Once we humans are all almost said and done as a species, I wonder how our existence on this earth would be chronicalled? I will try to sum up our five hundred thousand years plus of history and future in just one brief blog post here, Gentle Reader. Here goes:
This species was rather like an infectious vermin irritating the skin of our Mother Earth, rather like an attack of fleas, scabies, bedbugs, ticks, crabs and lice, but all at once and altogether. It is alleged that they began as a species of evolving ape, tree-dwellers that decided to explore the African savannah. They walked upright on their hind paws, and their brains began to enlarge and their intelligence quickly developed. Their forepaws become skilled at making, crafting and holding things, and so they invented tools, weapons and art. They began to lose their body hair and began to cover themselves with animal skins, later with cloth woven from plants and plant fibres. They invented tools and began to use fire for cooking meat and warming themselves. They developed language, agriculture and writing. They began to live in cities, and their tools and weapons became sophisticated and deadly. They learned how to extract the marrow of the bones of Mother Earth in order to make metal and their weapons became exceptionally lethal. this species became particularly obsessed and gifted at killing and murdering its own kind.
This was a tropical animal, biologically suited to live in warm climates, but their knowledge of fire and development of clothing adapted them to unsuitable climates, where, without fire or clothing, they would have surely perished. They dominated the earth as they spread and multiplied until almost every landmass has had to bear and suffer their presence. Many acquired the conceit that they were apart from or above nature. They became cities, nations and empires, strangling our Mother Earth with their growing presence. They developed culture, art, religion. The gods they purported to serve were outraged by their inability and unwillingness to fulfil even the most elementary tenets of religion, to love and respect others and treat with reverence and care the Mother Earth that sustained them, and the Deity collaborated with our Mother Earth to see to their much-deserved destruction.
Having long exploited and developed the marrow of our Mother's bones, called metal, they eventually discovered buried beneath the earth the blood of dragons that had lived millions of years before them. They named it petroleum or oil and used it to fuel their vehicles, heat their homes, and manufacture objects of pleasure, utility and mass destruction. This material they named plastic.
The smoke and fumes from burning the blood of ancient dragons fouled the air and water that sustained them, warmed the earth's climate and made our Mother Earth uninhabitable to them and the many other creatures that delighted her. But for a few surviving enclaves, our Mother has finally shaken off this human infestation. The remnant of survivors has yet to prove that they have learned their lesson well, and our Mother's good will alone will guarantee their future survival.
Saturday 30 November 2019
Friday 29 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 33
It is minus 2 degrees right now. Balmy compared to the rest of Canada in late November. It is going to go up maybe to 4 degrees today. We live in the mildest part of the country here. It is almost December. Christmas is less than one month away. Today is Black Friday, yet another American contagion that has crossed our border like a flu pandemic, and naturally almost everyone is going to want to go shopping today, to fill that lonely void in their lives with stuff that no one really needs or wants. This is really a sad reflection on how disconnected we all are and how much people use money, buying and things in order to fill that void.
The day is going to be sunny. It is going to be a hard, cold and brilliant light, like the light of truth, and it is also going to be very beautiful, if cold today. I just heard on the radio about how lonely and isolated people are, especially in Canada, and of how disconnected everyone seems to be, and how cruel this can be around Christmas when everyone is expected to be joyful and happy and full of gratitude and bliss. As one who is vulnerable to Christmas depression (I am generally alone every Christmas), I have come to value the importance of connecting and of making connections with others. This doesn't mean that I am going to be particularly wanted or welcome anywhere on Christmas Day, but the question here is how much am I willing to welcome others. I think what exacerbates loneliness is the inability, or the unwillingness,l to make the effort to connect with others. And depression itself can be so paralyzing as to make reaching out to others all the more difficult. So much the more important that we preempt holiday depression by already making the effort to reach out and make ourselves available to one another.
I am not going to do anything special this Christmas. Just the usual. I will work with my clients. I will make art. I will take long walks. I will be friendly to strangers and cats and dogs (nice cats and dogs). I will continue to attend church. I will cook well and eat well. I am going to bake cookies and share them. I will continue with my Spanish. I will continue seeing my friends, here in Vancouver and abroad my friends in Colombia by Skype. And of course, I will continue to make art and I will continue to write this blog.
I will reject sadness and depression, and I am going to choose love, I am going to choose joy. These are matters of choice, you know. And we do have that kind of power in our lives. I am not the only one who is going to be needing human contact. Everyone around me is going to be feeling something, or trying to protect themselves from feeling. I think this is a really important time to keep an eye on others, and to remember that this is a season of stress and difficulty for everybody. This is also a time for great joy, and now we are going to channel that joy, and let its tiny little trickle grow into a rivulet, a stream, and soon a mighty roaring river. That's right, Gentle Reader. We have that choice and what better day that Black Friday to choose joy and love over sadness and selfishness? This is my challenge today to all of us.
Thursday 28 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 32
I mentioned in an email yesterday to my Costa Rican friend that when I am making art I appear to be integrating rest, work and prayer all in one action. This is difficult to explain but for the creative process which I believe is one of the distinctions that make us so peculiarly human. That is, along with our sense of spirituality, or the numinous. The creative process is also in many ways tied in to or could be thought of as an integral facet of our spirituality.
I think this is why in our society there is still this erroneous but inevitable tendency of elevating artists, and this especially refers to film or music stars, as near quasi-deities. Olympus revived. At the very least, their glamour and fame would appear to invest in them a sense of moral authority and expertise that would otherwise pass unnoticed. Think Gwyneth Paltrow or Bono, for example. Or better still, don't. If they weren't famous they would simply be dismissed as neurotic, righteous blowhards that really don't know much about anything, which is to say, they would be rather like me and you, Gentle Reader. Perhaps just a little more annoying.
Yes, in our secular and spiritually empty culture that elevates science and logic way above spiritual wisdom and ethics, people are still going to want to vent their instinctive impulse to worship and adore the numinous, so instead of turning their attention to a God they cannot see, they worship at the altar of celebrity. And celebrities have become their new priests, gods and sages. Pathetic, yes? When you think how flawed and human they are, and away from their glow of fame and glamour how really pathetic they are, nonentities every bit as tiny and insignificant as you and me, Gentle Reader.
I will never see celebrity or fame. Perhaps because my art isn't good enough, and really, it isn't that good. But also for an even more salient reason. I'm just not interested. I don't care. This by the way has nothing to do with sour grapes. I am a Christian. this is more than a mere belief system. My life is dedicated and consecrated to Christ, though some of my readers, on reading some of the content of Content Under Pressure, might be inclined to think otherwise. If I were to be offered fame or celebrity, I would have to deny my faith, or at least walk in a direction other than the quiet life of prayer, consecration and service towards which Christ has called me.
This became only too clear to me while I was still a working artist. And I was being lured by the sugar cookie of fame and celebrity. That is how you make it as an artist. You get discovered then scooped up by a prestigious gallery and they sell all your lovely art to wealthy patrons and before you know it, all you have to do to pay the mortgage is keep making art. Could it get sweeter? Well, you get famous too, so you can charge higher prices for your work, then you become more famous, and your prices keep rising, then you get inducted in the Order of Canada, and suddenly you have jacked up your prices so high that you had might as well be already dead and mouldering in your crypt.
I live in holy anonymity. I live in creative anonymity. I paint and draw at home, and I draw in coffee shops and elsewhere when I'm outside. Of course I attract attention to myself, artists always do. And of course, I simply don't care any more. perhaps I never did. I might never sell another work of art again. I don't care. I do love participating in this whole divine dynamic of co-creating beauty and meaningfulness with God. If this is public witness, then so be it. This is work, yes, but it is also prayer and rest. And sometimes it is absolute pure joy, Gentle Reader
I think this is why in our society there is still this erroneous but inevitable tendency of elevating artists, and this especially refers to film or music stars, as near quasi-deities. Olympus revived. At the very least, their glamour and fame would appear to invest in them a sense of moral authority and expertise that would otherwise pass unnoticed. Think Gwyneth Paltrow or Bono, for example. Or better still, don't. If they weren't famous they would simply be dismissed as neurotic, righteous blowhards that really don't know much about anything, which is to say, they would be rather like me and you, Gentle Reader. Perhaps just a little more annoying.
Yes, in our secular and spiritually empty culture that elevates science and logic way above spiritual wisdom and ethics, people are still going to want to vent their instinctive impulse to worship and adore the numinous, so instead of turning their attention to a God they cannot see, they worship at the altar of celebrity. And celebrities have become their new priests, gods and sages. Pathetic, yes? When you think how flawed and human they are, and away from their glow of fame and glamour how really pathetic they are, nonentities every bit as tiny and insignificant as you and me, Gentle Reader.
I will never see celebrity or fame. Perhaps because my art isn't good enough, and really, it isn't that good. But also for an even more salient reason. I'm just not interested. I don't care. This by the way has nothing to do with sour grapes. I am a Christian. this is more than a mere belief system. My life is dedicated and consecrated to Christ, though some of my readers, on reading some of the content of Content Under Pressure, might be inclined to think otherwise. If I were to be offered fame or celebrity, I would have to deny my faith, or at least walk in a direction other than the quiet life of prayer, consecration and service towards which Christ has called me.
This became only too clear to me while I was still a working artist. And I was being lured by the sugar cookie of fame and celebrity. That is how you make it as an artist. You get discovered then scooped up by a prestigious gallery and they sell all your lovely art to wealthy patrons and before you know it, all you have to do to pay the mortgage is keep making art. Could it get sweeter? Well, you get famous too, so you can charge higher prices for your work, then you become more famous, and your prices keep rising, then you get inducted in the Order of Canada, and suddenly you have jacked up your prices so high that you had might as well be already dead and mouldering in your crypt.
I live in holy anonymity. I live in creative anonymity. I paint and draw at home, and I draw in coffee shops and elsewhere when I'm outside. Of course I attract attention to myself, artists always do. And of course, I simply don't care any more. perhaps I never did. I might never sell another work of art again. I don't care. I do love participating in this whole divine dynamic of co-creating beauty and meaningfulness with God. If this is public witness, then so be it. This is work, yes, but it is also prayer and rest. And sometimes it is absolute pure joy, Gentle Reader
Wednesday 27 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 31
The bus strike is off, and the union appears to have reached a tentative agreement with their employers, Translink, so we are emitting a collective sigh of relief this morning. Yesterday, as I was riding the bus home from a meeting out in darkest Marpole, a young woman with long ultramarine blue hair took the seat in front of me and soon she was knitting. I thought, what a perfect way for a woman with blue hair to pass the time on the bus, with knitting needles at the ready. I didn't get to see what she was knitting, nor what colours, but it really doesn't matter. There is something comforting and consoling about people doing creative things on public transit. Their having brightly coloured hair is a bonus.
I generally don't do art while on the bus. It's too difficult because the ride usually isn't smooth and I don't want to inconvenience the people seated next to me. And I usually don't want to attract that kind of attention in such a crowded space. Sometimes I read, often I look out the window or look passively at other passengers, but never staring, not even at the most interesting, because that would be creepy. Sometimes conversations with strangers happen, which is also enjoyable.
There is something consoling about making art, especially in public spaces. It is a revolutionary act. It is a way of flipping off the death culture that we are living in. It is rather like singing, only it's done silently and with colour and lines. I tend to wince and cringe when people call art a hobby. Art is not a mere hobby. Art is a celebration of life. Art is a declaration against mindless consumerism (unless your sole interest as an artist is in making a bundle off your work, then you really should think of doing something else, like maybe work in a shoe store)
I really don't know if I will ever sell another painting, and really, Gentle Reader, I don't care. Early in my career, I was exhibiting wherever I could, and I did well in sales. It still wasn't enough to pay the bills, and I always had to have some kind of day job going, even if it was just cleaning houses, Now, I don't have time or energy to promote art as well as making it. I don't have the connections, and I no longer care. I just want to do it, making art, and keep on doing it, keep on making art, until by the time I am done and pushing up daisies I will have littered this entire earth with my drawings and paintings.
I generally don't do art while on the bus. It's too difficult because the ride usually isn't smooth and I don't want to inconvenience the people seated next to me. And I usually don't want to attract that kind of attention in such a crowded space. Sometimes I read, often I look out the window or look passively at other passengers, but never staring, not even at the most interesting, because that would be creepy. Sometimes conversations with strangers happen, which is also enjoyable.
There is something consoling about making art, especially in public spaces. It is a revolutionary act. It is a way of flipping off the death culture that we are living in. It is rather like singing, only it's done silently and with colour and lines. I tend to wince and cringe when people call art a hobby. Art is not a mere hobby. Art is a celebration of life. Art is a declaration against mindless consumerism (unless your sole interest as an artist is in making a bundle off your work, then you really should think of doing something else, like maybe work in a shoe store)
I really don't know if I will ever sell another painting, and really, Gentle Reader, I don't care. Early in my career, I was exhibiting wherever I could, and I did well in sales. It still wasn't enough to pay the bills, and I always had to have some kind of day job going, even if it was just cleaning houses, Now, I don't have time or energy to promote art as well as making it. I don't have the connections, and I no longer care. I just want to do it, making art, and keep on doing it, keep on making art, until by the time I am done and pushing up daisies I will have littered this entire earth with my drawings and paintings.
Tuesday 26 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 30
I only go to Starbucks on professional matters, that is, to meet with a client. I have never been to any of the Starbucks locations for sheer enjoyment and leisure, except perhaps for when they were just starting in this city back in 1987, or so, and their only location in Vancouver was a tiny coffee bar at the Waterfront Station. I liked the staff there. They were friendly and personable. And they basically helped educate me about good coffee, and the various grinds and roasts and what countries or regions they were grown in, be it Sumatra, Kenya, Ethiopia, Colombia, and elsewhere. But as they grew, expanded, and basically took over and came to define the local coffee culture, making it something oh so middle class, bland and and insipid, by 1988 or so, I simply no longer went. I also became educated about the exploitation of farm workers on coffee plantations and I became more interested in buying fair trade, until I could no longer afford the higher costs. For years afterward I would stubbornly refuse to set foot in a Starbucks, until, working with clients out in the community, at times it became completely unavoidable. So, that is the only time I go. One still has to maintain standards, after all. And self-respect.
Yesterday, a client and I were each nursing a coffee in the comfort of some huge armchairs that adorned the front window of a Starbucks on Cambie Street. I soon noticed that of some thirty customers, or so, we were the only ones not drinking out of paper cups. That's right, Gentle Reader, no one was drinking from reusable ceramic coffee mugs, except for just us two. I only drink from ceramic or glass containers, no matter where I might happen to be, and I reckon that I have probably spared the landfill some four to five thousand paper and plastic beverage containers over the past twelve years or so. Not really much of a dent when you consider that every week here in dumb-blonde Vancouver, some 2.6 million paper cups end up in the garbage, unrecycled.
Even now, when we have been given just another ten years before global warming has got out of control and we might be pushed to the brink of extinction as a viable species on this earth, almost everyone still wants to chuck more paper and plastic in the landfill. Every bit as rational as the mouth-breathers in Alberta who insist on carrying on with the oil industry, climate change and species' extinctions be damned. Yesterday in Starbucks, there were perhaps two people actually having a conversation with each other. Everyone else was completely absorbed in their tech toys, be they laptops or smartphones. Now, at a time when we really need to learn to pull together and start to really value community, I commented to my client that there has probably never been a time in our human history that people have been so close, yet so not together.
Of course, no one was doing art in the Starbucks. I have in the past, while waiting for my client. I often feel like I'm doing something subversive or revolutionary by making art in public places Instead of separating me from others, the way that texting on my darling little phone would (I still don't, and still refuse to have a smartphone), making art connects me to other people, because I am not consuming, I am creating, and the very act of creating releases in each one of us that God presence that is latent in all of us. God is love, and when we are making srt, when we're making anything that is not purposed to do hrm, we are participating in the whole divine plan, and this is why people are attracted to artists when we are at work. We are connecting with others at the highest possible level. I have had so many beautiful and interesting conversations with strangers while doing my art in coffee shops. I don't reckon this would happen if I was just dumbly texting away on my phone or laptop.
Yesterday, a client and I were each nursing a coffee in the comfort of some huge armchairs that adorned the front window of a Starbucks on Cambie Street. I soon noticed that of some thirty customers, or so, we were the only ones not drinking out of paper cups. That's right, Gentle Reader, no one was drinking from reusable ceramic coffee mugs, except for just us two. I only drink from ceramic or glass containers, no matter where I might happen to be, and I reckon that I have probably spared the landfill some four to five thousand paper and plastic beverage containers over the past twelve years or so. Not really much of a dent when you consider that every week here in dumb-blonde Vancouver, some 2.6 million paper cups end up in the garbage, unrecycled.
Even now, when we have been given just another ten years before global warming has got out of control and we might be pushed to the brink of extinction as a viable species on this earth, almost everyone still wants to chuck more paper and plastic in the landfill. Every bit as rational as the mouth-breathers in Alberta who insist on carrying on with the oil industry, climate change and species' extinctions be damned. Yesterday in Starbucks, there were perhaps two people actually having a conversation with each other. Everyone else was completely absorbed in their tech toys, be they laptops or smartphones. Now, at a time when we really need to learn to pull together and start to really value community, I commented to my client that there has probably never been a time in our human history that people have been so close, yet so not together.
Of course, no one was doing art in the Starbucks. I have in the past, while waiting for my client. I often feel like I'm doing something subversive or revolutionary by making art in public places Instead of separating me from others, the way that texting on my darling little phone would (I still don't, and still refuse to have a smartphone), making art connects me to other people, because I am not consuming, I am creating, and the very act of creating releases in each one of us that God presence that is latent in all of us. God is love, and when we are making srt, when we're making anything that is not purposed to do hrm, we are participating in the whole divine plan, and this is why people are attracted to artists when we are at work. We are connecting with others at the highest possible level. I have had so many beautiful and interesting conversations with strangers while doing my art in coffee shops. I don't reckon this would happen if I was just dumbly texting away on my phone or laptop.
Monday 25 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 29
The laundry room in my building has been liberated. There is a tenant in my building who tends to leave his clothes wet in the machines overnight and often for two or three days. This person has some disabilities. He also attends university. Go figure. Some of the tenants here are almost ready to form a lynch mob. Our building manager says they are monitoring this tenant, but it may take a long time before we see any meaningful change. I don't know this person well. He is not a nice person to begin with, claims to be a Christian and we even attended the same Anglican parish church for a while where he managed to guilt the rector into letting him participate in the service of Holy Communion, so he could parade, or hobble around in liturgical robes like a self-important and sanctimonious little pharisee. This person is also in the habit of forgetting his keys and has to rely on others to let him into the building. Only when you bark out "You're welcome!" does he actually squeeze out a grudging "Thank you", and only with all the enthusiasm of Gollum letting go of his Precious.
Now I don't hate this tenant. I don't even dislike him, though I did for a while, since he just isn't that likeable. But people who aren't likeable tend to get trapped in a vicious cycle. Being already socially inept introverts often means that they are going to be misunderstood as unpleasant losers, are going to be treated like unpleasant losers, and in time are going to behave like unpleasant losers, thus further alienating others and keeping them ensconced in the kind of social isolation that kills people. He might actually have friends. perhaps other unpleasant introverts, and why not? One would hope that he might have in his life people who understand him. I really know very little about him, and there are details I am intentionally omitting in order to protect his privacy.
The Duchess, whom I have also referred to as the Queen of Candela Place, is ready to lynch him. I don't blame her. At least our common annoyance with this poor wanker has helped make us friends, in a way, but I'm not about to accept her line that if he can do well in university, then he should also be trusted to do his laundry like a real adult. Um...not so fast, Petunia. I am reminded here of that very dumb and very American saying, "If you're so smart, then why aren't you rich?" Oh, let me count the ways! Let's see, I was diagnosed (I say diagnosed because to me it is an illness) as a gifted child, and my IQ tends to err on the high side, putting me on the dumb end of the genius scale. Yet, I never made it through university, have always worked for a low wage and now live in social housing. On the other hand, I am responsible, self-disciplined, very capable on many different levels, and also a decent writer and not a bad artist.
Gentle Reader, the human trajectory is always going to be uneven. Even the gods of Olympus had their very human flaws. They were jealous, possessive, manipulative, vindictive and petty. We need to do better than they. We need to be better than they. We have to be patient and gentle with one another. because we are all such a flawed and uneven lot, kindness is so essential, and as things get even more difficult with the fallout of climate change and frightening despots, kindness is going to be all the more essential to our very survival as a species. Perhaps we need to do more to accept and celebrate this imperfection that we all share in common. Especially in this highly competitive era of toxic perfectionism!
Now I don't hate this tenant. I don't even dislike him, though I did for a while, since he just isn't that likeable. But people who aren't likeable tend to get trapped in a vicious cycle. Being already socially inept introverts often means that they are going to be misunderstood as unpleasant losers, are going to be treated like unpleasant losers, and in time are going to behave like unpleasant losers, thus further alienating others and keeping them ensconced in the kind of social isolation that kills people. He might actually have friends. perhaps other unpleasant introverts, and why not? One would hope that he might have in his life people who understand him. I really know very little about him, and there are details I am intentionally omitting in order to protect his privacy.
The Duchess, whom I have also referred to as the Queen of Candela Place, is ready to lynch him. I don't blame her. At least our common annoyance with this poor wanker has helped make us friends, in a way, but I'm not about to accept her line that if he can do well in university, then he should also be trusted to do his laundry like a real adult. Um...not so fast, Petunia. I am reminded here of that very dumb and very American saying, "If you're so smart, then why aren't you rich?" Oh, let me count the ways! Let's see, I was diagnosed (I say diagnosed because to me it is an illness) as a gifted child, and my IQ tends to err on the high side, putting me on the dumb end of the genius scale. Yet, I never made it through university, have always worked for a low wage and now live in social housing. On the other hand, I am responsible, self-disciplined, very capable on many different levels, and also a decent writer and not a bad artist.
Gentle Reader, the human trajectory is always going to be uneven. Even the gods of Olympus had their very human flaws. They were jealous, possessive, manipulative, vindictive and petty. We need to do better than they. We need to be better than they. We have to be patient and gentle with one another. because we are all such a flawed and uneven lot, kindness is so essential, and as things get even more difficult with the fallout of climate change and frightening despots, kindness is going to be all the more essential to our very survival as a species. Perhaps we need to do more to accept and celebrate this imperfection that we all share in common. Especially in this highly competitive era of toxic perfectionism!
Sunday 24 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 28
I just learned that the vintage Hollywood Theatre on West Broadway is soon to reopen. With a liquor license. The excuse? That is the only way they can afford to stay open. Rents are incredibly high in this city, as will be the patrons putting their bums in the plush velvet upholstered seats. This is actually sad in so many ways. I just heard on the radio the newscaster suggesting it might be kind of fun getting a little bit sozzled and enjoying a nap in those comfy seats, but the program host was more restrained and I could tell by her tone that she isn't likely to endorse this kind of measure.
The fact is, we live in a culture of addiction, particularly of alcoholism. A lot of people, those with the disposable income after rent, that is, are only too happy to go out and drink. Alcohol consumption is approved and celebrated in our culture and there is nothing at all unusual about drunkenness, public or private. All the statistics about liver damage, cancer, heart disease, as well as the psychological, emotional and public fallout of alcohol consumption continue to go ignored and unnoticed. Even our own public broadcaster endorses alcohol consumption. Sad, eh?
There is no way I would willingly sit in a theatre full of drunks. That is something I will not pay to have to endure, I would not do it for free, not even if someone paid me. Yes, it is partly because I am an ACOA, or, Adult Child of and Alcoholic, and of course I just don't want to be around it. But drunk people are not relaxing, or safe to be around. Even if they are only lightly fazed by a couple of glasses of wine, there is no telling what might end up happening. Listen, I have seen the fallout of drunkenness in confined spaces, especially on airplanes and it ain't pretty. Not to mention, when people are drinking, they get loud. Who wants to sit in a movie theatre full of loud obnoxious drunks!
Oh yes, but the world is going to hell, we say. I just heard yesterday how the world is more tense and distressed and anxious than any time since the Second World War. I still think that's hyperbole, and that what is really making us anxious is the superabundance of rapid fire news that keeps hitting us twenty-four/ seven, thanks to digital news and the internet. No one can cope with such an intense deluge of misery, fear and horror. So, a lot of folk are going to escape into their lovely glass of wine, their craft beer, their scotch on the rocks or whatever their poison de jour, because that is how most people like to cope with stress. They run away like frightened little rabbits and drink their ass off. How sad. How tragic. And how painfully obvious that we are nowhere near ready for whenever the time comes when things start to get really bad.
The fact is, we live in a culture of addiction, particularly of alcoholism. A lot of people, those with the disposable income after rent, that is, are only too happy to go out and drink. Alcohol consumption is approved and celebrated in our culture and there is nothing at all unusual about drunkenness, public or private. All the statistics about liver damage, cancer, heart disease, as well as the psychological, emotional and public fallout of alcohol consumption continue to go ignored and unnoticed. Even our own public broadcaster endorses alcohol consumption. Sad, eh?
There is no way I would willingly sit in a theatre full of drunks. That is something I will not pay to have to endure, I would not do it for free, not even if someone paid me. Yes, it is partly because I am an ACOA, or, Adult Child of and Alcoholic, and of course I just don't want to be around it. But drunk people are not relaxing, or safe to be around. Even if they are only lightly fazed by a couple of glasses of wine, there is no telling what might end up happening. Listen, I have seen the fallout of drunkenness in confined spaces, especially on airplanes and it ain't pretty. Not to mention, when people are drinking, they get loud. Who wants to sit in a movie theatre full of loud obnoxious drunks!
Oh yes, but the world is going to hell, we say. I just heard yesterday how the world is more tense and distressed and anxious than any time since the Second World War. I still think that's hyperbole, and that what is really making us anxious is the superabundance of rapid fire news that keeps hitting us twenty-four/ seven, thanks to digital news and the internet. No one can cope with such an intense deluge of misery, fear and horror. So, a lot of folk are going to escape into their lovely glass of wine, their craft beer, their scotch on the rocks or whatever their poison de jour, because that is how most people like to cope with stress. They run away like frightened little rabbits and drink their ass off. How sad. How tragic. And how painfully obvious that we are nowhere near ready for whenever the time comes when things start to get really bad.
Saturday 23 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 27
What comes after diversity? I am asking this question here for various reasons, not least of which that I happen to be suddenly wide awake at the very beginning of the wee hours of the morning, somehow snapped out of a deep sleep after a couple of hours in bed. But this happens from time to time, and I think rather than writing everything while sitting here at half past one in the morning, I will simply introduce some salient ideas, then later add to and revise everything once I have had a proper and full night's sleep.
First I will mention here how I came about thinking of diversity when I really should be lying in bed and waiting for the sleep divinity to come do their thing by me. I was having a visit this afternoon with a friend who lives overseas. We have known each other for a long time, well over a decade, having first met when he was here in Vancouver on an extended sabbatical. He is back in Vancouver for a few days, attending a conference.
Over a cup of coffee my friend, who is a professor of anthropology, was telling me about his recent experiences in visiting various very diverse churches and synagogues that happen to be LGTBetc centred or based, and particularly began to regale me about a couple of places here in Vancouver and in New York where the human diversity was nothing short of amazing, especially the racial diversity that included outlandishly tall transwomen of colour, and so forth.
We had been already talking at length about diversity and the queer community when I mentioned something about a transwoman in an Anglican parish church I was attending a few years ago. She seemed to had become particularly incensed at me because I didn't go all the way in accepting her purported self-identity. As seems to be true for a lot of trans people, it wasn't quite enough for her that I should simply accept that she perceives herself as a woman and then move on to talk about other and perhaps more interesting matters, but that I actually must believe as strongly and fervently as she does that she is a woman, every bit as much a woman as any cis female who was born a biological female and will die a biological female. While I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, what I didn't tell her was this is a leap that I am simply unwilling and unable to take, given that my belief is that our DNA never lies, and neither do our chromosomes. By the same token, I also accept that gender identity is decidedly different from biological sex, and I have absolutely no trouble with a person who has gender dysphoria opting to transition to the gender that they identify as. And other semantics.
Where I see a bit of a red flag in this and other conversations I have had seems to be around a kind of narcissism that appears to harbour itself in our Canadian values of diversity, and I am concerned that this is what is preventing us from moving forward. Referencing again the church where I met this trans woman, there was a particular pride that the good parishioners there often appeared to be taking in their diversity. Sometimes on the Sunday bulletin would appear a rather sweet drawing of persons of all races, classes and sexualities and genders (all appearing rather as twee stereotypes or caricatures) all holding hands and dancing in a circle. I did rather like the image, even if there was something just a little bit off-putting about it, and now I think I have finally identified the little fly in this jar of ointment. As well as appearing as twee caricatures, even though everyone in the illustration was holding hands and smiling, no one appeared to be looking at anyone else. They each appeared as the star of their own little Broadway show, the centre of their own little universe, which also squares with my impression and experience and eventual lack of success in ever socially integrating with that particular smug little congregation.
Following my visit with my friend, which included being introduced to a colleague of his, who also (with some friendly gesturing from my friend) took interest in the contents of my sketchbook), I was walking home in the early dark of late November, and came across a young street man, likely with addictions and maybe a mental illness as well, trying to break into a parking meter, allegedly to steal coins to buy something for his drug habit. The first thing I noticed was how alone he must be, and how isolated he must feel from the rest of the community. This doesn't say a lot for the rest of us, by the way, given how excluding and isolating most middle class Canadians tend to be anyway, despite all our lovely language about diversity and inclusivity.
When I got home, after dinner, I could hear the manic and frenzied screams coming from a woman who lives in the building next door to my apartment. I know nothing about this person, have never seen or met her, and her manic screeching and squealing could easily wake the dead. But I have compassion for this person, as annoying as I find her behaviour. She is screaming out of the depths of her intense pain, grief and trauma. She is screaming out of her intense loneliness and experience of absolute isolation. Or that's how I imagine her, anyway.
This also reminds me of a conversation I had recently with one of my clients, We were musing together on how one of the key factors in the deterioration of one's mental health and wellness is often in how increasingly isolated they become, as they become consumed 'by the experience of life as having for them no meaningful sense of belonging, purpose or participation.
This brings me back again to the idea of how do we get beyond simple diversity? How do we move beyond celebrating diversity as a consummate value, to channelling our diversity as a way of making us more cohesive and more part of one another's lives? Does anyone here know what a circle jerk is? It is when a group of men are standing in a circle masturbating. This rather inappropriate metaphor could actually be very appropriate to the way that a lot of Canadians do diversity. It is as though we are all standing together, all proud and glowing in our turbans, our kippahs, our hijabs, our surgically reassigned bodies, or whatever identifying traits make us unique and special, and well, we're not really interacting. We are simply each strutting our stuff. Each singing our own tune in our own language "I am special, I am special, look at me, look at me. I am very special, yes so very special. You will see. You will see."
I could even be justly accused of doing the same thing with my art, when I am showing my work, or especially when I am drawing in my sketchbook inside a coffee shop or other public space. Except for one salient little detail. I have become so used to making art wherever I might happen to be, that I don't usually even know, or notice that other people might be noticing, and really, I often feel genuine surprise and sometimes a little discomfort when I notice strangers looking my way as I am filling in the details of a particularly good representation of a tropical bird or a flower. Then I have to remind myself, oh, I'm making art in public, some people, anyway are going to notice. Duh. And when someone actually stops by to comment, I really don't care if they want to compliment my work, because really I'm more interested in hearing and learning about them and their lives, and if doing art in public can be used to facilitate healthy social connection, then I'm all for it. I don't want to be singled out for attention, but I do like the idea of connecting with people.
We have to get beyond mere diversity as virtue signalling and start working harder at connecting and at inviting into the circle and widening the circle all who live outside of the circle, or people who just have to live outside. Which is to say the homeless and the very poor. But we have been so blinded and brainwashed by hardcore economic capitalism and competition and the various myths and lies about individualism that it is still perennially difficult and almost impossible for many Canadians to reach beyond our own enculturated reserve in order to touch other people's lives, and by letting ourselves be touched by the lives of others.
This is why I say hi to strangers. It isn't much. ut it's a start. Not everyone responds, but most do, and it's almost always positive. It gets my head out of my rear end long enough to, hopefully and cheerfully encourage the rest of us to do the same, Gentle Reader. We have to start integrating more and including one another more in our lives, no matter how busy we think we are. Our future survival as a culture and as a species is going to depend on this. Good night, ducks, I'm going back to bed now.
First I will mention here how I came about thinking of diversity when I really should be lying in bed and waiting for the sleep divinity to come do their thing by me. I was having a visit this afternoon with a friend who lives overseas. We have known each other for a long time, well over a decade, having first met when he was here in Vancouver on an extended sabbatical. He is back in Vancouver for a few days, attending a conference.
Over a cup of coffee my friend, who is a professor of anthropology, was telling me about his recent experiences in visiting various very diverse churches and synagogues that happen to be LGTBetc centred or based, and particularly began to regale me about a couple of places here in Vancouver and in New York where the human diversity was nothing short of amazing, especially the racial diversity that included outlandishly tall transwomen of colour, and so forth.
We had been already talking at length about diversity and the queer community when I mentioned something about a transwoman in an Anglican parish church I was attending a few years ago. She seemed to had become particularly incensed at me because I didn't go all the way in accepting her purported self-identity. As seems to be true for a lot of trans people, it wasn't quite enough for her that I should simply accept that she perceives herself as a woman and then move on to talk about other and perhaps more interesting matters, but that I actually must believe as strongly and fervently as she does that she is a woman, every bit as much a woman as any cis female who was born a biological female and will die a biological female. While I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, what I didn't tell her was this is a leap that I am simply unwilling and unable to take, given that my belief is that our DNA never lies, and neither do our chromosomes. By the same token, I also accept that gender identity is decidedly different from biological sex, and I have absolutely no trouble with a person who has gender dysphoria opting to transition to the gender that they identify as. And other semantics.
Where I see a bit of a red flag in this and other conversations I have had seems to be around a kind of narcissism that appears to harbour itself in our Canadian values of diversity, and I am concerned that this is what is preventing us from moving forward. Referencing again the church where I met this trans woman, there was a particular pride that the good parishioners there often appeared to be taking in their diversity. Sometimes on the Sunday bulletin would appear a rather sweet drawing of persons of all races, classes and sexualities and genders (all appearing rather as twee stereotypes or caricatures) all holding hands and dancing in a circle. I did rather like the image, even if there was something just a little bit off-putting about it, and now I think I have finally identified the little fly in this jar of ointment. As well as appearing as twee caricatures, even though everyone in the illustration was holding hands and smiling, no one appeared to be looking at anyone else. They each appeared as the star of their own little Broadway show, the centre of their own little universe, which also squares with my impression and experience and eventual lack of success in ever socially integrating with that particular smug little congregation.
Following my visit with my friend, which included being introduced to a colleague of his, who also (with some friendly gesturing from my friend) took interest in the contents of my sketchbook), I was walking home in the early dark of late November, and came across a young street man, likely with addictions and maybe a mental illness as well, trying to break into a parking meter, allegedly to steal coins to buy something for his drug habit. The first thing I noticed was how alone he must be, and how isolated he must feel from the rest of the community. This doesn't say a lot for the rest of us, by the way, given how excluding and isolating most middle class Canadians tend to be anyway, despite all our lovely language about diversity and inclusivity.
When I got home, after dinner, I could hear the manic and frenzied screams coming from a woman who lives in the building next door to my apartment. I know nothing about this person, have never seen or met her, and her manic screeching and squealing could easily wake the dead. But I have compassion for this person, as annoying as I find her behaviour. She is screaming out of the depths of her intense pain, grief and trauma. She is screaming out of her intense loneliness and experience of absolute isolation. Or that's how I imagine her, anyway.
This also reminds me of a conversation I had recently with one of my clients, We were musing together on how one of the key factors in the deterioration of one's mental health and wellness is often in how increasingly isolated they become, as they become consumed 'by the experience of life as having for them no meaningful sense of belonging, purpose or participation.
This brings me back again to the idea of how do we get beyond simple diversity? How do we move beyond celebrating diversity as a consummate value, to channelling our diversity as a way of making us more cohesive and more part of one another's lives? Does anyone here know what a circle jerk is? It is when a group of men are standing in a circle masturbating. This rather inappropriate metaphor could actually be very appropriate to the way that a lot of Canadians do diversity. It is as though we are all standing together, all proud and glowing in our turbans, our kippahs, our hijabs, our surgically reassigned bodies, or whatever identifying traits make us unique and special, and well, we're not really interacting. We are simply each strutting our stuff. Each singing our own tune in our own language "I am special, I am special, look at me, look at me. I am very special, yes so very special. You will see. You will see."
I could even be justly accused of doing the same thing with my art, when I am showing my work, or especially when I am drawing in my sketchbook inside a coffee shop or other public space. Except for one salient little detail. I have become so used to making art wherever I might happen to be, that I don't usually even know, or notice that other people might be noticing, and really, I often feel genuine surprise and sometimes a little discomfort when I notice strangers looking my way as I am filling in the details of a particularly good representation of a tropical bird or a flower. Then I have to remind myself, oh, I'm making art in public, some people, anyway are going to notice. Duh. And when someone actually stops by to comment, I really don't care if they want to compliment my work, because really I'm more interested in hearing and learning about them and their lives, and if doing art in public can be used to facilitate healthy social connection, then I'm all for it. I don't want to be singled out for attention, but I do like the idea of connecting with people.
We have to get beyond mere diversity as virtue signalling and start working harder at connecting and at inviting into the circle and widening the circle all who live outside of the circle, or people who just have to live outside. Which is to say the homeless and the very poor. But we have been so blinded and brainwashed by hardcore economic capitalism and competition and the various myths and lies about individualism that it is still perennially difficult and almost impossible for many Canadians to reach beyond our own enculturated reserve in order to touch other people's lives, and by letting ourselves be touched by the lives of others.
This is why I say hi to strangers. It isn't much. ut it's a start. Not everyone responds, but most do, and it's almost always positive. It gets my head out of my rear end long enough to, hopefully and cheerfully encourage the rest of us to do the same, Gentle Reader. We have to start integrating more and including one another more in our lives, no matter how busy we think we are. Our future survival as a culture and as a species is going to depend on this. Good night, ducks, I'm going back to bed now.
Friday 22 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 26
I really have trouble with what is called identity politics. It is too simplistic and I think this can really facilitate intellectual laziness. For example, we all know how much racial profiling has been in the news lately. So has mental illness. So, if we are going to go with identity politics, then of course we are going to think of people of colour as occupying one category, and persons who are black, indigenous, Asian, brown, etcetera, as each occupying their own subcategories. Likewise LGBTQetc., with gay men, lesbians, and trans people each inhabiting their own subcategory. It is also neat and clean. Easy-peasy. We are protected from having to think. The disabled have their own category, as do the mentally ill, as do the poor, and last but not least, as also do women. All of those categories, of course, overlap. We have queer people who might also be poor, or people of colour, or mentally ill, and we have mentally ill people who might also be women, and you get the picture.
Socially categorizing persons according to their visible differences is simply a form of politically correct, post modernist apartheid. By doing this we are forgetting the one, important and precious factor that binds and unites us all together: OUR SHARED AND COLLECTIVE HUMANITY!!!!! That's right, Gentle Reader, all in upper case capitals and with exclamation points, just so you won't happen to forget. That is what the rest of us all have in common with the socially sanctioned enemy of our times, the cis binary heterosexual white male. The enemy. But also human beings, who happen to make up, if not the majority, then a very substantial minority of our human demographic. I am not making any apology here for them, by the way, and I acknowledge here that a lot of the social and historical problems we have to live with are largely thanks to straight white males.
By the same token, I am not about to buy into the fatuous and male-bashing nonsense of Canadian journalist Sally Armstrong, when during her CBC Massey Lectures this month, "Power Shift, the Longest Revolution" she kept tumbling back into that kind of lazy thinking where she was trying to whitewash male-bashing with thoughtful presentations about both genders (though methinks there are more than two!) working together for the advancement of women. Meanwhile, she simply indulged in the usual anti-male hate-mongering for which second wave feminists are famous. However, if you were to listen to Margaret McMillan, a woman who just seems to be a much better skilled thinker, talking about gender and history and war and violence, it is all far more nuanced. According to Ms. McMillan, more women in power is not going to make the world a more peaceful place and one has only to think of the violent and blood-letting legacies of such leaders, all women, as Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and others, and one will find that their gender did nothing at all to mitigate the war-likeness and policies of institutional violence of any of their countries, and they actually appeared quite enthusiastic at promoting war and violence as measures for advancing the state. And even though, like many of you, I also regret that Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the US presidency to the execrable Dump, while she was Secretary of State she fully promoted the bombing of innocent civilians in Libya.
Gentle Reader, before you dust off your song sheets for Kumbaya, please take note. Replacing patriarchy with matriarchy is going to do absolute squat for making the world a more peaceful place. Women do not contain an inborn magic or inherited mana that makes them morally superior to men. The problem has not been patriarchy. The problem has been power and the way it is used and abused. Men in positions of power are hideous, ugly, violent, selfish and completely psychopathic. So are women, when they have that kind of power. It isn't about gender, it is about human weakness and our lack of ethics and moral compass.
For those of you questioning my credentials, in other pages I have already identified as a non cis, non binary male, poor, queer, asexual, androgynous...and a feminist. I was also raised by a physically violent mother, so please don't presume to educate me about male violence! Here's an example, from just last Wednesday, of just how things can overlap. I was sitting in a cafe on Commercial Drive, happily working on a drawing in my sketchbook. Seated nearby was a young white male (presumably cis binary, but who only knows, and I wasn't about to ask!). He did appear poor and to be living with a mental illness, as he just sat alone at the table staring blankly into space. I was needing to leave my table to use the washroom, but given the indifferent staff in this coffee shop (Continental Coffee, go there at your risk), I felt nervous about leaving my art materials and other possessions unprotected. I wasn't expecting this guy to steal from me, but I know in my own professional experience with economically marginalized people, and with mental health challenges, that theft can be a common problem, and I wasn't wanting to set myself up. A young black man came in and sat down at the table between us. We said hi to each other and as he was taking out his laptop I asked him to watch my belongs for me while I was in the washroom, and he gladly complied.
Now this picture is full of irony, when you think of how many persons of colour get racially profiled as potential thieves and criminals. But I don't racialize people. On the other hand, neither am I about to judge mentally ill people (I am a mental health worker, by the way), or poor people as thieves. However, I tend to go with my gut, with my intuition, and sometimes one has to make unpleasant decisions in order to err on the side of safety. Still, all three of us are biological males, and for different reasons, and perhaps some similar ones, we are all also socially marginalized. We are all in the same boat and we really have to start thinking up and devising ways of working together instead of demonizing one another. Maybe not so easy, but it has to be done.
Socially categorizing persons according to their visible differences is simply a form of politically correct, post modernist apartheid. By doing this we are forgetting the one, important and precious factor that binds and unites us all together: OUR SHARED AND COLLECTIVE HUMANITY!!!!! That's right, Gentle Reader, all in upper case capitals and with exclamation points, just so you won't happen to forget. That is what the rest of us all have in common with the socially sanctioned enemy of our times, the cis binary heterosexual white male. The enemy. But also human beings, who happen to make up, if not the majority, then a very substantial minority of our human demographic. I am not making any apology here for them, by the way, and I acknowledge here that a lot of the social and historical problems we have to live with are largely thanks to straight white males.
By the same token, I am not about to buy into the fatuous and male-bashing nonsense of Canadian journalist Sally Armstrong, when during her CBC Massey Lectures this month, "Power Shift, the Longest Revolution" she kept tumbling back into that kind of lazy thinking where she was trying to whitewash male-bashing with thoughtful presentations about both genders (though methinks there are more than two!) working together for the advancement of women. Meanwhile, she simply indulged in the usual anti-male hate-mongering for which second wave feminists are famous. However, if you were to listen to Margaret McMillan, a woman who just seems to be a much better skilled thinker, talking about gender and history and war and violence, it is all far more nuanced. According to Ms. McMillan, more women in power is not going to make the world a more peaceful place and one has only to think of the violent and blood-letting legacies of such leaders, all women, as Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and others, and one will find that their gender did nothing at all to mitigate the war-likeness and policies of institutional violence of any of their countries, and they actually appeared quite enthusiastic at promoting war and violence as measures for advancing the state. And even though, like many of you, I also regret that Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the US presidency to the execrable Dump, while she was Secretary of State she fully promoted the bombing of innocent civilians in Libya.
Gentle Reader, before you dust off your song sheets for Kumbaya, please take note. Replacing patriarchy with matriarchy is going to do absolute squat for making the world a more peaceful place. Women do not contain an inborn magic or inherited mana that makes them morally superior to men. The problem has not been patriarchy. The problem has been power and the way it is used and abused. Men in positions of power are hideous, ugly, violent, selfish and completely psychopathic. So are women, when they have that kind of power. It isn't about gender, it is about human weakness and our lack of ethics and moral compass.
For those of you questioning my credentials, in other pages I have already identified as a non cis, non binary male, poor, queer, asexual, androgynous...and a feminist. I was also raised by a physically violent mother, so please don't presume to educate me about male violence! Here's an example, from just last Wednesday, of just how things can overlap. I was sitting in a cafe on Commercial Drive, happily working on a drawing in my sketchbook. Seated nearby was a young white male (presumably cis binary, but who only knows, and I wasn't about to ask!). He did appear poor and to be living with a mental illness, as he just sat alone at the table staring blankly into space. I was needing to leave my table to use the washroom, but given the indifferent staff in this coffee shop (Continental Coffee, go there at your risk), I felt nervous about leaving my art materials and other possessions unprotected. I wasn't expecting this guy to steal from me, but I know in my own professional experience with economically marginalized people, and with mental health challenges, that theft can be a common problem, and I wasn't wanting to set myself up. A young black man came in and sat down at the table between us. We said hi to each other and as he was taking out his laptop I asked him to watch my belongs for me while I was in the washroom, and he gladly complied.
Now this picture is full of irony, when you think of how many persons of colour get racially profiled as potential thieves and criminals. But I don't racialize people. On the other hand, neither am I about to judge mentally ill people (I am a mental health worker, by the way), or poor people as thieves. However, I tend to go with my gut, with my intuition, and sometimes one has to make unpleasant decisions in order to err on the side of safety. Still, all three of us are biological males, and for different reasons, and perhaps some similar ones, we are all also socially marginalized. We are all in the same boat and we really have to start thinking up and devising ways of working together instead of demonizing one another. Maybe not so easy, but it has to be done.
Thursday 21 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 25
I got a nice little sucker punch yesterday when I arrived home from work. Revenue Canada has decided to audit me, so I have been reassessed as owing them over a thousand dollars for my Canada Pension contribution. Now this could all be a scam related to phone calls and subsequent conversations I had with an alleged representative, but everything has a ring of authenticity, plus, he asked only the appropriate questions, gave information and suggestions that only insiders at Canada Revenue would know, and did not ask for or demand any money, nor were threats made. He also at first, on my request on a voice mail message, communicated with me by mail, on all the appropriate stationery, using all the appropriate terminology.So far so good. Now, ten days later or so, I have this letter telling me to pay up in two weeks or they start charging me interest. They have also recommended that I could pay through my bank, which is what I did last year. That is actually the clincher for me, because they did not provide me with any account number, since this is something the bank provides as a direct service to the government. So, it's all pretty watertight, airtight even. I know that when I go to the bank today or tomorrow that they will take the payment from my chequing account and directly transfer it to Revenue Canada. Easy-Peasy, or as we say in Spanish, pan comido.
It has been rather shocking news, because it still has come suddenly and almost unexpectedly, though I really should have been expecting this after my communications with the Revenue Canada agent, and it has caused me some anxiety and a bit of a troubled night for sleep as I have been working out the math. You see, I already thought I was quite flush with extra money for this extended trip I am planning to Latin America, Colombia and Costa Rica, respectively. I can still do it okay. My assets are some $3500 above what they were last year at this time. paying this debt to Revenue Canada will still leave me an extra $2500, and if I factor in the extra $500 I will be spending in Colombia for three weeks before taking my usual month in Costa Rica, then, at the end of the day, I will still have an extra $2000 in assets compared to a year ago at the time when I will have arrived home in early April. There is the possibility that I might have to take a small sum from my tax-free savings account to mitigate any shortfall, but that is really a tiny sacrifice.
So, then, why have I been upset over this? Quite simply, like most people, I naturally assume that the money I earn is going to be all mine, and that I am merely doing the government a favour by allowing them to steal some of my hard-earned money, which really is rightfully mine, mine, ALL MINE!!!!! my Precioussssss! (to quote Gollum) That is certainly how I have come to understand the thinking of the rich burghers in Shaughnessy Heights who have adorned their front gardens with those ugly red, black and white signe, huge signs, screaming out in protest against the government for imposing on them even a tiny extra bit of property tax in order to help increase government revenues that pay for infrastructure and social and health services and education. Now, I am much poorer than those lovely rich people, and in many ways it's like comparing apples to oranges, but by the same token, like them, I can afford to pay this tax. It is my obligation, and in a way it is also my basic human right, since in this regard I am privileged, 1: that I can afford to pay this kind of tax, and 2: that I have this small opportunity to share in and contribute to the collective wellbeing.
Receiving news of this tax debt for me is really nothing less than an opportunity for me to re-envision how I perceive my finances. They are not my finances. It is not my money. I have stewardship over this income of mine, yes, to adequately feed, shelter and clothe myself, but also, before even considering what luxuries or fun and enjoyable things or activities I am going to blow the rest on, to give back to the very community that supports and sustains me. Even though I am not really in a financial position to do this in my church, (and fortunately we're rolling in dough right now, so really they don't need anything from me), at least I can go on paying my own public share without whining, while thanking God for yet another opportunity to cut myself loose from the very chains that bind us to this earthly life.
It has been rather shocking news, because it still has come suddenly and almost unexpectedly, though I really should have been expecting this after my communications with the Revenue Canada agent, and it has caused me some anxiety and a bit of a troubled night for sleep as I have been working out the math. You see, I already thought I was quite flush with extra money for this extended trip I am planning to Latin America, Colombia and Costa Rica, respectively. I can still do it okay. My assets are some $3500 above what they were last year at this time. paying this debt to Revenue Canada will still leave me an extra $2500, and if I factor in the extra $500 I will be spending in Colombia for three weeks before taking my usual month in Costa Rica, then, at the end of the day, I will still have an extra $2000 in assets compared to a year ago at the time when I will have arrived home in early April. There is the possibility that I might have to take a small sum from my tax-free savings account to mitigate any shortfall, but that is really a tiny sacrifice.
So, then, why have I been upset over this? Quite simply, like most people, I naturally assume that the money I earn is going to be all mine, and that I am merely doing the government a favour by allowing them to steal some of my hard-earned money, which really is rightfully mine, mine, ALL MINE!!!!! my Precioussssss! (to quote Gollum) That is certainly how I have come to understand the thinking of the rich burghers in Shaughnessy Heights who have adorned their front gardens with those ugly red, black and white signe, huge signs, screaming out in protest against the government for imposing on them even a tiny extra bit of property tax in order to help increase government revenues that pay for infrastructure and social and health services and education. Now, I am much poorer than those lovely rich people, and in many ways it's like comparing apples to oranges, but by the same token, like them, I can afford to pay this tax. It is my obligation, and in a way it is also my basic human right, since in this regard I am privileged, 1: that I can afford to pay this kind of tax, and 2: that I have this small opportunity to share in and contribute to the collective wellbeing.
Receiving news of this tax debt for me is really nothing less than an opportunity for me to re-envision how I perceive my finances. They are not my finances. It is not my money. I have stewardship over this income of mine, yes, to adequately feed, shelter and clothe myself, but also, before even considering what luxuries or fun and enjoyable things or activities I am going to blow the rest on, to give back to the very community that supports and sustains me. Even though I am not really in a financial position to do this in my church, (and fortunately we're rolling in dough right now, so really they don't need anything from me), at least I can go on paying my own public share without whining, while thanking God for yet another opportunity to cut myself loose from the very chains that bind us to this earthly life.
Wednesday 20 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 24
Yesterday, Gentle Reader, you read the bitter and sour on these pages. This morning, shall we add a little sugar and honey? I was having a reasonably involved morning and early afternoon with my clients until things ended rather abruptly at one in the afternoon, and I was feeling a little bit awkward at having all this extra time left to fill in the afternoon. I did okay, but did end up staying home, where I had paperwork, and then some research work that needed to be done on Mexican artists, since that is the series of themes for future art classes I will be facilitating, should they ever be revived (and fortunately, I'm still getting paid for it), as well as running interference with one of my building managers and a couple of supervisors by phone and email regarding domestic and work matters. The building manager did finally come in to look at my kitchen faucet, and things at work are more or less all hunky dory.
I believe I was just relaxing before starting dinner, and taking a break from the research work. I had snacked already on a banana, a dish of low fat vanilla yogurt, and now I was enjoying some roasted unsalted cashews and a cup of homemade hot chocolate, while listening to classical music. All simple and ordinary enough, perhaps a bit excessively twee. then it hit me. I am living in absolute luxury. Even though I am a low-income worker living in government-subsidized housing I have at my fingertips, such food that would have been even beyond the reach of kings and princes in an earlier time, while enjoying the ministrations of staff in my building to help facilitate my ability to go on living here.
This morning, I can type out this boring screed on a little machine the size of a sketchbook, and when I press publish, it will be read by people all over the world. On this same little device, later today, I will be chatting with a friend who lives in Colombia. If his camera is finally working, then we will also actually see each other,, though he can still see me, given that my laptop camera functions quite well.
Last night, during and following dinner, I binge-watched two episodes of the Murdoch Mysteries, on this same laptop, then listened to interesting news items on the radio, followed by a presentation about alternatives to economic capitalism for an hour, the link to which I sent to my other, and very dear, friend who lives in Colombia, which he received seconds after I sent it and will likely be listening to it this morning as part of his English practice and personal enlightenment.
Even if the world is coming to an end (and maybe it isn't!), I live in a warm, safe and pleasant apartment, in a beautiful city, and I have meaningful work, good friends, access to art materials, books and reading and resources for improving my Spanish, while enjoying good physical and mental health. And the Holy One, God, is always near. What's there not to love, to be totally thankful for! Will this all end? All things come to an end. But how? Will we beat climate change? That is an uncertainty and it's going to be a huge uphill battle, but part of the joy is in not giving up the fight. I personally think we're going to be okay. While all the scientific research and models paint a dire and frightening picture, there are times when even science isn't going to get it right, because our understanding is always going to be substantially less than perfect. My guess is that things are going to get worse before they get better, but ultimately, things are going to get better, and we re going to have to fight for it.
We will keep hoping, and we will keep fighting, and we are not going to barter off our joy.
I believe I was just relaxing before starting dinner, and taking a break from the research work. I had snacked already on a banana, a dish of low fat vanilla yogurt, and now I was enjoying some roasted unsalted cashews and a cup of homemade hot chocolate, while listening to classical music. All simple and ordinary enough, perhaps a bit excessively twee. then it hit me. I am living in absolute luxury. Even though I am a low-income worker living in government-subsidized housing I have at my fingertips, such food that would have been even beyond the reach of kings and princes in an earlier time, while enjoying the ministrations of staff in my building to help facilitate my ability to go on living here.
This morning, I can type out this boring screed on a little machine the size of a sketchbook, and when I press publish, it will be read by people all over the world. On this same little device, later today, I will be chatting with a friend who lives in Colombia. If his camera is finally working, then we will also actually see each other,, though he can still see me, given that my laptop camera functions quite well.
Last night, during and following dinner, I binge-watched two episodes of the Murdoch Mysteries, on this same laptop, then listened to interesting news items on the radio, followed by a presentation about alternatives to economic capitalism for an hour, the link to which I sent to my other, and very dear, friend who lives in Colombia, which he received seconds after I sent it and will likely be listening to it this morning as part of his English practice and personal enlightenment.
Even if the world is coming to an end (and maybe it isn't!), I live in a warm, safe and pleasant apartment, in a beautiful city, and I have meaningful work, good friends, access to art materials, books and reading and resources for improving my Spanish, while enjoying good physical and mental health. And the Holy One, God, is always near. What's there not to love, to be totally thankful for! Will this all end? All things come to an end. But how? Will we beat climate change? That is an uncertainty and it's going to be a huge uphill battle, but part of the joy is in not giving up the fight. I personally think we're going to be okay. While all the scientific research and models paint a dire and frightening picture, there are times when even science isn't going to get it right, because our understanding is always going to be substantially less than perfect. My guess is that things are going to get worse before they get better, but ultimately, things are going to get better, and we re going to have to fight for it.
We will keep hoping, and we will keep fighting, and we are not going to barter off our joy.
Tuesday 19 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 23
This is going to be an interesting time for keeping our heads above water. It really was scandalously easy when I was eighteen and starting out on my own. Even though it was already difficult convincing an employer to hire me, given my youth and lack of skills, most workplaces provided training and if you weren't happy there you could quit and if you had even a couple of months of work under your belt you would be good for six months or more of Unemployment Enjoyment while pretending to look for another job. It wasn't always cake, but it was still rather sweet. Then our governments began tinkering with things, especially with unemployment insurance, made it harder to apply for, harder to get, gave us less money, and before we knew it, an awful lot of people were having to go on welfare, which paid a lot less. Then poor-bashing governments got elected in the provinces and they decided to kick everyone off of welfare and force them into low-paying jobs that would get them nowhere, and now we have a situation that is already quite frightening and hellish. Now that housing has become so deplorably expensive, this makes life in Vancouver practically untenable. So, if you are lucky enough to have a place you can afford (as I am), then you still have to oh so carefully manage your employment strategies so that you will not end up out of work and having to beg on the streets, because that has become the one and only option now that even welfare is hard to get, and even if you are on social assistance, you are not going to have enough money to survive.
As a low-income soon to be senior, who will soon be a low-income pensioner, I can only reflect on how stupid this country Canada really is, and how stupidly cruel our government and society still are towards people who are economically vulnerable, and there is no indication that things are going to improve. We have wealthy people galore in this country and they all cry, scream and whinge oh so bitterly about having to pay even a token increase of taxes so that people like me can at least afford to eat properly. They don't think they owe us. However, we have had to cope with low-paying jobs without benefits and short-term low-paying contracts to help serve the needs of those same rich bastards. Listen, rich pond-scum, you do so owe us. You owe me. I have worked most of these last forty years taking care of your relatives and colleagues and friends in home care and mental health work, wiping their stinky asses, feeding them, helping them walk, comforting them and their loved ones and all for less than a living fucking wage. And just like the sales staff in Shoppers Drug mart or in Indigo Books, who have to toil for less than a decent wage for your service, and entertainment and what do we get? Where is our reward?
Our governments and the conservative morons who elect them have been chronically delinquent in helping us and we need better, and we deserve better because we are also part of this country and our lives, work and services have done more than a lot to serve your needs so you all had sure as hell better start paying up. Yes you can afford it. Liars!!!!!
As a low-income soon to be senior, who will soon be a low-income pensioner, I can only reflect on how stupid this country Canada really is, and how stupidly cruel our government and society still are towards people who are economically vulnerable, and there is no indication that things are going to improve. We have wealthy people galore in this country and they all cry, scream and whinge oh so bitterly about having to pay even a token increase of taxes so that people like me can at least afford to eat properly. They don't think they owe us. However, we have had to cope with low-paying jobs without benefits and short-term low-paying contracts to help serve the needs of those same rich bastards. Listen, rich pond-scum, you do so owe us. You owe me. I have worked most of these last forty years taking care of your relatives and colleagues and friends in home care and mental health work, wiping their stinky asses, feeding them, helping them walk, comforting them and their loved ones and all for less than a living fucking wage. And just like the sales staff in Shoppers Drug mart or in Indigo Books, who have to toil for less than a decent wage for your service, and entertainment and what do we get? Where is our reward?
Our governments and the conservative morons who elect them have been chronically delinquent in helping us and we need better, and we deserve better because we are also part of this country and our lives, work and services have done more than a lot to serve your needs so you all had sure as hell better start paying up. Yes you can afford it. Liars!!!!!
Monday 18 November 2019
It´s All Performance Art 22
Well, Gentle Reader. It looks like the extended love-in between Boomer parents and their darling and perfect Millennial babies has finally come to an end. And now, behold, the Generation Gap, reinvented! Of course, this has been all rather late in coming, given that when I was a kid we were already in full and open rebellion against our own horrible parents as soon as we turned fourteen. That was before the days of helicopter-parenting, and kids were totally free-range, and yes, we were vulnerable, yes we had adventures, yes we were at risk, and yes, we grew and matured rather fast thanks to all that freedom from neurotic and anxious parents. At that age I was already a teenage hippy smoking pot and learning everything I could about where I would fit in alternative and underground counterculture, so I was meeting people, hitch-hiking around and reading underground newspapers to educate myself about the environment, women's rights, queer rights, anti-capitalism, and all sorts of progressive causes that were at one time considered radical, subversive and borderline illegal. We were all resisting war, resisting the Man, taking drugs, listening to outrageous music, dressing outrageously, and dancing and partying naked. We were once young, wild and radical. And many of us were also thinking. And writing. And educating. And even now that we-re in our sixties and seventies, there are still a good number of Boomers who have not sold out on our original values, and I for one rather resent being lumped in with the selfish sellouts by Millennials who have still not learned how to think independently.
And not all Millennials are whining hyper-neurasthenic little snowflakes, but enough of them are. And as for the Boomer category, we are not all Boomers. Somewhere in the mid-fifties, a subcategory of Boomer was born, 1955 or so, and we actually are called Generation Jones. The Boomers gave the world Woodstock. We gave you guys punk rock. When I came of age in the mid-seventies, all the low hanging fruit had already been picked, eaten and digested by our elder Boomer siblings, and now we had to avoid stepping in the resulting shit.
Not all of us vote conservative. Not all of us are sitting on fat home equity piggy banks. In fact, some us, like me, live in social housing. a lot of us embrace environmental causes and are working against climate change. And some of us are too old to be Boomers. Ever hear of David Suzuki? Stop blaming all of us for planet and environmental destruction, because we were also trying to knock sense into the heads of your grandparents' generation years before any of you spoiled little mucous drippers were so much as a twinkle in your daddy's eye! Stop painting us with the same brush, Snowflakes!
Instead of blaming us for everything, maybe try to understand that we were every bit as weak and imperfect as your grandparents, our own moms and dads whom we have finally started to forgive, and you are also going to prove to be every bit as weak and imperfect aqs we were. The problems of this earth and planet are so huge and complex that by the time we got on the train it was already out of control. Yes, a lot of us did sell out, especially to corporate and capitalist interests, and so did our parents, and so did a lot of Gen X people and so are some Millennials. This kneejerk blame game is simply that historical dynamic that happens with every succeeding generation, and the younger are always going to blame their problems on their elders, just like we did to our parents, and just like they did to their parents, and the beat goes on.
Another thing: The younger generations are always going to resent and envy their elders for their wisdom and toughness, every bit as much as we are going to envy the younger for their beauty, youth and boundless energy. I hope I am still around to hear the children of Millennials, and what they are going to have to say about their mommies and daddies. I can hardly wait. I will be in my nineties, by then, and I look forward to seeing you Snowflakes getting your own back. Suck it up, Snowflake!
And not all Millennials are whining hyper-neurasthenic little snowflakes, but enough of them are. And as for the Boomer category, we are not all Boomers. Somewhere in the mid-fifties, a subcategory of Boomer was born, 1955 or so, and we actually are called Generation Jones. The Boomers gave the world Woodstock. We gave you guys punk rock. When I came of age in the mid-seventies, all the low hanging fruit had already been picked, eaten and digested by our elder Boomer siblings, and now we had to avoid stepping in the resulting shit.
Not all of us vote conservative. Not all of us are sitting on fat home equity piggy banks. In fact, some us, like me, live in social housing. a lot of us embrace environmental causes and are working against climate change. And some of us are too old to be Boomers. Ever hear of David Suzuki? Stop blaming all of us for planet and environmental destruction, because we were also trying to knock sense into the heads of your grandparents' generation years before any of you spoiled little mucous drippers were so much as a twinkle in your daddy's eye! Stop painting us with the same brush, Snowflakes!
Instead of blaming us for everything, maybe try to understand that we were every bit as weak and imperfect as your grandparents, our own moms and dads whom we have finally started to forgive, and you are also going to prove to be every bit as weak and imperfect aqs we were. The problems of this earth and planet are so huge and complex that by the time we got on the train it was already out of control. Yes, a lot of us did sell out, especially to corporate and capitalist interests, and so did our parents, and so did a lot of Gen X people and so are some Millennials. This kneejerk blame game is simply that historical dynamic that happens with every succeeding generation, and the younger are always going to blame their problems on their elders, just like we did to our parents, and just like they did to their parents, and the beat goes on.
Another thing: The younger generations are always going to resent and envy their elders for their wisdom and toughness, every bit as much as we are going to envy the younger for their beauty, youth and boundless energy. I hope I am still around to hear the children of Millennials, and what they are going to have to say about their mommies and daddies. I can hardly wait. I will be in my nineties, by then, and I look forward to seeing you Snowflakes getting your own back. Suck it up, Snowflake!
Sunday 17 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 21
We are moving towards late November soon, and already it is looking more like winter and less like fall, though the temperatures remain tolerable, at around ten or eleven degrees. It is raining a lot and there is flooding in some of the streets. A lot of people hate this weather, and generally this time of year in Vancouver. Even I sometimes think of November and the following winter months as a dreary and hard period that has to be somehow endured till we arrive at spring and the promise and then the fulness of new life and new life so abundant.
There is beauty in this season. It isn't just the remaining coloured leaves that still hang on rapidly denuding tree branches. There is a beauty in the desolation of November. I cannot define or identify it, but just yesterday the stark beauty of the first naked trees struck me with a fresh gentle force. Here's an idea, Gentle Reader:
Many people here, especially those who move to the Coast from drier climates, have trouble adjusting to November and the following winter months here. They complain that even if it was thirty below in Edmonton, at least it was sunny. Point taken. One who is not already used to this climate must work hard to embrace the dark, wet and barren reality that is November in this part of the world.
It can be especially hard if you are already homeless. If you already have the comfort of a home to live in where you can feel snug, smug and cozy with your hot cup of whatever and your lovely book, netflix or smartphone to divert you from a comfy sofa or armchair, especially if you have a fire roaring in the fireplace, or even a fireplace that fire can roar in, then of course this weather can feel cozy and even romantic. But if you are living on the street, in an emergency shelter, or couchsurfing between sympathetic and patient friends, then it becomes something rather different.
I remember, just after Christmas, when I was one of the hidden homeless, staying with various people, and how hard it was. It was raining, very hard, and the Christian friends who invited me to stay in their shared house with them capitulated when their roommate, the lease holder, turned vile and bitter against me. Even though there were thousands of dollars worth of my paintings in that house, the nasty idiot insisted that he didn't want a near-stranger alone in the house where he also had his expensive photography equipment. I was told that despite the ugly weather, I would have to fend for myself through the day, even if I couldn't afford to sit in a coffee shop (fortunately I did have a little pocket change). I will never forget or forgive this cruelty, even though long ago I forgave the people who mistreated me. But of course, we are no longer friends, and likely never will be.
Today we will do what we can to enjoy and celebrate the cool dark rainy weather and the barren and leafless trees, but we will do so from our place of privilege and dry clothes and dry feet, and maybe we can at least offer a thought and a prayer and something even better for the many who have no shelter on a dark, cold and wet day of November.
There is beauty in this season. It isn't just the remaining coloured leaves that still hang on rapidly denuding tree branches. There is a beauty in the desolation of November. I cannot define or identify it, but just yesterday the stark beauty of the first naked trees struck me with a fresh gentle force. Here's an idea, Gentle Reader:
Many people here, especially those who move to the Coast from drier climates, have trouble adjusting to November and the following winter months here. They complain that even if it was thirty below in Edmonton, at least it was sunny. Point taken. One who is not already used to this climate must work hard to embrace the dark, wet and barren reality that is November in this part of the world.
It can be especially hard if you are already homeless. If you already have the comfort of a home to live in where you can feel snug, smug and cozy with your hot cup of whatever and your lovely book, netflix or smartphone to divert you from a comfy sofa or armchair, especially if you have a fire roaring in the fireplace, or even a fireplace that fire can roar in, then of course this weather can feel cozy and even romantic. But if you are living on the street, in an emergency shelter, or couchsurfing between sympathetic and patient friends, then it becomes something rather different.
I remember, just after Christmas, when I was one of the hidden homeless, staying with various people, and how hard it was. It was raining, very hard, and the Christian friends who invited me to stay in their shared house with them capitulated when their roommate, the lease holder, turned vile and bitter against me. Even though there were thousands of dollars worth of my paintings in that house, the nasty idiot insisted that he didn't want a near-stranger alone in the house where he also had his expensive photography equipment. I was told that despite the ugly weather, I would have to fend for myself through the day, even if I couldn't afford to sit in a coffee shop (fortunately I did have a little pocket change). I will never forget or forgive this cruelty, even though long ago I forgave the people who mistreated me. But of course, we are no longer friends, and likely never will be.
Today we will do what we can to enjoy and celebrate the cool dark rainy weather and the barren and leafless trees, but we will do so from our place of privilege and dry clothes and dry feet, and maybe we can at least offer a thought and a prayer and something even better for the many who have no shelter on a dark, cold and wet day of November.
Saturday 16 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 20
I read an online article a friend sent to me about crows and socialization. It was suggested that the writer of the article was trying, or might be attempting to make crows seem like humans, but I didn't think so. Here is part of my response to my friend: "Interesting article. Don't see any evidence of anthropomorphism. i think a lot of studies have been done that suggest this to be true of humans, as for crows, but I think for us that would also depend on the types of bonds and connections. For example, living in a large, but anonymous and not friendly city like Vancouver, would definitely lead to some negative public health incomes (mental health, especially) , but when there also exist strong and positive social and family bonds then it is highly beneficial. That could also depend on other variables, such as sanitation, hygiene, availability of quiet and private space, etc. Of course, we are not crows and crows are not people,though there seem to be almost some alarmingly close similarities between our species, such that, I have come to believe that if we were birds, then we would most likely be crows. Of course,this is all speculation. I don't really think much about things being evidence-based (although, even as a person of faith, I also accept the validity of science), though it is always good to have that as grounding, but to also allow the imagination free rein"
I like crows. I feel kind of connected to them,but especially since I began feeding them a couple of years ago. My strategy? to keep them from dive-bombing me during nesting season. They are notoriously aggressive birds and super-protective parents. Think of mother bears with feathers, but not big, though still kind of scary, and you'll get the idea.. I actually began to connect to crows even earlier, about five years ago, when I noticed that three crows would often be following me from tree to tree. This happened in the same area, the heritage preservation block on Tenth Avenue between Cambie and Main Street and kept going on for more than a year.
https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2621269,-123.1084401,3a,75y,190.81h,95.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBFlbaqHnP7qXsRZPh0MNow!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!12b1?rapsrc=apiv3
And here is a crow
I at first felt a bit menaced, then concluded that they either were looking for food, or were simply curious and friendly. I think they were curious and friendly, since I had never fed them before. But I also recalled how the best way to assuage aggressive mother and father crows when their young ones have just left the nest and are still vulnerable and fairly helpless, is to feed their young for them. This happened a couple of times on a forest trail The young crow was hunched on the ground by the trail and its parents were totally freaking out. So, I picked a salmonberry from a bush nearby and dropped it into the young bird's gaping mouth. Then I gave him another berry, then another. The parents promptly calmed down. The next day, the young crow was still there, I fed it more berries, and the parents were totally chill and calm.
I still feed local crows. Not all the time. They have become quite friendly, but still a bit wary and they will only let me come so close before they fly up to a tree branch or a road sign. Of course they expect to be fed, but there seems to be a kind of nervous interspecies friendship going on too, and I expect to go on feeding them again in the near future. And they no longer attack me during nesting season. Win-win!
I like crows. I feel kind of connected to them,but especially since I began feeding them a couple of years ago. My strategy? to keep them from dive-bombing me during nesting season. They are notoriously aggressive birds and super-protective parents. Think of mother bears with feathers, but not big, though still kind of scary, and you'll get the idea.. I actually began to connect to crows even earlier, about five years ago, when I noticed that three crows would often be following me from tree to tree. This happened in the same area, the heritage preservation block on Tenth Avenue between Cambie and Main Street and kept going on for more than a year.
https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2621269,-123.1084401,3a,75y,190.81h,95.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBFlbaqHnP7qXsRZPh0MNow!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!12b1?rapsrc=apiv3
And here is a crow
I at first felt a bit menaced, then concluded that they either were looking for food, or were simply curious and friendly. I think they were curious and friendly, since I had never fed them before. But I also recalled how the best way to assuage aggressive mother and father crows when their young ones have just left the nest and are still vulnerable and fairly helpless, is to feed their young for them. This happened a couple of times on a forest trail The young crow was hunched on the ground by the trail and its parents were totally freaking out. So, I picked a salmonberry from a bush nearby and dropped it into the young bird's gaping mouth. Then I gave him another berry, then another. The parents promptly calmed down. The next day, the young crow was still there, I fed it more berries, and the parents were totally chill and calm.
I still feed local crows. Not all the time. They have become quite friendly, but still a bit wary and they will only let me come so close before they fly up to a tree branch or a road sign. Of course they expect to be fed, but there seems to be a kind of nervous interspecies friendship going on too, and I expect to go on feeding them again in the near future. And they no longer attack me during nesting season. Win-win!
Friday 15 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 19
There are no guarantees in life. No promises that we are going to make it from cradle to grave unscathed. In fact, that is the one and only guarantee in life. We will suffer. All of us. It is going to be inevitable. When a baby is born, all innocence, purity and completely untouched, unmarked by the world, that must be a mother's greatest fear: the wounds, bruises and eventually the scars and damage the world is going to inflict on her darling. Just as she herself has been inflicted and disfigured by life, as has been the baby's father, and as their own parents have suffered. It is the gift that goes on giving, and there is no getting around this one salient fact of life.
We are all going to die, and before we die, we are all going to suffer. Big time. And we are all going to inflict damage and suffering on others. It's unavoidable. This is what happens, with so many damaged beings occupying this sad and sorry earth together. The younger generation blames their parents for the horrible world they have inherited, that they insist is the fault of their moms and dads. Right now, the snowflakes (millennials) are making hay out of it as they blast and blame and castigate their own parents for making such a frightful mess of things through their own short-sighted selfishness. Unaffordable housing? Blame mom and dad. Expensive university tuition? Blame mom and dad. Global warming? Guess who. And the beat goes on.
I acknowledge that my generation is partly responsible for the ills of the world. I also acknowledge that we inherited from our own parents a very imperfect state of things. And they inherited a lot of damage from their moms and dads. It is rather amusing hearing younger people blame us for everything. That is exactly what we did with our parents, oh, some forty years ago or so. And in another forty years, guess what's going to happen? That's right, Gentle Reader! Those whining, neurasthenically delicate little snowflake millennials are going to have to toughen up and bear it as their own kids start to blame them for the mess they made of everything. Oh, that will be a sight to behold, and oh the emotional blackmail as mommy and daddy millennials have little neurotic meltdowns because they are just too upset and traumatized by their angry little darlings rage and accusation and blame. And they are not going to accept responsibility. partly because this is a generation that refuses to be responsible for their own mistakes (mine was also pretty bad for this, and guess who raised the millennials?), and will simply weep themselves to death for their poor delicate hurt feelings. Everyone wants to feel good. So, why face the music?
Why not face the music? Blaming never got us anywhere, though we still do it, anyway. I accept that I have also helped make a mess of things, simply by existing as one damaged being among many. Even if I don't drive a car, and tend to buy very little, and a lot that's second hand, I still occasionally have to use plastic, I can't afford to shop fair trade, and every year I travel by air. Unforgivable.
We also have it in ourselves to become healers. But that is a very costly calling that will not require less than everything of us, and I'm not sure how many are ready to drop their smartphones and ipods and go into the wilderness in order to meet God. I have done this already, and despite being still wounded and damaged, I will voluntarily embrace this call to be a healer and to live redemptively. Someone has to do it. And someone has to set the example. Might as well be me. Even if I am but a voice in the wilderness. A flickering, tiny little candle on the windswept moor..
We are all going to die, and before we die, we are all going to suffer. Big time. And we are all going to inflict damage and suffering on others. It's unavoidable. This is what happens, with so many damaged beings occupying this sad and sorry earth together. The younger generation blames their parents for the horrible world they have inherited, that they insist is the fault of their moms and dads. Right now, the snowflakes (millennials) are making hay out of it as they blast and blame and castigate their own parents for making such a frightful mess of things through their own short-sighted selfishness. Unaffordable housing? Blame mom and dad. Expensive university tuition? Blame mom and dad. Global warming? Guess who. And the beat goes on.
I acknowledge that my generation is partly responsible for the ills of the world. I also acknowledge that we inherited from our own parents a very imperfect state of things. And they inherited a lot of damage from their moms and dads. It is rather amusing hearing younger people blame us for everything. That is exactly what we did with our parents, oh, some forty years ago or so. And in another forty years, guess what's going to happen? That's right, Gentle Reader! Those whining, neurasthenically delicate little snowflake millennials are going to have to toughen up and bear it as their own kids start to blame them for the mess they made of everything. Oh, that will be a sight to behold, and oh the emotional blackmail as mommy and daddy millennials have little neurotic meltdowns because they are just too upset and traumatized by their angry little darlings rage and accusation and blame. And they are not going to accept responsibility. partly because this is a generation that refuses to be responsible for their own mistakes (mine was also pretty bad for this, and guess who raised the millennials?), and will simply weep themselves to death for their poor delicate hurt feelings. Everyone wants to feel good. So, why face the music?
Why not face the music? Blaming never got us anywhere, though we still do it, anyway. I accept that I have also helped make a mess of things, simply by existing as one damaged being among many. Even if I don't drive a car, and tend to buy very little, and a lot that's second hand, I still occasionally have to use plastic, I can't afford to shop fair trade, and every year I travel by air. Unforgivable.
We also have it in ourselves to become healers. But that is a very costly calling that will not require less than everything of us, and I'm not sure how many are ready to drop their smartphones and ipods and go into the wilderness in order to meet God. I have done this already, and despite being still wounded and damaged, I will voluntarily embrace this call to be a healer and to live redemptively. Someone has to do it. And someone has to set the example. Might as well be me. Even if I am but a voice in the wilderness. A flickering, tiny little candle on the windswept moor..
Thursday 14 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 18
On my calendar, every new month, I mark the days remaining till my sixty-fifth birthday. It's coming pretty fast, in 473 days, or a year, three and a half months. This is kind of a fun exercise for counting down till I can finally receive my full pension, and reduce my work schedule to maybe two days a week. I might even be able to retire completely, but I rather like the idea of feeling useful and getting paid for it, for a while longer, anyway.
What I am really looking forward to is the fact that I will no longer have to worry about getting enough work in order to survive. This, of course also depends on a couple of other factors. For example, if I can stay safely housed in my low income apartment, but I have already lived here for seventeen years and don't seem to be about to go anywhere. There is also the hope that my brilliant contract employers will not phase out my occupation or turn it into volunteer work, for a little while longer anyways.
My health could also be a factor. Even though I haven't had any scares since I had that bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome in May of 2015, which never got properly diagnosed by any of the brilliant doctors at my bedside, they did discover enough irregularities to my thyroid and pituitary to want to monitor me and get me on the right meds. Otherwise, except for the odd low thyroid day or week, I am doing fine, and expect to keep on keeping on for a few years to come.
The kind of government that gets elected in the new future might also impact on people's ability to retire with dignity, since there remain that stubborn and mule-headed base of thirty percent of Canadians who support conservative governments, and our first-past-the-post electoral system could well get those clowns elected again, then watch them make our lives miserable and less than tolerable.
There is also the impact of climate change and how that could affect my quality of life, and for everyone, but especially for seniors and other low-income and vulnerable people. There could be a lot to lose sleep over. I am of course going to go on hoping for the best, because that is what hope is. I have decided that I am not going to buy into the despair or the histrionics of Greta Turnberg , much as I admire and respect her and the many young people taking up the call against the industries of death that are vectors of planet killing climate change. (I'm not doing a bad job myself, Gentle Reader, at sounding maudlin about it).
I know we are going to get through this. Things will likely look different in a few years, and maybe I won't so willingly be taking those annual plane trips down to Latin America every year, though I still hope I can have it both ways. My reasoning is that I don't drive a car, am vegetarian, and don't buy a lot of stuff. My carbon footprint is tiny, so why not enjoy an annual flight sort of guilt free? What is a piece of cake, if we can't have it and eat it all at once, darlings?
What I am really looking forward to is the fact that I will no longer have to worry about getting enough work in order to survive. This, of course also depends on a couple of other factors. For example, if I can stay safely housed in my low income apartment, but I have already lived here for seventeen years and don't seem to be about to go anywhere. There is also the hope that my brilliant contract employers will not phase out my occupation or turn it into volunteer work, for a little while longer anyways.
My health could also be a factor. Even though I haven't had any scares since I had that bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome in May of 2015, which never got properly diagnosed by any of the brilliant doctors at my bedside, they did discover enough irregularities to my thyroid and pituitary to want to monitor me and get me on the right meds. Otherwise, except for the odd low thyroid day or week, I am doing fine, and expect to keep on keeping on for a few years to come.
The kind of government that gets elected in the new future might also impact on people's ability to retire with dignity, since there remain that stubborn and mule-headed base of thirty percent of Canadians who support conservative governments, and our first-past-the-post electoral system could well get those clowns elected again, then watch them make our lives miserable and less than tolerable.
There is also the impact of climate change and how that could affect my quality of life, and for everyone, but especially for seniors and other low-income and vulnerable people. There could be a lot to lose sleep over. I am of course going to go on hoping for the best, because that is what hope is. I have decided that I am not going to buy into the despair or the histrionics of Greta Turnberg , much as I admire and respect her and the many young people taking up the call against the industries of death that are vectors of planet killing climate change. (I'm not doing a bad job myself, Gentle Reader, at sounding maudlin about it).
I know we are going to get through this. Things will likely look different in a few years, and maybe I won't so willingly be taking those annual plane trips down to Latin America every year, though I still hope I can have it both ways. My reasoning is that I don't drive a car, am vegetarian, and don't buy a lot of stuff. My carbon footprint is tiny, so why not enjoy an annual flight sort of guilt free? What is a piece of cake, if we can't have it and eat it all at once, darlings?
Wednesday 13 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 17
I don't suppose that people are much interested in listening these days. Sometimes they are, but not often. We are all really struggling just to survive, pay rent, keep a roof over our heads and not get overwhelmed by climate change fear. I'm okay for housing, since I live in a BC Housing apartment where I pay but a pittance for rent, but I think I'm still feeling overwhelmed. I just survived another Remembrance Day, which is all a bunch of tub-thumping patriotic and war-mongering nonsense, and it is so draining having to resist that collective militaristic delusion, feeling zero support from others since almost everyone else is brainwashed, even in church, apart perhaps from our priest, but this kind of passive activism is exhausting.
And, right now in my region, the Greater Vancouver Regional District, we have the threat of a full-out bus strike hanging over us. For me, it isn't going to be that bad, since I walk a lot, am used to walking, and most of my work assignments are reasonably close together and not that far from where I live. However, the union has threatened to go on a full-out strike if they can't reach an agreement by this Friday. They are holding hostage the most vulnerable people, those who rely on transit in our city. That is so wrong, so absolutely wrong! And they can still get away with it. I'm also a union guy, but to everything there is a limit, and when the safety and wellbeing of the poor, weak and vulnerable are up for grabs, then our transit union, and their bosses have overstepped their boundaries.
There are still small things to celebrate. The coffee is good and strong this morning. I hand-brew it these days, for a couple of reasons. The small coffee maker that I bought doesn't make quite enough for two large cups, and I don't feel ready yet to invest in another big coffee maker. So, I have kept the pot and filtre cone from a machine that died a couple of years ago and just do it the old-fashioned way. So, I balance the filtre cone over the pot, and it sort of fits, though at an angle. And I boil the water. Not in an electric kettle, but an old-fashioned model that whistles when it's boiling. measuring the right amount of coffee so that the resulting brew isn't like insipid maiden's water. It's not an exact art, but I seem to be getting better at it.
And I like my old kettle. I bought it second-hand in a store on Main Street in Mt. Pleasant, while hanging out with my step-cousin. She has since passed away, cancer, March 2014. Rest in peace, Lanice. In our blended family you were my only friend. I mean it. We walked over to the Downtown Eastside where I had recently moved into my new apartment, where I would be for four months between the rooming house where I lived from 2000 to 2002, where I now live, and and the apartment I have lived in for the last seventeen years. So, Lanice and I visited in my new apartment (she was my first guest), and we celebrated with a pot of tea, and the water was boiled, of course, in my new second-hand whistling kettle. This morning will be a mixed blessing. I will be walking four miles, largely through a beautiful heritage neighbourhood, Strathcona, into another beautiful heritage neighbourhood, Grandview-Woodlands. Then, once I am done with my client, I can shop for lovely Italian cheese, walk around and absorb the beauty, then sit in a coffee shop with the drawing I am working on of a peacock. Then another brief professional visit with another client.
Life could be worse, it could be a lot worse, and now that the sun is coming out this morning I will cease to complain, at least for five minutes, darlings.
By the way, Gentle reader, you will notice something a little bit different about my blog. I can finally make proper paragraphs again. I think I just needed a couple of years to notice the Compose app. I have always been useless with this kind of technology.
And, right now in my region, the Greater Vancouver Regional District, we have the threat of a full-out bus strike hanging over us. For me, it isn't going to be that bad, since I walk a lot, am used to walking, and most of my work assignments are reasonably close together and not that far from where I live. However, the union has threatened to go on a full-out strike if they can't reach an agreement by this Friday. They are holding hostage the most vulnerable people, those who rely on transit in our city. That is so wrong, so absolutely wrong! And they can still get away with it. I'm also a union guy, but to everything there is a limit, and when the safety and wellbeing of the poor, weak and vulnerable are up for grabs, then our transit union, and their bosses have overstepped their boundaries.
There are still small things to celebrate. The coffee is good and strong this morning. I hand-brew it these days, for a couple of reasons. The small coffee maker that I bought doesn't make quite enough for two large cups, and I don't feel ready yet to invest in another big coffee maker. So, I have kept the pot and filtre cone from a machine that died a couple of years ago and just do it the old-fashioned way. So, I balance the filtre cone over the pot, and it sort of fits, though at an angle. And I boil the water. Not in an electric kettle, but an old-fashioned model that whistles when it's boiling. measuring the right amount of coffee so that the resulting brew isn't like insipid maiden's water. It's not an exact art, but I seem to be getting better at it.
And I like my old kettle. I bought it second-hand in a store on Main Street in Mt. Pleasant, while hanging out with my step-cousin. She has since passed away, cancer, March 2014. Rest in peace, Lanice. In our blended family you were my only friend. I mean it. We walked over to the Downtown Eastside where I had recently moved into my new apartment, where I would be for four months between the rooming house where I lived from 2000 to 2002, where I now live, and and the apartment I have lived in for the last seventeen years. So, Lanice and I visited in my new apartment (she was my first guest), and we celebrated with a pot of tea, and the water was boiled, of course, in my new second-hand whistling kettle. This morning will be a mixed blessing. I will be walking four miles, largely through a beautiful heritage neighbourhood, Strathcona, into another beautiful heritage neighbourhood, Grandview-Woodlands. Then, once I am done with my client, I can shop for lovely Italian cheese, walk around and absorb the beauty, then sit in a coffee shop with the drawing I am working on of a peacock. Then another brief professional visit with another client.
Life could be worse, it could be a lot worse, and now that the sun is coming out this morning I will cease to complain, at least for five minutes, darlings.
By the way, Gentle reader, you will notice something a little bit different about my blog. I can finally make proper paragraphs again. I think I just needed a couple of years to notice the Compose app. I have always been useless with this kind of technology.
Tuesday 12 November 2019
it's All Performance Art 16
This is my response to a Facebook notification I received obligating all of us to go out and buy a red poppy to honour the war criminals (aka veterans) on Remembrance Day yesterday.:
"The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the fire bombings of other German and Japanese cities that likely cost millions of innocent lives make the allied soldiers every bit the war criminals as the Nazis. They have never faced justice for war crimes and this has to be reckoned with. I wear only the white poppy, which is the peace poppy and I try to remember all the victims of war, not just on our side. As for the lame and dumb argument that we owe our democratic rights and freedoms to their so-called sacrifices, this is what I have to say. I am deeply ashamed that any privilege that I enjoy was bought and paid for by the death and wanton slaughter of innocent people. Please stop boring me with your twaddle! All of you!"
Here is my email, Sunday, to a popular radio broadcaster on a weekend program on the CBC:
"Thanks so much for playing that song this morning. I get so sick of the patriotism and tub thumping that often fills Remembrance Day services, and I will be wearing (I'm wearing it right now!) the white poppy. I will also copy and paste here my email this morning to my parish priest. By the way,if you get any negative blowback from listeners, just read again my email and be encouraged. blessing
The same morning, my email to my parish priest, in response to their inviting an old war criminal to speak about his experience of the War in Europe in the 1940's. (by the way, from now on, I am calling all veterans war criminals, at least during this season of collective brainwashing, called Remembrance Day)
I've thought it over, and I will probably leave early and go downstairs before the old veteran starts to speak. This is because I still think this is inappropriate in a Christian service. if it was a survivor of Auschwitz, or the bombing of London, or the Nazi occupations in Holland or France, or if it was a survivor of Nagasaki, Hiroshima or the fire bombings of German and Japanese cities, then I would stay. However, commemorating militarism has no place in the house of God. Please share my email with others. see you there, and later downstairs, if you want to talk more about it. thanks and blessing.
That about says it, Gentle Reader. We live in a country that prefers barmy and feel good lies over truth.
"The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the fire bombings of other German and Japanese cities that likely cost millions of innocent lives make the allied soldiers every bit the war criminals as the Nazis. They have never faced justice for war crimes and this has to be reckoned with. I wear only the white poppy, which is the peace poppy and I try to remember all the victims of war, not just on our side. As for the lame and dumb argument that we owe our democratic rights and freedoms to their so-called sacrifices, this is what I have to say. I am deeply ashamed that any privilege that I enjoy was bought and paid for by the death and wanton slaughter of innocent people. Please stop boring me with your twaddle! All of you!"
Here is my email, Sunday, to a popular radio broadcaster on a weekend program on the CBC:
"Thanks so much for playing that song this morning. I get so sick of the patriotism and tub thumping that often fills Remembrance Day services, and I will be wearing (I'm wearing it right now!) the white poppy. I will also copy and paste here my email this morning to my parish priest. By the way,if you get any negative blowback from listeners, just read again my email and be encouraged. blessing
The same morning, my email to my parish priest, in response to their inviting an old war criminal to speak about his experience of the War in Europe in the 1940's. (by the way, from now on, I am calling all veterans war criminals, at least during this season of collective brainwashing, called Remembrance Day)
I've thought it over, and I will probably leave early and go downstairs before the old veteran starts to speak. This is because I still think this is inappropriate in a Christian service. if it was a survivor of Auschwitz, or the bombing of London, or the Nazi occupations in Holland or France, or if it was a survivor of Nagasaki, Hiroshima or the fire bombings of German and Japanese cities, then I would stay. However, commemorating militarism has no place in the house of God. Please share my email with others. see you there, and later downstairs, if you want to talk more about it. thanks and blessing.
That about says it, Gentle Reader. We live in a country that prefers barmy and feel good lies over truth.
Monday 11 November 2019
It's All Performance Art 15
lt communicating to hidebound conservatives about the importance of social activism. When any of those people ask you the rhetorical question, "Are you expecting to make a perfect world?", or similar, then that is a red flag, and you had might as well either walk away or at least change the subject, because you are not going to get anywhere fast with that kind of non-thinking, and certainly with the kind of people who really don't know how to think. I had a friend, now an ex-friend, from a country in Latin America, from Lima, Peru, who used to spout that kind of nonsense. To cut him perhaps a little bit of slack, he was trying to help me improve my Spanish, in exchange for support in English. On the other hand, he was a business administration student from a reasonably well-off family with one singular goal in mind: to become a Canadian citizen and leave behind his birth-country forever. When I suggested to him, on a few occasions, that his country might actually need him, and that his leaving would be just accelerating the kind of brain drain for which Canada is hugely responsible, but always denies responsibility, he responded with the usual lame excuses, every single one of them completely self-centred and absolutely self-serving. This of course is largely due to Canada's very ass-backward policy on immigration, welcoming moneyed and well-educated immigrants who will of course help feed and fatten the economy, without caring much about the brain drain in poorer countries that we will be benefiting from as we gladly welcome them from their countries of origin, places that will be needing those people's skills, education and expertise way more than we do, while giving short shrift to refugees and other poorer folk who might not have a lot to contribute, right away anyway, but have been proven to make the most loyal and the most productive of new Canadians. But here I digress, and in one disgracefully run-on sentence, but such is blog-writing, eh? We were talking about making a perfect world, and that of course isn't about to happen, at least not during my lifetime. This world, the human part of it anyway, has never been perfect even if some of us appear to be better off now than we were before, but not without plunging many others into lives of poverty, want and despair. Or perhaps one could just simply ask, what is wrong with us? It isn't that social and political activists, people who really want things to improve, especially for the most vulnerable, expect to create heaven on earth. If there is anyone who already knows that is not going to happen, then it's going to be us. So, this brings us to the problem of Remembrance Day, when almost everyone gets all damp and smarmy about the dead soldiers and how their sacrifices have made it possible for us to live in freedom and peace. Well, that's one narrative, and it is also the very came claptrap that they are feeding to their children. But no one ever talks about the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just the Japanese war atrocities in Nanjing and Hong Kong, nor does anyone mention the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands scorched to death in the allied fire bombings on Tokyo, or Dresden or other cities. We do go on at length about Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and so we should. But why exclude the innocent murdered in other countries, just because they lived in enemy countries, and why not acknowledge that the very soldiers that we are expected to honour and commemorate also committed war crimes, crimes against humanity every bit as cruel and dastardly? Tell me, Gentle Reader, your excuse de jour. I am waiting. This will never be a perfect world, but this does not leave us off the hook for not doing our due diligence to keep it from getting worse. And dropping bombs on others is not going to do it.
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