Recently I have had a couple of nearly brutal little reminders of how difficult it can be explaining to people that I don't have a family AND that I'm perfectly okay about it. They were both conversations with Mexicans and Mexicans have much stronger family ties with each other than do many Canadians. One is a very sweet young woman who works in a Mexican café where I enjoy hanging out with my sketchbook. She seemed saddened and perplexed when, after asking me if I have any family to see for the holidays, I replied no, they're all either dead or away somewhere. I didn't realize at the time how cruel and brutal this must have sounded to her. Especially when I smiled and said, "por eso, para mi hay menos problemas", or, therefore I don't have so many problems. Last night I had a conversation via Skype with a friend who lives in Mexico. He also seemed baffled that not only have I not seen my one sibling in almost twenty years, and not only do I not know where he is, or whether he is dead or alive, it really doesn't matter to me. My friend wanted to know why. I replied that my brother has always hated and rejected me. He has never explained why and this is why we are not in contact. My young Mexican friend seemed very saddened by this bit of information and I was quick to change the subject, more because I didn't want to upset him and I didn't want my sense of schadenfreud about my family to further sadden him.
This is actually a very common feature about ageing alone. We are often completely isolated from family and loved ones. They are often dead, or estranged, or, as in my case, we have been cruelly judged as incurable losers and ostracised as a stain on the family DNA. I am not feeling sorry for myself. I have come to terms with my solitude in the world and have come to embrace and actually enjoy it. My Christmases are guilt and conflict free. I can spend time working with vulnerable adults and almost every year there is another friend I can either invite over for brunch or who will have me over for dinner as happened this year.
Still, I am isolated and, like many low income seniors, I am ageing alone. I have no intention of doing this without friends, but by the same token it is more incumbent upon me to be a friend than to find a friend. As painful as this solitude was for a while, this has become for me a kind of freedom. I can use this extra alone time to deepen in God, to grow as a person, to rest and recharge by the well of living water and it gives me more room to welcome others into my life.
Here I am entering into what should be a sad and very bleak stage of life for me, but I have never felt so well, so well-loved and appreciated by others, and so ready for new doors to open. My capacity to enjoy the most simple beauties of life has never felt so stable, consistent and heightened. I expect things to only get better as I proceed on into my sixties, regardless of what billionaire imbecile is occupying the White House, because my wellbeing comes from a place within, where I fellowship with the same living God who made and sustains the universe.
This is a call out to my brother, by the way, should he stumble upon my blog or if anyone reading this might happen to know him. He is the man also known as Rick Shannon, from his radio broadcasting days with C-Fox during the seventies and CFMI during the eighties. His birth name is Richard James Greenlaw. Hello, Rick. I do not know why you have always hated and rejected me as you have never told me why. Your treatment of my has been deplorable and while I cannot forgive the act I can forgive you. Regardless of your vile attitude towards me I love you and if you ever wish to contact me all you have to do is a quick Google search. Providing your will and your intentions are good, I will give you a warm welcome. Should we never see each other again, and I think this is likely, I wish you a good life as you, like me, begin soon to enter your final stage of life.
Saturday 31 December 2016
Friday 30 December 2016
Getting Old Ain't For Sissies 4
Optics play quite a role in getting old. If you look old you are perceived and treated as old and this, Gentle Reader, is indeed a mixed blessing. On one hand, you are likely to get the seniors' discounts and a seat on the bus (believe me when I say this, there are still kind people on the planet and many of them are young and ride the bus). On the other hand you are more likely to be disregarded as a know nothing dinosaur or an old fart who shouldn't be taken seriously. Some people seem to think I'm younger, but either they're lying or their prescription glasses need upgrading. Even eight years ago or so, while I was running for the bus, someone yelled at me "You're going to get a heart attack!" and I replied that I'm not that old.
I am reminded of a cartoon that used to appear in the Globe and Mail, Fisher, before the author decided to pull it. It featured the protagonist, now securely middle aged, flirting with a young woman serving him in a coffee shop. Just when he's getting all damp and turned on by her effusive friendliness she drops the bomb and tells him how much he reminds her exactly of her dear beloved dad. His face in the last panel has to be one of the saddest images I have ever seen on the comic pages.
Whenever a young person appears to like me I try to remember that little comic strip. This isn't to suggest that I am so ugly and over the hill and, yes, there are young people who are attracted to older people and not always for their money, but not quite so many as some older people would care to imagine.
The fact of the matter is, if a young person expresses interest in my friendship and appears to really enjoy being around me, to actually delight in having me around, I take especial care to respect the optics. Even if this person might be attracted to me I am more than likely standing in for their father, perhaps even their grandfather, or a beloved teacher, or a favourite actor, or they just really like me as a person. There is no way I would even think of jeopardising the equation by assuming that I am being viewed with bedroom eyes. Maybe I am, but likely not and I would prefer to honour the social contract of being kind to young people as an older friend, perhaps a mentor and nothing else.
I refuse to act or look any younger than I am for one simple reason. It looks ridiculous and I don't want to be ridiculous. It isn't that I particularly want to be taken seriously but I have seen older people who glom onto younger people for their little youth fix. I don't know what, if anything, goes on behind closed doors and this is something I don't want to know. But whenever the possibility appears to be arising of a young person wanting to lure me into bed with them I simply remember a seen from the Pedro Almodovar film Broken Embraces. The character played by Penelope Cruz is a young woman involved with a tycoon old enough to be her grandfather. They have just had sex with each other and the old goat looks so serene and satisfied, blissed out in a geriatric post-coital seventh heaven. The Penelope Cruz character gets out of bed, locks herself in the bathroom and vomits into the toilet.
I do take care to not forget that image. It helps me stay humble and I hope it will make me wise.
I am reminded of a cartoon that used to appear in the Globe and Mail, Fisher, before the author decided to pull it. It featured the protagonist, now securely middle aged, flirting with a young woman serving him in a coffee shop. Just when he's getting all damp and turned on by her effusive friendliness she drops the bomb and tells him how much he reminds her exactly of her dear beloved dad. His face in the last panel has to be one of the saddest images I have ever seen on the comic pages.
Whenever a young person appears to like me I try to remember that little comic strip. This isn't to suggest that I am so ugly and over the hill and, yes, there are young people who are attracted to older people and not always for their money, but not quite so many as some older people would care to imagine.
The fact of the matter is, if a young person expresses interest in my friendship and appears to really enjoy being around me, to actually delight in having me around, I take especial care to respect the optics. Even if this person might be attracted to me I am more than likely standing in for their father, perhaps even their grandfather, or a beloved teacher, or a favourite actor, or they just really like me as a person. There is no way I would even think of jeopardising the equation by assuming that I am being viewed with bedroom eyes. Maybe I am, but likely not and I would prefer to honour the social contract of being kind to young people as an older friend, perhaps a mentor and nothing else.
I refuse to act or look any younger than I am for one simple reason. It looks ridiculous and I don't want to be ridiculous. It isn't that I particularly want to be taken seriously but I have seen older people who glom onto younger people for their little youth fix. I don't know what, if anything, goes on behind closed doors and this is something I don't want to know. But whenever the possibility appears to be arising of a young person wanting to lure me into bed with them I simply remember a seen from the Pedro Almodovar film Broken Embraces. The character played by Penelope Cruz is a young woman involved with a tycoon old enough to be her grandfather. They have just had sex with each other and the old goat looks so serene and satisfied, blissed out in a geriatric post-coital seventh heaven. The Penelope Cruz character gets out of bed, locks herself in the bathroom and vomits into the toilet.
I do take care to not forget that image. It helps me stay humble and I hope it will make me wise.
Thursday 29 December 2016
Getting Old Ain't For Sissies 3
Staying socially connected is often a huge challenge, no matter what your stage of life. In childhood we all want to have our friends, our best friends, playmates, buddies and this is even more complicated by helicopter parents who only permit their delicate little boobums to socialize with each other on playdates or in day cares and schools or however they want to outsource their kids' childhood. When I was a kid we were all free range and this made childhood friendships all the more enchanting and exciting with the afternoon adventures we were always going on together, without even a whisper of parental interference.
As teenagers things get more intense, more constrained, more competitive and more lonely. High school social hierarchies are every bit as legendary as they are notorious for the young formative lives that have been permanently ruined by the godlike scorn of the cool kids.
As young adults we continue to cling to our groups, cliques and best friends forever, best friends de jour, friends with benefits, lovers, one night stands and whatever it takes to staunch the edge of loneliness as we seek in one another the code that will decipher for us the mystery of ourselves.
Most of us eventually pair off, marry, have and raise children and isolate from one another, a noble sacrifice for that sacred family unit. Old friends often fall out of contact, for men anyway, since women seem to be much better at staying in contact with their friends. In the majority of cases the husbands become dependent on their wives for maintaining social contact and connection as well as for their own emotional nurturing. True it is that men still tend to marry their mothers, expecting their wives, if ever-so-tacitly, to go on wiping their stinky asses for them.
Many end up divorcing there spouses, a few become widows or widowers. The men, being the emotionally dependent party, usually fare worse and the women more often flourish in their new liberation, not from male dominance, but from masculine oedipal co-dependence (Shut-up, Sigmund Freud!) The newly single men will try to re-mate or remarry as quickly as possible, because few of them can endure having to look after themselves, or they will continue to slide downhill, often into the misery of addictions or mental illness and poverty.
It is rather different for those of us men who have always been single and without children (to our knowledge, anyway!) It isn't just that a lot of us are gay. Some are conventionally heterosexual, some asexual, some, such as myself, refuse to be labelled. We are single not because we are losers whom nobody wants, nor because we are too fussy, but we are simply too busy or too interested in other things to care much about settling down with someone. We are rather more like cats than like dogs. We enjoy companionship and fellowship, but can also do rather well, sometimes even better, without it.
What is unfortunate is the way the rest of the world tends to judge us, or worse, completely ignore us, as though by not legislating our sexuality and marrying and breeding, we are somehow inferior, or not even completely human. This can make it particularly difficult for us to find and flourish in strong and meaningful friendships, since our married peers often tend to hold us in suspicion. While this is more likely to be a problem in more traditional and conservative societies the permanently single male even in liberal and progressive Canada is still tainted by stigma.
Ageing often comes with social isolation and loneliness. This does not have to be inevitable. Attitudes on both sides could stand to change a little. Single men, especially older ones tend to be very self-centred and rigid and set in their ways. This isn't true in all cases. I myself owe the fact that I am enjoying some strong and vibrant friendships to the fact that I have taken an ongoing stand against becoming a self-centred, miserable fossil. This hasn't been easy. It has meant staying as open as possible and making a concerted effort to not judge people younger than me as idiots just because they do things differently.
My faith in Christ, at its better moments, arms me with compassion for people and other beings, and a love for life as well as for learning new things and knowing people and caring for others. As long as I maintain this focus I can rise even a little bit above the crabbed, miserable and solitary stereotype that would otherwise imprison and hobble me. I try to see myself as a friend first, before seeking friends, which I think helps make me a better friend. By seeking to learn from others, I won't necessarily stop ageing, but I will maintain a youthful resiliency of spirit and mind, knowing that there will always be others nearby to reach back to me as I reach out to them.
As teenagers things get more intense, more constrained, more competitive and more lonely. High school social hierarchies are every bit as legendary as they are notorious for the young formative lives that have been permanently ruined by the godlike scorn of the cool kids.
As young adults we continue to cling to our groups, cliques and best friends forever, best friends de jour, friends with benefits, lovers, one night stands and whatever it takes to staunch the edge of loneliness as we seek in one another the code that will decipher for us the mystery of ourselves.
Most of us eventually pair off, marry, have and raise children and isolate from one another, a noble sacrifice for that sacred family unit. Old friends often fall out of contact, for men anyway, since women seem to be much better at staying in contact with their friends. In the majority of cases the husbands become dependent on their wives for maintaining social contact and connection as well as for their own emotional nurturing. True it is that men still tend to marry their mothers, expecting their wives, if ever-so-tacitly, to go on wiping their stinky asses for them.
Many end up divorcing there spouses, a few become widows or widowers. The men, being the emotionally dependent party, usually fare worse and the women more often flourish in their new liberation, not from male dominance, but from masculine oedipal co-dependence (Shut-up, Sigmund Freud!) The newly single men will try to re-mate or remarry as quickly as possible, because few of them can endure having to look after themselves, or they will continue to slide downhill, often into the misery of addictions or mental illness and poverty.
It is rather different for those of us men who have always been single and without children (to our knowledge, anyway!) It isn't just that a lot of us are gay. Some are conventionally heterosexual, some asexual, some, such as myself, refuse to be labelled. We are single not because we are losers whom nobody wants, nor because we are too fussy, but we are simply too busy or too interested in other things to care much about settling down with someone. We are rather more like cats than like dogs. We enjoy companionship and fellowship, but can also do rather well, sometimes even better, without it.
What is unfortunate is the way the rest of the world tends to judge us, or worse, completely ignore us, as though by not legislating our sexuality and marrying and breeding, we are somehow inferior, or not even completely human. This can make it particularly difficult for us to find and flourish in strong and meaningful friendships, since our married peers often tend to hold us in suspicion. While this is more likely to be a problem in more traditional and conservative societies the permanently single male even in liberal and progressive Canada is still tainted by stigma.
Ageing often comes with social isolation and loneliness. This does not have to be inevitable. Attitudes on both sides could stand to change a little. Single men, especially older ones tend to be very self-centred and rigid and set in their ways. This isn't true in all cases. I myself owe the fact that I am enjoying some strong and vibrant friendships to the fact that I have taken an ongoing stand against becoming a self-centred, miserable fossil. This hasn't been easy. It has meant staying as open as possible and making a concerted effort to not judge people younger than me as idiots just because they do things differently.
My faith in Christ, at its better moments, arms me with compassion for people and other beings, and a love for life as well as for learning new things and knowing people and caring for others. As long as I maintain this focus I can rise even a little bit above the crabbed, miserable and solitary stereotype that would otherwise imprison and hobble me. I try to see myself as a friend first, before seeking friends, which I think helps make me a better friend. By seeking to learn from others, I won't necessarily stop ageing, but I will maintain a youthful resiliency of spirit and mind, knowing that there will always be others nearby to reach back to me as I reach out to them.
Wednesday 28 December 2016
Getting Old Ain't For Sissies 2
Getting my ducks in a row has been my chief defining phrase over the last eight years or so. I think I first saw it in the Globe and Mail. I thought, how cute. A lovely little row of duckies following me everywhere. White ones, 
mallards,
teal, 
wood ducks 
and mandarins,
wigeons. 
I don't know what changed or developed in my brain chemistry as I entered my fifties but suddenly I was super disciplined and organized. Not to an extreme. My kitchen drawers and closet will always tend towards the untidy. But I try to know where everything is. I have a number of routines and little disciplines to keep my life in order. I have to. I feel somehow incomplete without a cohesive sense of routine. It helps keep my brain in place. I might also be a little bid OCB.
Every morning its the same thing. I get up, brush my teeth, shave, trim my hair, shower, clean my apartment, dress, make coffee, pour orange juice, do my devotional readings, then check my email and have breakfast. In the evenings I make sure I have something new and pithy written on these pages for your entertainment, pleasure and enlightenment, Gentle Reader. During the day I try to get some art done, either a drawing in my sketchbook (often inside a café between clients at work) or a painting on my easel. Saturday mornings I make bread, buy the weekend Globe and Mail, then breakfast on a cheese omelette before taking a long walk through the wealthy neighbourhoods before ending up in a favourite café where I, of course, draw. Then I walk back as far as No Frills in Kitsilano to buy groceries from where I bus the rest of the way home. Sunday mornings I do laundry, and then go meet a friend for coffee, or go for a walk, or sometimes even attend church (I've done this just once in the last year. Maybe I'll go back in another year.) Every March 1 I fly off to somewhere in Latin America for a month. I always return 1 April.
When I was young I would have been horrified by such routine. I would have found it stultifying. I would have felt like a dragonfly trapped in amber. I wanted to be free and untrammelled. When I was young I eschewed discipline and routine as a prison. Now I find them liberating. It must be part of ageing well. This doesn't mean that I have thrown all spontaneity out the window, but I do tend to plan and book my adventures in advance. During my first international trips (I was thirty-five when I went to Europe, thirty-eight for my first trip to Costa Rica) I didn't even think of booking a hotel. I got off the planr, got a cab, and looked for something. Easy as pie. Outside of my plane trips I booked absolutely nothing.
I now appreciate the security in having things in order. It seems to liberate my mind to think more clearly and more freely. I take this as an exercise in ageing well.
mallards, teal, wood ducks and mandarins, wigeons. 
I don't know what changed or developed in my brain chemistry as I entered my fifties but suddenly I was super disciplined and organized. Not to an extreme. My kitchen drawers and closet will always tend towards the untidy. But I try to know where everything is. I have a number of routines and little disciplines to keep my life in order. I have to. I feel somehow incomplete without a cohesive sense of routine. It helps keep my brain in place. I might also be a little bid OCB.Every morning its the same thing. I get up, brush my teeth, shave, trim my hair, shower, clean my apartment, dress, make coffee, pour orange juice, do my devotional readings, then check my email and have breakfast. In the evenings I make sure I have something new and pithy written on these pages for your entertainment, pleasure and enlightenment, Gentle Reader. During the day I try to get some art done, either a drawing in my sketchbook (often inside a café between clients at work) or a painting on my easel. Saturday mornings I make bread, buy the weekend Globe and Mail, then breakfast on a cheese omelette before taking a long walk through the wealthy neighbourhoods before ending up in a favourite café where I, of course, draw. Then I walk back as far as No Frills in Kitsilano to buy groceries from where I bus the rest of the way home. Sunday mornings I do laundry, and then go meet a friend for coffee, or go for a walk, or sometimes even attend church (I've done this just once in the last year. Maybe I'll go back in another year.) Every March 1 I fly off to somewhere in Latin America for a month. I always return 1 April.
When I was young I would have been horrified by such routine. I would have found it stultifying. I would have felt like a dragonfly trapped in amber. I wanted to be free and untrammelled. When I was young I eschewed discipline and routine as a prison. Now I find them liberating. It must be part of ageing well. This doesn't mean that I have thrown all spontaneity out the window, but I do tend to plan and book my adventures in advance. During my first international trips (I was thirty-five when I went to Europe, thirty-eight for my first trip to Costa Rica) I didn't even think of booking a hotel. I got off the planr, got a cab, and looked for something. Easy as pie. Outside of my plane trips I booked absolutely nothing.
I now appreciate the security in having things in order. It seems to liberate my mind to think more clearly and more freely. I take this as an exercise in ageing well.
Tuesday 27 December 2016
Getting Old Ain't For Sissies 1
I will be sixty-one in two months. I am looking forward to retiring in four years. I don't expect to spend my final years doing nothing and I could easily continue working into my eighties or even, God permitting, into my nineties if the opportunities don't dry up along with my skin. What I am looking forward to is no longer having to be dependent on the good will of an employer for my daily survival. This has to be still one of the most odious and abused social contracts on earth, which is why I am solidly in favour of a guaranteed annual, livable income for all people on low incomes. It has already been proven to be a myth that people will only work if they have to. Rather, it has been found that the desire and need to work and be productive and to participate meaningfully in the wellbeing of the community is something that is deeply ingrained in human nature. This only falters when there is something seriously wrong or toxic with the work environment, for example, low pay, unsafe working conditions, nasty and demanding bosses, bullying coworkers. I, for one, will only consider continuing in my occupation if certain of the aforementioned conditions in the workplace improve noticeably. Otherwise, once I hit sixty-five, I will either find other employment or do volunteer work. Or, I will devote all my free time to my art, writing and caring for the poor and vulnerable (which is to say, volunteer work). And it ain't going to be my head that gets banged on my way out!
I am quite new at the game of ageing and this is going to take some time to get used to. I still enjoy good health. My eyes and ears have shown no signs of deterioration and my level of physical energy remains rather on the high side. I saw a counsellor recently, a woman young enough to be my kid (oh, but aren't they all, these days?) who suggested when I mentioned to her that a lot of my friends are in their twenties and thirties that I must be getting youthful energy from them. Very frankly, I countered that they're the ones getting the youthful energy from me. I refuse to form any vampiric relationships where I am deriving life force from others. For me, part of the secret of ageing well is in developing and maintaining my own interior resources of strength and energy and imparting the largess to others.
When you are single, male, and on a low income, ageing can be a merciless and cruel process, unless you are already well-versed in good self-care. I think it can be particularly difficult for men because most of us are used to expecting women to wipe our asses for us.
Yes. I just said that.
Most of us never learn to be truly independent of our mothers. We expect wives and girlfriends to fill the gap, regardless of the advances made by feminism. Only those men who have truly learned to internalize their mothers and become effectively their own mom (and dad, too) are going to survive solitary ageing. Ever notice how many men go downhill rapidly once their wives divorce their ass or die? While divorced and widowed women tend to do okay or even better in may cases? Still want to argue?
Single low income men are almost treated like a dirty secret. We have no family, no spouse, and little or no money. I am going to do my very best through this blog series to make us visible, to grant us existence, and hopefully challenge and empower some of us to age with dignity, grace, courage and joy. It is possible, but we have to be flexible and we have to be willing to welcome change because most of us are not going to do well by staying as we are.
I am quite new at the game of ageing and this is going to take some time to get used to. I still enjoy good health. My eyes and ears have shown no signs of deterioration and my level of physical energy remains rather on the high side. I saw a counsellor recently, a woman young enough to be my kid (oh, but aren't they all, these days?) who suggested when I mentioned to her that a lot of my friends are in their twenties and thirties that I must be getting youthful energy from them. Very frankly, I countered that they're the ones getting the youthful energy from me. I refuse to form any vampiric relationships where I am deriving life force from others. For me, part of the secret of ageing well is in developing and maintaining my own interior resources of strength and energy and imparting the largess to others.
When you are single, male, and on a low income, ageing can be a merciless and cruel process, unless you are already well-versed in good self-care. I think it can be particularly difficult for men because most of us are used to expecting women to wipe our asses for us.
Yes. I just said that.
Most of us never learn to be truly independent of our mothers. We expect wives and girlfriends to fill the gap, regardless of the advances made by feminism. Only those men who have truly learned to internalize their mothers and become effectively their own mom (and dad, too) are going to survive solitary ageing. Ever notice how many men go downhill rapidly once their wives divorce their ass or die? While divorced and widowed women tend to do okay or even better in may cases? Still want to argue?
Single low income men are almost treated like a dirty secret. We have no family, no spouse, and little or no money. I am going to do my very best through this blog series to make us visible, to grant us existence, and hopefully challenge and empower some of us to age with dignity, grace, courage and joy. It is possible, but we have to be flexible and we have to be willing to welcome change because most of us are not going to do well by staying as we are.
Monday 26 December 2016
Boxing Day: The Denouement
Hello Gentle Reader and a very Merry Christmas one day late and a Happy New Year six days early to all of my readers in the many diverse countries where my blog is being read today: France with 824 views this week; Canada with 78; the United States at 43; eight in Germany, eight in Ireland, 7 in Portugal, four in Poland and one in China. This blog has been around the world many times over in three years: here are some other countries where I have been read: Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador. Across the pond I have had readers in Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the UAE, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the Philippines, Turkey, India, Vietnam and more. There is something gratifying about reaching an international audience when you are an anonymous blogger who doesn't always know when to shut up.
It's been a snowy day but it seems to have turned into rain. I went out shortly after ten this morning with the intention of buying tofu, a 2017 Calendar and two pale aqua green pencil crayons, as well as stopping in a café for some time to work on a drawing in my sketchbook. My other objective was to log five miles of walking while attending to my errands. The objective today, this holiday following Christmas Day, called Boxing Day, or St. Stephen's Day, or the Feast of Stephen (Good King Wenceslas looked out...) It all looked like it was going to work beautifully. At first it was just raining then suddenly there was a wonder of frozen white plummeting from the sky. In the café I was the only customer. It was quiet but for the music, which was generally enjoyable, and I passed more than a good hour to an hour and a half in there, nestled in a comfy chair as though I were the only person on earth. Here is an image of the bird I am working on: It's a yellow oriole from Central and South America. | |
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I walked over the Cambie Bridge in the snow storm, taking care to use my big black and blue umbrella as a walking stick, as the snow was building up already and in places it was slippery. At Broadway and Cambie I stopped in the bank to take out five hundred dollars, then walked to No Frills to buy one brick of tofu. Suddenly, my knapsack slid off my shoulder and fell on the floor, the strap cleanly torn where it was once attached to the bag. I McGivered it by tying it onto one of the front buckles, an awkward fit but it would have to do. While paying for the tofu I imagined I would have to hop on the Canada Line and head directly home to fix my bag and make alternate plans. I still wanted to get the calendar. I clenched my teeth and walked the three blocks to the Book Warehouse where I found a beautiful overpriced calendar featuring the paintings of Jessie Arms Brocke: http://www.jessiearmsbotkegallery.com/jessiebotkebiography.html
Here are some images of her work, including the white peacocks with delphiniums I once adorned my apartment with on a poster I bought in 1987, when I knew absolutely nothing about her: | |
    | |
I would love to be able to paint the way Jessie painted. I already accept that it is not going to happen but at least her images are there to inspire and teach. A bloody expensive calendar, more than twenty bucks! By then I decided to tough it out with my disabled knapsack. I managed to fit both the tofu and the calendar inside and decided I'd continue walking. I managed to reposition the bag so it wasn't cutting into my shoulder. While continuing along a quiet side street I heard the song of a male Anna's hummingbird hidden in a fir tree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEbcSbBiyZk During this kind of weather I am always mentored by the small birds, that continue to fly and search for food and sing even when it's snowing. Lately, outside my apartment I often hear the song of a white crowned sparrow (did I tell you it's December 26?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEbcSbBiyZk Among other things they encourage me to press on, regardless of difficult circumstances or of how incapable or weak I feel. This mentality has been invaluable to my mental health recovery and continuing wellness.
The little birds remind me not to be a whining wimp, to brave the cold, embrace the snow, and carry on. It always works. I saw a man pouring salt on the sidewalk and stopped to thank him, and mentioned that I often walk this way to work during the week. He was very gracious and we stopped to chat a little bit. As I was waiting in line to pay for the pencil crayons there was a man waiting behind me. I would need a bit of time and space to find room in my awkwardly jerry-rigged bag, so I made him some room at the counter and invited him to go ahead, please, with his transaction. He looked a bit perplexed that a stranger would speak to him as though he already knew him, but you know something, Gentle Reader? That is how I speak to everybody. Like I already know them.. And in a way I do because God fills my heart sometimes with such love as to want to fill it and welcome all whom I see. Other times, of course, I want to smack some of them upside the head but we won't talk about that right now, will we, darlings? I got on the bus and two young people got up simultaneously to offer me a seat in the front. Of course I accepted, though I didn't have the nerve to tell them I had just been walking for five miles. Perhaps they might have assumed that after five miles the old guy would be needing a seat. When I got off the bus I bought milk at the local Shoppers Drug Mart. The Filipino trans-boy who works there is nice with a peppery sense of humour. He was busy with a customer slowly writing something out for her lottery ticket. I put down my big judge of milk next to the woman, citing my sore arm. The trans-boy offered to check me out at another stall while waiting for Ms. Slowpoke. The tall young Sikh security guard gave me an exceptionally warm smile. He seems like a gentle soul. I really like Sikhs, by the way, especially the old men. They are so sweet! I've been home since around one thirty. I made a pot of cocoa (fair trade, natch) while listening to a Baroque cd and a friend and I visited on the phone while I was making the cocoa, then drinking it and sewing the strap back onto my bag. My friend and I go back many years, since the eighties. I mentioned to her that she and I and many in a huge network of persons we are connected to have all fallen through the ever-widening cracks of a system that has relentlessly failed us. We all have needed supports to help move us forward, and we are all particularly gifted, if wounded and damaged people making supports all the more necessary if we were to flourish and if the rest of society were to benefit from our talents and gifts. Only in recent years are some of us surfacing again, moving towards wholeness and finding ways to offer our lives and gifts for the greater good, in ways that will not compromise our integrity. It is a slow and grueling march forward in small steps. It is always in small steps. So we keep moving forward. The snow has turned into rain. I don't think it's going to stick. |
Sunday 25 December 2016
Creeping Christmas 6
Merry Christmas, Gentle Reader. On these pages, anyway, that is what it's going to be. Not Season's Greetings and certainly not that lame Happy Holidays. It is Christmas. Whether you believe in Jesus, in Santa, or nothing. On these pages today is Christmas Day. This is part of our heritage, whether we like it or not, and many of you don't, Gentle Reader, because you have such an irrational hate-on about the Christian faith. Celebrate it whatever way you like, and feel perfectly free to wish me happy holidays or seasons greetings till you're blue in the face, but I will respond with a polite thank you or a not so polite Merry Christmas. We're all in this together. We still have free speech in this country and even though this makes some of you want to gag, we have a largely Christian heritage and this should be nothing to be ashamed of or to apologize for.
To my Jewish readers, Happy Hanukah, because this year it coincides with Christmas.
The rest of you are going to have to wait your turn.
Christian heritage or not, I could hardly say that this has ever been a Christian country what with the early history of slavery, bigotry, legislated misogyny, homophobia and the huge stigma that still exists towards people with disabilities, especially towards those who suffer from mental illness.
We have come a long way, but I think it is tragic that our thinking is still so black and white, so either or, that many of us feel that we have to be ashamed of and abandon some of the Christian influences that have helped mold us as a culture of compassion and fairness. Of course, this hasn't been so in other so-called Christian countries. Just look at the vicious hatred in "Christian" Hungary against Muslim refugees. What I mean to say, Gentle Reader, is why can't we take the best from each of the traditions that have helped shape us and integrate them into a superior whole?
For me it's been a pleasant if inauspicious Christmas morning. I have been alone, devoting my time to breakfast, emails and Skype texts wishing my many friends here and abroad a Merry Christmas, or for my Spanish speakers, Feliz Navidad. I have also done my laundry. On my way down with my bag of clothes I had a chance to chat with an Afro-Honduran lady who lives on my floor. She is the first person I saw and spoke to this Christmas morning. Like me, a strong Christian. We usually chat in Spanish. She is a very warm lovely person and for me this visit in the elevator felt like a real Christmas gift. As she was heading for the door I thanked her for the gift and she gave a beautiful smile.
Breakfast has been, oh, SO GOOD! My traditional apple bread pudding topped with home made caramel sauce (brown sugar, butter, a bit of milk, stirred at boiling point in a sauce pan) and vanilla Greek yogurt.
I wish you all joy today, and a New Year full of hope and new things. I pray that we all have the gift of courage and faith and that we reach out to one another in a spirit of kindness, compassion and fraternal love.
peace to us all, Gentle Reader
Aaron
To my Jewish readers, Happy Hanukah, because this year it coincides with Christmas.
The rest of you are going to have to wait your turn.
Christian heritage or not, I could hardly say that this has ever been a Christian country what with the early history of slavery, bigotry, legislated misogyny, homophobia and the huge stigma that still exists towards people with disabilities, especially towards those who suffer from mental illness.
We have come a long way, but I think it is tragic that our thinking is still so black and white, so either or, that many of us feel that we have to be ashamed of and abandon some of the Christian influences that have helped mold us as a culture of compassion and fairness. Of course, this hasn't been so in other so-called Christian countries. Just look at the vicious hatred in "Christian" Hungary against Muslim refugees. What I mean to say, Gentle Reader, is why can't we take the best from each of the traditions that have helped shape us and integrate them into a superior whole?
For me it's been a pleasant if inauspicious Christmas morning. I have been alone, devoting my time to breakfast, emails and Skype texts wishing my many friends here and abroad a Merry Christmas, or for my Spanish speakers, Feliz Navidad. I have also done my laundry. On my way down with my bag of clothes I had a chance to chat with an Afro-Honduran lady who lives on my floor. She is the first person I saw and spoke to this Christmas morning. Like me, a strong Christian. We usually chat in Spanish. She is a very warm lovely person and for me this visit in the elevator felt like a real Christmas gift. As she was heading for the door I thanked her for the gift and she gave a beautiful smile.
Breakfast has been, oh, SO GOOD! My traditional apple bread pudding topped with home made caramel sauce (brown sugar, butter, a bit of milk, stirred at boiling point in a sauce pan) and vanilla Greek yogurt.
I wish you all joy today, and a New Year full of hope and new things. I pray that we all have the gift of courage and faith and that we reach out to one another in a spirit of kindness, compassion and fraternal love.
peace to us all, Gentle Reader
Aaron
Saturday 24 December 2016
Creeping Christmas 5
Here it comes. It's almost here. One more time. The little kidlets will be anxious insomniacs tonight as they listen for the Fat Guy's reindeer's hoofs on the roofs. The slightly older ones will wonder how someone so obese could fit down the chimney. The even older kids will want to know how he's going to get in their condo without a chimney to get stuck in or without getting arrested for breaking and entering.
Churches of the Roman Catholic and Anglican persuasions will be pulling out all stops for their classic midnight mass. Their protestant brethren will hold earlier services and all, or some of, the faithful will be gathering in to sing and hark with the Herald Angels and come with all ye faithful to adore once again the Babe of Bethlehem.
Other folks will be getting drunk, or using other, stronger substances to forget about their own emptiness of soul and heart which festers at the very core of the secular farce of Consumermas. Families will gather together for their own Christmas Eve traditions and all the It's All About Family-ites will chant and crow that they all have to be together on this special night and no outsiders will be welcome. Homeless folk will cope huddled and freezing in whichever vacant doorway they can find. Santa does not come for the homeless. Jesus does, having been homeless himself.
Figuring out a name for this most auspicious of holidays has become a major cause of worry for some people. As Christmas has become secular in tandem with the falling interest in things Christian there aren't a lot of people who want to really think of Christianity or of Jesus Christ, not even once a year. And no one wants to offend non-Christians, be they immigrant Muslims, or Jews or Buddhists who have been here for five generations or pagans or agnostics and atheists. No one wants to be offended and, worse, no one wants to offend. We are in Canada.
So you have a growing majority of folk wishing one another a bland and noncommittal "Seasons Greetings" or "Happy Holidays". They aren't Christmas cards, they are Holiday cards, Holiday parties, Holiday trees, Holiday dinners with turkey and all the trimmings. Happy holiday can mean anything, from a trip to Vegas (may it all stay there) to a nice week off, to (dare I mention the word) Merry Christmas.
I still prefer the word Christmas, being myself a Christian, though I try to understand and respect the squeamishness of those who don't believe as I do. Generally I wait for someone else to say....whatever, and I will simply respond "Thank you." Sometimes I will peep out a vague Merry Christmas, or if I'm afraid of getting whacked over the head with a Christmas stocking full of bricks I will whisper lamely "Have a nice holiday" and get out of there fast.
It isn't enough to simply say that for me it is Christmas, or Christ Mass. I grew up secular, no church and all Santa Claus, and when at the age of ten I had my first exposure to the Christian message of Christmas, somehow I found it more believable than the shallow and selfish crap about Santa Claus. It resonated inside and I was the least surprised when, five years later, I morphed into a teenage Jesus Freak. There is no doubt, still, in my mind, some forty-six years later that this is the real goods.
Churches of the Roman Catholic and Anglican persuasions will be pulling out all stops for their classic midnight mass. Their protestant brethren will hold earlier services and all, or some of, the faithful will be gathering in to sing and hark with the Herald Angels and come with all ye faithful to adore once again the Babe of Bethlehem.
Other folks will be getting drunk, or using other, stronger substances to forget about their own emptiness of soul and heart which festers at the very core of the secular farce of Consumermas. Families will gather together for their own Christmas Eve traditions and all the It's All About Family-ites will chant and crow that they all have to be together on this special night and no outsiders will be welcome. Homeless folk will cope huddled and freezing in whichever vacant doorway they can find. Santa does not come for the homeless. Jesus does, having been homeless himself.
Figuring out a name for this most auspicious of holidays has become a major cause of worry for some people. As Christmas has become secular in tandem with the falling interest in things Christian there aren't a lot of people who want to really think of Christianity or of Jesus Christ, not even once a year. And no one wants to offend non-Christians, be they immigrant Muslims, or Jews or Buddhists who have been here for five generations or pagans or agnostics and atheists. No one wants to be offended and, worse, no one wants to offend. We are in Canada.
So you have a growing majority of folk wishing one another a bland and noncommittal "Seasons Greetings" or "Happy Holidays". They aren't Christmas cards, they are Holiday cards, Holiday parties, Holiday trees, Holiday dinners with turkey and all the trimmings. Happy holiday can mean anything, from a trip to Vegas (may it all stay there) to a nice week off, to (dare I mention the word) Merry Christmas.
I still prefer the word Christmas, being myself a Christian, though I try to understand and respect the squeamishness of those who don't believe as I do. Generally I wait for someone else to say....whatever, and I will simply respond "Thank you." Sometimes I will peep out a vague Merry Christmas, or if I'm afraid of getting whacked over the head with a Christmas stocking full of bricks I will whisper lamely "Have a nice holiday" and get out of there fast.
It isn't enough to simply say that for me it is Christmas, or Christ Mass. I grew up secular, no church and all Santa Claus, and when at the age of ten I had my first exposure to the Christian message of Christmas, somehow I found it more believable than the shallow and selfish crap about Santa Claus. It resonated inside and I was the least surprised when, five years later, I morphed into a teenage Jesus Freak. There is no doubt, still, in my mind, some forty-six years later that this is the real goods.
Friday 23 December 2016
Creeping Christmas 4
Two days to go, Gentle Reader, till the Big Day. Right now I am seeing a YouTube video in Spanish about Lucrezia Borgia, the infamous trollop daughter of Pope Alexander VI. I know, I know, what a thing to see so close to Christmas. I have a simple excuse: the selection of schlocky Christmas music being served on the CBC was just a little bit wanting for this listener, ademas, de verdad necesitaba escuchar algo en espanol, or, I was really needing to listen to something in Spanish. While searching YouTube for some other Christmas music I came across this in a selection of Spanish documentaries. Now it's the biography of Mata Hari, also in Spanish, hardly the Blessed Virgin Mary, nor the blessed virgin anything, but this seems to be the day for famous bad girls. It is also the day following my mother's birthday, a bit of a bad girl in her own right. She never gave me much in the way of details about her disorderly life before she married my father, and I'm glad there are things I will never know about her. She did drop her share of hints. And I finally put up the bloody Christmas lights this morning. I was going to do it yesterday in her honour but couldn't find them in my closet, so this morning I had to perform a major excavation. I finally found them. In case you are so insensitive, Gentle Reader, as to judge me as a hoarder, please understand this. I live in a tiny bachelor apartment of perhaps three hundred fifty square feet or less, with only one tiny closet. Satisfied? I thought you'd be.
Yesterday I was listening to some of the usual horse manure on the CBC about Christmas. Various common folk had been interviewed on the street and for each and everyone it appears that Christmas is a secular celebration involving family and only those you really care about. I phoned in two comments: that I found them to be incredibly selfish and narcissistic in their take on Christmas, which really is about Jesus and his message of love, and that our love and care has to extend beyond our immediate families and loved ones. My second comment was in reply to a presentation they were doing about being alone on Christmas. Everyone they talked to was not really alone for Christmas. It was merely their first time away from their precious families. Everyone who spoke on the program had friends to look after them for Christmas Day. Absolutely no mention was made of the many who have absolutely no one to welcome or care for them on Christmas and how traumatic this often is. I spared them no quarter in my second phone call. I told them they were behaving like smug, cowardly bourgeois too afraid and too ashamed to make mention of this horrible and ugly elephant in the room (with all respect to elephants). I really hope that I have given them enough of a kick in the ass to persuade them to grant us, the rejected and unwanted at Christmas, existence and presence on future programs.
It is somehow easier for me this year. A friend with whom I have reconciled following some rather difficult years between us has invited me to his home for Christmas dinner, just following my two hours working with some of my clients. Speaking with a counselor yesterday we agreed that it isn't just because I have a place to go this year. Some real healing has occurred.
To the rest of you, let me offer this counsel. If you are okay for this Christmas, please think of anyone you know who isn't. Don't feel guilty, but reach out. Invite them for dinner. If that is completely impractical, make some time to spend with them, even if it's just on the phone on Christmas Day. But try to spend some time with them, with maybe some treats and something nice to drink. No one should have to spend this day alone unless they really choose to, and those of us who are fortunate enough to have people around that love us are not exempt from responsibility.
Yesterday I was listening to some of the usual horse manure on the CBC about Christmas. Various common folk had been interviewed on the street and for each and everyone it appears that Christmas is a secular celebration involving family and only those you really care about. I phoned in two comments: that I found them to be incredibly selfish and narcissistic in their take on Christmas, which really is about Jesus and his message of love, and that our love and care has to extend beyond our immediate families and loved ones. My second comment was in reply to a presentation they were doing about being alone on Christmas. Everyone they talked to was not really alone for Christmas. It was merely their first time away from their precious families. Everyone who spoke on the program had friends to look after them for Christmas Day. Absolutely no mention was made of the many who have absolutely no one to welcome or care for them on Christmas and how traumatic this often is. I spared them no quarter in my second phone call. I told them they were behaving like smug, cowardly bourgeois too afraid and too ashamed to make mention of this horrible and ugly elephant in the room (with all respect to elephants). I really hope that I have given them enough of a kick in the ass to persuade them to grant us, the rejected and unwanted at Christmas, existence and presence on future programs.
It is somehow easier for me this year. A friend with whom I have reconciled following some rather difficult years between us has invited me to his home for Christmas dinner, just following my two hours working with some of my clients. Speaking with a counselor yesterday we agreed that it isn't just because I have a place to go this year. Some real healing has occurred.
To the rest of you, let me offer this counsel. If you are okay for this Christmas, please think of anyone you know who isn't. Don't feel guilty, but reach out. Invite them for dinner. If that is completely impractical, make some time to spend with them, even if it's just on the phone on Christmas Day. But try to spend some time with them, with maybe some treats and something nice to drink. No one should have to spend this day alone unless they really choose to, and those of us who are fortunate enough to have people around that love us are not exempt from responsibility.
Thursday 22 December 2016
Creeping Christmas 3
Today is the first full day of winter, following the winter solstice yesterday. It is in northern climes an auspicious date marking the day of greatest darkness on the earth (north of the equator) and pagan beliefs of old hold that this is the day for the rebirth and regeneration of the sun without which, of course, there is no life. This is also a time to celebrate light. Here the traditional Christian Nativity and Pagan solstice beliefs nicely and briefly dovetail although it can be safely ascertained that Jesus was likely born sometime in April.
Everywhere are coloured lights festooning homes, buildings and trees. I would like to go for a few walks over the next few evenings to see and enjoy some of the displays. The scary phallic looking crane at the construction site a block away is adorned in white lights, lending a cold sinister aspect. That tower, when it is finished, is going to obliterate my view of the sky. There are a few, not many, other windows with lights. One window adornment slowly changes colour. Right now it is bright red with a splash of indigo downstairs. Tomorrow it could be purple or teal.
I often have trouble with sleep this time of year, I think because of the increased and gathering darkness. It is five am and I have been up since before four and I am thriving on less than four hours of sleep. Following a light breakfast I will be returning to bed with the radio on at a low volume. I don't begin work today till ten-thirty and this gives me plenty of time to rest. I often have segmented sleep and find that if I get up predawn, then let myself get tired, I can go back to sleep for a couple of hours and still arrive on time at work reasonably well-rested.
The light of Christ and the light of the sun, and the stars, remind us of the primordial value and our absolute need of light. It is now believed that the Star of Bethlehem was really a supernova timed beautifully with the birth of the world's Saviour and Christians generally decorate their homes and trees with strings of light as a reminder and a symbolic offering of light to commemorate the Light of the World.
By extension we can also celebrate the stars and the sun, not as objects of worship but as the shining creation of the God who became a tiny baby and later a crucified innocent man offering his life for us and three days later conquering the very death that could not swallow him: the ultimate triumph of light over darkness.
Sometime today I will adorn my window with a string of coloured lights. I am late this year but it is beginning to feel like time. It is also my mother's birthday today and this is a nice way to remember her.
This from the legendary Leontyne Price:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I86TRq_rQIo
Everywhere are coloured lights festooning homes, buildings and trees. I would like to go for a few walks over the next few evenings to see and enjoy some of the displays. The scary phallic looking crane at the construction site a block away is adorned in white lights, lending a cold sinister aspect. That tower, when it is finished, is going to obliterate my view of the sky. There are a few, not many, other windows with lights. One window adornment slowly changes colour. Right now it is bright red with a splash of indigo downstairs. Tomorrow it could be purple or teal.
I often have trouble with sleep this time of year, I think because of the increased and gathering darkness. It is five am and I have been up since before four and I am thriving on less than four hours of sleep. Following a light breakfast I will be returning to bed with the radio on at a low volume. I don't begin work today till ten-thirty and this gives me plenty of time to rest. I often have segmented sleep and find that if I get up predawn, then let myself get tired, I can go back to sleep for a couple of hours and still arrive on time at work reasonably well-rested.
The light of Christ and the light of the sun, and the stars, remind us of the primordial value and our absolute need of light. It is now believed that the Star of Bethlehem was really a supernova timed beautifully with the birth of the world's Saviour and Christians generally decorate their homes and trees with strings of light as a reminder and a symbolic offering of light to commemorate the Light of the World.
By extension we can also celebrate the stars and the sun, not as objects of worship but as the shining creation of the God who became a tiny baby and later a crucified innocent man offering his life for us and three days later conquering the very death that could not swallow him: the ultimate triumph of light over darkness.
Sometime today I will adorn my window with a string of coloured lights. I am late this year but it is beginning to feel like time. It is also my mother's birthday today and this is a nice way to remember her.
This from the legendary Leontyne Price:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I86TRq_rQIo
Wednesday 21 December 2016
Creeping Christmas 2
Deck the malls with plastic holly
falalalalalalalala
Seasonal consumer folly
falalalalalalalala
Drag we out our gay apparel
falalalalalalalala
Look, it's Robert dressed like Carol
falalalalalalalala
How do like my little Christmas carol, Gentle Reader? But for the tune and the falalalalalas it is my own special creation. Ah...Consumer mass. The festival of naked and unabashed and absolutely shameless overconsumption. This is the time of year when we pull out all stops and joyously morph into trailer trash versions of Donald Trump and the Kardashians rolling like fat happy little piggies in the rum and eggnog overindulgence of that most festive of holiday seasons. Over-buy, over-spend, overeat, over-consume. We are absolutely shameless in our consumerist gluttony.
Merry Consumer Mass!
Even Santa Claus is fat. How's that for a roll model (er, role model. How's that for Freudian spelling)? All those cookies? Maybe he'll be chowing down on reindeer steak when he gets home to the North Pole. Is that how he keeps Rudolph in line? So we've created this god of Yule, a fat bearded old man dressed in the most appalling taste and he is our de facto roll (there we go again!) model. Santa is fat, it's Christmas, let's eat. All the most fattening artery-clogging food that has ever been imagined. Do you know how much butter goes into a single batch of shortbread? I have been making shortbread cookies this month, Gentle Reader, and let me tell you that I am eating them faster than I can replace them and I am not exactly getting slimmer right now. I've eschewed eggnog this year, except perhaps for a one or two litre container that I will be buying for the big day, only. I used to drink it almost daily from Thanksgiving (I live in Canada and Turkey Day is celebrated in early October here) while happily chanting Bah Humbug! about warnings of elevated cholesterol and weight gain. I'm older now.
I am really glad to report that, barring some sleep difficulties, I am not hobbled by depression this year. I do have a place to go on Christmas Day (Yay Michel!!!!), though I am still working for two hours in the afternoon. It is amazing what a difference one friend who cares enough can make. Unlike my other "friends."
Here's the Urban Dictionary take on Consumermas:
The reorientation of Christmas from a celebration of the birth of Christ to an excuse to buy needless material objects in order to swell the pocketbooks of Chinese businessmen.
This little offering from the great Eartha Kitt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFMyF9fDKzE
falalalalalalalala
Seasonal consumer folly
falalalalalalalala
Drag we out our gay apparel
falalalalalalalala
Look, it's Robert dressed like Carol
falalalalalalalala
How do like my little Christmas carol, Gentle Reader? But for the tune and the falalalalalas it is my own special creation. Ah...Consumer mass. The festival of naked and unabashed and absolutely shameless overconsumption. This is the time of year when we pull out all stops and joyously morph into trailer trash versions of Donald Trump and the Kardashians rolling like fat happy little piggies in the rum and eggnog overindulgence of that most festive of holiday seasons. Over-buy, over-spend, overeat, over-consume. We are absolutely shameless in our consumerist gluttony.
Merry Consumer Mass!
Even Santa Claus is fat. How's that for a roll model (er, role model. How's that for Freudian spelling)? All those cookies? Maybe he'll be chowing down on reindeer steak when he gets home to the North Pole. Is that how he keeps Rudolph in line? So we've created this god of Yule, a fat bearded old man dressed in the most appalling taste and he is our de facto roll (there we go again!) model. Santa is fat, it's Christmas, let's eat. All the most fattening artery-clogging food that has ever been imagined. Do you know how much butter goes into a single batch of shortbread? I have been making shortbread cookies this month, Gentle Reader, and let me tell you that I am eating them faster than I can replace them and I am not exactly getting slimmer right now. I've eschewed eggnog this year, except perhaps for a one or two litre container that I will be buying for the big day, only. I used to drink it almost daily from Thanksgiving (I live in Canada and Turkey Day is celebrated in early October here) while happily chanting Bah Humbug! about warnings of elevated cholesterol and weight gain. I'm older now.
I am really glad to report that, barring some sleep difficulties, I am not hobbled by depression this year. I do have a place to go on Christmas Day (Yay Michel!!!!), though I am still working for two hours in the afternoon. It is amazing what a difference one friend who cares enough can make. Unlike my other "friends."
Here's the Urban Dictionary take on Consumermas:
The reorientation of Christmas from a celebration of the birth of Christ to an excuse to buy needless material objects in order to swell the pocketbooks of Chinese businessmen.
This little offering from the great Eartha Kitt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFMyF9fDKzE
Tuesday 20 December 2016
Creeping Christmas 1
I'm not sure, Gentle Reader, if I have already written a previous post with this title, if so then please excuse the repetition. Five days to go. It isn't so onerous this year, for some reason. Perhaps because I have been invited for Christmas dinner. Twice. This is the first time this has happened for me in well over a decade. Can it get any better? This of course was one of the principal causes of my depression over many recent Christmases past: this sense of living without a family, not being wanted by my "friends." I have had various people over for brunch Christmas morning in recent years, a privilege usually reserved for friends also at loose ends. Besides this, I have had Christmas dinner at work since 2008. The new clinical supervisor is a bit of a Scrooge, I'm afraid, and has declared no dinner for the peer support worker this Christmas, but I still get paid two hours to be there from two till four in the afternoon on Christmas Day. My employers save two hours pay, or twenty-four whopping bucks for not paying me for two hours (yes, I am paid a measly twelve bucks an hour for what I do: just a bit more than a dollar above minimum and ten bucks less than a living wage). However, a friend has invited me for Christmas dinner this year, after work, and yes I am going.
I am doing better than usual at ignoring Creeping Christmas. All the obnoxious Christmas music that started before Halloween is only white noise and twice today, on the CBC, they played one Christmas song that I like: Mary's Boy Child by Bony M. Listen...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxm1FlLSfe4 ...
I like it even better than Rah Rah Rasputin! And I just heard it a third time today, this time on YouTube!
Today, on my way inside the social housing building where one of my clients live, Santa was sitting outside, presumably for a cigarette break. We smiled at each other and I told him that for Christmas I want world peace and someone different in the Out House, and then I caught it and said, oops, I mean the White House and I wished Santa a Happy Freudian. He gave me a big smile through his beard and I can only imagine what he said to his elves later!
The snow is rapidly disappearing with the warmer weather and the rain. I'm dreaming of a green Christmas....
I am doing better than usual at ignoring Creeping Christmas. All the obnoxious Christmas music that started before Halloween is only white noise and twice today, on the CBC, they played one Christmas song that I like: Mary's Boy Child by Bony M. Listen...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxm1FlLSfe4 ...
I like it even better than Rah Rah Rasputin! And I just heard it a third time today, this time on YouTube!
Today, on my way inside the social housing building where one of my clients live, Santa was sitting outside, presumably for a cigarette break. We smiled at each other and I told him that for Christmas I want world peace and someone different in the Out House, and then I caught it and said, oops, I mean the White House and I wished Santa a Happy Freudian. He gave me a big smile through his beard and I can only imagine what he said to his elves later!
The snow is rapidly disappearing with the warmer weather and the rain. I'm dreaming of a green Christmas....
Monday 19 December 2016
Where Did I Leave Myself?
It was a most innocent Freudian slip that I made today. Following two morning cancellations with clients because the buses cannot be relied on when there is a lot of sudden new snow on the ground, I did see my afternoon client, who lives nearer to my place and I could get there walking (only two smiles-oops! I mean miles), and so I walked over the bridge, taking care with the slush, and we had a game of Scrabble in the common room of her building. She wanted to know how I got there, so I said, well, I left myself at 12:40, only to realize that I meant to say that I left my place at 12:40.
Or, perhaps I really did leave myself behind at 12:40 and it took me two smiles to walk there? So, by saying that I left myself behind, I could be suggesting any number of things. Perhaps I really am my apartment and I only feel safe to be completely myself when I'm at home, away from others, unguarded and more or less relaxed? To leave this government subsidized sanctuary that is rented to me at less than thirty percent of my monthly income involves turning into someone whom I am not, then, in order to face the horrible world outside? And this taking two smiles to get there would imply the need to put on a happy face, to freeze in place the mask I require to face everyone out there?
I don't think of myself as a phony and maybe the slips are really not at all Freudian, but just slips. Sometimes, a slip is just a slip. This isn't to say that I don't have to make certain adjustments to myself before leaving my place. Even in my building there are some very challenging tenants, especially the one next door, a very sad and tragic case actually. I can't go into detail about her here, partly because it would be unkind, and I could also get into trouble professionally, since she is also a client of the organization that employs me. Suffice it to say, she has a tendency towards aggression and I have found that it is better to avoid this person altogether, especially given the irrational hate on she appears to have always had with me. So we don't speak to each other, not so much as a good morning, which is just as well, since she might easily reply "What's good about it?" The last conversation we had, in August, she wanted to know why my back was wet as she saw me come into the building. I replied that it's perspiration, instead of that it was none of her damn business, and that it's a hot day, which means my body is functioning as it should. She tried to escalate, I wouldn't pander to her entitlement of being treated like royalty and then she let loose and bellowed, "Why do you always have to be such a fucking asshole!" I reported her to management, who at first made lame excuses on her behalf, so I went to upper management and it was agreed that this person should leave me alone from now on. So we don't speak, not even so much as a hello or have a nice day. (she would simply growl, what`s so nice about it) There is one other tenant in this building with whom I am not on speaking terms, an old Colombian woman just like the arrogant bitches I had to tolerate while in Bogota. Another difficult personality who has management wrapped around her middle finger (another Freudian. Oops again.)
The fact of the matter is that I can't leave myself behind. The person I take outside with me is the same person that I live with, perhaps just with a little careful grooming. Perhaps what I might consider is taking home with me the self that I am when I am away. That's right, the smile, the kindness, the good sense of humour and the patience with hopeless dumbasses. I could become in the safety of my home the kind gentle person I have deceived my clients and coworkers into believing.
Even my mask is real. I leave my apartment determined to give and be my best and to not inflict my demons on unsuspecting others. They are not as strong as they used to be, my demons, and I believe that through faithful prayer and spiritual and self-discipline that they are steadily weakening. Which isn`t to say that I have actual demons, as I mean this in a figurative sense as I don`t believe that I have actual demons. Yes, I do believe that such entities exist and, yes, I also believe in modern science, but that`s a different toybox and I don`t want to rummage around there today.
In other words, Gentle Reader, I can't even step outside the sanctuary of my little apartment without being confronted by reminders of where I work and the challenge of having to put my best face forward every time I step into that corridor. But maybe that friendly mask I have to put on is also slowly evolving into the real face. My real face.
Or, perhaps I really did leave myself behind at 12:40 and it took me two smiles to walk there? So, by saying that I left myself behind, I could be suggesting any number of things. Perhaps I really am my apartment and I only feel safe to be completely myself when I'm at home, away from others, unguarded and more or less relaxed? To leave this government subsidized sanctuary that is rented to me at less than thirty percent of my monthly income involves turning into someone whom I am not, then, in order to face the horrible world outside? And this taking two smiles to get there would imply the need to put on a happy face, to freeze in place the mask I require to face everyone out there?
I don't think of myself as a phony and maybe the slips are really not at all Freudian, but just slips. Sometimes, a slip is just a slip. This isn't to say that I don't have to make certain adjustments to myself before leaving my place. Even in my building there are some very challenging tenants, especially the one next door, a very sad and tragic case actually. I can't go into detail about her here, partly because it would be unkind, and I could also get into trouble professionally, since she is also a client of the organization that employs me. Suffice it to say, she has a tendency towards aggression and I have found that it is better to avoid this person altogether, especially given the irrational hate on she appears to have always had with me. So we don't speak to each other, not so much as a good morning, which is just as well, since she might easily reply "What's good about it?" The last conversation we had, in August, she wanted to know why my back was wet as she saw me come into the building. I replied that it's perspiration, instead of that it was none of her damn business, and that it's a hot day, which means my body is functioning as it should. She tried to escalate, I wouldn't pander to her entitlement of being treated like royalty and then she let loose and bellowed, "Why do you always have to be such a fucking asshole!" I reported her to management, who at first made lame excuses on her behalf, so I went to upper management and it was agreed that this person should leave me alone from now on. So we don't speak, not even so much as a hello or have a nice day. (she would simply growl, what`s so nice about it) There is one other tenant in this building with whom I am not on speaking terms, an old Colombian woman just like the arrogant bitches I had to tolerate while in Bogota. Another difficult personality who has management wrapped around her middle finger (another Freudian. Oops again.)
The fact of the matter is that I can't leave myself behind. The person I take outside with me is the same person that I live with, perhaps just with a little careful grooming. Perhaps what I might consider is taking home with me the self that I am when I am away. That's right, the smile, the kindness, the good sense of humour and the patience with hopeless dumbasses. I could become in the safety of my home the kind gentle person I have deceived my clients and coworkers into believing.
Even my mask is real. I leave my apartment determined to give and be my best and to not inflict my demons on unsuspecting others. They are not as strong as they used to be, my demons, and I believe that through faithful prayer and spiritual and self-discipline that they are steadily weakening. Which isn`t to say that I have actual demons, as I mean this in a figurative sense as I don`t believe that I have actual demons. Yes, I do believe that such entities exist and, yes, I also believe in modern science, but that`s a different toybox and I don`t want to rummage around there today.
In other words, Gentle Reader, I can't even step outside the sanctuary of my little apartment without being confronted by reminders of where I work and the challenge of having to put my best face forward every time I step into that corridor. But maybe that friendly mask I have to put on is also slowly evolving into the real face. My real face.
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