly stumbled over the same young hipster couple, not because they were clumsy and not because I was clumsy but because, as the young man good-naturedly mentioned the second encounter, the aisles are narrow.  I replied that I believe they call it "moving product, and if they continue to move product this way they will be moving me to a different store."  They seemed pleasantly amused, as was I and I thought, how cool to be good-natured and witty with pleasant strangers and getting them to smile like that.  I must keep doing this.

Leaving the store I dragged my loot to the nearest bus stop.  I didn't have to wait long.  The driver seemed like an affable young man, perhaps about thirty.  He was chatting with two other young men around his age, possibly friends and certainly social peers to him.  They were occupying the courtesy seat for the elderly and people with disabilities.  The driver was explaining about the necessity of not driving with distractions and in a louder than appropriate voice proceeded to mention the danger of being distracted by "hot chicks".

Gentle Reader, I felt mortified.  I really began to wonder which decade we were living in, if suddenly we had just departed to forty years in the past, especially the way his young fair-haired friends seemed to agree with him.  I looked around and noticed there were women seated nearby and found myself wondering if anyone was feeling a little uncomfortable or unsafe.  I began to wonder if I should go over to the young driver and express my concern and disapproval. 

I have been here before, trying to correct or remonstrate with recalcitrant and odious bus drivers, and I tell you, darling, it is an absolute waste of time.  They always become rude, hostile, defensive and even have tried to kick me off the bus for interfering with their work.  And now that they work in tandem with armed transit cops I am certainly not taking that kind of risk again especially following an incident at a Canada Line station when I challenged an attendant about waiting till passengers are on the platform before checking their fares.  I called it entrapment, which is exactly what it is, and suggested that maybe they should do it in front of the ticket machines instead so that if someone doesn't have the correct fare they can be redirected to the vendor without the humiliation of being punished.  He became rude and verbally abusive and called over his armed cop buddy who responded by giving me a body search!  When I reported this incident to Translink I actually did receive an apology.

When I disembarked from the bus I memorized the stop number as well as the bus number.  For some unexplained reason on the online complaint form we are expected to memorize the stop number or the complaint won't be processed.  I imagine they do this just to prevent folks from complaining.  I did write out my complaint.  I also asked if they could get the bus drivers to start proactively kicking selfish thoughtless lazy young louts off of the courtesy seats so that no elderly or disabled person has to do it for them.

And let's hear it for a public transit system where everyone feels safe!

Thursday

So this is a typical Thursday for me.  I began at one of the mental health teams where I was at a morning meeting then went for a walk with my supervisor and two of our clients.  Later I took one of the clients for coffee, then had a break for nearly an hour that I spent in a coffee shop with my sketchbook following escorting him back to the office with donated Starbuck's coffee for our social group.  After lunch I was with a social group of several clients where we had lunch together at a food court.  We returned to the office where I visited for a while with another client while working on a drawing.  Then I walked another client home who was having some health and breathing difficulties.  Ironically, the facility she lives in is the same building where I was born in 1956 and also the same building where my mother died thirty-five years later.

I stopped in an art store to buy a lighter and medium shade of aqua pencil crayons (I use a lot of this colour).  By the way here is the bird I am currently drawing.  It is called a Yellow  Backed Oriole and is from Colombia and neighbouring countries:



Isn't he gorgeous!

Then I bussed home, had a light snack then proceeded to my final meeting with my counsellor.  She is a young woman in her mid thirties getting ready for her second crack at motherhood.  We had a great wrap up session.  She thinks I'm doing well and has wisely cautioned me on not letting my abrupt endings with certain individuals and parties spread into places where I could end up getting hurt.  We also had an interesting little chat about telling children about the facts of life, as they used to call them.

It came out that not only are parents squeamish around their kids about matters of sex and reproduction, but so are children.  The door does swing both ways, eh?  I remember when I finally got the goods from my mother about sex.  I think I was ten, maybe just eleven years old at the time, but I felt that the science books she let me look at explained almost everything except the dirty deed itself.  She told me.  And I was grossed right out.  Then I asked her if that's what she and Dad did to in order to conceive me (though I didn't then know the word conceive).  She said yes.  And I was even more grossed out.

Then I remembered in the old house where the walls were a bit thinner, and just getting to sleep when I heard noises coming from Mom and Dad's bedroom on the other side of the wall.  Mom saying in a funny kind of voice "Oh Bobby!  Stop that!), then Dad muttering something, then Mom laughing in a very funny way that I had never heard from her before, then again Mom saying something and then the sound of a hand slapping a naked butt.

I confronted my mother the next day.  "Why were you spanking Daddy last night I asked?"  I can't remember exactly what she said in reply but I can honestly say that I had never in my brief little life seen her so embarrassed.

Following my session with my counsellor I saw a Mexican friend of mine for coffee and relaxed as we whiled an hour and more in the language of Cervantes.  Now I am home, Gentle Reader, and finding myself feeling strangely and wondrously grateful that my beginnings were so humble, so silly and so hilarious.

This Weather

It's raining again and the wind is blowing.  I did not have enough time to walk outside as I wanted to because of professional commitments and time.  It's been an exhausting day and it goes without saying that weather and season are also factors.  I did manage to carve out a three and a half mile walk this morning on limited sleep before it started raining and then holed up with my sketchbook in a café until I had to get to work across the street for a meeting followed by our annual staff free lunch.  I usually try to walk a minimum of five miles a day and I did manage to add on an extra mile in shorter strolls.

I stuck to the quiet side streets and noticed the luxuriant green of moss covering naked tree trunks providing an illusion of spring.  The new monster homes, despite the beautiful affluent neighbourhood, are uniformly hideous ostentatious bunkers where their wealthy Chinese occupants can safely sleep surrounded by their precious money.

Before you squeal "racism", Gentle Reader, please note that the vast majority of these new wealthy property owners in Vancouver are Chinese and their fancy fortresses are butt-ugly.  I'm not going to play the "I'm not racist but" card and we all know that only a racist would make that comment.  I also openly rebuked an individual (white) in my coffee group yesterday for openly harping about Chinese being rude.  I said they are no more or less rude than anyone else, we're all alike and changed the subject.  I commented later to some coworkers that I really prefer working with people who are younger than me.  They're thinking isn't fifty years behind and they usually are not racist.

Does it bother me that the new wealthy elite in my city is Chinese and not, say, German?  No.  I have run across very presentably Caucasian Germans whom I couldn't stand the sight of because I felt they were douchebags.  I am part German by the way.  And I also have known some very lovely Germans and Chinese and Mexicans and English and Caribbean and ... shall we find something else to bore us, darling?

Despite my tiredness it was a nice walk.  I got everything done to day that needed to get done.  Night has fallen and I am tired.  Outside the wind is blowing the rain at an ugly driving slant and as much as I complain about noisy neighbours I am very grateful to have this little apartment. 

Everyone's quiet right now.

Parrots And Donald Trump

I do not know what these two entities could ever possibly have in common.  And I like parrots.  I almost bought one once, rather more like a parakeet.  It was a beautiful little bird called a Sun Conure.



Isn't he (she?) pretty?

I didn't buy the bird.  I had enough money at the time and we did bond rather nicely whenever I visited him (her?) in the pet store.  I had to think it over for a few days.  The bird I reasoned really belonged in the jungle it likely was smuggled from in Colombia or Venezuela, or perhaps it was hatched in captivity.  But it still felt weird and I couldn't help thinking that keeping an exotic bird was really the moral equivalent of taking a hostage.  She (he?) was an incredibly beautiful and affectionate little bird.  Rather like a kitten with feathers.  I just didn't feel I could give her (him?) the home that she deserved.

I'm not a pet person.  I love animals but I think they should all be wild.  I don't even approve really of having cats and dogs but the horse is already out of the barn (pun intended, Gentle Reader!) and the pet industry and people's need for affection from nonhuman sources are such that pets are inevitable.  But not for me.  I for one seek to work against our very human tendency, in my city of Vancouver anyway, to distance ourselves from one another and maintain silent hostile truces.  I for one see people's popular obsession over dogs as a symptom of our mutual alienation.  I am not opposed to dogs or pets.  Simply I would never let myself get into a relationship that is unequal.  With dogs (cat's, bless their retractile claws, are a bit more of a challenge) one receives unconditional love and devotion in exchange for kibble and shelter.  The dog is going to be completely dependent on its human for everything.  It will be like having a three year old child for sixteen years (with a cat it's more like having a teenager for twenty years!).  This is hardly what I would call a relationship between equals and more an admission that we have failed to be truly human towards each other.

Still I particularly love parrots, among other birds.  When they see that you are a safe person they become as affectionate as puppies.  When Victoria used to have its famed Crystal Gardens I used to go in there to hang out with the birds.  The Hyacinth Macaws (from Brazil)



and the Red Lories (Indonesia)



especially loved to be petted and cuddled.  But I would never even think of depriving a bird of its right to fly freely as a vent for my emotional needs.

I recall another parrot I used to pet and play with in a local pet store.  It was a Harlequin Macaw



The bird seemed to want to chew on something so I gently offered him my wooden umbrella handle.  The bird suddenly cowered and cringed as though about to be hit.  This is such a sad memory and I can hardly imagine whom would have abused this beautiful loving parrot.

I am not going to post Donald Trump's image.  Only beautiful creatures belong on my blog.  He wants to kill the innocent family members of accused terrorists which is to say that he is advocating for crimes against humanity and getting away with it.  I appeal to all of you reading this blog and especially my American Gentle Reader to forward this article everywhere and to please do everything in your power to prevent the Donald from getting anywhere near the White House.  Maybe even offer him a one way plane ticket to the Hague?

I'm Going To Be Sixty. (And Then One Day I'm Going To Die!)

I had this conversation today with someone who was born the same year as I.  We are both going to turn sixty.  For me it happens in five short little weeks.  Well, Gentle Reader, what can I say about turning sixty?  This reminds me of a chat I had with a friend yesterday who is in his early thirties.  He wanted to know what has been so far for me the best period of my life.  Very honestly I replied, the present time.  My fifties have been really the best, happiest, most stable and most productive time of my life.  I have a much better idea of who I am and of my direction in life.  It has also been for me an incredibly productive time.  I have produced an incredible body of art and have become reasonably fluent in Spanish with constant room for improvement.  I have lived in the same decent affordable apartment for more than thirteen years.  I have good stable friendships.  I have worked in the same profession for almost twelve years, work that comes very close to being for me a dream job.  I also have a decent home library with tons of books in English and Spanish.

My health has taken a slight beating.  Last year I was in hospital with a systems shutdown due to a noncancerous growth on my pituitary gland and an underactive thyroid.  My hands and feet were partially paralyzed, I was weak and could not walk without assistance. I am on medication, getting good medical attention (even though I sometimes have to kick the doctor's ass) and I feel better and stronger than ever.  I eat well, having been vegetarian for more than twenty years.  And I get lots of exercise, walking more than five miles a day.

My mental health has done particularly well during this time.  As you know Gentle Reader I am a survivor: of childhood abuse; of religious cult abuse; of complex post-traumatic stress disorder; of extreme poverty and homelessness.  I am glad to say that I have enjoyed during this decade of my life a full recovery from all these things.  My major areas of focus are: my profession as a mental health worker; my spiritual life of faith; my art; my friends; improving my Spanish; travel; doing my part to defend and advocate for those who cannot speak for them selves, especially the mentally ill the very poor and the homeless; educating myself in all the things that really matter in life-philosophy, history, human nature, social and international cultural realities, the beauty of nature, music, art and literature in the two great languages of English and Spanish; spending time outdoors while engaging in long walks; and writing, especially this dear little blog.

I celebrate what I have learned and gained through my losses in life.  Even though my family is dead and/or absent I live well alone and unburdened by guilt and enslaving obligations.  Even though I have always been single and childless I have come to revel in my solitude as a gift from God and as a perfect forum for spiritual growth and development.  Even though I have had to leave the church in order to give myself time to heal and restore from some very messy situations I have been in I know that God is with me and upholds and sustains me through all.

I do not know, Gentle Reader, what the future holds for me.  I like to think that with each choice I make and each step I take that I am actually right now creating my future.  Now I want to especially value and treasure each moment and each person with whom I come into contact, to embrace each moment and each person and every friendship as an irreplaceable gift and as a portrait of the Divine.

For now, if there is any one thing that could possibly bother me about turning sixty it is realizing that no one seems surprised when I tell them.

Haggis? Don't Forget To Flush!

As we know, Gentle Reader, tomorrow is Robbie Burns Day.  Aren't we excited.  Heather corsages and piping in the Haggis and lifting a wee dram.  Make it more than a wee dram because you're going to need whatever it takes to wash down that culinary horror.  Have we noticed that there is no such thing as a Scottish restaurant?  For one to exist we would require such a thing as Scottish cuisine!  Deep fried Mars Bars anyone?

Just let me do a quick Google search.

Nope.  Not a single Scottish restaurant, not anywhere.  Outside of Scotland.  I tried haggis once.  That was one time too many.  The memory of the trauma is still raw even after thirty-six years!  Not even if offered a vegetarian version would I let it come anywhere near my lips.

Even though my father was Scottish Robbie Burns Day was not a big deal in our household, perhaps because my mother was German.  I only learned about it in my early twenties.  Liking neither haggis nor bagpipes (though the music has grown a bit on me over the years) and caring not especially for heather nor the poetry of Robbie Burns I never really paid much attention.  I really can't understand why such a mediocre writer of mediocre verse would gain fame as a national mascot.  And heather?  Probably one of the most insipid flowering shrubs that ever existed.

Scotland, and Scottish culture such as it is, really doesn't have much to commend itself.  I was in Edinburgh once for four days in 1991.  The city has its beauty, especially the medieval part of town and the castle and cathedral, but it always felt to me kind of bleak and desolate.  In the gully below the castle bluff lies a fascinating cemetery by the way.  I visited there late my first night there reading inscriptions of people dead for three hundred years and got happily lost there for a while.  The countryside and hills that surround Edinburgh are beautifully green in June but there aren't any trees.  The landscape was deforested centuries ago and nothing outside of grass, heather and broom and gorse have replaced the trees.   I did climb to the summit of one of these hills.  It is called Arthur's Seat.  There is at the peak a natural stone saddle that I lay in while feeling the wild wind whip my face and my head and my hair.  I heard the haunting singing of skylarks and the menacing croak of jackdaws and just then glimpsed the subtle and savage beauty that marks the Scottish country and the Scottish people.

I would say that the beauty of Scotland lies in its people: tough, strong, resilient, humorous, silent, sensitive and loyal.  Along with Walker's shortbread, the Scottish people are their country's greatest export.  The shortbread is sweeter.  But the Scottish people have greater substance.

Against Mediocrity

Good evening Gentle Reader, it is that time again, that lovely little hour or so just following the cozy little nap that follows my cozy little dinner.  It's Blog Time again.  And once again as I have every day or almost every single day since I began this written penance just over two years ago I will try to entertain, amuse, inform and enlighten you.  You likely have noticed dear that I always seem to have something to say, even when I don't.

Speaking of dinner I had a lovely, tasty, simple, filling, nutritious and substantial guisado which is a Spanish word for stew.  It isn't much of a stew.  I simply took six big and I mean huge potatoes from the bottom drawer and back part of the fridge and the surprisingly cheap cauliflower I bought yesterday and went to work.  The potatoes are from a twenty pound bag I bought a couple of months ago.  You should have seen me haul that load onto the bus.  They were incredibly cheap by the way, working out at around twenty cents a pound.  Hey, I'm on a low income, I like to eat, and I have a finely honed instinct for bargains.  This reminds me of one evening when I was dragging a ten pound bag of spuds on the bus around twelve years ago when the Atkins diet was all the rage and potatoes and all things carb were the Eighth Deadly Sin.  The slightly pudgy middle age driver, who looked rather like a potato himself, began promptly to lecture me all about the sins of potatoes and carbs and that I would never lose weight this way.  I was only just beginning to learn healthy assertiveness skills, put up with his tactless little lesson and left the bus feeling like a chewed out little piece of crap.  Nowadays if any tactless or impertinent bus driver or anyone else who seems to have forgotten their place tries to stick his nose into my business I let him know it right away.  If this were to happen again I would have simply replied "Here's the deal: you don't tell me what to eat and I don't tell you how to drive."

So I chopped these six huge potatoes, skins and all into the heating water in my big fat cooking pot, then chopped up half a head of cauliflower (huge, and very cheap at less than three bucks.  This just after the local grocers were confusing the humble vegetable with gold bullion and trying to extort from the gormless consumer up to ten bucks a pop.)  While the spuds and cauliflower were cooking I whipped up a huge batch of made from scratch cocoa and served myself from my beautiful Mexican cocoa pot, getting up from time to time to check the cooking and add two tins of black beans, a generous whack of miso, thyme, chili powder, garlic powder, allspice, nutmeg, soy sauce and red wine vinegar.  Then I added frozen corn and a huge pile of shredded extra old cheddar.  Enough to serve a small army: delicious, filling, simple, nutritious.

I cook everything from scratch or from near scratch.  This morning I made bread, without a bread maker.  As I mentioned to the owner of the café where I sit and draw on Saturday afternoons, even with the rising food prices I still manage to stick within the same budget as I have been maintaining for the last four or five years without any sense that I have skimped or made any sacrifices.  Don't ask me how I do it.  I simply don't know.  Maybe it's enough to say that God provides?  And maybe that having lived modestly on a low income for all of my life that I have simply developed a very good instinct for living frugally but well.

I was having a chat with one of the regular patrons at said café.  We both had trouble coping well in school.  It turns out that we were both diagnosed as gifted children with way higher than average intelligence.  Teachers and parents alike would be screaming at us "Why can't you do
better than this.  You're so intelligent!!!!!"  Or, Gentle Reader, perhaps this is exactly why we did not do well in school.  The school curriculums cater to social conformity and mediocrity.  Gifted children need special attention, care and stimulus if they are to be expected to do well within this stiflingly boring cubicle called the classroom.  While our lives have taken decidedly different directions I think we could both claim that regardless of our problems with the education system we have both lived rich and fulfilling lives.  My income has always been modest but I have been blessed throughout most of my working years with the opportunity to live out my Christian faith through my work: through the housecleaning, personal care and palliative care I was honoured to administer to some of the most vulnerable persons during my twenties and thirties; as a worker in a homeless shelter and a mental health peer support worker through my forties and fifties.  All of this I did on low pay, living paycheque to paycheque, often in unjust and unsafe conditions, and yet feeling honoured throughout that I could so faithfully serve my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  Instead of destroying me my life of poverty has taught me to be frugal, resourceful, creative and tenacious.  I have also been blessed with subsidized housing for the last thirteen years, making it possible for me to live with dignity in one of the world's most expensive cities.

To quote the Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta (does she have full sainthood yet?):

"We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.  We have done so much, for so long, with so little, that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."

Words to live by.

I Saw A Rainbow Today

I suppose I'm keeping up the weather theme, Gentle Reader, since nothing interesting or particularly bitchy is happening in my life these days.  The conditions were rather moist this morning as I went out seeking a coffee shop to sit and draw while sipping the dark roast on tap.  I bypassed as always Tim Horton's.  I never go in there.  I know it is every bit the symbol for Canadian patriotism as hockey and Canadian Tire and maple syrup but I would never be caught dead or alive or in an induced coma inside a Tim Horton's.  Does this make me a snob?  Well...maybe.

What really makes me gag with derision is the way Tim Horton's has finally discovered dark roast coffee.  They have finally come into the 1980's.  Wow! I started drinking dark roast, I think, in 1981, when a neighbour of mine served me my first cup of dark French.  I was hooked, sold and transformed into a deliriously willing slave of that fabulously aromatic, complex and musky quality of roasted coffee bean.  There has been no turning back.

I ended up at Melriche's on Davie Street, a local hip coffee shop where I have had perhaps seven art shows since they opened in the nineties.  I was their opening artist in 1994. I'd been painting for only a year and already was producing a decent body of work.  A young woman saw my paintings and became my agent, securing me a dandy little commission that paid for my first trip to Costa Rica.  That's all it took to get me obsessed with becoming fluent in Spanish.

I saw a rainbow today.  It wasn't full on brilliant and blindingly polychromatic, but rather faint, faded and tentative, like a very shy child peaking from behind a half-shut door.  I paused, stopped, strained my neck only longing wishing and employing all my psychic forces to will it into a strong showing of blinding colour.  It strengthened a little then faded like a happy sigh into the blue sky.

This evening my friends, who have recently immigrated to this country, disclosed to me that they are pregnant, expecting their first child.  I remember the rainbow and now I am smiling.

Goody Bag

Well that's what Xaviera Hollander called it.  Remember her?  The famous or infamous author of the Happy Hooker?  I was seventeen when I read her book.  My mom bought it and left it lying around the apartment.  She was actually okay with me reading it and it fueled some rather interesting mother and son dialogue.  Oh did I also mention that I was a fundamentalist Christian in those days?  Teenage Jesus Freak!  But I was also curious and wanted to know everything about...well...everything.  I have to admit that I have never burst out laughing out loud so many times while reading a book about...well...anything.  Then came the bit about her goody bag.  Yes, that is what one of the twentieth century's most famous whores called it.  Her black carryall where she hid all her bondage gear-whips, handcuffs and more-when she was making...er...house calls?

I'll give you a few moments, Gentle Reader, to stop giggling and compose yourself...

It was during this time that I was already carrying an army knapsack.  This was purchased for me by a friend in the Jesus People.  We all carried these canvas shoulder bags for our Bibles and tracts.  It made it easier to spread the Gospel.  I carried in it of course my Bible and tracts and a notebook and often something to read (no, not the Happy Hooker, Gentle Reader, she stayed home with my mom right where she belonged.

Now I'm sure you are dying to know what else I carried in my Goody Bag.  Food, usually.  Fresh fruit, yogurt, dates, halvah, sesame snaps and always blue cheese.  And a bamboo container of dried lavender.  No drugs.  I said already that I was a Christian.  I didn't use drugs.  Try convincing local police.  The sight of a teenage boy with shoulder length hair dressed like a hippy and carrying a canvas army bag with this hundred watt light bulb grin on his face was only likely to catch attention.  I cannot remember how many times I got jacked up by police, questioned, asked for id taken in for questioning, all at the tender age of seventeen.  I did enjoy a little bit of schadenfreud seeing the expression on the police officers' faces when they saw the Bible inside my goody bag along with the blue cheese and lavender.

I have always carried with me a goody bag.  It is such an essential part of my wardrobe that I never feel fully dressed when I step outside without one.  Even though I'm still a Christian, and likely always will be, I no longer carry a Bible in my goody bag.  Usually a small book, usually a novel or short story collection always in Spanish for reading on the bus.  My sketchbook and pencil crayons and coloured pens for when I want to stop in a coffee shop for a little artwork.  I also carry paperwork on occasion and a photo album with images of some of my paintings (I never know when someone might want to have a look and who knows even buy one.  Only in my dreams!) and a couple of day timers.

My goody bag is not a man purse by the way.  Ridiculous ostentatious yuppie contraptions made of fine tooled leather or suede and worth hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars.  I would never be caught dead wearing a man purse.  A goody bag need not cost more than fifty though sometimes they can get up towards a hundred but usually shouldn't cost more than twenty or even less.  Made of canvas or cotton, coloured khaki green, beige or black and they all serve the same purpose and make the same statement: ______

Blood And Chocolate

Today I gave blood and drank chocolate.  I am not a blood donor, never was, never will be.  I have no explanation available, it is simply something I do not do.  Maybe in the future but I am getting a bit old.  I like to give in other ways.  This is blood work that I was having done, a necessary evil for gauging the effectiveness of the medications I am on for my pituitary and thyroid and for measuring my various hormone levels.  It is also a pain in the ass Gentle Reader (no that is not where they stick the needle in!)  My endocrinologist is not a very good communicator.  He has already written one of my prescriptions incorrectly and generally tells me nothing about details I need to know about properly procuring my meds and getting blood work done.  He is an old school doctor.  That's right, Gentle Reader, he thinks he is God.

So, Monday afternoon after leaving work early I thought to get a head start on my blood work and went to the local clinic, which was busy and where I wasted nearly forty minutes until my number came up (they don't appear to give a tinker's damn about your name).  Then I was instructed by already overworked clinic staff that they couldn't do the blood work for me given that they were expected to check my cortisol levels and that this needed to be done at nine in the morning.  They showed me my good endocrinologist's illegible scribble where I barely made out a clumsily rendered scrawl about cortisol and 9 am.  No other details.  I was told to visit the laboratory at St. Paul's Hospital across the street.  Now St. Paul's is a big hospital and I did not know where the lab was, so I asked the older East Asian (likely Chinese) gentleman in the white lab coat, "where in St. Paul's."  With his poor English he thought I said where IS St. Paul's and proceeded to give me directions.  Then I told him in slow and careful English: "I know where St. Paul's is.  Where in St. Paul's do I go."  Neither he nor his co-worker knew.

I went out for a walk and left rather an angry message on my endocrinologist's voice mail threatening that if I had to lose hours of work and income over these stupid-ass procedures then I would likely give it up altogether and happily die prematurely if I have to.  The next day, Tuesday, I got a very kind and apologetic call from his secretary.  She confirmed to me that at St. Paul's they would do the cortisol test for me.

I wanted to get there early.  I couldn't get to sleep and lay awake for two hours.  I overslept an hour but still made it to the lab at around 9:30.  Everything got done and I was home again in half an hour.  I found the staff at the hospital much more efficient, hands on and caring than the poor stressed out doofuses in the clinic.

Weak from blood loss I stopped at home for a peanut butter and jam sandwich with cheese, then went to work where I spent time with a client, then facilitated an art class.  Having a cancellation in the afternoon I was able to get home at around 2:30 (and yes I do get paid for the cancellation, and I thank you for wondering!).

I made hot chocolate from scratch while listening to the Mozart Requiem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlhKP0nZII I used to do this every morning until it became only too necessary to lose the weight this self-indulgence had helped me accumulate.  I use fair trade cocoa.  While the music is on I heat a saucepan to medium and melt a tablespoon of butter.  I add and stir in two heaping tablespoons of brown sugar and two heaping teaspoons of cocoa and stir till it's blended.  Then I add about three cups of milk and turn the heat up to high while stirring vigorously.  I stir five hundred times to the music of the Requiem, turning the heat down at the four hundredth stir.  When it is done it is hot but not boiling with a texture like satin.  I pour it into a cocoa pot I bought three years ago in Mexico City.  It is dark blue decorated with bright yellow sunflowers and bright green leaves.  I get two and a half mugs from this batch and it is delicious, especially with a drop of vanilla.  While savouring the delicious cocoa Charpentier's Te Deum comes on.  The sound of the French High Baroque and beautifully made cocoa are made for each other.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2894qzGTkNs

I was not satisfied to waste the whole afternoon in self-indulgence, lying around sipping sweet nothings and listening to the most beautiful music ever composed, performed or recorded.  I read the newspaper then went out at four to while an hour in a local café that I never patronized.  It is called Truffles, on the corner of Davie Street and Howe, a bit pretentious, but quiet, the service is nice and a perfect place to spend an hour with my sketchbook.  Here is a Google image of the hummingbird I am currently interpreting with pencil crayons and coloured pens, a Violet Crowned Woodnymph:



Altogether an enjoyable if self-indulgent kind of day.

Weather To Sneeze

This has been one of my worse allergy days in ages.  I wondered for a while if I was coming down with a cold but it has all the telltale signs of one of my classic allergy attacks.  I go through prolonged sneezing fits of up to twenty or more sneezes in a row.  Nose is chronically drippy and I feel washed out with incredible bursts of manic energy.  And anything can trigger a sneezing episode: dust, smoke, pollen, perfume, cleaning chemicals.  I am also so sick and tired of trying to explain any of this to well-intentioned nosy parkers that I simply refuse to explain now should the subject arise.  To a couple of clients who wanted to know what I'm allergic to I simply said it's not worth going into.  To a co-worker who wanted to know if my sniffle was due to a developing cold and I replied it was allergies she wondered alloud that it isn't even Spring yet to which I replied "Let's not go there, eh?"

The fact of the matter is I do not understand my allergies.  Neither do any of the doctors to whom I've talked about them.  Since getting an annual flu shot every fall the allergy attacks have been substantially reduced till Spring so this one is particularly early.  Generally the allergy attacks hit me every ten days or so and last for one and a half days.  I can generally function okay and have only taken time off from work, maybe, twice because of allergies.  I will spend maybe half a day feeling washed out and my voice goes down half an octave so that I sound like Tom Waits for a few hours.  As I mentioned during these sneeze vulnerable times anything will set it off.

There's no way I'm explaining this to people who aren't close friends or confidantes.  It's too much information.

While dragging my south end across the day there was often sun shining through the winter clouds and the temperatures were a mildly cool nine degrees Celsius.  It's cloudy now.

I'm again reading three books simultaneously, maybe four.  Primarily two novels, in English and in Spanish.  A Facebook friend was just promoting another book, a theological treatise by a liberal bishop.  He seemed less than amused when I commented unflatteringly about the author and perhaps I owe this person a good read just to see if I might react a bit differently to some of his positions after all these years.  Stranger things have happened but I have a feeling my reading list is going to be very full given that maybe four hundred of the six hundred plus books in my home library still languish on the shelves unread.

I used to read to learn how to form an opinion.  Now I think I read to challenge and explode my opinions.  While I have certain core values that I don't expect to change any time soon, opinions are something else.  As I have already written several times, Gentle Reader, opinions are like assholes.  Everybody has one.  I want to learn to question my opinions and to search uncompromisingly for the truth until the tables are turned and the truth seeks me and finds me out.  And then I think I'll have nothing left to say.

I'm not sneezing so much.  Nose is still a bit runny.

Weather Today Or Weather Yesterday

I expect that there are not going to be a lot of surprises with the weather.  Yes we are going through climate change but I am hoping for a stretch of relative normalcy to reinforce some illusions of stability.  It is not going to get ridiculously warm or cold.  There will be no preternatural storms, winds or floods.  The loony is going to return to par with the US dollar, a cure for cancer will be found and the New Jerusalem will descend to the earth.  How we love to fantasize, Gentle Reader.  How we long to live in a permanent halcyon blur all warm and fuzzy like happy little froggies being slowly cooked to death in the gently heating water.

The weather is a bit mild these days and this is usually what happens in mid-January.  The worst of winter really feels like it's over, here in Yoga and Sushi Land anyway.  Which reminds me of a little joke between my friends who have recently arrived from Mexico.  You know you're really in Vancouver when every block seems to have a yoga parlour, a sushi bar, a pot shop, a gym and a Starbucks.

But seriously, I'm an optimist. Spring here begins at around January 15.  Little flowers, notably snowdrops are already beginning to bloom.  The house finches are singing.  There is even now a little more daylight.  The temperatures aren't quite so low.  Today they are forecasting a high of ten.

I have been thinking about gender lately.  I used to attend an Anglican church where one of the subdeacons is a transwoman.  Now this is a particularly unpleasant disagreeable transwoman who seems to have her nose permanently out of joint and will only exchange the peace with her friends.    One day we were having a polite chat about gender (she never could stand me by the way).  I suggested lamely that she perceives herself as a woman.  She shot back "I AM a woman."  Okay, very postmodern of her and of course I didn't disagree with her.  It is because she wishes, she wishes it so.  She is NOT a woman.  A transwoman, yes, but to qualify as a woman one requires a certain chromosomal set along with a uterus, ovaries and mammary glands.  Not all the surgically invented vaginas and breast implants and hormone treatments in the world are going to do this.  What makes a woman a woman is the fact that she can even potentially conceive and bear children. 

This doesn't mean that I am not against sexual reconstructive surgery.  Where appropriate I am entirely in favour especially given how many lives this saves from suicide.  And I am completely against transphobia of all kinds.  I accept transwomen and transmen and I accept there self-perception.  But I equally accept that it is not my perception which I trust will be equally respected.

Gender is a funny thing.  When I mentioned to a former friend who was then a recovering Christian fundamentalist beginning to backslide back into fundamentalism that there is a transwoman serving at this Anglican church as a subdeacon he shouted in horror "You mean there's a transvestite serving at the altar!"  I gently explained the difference.  He didn't seem to get it.  Like most fundamentalists he is not particularly bright since his enlarged amygdala seems to interfere with normal brain functions and we soon were no longer friends.

In terms of myself I tend to identify as androgynous or agender.  This gives me the best of neither world but it also makes relating with gender defined groups a little bit awkward.  I seem to have a little in common with men, a little in common with women, a little in common with transpersons and not a lot in common with anyone.  I am not comfortable in male exclusive groups for the same reason as female exclusive groups.  They tend to bring out in one another some of their worst stereotyped traits.

Like the mostly male weekend bike jocks who occupy my otherwise favourite Saturday café.  Fortunately they're gone within a half hour but I swear that they leave the place smelling like a locker room with an espresso bar.  In a different café where till recently I was showing my art there was a swarm of loud obnoxious middle aged white women taking over the place every Friday.  I had to stay away to preserve my sanity.

This isn't to say that not all gender exclusive groups are unpleasant.  Yesterday in another cafe there was a just mildly strident gathering of women all from the same family, teens-to-middle age.  even if they got on my nerves a bit I found them quite enjoyable and very intelligent to listen to.  One was talking about a friend who apparently has the same thyroid-pituitary condition that put me in hospital last year.  Had they been a mixed gender group I might have shared a bit with them from my own experience.  I knew that being a biological male made me likely to them a potential threat (understandably) and therefore unwelcome.

In another café, a Mexican establishment I enjoy sitting in sometimes, there is sometimes another female dominant group of Mexican mothers with two or three small children.  These ones are a bit different.  To my surprise they seem quieter, gentler and less strident.  Their energy is lovely and I quite enjoy being in the café with them even though we never communicate, naturally, given that even though I am agender when they see me they see a man and case closed.  I might also be a bit prejudiced in favour of Latin Americans given that so many of them speak my adopted Spanish.

Then there is this particularly offensive add on CBC TV and online for a program called "Moms" where one character in a coffee klatch of woman who looks like a transwoman having a very bad day waxes on about her "Mom-gina."  Too much information.

Next!

Sunday Weather

The weather today is much like the weather throughout the week.  It is having Sunday and Saturday off that makes it a little more significant.  Yesterday, although heavy rain was forecast I didn't need to raise my golf umbrella once while walking all of seven miles, not all at once Gentle Reader, since more or less halfway I always stop in the same pleasant café for two hours to sip, draw and nibble, maybe chat a bit with the owner and other regulars.  Today again the sky is uniformly grey.  It is morning and still rather dark.  It is 8:24 and the coffee is being made while I am waiting for my clothes to finish the wash cycle.

Today the sun rose at 8:01, just twenty-five minutes ago (it is now 8:26, there is nothing wrong with my math but it does take a little time to look things up on Google).  It sets today at 4:45 pm.  The daylight is definitely increasing.

Okay, we'll wait for the cheering to stop....

I have just returned from the laundry room.  The clothes are in the dryer.  The filter in the dryer was clean and I try to always remember to clean it after use.  I used to get really annoyed when the previous user neglected to clean the lint filter, and mutter imprecations about the lazy useless boneheads I have to share the building with.  Lately I look on a clean filter with gratitude and I simply try to smile thinking that the previous user was so thoughtful.  I find that I still feel a bit annoyed but I no longer curse anyone or their dead ancestors.  While waiting for the elevator I noticed that it is raining quite heavily this morning.  Doesn't matter.  I'm going out for a few hours.  Likely I'll do a long walk and spend an hour or two in a café somewhere with my sketchbook.  A friend cancelled a visit today (he's a student and very busy) so this leaves me with some breathing time.  I will still be Skyping, this morning with a friend who lives in Argentina, this afternoon with a friend in Peru.

Living alone without family I am really trying to maintain my friendships.  I have lost perhaps three friends, maybe four over Christmas, given my problems with the Anglican Church (they are all Anglicans) and I am staying away from another friend who tends to upset me so I'm focussing more on recently made friends and a couple of old friends whom I don't see very often but we still see one another nonetheless.  It is especially a challenge to not get sideswiped by self-pity and fear.  I'm almost sixty, alone and will likely be facing a lonely old age.  I think we all do.  But this is no excuse for not making an effort with people and to try to stay in contact even if many of them seem to busy or a bit indifferent.

This is also a very crucial stage in life for becoming your own best friend.  It is clear that a lot of things that married and partnered people take for granted are often monumental challenges for single people.  We have to learn to enjoy solitude.  We also have to take complete care of ourselves.  It really isn't difficult, just really important to accept that no one is going to do it for you.  I think this is why I have become so disciplined.  I always get up early or reasonably early and try to guarantee myself at least seven hours sleep every night.  It doesn't always come out this way  Sometimes I have sleep difficulties.  I still get up usually at seven, a bit later on weekends.  Every morning I brush my teeth, shave, trim my hair, make my bed, shower, and clean my apartment.  Then I make coffee (decaf four times a week), have a decent breakfast, read or write for a little while if there is time while listening to the news then I take off to work, or if I don't work that day, I get outside anyway.  Sunday mornings I do my laundry.  I used to go to church after but now enjoy the free time and the opportunities of hanging out with people who actually like me (I didn't have such luck in church, Christians being what they are)

It is now a couple of hours later.  It is still raining outside, which is all well and good since it is not raining inside, and I have finished the laundry, breakfast and listening to the usual fascinating social commentary that is featured on Sunday mornings on the CBC Radio One.  My friend in Argentina is not available today as she is entertaining her family (one of the unjust social inequalities I suffer from in many of my friendships!) and I have done some work on my Green Peafowl painting as well as having read a bit.  It is time to go outside.

I was hearing on the radio two distinct role models for aging well this week.  One was of a ninety year old man in New Brunswick, voted as Canada's most independent senior.  At the age of ninety this man lives alone and efficiently runs his own farm and takes perfectly good care of himself.  He is alone and apparently has no friends and doesn't seem to want to have friends.  He is content, keeps himself busy, occupied and entertained and is ninety years old.  I have not heard any details of his life, of why he doesn't have friends or doesn't want any.  It could be very interesting and informative as there are blanks that need to be filled in here.

The other was an interview with Jane Goodall, the famous chimp lady.  She would be, I think eighty-two now, very active and very healthy and completely engaged with the human community.  She has family, friends and social supports as well as deserved fame and prestige.  Unlike the crusty misanthropic novegenarian geezer Dr. Goodall appears to really love and appreciate people, speaks with humour and hope and to me is one of the most inspiring people I have ever heard.  She is also a deeply spiritual woman who sees God as real and ever present in all of nature.

When I get old I want to be completely independent like the geezer.  When I get old I want to be loving, gentle and inspirational like Jane.

Saturday Weather

Today when I arrived home at just past four following my weekly Saturday outing I felt a bit at a loss for what to do.  Usually I make a big dish of food, always vegetarian, while listening to the Next Chapter on CBC Radio One where Shelagh Rogers is interviewing various interesting authors.  I looked in the fridge and saw that there is no room to fit another vegetarian dish and I am simply going to have to finish eating the chocolate red lentil mole that is occupying part of the bottom shelf.  What a privilege.  I am considered poor by Canadian standards.  My wage is hardly $1.50 more than minimum and I am blessed with a fridge crammed full of good food.  Never complain about a fridge that is too full.  I had this conversation today with a fellow I know in the Café where I sit with my sketchbook for two hours ever Saturday.  He mentioned how good we have it living in Canada and I could only agree.  Here most of us open the fridge door and wonder what we're going to eat for supper.  In some countries, given that they have a fridge, they will open it and wonder if they are going to eat supper.  I didn't trouble to mention to my friend that here in wealthy and privileged Canada we do have a growing population of people who have to rely on food banks, those who when they pull open the fridge door and wonder if they will have anything to eat today.  I put a baked potato in the oven and will soon heat up the leftover mole and some leftover broccoli mixed with leftover cabbage and a fresh red pepper in vinegar and chili.  Briefly I had to put in earplugs and crank the radio up really loud to staunch the shrieking of my Mexican neighbour's grandson across the hall when she had opened briefly the door to let in her daughter.  The kid has one of those piercing shrieks that could shatter glass and absolutely no self-control.  I used to get mad at my neighbour about her out of control grandson but now I suspect that he might have special needs, perhaps fetal alcohol spectrum disorder so now if need be I just reach for the earplugs and turn the radio up.

I'm reading two or three books simultaneously right now, alternating between Timothy Findley's "Headhunter" which is a novel about mental illness and art snobs, and a Spanish (I'm reading in Spanish) book called "Los dos mensajes de Islam" or The Two Messages Of Islam, and I will also likely have a peek at my Spanish translation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy if I don't watch an episode of Schitt's Creek instead.  I have only recently discovered this well done Canadian comedy on CBC online about this obscenely rich family that loses everything and has to resettle in a small town.  I am also currently reworking another painting.  This one features a green peacock:



All while drinking decaf Earl Grey so I guess I am having rather a twee kind of day.

On the way back on the bus this afternoon I chatted briefly with a lady around my age or a bit older about being glad that I didn't bruise anyone with my much stuff while getting on the bus (knapsack, bag of groceries and big umbrella).  She is going to be spending the weekend in Pemberton which I have never seen before and as I mentioned to her that here I am visiting other countries and there is so much I haven't seen in my own back yard.  We agreed that it is very helpful knowing Spanish while visiting Latin America (in my case Bogota Colombia this March).  At the No Frills I said to the young lady at the check out that one of her coworkers was tossing bananas.  I said that I already talked to him about it (I was nice but firm) and he was good about it and agreed to take it easy.  I did not want to identify him since I don't want him to lose his job and he was nice.

Before that I enjoyed a lovely four mile walk through Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale feeling glad that I haven't had to use my umbrella today.  The rain stopped this morning and it's been decent ever since, even with the odd patch of sunshine.  There are green moss and ferns everywhere and snowdrops coming into bloom.  The air is cool, clean and invigorating.  I would even call it delicious.  I have been talking on my phone all day off and on to my imaginary friend, Fulano, in Spanish, recording on my voice mail and playing it back to check my fluency.  It is a sneaky and very effective way of practicing Spanish in public and folks often look at me strangely as if they are thinking that I don't look Mexican or Spanish (their idea of how Spanish people should look anyway) so what am I doing speaking fluent Spanish, while I'm sure native Spanish speakers look on with pity as I struggle pathetically to master their language.

I saw two Anna's hummingbirds today, singing from tree branches but in this light they appear grey and colourless since they need the right angle of light to show their brilliant colours.  They have become very common here during the winter.  Imagine.



This morning following a very decent sleep I got up early and made bread.  It was lovely.

Dinner is now ready Gentle Reader.  Provecho!

Weather Check

The weather is still typical for January.  They say that we are having a milder than average winter so far but I don't exactly believe them.  Still, the snowdrops are blooming early and we have had so far no noticeable snow.  Already we are entering into the slightly warmer (or less cold) half of January.  We haven't had a long deep freeze where people can skate on ponds and lakes and get away with it and yes, Gentle Reader, we have had many such winters in Vancouver with such prolonged cold snaps.  Already I see catkins dangling suggestively (dare I say lewdly) from the thin branches of the hazel bush.

The air says that it is still winter, it is clean, lovely and bracing.  All day it has been overcast beginning this morning with a temperature of -1 C.  and rising to around 6.  This morning I was walking in the West End and was saddened to see the condition of the grass at Barclay Heritage Square Park:

This is how it looked before the neighbourhood dogs destroyed it.  There are a number of irresponsible and selfish dog owners here in Vancouver who really don't care how much their four legged progeny inconvenience others.  This is not an off-leash dog park.  Now it looks like a battlefield.  There is not one square foot of undestroyed turf left on this park.  It is worse than an eyesore.  It is, if I dare go on about this first world problem, a tragedy. 

It is not simply tragic that something beautiful has been destroyed because of the selfishness of others.  It also suggests to me how unhealthy and anti-communitarian has become our culture's modish obsession with canines.  I am not against dogs and not against having a pet.  However, in this city notorious for its unfriendliness and street vistas of pedestrians so obsessed with their I-phones that they never notice that they might be stepping in, dare I say, dog shit, I really wonder if many of us have opted to replace human contact with having a dog.  It stands to reason.  While looking after a dog can be very much like being stuck for sixteen years caring for a three year old child (with a cat its like having a permanent teenager) barmy dog owners will often rhapsodize about the unconditional love they get from their hairy babies. 

This is a cruel burden to dump on a poor dumb animal.  As if so many of us have so given up on the possibility of having healthy and fulfilling human relationships.  Now I do understand and agree that many dog owners are indeed well connected socially with lovely and fulfilling marriages, relationships, family ties and friendships.  I also concur that there are others who have so despaired of finding true love or real friendship that, well, to quote that famous bumper sticker from the Seventies: "The more people I meet, the more I love my dog."  I am even under the impression that it is the more dysfunctional, problematic dog owners who tend to use their pets to abuse public space as these ones.

More Weather

So, we had a sunny day that wasn't freezing cold.  It started out cloudy, following rain last night and I did pack around my big golf umbrella feeling a little bit like a dork because I didn't know who to believe.  To enhance the dork chic of my dear little brolly, as I like to call it, is a good winding of grey duct tape on the handle, which nearly got broken off when I accidentally had to force the door open that it had fallen against.  I used the last of my duct tape and had to purchase a new roll.  Duct tap, as I mentioned to the smiling checkout clerk in the Kerrisdale London Drugs, is one of the great symbols of Western civilization.  In a future blog post I might write about the other great symbols.

As I walked over the Cambie Street Bridge on my way to work this morning the sun showed through the clouds and the water below became a pale limpid turquoise.  I have noticed more snowdrops coming into bloom.  I don't care if it is mid January.  Spring is on its way. 

It has remained sunny all day today.  I counsel newcomers from warm countries to embrace the cold weather here and to spend as much time outside during daylight hours as possible.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  One is vitamin D absorption,  I don't know if it is possible during winter months but if you are getting a lot of winter sun on your face and the top of your head (easy for me, being quite bald) it could make a difference.  Oops, my apologies, Gentle Reader.  I just consulted with Uncle Google and there is an article in the Toronto Sun that states that after October the angle of the sun is such that the body does not manufacture vitamin anything until the spring time.  Buy supplements, or drink fortified milk.  Lots of it.  I hope your conscience is okay.  Those poor cows are not treated at all nice but sometimes just in order to get by one has to hang one's conscience out to dry.  The rhyming is unintentional by the way.

The other reason is that we need daylight, lots of it, if we want to do well and flourish as functioning human beings.  We are day critters, Gentle Reader.  Never mind that the weather is shitty.  It's daylight.  Go outside and play.  That lovely natural daylight will stimulate our dear little brains to produce those lovely happy hormones that keep us light footed and buoyant and all the less likely to practice our swan dive when walking over the bridge.  Leave your personal listening device at home (yes, Gentle Reader, I did just write that!) and listen to your environment.  What do you hear? Besides traffic and blasting horns and police and ambulance sirens, jack hammers, and other construction racket.  And the chatter of idiots and children screeching till your nose bleeds and your brains begin to flow from your ears.  Okay, step away from the traffic.  Don't play in it and please hie thee to a quiet side street.  Now listen.  What do you hear?  I think it's called a bird.  Yes, there's a crow, and over there a Steller's Jay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0S3NhhV1js
How about a red shafted flicker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQmlp4jzcyg.  Even in January the house finches begin to sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMYCrA4OIs.  You will see tree trunks festooned in gleaming green moss and adorned with licorice ferns.  The ferns by the way are edible and were a favourite vegetable harvested for millennia by our aboriginal forbears.  They are quite delicious by the way.  I have tried them. The naked branches of the trees will be shining with hues of brilliant copper, silver, platinum and gold.

Winter can be a time of beauty, though unlike the vulgar displays of summer and spring (my favourite season by the way), it is a subtle and hidden beauty and you have to seek it out, look for it, watch and listen for it.  Soon you will not have to try so hard, you will develop the senses to summon immediately forth this gentle beauty of winter.  You will have no regrets Gentle Reader.

Weather Or Not.

A German friend, now sadly ex-friend, asked me once why in my emails I always talked about the weather.  I replied that this is a long-established custom in my dear little country.  That we are a nation with a resource economy-drawers of water and hewers of wood, if you will, Gentle Reader.  Our weather poses for us a life or death significance.  It provides us with wheat fields golden with grain that help feed the world.  Our fisheries are dependent on the accuracy of our weather forecasts.

And last but not least, weather-talk is a long-established and cherished Canadian tradition.  We likely get it from the British.  It keeps us from talking about other things.  Canadians hate arguing.  We like to get along with everybody.  We have one of the world's best and most successful national multinational strategies in the world.  I would think that this could be at least partly due to our ancient custom of weather talk.

If it's raining people will always say it's miserable.  If the sun is shining all faces break into beaming smiles almost as bright and blinding as the Day Star warming our earth.  If it snows it's mixed.  Most of us here in Vancouver anyway would prefer to see it on the mountains so no one here below should have to drive in it or slip on ice.  Meanwhile all the skiers and snowboarders are happy, the mountain resort operators are ecstatic and everyone's happy, no one is complaining.

Speaking of complaining I should mention here that we Canadians can be notorious whiners.  We whine about the weather, we whine about politicians, we whine about the weather, we whine about the economy, we whine about the weather.  See how good we have it here.  We live in the Great Northern Paradise, we live in Shangri-La with maple leaves and mack jackets and hockey pucks.

Canadians talk about the weather.  All Canadians, all generations, all ages, from the geekiest to the coolest to the hippest to the douchiest.  It is always a clear sign that a new Canadian has assimilated well into our culture when the first words that come out of their mouth are "rain sucks, eh?", or "Isn't it miserable!"

It hasn't rained today.  This is quite eventful during January.  There were a lot of clouds in the sky and some patches of blue, and many places where the Day Star was tossing honey-toned light on the water and the earth.  It isn't particularly cold and the air is clean and bracingly fresh.  This is why I don't want to live in the tropics.  I know that I would miss that clean blast of cool air that wakens and refreshes from the last weeks of October till the middle of April.  We're always glad when it's gone and we can finally wander outdoors without jackets and sit on the grass (where the dogs haven't beat us to it) and enjoy the shade.  But when that first gust of cold autumn air fills the morning and lingers till noon we are almost all suddenly and indescribably happy.

I have decided to stay away for a while from the café after removing my paintings last night.  It feels as though I was indentured to this establishment and now I want to enjoy being free, to discover and enjoy some of the many other good and decent coffee shops in Vancouver.  It is almost like being in a new city.  I did sit for a while this morning inside a café in Yaletown with my decaf Americano and sketchbook.  It was nice, the server pleasant and the music refreshingly indy.  I have Adele earworm from all the hours I have drawn inside the other coffee shop.  Nothing against Adele by the way but I always knew it was time to leave said café when I heard "Hello" being played for the third time.

So I hope, Gentle Reader, that you and my German ex-friend are now satisfied that I have answered your question and staunched your curiosity concerning our Canadian twee obsession with talking about the weather.  And to my German ex-friend, I hope you do read my blog from time to time and that even one day you will forgive me for what caused the end of our friendship.

More About Our Beautiful Weather

First, a word about today.  I just had a chat with one of the owners of the local café where I am showing some of my paintings.  There is quite a large and I think particularly well-done piece that occupied a highly visual place in the coffee shop.  When I saw today a large plant (or small tree) obstructing the view of more than half the painting I asked if the tree was going to stay there.  I was told yes, probably.  So I said that since I was wanting to showcase the painting then I'd might as well remove it.  I was told to go ahead.  I mentioned that I did find this discourteous.

Later we had a talk.  The owner got a bit emotional and I think somewhat rude and didn't appear immune to making a couple of cheap shots (that there might be something wrong with my giving an unkind look to a mob of ten very loud and rude middle aged women totally crowding into the space I was sitting in while drawing and having a coffee).  I let it go, let her have her say, and agreed to her terms.  Later I took out the big painting.  I am not happy with the tone that was taken nor the lack of respect for my art being there.  I've decided to stay quiet about it.  However, I am thinking of taking out all the paintings if for no other reason than to not feel that I have to somehow nice-up to obnoxious customers just because they are being so kind as to let me display my art in their coffee shop.  It creates extra tension and I would rather return to the secure boundary that comes with not having my art up nor any vested interest in this establishment. 

This could of course backfire so I might give it a few days before I make my decision.  I might even go in this evening just before closing time and bring home the other paintings.  Or I could leave things the way they are, give it all a chance to blow over and try to be friends with everybody.

One of the unpleasant leftovers of PTSD is this tendency to overreact when offended and then create a nasty domino effect that only ends up damaging everyone, especially me.  Also known as a pyrrhic victory.


So, Gentle Reader, I am going to leave things as they are, for now anyway, if for no other reason than to not let a lizard hatch into a dragon.  I really do want my paintings back but tomorrow I could change my mind.

Isn't our weather wonderful?  This must also be affecting people's mood.  I claim that it doesn't impact me really but I'm probably lying.  They call rain and dark cloudy skies miserable weather for good reason.  It really brings out the miserable in us. 

I just wonder if it has to.  I wonder if by calling it miserable we are making the weather and by extension ourselves miserable.  Maybe it is better to acknowledge that it isn't all about us and that the weather happens the way it happens because this is precisely the way it is going to happen: the earth gets watered, the air is cleansed, food grows and we can all stay alive.  Who would be miserable about that?

This just in:

It is a couple of hours since I wrote this.  I went to the café and took down my paintings.  I was polite and cheerful and reassured the staff person on duty that I am still a customer.  The owner was nowhere to be seen, but might have been hiding in the back.  I'm happy now.  My babies are home where they belong.  If permitting café owners to treat me rudely or disrespectfully is a price I have to pay to market my art then all my paintings will stay home with me where they belong. 

It's a beautiful day!

Lovely Weather

Today, Gentle Reader, I am going to write about the weather.  Yes I can hear you sigh with relief especially following that nasty spate of screed against the Anglican Church.  Today, I promise to keep it light.  And speaking of light, GR, have you noticed that already the days are beginning to get longer again?  Come on, just a little bit.  Listen here, our absolute shortest day already came and went.  December 21.  And we were blessed with a whopping eight hours eleven minutes of daylight exactly.  The sun rose at 8:05 in the morning and set at 4:16.  It felt like the end of the world, Gentle Reader.  And now the bad news.  Today, 11 January, exactly twenty-one days, or three weeks following that dread event, this morning the sun rose again at 8:05.  The good news?  It didn't set today until 4:36!  That's an extra twenty minutes of daylight today! Eight hours and twenty glorious minutes!

We'll wait for the cheering to stop...

Everyone's still cheering...

I guess we'll simply have to speak above the roar...

In these northern climes we are easily affected by the lack of sun.  We are creatures of the day.  Sunlight is part of our DNA.  We are not a race of vampires.  We are creatures of the day, children of the light.  This of course is why Christmas was moved to coincide with the ancient Roman Saturnalia.  What better time than when it is darkest and the night is longest to celebrate...Everything.  From the birth of a tiny baby whose death would save the world, to the gathering of families, to the feasting, the music, the coloured lights, candles and roaring fireplaces, the libations and the partying and the acts of good and charitable works.  We all do this to remember and to summon forth the light even as it remains at its most distant from our part of the planet.

They say that the first week of January is the most depressing week of the year.  For me, no.  It is a time of hope and expectancy.  The minutes and seconds of daylight are already beginning their slow march forward.  My body, tired from eating excessively all the right foods to land me in coronary care (believe it or not I lost three pounds this Christmas!) craves in abundance fresh overpriced fruits and vegetables, plain whole wheat bread (I bake bread every week.  Recipe to follow), good wholesome cheese.  For me  this is when Spring really begins. 

You don't believe me?  Do you realize that already the snowdrops are blooming?  They are early this year.  I saw my first one December 22, and the day after Boxing Day there was a daffodil in full glorious bloom.





Near the daffodil there are also several franklinia bushes in full bloom.  They are fragrant and these ones are red.  Here is a white franklinia.



It is not an unusually mild winter.  We have had three cold snaps since November, lots of frost but only a half day of a little bit of snow.  When it rains it warms up to eight degrees or a bit warmer.  When it is sunny the mercury plunges to near zero.  The winter light is magical: long sinuous shadows and beams of light tinged with copper and gold and a sky that can be best described as fiercely blue.  The trees are all covered with glistening green moss and ferns. 



This is winter.

The rain is back and will likely be around for much of the week.  It was dark today and a heavy solemnity weighed over everything.  This is the beauty of the winter weather here on the West Coast.
We don't avoid the weather, we go outside, embrace it and celebrate it giving vent to our inmost yearning for the coming spring.

And now, Gentle Reader, my bread recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 F.
In a mixing bowl blend three cups of whole wheat flour, three tablespoons brown sugar, two teaspoons baking powder and a half teaspoon salt.
Add one and a half cups milk and a quarter cup sunflower oil.

Mixing everything till it's a well blended mass that seems almost to breath on its own.  Dump the whole mass onto an oiled baking sheet.  Bake for 45-50 minutes.