One Hundred Things I Am Not Going To Do Before I Die

Hey, boys and girls.  You've probably heard and read more than enough about the one hundred things you should do, see, visit or eat before you die?  Well, here is a list of one hundred things I am not going to do before I die.

 Vices

1. Resume using tobacco

2. Drink above the legal limit

3. Try heroin

4. Try cocaine

5. Smoke crack

6. Try crystal meth

7. Use any other illegal substances (and no one knows if I ever have before)

Politics

8. Join a political party

9. Vote Conservative

10. Vote Fascist (see 9)

11. Run for elected office (What! Are you crazy?)

12. Run for unelected office

13. Flatter a politician

Recreation and travel

14. Climb the Grouse Grind (it's way too popular, crowded and trendy and my version of enjoying nature does not involve gasping and hyperventilating while someone's bum is in my face.)

15. Bungee Jump (I'm not that bored)

16. Sky dive (if God wanted us to know how it feels to fly outside a plane he would have given us wings)

17. Scuba dive (Do I look like a fish, well, seriously, do I?)

18. Visit the North Pole (Santa doesn't need another elf)

19. Visit the South Pole (Don't want to slip in penguin shit)

20. Climb Everest (I'm afraid of heights)

21. Visit North Korea (Kim Chi okay, I guess, but certain other Kims, no thanks)

22. Visit China

23. See the Great Wall of China (guess why)

24. Visit India (although I like curry)

25. See the Taj Majal (guess why)

26. Visit Uzbekistan (it's full of Uzbeks)

27. Visit Tajikistan (it's full of Tajiks)

28. Visit Turkmenistan (it's full of, well, you know)

29. Visit Moldova (where the hell is Moldova?)

30. Go anywhere in Russia (except maybe St. Petersburg, which I understand to be almost unbearably beautiful.)

31. Go anywhere on an all-inclusive (really, if I want to sit around and get drunk and behave badly with other people who speak English I can do it a lot more cheaply in a huge selection of bars that are in my neighbourhood.)

32. Go hiking across the Sahara (don't want sand in my shoes)

33. Play hockey (there are so many reasons why not to go into detail about this that I'm leaving it alone. I don't want to get thrown in the slammer for treason)

34. Watch professional sports on TV. (boring, and counterintuitive.  While cramming chips and beer in your pie hole in front of the idiot box you're not out there on the field burning it off.)

35. Play golf (it frightens the bunnies.)

36. Attend the Olympics in any capacity that is not to protest.

37. Stay in a hotel where I have to pay more for one night than I earn in a week. (maybe unless someone else is paying)

38. Visit Uganda

Professional

39. Work in a bank

40. Work in McDonald's (I might last an hour)

41. Work at Tim Horton's (might last an hour and five minutes)

42. Work at Wallmart (might last an hour and six minutes)

43. Work at Starbucks (might last five minutes)

44. Work as a cop

45. Do anything for the military (except care for an ailing or mentally ill war vet)

46. Sell my body (Oh, come on, you're laughing so loud I can hardly think!)

47. Be a pole dancer (What? Ya want I should do stand-up?)

48. Sell drugs

49. Work at a gas station.

50. Work for a political party.

Human Interest

51. Own a dog (raising a kid might be easier)

52. Raise a kid (a dog can be a problem usually for no longer than fifteen years and there's always lethal injection.)

53. Get married (There is no room for two on my throne)

54. Become a Buddhist (I'm a Christian)

55. Become a Jew (I'm a Christian)

56. Become a Muslim (Ditto)

57. Become a Hindu (Ditto)

58. Become a Baptist (Uh, wait a minute!)

59. Walk down the street naked (Stop gagging, you know you shouldn't eat while you're on the computer!)

60. Drive a Lamborghini (not even a stolen one)

61. Drive a Mercedes Benz (I can't even afford to look at one)

62. Drive a BMW

63. Drive a Volkswagen (I never learned to drive...anything)

64. Drive

65. Ride a skateboard

66. Get a tattoo

67. Dye my hair (hair?)

68. Wear a wig

69. Wear a toupee

70. Wear a comb over

71. Shave my head (hello, Comb Over!)

72. Own a castle

73. Own a bungalow (hello, Vancouver!)

74. Own a one bedroom condominium (Ditto)

75. Own a cardboard shack (Ditto)

76. Eat filet mignon (I'm vegetarian)

77. Eat squab (ditto)

78. Eat filet de sole (ditto)

79 Turn vegan (I'm not giving up cheese omelettes.)

80. Wear pink (maybe magenta)

81. Wear a dress

82. Wear make up

83. Wear women's underwear (depending on how much money I'm paid)

84. Go barmy and ga-ga over giant pandas

85. Attend a Michael Buble concert

86. Attend a Justin Beiber concert

87. Attend a Madonna Concert

88. Learn to like Rap (some Hip-Hop is okay, though)

89. Learn to like Heavy Metal

90. Take up jogging (walking is better and it doesn't make you look ridiculous)

91. Take up roller blading (ditto)

92. Join a yoga class

93. Join a tai chi class

94. Be a member of the One Percent (because God is merciful)

95. Learn to speak or write Klingon

96. Spend money I don't have (if you want to give me credit then tell me what a great blog this is or what a good artist I am.  Or what a nice person I can be.  Sometimes...)

97. Be a ballet dancer (I would look dreadful in a tu-tu and pink is not my colour)

98. Ski at Whistler (not my scene and I can't ski anyway)

99. Snowboard at Whistler (ditto)

100. Walk on water (that isn't already frozen and anyway it's already been done.)

I forgot number 101 even though I said I would write one hundred: Die.

Happy New Year everybody!

No animals were harmed during the writing of this blog.

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Bird Brain

This post is all about birds, specifically, my experiences with birds.  Those of you who know my art (and for those who don't but would like to here's my website: thesearepaintings.googlepages.com) know that I love birds, especially the tropical colourful ones, but also our feathered locals.  In my childhood I remember feeling enchanted by the swooping Barn Swallows, whom my mother, a neat freak if one ever lived, would try to chase out of the garage with a broom and take down their nests.  In her words she didn't like them shitting on the car.  On the other hand she didn't care much for mosquitoes and swallows, well, they eat lots of mosquitoes. Now the barn swallow is practically gone from Vancouver.  They have almost disappeared and I miss them painfully.

     I was intrigued by the beautiful rollicking whistle of the Crested Myna.  This is a bird that was brought over from China in 1890, was accidentally released in the wild and soon became a common and established bird in the Lower Mainland.  I thought they had the most wonderful song.  My mother called them "Japanese Starlings."

They eventually died out and the last pair perished in 2003 near the south end of the Cambie Street Bridge.  In 2002 I saw those two birds.  I remember the first time I heard a robin sing and knew it was a robin as well as the first time I saw a red-shafted flicker flying across the field behind our house.  I also loved the Brewer's Blackbird  and when the sun hit their glossy plumage I would look for the reflections of green and violet in their black feathers.  By the river I saw the Red-Winged Blackbirds.  Gold Finches in our field I named wild canaries.

When I was in fifth grade and we'd moved to a split-level on a small plot I saw my first Western Grebe struggling to fly off from the wet road.  In the darkness he must have thought the wet pavement was really water.  I was on my way to school but a kind man stopped his car, wrapped his coat around the poor bird and promised to take it the SPCA.  When I was in grade six I saw a Mountain Blue Bird, one of the very few seen in the Lower Mainland. 

That was when I would watch in September for the return of the Band Tailed Pigeons to the oak trees in Minoru Park.

     Throughout my teens my interest in birds flagged.  I did enjoy seeing some of the exotic birds on display in the Stanley Park Zoo, such as a Himalayan Monal.

  When I was fifteen a friend and I were visiting together.  We were both fundamentalist Christians and when my friend, who two years later died from cancer (he was just twenty-one) said in awe and wonder "And to think some people say that evolved."  Even then I was a little more open minded than my friend Craig about the likelihood of evolution and maybe God could have been somehow involved in that amazing process but I said nothing and simply absorbed the incredible beauty of that bird's colours.

     My interest in birds resurged when I was about twenty-three.  I was working nights at a downtown parking lot at the Hotel Vancouver.  In the morning I would treat myself to breakfast, usually waffles at the Sylvia Hotel restaurant (before it was renovated into something fancy-shmancy and absolutely beautiful with an ocean view), then tired I would find my way home and sometimes stop in one of the branch libraries.  In spite of my exhaustion from working all night I would look at one of the most beautifully illustrated books of birds of the world ever (titled "Birds of the World" by Oliver Austen) and was knocked breathless by the wonderful bird paintings of Arthur Singer.  I found myself sharing a table with an Asian man from Malaysia who kindly enjoyed the book with me and identified some of the birds he recognized from Malaysia.  Three years later I began making batiks, a craft I had learned and excelled in in high school, using birds as a theme.  I discovered in a book store, for a good price that book, Birds of the World, that had tantalized me from library shelves.  I bought it and it remains in my library, in worn condition but highly prized among my more than five hundred books.

     Around that time, one morning, following an early mass at St. James I was walking home along Commercial Drive when I saw one of our local sparrows, a Song Sparrow, trapped in a doorway.  He couldn't find his way out so I caught him gently and let him perch on top of my hand.  I was worried about having to bring him home to nurse him to health, particularly because in those days I had a cat who had a refined taste for little birds.  I walked for several blocks with this wild bird perched serenely on my hand, rather eliciting amazement from passers-by.  When we arrived at the Grandview Cut, a gorge with trees throughout the bird took its cue and flew away into the trees.

     A couple of years later I saw a pigeon at rest on the grass.  She let me approach her.  It was as if she couldn't or didn't want to fly away.  She let me pick her up in my hands.  I held her up and said, "You can fly.  So...Fly!" and off she went.

     It must have been more than ten years later when I was homeless and couch-surfing with some friends in the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver, when on my way back to the house one night I stopped, feeling tired and very sad about my condition to rest on the curb of the sidewalk.  I saw something plummet down from the sky and land right next to me.  It was a red-shafted flicker

 I reached down and gently stroked the bird on the white patch on his lower back.  I have never felt anything so soft.  He remained with me.  I reached down, petted him one more time and off he flew.

I had already been painting for the past five years (you guessed it) birds.  I still paint them.  I have since become quite fascinated with crows and ravens.  Crows have the most intense and irrational (I think) hatred for ravens.  Once, just a few years ago I noticed two crows harassing a raven perched on a lamp standard.  He seemed quite serene and really appeared to be ignoring his tormentors.  Seeing how much bigger and more magnificent the raven was I looked up and said to the two crows in Spanish. "Ustedes tienen envidia" or, you're just jealous.  The two crows stopped what they were doing and flew promptly away.  In June 2002 when I was hiking a lot in the forest of Stanley Park I made a point of befriending as much as I could the local crow population.  When they appeared to be ready to dive bomb me since it was nesting season I would try to sooth them in Spanish, assuring them that I was their friend and meant them no harm.  They very soon relented and from then on whenever I would walk by them I would gently salute them in Spanish and they would look at me and sometimes quietly follow me for a short distance. One day, deep in the forest, I felt tired and thought of lying down on the dry forest floor for a brief rest.  Just when I was doing this I heard a very loud cawing.  I looked up and noticed three rough looking characters advancing towards me.  I was out of there in no time.  I am thoroughly convinced that, having befriended the crows that they came also to consider me their friend and seeing that I was in danger warned me and possibly helped save my life.

     There was another time when, walking in the forest near UBC I came across a baby crow on the ground.  It's parents were cawing madly at me.  I reached for a ripe salmonberry, dropped it in the baby's mouth and the parents promptly calmed down.  I fed it some more salmonberries and then walked on.  For the next three days I saw the same baby crow on the ground.  I would always feed it a few salmonberries.  The parents watched calmly and serenely from the upper branches.

     I will conclude with this little incident.  One day in a park I saw one crow attack another.  Then three other crows came to its defence and stood between the attacker and the victim crow.  I don't know what they were saying to each other but they appeared to be holding counsel, then pronounced judgement on the attacker and banished him because he very quickly flew away from them.

     I would like to conclude this account with two very sad incidents.  One was when, crossing the bridge of the Grandview Cut I saw a raven perched in one of the trees and a bright yellow parakeet next to him.  A relationship of trust must have developed between them because the parakeet was cuddled next to his huge black protector.  Then suddenly, without warning, the raven attacked and killed the parakeet, and probably ate it after.

     And finally, during one of my many walks in Pacific Spirit Park I saw a hawk catch and carry off a robin.  Then I saw and heard another robin, its mate or its friend, traumatized and crying and wailing in the most piteous voice.  It was so heartbreaking.

Stumbling Towards Community

What is community?  I go to a church where people tend to pride themselves for their sense of community.  Indeed there are many community programs and types of outreach at my church, St. Paul's Anglican in Vancouver's famous West End.  They have an advocacy office, staffed and run by two paid employees and a number of volunteers to reach out to the local homeless and destitute and help connect them with housing, food, medical and other services.  They also have a labyrinth which all are free to walk for their personal prayer, meditation and contemplation.  There is Our House, a live-in rehabilitation program for individuals who suffer from addictions. St. Paul's welcomes newcomers of all kinds and classes and colours, or as they like to say, "No matter where you happen to be on the journey, you are welcome here."  It would appear that many things are offered at St. Paul's except maybe for family and friendship.  Those are things you have to provide for yourself.  Not that easy if you are already alone, if your family is in another part of the world, or if they are all dead, or if for some reason they don't want you.  Likewise friends.  This is demonstrated every Christmas when those in the church who are without family or friends are still expected to celebrate the holiday alone.  Aside from scheduled church services that is.  But, as I already have, you might have the good fortune of making new friends at St. Paul's.  But none of them want to see me at Christmas. 

     What is wrong with this picture?  Could it be that at St. Paul's there is a rather limited superficial understanding of community?  I would have to say so.  I have long understood community, at least outside of the meaning ascribed to secular society as meaning more than simply saying hi to people in the neighbourhood and trying to be helpful where you can.  I have always believed that community, if it is true Christian community, combines and integrates many of the elements of family and friendship so that all are included and we are all involved in one another's lives on a variety of levels, all of this having a healing and redemptive purpose.  For example, in a church that really aspires to community I couldn't envision anyone being without a welcoming place to go for Christmas or Thanksgiving, or to have the opportunity to be and provide such a place to others.  I could not imagine anyone going hungry or even needing the food bank because we would all be pooling together our food and resources and sharing together many community meals, in the church and in our respective homes.  I could not imagine anyone being homeless or having to be sent to a low barrier shelter (certain exceptions for people with addictions or mental health issues that would make them too difficult to accommodate) because we would be opening our homes and lives to one another.

     I do realize and accept that much of what I envision here is likely always going to remain an unattainable ideal.  But I also think there are many in between places that we could fill.  If we cared enough.  If we had the imagination.  If we prayed enough.  It is good also to be realistic.  Many of us have to work for a living at occupations that make tremendous demands on our time, our lives and our energy.  Living in a city that has the most expensive housing in North America makes this situation particularly onerous.  What could we do to work our way around this, or how can we trust God to use our daily life situations in a redemptive way so that we can still all be drawn closer together in his love?

    I am ashamed to confess that I don't do a lot either.  At church I try to open my heart to people, regulars and newcomers and I do what I can to try to make people comfortable, especially during coffee following the Eucharist.  When I can convince others to join me in a local coffee shop for a visit or for a walk afterward that is also a bonus.  It is often difficult to get people interested because, well, I think for many of us church and God are somewhat other than our daily lives and we really want that boundary to remain fixed and stable.  I think people feel this way for good reason.  There is often so much chaos, pressure and busyness in their daily lives that they don't want this to be complicated by needy folk in church bursting in like barbarians at the gate.  While this is a legitimate concern I sometimes wonder if at least some of us (I'm talking to myself here) might listen carefully for the Lord's voice and call to push a little bit beyond our little havens of comfort.  It doesn't have to be too much too soon or all at once and really it is generally much better to embark on something like this slowly and gently.  Small steps, you know.  I used to open my home to a lot of people and often had people, sometimes perfect strangers eating at my table.  I lived in bigger apartments or houses in those days and I also had a greater surplus of emotional energy.  Now I live in a tiny bachelor unit (350 sq. ft.) and I work in an emotionally and mentally challenging occupation as a mental health peer support worker.  To do well I have to have time alone in the evenings at home and this is also when a lot of my time in prayer and reflection occurs.  But I can still make myself available to people who would like to have coffee or share a meal together just after work, or talk on the phone or exchange emails together, I mean this as a way of serving others.  I think that each person does have their unique gifts and potential and that this might be a good time to begin exploring these possibilities, but in small steps. 

     We need to come together more, but we also have to prayerfully plan and consider what we can each do and how we can do it.  I know that I would like to grow as a friend to others in the church and also as a person who can help network for others.  For example if at Christmas and Thanksgiving I could work with others in a network to help see that everyone is well taken care of over the holidays and that those who are also used to their more concrete family and social plans would be open to sharing the table a little more readily with outsiders and newcomers.  I think we have a lot to offer.  I also know that many of us are already tired, needy and discouraged.  How can we become a healing balm to one another?  I think even by asking the question we will eventually find solutions.

Ageing Gracefully

I was going to write this post about ageing and then I saw the first snow drop today so I thought maybe I should write about spring instead.  So, I shall try to write about both.  First about this snow drop because it is the earliest I have ever seen one in bloom.  It is December 28 and this delicate but incredibly tough little flower usually doesn't appear till near the end of January, though I have seen them earlier.  So, this is a lovely surprise, three days after Christmas.  For me spring, not winter,always begins with the Winter Solstice.  The dragon that was swallowing the sun is suddenly and very slowly disgorging it again and slowly the days increase in daylight, first a few seconds a day and then eventually by several minutes. No matter how much it snows or how cold it gets winter is in retrograde and the new life is already beginning.  This is of course very easy to say here on the balmy West Coast where I live because we never see temperatures with wind chill of down to forty below as is currently happening in Manitoba.  Walking the quiet streets of our most beautiful and affluent neighbourhoods here in Vancouver it is easy to think already of Spring.  Not only is the temperature mild at a balmy seven degrees but the grass is every bit as green as on a spring day and the tree trunks positively gleam with the velvet green of fresh moss.  There are already winter flowers in bloom in some gardens.  Even if we are hit with another cold snap and a fresh dump of snow it usually ends quickly, nature recuperates and things again are beginning to bloom.  It is very hard to convince many people of this, those for whom it feels a little bit cool and there are no leaves on the trees, therefore it's miserable and it's winter.  But even if there are no leaves on the trees have you noticed the buds and that they are already getting a little bigger? And that soon, in early January the house finches will resume singing.  Please scroll down to my post "Winter In Two Days" if you want to see an image of this lovely little bird that resembles a sparrow painted red and sings so beautifully.

     Old age can also be a second spring.  First let's think of the word, "spring".  To spring up, or a spring in a mattress that holds you up when you are at rest, or a spring of cold, pure and fresh water burbling from out of the ground.  For now let's forget about sagging and arthritic bodies.  No the years are not kind to the flesh.  Men lose their hair, their stamina, their knees become stiff and they lose their vitality.  It is even worse for women, whose breasts sag down to their navel, whose legs lose their shape and become scarred with cellulite and varicose veins and whose bones often become brittle and frail.  Age can be particularly cruel to the human face wreaking havoc on beautiful young skin that becomes wrinkled, discoloured and saggy.  We hate and fear old age because it reminds us of death and it nags in our ear and in our sleep that we too must eventually die.  This is also why so many of the young shun and ignore the aged.

     I began working with seniors and the dying when I was twenty-four years old. What a lesson in life was beginning to unfurl for me.  I learned to overcome my fear and revulsion of age and to listen carefully and attentively to the wisdom and experience of men and women who had lived through two world wars and the Great Depression, people who had seen so many changes in the world and maintained their poise and integrity.  Some could make me laugh like no one else and many times I would meet and get to know their children and grandchildren and see their features replicated in younger and more contemporary faces.  Even a year before I began this work I was visiting some friends and looking at a coffee table book in their living room about Haida Gwaii.  There was the photo of an aged aboriginal woman and her face with its unique beauty and antiquity fascinated me.  The lines and the wrinkles were like rivers and streets on a map and intuitively I knew something of the seven or eight decades of history and life locked up in that woman's face.  I was at that time fascinated by the theme of age.   A good friend of mine was already in her fifties, the same age as my father and I myself felt a little impatient to see some signs of maturity appear on my twenty-three year old face.  I thought young people to be rather flaky, shallow, boring, and irresponsible and I deeply admired mature people and often sought them as friends.

     I find it interesting and sad that so many people are afraid of age and of ageing.  The cosmetic surgery industry is worth billions of dollars and of course all kinds of celebrities, especially ageing actors are all going under the knife.  Even Sophia Loren the almost eighty year old Italian screen goddess is said to have had some nick and tuck strategically done to make her look like a fabulous, sexy and glamorous seventy-nine year old, though she does deny this, of course.  It is estimated that she must have spent $50,000 on surgical enhancements.  Jane Fonda, who would be seventy-six has also admitted repentantly to having gone several times under the knife.  And then there is Dolly Parton. How could any single square inch of her magnificent surface be natural?  To maintain that cleavage alone on a sixty-seven year old body?  Without the grace of surgery and implants she would be needing knee pads instead of a bra.

     This fascination I have long had with women and ageing and women fighting the years begins with my own mother, a beautiful woman with film-star looks and charisma, she fought madly against the years but only with make-up and hair dye.  She never went in for surgery though she did consider in her early fifties getting a face lift.  She also looked very young for her age.  She told me once that the only time she allowed her hair to become grey was when I was away living in Toronto.  The sight of her with white hair and still being in her forties she found so frightening that she dipped back into the Clairol and even up to her untimely demise from cancer at sixty her hair remained stubbornly and artificially reddish-auburn.

     Then I became intrigued with Marlene Dietrich, first the legend and then the woman.  Like many I was fascinated that she could maintain into her seventies an illusion of youthful good looks and in time, thanks to her daughter's tell-all biography of her mother, the secrets were out and the Great Dietrich was revealed as a fraud.

     All considered, I think it is sad and absurd that so many people, especially women, squander so many billions on delaying the inevitable.  I suppose this can be at least partly blamed on capitalism and the shark-fight competitiveness that characterises almost all aspects of life.  Younger and more beautiful are better because they are more marketable, and marketability grows the economy and this in theory makes us all rich.  Except only a tiny minority, that darned old One Percent, gets most of the pie.  In the meantime, Mom, Grandma and Great Grandma want to maintain their goddess appeal and youthful allure so, as long as they have the means, they will go seeking out rejuvenation clinics because really, who wants to look like her grandmother.  This actually reminds me of some photos in one of the family albums that is in my custody.  There is a black and white photo of my maternal grandmother, in her fifties, walking cheerfully down the street in Regina, dressed in a favourite "town frock" with her little hand bag strategically positioned.  There is another photo of my mother and her two sisters, in their fifties and sixties, taken some thirty to forty years later.  They all look twenty or thirty years younger than their mother at their age.

     We need to celebrate age, not deny it.  The more women (and men) who proudly display their grey or thinning hair, wrinkled skin and sagging jowls with pride the better we will be as a community.  Our elders are greatly needed for their wisdom, life experience and the capacity for kindness and generosity that can only be forged in the fires of life and time and not diluted and squandered out of existence by the vain quest to be redone, remade and redesigned to look as young as their kids.  In fact, I will go as far as to claim that our future wellbeing depends on a place of honour and influence being restored to our elders.  The young have of course the raw strength and energy of youth.  For the greater social good, this force must be tempered and defined by the wisdom and serenity of old age.

     Recently a Toronto artist, I forget his name, did a series of photographs of his mother, a woman in her seventies, completely and unabashedly naked.  I at first felt squeamish seeing these photos, all more or less the same of a slightly overweight crone seated full frontally naked on a chair, her breasts resting proudly on her lap.  Then I thought how greatly she resembled the prehistoric sculptures of the Venus of Willendorf, the original Aphrodite, a goddess of life and fertility unencumbered by the silly disguise of youthful prettiness so characteristic of the Greek new and improved version.  I cannot begin to describe the strength and power that I saw in those photos.

     As for myself, I am already nearing sixty.  I have no intention of disguising this, nor of shaving my balding head or of growing a comb over or buying a wig or toupee or wearing a flattering hat.  I have entered a new spring and the nearer the inevitability of death, the more intense my enjoyment of life, of learning and of growing in wisdom, grace and (I hope) humility.  My advancing years reinforce and renew and in a way are my strength and I will, with God's help, do all that I can to be a resource and a source of good things to people of all ages.  This life that may last another twenty, thirty, forty or even fifty years must eventually end as I simultaneously prepare for the afterlife of an eternity spent in the presence of God and to do everything I can to make life richer and more meaningful and enjoyable not only for myself but for all people in my contact and influence.

Splitting Hairs

 A couple of years ago while waiting for a bus at a stop near the local bus loop the driver stepped out of his vehicle for a break.  I was immediately struck by his hair.  He was middle aged, perhaps still in his forties with long flowing brown hair that fell well past his shoulders.  And a pronounced bald spot.  To put it mildly he looked ridiculous, like an ageing rocker obstinately refusing to put his wild youth behind him where it belonged.  Then I saw a man about my age and a near identical male pattern baldness looking at him as well.  His silver hair was even shorter than mine, and I keep my hair very short, and it was clear we were both thinking the same thing.  I turned and said to him, "And that is why I keep my hair short."  He muttered in reply, "I don't blame you.  I don't blame you one bit." 

     I used to have long hair, back in my wild and reckless youth.  In 1970 when I was fourteen I was letting it grow, well past my ears, just when I was starting to smoke pot and explore alternative life styles (I was in many but not all ways an early bloomer).  To my parents' horror and distress I let it grow down to my shoulders.  I had in those days beautiful hair.  It was wavy, curly, tangled and tawny, bleached by the sun and with my then fine elfin features I was outlandishly beautiful.  My ultra conservative working-class father was particularly scandalized by my unmasculine tresses and when I went to live with him and his girl friend for three very long months he ordered me to get it cut.  I refused and when he saw that I wouldn't budge and that at the age of seventeen he would not be able to force me, he relented.  Three months later he kicked me out of his house, for no real reason except that he could no longer stand the sight of me and my relentlessly growing hair and I was condemned to finish my grade twelve in a small town on Vancouver Island living with my mother and her fat studly Romeo.

     My long hair was for me a symbol of not simple rebellion but of liberation.  Like most boys growing up in the sixties I was made to always have my hair cut military or Kennedy-era short.  My family and home environment were for me an oppressive and miserable nightmare.  Allowing my hair free reign to grow and blow in the wind was my signature of personal freedom as I resolved to break out of the prison of my family home, which was made all the easier by my parents' bitter divorce when I was thirteen.  In Toronto in 1975 when almost everyone else was getting their hair cut I followed suit, then in early 1976, just before my twentieth birthday, I noticed it was beginning to recede from the front.  To my surprise I was not alarmed and immediately accepted and embraced my new look of gathering maturity.  At twenty-seven I began to cut it very short since a balding head does not suit hair of any length beyond one inch.  I learned to cut my own hair, not with great skill, but soon became rather good at it.  This was after my first three grey hairs appeared.  I had already been through hell in my life and was at the time working in health care and already had experienced my first couple of deaths since I was among other things working in palliative care.  I welcomed the grey.  I had earned it.  In June 1991 while visiting Edinburgh, Scotland, in a local drug store I bought a barber's scissors that I still use to this day twenty-two years later.  Ironically, it was on Father's Day that I made the purchase and Edinburgh is the city where my paternal grandfather was born.  I believe that cutting my own hair for the past thirty years has saved me thousands of dollars. Through my forties and into my fifties my hair has become more sparse and greyer.  I cut it daily now, usually three snips every morning, following my daily shave and preceding my morning shower.  It feels almost like a sacred rite, a fresh offering of my life to God through the sacrifice of three snips of hair every morning.  I have found that this is also a great way of maintaining a well groomed appearance.

     Balding prematurely has of course aged my appearance.  My face itself is rather young for a fifty-seven year old, but people generally notice the baldness first and often automatically assume that I am five to fifteen years older.  Even in my forties service staff in stores, especially young ones, were already offering me the senior's discount and I can only hope that such a thing will still exist in seven years time when I will be eligible for my pension.  Younger people now sometimes offer me their seat on the bus and of course I accept because I do want to encourage good behaviour in young people, and some people seem almost shocked when I tell them I haven't retired yet. 

     A lot of women, such as my mother, begin dyeing their hair as soon as the first grey appears and even in their eighties and nineties continue to colour it so that they will never have the pleasure of seeing themselves with grey hair.  The pressure to look young is so intense that it creates in us a lot of bizarre behaviour due to the resulting self-hatred.  I should also mention the many balding men who grow their hair long on one side and flip it over to create the comb over (in Japan they call this style the "bar-code") or they shave it all off in the lame hope that they will look sexy, or younger, or not really bald, but this really is just another kind of comb-over.  I won't mention here the various hair-replacement therapies and anti balding scams that men get duped into trying and paying the annual equivalent of the economy of a small country, though I just have. And yes, there will always be wigs and toupees.  But wigs do serve a purpose, for women especially undergoing chemo and radiation therapy who lose their hair.  This is often a tragic event for a woman, almost as dire as losing a breast that they are hoping to spare from the ravages of cancer.  Even though it was stylish for a while for young women to shave their heads bald it didn't last very long, I think because there is almost an archetypal fear that many women have of losing their hair.

     There is so much symbolic weight and baggage about hair.  Remember the dumb blonde jokes now no longer in vogue because they are even worse than politically incorrect?  They are actually downright offensive (and hilarious!).  Or how about the legendary bad tempered redhead?  Well, my mother was a redhead and she was not known for her serenity. The multi-billion (or trillion?) dollar industry of hair dressing and hair styling really betrays how many of us hate our appearance and how much value we place on our hair without which there is no remaining evidence of having good health, sex appeal or general attractiveness.  It can also make or break a promising job interview.  I am sure I have been turned down for many positions because I am losing my hair and this makes me appear older, less attractive and less marketable.  Even people who have never read the Bible are familiar with the story of Samson and Delilah, who cut off his hair and that this caused him to lose his legendary strength.

     Hair only really interests me if it is hair that has been coloured with every hue of the spectrum, a fashion begun in the seventies by the punks which has since become mainstream but I still love this. It draws the attention away from the hair and away from the person wearing the hair and instead to the glorious emerald green, or cyan blue, or pomegranate red, or deep purple (the shade not the classic rock band).  The woman or man carrying these colours adorning their head becomes an instrument that celebrates that colour and if I have one single regret for going bald it is simply this: that I will never be able to really legitimately dye my hair a stylin' peacock blue.

Let There Be Light

We have just passed the Winter Solstice and already the days are beginning to lengthen.  Not noticeably.  In the last five days the days have been lengthening by seconds.  On December 21, the day of the solstice we had eight hours, ten minutes and 59 seconds of daylight.  Now, five days later we have more than one whole whopping minute of daylight time, eight hours twelve minutes and sixteen seconds. And very slowly the increase accelerates until in June we will be enjoying sixteen hours of daylight, warm weather (if we're lucky), and a plethora of flowers, leaves and green grass and singing birds and surging hormones.  What would we be without light?  Where would we be?  The earth would perish very quickly if the sun went out.  Is it any wonder that the sun was worshipped as a god by ancient peoples all over the globe?  Without the light and warmth of the sun all life would be soon gone.  Not only would we be unable to see the beauty around us, we would soon be extinguished with it.  It is also a wonder that the quality and strength sunlight, depends on where we happen to be in the world and at which stage of the earth's revolution around the sun, since it is the tilt of the earth's axis that creates winter in one hemisphere and summer in the other.

     We all learned in school about photosynthesis, the process of sunlight being harnessed by the chemical chlorophyll which makes the leaves and stems green to produce nourishment with help from the minerals of the earth being drawn up into the plant or tree with the water.  Such a simple but profoundly mysterious process which is the basis of life or most life as we know it, since mushrooms, fungi, and creatures that occupy the darkest depths of the ocean do rather well without sunlight.  But they do not foster the flourishing of life, and without the trees, grass, fruit and seed of the upper world we might subsist for a while on mushrooms but the most vital aspects of our lives would be rendered to a barely vegetative existence and eventually we would either morph into hideous blind reptiles or, more likely, we would vanish from the earth because of the inevitable cold.  Because of light, the light from the sun, we enjoy warmth, food and vision.  Sunlight also creates in the skin vitamin D, which is essential for good health.

     Without light there is no colour because light is composed of colours as colours are components of light.  The process by which light through its varying wavelengths and intensities becomes distinct colours and shades I think will always be essentially mysterious.  Scientists can analyze light and understand what it does.  I am not convinced that they will ever define exactly what it is besides energy. It is common knowledge that matter is highly organized energy.  When the atomic structure of any material, notably a radioactive element is broken down, tremendous and destructive energy is released.  I do not have the knowledge or the background in physics to be able to adequately explain or understand just how the so-called God particle can hold together the nucleus and electrons of an atom, but I am satisfied with believing that this energy proceeds from God and in a way is God.

     Light to me is the most definitive visible evidence of God.  It is always present, always evident, but it cannot be defined except that it is and that it informs and sustains and maintains the very structure of the universe as our bodies, our minds and the earth that we are part of.  Light is a visible miracle that is for atheists and none-theists the elephant in the living room.

     Sometimes as a walking meditation I imagine every single atom that is me and everything surrounding me and the energy which is the God of Love upholding, inhabiting and sustaining these most minute particles and nanoparticles of atoms and components of atoms, and this always fills me with joy and awe.  Be it light energy or fire energy or sound energy or other energy this is our most infallible sign, besides joy and love, of the divine presence.

     The Aztec and the Maya and other ancient peoples performed ritual human sacrifices on the winter solstice so the sun would stop dying and return with its life-giving light, so important is light.  They did not know that by murdering people to appease their gods they were but plunging themselves into darkness.  It is unfortunate that our eyes can be open to the glory of light, but our behaviour can still plunge our souls into darkness.