El Malabarista

I have a reputation in my work as a juggler, given that I am working simultaneously at four different sites with ten clients or more.  I often enjoy this.  It keeps me busy, engaged, and my days and weeks at work are full of variety.  Because of the flexible nature of my scheduling I can often graft in activities that I enjoy and benefit from: walking and drawing.  These activities never conflict with my professional assignments and sometimes can be easily integrated into my duties with my clients.  I try to map out my day in the early morning to ensure that I can fit in a minimum of five miles of walking (ten thousand steps) every day.  I also try to splice in perhaps up to an hour in a local coffee shop with my sketchbook. 

If I may bore you with the quotidian details of my last three workdays, Gentle Reader, you will have a better idea of what I am saying, should you succeed in staying awake throughout.  On Monday, I had the morning free, as I have lately.  I did have a couple of errands, including reloading my transit card at the local Canada Line station, then I walked to the lovely garden terrace of the café at the art gallery which I delight in referring to as El Jardin a los Burgueses, or the Bourgeois Garden.  Lounging on comfy patio furniture surrounded by flowers and fresh air and classical music I enjoyed an iced Americano while developing a new drawing.  I then walked home where I stitched up the strap on my knapsack as it was starting to come loose, had a light lunch then walked over to see my first client.  Altogether that was five miles of walking.  I arrived early for my professional appointment so I drew some more and continued to draw for a while visiting my client (he has expressed interest and comfort in seeing me do art while we visit.  I always ask the clients' permission in this).  My client and I walked another one and a half miles.  Later, following my last client for the day I spent forty minutes and a bit in another local café with my sketchbook
Here is the bird of which I am doing a series of seven drawings (I'm on number three right now)

   It's a Resplendent Quetzal from Central America.

When I arrived home I did my day's paperwork, cooked and fed myself, and relaxed for the evening with reading, art and writing my blog, as well as a YouTube video (a child of the Sixties', I am watching the Lucy Show videos these days)

Tuesday, yesterday, I got up at the crack of dawn and left at seven am for a long walk of some five miles, stopping for an hour in a café with my sketchbook then to my first work assignment of the day.  On my way to my following client on the other side of town I stopped in one of my mental health teams to drop off and photocopy a huge wad of paperwork.  After seeing my client I met with another client in a café where we did art together, allowing me yet more time for my quetzal drawing.  Following a quick grocery shopping trip at the nearby No Frills I read on the bus a novel in Spanish by a Colombian author, Laura Restrepo, a well-known Colombian journalist.  It is titled un relato de un entusiasmo, or, a tale of a passion, and touches on the civil war in Colombia during the Eighties'. I often read in Spanish while on the bus during my work day.  During the long walks I can often take before or between clients I also practice Spanish on the phone, talking to an imaginary friend in Spanish.  Anyone hearing me will think that I'm either a Canadian talking on the phone to a Hispanic friend, or that I'm a very pale Mexican.  At home, following a quick snack I had an enjoyable two hour coffee visit with a friend of mine who is on his way first to Rome, then to Ontario to conclude his theological studies as he prepares for the Anglican priesthood I returned home where I finished my paper work, ate, wrote in my blog, texted with a friend in El Salvador, read a bit, saw part of a Spanish language video then crawled into bed where I read for a while from another book in Spanish, the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Sieg Larrson in Spanish translation.

Today I left this morning an hour and a half earlier than usual, got off the bus early to walk two miles and arrived an hour early at the café where I was meeting my client.  I spent the hour drawing, met with my client, then went to a staff meeting at the Team across the street, then bussed to my next meeting in the area of Vancouver General Hospital with the clinical supervisor and my new supervisor.  I phoned my last client who cancelled and I took a long three mile walk in a beautiful neighbourhood while practicing Spanish on the phone.  I stopped in a café to do some more art then bussed home.

I have to admit that I don't have a lot of energy right now.  I simply napped in my recliner chair, cooked, ate, did paperwork and avoided a Skype visit with a language partner in Latin America, listening, as always, to the many fascinating programs on CBC Radio, watched yet another Lucy Show video, painted a little and now I am finishing this blog post.  I will soon be going to bed.

These are very typical work days for me.  I get a lot done, I enjoy being busy and I adore my clients as well as feeling honoured to help participate in their journey towards recovery.  I never feel overwhelmed by it all.  I m El Malabarista, I am the Juggler.  I maintain that calm silent centre in the midst of the swirling balls, the whirling electrons, the revolving planets.  I am not a god, nor a divinity, but I do have a sense of the divine presence keeping me calm and grounded while active and dynamic.  I am greatly encouraged by the praise and support from my many supervisors and bosses.  That is all very nice.  A bloody fat raise to a living wage would be absolutely awesome.

Real Boobs

I'd like to continue this conversation about some of the issues surrounding the burkini, but we're no longer in France, so perhaps we could think of some of the ramifications here in Canada surrounding body image, body display, gender, and values.  I have not heard of the burkini being used here and really I'm not sure if anyone would really notice it much.  As I said, here, Muslim women on occasion go in public fully veiled.  Even if people don't like it (I don't) we generally all accept and respect it as the woman`s right to express or not express herself in public in a way that is best for her.  As long as it is her choice, and no one is imposing it on her.  And it turns out that this is the way it is here.  We are not in Saudi Arabia, but we will dress or undress as we choose.

Last night on the CBC I heard an interview with an Israeli musician, a young woman who was ordered to cover up her bikini top while singing in an outdoor concert on a beach.  The young woman was outraged, refused to cover up and I believe had to face some consequences afterward (I think she was fined).  In the interview she crowed quite eloquently about women`s rights to do as they wish with their own bodies.  The interviewer, the incomparable Laura Lynch, slyly interjected a question about the attempted ban on burquinis in France.  The Israeli singer suddenly waxed shrill and strident as she insisted that those women are oppressed, they are being told what to wear, it`s an open door to more oppression and the burkini should be burned and thrown into the ocean.  Not for one nanosecond did she appear to be aware of her hypocrisy as well as her complete ignorance by making such a sweeping judgment, and possibly was also betraying her own anti-Muslim (anti-Palestinian?) bais.

On the other end of the spectrum I did witness, sort of, the annual women's topless march in Vancouver.  No, I did not come out to look.  A friend and I were having coffee in the elegant terrace café nearby and on our way out, there they were.  A crowd of maybe forty or fifty topless people, mostly men, with perhaps four (my friend's estimate) or maybe two (from what I could see) women.  There was also a mob of very stupid and ignorant fully clothed men with their cameras and phone cameras out, ready for a cheap shot of naked breasts.  (Ironically, I thought that a lot of them looked Middle-Eastern.)  We could call those guys the Real Boobs.

My friend and I had an interesting talk about it after.  We agreed on two things: women should have the right to wear or not wear whatever they want in public (men, too) and that it is still often helpful for those of us who want the freedom of unbridled self-expression to consider and respect the kind of impact our self-expression is going to have on those around us.

There are tonnes of issues around the way we dress, or choose not to dress when in public, especially body issues.  There is a general consensus (well, sort of general) that women should have just as much right and freedom to take off as many clothes in public as men.  On the surface that all sounds well and good.  It could even be helpful to consider that it isn't just women whose chests can look beautiful and alluring but men as well.  I would also like to add that it wouldn't be just women (who are not anywhere near as visual when it comes to sexual attraction as men) but to more men than would care to admit that they are not one hundred percent heterosexual.  This rather crosses over to another theme but I would like to briefly touch on here.  Given that we live in a historically heterocentric culture where, despite many recent advances towards legitimizing same sex marriage etc., it is highly likely that very few men, outside of the exclusively gay, are going to be forthcoming or honest about their personal same-sex attractions, so it gets sublimated and often with accompanying violence.  I am thinking here particularly of mixed martial arts and ultimate fighting championships.  Young, handsome and very fit men clad only in tight skimpy shorts beating the crap out of each other before bellowing mobs of male audiences howling for blood.  Ultimate closet cases and as a cover for their sublimated homosexual attractions they act out their accompanying shame and self-loathing by cloaking it in violence and thus justifying it in the most naked, raw and ugly caricature of primeval masculinity. 

I often have wondered, what if the two combatants pulled a total one-eighty on their audience.  Instead of beating each other up, while in one of their wrestling holds, if instead they were to begin caressing, embracing and kissing each other in the most intimate and tender way, like lovers totally lost in each other.  What would happen then?  I think it's worth a thought or two.

Back to women.  There is one particular reason for needing to postpone the public baring of women's breasts.  It has nothing to do with equal rights or choice, and really, as far as I'm concerned, they should have the right to do this if they want to.  But there is still this one, unpleasant and naked (pardon the pun, Gentle Reader) reality that has to be reckoned with.  The ongoing and absolute public sexualizing of the female body.  Men appear to be nowhere near to being ready to reckon with this.  Teenage boys and twenty and thirty something males are particularly deplorable with the sexting and the trading of images of undressed girlfriends and hookups, the incredible accessibility of pornography on the internet and the absolute male intransigence about not changing some of the most fundamentally destructive attitudes so many men still have towards women.

Even though topless women and topless men can look equally sexy there is still a lot of social, cultural and ancestral baggage around women's breasts that I am not sure if it would be comfortable or safe for a lot of women were they to go habitually topless in public.  Or maybe it would be okay.  With naked breasts always in their face men would have to simply get over it, get used to it and get on with their lives.  If only...

We also need to factor in the historical subjugation of women that has led to this fetishizing of breasts.  I have to admit that even progressive little old me can still feel a bit squeamish around a woman who is breastfeeding, especially if nothing is left to the imagination.  I remember how distinctly uncomfortable I felt a few years ago when at a work Christmas party I saw my supervisor serenely breastfeeding her baby while carrying on a conversation with me about work.  I also tend to wonder if we have a primal sense of breasts as being sacred.  They are our first source of life and nourishment while we are vulnerable infants.  I sometimes wonder if there must be some kind of creepy archetypal Oedipal instinct in our collective unconscious that leads many of us to sexualize the breast as a symbol of the Great Mother.

And let me repeat, Gentle Reader, even though there were a few women last Sunday exposing their breasts in public, it was the dumbass men who came to gawk who are the Real Boobs.

Exotica

Exotic:

of foreign origin or character; not native; introduced from abroad, but not fully naturalized or acclimatized:

exotic foods; exotic plants.

2.

strikingly unusual or strange in effect or appearance:

an exotic hairstyle.

3.

of a uniquely new or experimental nature:

exotic weapons.

4.

of, relating to, or involving stripteasing:

the exotic clubs where strippers are featured.

Here, Gentle Reader, I will explore with you my experience of that most useless catch-all of English adjectives: Exotic.  I first encountered the word when I was a child of ten.  I was home sick with the flu and resting in bed with a lovely pile of books by my side.  One was a beautifully illustrated picture book of wildlife of the world.  It was given me the previous Christmas by my paternal grandmother.  I couldn't put it down and it became my book for the year, especially the birds.  It was a little bit odd, however.  I believe the book was written and published in Great Britain so all the common birds illustrated seemed to me very unusual.  Almost none of them lived here in Canada.  They were strange to me, strangely beautiful. I didn't know at the time that I found them exotic.  Then I turned a few pages to the section titled "Exotic Birds." 

This was my first ever encounter with the word "Exotic."  Even to say it, to feel this word roll on my tongue felt, er, exotic.  Featured on the page were birds from other lands, tropical paradises lifted off of travel posters.  I remember the sulfur crested cockatoo and the cordon bleu finch.  I think there was also a scarlet macaw.  I can't remember the fourth bird.  I kept returning to this page, my young Canadian suburban eyes feasting on the beauty and delicious strangeness of these creatures.

When I was twenty, a friend referred to me as "exotic."  I think this is the only time I've  heard myself described with this word.  To this day I haven't a clue what he must have been talking about.  A couple of years later I really became interested in exotic birds.

I was twenty-one when I saw them in the display window of a pet store:



This is a painting I did of hyacinth macaws.  They are huge with long tails.  The first painting  I sold was a large canvas of hyacinth macaws.  To look at two of those elegant birds staring back at me through the window as though they wanted to talk to me and the intoxicating shimmer of their deep ultramarine plumage has always stayed with me.

A couple of years later, following a night shift in a parking lot where I worked for a few months I found myself in a neighbourhood branch library the following Saturday morning.  I was absolutely paralyzed with a quiet ecstatic dread as I stared at page after page of a lavishly illustrated book called Birds of the World.



This is one of my interpretations of the Fairy Bluebird of Southeast Asia.  I first saw this bird in one of the pages of that book.

Here is one of my interpretations of the Resplendent Quetzal of Central America:



The first time I saw one of these birds was on the page of the Bird article of the World Book Encyclopedia, 1966, which my parents bought when I was a kid.

Through my twenties and thirties, and into my thirties, forties and fifties, I bought, acquired and collected bird books, birds of the world, "exotic birds" that no one had ever heard of, hummingbirds, peacocks, pheasants, parrots, birds of paradise and others, many others.  I have long been addicted to the exotic and here are a few more images of my art to prove it:









As far as images of my art go, Gentle Reader, this is all that I'll bore you with.  Everything is available should you want to own any of these paintings.  Prices negotiable and all sales are final.

That said, another thought about "Exotic".  It all depends on where you live.  The British birds in that special book from my Grandmother looked very strange, lovely and special to me because I had never seen them before.  For me they were exotic.  Some of our most beautiful birds here in my own neighbourhood are seldom seen or noticed by others unless, like me, they happen to be bird geeks.  This makes them exotic. 

A friend recently told me that because of my blue eyes and blonde (gray, actually) hair along with my fluent Spanish, many of my Latin American friends must find me exotic.

Has everyone stopped laughing yet?

And on it goes.

And finally, my interest in the exotic has made exotic things, especially birds, seem kind of ordinary and every day, though I still love and celebrate them.  The familiar and everyday in my own back yard have since become a little more interesting, beautiful and mysterious.  It's all exotic.  But of course, Gentle Reader, what else could it ever be!

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite 3

This is my message to the Muslims who live in France.  Before I say more let me acknowledge how little I know the immigrant experience, having never had to leave my own country.  I do live in a multicultural country, Canada, where ethnic and religious diversity are taken for granted.  I have also had the pleasure of working with and knowing as friends many people who have moved to my country as immigrants.  I would also like to say one more thing here: Canada does multiculturalism very differently from France or other European countries and I would also dare to boast that we do it a lot better.

It isn't always easy and we don't always get it right but generally speaking newcomers feel welcome here and almost always integrate well without having to sacrifice their cultural identity.  This might be because here in Canada we love novelty and generally feel enriched by foreign cultural input.  We are not all this generous and particularly many of our older, white, male and less educated (which is to say conservative) compatriots still have a marked tendency towards racism and bigotry.

I understand that French society does not easily accommodate diversity and what a disadvantage this must be for you.  To imagine immigrating to a wealthy nation to work and actually earn a decent income and actually enjoy fundamental human rights and freedoms only to go on being treated like an outsider, like someone who never will belong for simply not being "French" with no guarantee that it will be any better for your children or grandchildren.  Is it any wonder that you end up creating for yourselves two very distinct and separate realities, coexisting and only acknowledging the other's existence because your survival in this country depends on it.

As much as I sympathize, I am going to tell you something that you are not going to want to hear.  You have to learn to integrate.  Not assimilate, and not to lose your ethnicity nor your religious faith, but to do everything in your power to compromise a little and accommodate your hosts.  In
Canada we have the good fortune of being a society that makes lots of accommodation for newcomers.  We do not have to do this but if we want to build a healthy and sustainable society that will benefit everyone then we have to do this and for that reason.  Because your French compatriots are not pulling their share then you, the Muslim minority, must do all the more to meet them halfway.  Of course this isn't fair but such is life.  What are you prepared to do, short of resorting to drastic or destructive actions, to help make life more fair for yourselves and for the French majority?  It has to work both ways.

Perhaps in France there are a number of progressive and generous folks who are already working to bridge the divide and are reaching out in friendship to their Muslim neighbours.  Build on this.  For the rest of you, make every possible effort to learn and speak well the French language.  Practice in your homes, with each other.  You can still speak Arabic.  It is both and, not either or.  As a Christian I know how awful it is when ignorant non-believers insult my faith.  As much as I deplore the massacres and murders of French and Danish cartoonists I also understand why this blatant disrespect of Mohammed would be such an outrage to you.  I also appreciate the absolute discomfort of  those Muslim women who want the dignity of their bodies and faces to be upheld and to not feel at the mercy of the male gaze.  Here in Vancouver, where I live, some Muslim women wear the hijab, a few are veiled.  Whatever I might think of it, I respect this as their right to dress and express themselves in a way that works for them.  I only wish that more people in France (hey, even in my dear Canada!) would simply live and let live about the hijab, the niqab and the veil.

By the same token, I also question the absolute necessity of using external props, such as veils and head scarfs, as an essential expression of religious faith.  In my city I recall seeing on the bus a young Muslim woman wearing the hijab.  She was seated in the front in the courtesy section for seniors and people with disabilities, and she was totally focused on her laptop.  There were seniors standing nearby, who clearly needed the seat more than her.  I was standing at the time, or else I would have gladly given up my seat.  No matter what I tried to do to get her attention she completely ignored me.  I have little doubt that she knew what was going on.  Here she was, boasting with the hijab that she was a faithful Muslim, yet completely disregarding the ethic of Islam about caring for the vulnerable.  Or perhaps she assumed we were all infidels and not worth the effort?

I am basically saying to you Muslims the same thing that I am telling French society:  Get over yourselves.  Look for ways to compromise and try to co-exist.  For those of you who must take your religion to an extreme, perhaps you need to reconsider and study other, more moderate forms of Islam that emphasize charity and justice over headscarves and veils.  France is not, nor ever will be an Islamic country.  If you have to live in a society where Islam is the state religion then perhaps you ought to consider going back to where you came from?  But that would be a step backward and a huge loss to yourselves and to the French nation.  Look for ways to compromise and learn how to internalize your faith so that it becomes a vehicle for the common good instead of a weapon of division.

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite 2

Gentle Reader, I just pulled this little paragraph from Wikipedia:

"It became a moral mission to lift the world up to French standards by bringing Christianity and French culture. In 1884 the leading exponent of colonialism, Jules Ferry declared; "The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior races." Full citizenship rights – assimilation – were offered, although in reality "assimilation was always receding [and] the colonial populations treated like subjects not citizens."^[4] France sent small numbers of settlers to its empire, contrary to Great Britain, and previously Spain and Portugal, with the only notable exception of Algeria, where the French settlers nonetheless always remained a small minority."

To continue my letter to French Society:

Read carefully this quote from that dreadful Jule Ferry and perhaps you will have a little more insight about what is wrong with your country.  It is not sufficient to say that that was the way they thought in the Nineteenth Century.  That kind of imperialist, racist arrogance dies very slow and very hard and the resulting hubris ends up paying itself forward for generations, even centuries, to come.  It's not to say that the British or the Spanish weren't any better: this arrogant, racist hubris was a general plague throughout Europe.  Now in the Twenty-First Century in Latin America we see even today the bitter fruit of the greedy, rapacious violence that the Spanish visited upon the indigenous peoples of Latin America as well as the poverty and squalor that many of our own aboriginal people languish in here in Canada.

To hear French people whine and lament about the invasion of all those dreadful Muslims to their precious white, secular Gallic shores is ingenuous and rather stupid, to say the least.  When the French visited on various people in North Africa and the Middle East their own brand of cultural imperialism they had no idea of the monster they were creating, and that one day it would return to bite them in the ass.  Many French seem determined to convert their culture into a toxic fossil or at least a laughable caricature of itself (baguette, Brie and Bordeaux).  The resurgence of the far right indicates that the old time French racism has not only survived since the Nineteenth Century, but that it is now alive, well and perfectly able to breath unassisted.

Like much of Europe the French government began inviting citizens of former colonies to come and work in France, but the racism and cultural intolerance being what it is, they were never invited to fully participate as complete citizens, even when they became French citizens.  Being shunned and ostracized by mainstream French society many Algerians and other Muslim immigrants stuck to themselves in their own enclaves, ghettoes, arrondissements.  North African and Middle Eastern Muslim culture-in-exile came to thrive in French cities, co-existing without much love from the local French gentry.  Then came Islamic extremism, terrorist attacks, and Charlie Hebdot stirring the pot.

I see the whole problem with French society as being something very simple: fear of change.  They have so codified and embedded various sacred cultural icons and symbols as to leave absolutely no room for growth, change or meaningful evolution.  Very unlike what many white Eurocentric folks would care to believe, culture is not static.  Indeed, for any culture to survive, change and exterior influence have to be accepted, welcomed, and integrated.  This is not the same as assimilation, rather it is leaving room for fusion so that the fruit, the result of this coming together of different cultural influences becomes something altogether different, vibrant and living.  The French, and other European cultures and countries have become so entrenched and fossilized in their inherent racism and resistance towards change that is it any wonder that there is the fear of being overrun by foreigners who dress and worship in ways that are deemed unacceptable, because they are different?

This brings me to the theme of the burkini.  When I first heard about it I went, yeah right, more Islamic backwardness.  But then I looked a little more carefully and thought of some of the Muslim women in Vancouver, Canada, where I live, who choose to go veiled in public.  I didn't like this for the longest time, still don't, but I think I understand it now and can accept it.  To my knowledge, none of these women go around veiled because they have been told to.  It is their individual choice for individual reasons. For some it is their way of honouring Allah through dressing modestly (even if |I see overkill here), or they simply want to feel free and unmolested by the male gaze.  It is also an expression of self-respect about their own bodies as they choose not to put themselves on public display as though they are prize heifers in a country fair cattle competition.  Perfectly acceptable reasons.  But in Canada we are more accepting of diversity and we are not so insecure about being secular that we welcome as diversity of expressions of faith and belief in the public sphere.  It isn't perfect but by and large everyone does get along, there is considerably more mixing between various ethnicities and, I think, more intermarriage (it's a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say).

Now I have to admit that I personally find the burkini ugly and I feel sorry for any self-respecting Muslim woman who would be seen wearing one in public.  But this is their choice.  They also have a right to enjoy the beach and really why should they have to opt to have to lay or strut around almost naked just to please the so-called secular French values, especially when this is offensive to them, their faith and everything they hold sacred?  Why can't more French people get over their hostile racism and intolerance, their exaggerated self-importance and their cultural arrogance and simply live and let live?  And yes, this also means to get over the trauma of the recent terror attacks.  Why summon police to publicly traumatize and humiliate these poor women by stripping them in public?

I am glad to hear that the French supreme court has successfully overturned the ban on the burkini and I really hope that more French citizens can take advantage of this first baby step towards inclusivity, tolerance and good relations with an unjustly hated and hugely misunderstood minority.

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite 1

Why am I writing about something that really shouldn't matter to me in the least, especially given this current bout of I-don't-give-a-shit-itis I am suffering from?  It concerns the burkini, you know, Gentle Reader, that aquatic hazmat suit worn by some conservative Muslim women in France which has been getting them busted by the police for public indecency.  Yes, you are reading me correctly, dear. Public indecency.  For wearing too many clothes in public.  For not being secular.  For flouting secular French values.  For not dressing (or undressing) like whores in public.  Guilty for being Muslim.

There are so many nuances and complexities to this conundrum that I don't really know where to begin.  I didn't think for a while about writing about this, but my commitment to multiculturalism, Canadian style, seems to demand that I write something.  What makes this difficult is that I would have to write two distinct essays.  Perhaps here I will write two different letters: one to French society, the other to conservative French Muslims.

Dear French Society:

I understand that your country is going through a nightmare, after as many as three major terrorist attacks in less than two years.  No one is going to emerge out of this without feeling traumatized.  Muslims, regardless of their variety of Islam, are the current bogeyman for some and perhaps for many French citizens.  It is completely understandable that many are going to feel nervous and even hostile around any evident signs of Islam, especially the conservative or radial variety and that others are going to demonize all Muslims as being un=French and therefor evil, or at least anti-secular.  You are probably not going to like much what I'm about to tell you but I'm telling you anyway.

This is rather a complex matter and I don't think I would do it justice in one single, interminable and exhausting post.  So I am dividing it into three parts.  This is the introduction.  Tomorrow I will write the main body and conclusion of my letter to French society.  The following day will be my letter to the Muslim community in France.  If necessary I will extend this series into a fourth part by way of conclusion.

Wish me luck.

Spanish Octopus

As many of you know, Gentle Reader, I specialize in accomplishing the impossible (we will pause five minutes as my swelled head shrinks to normal size).

Now, as I was saying, GR, I do have a reputation for being resourceful, for my ability of making the best maximum use with the very little I have at my fingertips. (we will pause another two minutes while my head finishes shrinking)

As you also know, one of these impossible accomplishments has been becoming fluent in a second language, Spanish in my case, after only beginning to learn it seriously while in my middle forties (I am sixty now, for those of you who have been kind enough to forget)  I did not have the money to go to university, nor to attend pricey language classes.  I bought a dictionary, a language workbook and networked with people.  I met others who spoke Spanish or were learning it and attended free or low cost conversation groups and classes, listened to radio programs in Spanish and wherever possible, bought books written and published in Spanish. 

When I finally got the internet at home, some fifteen years after everyone else did (I couldn`t afford it for the longest time, if you must know), I discovered a plethora of resources online.  Especially YouTube and Skype.  Every evening I play part of or an entire video documentary in Spanish.  I have thus gained a plethora of Spanish speaking friends, from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Honduras, and other places, mostly on Skype.  I have learned so much besides Spanish and my life is being continually enriched by these lovely new people as I learn more about their lives and sometimes even get to visit them in their country.

I especially have the blessing of my friend from Peru who lives here and we see each other regularly for language exchange, yes, but simply to hang out as buddies.

I feel like a Spanish octopus with my tentacles spread throughout Latin America.  A very blessed and happy Octopus.  My Spanish, while now fluent, still isn't perfect, but one day...Who knows?

Walking

I've done a lot of walking today.  I try to walk every day.  I do walk every day.  Minimum of five miles or eight kilometres a day.  This is to ensure that I get my minimum ten thousand steps a day.  It keeps me reasonably in shape, healthy, mentally active and I'll live forever (I made up that last part, Gentle Reader).

I always somehow manage to get in my minimum five miles (eight kilometres) a day.  Given the flexible nature of my work and my work day it isn't that difficult really. I just try to factor in the time and distance before I begin my day.  This morning I decided that I did not want to walk a lot in the hot afternoon, as they were forecasting thirty degrees inland (twenty-five by the water).  Of course, whenever they forecast warm weather, the CBC always gives us nearly a week to get into an anxious panic as we are warned to stay in the shade, apply the sunscreen with a trowel, drink lots of water, and make sure that we've updated our will.  It's like preparing for Armageddon.  Sometimes it does get hot and intolerably so, but more often than not it's pleasant in the shade and not that bad in the blazing solar death rays.

Being cowed into a creeping sense of dread of the coming heatwave I chose to play it safe.  I went to sleep early, and woke up early (too early) and struggled out of bed just past five in the morning.  I was out of the apartment by 7:15.  I planned to get in my five miles (eight kilometres) in the cool of the morning.

It was lovely.  I walked three miles (4.8 kilometres) through the breathtakingly lovely streets of Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale then stopped nearly an hour in one of my favourite cafes where I enjoyed an iced Americano and chocolate cookie while beginning a new drawing (number two of a series of seven Resplendent Quetzals, if you must know, and here is a lovely Google image to refresh your memory):



Oh, but can it get any lovelier!  I am practicing for my trip to Costa Rica this March, fourth visit, where these glorious birds live and I even entertain the slightly lame-ass hope of selling some art while I'm there, which is why I want to get really good at drawing the local bird life.

I resumed walking for another two miles till I arrived at work.  During this time I spent a lot of time on the phone with Fulano.  I think I've mentioned elsewhere on these pages my eccentric practice of speaking Spanish to my imaginary friend, Fulano, on my voicemail whenever I'm out walking.  It's very effective and no one is any the wiser.  Non-Spanish speakers assume that I'm a very pale Mexican; native Spanish speakers, not so easily fooled in their mother tongue, assume that I'm a Gringo talking to a Hispanic friend in rather acceptable sounding Spanish.

I even managed to work in another four miles (6.4 kilometres) for the rest of the day: half a mile with my client, (0.8 kilometres), one and a half miles (2.4 kilometres) when I got off the bus on my way to my next professional assignment to walk some more through the breathtakingly lovely streets of Shaughnessy.  Following a meeting over coffee with one of my bosses I walked another half mile (0.8 kilometres) where I enjoyed an extended coffee break (iced Americano with chocolate mousse dessert) in a cosy corner on a couch in a local bakery café.  A young Chinese Canadian whom I've never met before joined me and we got into the most amazing conversation for the next half hour or so while I was working on the new quetzal drawing.  He is a food importer and I was trying to persuade him to consider bringing in cashew fruits from Central America.

My last client for the day cancelled so I walked another two miles (3.2 kilometres) again through the breathtakingly lovely streets of Shaughnessy, then took the bus home.

Why do I walk all the time?  Well, it's the only exercise I'm any good at, so I've always walked long distances, ever since I got lost for several hours when I was four years old and got my parents in a tizzy (they eventually found me in the local cop shop, smiling in a big rocking chair while a young plainclothes constable told me stories and fed me candy.)  This walking habit did make me rather unusual as a child and since I was unpopular I spent a lot of time walking alone and actually enjoying it.  Ever since those days in the Sixties I have been making a virtue out of necessity (rather a default kind of necessity) and extolled walking for its many alleged benefits.  Also so much the easier since I totally sucked at sports.

Now that walking is fashionable and almost everyone is doing it it still has lost none of its lustre for me.  I still love walking, especially wherever there is a forest, or parks, or lovely houses or all of the above.  I am at my best when I walk as I look carefully at the light in the leaves of the trees, study details of heritage houses, quietly observe those who are nearby, and not so quietly curse sidewalk cyclists.  I imagine I'll keep on walking till my legs give out and I don't expect that's going to happen for a very long time.

Do The Math

I just read an article in one of our local free daily papers about how the government of my province can on one hand crow about BC having the best and most robust economy in the country while still crying grinding poverty when it comes to properly funding housing, education, social and health services.  Our premier boasts about our province's triple A financial rating as a place to do business while housing becomes increasingly unaffordable in my city and  people with middle class incomes are migrating from here in droves to other parts of the province, the country, or emigrating to other countries since they don't want to end up in low barrier shelters.  Public schools are being closed while private schools are getting a boost in public funding.  Our health care system needs badly to be repaired, overhauled and greatly improved if we are to be provided with quality services on our single-payer system.  The homelessness crisis here has reached record proportions and people on social assistance and disability assistance are stranded on considerably less than a subsistence income.  There is no such thing as adequate, publicly funded daycare and record numbers of children from low-income families are going to school with empty stomachs. 

Everyone I talk to or hear from is very worried about our future here.  We do not anticipate any general improvement in the general standard of living for those who are not obscenely wealthy.  For all the lip service we get from our mayor and city council about affordable housing none of the efforts being promised and undertaken seem anywhere near enough to put more than a band aid on a cancer.

I just read in a different article in the same newspaper that our members of parliament, when they retire stand to collect a pension of $120,000 a year.  Oh yes, you can say that they have earned it, they have served their country and its people in so many ways, or maybe they have simply further sold us down the river for corporate and international banking interests.  By the same token, I have also served, working hard for years caring for the elderly, the dying, the addicted, the unwanted.  So what's going to be my reward?  I will be lucky to collect more than thirteen hundred glorious bucks a month when I retire and yes, I do expect to go on working till I'm pushing up daisies.

So, why these disparities, and especially, why aren't our governments able to balance the needs of our vastly diminishing social contract and public safety net with the best ever economy since sliced bread?  We might well recall, Gentle Reader, that when the BC Liberals were first elected into power, it was on the platform of throwing people off of welfare and cutting back on health care and education spending, tearing up contracts and slashing in half the earnings of many institutional workers in hospitals and schools.  They also promised to balance the budget.  Well, guess how they balanced the books?  By punishing those who are least capable of defending themselves.  So now the books are balanced, and our economy is cooking like crazy. And look now how our imbeciles in Victoria squeal like pigs being slaughtered whenever it is suggested that some of that new money be reinvested into those places that need it most!

Gord Downer

I am about to topple a contemporary Canadian sacred cow.  It's name is the Tragically Hip, a band whose dark, morose and depressing chords and (the little I know of them) lyrics have never done anything for me but to make me yearn for the sounds of Salsa.  Now that their lead singer, Gord Downie, is on his way out with incurable brain cancer we are suddenly all being force-fed their music whether we want to hear it or not.  I am sorry for what he has to go through, but not sorry enough to want to endure his band's horrible music.

I only decided to blog about this after two things happened on the weekend.  On the CBC it was said "In Gord We Trust."  Later in the Globe and Mail I saw the headline "One Nation Under Gord" and off came the gloves.  I emailed the managing editor of the Globe and said that as a Christian I found that headline very offensive, as I am sure would other Christians as well as Muslims and Jews.  The CBC has also received a few calls from me.  I really don't know if it was the right thing to do since I don't always think clearly when indignation is filling my grey matter.

Of course, it is old hat that rock stars are deified by their dumbass fans and other groupies.  Most people live out their lives as unthinking consumers, people of little imagination.  Of course they are going to lick the snakeskin boots and designer derrieres of rock stars.  We live in a culture that is ethically bankrupt.  It is all about competition, consumption and diversion.  No one thinks originally any more and any brighter than average performer with an inflated sense of celebrity, with the right alchemy of sex-appeal and dazzle and imagination will be having a field day.

Rock stars are mortal.  Gord Downie will soon be dead.  The God in whom no one seems to believe anymore will never die and should we put our gaze on him, in a way, neither will we.

But for me, an alleged Christian, surely there must be kinder, more loving and more intelligent ways of getting the message across.

Why Do I Travel?

I am writing this post in response to a friend's comment that having read my travel blog, which she enjoyed, she has noticed that I often have mixed feelings when I travel and that this was especially noteworthy in my posts that I wrote during my second visit to Colombia.  Given how much grief Windows 10 (rammed down my throat by those assholes at Microsoft) causes my Yahoo page whenever I try to type more than one sentence, I am going to respond to my friend here on my blog, which Windows 10 screws up perhaps every fifth sentence so let's hear it for quality!  And then of course I will send her the link.

There are several variables involved in my choices of travel destination.  The first criteria has to do with where I feel called.  I know that for many people this is an odd concept and for those who don't believe in a higher being, somewhat inconceivable.  Be that as it may, that is the way it is for me.  I go where I feel called.  This doesn't mean that I will be visiting every part of the earth that interests me.  It means that I will selectively choose depending on where I feel called.

The second criteria has to do with language.  I speak Spanish with reasonable fluency as a second language.  I like to spend a month in a Spanish speaking country every year, living in Spanish, which does wonders for maintaining and raising my level of fluency.  As much as possible, when away, I live in Spanish and communicate almost exclusively in the language of Cervantes.  By the time I return to Canada I often find that I have a light accent for the first few days so, yes, I would say this is very effective.

The third criteria involves staying as open as possible to the place where I'm visiting.  This often evokes in me a plethora of responses, positive, negative and perplexed, sometimes absolutely delighted.  In my journals I try to report as honestly and candidly as possible my impressions and reactions.  There is always going to be a huge mix and part of my desire is that you, Gentle Reader, might participate with me in this process.  What inevitably happens is that an expanded sense and experience of community develops as I make new friends among the local people so that I now have friends in Mexico, Costa Rica and Colombia, all because of these trips that I go on,  It is kind of like an international sense of having an extended family.  Regardless of the negative experiences and reactions there is always a positive essence in these travels that often keeps drawing me back to some of these places.  This is something I can't always write about as the feelings are often so innate and intuitive.

The one remaining criteria has to do with affordability.  I live and travel on a very low income and I often have to accept certain sacrifices and tradeoffs while I'm away.  I often end up confined to places like Bogota for the very reason that I cannot afford to go much further but that's okay and I always manage to make the best of the situation.

My next destination will be Monteverde, Costa Rica, my fourth visit there.  This place feels like a second home to me.  I don't know if I will be writing my blog during this trip but it's likely that I will.

In The World, But Not Of The World

With varying degrees of success and failure I have tried throughout my Christian experience to remain as closely involved in the world around me without taking on certain values and mores, or should I say lack of mores, that are not compatible to my religious profession.  This has led me into some very strange places over the years and I have often found myself questioning my wisdom and my motives.

During my extensive street ministry from 1980 to 1996 or so I found myself often in some very strange places, including after hours bars and gay and alternative nightclubs, all in the name of being a Christian presence in the least likely circumstances for people chronically alienated from the church and the Christian faith (notice that I have indicated these as two distinct entities, Gentle Reader?)  I cannot say that I went totally free from being influenced and corrupted, more in some of my attitudes and language than in my lifestyle preferences, but let`s just say that it took its toll and at times the exhaustion and burnout were telling.

More recently I have been undergoing subtler challenges in the workplace.  Let me say, first of all, that at least the kind of work I am doing, caring for vulnerable and disenfranchised people, is very compatible to my Christian faith, and does much to enhance my experience of discipleship and spirituality.  Then there are my coworkers.  Different story altogether.  In most cases I am the only or almost the only Christian on board and I only have to sit for five minutes in the staff room to remind myself what different worlds we inhabit.  Generally, Eastern spiritual practices are endorsed, encouraged and practiced, such as yoga and Buddhist meditation.  I dare not mention prayer because the Christian faith, unlike Buddhism, just is not respected or particularly liked where I work.  So I keep my views and my experiences to myself.  Most of my coworkers drive vehicles, a practice I have always eschewed, thinking that it is better to put the wellbeing of the environment ahead of my personal convenience and pleasure.  All of my coworkers who do not happen to be peer support workers earn fairly substantial salaries and enjoy lifestyles, perks and entitlements that I neither know nor really care to know.  Still, it often makes conversations awkward, given that I simply cannot communicate on their level of financial excess.  Even though I travel, I do so on a strict budget, so we really have little common ground to talk about when it comes to vacations, since they tend to take travel luxuries for granted that I could only dream of, if I really was interested , which I'm not.  My reasons for travel are likely quite different from theirs, since I go to learn about the people, the culture and the language and to offer friendship in foreign lands, and not as a tourist-consumer.  Unlike most of them, I neither own my own home, nor ever will own my own home, nor have I ever aspired to, not simply because it has been out of my economic range but as a Christian who takes literally the notion that he is a pilgrim and sojourner on this earth it has never occurred to me to take this kind of step.  Now how could I possibly explain something like this to secular minded coworkers for whom home ownership is taken for granted, though in a city as expensive as Vancouver it will be a matter of for how much longer.

Unlike many of my coworkers I rarely eat in restaurants, not just because it's too expensive but because I feel that it is more responsible to buy groceries economically and prepare and eat my own food.  I could go on, but I'm sure you get the gist.  What we do share in common is a strong dedication to work well with our clients and to do our utmost to promote their wellbeing.  Even if I eschew social occasions in the workplace given our incompatibility of lifestyles and values, at least professionally we are all on board.

Which brings us to the Olympics.  It really saddens me how a mere sporting event comes to so dominate people's lives, as if physical excellence, competition and winning are the be-all and end-all of our humanity.  This is where my values as a Christian really have a field day.  It isn't that my faith is really against these things, rather, we don't really place a lot of value in them.  You see, Gentle Reader, I don't believe that God calls us to honour the amygdala, also called the reptilian brain.  We are made for better, and higher, to be kind, gentle, loving and honest and to care for the weak and vulnerable as we ourselves walk with and identify with the weak and vulnerable Christ, through whom we are made strong in our weakness through the weakness that he shared with us as a tiny human baby and on the Cross of Golgotha.

True Theology

I have no problem with atheists.  People will believe what they will believe and they will believe on whatever terms work for them.  I fully appreciate that belief in God, or the option of not believing is something very personal.  Having read Blaise Pascal's logical proofs for the existence of God (please let there not be a quiz, it's been so long ago) I have to admit that my reaction was a bit lukewarm. 

Really, I don't care if the existence of God can or cannot be proved rationally.  This has absolute squat to do with my reasons for believing nor with the way I believe.  Even early in my career as a young Jesus freak I was already bored to extinction by the lame and baroque contortions the evangelicals I knew would put themselves, and the rest of us, through in order to explain the nature of God, the complete existence of God, using every possible rational, and slightly less than rational ploy at their fingertips.  I reached a point where I really didn't care a rat's buttocks what the Bible said about God and how eloquently it could be proved.  To me, none of their explanations, none of their prevarications even remotely touched on what was real to me.

Real to me.  God is real to me.  That is how I became converted.  I was drawn, not by cleverly construed arguments and not by well-crafted explanations.  I was drawn by the Holy Spirit.  A group of people, themselves very young, though quite mature to my fourteen years of existence, had experienced God.  God became real for them, and through the Holy Spirit, filled and inhabited them.  An irresistible force of love and power.  They were very ordinary people, some who had already led very difficult and pain-filled lives.  And Christ was there in our midst.

These are things that cannot be explained or rationalized, just experienced and shared.  Having myself enjoyed this supernal divine experience, something which has never left me, I can only grimace and moan and laugh ironically at the pathetic attempts of so-called Christians who have never known him as they try to explain him and prove that he exists.  My dear, it is only by humbly accepting the love that is already there for us that we come to know that God is real and that we can always trust in him.

I do understand atheists.  They have not had this experience.  To explain it to any of them would be like trying to describe the colour green to someone who is colour blind.  So when an atheist, on top of saying that they have had no experience of God, goes on to claim that God does not, nor could ever possibly exist?  That is just too over the top.  To say that something cannot be real for me just because it isn't for you or someone else is simply the height of arrogance as well as being a very ungenerous position to take.  I feel sorry for them.

God cannot be known through the mind, it is through the heart, that we come to know him, and then the mind becomes enlightened.  That is true theology.

Do We Say We Want A Revolution?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8xr2ZfY4I

No, Gentle Reader, you do not get to listen here to either one of the Beatles' old chestnuts, neither number one, nor number nine.  This is Judy Collins' interpretation of the song from the play Marat/Sade, for your listening pleasure, and yes, there will be a quiz after.

I think it goes without saying that we are heading into desperate times.  Every since our elected representatives were seduced by the cheap thrills of Globalization and the good favour of the multinationals the gap between rich and poor in our country has been widening exponentially.  It began in the nineties with the canaries in the coal mine, our own poor and homeless, a crisis created everywhere by rightwing governments leaning harder to the right, by centrist governments leaning harder to the right, and by progressive governments leaning harder to the right as they slashed and burned social assistance programs in the name of being globally competitive and to please their masters at the World Bank, turning thousands of vulnerable people everywhere out onto the street.  Despite the egregious human rights violations involved here the rest of us didn't bother to notice until the price of a single detached home became the purview of anyone earning high in the six figures.

Now, especially here in Vancouver, we have people on middle incomes suddenly having to make a very difficult decision: move out of this city into a cheaper community, likely in another province, or end up in a low barrier shelter.  We never thought our governments would let it get this out of hand.  We never expected to find out how little they really care about us.

We need more than band aids and this appears to be all we are being offered.  I have read the math for the Federal Liberals new housing strategy to be rolled out next year.  The money isn't going to be anywhere near enough.  Nor are the measures being taken by the city.  Four hundred new units of affordable housing, just announced this week, many of which are not going to be affordable to the poorest Vancouverites, are not going to be enough.  And our provincial government?  They are so deplorable I don't even want to dignify their existence by mentioning them in this blog.

We are needing nothing less than a revolutionary approach to housing, in this city, and in this nation, if we are to see a return to the kind of social equality (even in those days way less than perfect) that we all took for granted forty years ago.  The government intervention needed to close the loopholes and bring greedy landlords and realtors to justice is going to have to be intense, comprehensive and absolute.  No one in this city should have to pay more than thirty percent of their income for housing, and for those on low incomes the percentage really ought to be lower than that.

Even though a lot of us are still fairly comfortable, if worried and anxious about the future, this could easily change in just a few years, even in just a few months.  When thousands of citizens disenfranchised by their own governments become tens of thousands we begin to hear a murmur of unrest.  When they become hundreds of thousands we can hear the shouting.  When we become millions we'll all be screaming and if our governments remain lukewarm and indecisive and continue to fail to show real leadership they are going to find us all dancing on their graves while the rest of us sing songs of victory.

I am a pacificist.  I detest violence.  However I understand why people rise up and fight for their survival when their very existence becomes threatened.  Even a cornered mouse will fight back and bite its oppressor.

Soon, if we don't see real change happen, there is going to be civil unrest.  There will be acts of civil disobedience.  People, especially renters are going to organize.  When you find that everything you once enjoyed has been taken away from you it suddenly becomes very easy to fight back.

I really hope we do not end up having to see this.  I for one will not endorse violence but I certainly will endorse meaningful, effective and well-meaning acts of nonviolent civil disobedience and strikes if that is what it is going to take to bring justice to those of us who simply want to be guaranteed the simple and fundamental human right of having a roof over our head.

This is my one thousandth post on this blog, Gentle Reader.  Let`s celebrate!

Connecting The Generations

From time to time I am asked if I have children.  My favourite reply?  I am glad that I have never had the opportunity of helping to ruin the next generation.  I cannot say that I have ever really chosen to have or to not have kids.  It just never seemed to be part of the plan for my life and I really have no regrets.  I have absolutely no idea what kind of parent I would have been and I'm glad that this is something I will never have to find out.

I often have many opportunities of interacting with and befriending people who are considerably younger than me.  Currently and more recently this has been with Latin Americans though at other times I have had younger Canadian friends as well, but as is often the case with younger people they have not been easy to keep as friends.  I'm not complaining.  I never stayed in contact with anyone I knew in my twenties, thirties and forties and some of these people were old enough to be my parents.
I don't think that it is common for young people to really stick to long-term friendships and often that seems to be part of the whole adventurous and exploratory nature of youth.  As for myself, now that I am older, I really do appreciate friends and friendship a lot more than I used to and I really try to do my part, short of locking my friends in a cage, to keep my friendships going.

I am resigned to the likelihood that, except for maybe one or two, I will not be in contact with any of my younger friends in ten years' time.  I do hope that while we are in contact that I can at least have a positive and redemptive influence on these people, much as some of my older friends did for me when I was much younger.  Let's think of it as paying it forward.

I have to admit that I don't think a lot in terms of generations.  I refuse to refer to people younger than forty as "Millennials".  It is every bit as dumb and useless a catch-all as Generation X and the Baby Boomers.  This isn't to say that we aren't formed and shaped by the zeitgeist of our times.  Of course we are.  But this really just touches on superficials, and it does nothing at all to touch or focus on what we all share in common as human beings.  It also goes without saying that each generation goes through the same stages of life: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, old age.  The way we handle these changes and transitions does vary throughout the generations but I still hear the same song being sung by kids in their twenties, as I was singing in my twenties and my parents were singing in theirs: the need for independence, self-determination, a sense of identity, of community, a need to individuate, to explore, learn, meet a soul mate, marry or prepare for marriage (or choose not to), have children (or not),

I am also aware that just as my generation was discovering new worlds opening up to us that did not exist for many of our parents' generation, this is also happening with the current crop of younger people.  We all need one another and there is something particularly rich and gratifying about intergenerational friendships.  As I found with my older friends when I was in my twenties and thirties, there was a certain wisdom and stability that they had to offer, nonexistent in my generational peers.  They also tended to be kinder, less judgmental and more grounded and stable.  They had lived through unimaginable crap and horrors, their asses had already been kicked by life many times over and they had lived to tell and in many cases had come out as better people because of it.  Through their presence and influence I was able to learn and appreciate that there was light at the end of the tunnel, and each in a different way offered me a kind of reference and a sense of hope of how I could possibly envision my future self.

I also know that I have benefited from their moral compass and their sense of ethic, qualities often nonexistent or just developing for us when we are young.  In this regard I definitely want to influence the young since they are inheriting the earth from us, or should I say that we have borrowed it from them.

By the same token I am reminded by younger people of the importance of staying open, flexible and of never turning down the opportunity to live a little bit more richly and perhaps more dangerously (but not too dangerously)  This isn't to say that I envy youthful self-destruction.  I don't and I see this as one thing that everyone could stand to grow out of.  But neither do I want to lose that thirst and the daring that comes with it of trying new things, travel, visiting new places, new worlds, knowing new people and learning new ways and new ideas.

Still there is often a certain rigidity in the thinking of young people: many of them can be judgmental, viewing everything in black and white.  Anyone who has the good fortune of aging well is going to be in a strategic position to mentor while at the same time being mentored towards staying open to the new.

Surviving The Fire, 7: Conclusion

Fourteen years have passed since I became stably housed.  I am sixty now.  I expect to go on living in the same apartment for a while anyway.  It hasn't all been easy but on the whole my quality of life has improved tremendously.  I have sometimes said of my fifties that they have been so far the best decade of my life.  A lot of good things seemed to come together for me at once, or at least in short order.  As I was settling in my new affordable apartment I began seeing a psychiatrist who helped me a lot in finding my way through my issues of complex PTSD.  In the meantime, with the help of a good employment counsellor, I got into a pre-work program and from there became gainfully employed.  I am glad to say that it is almost fourteen years now that I have been off of social assistance.

Still, the first few years, until about 2006 or so, were rather difficult.  On several occasions I was indecently assaulted by two needy and very disturbed male tenants in my building.  There have also been ongoing issues of noise from other tenants and from the building next door, but not bad enough to make things unliveable.  I have had some difficulties coping with the fundamentalist Christians running my building but the worst of them seem to be well out of sight now, and out of mind.

Church has not been easy.  While attending a fundamentalist church connected with my building, 2003-2005, I came to find their homophobia offensive and unnecessary and during this time became fully aware that really I do accept same sex marriage.  Mentioning this openly created problems so I left this denomination.  I did waste several years rehabilitating myself with the Anglican Church.  This became both painful and problematic.  I won't go into detail as I have written plenty about this already in other parts of this blog.

I also lost my last remaining friends during this time.  They did not want to know the person I was turning into post-therapy and I am happy to say that I am glad to be rid of them.  I have also made some very good new friends, good solid people who are not embarrassed to know me and who do not judge me.  I have lost all contact with my surviving family, including my brother and his daughter and even if this has been a bit painful I have accepted the situation and appreciate that this for me is the best possible outcome.

There are some ongoing health challenges and I suppose this can at least partly be attributed to the fact that I am not getting younger.  My pituitary and thyroid problems have made me quite ill at times, landing me in hospital last year and now I am under a doctor's care while undergoing treatment, but I generally feel well, if a little tired at times and my capacity of enjoying life, especially the current moment, seems all the richer and sweeter.  Work isn't always easy, with complications at times with clients or coworkers or supervisors but on the whole there is a lot of good will on all sides and I seem to be flourishing.

What is particularly remarkable is the way I have been able to become fluent in Spanish while enjoying the luxury of foreign travel every year, and this on what could be charitably called an obscenely low wage.  My life feels richer than ever as I interact with people of all ages from the whole range of Latin American countries.

I know that this could all end or change at the blinking of an eye.  I am not going to worry.  I will continue to embrace as a divine gift the present moment as I walk towards an uncertain but glorious future.

Surviving The Fire 6

This was the worst stage of my life.  I was homeless and suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness.  And I was vulnerable to being victimized: by my father, and by the many false friends I accumulated along the way.  My father at first welcomed me into his small rented cabin on the Sunshine Coast.  We agreed that I would stay with him part time and weekends and perhaps one or two extra days couch surfing with many of the various people who now are no longer my friends.

My father became quite ugly over time.  I never was a son particularly dear to him and he became verbally and emotionally abusive.  I was dependent on his charity and feeling already too emotionally broken to defend myself, so of course I submitted to his bullying.  I nearly killed myself two nights before Christmas.  He didn't care.  Christmas morning I was deathly ill and should have been hospitalized.  He told me I was not welcome in the house, despite my fragile health, because my brother and his daughter were going to spend the day with him and he didn't want the house to feel "crowded".  He is dead now.  I am done dancing on his grave and have finally forgiven my father.

My ex-friends balked at putting up with me long enough for me to get on social assistance and find housing.  Other ex-friends tried to use my vulnerability to sexually exploit me.  Others were very eager to remind me that I was dependent on their kindness and that I therefore had to especially respect them.

I finally found a place to live in a shared apartment with an Eastern European control freak.  I tried to work, without much success.  I wasn't well.  I moved to another shared situation a year later, a shared house with four other dysfunctional males, a Pakistani slumlord at the helm, and a nasty little crack addict in the room next door.

I coped.  I coped.  And I coped.  I painted, sold art, sometimes found employment, but spent a lot of time walking everywhere, or meeting ex-friends for coffee when I could afford it.  Social services became vicious and I was traumatized by an overzealous worker whose supervisor came to my defense.

So ended the nightmare.  I found affordable housing where I have lived now for over fourteen years and I have been gainfully employed almost throughout.  I found good psychiatric care which lasted four years and now, despite the patronizing coworkers in some of the places where I work, enjoy a full recovery and, despite my modest circumstances, a rich and rewarding quality of life.

I have, by the grace of God, survived the fire.  I am sixty now.  And I have new friends.

Quejon Soy?

The title is Spanish for "Am I a complainer?"  Well, sometimes, I guess, but really who isn't?  Does this make me ungrateful?  Maybe...But usually not.  I actually am really grateful for what I have and for where I am in life.  I am also aware of how critically vulnerable we all are with the many changes that are happening all around us, especially of how much harder it is to survive on not just a low but also a moderate income.  I try to stay aware of how we are being impacted and I try to use this knowledge responsibly, as an advocate for the poor, the homeless and the vulnerable, knowing full well that I am one of those vulnerable persons.

I'm easily impacted by others, especially strangers in public.  I suppose it's a kind of hypersensitivity, or maybe it's a trauma leftover.  It is often hard to figure these things out.  I am especially noise sensitive.  I always have been but it seems to get worse with age.  I especially can't stand high, strident sounds: sirens, children squealing, whistling.  I am also troubled by people talking directly behind my head, strangers on the sidewalk yelling swear words in my ear.  None of these things are meant to be taken personally.  I don't take them personally.  Still, they can be like torture.

I do what I can to cope.  I refuse to stay home all the time.  I have to be out, in public, among other people, no matter how irritated I get.  Sometimes I manage better than others.  Today, I actually asked a barista to stop whistling, since I was seated nearby with my sketchbook and trying not to be driven nuts.  She resumed whistling, a bit quieter but still enough to be annoying. I packed up my things and left, just after slamming down my half consumed bottle of mineral water in front of her.  "You can have your water back." 

I don't like this hyper-irritability, but I have to accept it.  I think at times that it's also appropriate to tell others how their inconsiderate behaviour is affecting me but not always. Other people are generally pretty oblivious and generally they are going to tell me it's my own problem and I have to get over it.  We also live in a very selfish, individualistic society where the emphasis is on self-expression and being competitive.  People like me really aren't allowed to exist, you know.  We are not strong enough and here only the strong are allowed to survive.  Darwin 101. But exist we do and we really have to make the best of it.  And I'm not complaining.

I really try to monitor myself when I'm out in public.  I try to remind myself that people cannot be blamed for their ignorance.  I take care not to avoid these situations.  But when I can get away, into the quiet, it is like living water pouring over my soul.

To those who know me, but have trouble understanding what I am going through, I have this to say: It`s okay, you don`t have to understand.  I only ask this, that you realize how hard I am trying and what a struggle this often is for me.  I will do everything I can to not offend or embarrass you but I cannot always promise that it`s going to work out that way.  By the same token, I also accept that this at times can make me a difficult person to know and love.  All I can ask is that we both go on trying.

In the meantime, I am not giving up.  I have to be among others and despite the annoyances and the irritations I am also trying to be aware of how negatively I impact others as well.  I am trying every day to see the beauty and the goodness in others, even if they are lacerating my nerves without the slightest knowledge of it.  I will go on trying while doing my best to take care of myself.  It is like a very huge, ancient and complex dance, in which, like it or not, we all have to participate, it has been going on for all the millennia of our species' existence  and even now we are always only going to be just learning the first steps, probably for as long as we live.

Ah, but must I go on dancing?

Yes, my darling child, yes.

Surviving The Fire, 5

I spent two years and four months in the bachelor unit on Pender and Victoria in East Vancouver.  A wood frame building, I was often being serenaded with all kinds of noise: foot stomping, unwanted music and TV, domestic quarrels.  It seemed that every single tenant who moved into the unit upstairs from me (Five during my tenancy of  little more than two years) seemed to really want to alienate me and I did not make a lot friends there.  One, a young punky male, became particularly hostile and began to spit on my window (not mere saliva, by the way, if you must know, Gentle Reader!) and started calling me Faggot and threatening me, and all because I had at times politely asked him to keep the noise down.  The building manager told me that I had a problem with noise, making it of course my problem and no one else`s.  That was when I discovered the essentials of earplugs and the kitchen exhaust fan as the best way to block out unwanted sound for a decent night`s sleep.  Still I wasn`t sleeping well.  My mental health was taking a nose dive and I was sort of aware of it.

Then came the marathon tooth-aches and my employer`s intransigent stubbornness about not giving me enough hours to qualify for dental coverage.  Every time my hours got perilously near to the magical twenty a week there would be a mysterious claw back.  I have never in my life known such intense pain, often being kept awake all night in agony and not having any funds other than my scant earnings to go to the dentist, which I could not afford.  This nightmare lasted for four months, from May 1996 to August.  I never did get dental treatment.  I was so broke that I actually quit taking the bus and often found myself walking six miles or more to get to the homes of my various clients (I was a tragically underemployed home support worker)

In 1997 the mental health breakdown began to manifest and I was at times despondent, suicidal and usually had trouble sleeping.  I was at war with a very evil and corrupt priest in my church who did everything possible to defame me and hobble me, thus worsening my mental health condition.  I made a whole batch of young sexy Generation X friends several of whom also found me sexy as well as intriguing and just too interesting.  Of course I didn`t bed anybody.  I was an asexual in denial and besides, there was no way I was going to let even the most alluring of those young idiots to get the better of me and there is nothing like getting someone in between the bedsheets for getting the better of them.

I quit my job in absolute disgust and tried to live by faith and art sales.  Help always seemed to come, often from the most unexpected sources, and even though the rent was often late I know that God was providing for me.  Until almost a year later when he slipped the rug out from me, no further help was coming, and I finally fell completely into the hands of God, homeless for the first time in my life.

Ethics, A Moral Compass, And Good Mental Health

This has been my own experience of mental health recovery.  It sort of began with a series of conversations I had with my psychotherapist of four years, more than ten years ago.  He admitted to being influenced by the likes of Freud and Maslow, really huge on self-esteem, self love, self everything.  What's in it for me.  Celebrating my ego.  Feeling good about myself.  Eventually I stood up to his narcissistic nonsense.  I insisted that he and I are but two among seven billion other human lives and that regardless of what we want to do or be for ourselves we are going to impact on others and other people are going to impact on us.  I insisted to him that for me friendship has squat to do with what's in it for me and everything to do with us because in any friendship one is reckoning with a third being who is a fusion of the two selves.  I told him that as a Christian I am commanded to love, not only myself, but others, no matter who they are or what kind people or what kind of impact they have on me.  It does not mean that I have to approve of them, endorse them, or tolerate or accept mistreatment.  Sometimes it means having to distance myself from harmful people but never to diminish or despise them.

I told him that for me, mental health recovery isn't me, it is us.  It isn't just doing what is right for me, but doing what is right and we determine what is right by what is good not just for myself but for others.  Not either or, but both and.

I told him that as a Christian I was not about to embark on any form of relationship that would be even remotely selfish or exploitative, not even with the reward of sex and a torrid affair with someone young enough to be my child no matter how much that person wanted this kind of relationship.  I told him that there is absolutely no incompatibility between self-sacrifice and good mental health, given that the sacrifice involved is not a neurotic or masochistic self-loathing and totally dedicated to the common good, which includes my personal wellbeing.

I challenged, and I challenged and I challenged.  I brooked no opposition from my therapist and every time he would interrupt I would close him down and tell him to please keep quiet for at least ten minutes so that I could say everything that I had to say.

He heard me out.  Then to my surprise he admitted that I had taught him something very critical, and that he was inspired by my ethics and my sound moral compass.  Also, to his amazement, and mine, my recovery from complex post-traumatic stress disorder really began to move forward.

I don't know if this ever helped him recover from his atheism.  But boy, what a conversation we had.

When Coworkers Snub You

This is a common occupational hazard for me.  Because I am a mental health peer support worker this automatically marks me and stigmatizes me in the workplace.  Even though I am well-recovered and have never been on the receiving end of mental health services, my highly paid and highly educated coworkers, be they psychiatrists, case managers, rehab professionals or office staff all seem to view me through the same lens of professional, and perhaps personal, disdain. 

This happened again today at one of my work sites.  It is often as though I am completely invisible when we are working together in groups with our clients.  Some do give me the time of day but generally in such a way as to reinforce that to them I am more client than coworker, even if I have never received services from any of them and even if I try to persuade them that having only received treatment for four years from a private psychiatrist without meds and no hospitalization would maybe alter their perceptions a bit.  It never happens.

Once a consumer, always a consumer.  Even if you`ve never been a consumer.

What doesn`t help is that I am also receiving the lowest pay, twelve whopping bucks an hour, and as a contract worker have absolute squat in the way of benefits.

I am not getting younger, being four years from retirement.  My pension is going to be scant and I will likely have to continue working if I don`t want my last years on earth to be too intolerably bleak.  There is absolutely no opportunity of promotion or raise and any requests I have made are routinely ignored or blocked.

I need this job to pay the bills, and I might try to go on working part time after I turn sixty-five though I really do not look forward to a future full of condescending and patronizing treatment, especially by people young enough to be my kids.

Besides the fact that it keeps me alive, the one saving grace for me about this work is my clients.  I love them and I am devoted to participating in their journey of recovery. 

Everyone else can go to hell.

Surviving The Fire 4

The farmhouse in Richmond seemed like a godsend.  I was exhausted and burnt-out from street and bar ministry downtown while living there and I was only too glad to have this rustic place of refuge and quiet.  I had very strange and rather hostile neighbours and there was a lot of backbreaking work involved in restoring the house to a liveable state but it was totally worth it.  When I first got the place there were two bedrooms but I repurposed two other rooms to make them both sleepable.  Living alone I would take turns sleeping in different rooms.  I felt like a millionaire.

In the meantime my mother was struggling with life-threatening cancer and my work with vulnerable adults in the Downtown Eastside was becoming ever more difficult and challenging.  I was, in a word, traumatized.  I allowed an ex-cocaine addict and dealer to move in with me in order to facilitate his new discovery of Christ.  He turned out to be more demon than angel and was violent, controlling and manipulative.  Insisting that we were already doing the Lord's work he refused to seek employment or even get welfare.  I in the meantime had lost my job. While people we were trying to support and care for were dying almost every week from AIDS and other causes we struggled with the most severe and grinding poverty.  We were eating weeds and herbs from the back yard and subsisting on scant donations from well-intentioned Christians.  To continue our work of ministry downtown we would sometimes walk the nine miles there, then back again.  Two older women joined us and we became something of a force to be reckoned with.  One of the women's, along with my roommate's, self-destructive urges were taking force and things really went to hell.  My mother died, others were dying, we were often constantly fighting.

I went to London where things got very bizarre at times (I was extorted for around eight thousand dollars) and one of the women back home took in a mentally ill drug addict whom she took into her bed and who beat the crap out of her.  In Amsterdam I was robbed at knifepoint and later I was being stalked by two men who might have been accomplices to the man who robbed me.  I returned to Vancouver to try to bring some order into the chaos that things had spiralled into.  The young mentally ill addict was disposed of and the two women and I lived together in the farmhouse where we all fought bitterly.  More people we were caring for died, and kept on dying.

I became an artist, legally changed my name and the community broke up and I was living on my own all of a sudden for the first time in almost eight years.

Olympic Proportions

I suppose it's inevitable that I'll be writing something about the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, but what really is there to write?  That once again the biannual spectacle is making a global ass of itself and all its participants and spectators as well as the host city/nation?  The news certainly isn't all good.  An entire favela (slum) in Rio was leveled to make way for the Olympic village for housing athletes.  Instead of being repurposed afterward as low-income housing as they did in London in 2012 it will be transformed into an elite gated community for the uber-rich.  In other news, two coaches were mugged on the first night in Ipanema, athletes have been publicly swarmed and robbed and there is absolutely no hope that Brazil is going to magically transform itself into an equal and just society.

When I hear about Rio I think of course of what it was like here in Vancouver where the 2010 Winter Olympics were hosted.  Vancouver and Rio have not a lot in common, yet.  Vancouver does have its share of poor and homeless residents, and the population of disenfranchised people here is growing exponentially as this city becomes increasingly unaffordable to all but the obscenely wealthy.  We do not have anything quite like the Favelas although the horrid conditions of the surviving SRO's of our Downtown Eastside are not fit for human habitation, and almost none of the fancy new buildings and towers going up are going to people on low incomes.  We are on our way to becoming Rio.  Rio North.

Our own Olympic Village was also repurposed as housing...for the upper middle class (one bedroom units starting at $1660 a month, and what a storm was launched when our city council had the colossal gall to call that affordable) with maybe the two most modest and worst-placed buildings designated for people on low incomes.

I did have a conversation with a couple of people in the waiting room of the hospital lab.  We all agreed that this business of building bigger muscles by athletes on steroids and injections is nuts and that really its quality instead of quantity, or, less is more.  Also all this nonsense and fuss about medals and winning.  Really, should anyone in our hyper-competitive culture care about winning when really it should be considered such a grand pleasure and huge privilege to actually be there?  Or, to paraphrase Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose prose I find otherwise boring, don't cry because it's over, but smile because it happened.  I do find it intriguing how every year the Olympic athletes appear to be growing yet bigger and bigger muscles and of course it does beg a question or two about clandestine doping and steroid use.  One such athlete, in American garb and unnaturally bulging biceps had this really ugly, aggressive expression, like a UFC fighter.  Likely a Trump supporter.

In conclusion I am always somewhat saddened by all the fuss, praise and adulation that is poured upon these young athletes for their physical prowess.  This is at once primal and very shallow.  But this is why I quickly lose interest in sports and athletics.  They're all about the body but suggest very little or nothing about what it really means to be a good, kind, humble and generous human being.