What Gives Us The Right?

Once Again, Gentle Reader, I was being afflicted with a case of chronic Brain-Fartitis when the CBC after dinner program As It Happens came to the rescue with their interview with psychology professor (U of T) Jordan "I`m Not A Bigot" Peterson.  The good professor apparently objects to being obligated to refer to and address transgender persons by the pronoun of their preference, or the generic "they."  Having an evident allergic reaction to political correctness he simply refuses to do this, claiming that no one has the right to put words in his mouth and force him to say something he disagrees with.  Carol Off, one of the co-hosts of the program, ends up badgering him relentlessly about the importance of respecting the rights of a vulnerable minority.  The good professor responds that it should not be the purview of a tiny minority to hold everyone else hostage to their need sensitivities.

Carol suggests that society may be evolving and that gender variance inclusion ought to be accepted as part of this process of evolution in response to the good professor's insistence that society is not obligated to make everyone feel comfortable.  He goes on to mention that the more the "radical left" pushes their progressive agenda, the bigger and nastier the reaction from the right and the resulting culture war could be prolonged, violent and ugly.

To me there are never easy answers, especially to this little ethical minefield.  On one hand we have the transgender community, a small minority, yes, but consisting of vulnerable people historically mistreated and traumatized.  Now, they are finally finding room in society with protections and human rights.  And people are coming on board in solidarity.  On the other hand there are more conservative individuals who view gender as binary and traditionally male and female.  You are male and he and him if you were born with male genitalia; female, she and her if you have a uterus, breasts and ovaries.  We have not advanced a lot in our understanding of gender and most of us still have pretty fixed and rigid notions of what makes a man and what makes a woman.  Behaviour, preferences, tastes, attitudes.  Blue and pink.  Guns and dolls.  And, of course, biology and anatomy.

Except...

Not everyone fits the binary.  And it isn't just those who are clearly transgender, but the many who find themselves almost anywhere on the scale, or, as in my case, absolutely nowhere on the scale.  I still struggle with gender reassignment therapy and surgery.  I still wonder if it would simply be easier for one to accept the body they were born with and accept compromises of identifying with the gender that doesn't correspond to their biology or anatomy.  I would imagine that chromosomes and genetics play some role in our identity.  And then we find ourselves feeling completely outside of or utterly incompatible with our birth assigned gender identity.   In the case of a transboy or transgirl it seems simple enough to go through the therapy, the surgery and emerge into the anatomical version of our preferred gender.

Except...

A transman, even with an exquisitely reconstructed penis, is never going to produce sperm and father a child.  Neither is a transwoman, even with her flawless new breasts and a vagina that would fool any red-blooded cis hetero guy, ever going to conceive and bear a child.  No, our reproductive potential does not ultimately identify us but surely it still plays, in our complex human portrait, a role in defining us, if but a little.

I do not believe that a transwoman is a woman.  I don't believe them to be a man either.  Likewise a transman is not a man.  But not a woman either.  Regardless of their chromosomal makeup.  By the same token, even if on my passport I am indicated as a male, I don't feel like a man.  But I don't feel like a woman either.  Human, yes.  But identified by my anatomy?  Not really.  I carry with me my femininity and my masculinity and they live mostly in harmony.  They are like Yin and Yang and they are in a dynamic dance and that dance makes me who I am.  I still answer to he, rather than she, but only out of token respect for the body that is part of my identity.

I am not going to speak for transgendered persons, nor for anyone else.  It's really none of my business.  If a transwoman introduces herself to me as Gladys, I am not going to be so tacky as to find out that her birth name is John, then proceed to call her John.  And I will refer to her as she and her.  Not because she is a woman but because of the person she is.

In regards to the good professor Jordan Peterson.  It is one thing to want to be truthful and honest.  It is quite another thing when one decides to be an asshole about it.

Royal Guns, Bullets, And Bombs

So Kate and Will had a tea party for their royal kiddies in Victoria at Government House today.  And who were invited?  Twenty-four military officers, their spouses and their little commoner kiddies.  This has long stuck in my craw about the Royal Family.  Oh, yes, they are so lovely, polite, boring, refined, well bred, and twee.  They are the ultimate in twee.  Especially Will and Kate.  They are the most trifliest of the trifles.  And they seem like lovely and decent people.  I have nothing against them.  I like them.  Neither because they are royalty, nor despite.  They are so inarguably nice.  Twee, of course but this occupational hazard of being a royal is simply every bit is insurmountable as it is unavoidable.  They're not bad-looking either, especially Kate whom under slightly different circumstances would have been an awesome supermodel.  The Royal Glamazon.  And Will had that inescapably dorky adolescent cuteness a few years ago that got millions of teenage girls (and a few teenage boys!) all hot and wet and squealy,  But here I digress.

What's with the military connection?  Yes, the Queen is the Royal Commander of the Armed Forces, etc., but when I see male members of the Monarchy all decked out in military kitsch I do feel a tad nauseous, to say the least.  And then there's that deplorable sibling of Will's, that Royal Carrot Top of dubious paternity shooting and bombing and who knows what else in the Middle East?  Why aren't any of these silly bluebloods a little more concerned with peace?

I have never been a monarchist.  Neither am I strident republican.  I just don't care.  But if the Royals would just make a couple of little tweaks about their lifestyle and way of doing things I might look on them with slightly kinder eyes: that they totally ditch the military and start working for peace, and that they sell off most of their holdings, give their money away for peace and social and human development, get real jobs, and really do their level best to live like ordinary folk, which, like it or not, they are.  They can still be Royals.  They can still take them out of storage and dust them off and polish them for public display when needed.  But enough of the military nonsense.  Bombs and bullets kill people.  Not really that many enemy soldiers or terrorists, but an awful lot of children, old people, women, people with disabilities and ordinary family men.  Maybe a peaceful Royal Family?  One that is not so obscenely wealthy?

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of...

What I am right now is tired.  I worked all day, sort of. 

(Two hours later)

What I am right now is kind of awake.  I napped all evening, sort of.

There must be better ways of writing a blogpost than this, but frankly, Gentle Reader, this is one of these rare days when a brain fart is only a brain fart.  I did have a pleasant enough day.  It started earlier than usual, as I am retiring earlier and getting up earlier these past few days, to accommodate my earlier starts at work, but also for the pleasure of enjoying a longer than usual walk in the early morning on those days this week that don't begin with an early meeting, and time besides to sit in a café somewhere with my sketchbook.  Still, getting up at five am or earlier does wear on one after a while and that is going to be the gist of this little essay, Gentle Reader.

I could write about work but I have to be confidential about my clients and my employers are very thin-skinned about criticism, so, darlings, you are going to have to just read between the lines.

My supervisor did give me some printed material about motivational interviewing.  In less than fifty words it's about facilitating a client to come up with their own solutions by knowing what not to say and not what to ask.  I am informed that this is a very difficult skill to acquire and I believe this.  I would say it's more like going through a character transformation than simply learning new techniques.

I'm probably not going to have time nor energy to paint tonight.

It's all for the best.

Sweet dreams.

Is There Life On Mars?

Isn't it amazing some of the stupid, hare-brained ideas that come from out of the scientific community sometimes?  Like this one idiot who has a plan in process about colonizing Mars?  Now, for just one minute, Gentle Reader, close your eyes and try to imagine not Earth without human life, but human life without Earth.  Without our Mother.  Life on a planet hostile to life, no oxygen, no warm summer days, no trees, birds, no butterflies or bees, no elephants, no bears, no dogs or cats.  Nothing.  A bubble existence of the privileged few allowed to escape the asteroid collision or global nuclear holocaust that those doomsday eggheads want us to believe is not only a future possibility but something inevitable.  Our coming inheritance.

How do, and from where do, these idiots get the idea that humans can or are even meant to survive away from the planet that formed and nurtured us?  This nonsensical crap that we are somehow special, apart from nature, above and detached from the biosphere that sustains us.  Such Descartian rubbish! 

I am not anti-science.  I am anti academic stupidity.  Somehow, over the last five hundred years, we have been led to believe that our superior brains and capacity for reason and consciousness make us somehow different and superior to other life forms.   We are made of the same dust and microbes and water as other life forms.  There is but a one percent difference between human DNA and the DNA of chimps and bonobos.  When we die our bodies decompose and decay, presumably to feed and fertilize the earth from which we sprang. 

This very hubris has led us to colonize and destroy other nations and peoples and destroy our environment and put in jeopardy our Earth's very future.  And certain privileged rich people and academics expect that they are going to escape from the fruit of the damage the Earth has incurred of them, and fly off and ruin yet another planet?  What hubristic shit!

Even if they succeed in establishing a self-sustaining colony on Mars, there are going to be many unaccounted for physical and mental health impacts and obstacles.  To live in an isolated colony completely cut off from our biosphere is really a form of suicide.  No one will survive for the long term because our very life is contained in this planet.  We are the Earth and the Earth is us.  Stay home and spend the money on fixing this planet before we ruin it further.  To hell with Star Trek.  Great TV show and movie but that's all it is.  Stay home and learn to live with your own species and co-exist with our sibling species here with our Mother.

Travel Story

Gentle Reader, the CBC, in their infinite wisdom, have preempted all news and current events programming for the next one and a half hours to treat us to the presidential debate of a foreign country.  For my readers outside of Canada not familiar with the CBC, the initials stand for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  That's right, Gentle Reader.  Our national broadcaster.  Who, just over a year ago, in the USA, would have bothered to watch any of our prime minister debates for our federal election last year?  Didn't think so.

So, right now, despite the horrible effect that Donald Trump's nasty, raspy voice has on my aging nerves, I am listening, with prayer, and trepidation.  He is unhinged, a bully, chronically interrupts, and is consistently unwilling to level with facts.  I only hope that Hillary Clinton who is remaining poised, cool and well-mannered, will kick his fat heiny to Jupiter and beyond.

This is so depressing that I think I'll spend the rest of this space writing about how travel has enriched my life.

It has happened in so many ways, but first let me offer a full disclosure here.  I didn't have my first trip outside of Canada or the US until I was thirty-five.  I often was so embarrassed as a youth, hearing and being regaled by all, or at least many, of my friends about their travel stories: to Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Polynesia, Australia.  I felt left out, deprived.  I felt also ashamed, not for a lack of courage, but a lack of funds.  I didn't have the benefit of Mom and Dad to stay with and foot the bill while I worked, saved, went to university and take a few months off for my coming of age world journey.  It wouldn't have worked for me anyway.  For the most part these trips of one's youth have always been the privilege of the middle class.  I didn't grow up middle class, and from my parents' bitter divorce on I have lived mostly in poverty.

My mother died from lung cancer when I was thirty-four.  A few months later I received money from her life insurance policy and went to Europe for two months.  I regret that I didn't go far beyond Britain, except for a couple of weeks spent in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.  On the other hand, there are so many images of places I saw, visited and people I met that are still engraved in my memory: the green manicured marvel of Kensington Palace Gardens, Hyde Park and Kew Garden.  The architectural marvel of St. Paul's Church.  The young man sharing a beer with me on the train.  Edinburgh Castle and the old cemetery down below where I got lost late one night.  The massive poppy and wheat fields among the ancient stones of Avery.  The lovely eccentric people, working in a fashion co-op with a café in the back, a repurposed rail car, where I often went for baguette and brie for breakfast.  The young African man who robbed me at knife point my first night in Amsterdam because I stopped to admire the profile of the stepped gable roofs of seventeenth century houses across the canal.  The vision I had in a thousand year old church in Cologne of a gathering of medieval nuns.  The wonderful symmetrical columns of the Palaise de Justice in Brussels.  The woodlands and fields and the palace maze in Hanover.  Standing at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.   Sitting among the ruins of a church, a surviving monument to the Allied bombings of Hannover during the Second World War.  Petting three friendly horses on the outskirts of Cardiff.  Lying in a stone cradle at the peak of Arthur`s Seat as the wind blew over me in Edinburgh.

Seeing for the first time in Costa Rica birds I had known only in picture books: the resplendent quetzal, orioles, motmots and hummingbirds in Monteverde and flocks of green and orange parakeets in downtown San Jose.  Hearing the roaring of howler monkeys in the early morning and walking protectively with two young New Yorkers in the Cloud Forest who had been frightened by the roar of a jaguar.  The incredible otherworldly serenity while sitting quietly in a clearing in the jungle, the glorious blue morpho butterflies.

The bougainvillea spilling over hacienda walls in glowing magenta and red splendour as viewed from the winding cobbled streets of San Angel and Coyoacan in Mexico City; feeling transported hundreds and thousands of years while sitting on the steps of ruined temples and pyramids in Teotihuacan and Palenque.  Reading and perfectly understanding in Spanish the heart wrenching poem by Rosario Castellanos in the Plaza de las tres culturas in Mexico City, honouring the students murdered there by police and military days before the opening of the 1968 Olympics.  Living in a foreign language, Spanish, as it rapidly becomes my own.

My travel experience is still limited and brief compared to some of the tireless globe-trotters I know and admire.  There are many parts of the world I will never see.  It doesn`t matter.  It is the places I have already known and grown to love and the possible future places that I will embrace as beloved extensions of my home.  These trips, these places, these people have all changed me, and are changing me still.  I never thought I could do it.  I am still poor.  Somehow God blesses me every year to go on these trips.  I am becoming both older and younger as I age.

And the wretched debate is finally over!

About The Royal Couple

Well, not that there's anything special about Will and Kate.  I am not a monarchist.  I am not anti-monarchy.  I just don't care.  I don't believe that they are better or superior or different from the rest of us.  They are prisoners by birth, breeding and tradition and that is the cage they have to live in and through which they must negotiate the world.  I haven't even a tincture of envy for them, despite their massive wealth and privilege.   But that's because I don't give a damn about wealth or privilege.  I am happy with who I am and with what I have.  I love the anonymity of my life and living simply as one simple human among so many other simple humans.  This is something Kate once knew, and never will again.  Will?  Poor bugger, he's beyond hope as far as that goes.   I feel sorry for them.

I imagine that so many people go gaga over royalty for one simple reason.  We have a tendency of projecting onto celebrated figures our best and most noble human traits.  It is almost a kind of self-hatred by default the way people adulate their "betters."  But really, we are all the same, all equal and each made in the image of the same God.  We are all royalty.

Imagine being followed and hounded by the media throughout your life, every one of your steps, almost every breath of yours being scrutinized.  That feeling that the whole world even knows, not only when you're taking a shit, but the kind of toilet paper you use and your particular style of wiping your ass.

I have to admit that, like many, I do admire Will and Kate, especially their desire to be as normal as possible and to know and appreciate normal life as much as possible.   They never are going to quite get it of course.  I have absolutely no hostility towards them.  I rather like the Queen.  I would never go out of my way to see them because, quite simply, I have other things to do.  I also already have a life.

I also appreciate their interest in becoming familiar with as many facets of Canadian life during their visit here as possible.  Including visiting in Canada's poorest postal code an organization for low-income pregnant women and officially opening a welcoming centre for new immigrants and refugees.

They are never going to know what it is like to shop in a budget grocery store, or what it is like to take a bus, seated next to a perfect stranger staring at their iPhone as though they do not exist.  They are not going to know what it is like to walk past a street beggar, nor to ignore a clandestine drug deal in broad daylight.  Nor will they ever enjoy the innocent pleasures and past times we all take for granted: going to a movie, taking a walk, sitting in a coffee shop with a friend, or alone with your laptop or a newspaper, or having a friendly chat with a stranger in a lineup in a store.

Today I saw their motorcade.  The street was blocked off and there were dozens of cops on motorcycles with sirens then a whole cavalcade of black SUV's and minivans, one of them containing the royal couple and their two royal kiddies.  One young woman was standing there at the corner of Clark and Venables with her camera and her face lit up with ecstatic delight as she caught them to photograph.  I didn't see them.  Oh, well, I'm sure they look as normal in the flesh as they do on screen.

One friend of mine said that he wouldn't go out to see the royal couple if they had twenty dollar bills stuck on them for the picking.  I replied that if they were hundred dollar bills I might change my mind.  He still wasn't persuaded.

Everywhere they go they have to be followed by security.  The costs are enormous.  I have heard that this visit alone is costing the Canadian taxpayer some one hundred twenty million dollars, or, one quarter of the amount that our provincial government is ponying up for affordable housing.  One would think that with their enormous royal wealth they might consider footing half the bill?

I was particularly surprised by my reaction when Will's mom, Diana, died in that awful car crash in Paris nineteen years ago, hounded and chased by paparazzi. What a surreal day that was for me.  I had almost not a penny to my name and I still didn't know how I was going to pay the rent, though I did, somehow.  I was walking in the early evening and the sun was getting ready to set, casting a magical flaming light on the earth.  In an area surrounded by warehouses, razor wire and not much else there were a couple of hookers plying their trade.  One I knew from stopping to chat from time to time.  One morning at dawn while I was walking to church for early mass she said hi to me, enveloping me in an enormous friendly hug.  I went into the chapel with the smell of her perfume hanging from my clothes and I could imagine what it must have been like for Jesus when the sinful woman anointed his feet with perfume while washing them with her tears.  There was a two dollar coin on the ground and I put it in my pocket.  I stopped by an old house where an old friend of mine once lived.  I was curious and had a look in the backyard where two wasps stung me.  Then I came across a procession of people I knew from a local Christian community house.  I walked with them for a while and we arrived at an outdoor celebration in a park where people were dressed in the most outlandish and brightly coloured costumes.  One fellow from New Zealand and I were talking about Costa Rica and I was telling him about my desire to learn Spanish then return to that beautiful country, perhaps to live.  He advised me to examine my motives, I guess because it seemed like such a beautiful dream, which of course it was.  From the park I walked into downtown and on into the West End where I sat in a coffee shop where I was showing some of my paintings.  The owners always gave me free coffee.  As my arm began to swell with the wasp venom I went shopping for a chocolate bar to spend the two dollar coin on.  In Shoppers Drug Mart I heard someone say, "I can't believe it.  It can't be true."  I passed by an apartment building.  It must have been getting late as it was already dark.  There were three people standing outside chatting to a tenant looking out her window.  One said, "This is impossible.  I'm in shock.  Are you sure she's dead?"  In the local Safeway I was still seeking a cheap chocolate bar for two bucks.  No luck.  And I heard the name Diana and the word car crash.  I went to the London Drugs across the street where I finally found what I was looking for.  Two Swiss chocolate bars for $1.75.  My arm was getting worse and I overheard someone else say, Did you hear the news about Princess Diana? 

I walked home, all of three or four miles.  On the way home on Main Street, a woman, likely a drug addict, asked me for spare change.  I gave her my last quarter.  Is that all? she said.  I replied to the ungrateful bitch that it was my last quarter, take it or leave it.  Of course she took it and not one word of thanks.  When I arrived home I lay on my bed with my chocolate bars and a glass of milk.  I just had one, I think, and it was delicious.  I turned on the radio for the news and yes it was true.  Princess Diana had just been pronounced dead in a car crash in Paris.  While my arm continued to swell and ache with wasp venom I lay back on my pillow and wept.

When Ethics Collide

I cannot remember this person's name, and it's just as well since I don't want a libel suit on my hands should I yield to temptation and write exactly what I think of him.  He is a bigshot in the medical ethics department and has recently come into the foreground with his egregious and ridiculous claim that no doctor in Canada should have the right to refuse to perform a treatment on a patient that runs contrary to his personal ethics.  Which is to say that in his educated opinion no doctor should be allowed to object to performing an abortion, give advice and support for birth control or assist in doctor assisted suicide should it happen to conflict with his ethical or religious beliefs.

In other words, if you are a doctor and you disapprove of abortion and a woman approaches you to provide her with one, according to this "ethicist", you still have to provide her with the abortion.  Even if you are thoroughly convinced that you are murdering a baby and may suffer from a series of traumatic episodes after, tough luck.  Get in there and butcher that fetus.  If you are against birth control and she wants an IUD?  Suck it up, dude and put on those latex gloves.  Put on an extra pair if it'll make you feel better.  Assisted suicide?  So, you're going to feel like a murderer and will find yourself seeking psychiatric help for years afterward.  Give him the injection already, count to ten, and just think what you're doing to help him make it to a better place.

I an glad I am not a doctor.  Not because I'm pro-life because I'm kind of both pro-choice and pro-life (I can too!) but because I would never want to be put in that kind of position.  Perform an intervention that runs entirely against everything that I hold sacred or risk losing my job?  What a horrible position to find oneself in.  I actually might have found myself hovering dangerously close to such a dilemma.  When they were tabling legislation for doctor assisted suicide they were at first going to include people suffering from mental illness wanting to end their lives because they had lost all hope.  Had the legislation been passed in this form it would have been for me a very difficult situation.  As you have guessed I am unconditionally against doctor-assisted suicide.  It crosses too closely into the territory of homicide and as a Christian and a life-affirming pacifist this flies in the face of all I hold sacred.  To think that I was working with a client who wanted to end his life and I would have to passively accept and even encourage their desire to do so, on pain of losing my job.  For this, and other reasons, I lobbied fierce and hard against this legislation, as did others.  We won, I am glad to say.  I am saddened that legislated suicide is still on the books but a small victory is better than none.  For those righteous progressive folk who whine and carp about human rights and death with dignity I have four little words for my answer: improved palliative care services.

No one in any position should be expected to perform a service or duty that runs contrary to their conscience, otherwise we would have demoralized and depressed medical care and support staff and this in general would impact on the collective morale and the ability to provide effective and compassionate services.  Neither should a doctor or other health care provider be obligated to direct the patient to those who will do the deed, for the simplle reason that the moral conscience of the care provider has to be equally respected.  In most cases abortion and assisted suicide are not life and death issues, except of course for the fetus and for the patient wanting to end their life.

Clamp It Shut

I have decided to go on a verbal fast when it comes to interacting with strangers who behave like idiots.  This is not going to be easy.  I have long believed in speaking out when something doesn't seem to be right.  Then this tendency went into overdrive and I would find myself ragging on strangers for second hand smoke, skateboarding on sidewalks, yelling in my ear, you name it.  It hasn't always been an exercise in futility and some have actually responded benignly and even with humility.  Others, not so much.  But it hasn't been so much the conflict this has generated at times, but it does take up a lot of emotional energy.  I really think that I am made for better than educating idiots, or the raising of overgrown children whose parents failed them miserably the first twenty years of their lives.  Neither has this done anything to help my peace of mind.  Rather than alleviating my stress, this tendency of trying to correct other people's badly raised children has been emotionally draining, and at times dangerous, and I really want to be a little more constructive with my energy.  I believe this is also called picking your battles.

I have done well more and less these past three days of clamping it shut.  I would even say that I have been a lot better over the last few years.  People have cycled past me on sidewalks, blithely and as though in an altered state and I have said not a thing about getting their lazy ass off the sidewalk, or walk their goddamn bicycle; smokers have sailed by me floating on a blue cloud of carcinogenic euphoria without hearing not even a censorious snort from me, though on a couple of occasions I was careful either to cross to the other side of the street or discreetly wave their smoke away from me.  Today I did put my fingers in my ears (while balancing my big golf umbrella) when a whistling dork tried to serenade everyone at the bus stop.  I had only to glance at him once and he stopped.  Neither have I bounced off of interlopers nearly walking into me the kind loving words, "Excuse me works".  Usually I have been trying to discern that something is going on in these people's lives, I do not know what it is, that it could be anything mundane or something hugely tragic and life-altering and I simply offer up a prayer for them and walk on.  Or I try to be kind to strangers.  On the sidewalk this morning, after avoiding temptation to comment with snark at someone, I complimented a young man for his beautiful umbrella (every colour of the rainbow and then some).  On the bus this afternoon after restraining myself from reacting when a young woman's bag almost bounced off my face, I offered her my seat, hoping she would be more comfortable.  She politely declined but appeared to appreciate the gesture.  Two men standing were having a rather loud conversation next to me, which felt invasive, but instead I apologized for eavesdropping when one of them mentioned that downtown Granville must be really wild during the small hours of the morning, and shared with them what it's like for me living there, and how I simply stay home and watch YouTube during evenings.  They were friendly and seemed amused and suddenly I liked them.

This is not easy and I don't expect it to be easy, and it probably is never going to be easy.  So much has changed since I was younger.  This city is more crowded and everything is louder and noisier.  There is new construction everywhere filling the air with unwelcome and invasive noise and erasing out of existence the city I once knew and loved.  Sirens are more strident and ear-splitting, children are being poorly raised, behave abominably and everywhere you can almost see glass being shattered by their continuous ultrasonic squeals.  Everyone is talking on their handheld device making a quiet bus ride or a peaceful table in a café a fond and distant memory.  Others are swept up in this current wave of narcissistic entitlement, caring not a tinker's damn about how their inconsiderate behaviour is impacting others.  People tend to be ruder and more prone to launching into volleys of verbal abuse and profanity at complete strangers should they be told off for their crappy behaviour.  And don't get me started about irresponsible dog-owners.

We also have larger, collective stress: the onslaught of global capitalism and how this has made competition for even a low-paying service industry job fierce, ruthless and dehumanizing; most of the new jobs created are low-paying, part time and contract positions, like mine; generally people are earning less and paying more for food and especially for housing.  Those low and middle income earners brave enough to stay in this obscenely costly city often live saddled with debt, from paycheque to paycheque and often don't know if they will still have a job or a place to live next month.  We are also being inundated with other collective, global fear: the effects of global warming and climate change, international terrorism, and Donald Trump.  All of these pressures and this fear impacts us and we either shut down, act out, or both.

For me, being told by a counsellor who is young enough to be my daughter that coping with all this is all my problem is a little bit of an insult to my intelligence, given that she doesn't have a clue about how things were when I was her age, nor the huge learning curve and humongous adjustments that I and others of my generation have had to make in order to cope with these and other sweeping changes in our lives.  She has no idea that there was a time when people phoned and visited each other, children were better behaved and people tended to be a little more considerate and things were generally a little more peaceful and a bit simpler.  Of course, we were also living through the Cold War and in the shadow of nuclear missiles ready to be launched and destroy all life on this earth as we knew it.  This threat has not exactly gone away, incidentally. 

Sure, we were not spoiled by all the technological advances and the endless choices of everything that now we all take for granted like jaded spoiled rich kids.  There are also many changes that I appreciate: the Internet for example and the absolute freedom of accessible information about almost everything.  I also find Skype pretty awesome.

Now this hasn't been easy, and yes, Mother, I am dancing as fast as I can.  So, cut me a little slack, already.  Coping with all these changes, and trying to enjoy life on an earth with an uncertain future is not a cakewalk.  Yes, I will cut you all a little slack for acting like idiots.  By the same token I also expect to be cut some slack for those times when I can no longer hold my tongue and let you have it for being an idiot.  In the meantime I am trying my level best to behave.

Patience, please.

Happy Idiot

Life is not easy.  Sometimes it can be downright horrible.  And then there are those spontaneous acts of kindness.  This morning a woman offered me her place in a coffee shop line-up.  I was reluctant but she insisted.  Then, when it came time for my order I offered her my place.  She insisted that I accept her kindness, which I did.  I have been thinking of this woman's act of kindness off and on today as I have been making a redoubled effort to treat others with kindness and to basically keep my mouth shut when I find them annoying.

There are a lot of idiots out there.  Walking wounded idiots.  They shuffle along whistling behind your head and blowing smoke in your face, or they almost collide into you on the sidewalk where they ride their bikes and skateboards.  They put their gamey feet up on chairs and tables in coffee shops without the slightest indication that they might be aware that they might not the only people in existence.  They let their badly raised children run, scream and squeal all over the place, taking mortal offence if you express annoyance.

I am done with coping, I am finished with resisting, and I am not interested in accommodating.  From now on I will simply say nothing.  I am sick of being sworn at by someone else's badly raised child.
We are all wounded, broken and half destroyed.  Many of us carry great burdens and stagger under broken hearts.  Many would feel their load so much lightened by any act or expression of kindness.  Many would be blessed by the smile and consolation of a nonjudgmental happy idiot.

Can't Give It Away

This is the conundrum I find myself in concerning my art.  I can neither sell it nor give it away.  I seem to be stuck with it.  I have on occasion given art to people who are still my friends: two exactly.  Everyone else has dumped me.  They liked my paintings better than me, and some who received two or three gift paintings from me saw fit to re-gift them to people I have never known, met, nor will I receive a single nickel or cheque for art that was never destined for them.  As I said to the lady whom I gave two paintings as a gift when I was homeless and staying part time with my father (she was his landlady and friend and wanna be girlfriend), when she gave one painting to her daughter: the next one is for sale.  It just didn't occur to the stupid old bat that I could have used a little money, given my extremely impoverished state at the time.

For an unknown artist I've done pretty good in sales: one hundred or more, so far.  I also often have felt guilty about receiving money for my creative efforts and ended up giving a lot of paintings away to less than worthy individuals.  Bad piggy, no pearls.  I don't think I was trying to buy anyone's friendship.  Perhaps I just felt so grateful at times that anyone would want to befriend me that this was my way of saying thanks.  Every one of these people, save for two already good, trusted and very established friends, whom I have gifted my art to have shat on me and dumped me and we will likely never see each other again.

Selling my paintings has sometimes left me feeling a bit conflicted.  I have often felt troubled about my art going to well-off people instead of to just anyone regardless of their income.  I would often slash my prices to make my paintings more accessible to people on low incomes.  The fact of the matter is, I don't think that anyone particularly wealthy ever bought any of my art.  I was also aware that should I find myself represented by a good gallery, then those would be the only class of people who would be buying my art, giving me a lovely income, time on my hands to paint to my heart's delight, and a severely compromised conscience.

I have tonnes of canvases and filled sketchbooks clogging my little apartment.  I might have a couple of shows coming up in the next year or so.  But there are no guarantees.  Besides, Gentle Reader, I have become so fond of and attached to a lot of my art that I am no longer so sure about letting go of anything.  Maybe when I die, they will tie my body to an enormous raft and funeral pyre made up entirely of my paintings and sketchbooks.  Then they'll pour gas over everything, set me and my art ablaze and let us go floating out to sea, flames and smoke obscuring the darkening sky.

Not great for the environment, but what an exit!

Descent Into Barbarism

It seems to be where we're heading.  Every man (and woman) for themselves.  I was threatened today by a large black man in a pricey neighbourhood of my city (Kitsilano, Vancouver).  I am mentioning his race because I am not ruling out racial hatred for his near attack on me.  He has a shaved head, wore sunglasses (do I see an ugly male stereotype here?) and was jogging pushing (ironically) a double baby stroller with a husky dog in tow.  There was very little room left for me on the narrow sidewalk so I commented in passing that there wasn't a lot of room for pedestrians.  He called back, "What did you say?"

I should have ignored him but I said, "you heard me the first time." 

He repeated "What did you say?"

"I'm sure you're not deaf.  I don't want to argue."

It turned out that he was following me and was getting ready to punch me.  In front of his baby.  I reached for my phone to call 911.  He swore at me and went away and I called back to him "What kind of language is that to use in front of your kid", and finished with "that isn't how we do community."

I know that I should have kept my mouth shut.  Anyone stupid and selfish enough to behave like this loser is not going to take kindly to even the most gentle and constructive criticism.  I am also weighing the possibility that he was on steroids, or worse.  Still, given that I was on my way to see one of my clients I should have known better and kept quiet.

I cannot seem to cure myself of this habit of commenting to strangers on their bad behaviour, at least when it impacts me.  I don't always, and more often than before I do try to keep my mouth shut and pick my battles.  I don't like being sworn at or threatened.  At the same time I do not like the idea of giving assholes a pass for their selfish, rude and inconsiderate behaviour just because I'm afraid of the consequences.  A coward I am not.

By the same token I really need to practice self-restraint around uncivil and barbaric douchebags like this very sorry excuse for an African (my heart goes out to all of you, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.).  While I can bounce back okay and still work well with my clients (all survivors of mental health struggles) I don't see that I should put myself in positions or in situations where I'd have to.  I've already convinced myself.  I'm brave.  Now let's move on.

Given that I have had more threatening run-ins with black men than any other demographic, this is concerning.  I do not believe that I select this group, neither consciously or unconsciously.  I do believe that black men tend to be disproportionately prone to aggression, crime and violence.  And also that my being Caucasian makes me a sitting duck for some of these guys.  I have heard all the reasons, all the justifications and all the lame, lovely liberal excuses for black violence.  They do have some merit, but I also believe there is another problem.  Young black men, and not a few of other races are fed, or feed themselves with a steady diet of toxic masculinity: porn, rap music, violent video games, mixed martial arts fighting, and an incredibly distorted, survival of the fittest, law of the jungle mentality.  Factor in unfettered capitalism and we see a recipe for social collapse and on a huge, descent into barbarism, kind of scale.  On top of that we have the massive sense of disentitlement from centuries of slavery and more recently of extremely crappy treatment from white society.  This is exponentially worsened by the passive encouragement many are given to ruminate on their history of injustice, steep in their acid bile of resentment and emerge out of it bristling with violent and virulent hatred.  I really hope that North American black men will, instead, come to emulate the mentality of the likes of Mandela, King and Tutu without fear of being labelled as weak Uncle Toms.

In the meantime, I am going to use this post as a way of keeping me accountable for staying quiet when strangers annoy me.  But I'm not going to do this out of cowardice or fear.  If I have to face off with a violent asshole, peacefully of course, then so be it.  This is going to be my reason for staying quiet: I have to start conserving my energy for more constructive uses.  It is evidently impossible to educate idiots in this culture of moronic selfishness, entitlement and narcissism.  I think it would be better for me to focus on being a good role model and to do what I can to show kindness and treat others well.  Let someone else do the teaching.  I'm done.

My final words to Black people:  If you want to be respected, then show yourselves worthy of respect.  Not to be feared, but to be loved and honoured.  And try to be gentlemen about it...

If Trump: The Great Reptilian Brain Wizard

Gentle reader, this is a worst-case scenario to the very extreme.  But I have to write this.  It is an elephant in the room, a very fat, gross, ugly and mean Republican American elephant and he has to be named.  Donald Trump.  Yes.  But what this obnoxious and dangerous clown of a billionaire could possibly represent, should the American people be stupid enough to grant him access to the White House and the nuclear codes.

This has turned out to be the most bizarre presidential race in US history and we in Canada ought to sit up and take notice.  As Trudeau Senior once famously said, having America for a neighbour is like a mouse having to sleep next to an elephant.  Every single move and sound the elephant makes is going to impact the mouse and in spades.  Now that there is a high possibility of this moron with bad hair gaining the highest political office in the land and the most powerful in the world we are going to be at risk and possibly in danger in so many ways:

Yes, Trump the Dump has promised to tear up international trade agreements, deport Muslims and Latinos, build a wall with Mexico that he insists Mexico is going to pay for, murder the innocent family members of terrorists, revoke the minimum wage, ignore climate change and beef up fossil fuel extraction, transport and trade, and threaten with nuclear annihilation any country that pisses him off.  He has proven to be many times over a liar, a mean-spirited, emotionally unstable, bigoted and hateful liar. 

No matter what outrageous and stupid claims that he makes, his support base remains strong and no one is going to mind that he tells it like it is, which is to say what they want to hear, no matter how stupid and false, because it is what they want to hear.  Trump the Dump has promised to make America great again by putting the white, uneducated working class back to work-which is to say that by kicking everyone off of welfare and abolishing the minimum age he would legally force all his white poorly uneducated supporters into near slave labour conditions.

Trump the Dump is the Great Reptilian Brain Wizard.  As poorly educated people have neither the resources nor a developed capacity to be rational nor to carefully consider a variety of options and positions, Trump is strategically positioned to exploit these people's fear, resentment and hate to the max.  They are justifiably angry at being left behind by the global economy and they cannot be faulted for wanting to lash back at the very politicos who helped strip America of its manufacturing industries, putting millions out of work, many of whom work now in poorly paid positions.  This has also made it all the more convenient to dump the blame on immigrants for stealing their jobs, no matter how much evidence there is to refute this nonsense.

There still remains a strong possibility that Trump the Dump could well be the next president.  When he is elected one can only guess what this could mean for Canada.  If Trump proves to be as much like Hitler as a lot of us tend to imagine him then we could be in deep doo-doo.  Trump, with his classic fear-mongering paranoia, could easily invent any number of excuses for an invasion and armed occupation of Canada.  Remember Austria in 1938?  He could cite our liberal multiculturalism, our welcoming of immigrants as posing an imminent threat to America, along with the ongoing temptation of our fat motherlode of natural resources.  Whatever he wants.

After that it's anyone's guess, but I'll bet you Tim Horton's to Krispy Kreme that this could signal a very dark and dangerous epoch for our country and that any thinking person, political activist, or intellectual would find their lives in grave danger.  Even me, Gentle Reader, with my lovely blog and some of the less than kind things I sometimes have to write about the powerful.  While sitting on the edge of my seat and trying not to bite my nails, between now and the first week of November, I am going to be particularly nervous and observant.  The best part of me knows that this is but a fleeting bad dream, that in November reason will prevail, Hillary, for all her flaws will be the next president, and we will continue to fumble our way towards working for a slightly better world.

But just in case, I am trying to visualize asking customs in Costa Rica or some other Hispanic country for political asylum.  The good news?  My Spanish is now better than ever.

Seeing Through New Eyes

I always enjoy showing my city to newcomers.  This happened today.  I have a Peruvian friend who has been here for over a year and a friend of his has recently come here for a month.  Today we were introduced for the first time and then we went walking, along the Coal Harbour Seawall


, then into Stanley Park as far as Prospect Point


where we stopped in a restaurant for a snack with a breathtaking view of the Lions` Gate Bridge, then through the forest and then along the Seawall until we visited the laughing statues at English Bay.



My friend didn`t think I liked the statues, and I have to admit that I know a lot of people who find them off-putting, and many others who love them.  We even saw a little girl cry with fright when her mother carried her over to them.  I couldn`t give a black and white answer because, really, that`s not the way I seem to experience things.  A lot of people will either like something or dislike it.  My experience of things has always been more nuanced.  As I explained this to my two Peruvian friends (even though I have only met once my friend's friend I already consider her my friend and I hope that's okay with both of them because I find them both to be lovely people.) I often don't know what to make of something so I'll simply give it time and think of it as interesting.  It helps me keep an open mind and this way I can easily grow to like new things and people, as I seek to understand them better, I might otherwise dismiss.  It's amazing the things we learn about ourselves through other people.

I also have a special fondness for Peruvians.  Almost every Peruvian I've met I have found to be kind, gentle and humble and very nice to be with.  Or maybe I'm just lucky and I get to meet the good ones.

Seeing my city through my friends' eyes has helped me love all the more the place where I live and for this I thank them both with joy and gratitude and to both these Peruvians who have been so kind to befriend me I dedicate this post.

A Sad Little Bird

Gentle Reader, forgive me if I am about to wax maudlin, as we already know that to not be my preferred style of writing.  But there are some things that completely escape sarcasm, cynicism and irony.  And such thing I witnessed yesterday.  It was a tiny bird, fluttering lamely on the sidewalk, as though already dying.  I stopped to look and wondered what I could do to help.  This bird was tiny.  It might have been a species of warbler (female, I think) or a kinglet.  It had olive green plumage and yellow underparts.  I phoned the City Hall help line for advice and the bird suddenly held very still on the pavement, breathing, its eyes open and its bill gaped open as though in an expression of supplication.

The City Hall employee transferred me to Wildlife Rescue and I stood and waited stupidly before I could figure out their complex caller menu.  I left a voice mail with a detailed description of the bird and the address of the house it was languishing in front of.  A few minutes later I got a call from one of their staff who made unreasonable demands and asked rather stupid questions without considering that I had already done all I could and could not be any later for work, since that's where I was headed.  She concluded by lamely telling me there was no one available to pick up the poor bird and we'd might as well consider it dead or a live snack for one of the local cats (my interpolation, not hers).

Now, I happen to love cats.  Dogs, I like, certain breeds and mutts I love, but cats I generally and universally adore, though I will never have one again for a pet, given that I just couldn't give a good home to a pet of any species or breed.  I am too busy taking care of myself these days.  But cats, as much as I enjoy stopping to pet them on the sidewalk really ought to be kept indoors.  They are the number one culprit for killing our birds and with all the kibble they eat they certainly don't need the live food.

I went on to work feeling badly about the bird.  It was so vulnerable and I wanted to do something, anything, but had to accept that this was beyond my purview, just as I am not able to shelter homeless adults in my tiny bachelor unit. 

We are surrounded by vulnerability and we ourselves are often vulnerable in our helplessness to do something.  It creates a kind of paralysis.  I think some people try to cope with this paralysis by taunting and mocking and victimizing the already vulnerable.  Since people of colour, queer people and the disabled are finally off limits for this kind of mistreatment (thank God for this) there still seems to be an open season on the poor and homeless.  Stand up comedians are especially bad for doing this and I am completely flummoxed that there has been no public outcry about this.  Perhaps because people aren't really as compassionate as they could be?

This evening I shut off the radio in midstream while listening to the CBC program, Laugh Out Loud, because their idiot de jour was suggesting they put electric fences around panhandlers so they can't bother people on sidewalks.  I also sent an email to Ali Hassan, the host of this program:

"I enjoyed Martha Chaves, as always.  She also has the decency to not target the vulnerable for cheap laughs, unlike the second comedian who was on. When  he took a cheap shot at homeless panhandlers needing electric fences around them I`d had enough and turned off the radio.  This day and age it is no longer acceptable to mock people because of race or sexual preference.  It is time this respect was extended to the poor.  Shame on you, Ali, especially given that you as a member of a visible minority might have a little more empathy for others who are targeted by bullies.  I expect better from you and from the CBC.
aaron"

I don't expect that Ali Hassan has much of a conscience, but it's worth a go.  It also seems to me that when Hitler and his Nazis were just coming to power in Germany it was already de rigueur to mock and deride the Jews.  I hate to imagine the kind of slippery slope we'll find ourselves on if we don't soon halt this fashionability of bullying the already helpless and vulnerable, in our case, the poor, the homeless, the beggars.  We deserve better and we deserve to be better, Gentle Reader.

Happy Friday!

I seem to be a bit short on ideas today, Gentle Reader, so let's fake it, shall we?  Isn't it a beautiful day today?  This could likely be the last of those special days of late summer and now the summer is dying into Autumn.  I have another name for this in-between season.  I call this Fummer, then comes Fall, which is followed by Finter followed by Winter, then Sprinter, Spring, Sprummer and Summer again.  Eight seasons in all.

The world hasn't ended yet.  We are still on the same planet Earth which has not lost its orbit and still rotates on the same invisible axis.  Whatever is happening because of global warming and climate change things seem to be proceeding as usual, except the small incremental changes, the early thaw and late freeze in the Arctic and Antarctic, the shrinking glaciers, the slowly rising sea levels, and the warming ocean currents disrupting and killing fish migrations, among other things.  It's all creeping along, insidious and more subtle than the serpent in the Garden of Eden.  We really don't know what to expect, nor how it is going to impact us.

I try to do what I can to reduce my carbon footprint.  Not having a car helps tremendously, as does being a vegetarian.  I recycle, maybe not everything, but almost everything: paper, containers, newspapers, organic waste.  On the other hand I fly every year and I hope that by doing so I am not contributing too much carbon to the atmosphere.  I think that on the whole my carbon footprint is very small, more like that of a citizen of a Third World country.  Even small steps matter, like ordering my café beverages in glasses or ceramic mugs.  I think I must have already saved the landfill maybe three thousand plastic and about as many paper beverage containers.

I have seen my travel agent this morning and Monday morning I will be booking my flight to Costa Rica in March.  I never pay anything by credit card.  I have a huge allergic reaction to debt and my idea is that if I can't afford it then I can't have it.  This does make things a little bit constrained in some ways but it has also made me very disciplined at budgeting.  I suppose this makes me a bit of an oddity but I tend to wear my oddness like a badge of honour these days.  Speaking of which, I had to admit to my coworkers today that I haven't had a TV since I was in my twenties.  This was by way of explaining why I couldn`t figure out how to find the music channels on the TV in the programs room downstairs for the weekly art program I facilitate.  It seems that our CD player has "found a new home" which is rather a nice way of saying that one of the clients stole it, so I tried to use the one they keep in a cupboard in the office, but I couldn't get it to work.

It's been quite a random kind of day.  I am waiting for a response on Skype for a friend in the Dominican Republic for some Spanish-English conversation.  If she doesn`t get back to me I`ll just read for a while, do some art work and go to bed early.

Happy Friday!

Morality Play

It never ceases to amaze me, this either/or and black and white thinking that people never seem to quite break out of.  Especially when it comes to addressing addiction.  On the radio this morning someone expressed outrage that anyone would accept the premise that there could be a moral aspect to addiction.  She cried out loud and almost tearful about how awful it is to judge addicts, that this has to be addressed scientifically, and that addiction is a disease, etcetera, etcetera.  Anyone even suggesting that the addicted person has any moral responsibility about their predicament is misguided, confused, right-wing, cruel, judgmental and simply not a nice person.

Uh-huh.

First of all, let me make one or two matters perfectly clear:

1. I agree that addiction is an illness, and must be addressed and treated as an illness.
2. It is absolutely unconscionable to judge addicts for being addicted.
3. I am in favour of harm-reduction.

Here is where we disagree:

I have said this before and I'm saying it again.  No one has ever put a gun to anyone's head and forced them to smoke, inject or snort something that will eventually be their lord and master.  No, I am not a conservative.  I am left-wing, progressive, and I am also a Christian.  Oh, but I can!  As I said, no one has ever forced anyone else to take drugs.  There is always an element of choice involved whether we like this or not and therefore the addict has to accept responsibility for their condition and for their recovery if they are to indeed recover.

Our capacity to choose, and our capacity to accept, or reject, responsibility for our choices is one of many qualities that make us uniquely human.  When this capacity for choice and responsibility is omitted in our treatment programs we are in effect dehumanizing the client.  We are patronizing them, treating them like children, or worse, like cats or dogs.

This is not licence to shame or humiliate.  Once addiction kicks in it's game over and we shift very quickly from poor lifestyle choice to addiction.  I think there is a lot to be done about prevention.  We need to address especially young people about the need, the curiosity, peer pressure, pain, fear, lack of love and spiritual yearning that often lead to addiction.  I also think it is no coincidence that many people who become addicts have histories of childhood abuse.

I say, continue harm reduction strategies, decriminalization and legalization of drugs.  I also say, redouble treatment opportunities and options--AFFORDABLE options that won't require months long waiting lists for those who need the services  most.  Harder work needs also to be done about prevention.  Whatever your opinion, we can never have too much compassion.  Let's hear it for love in action.

Sweet Dreams

I'm on the low ebb of my sleep cycle.  I have found that it often has sweet nothing to do with stress or anxiety though on occasion they play a role.  Last night, and the night before were very similar.  After getting to sleep reasonably early, before ten thirty on both nights, I woke up three hours later following a short but deep REM sleep only to find myself lying awake for the next two to three hours.  I don't believe that I was always awake.  When we are in bed we are not so aware of the contrast between waking and sleeping so that we can pass in and out of sleep all night and still claim to have not slept a wink.  In the daytime we are so absolutely awake that should we lie down for a quick nap we're going to notice the difference profoundly because we are completely alert at the time.

I threw in the towel on both mornings and got up at the crack of dawn, had a shower, cleaned my apartment and ate breakfast, only to return to bed shortly after, five-thirty this morning, six am the other day, lying on top of the bed and drifting in and out of sleep for the next three hours.  Today I do not feel quite so rested though I was fine the other day.  Though I dragged my ass all day, I left early for work, walked about seven miles today between, during and following professional assignments and even had time to sit in a coffee shop with my sketchbook.  I also got tonnes of Spanish practice on my phone while walking.

My last client cancelled so |I got home at two thirty where I napped for two hours.  I still don't feel fully rested, nor am I terribly worried about my sleep problems.  First of all they don't occur all the time.  Perhaps three or four nights a month now, as opposed to three or four nights a week just a few short years ago.  There seem to be a few causes for my sleep difficulties.  PTSD aftermath is one of them.  Aging is another.  I have read that men tend to develop sleep issues after age forty-five.  We have a lot weighing on our conscience, Gentle Reader.  Work stress and anxiety are other causes and in my line of work especially sleep issues are going to be an occupational hazard.  I did spend 2003 and small portions of 2002 and 2004 working mostly night shifts in a homeless shelter and it has not surprised me that since I left this position that my sleep cycles have been very delicate.

One learns to cope.  I try to get to bed early at night so that, should I wake in the middle of the night, I will still make every effort to go back to sleep, usually with success.  If not, then I get up in the small hours, get started, then return to bed for a three hour nap.  Sometimes it works, not always.  It's getting better and I have learned to adapt.  Still, the rare time I have an unbroken sleep of six hours or so I feel like the most privileged person alive.

Dance Of Death

I was disappointed to hear how uninterested Mother Teresa was in social activism when I learned of her elevation to official sainthood.  She believed that following the gospel and being faithful to Christ through a devotional life dedicated to serving the less fortunate was all that was required.  She expressed absolutely no interest in movements towards social change or reform.  I did find this a bit saddening but it really didn`t surprise me much.  For all her saintliness the woman was also an Albanian peasant with little formal education to balance and inform her intense devotional life.  I suppose it could also be convincingly argued that with all the good she did in her ministry to the poor, unwanted and dying in Calcutta, and the huge influence she has had on others, was already enough.  It only takes a spark to get a fire going.

Mother Teresa was one of my early Christian mentors and for years, as much as I could, I tried to model my life around her pattern: daily mass (Anglo-Catholic as opposed to Roman): days spent in caring for the sick, unwanted and dying: devoting my life, my youth, everything, to serving and honouring my Lord Jesus Christ.  My life would still have been compromised in her judgment, I'm sure.  I did get paid for my work, if a low, somewhat lower than living, wage.  And I had no job security.  I also participated in social and political activism, against nuclear weapons and war, among other things.  For me, individual ministry meshed with social witness, as it still does to this day.

I am still neither surprised nor disappointed about her sainthood and to this day I regard Mother Teresa as one of my most significant mentors.

Last night I heard on the radio an interview with another of my mentors, Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities.  He was inspiring as always as he reminded us that the broken, unwanted and afflicted remind us very uncomfortably that we also are going to suffer through the trials of age and dying.  He emphasized the importance of becoming to one another true community and of how the evidently well and strong have much to learn from the weak and disabled.

I am thinking today of how far we still are from being a world that God might find worth preserving.  We are still governed and influenced by greedy, narcissistic, self-serving sociopaths.  We are still largely indifferent to our destructive and negative impact on the world, the environment and one another.  Despite all the scientific evidence to the causes of global warming and climate change and how we are already reaching the point of no return, the vast majority of human idiots insist on their entitlement to cars that pollute and eating red meat, which are among the greatest vectors of climate change.  Guns are still fired, bombs are still dropped, and refugees swarm into countries of safe-haven where they are not wanted.

I could go on.

There are still good, righteous and holy people in our midst.  Most of them are unknown.  They are the ones who keep the rest of us alive.  They are the ones who keep the world from collapsing  Without their love,  their prayers, their small and great acts of kindness I dread to think of where we would be.  We need these ones to put love in action and also to inspire and challenge us to do the same.  We need courage.  We need to learn to love truth.  We need to learn to love. 

I want to be one of those people, whose prayers and love keep the earth in orbit, the sky from falling and our humanity from destroying the earth, our mother, and ourselves.

Thirty Per Cent

This is what they have calculated to be a fair proportion of income relative to housing.  No renter or home owner should have to pay more than thirty percent of their monthly income for rent.  The reality is sadly out of sync with the cipher.  Not only do we find more than half of home owners and renters in this city paying more, often way more, than thirty percent, but a growing exodus of middle income earners fleeing Vancouver for cheaper communities.

A friend and I did the math the other day in a coffee shop.  We discovered that if the tenants occupying any given apartment building roughly represent the economic demographic and if everyone paid a measly thirty percent of their monthly income rather than a set inflated figure for rent, the collective sum of rent taken in would actually be higher.  Higher income renters pay more, but still have enough money in the bank for an annual fancy vacation and a dandy retirement nest-egg.  Lower income renters, with extra subsidies whenever appropriate, will never have to darken the doorway of a food bank and might even have enough in the bank for dental care or even a budget holiday.

The only people left crying are the property managers and real estate developers as they weep into their vintage scotch since they can no longer afford that fourth Lamborghini even if they can still console themselves with a new BMW.

Everyone knows that this is not going to happen, or at least not yet.  Maybe not in my lifetime but you're innocent when you dream.  The greedy douchebags who control real estate in this city have already bought our mayor and our premier so they are going to dance to their tune no matter how many of the people who voted for them end up turfed onto the pavement or having to move to other parts of the country.

We have bartered our lives, as voters, to wealthy sociopaths, and now we are governed by parties and individuals who care not a steaming, foul smelling mound of hooey for us.  Compulsory voting is not the answer because no matter which way we slice it we're always getting the same baloney.

Convincing greedy landlords, greedy anybody that housing is a human right and not a source of profit is going to create a huge learning curve and the apprenticeship is going to be neither quiet or enjoyable.

Renters are going to have to take matters into their own hands.  Tenants are going to have to start organizing.  No tenant will be required to pay more than thirty percent of their monthly income for rent, no matter where they are living and renting.  That's right.  Civil disobedience.  As renters organize together they will become a powerful and unstoppable force to the corporate greed that is destroying our cities.  We will pay the rent that we have decided to be just and the landlords/property managers are going to have to put up and shut up and accept it.  If they try to evict us we will stay where we are.  When the police come to remove us, others will occupy the unit in our place to continue stating the terms of their rent: no more than thirty percent.  It is going to be a long, ugly, noisy, perhaps even violent and bloody process but this is what it is going to take to return affordability to rentals in Vancouver and a sense of social justice and fairness towards especially lower income tenants.  I am not advocating violence and I would prefer passive resistance but unfortunately, the police are not particularly fond of Ghandi nor are they well versed about Martin Luther |King.

It's 9-11 Again, And Again, And Again...

It`s the fifteenth anniversary of that dreadful event.  I remember where I was that morning when the world changed yet again.  I was just waking up and listening to the morning news on CBC Radio 2 back in the days when they played lots of lovely classical music.  Music programming that day was cancelled for the constant bombardment of news updates and minutiae.  It was horrible and horrifying.  At first I could hardly believe what was happening and thought, maybe this is an ad for the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?  As a way of coping I went to the public library and checked out a biography of Ghandi.

The weeks leading up had seemed so tranquil and idyllic.  Flawlessly sunny late summer weather and quiet and peaceful walks in lovely neighbourhoods full of trees, the dazzling sunlight transforming everything, but especially foliage, into something eternal and magical.  I felt full of hope that we were about to enter a new era and that people everywhere would come to be more reasonable, happier, more generous, more loving.  On that morning all of those lovely illusions were shattered like a Faberge egg being dropped from a thirty story window.

It became evident that this wasn't a movie, and not a bad dream but a huge waking nightmare.  Nothing would be the same again, and indeed, nothing has been the same.  It isn't that we are less safe, since in the Seventies there was even more terrorist activity than now and we were all worried about the Cold War and impending thermonuclear doom.

I was savvy enough to know that the American military complex would exploit the occasion to the max, would lash out in vengeance throughout the Middle East, doing far more to contribute to global angst and instability than two World Trade towers collapsing and killing three thousand innocent Americans.  Our worst fears were realised, and within the next four years Afghanistan and Iraq were transformed into charnel houses and the Taliban were succeeded by Al Qaeda, then came ISIS and now, millions of refugees and displaced persons later...

I did notice that Co-op Radio, Vancouver's community radio station, mentioned nothing on the Spanish speaking programs about the disaster.  Being rabidly Marxist they also hated the Americans and focussed instead on the anniversary of the coup in Chile, September 11 1973 when Pinochet and his thugs jackbooted all over that country partly thanks to CIA involvement.  Fair enough.

As much as I greatly benefited from the Spanish language programs on Coop Radio during my early years of learning the language of Cervantes I was saddened that they would allow their ideological hatred to blind them to the suffering and loss of innocent lives of others, even if those lives were despised Americans and it was the much loathed World Trade Centre that was the target and ground zero for the slaughter.

On this sad and auspicious day I think of Chile and I think of New York City, in total, six thousand lives snuffed out of existence, innocent casualties of ideological hate.  And I keep praying that one day we will get it right, that we will stop hating, that we will really begin to open our eyes and see, not only how connected we all are, but how interdependent we have all become.  We can't afford war and we certainly can't afford violence on any level and now is the time for us all to adjust our ideologies and other sacred cows in order to make room for the other.

On Hypocrisy

Oh, here I go writing about myself again, Gentle Reader.  What a bore!  Yes, if I am going to write about hypocrisy then I'd might as well do it honestly.  Today, for example, I was enjoying a long walk, and I was determined to be a kind and caring person throughout the day.  Then, as I was crossing the street a rather fat South Asian man with a shaved head in a fancy car cut me off for his precious right hand turn.  Since his window was open I roundly chewed him out, telling him that it is a walk signal, my right of way and he should look and wait next time.  Because he ignored me I called him a moron.

Now I suppose he got what he deserved and was certainly behaving like an inconsiderate jerk with a huge sense of entitlement, but I still did not live up to my expectation of myself.  I behaved like a hypocrite.  This happens often enough.  We never seem to live up to our expectations of ourselves.  One idea would be to lower our standards.  Instead of being like Mother Teresa, maybe try to be like the guy who runs the neighbourhood soup kitchen.  And if that's too high and lofty, maybe opt to be like the young lady who says thank you to the driver when she gets off the bus.  Or maybe put no expectation for yourself at all. 

Just think, nothing to live up to, no higher standard to measure against, no sense of disappointment and self-loathing from your ultimate and serial failures.  Pathetic much?

I am thinking of these two Jehovah's Witnesses I saw from the bus window this morning, standing on the street corner with their magazines and their little literature stand, two homeless men sleeping on the sidewalk just a few feet away.  I thought, when did I last hear about Jehovah's Witnesses performing acts of kindness and charity?  Didn't think so.  They're only interested in propagating their distorted and toxic version of the Christian faith.  They certainly don't care about the vulnerable.

What an easy and excellent target.  On the other hand, I have no idea if either of those Jehovah's Witnesses had perhaps offered spare change, or a cup of coffee to either of those individuals.  The answer is likely no, but one never knows, so really I am not here to judge.  Still, what a clear and flawless image of black and white hypocrisy!

It is equally difficult having conversations with a lot of people that will somehow address their hypocrisy and turn them against you.  This happened some years ago between a friend and myself.  This individual, a Christian pastor, has a tendency of making some of the most loathsomely judgmental remarks about persons on welfare and other vulnerable people.  "Some of them don't want to work", he has said, or, concerning black people who are activists for equal treatment under the law, "Why don't they just get on with their lives and stop whining?"  Making the mistake of trying to educate him about his hypocrisy and lack of insight simply ended the friendship.  I was accused by him of shooting him down whenever he had anything to say.  It is very difficult maintaining friendship with the intentionally ignorant.

We are friends again, sort of.  I walk on eggshells around this person because he still really does not want to be confronted or confused with facts and for me it is an exercise in humility keeping my mouth shut around him.  And anyway, by trying to elevate his standards for him I am also by default betraying my own inability of living up to my own,

Still, I am determined to keep my standards high.  Of course I am going to keep failing and falling short and cursing my weakness and lack of resolve, but so what?  This way I can learn humility and without humility I am not going to learn a bloody thing that is worth knowing.

Tapestry Or Ugly Rag?

What do we see when we try to imagine a tapestry?  A song by Carol King?  Perhaps a woven picture featuring Fourteenth Century ladies strumming lutes surrounded by flowers and unicorns?  Medieval Twee, anyone?  To imagine the work and time that goes into making one of those things that brightened and adorned cold castle walls.  Thread after thread, each colour and thread in its place, harmonizing and interfacing with other threads.  How the young ladies of the court worked their fingers to the bone, struggling year after year by candle and torch light, with the poorest of materials and the most rudimentary of dyes.  Everything was done absolutely by hand.  Each thread on its own, gold, blue, crimson or green dangled absolutely useless until it was woven in relation with the other threads to form the lasting and beautiful image.

I sometimes think of us, as humans, as threads in a piece of cloth, or even a tapestry.  We all interact, our lives touch and cross each other as we are woven together to form an image much larger and more complex than our individual selves.  Every act, every word spoken, every thought somehow touches others and not simply ourselves.  We work together, play together, exist and co-exist together, fight together.  Even when we ignore one another we are still together.  This is inevitable, unavoidable.

To many of us, Hell is other people, to quote Sartre.  This is especially so in city life, where we have little option but to have to put up with one another.  And anyone who does even a little people watching in any urban centre will notice one particular and jarring tendency that we almost all share in common: we are all pretending that we are the only ones here.  The person walking in front of you also thinks that she is the only one here.  Say excuse me as she gets in your face and she pretends not to hear you.  Accidentally step on her heel and she will glare at you as though you did it deliberately.

Don't get me started about sidewalk smokers and second hand cigarette smoke.

We pretend that we're alone, but we're all together: the banker, the high tech geek, the baker, the coffee barista, the beggar, the construction worker, the hooker, the drug dealer, to name a few.  Pretending that we are the only person here we get in each other's way, inconvenience each other, trip over each other, yell in each others ears, ignore each other.  They say that not hate, but indifference is the opposite to love.

Even though we are all together, and act as if we don't know or like it, it is hard to visualize the kind of tapestry that we make.  Each thread acts as though it is the only thread, the best and most beautiful thread, too good and too lovely and costly to be lost and devalued in a woven composition with other threads to compete with.  Every thread forgets, or simply has never understood, how useless it is dangling alone in the cold wind.

Regardless of these illusions of solitude and exclusivity we are together, and way more together than we would care to imagine.  Imagine the building you live in, and try to imagine that the walls, floors and ceilings are all made of clear transparent glass.  No curtains, no blinds, nothing to cover, protect or shield.  Imagine how close we suddenly are to one another, all neighbours, separated by only a metre or two or three feet.  We see each other, waking or sleeping; we see each other naked and in the bathroom.  I'll stop here (You're very welcome, Gentle Reader!)

We are completely and indelibly dependent on one another.  Even though I agree that there is a problem with codependent relationships I also laugh at the absolute fear of intimacy and deep friendship that seems to be the norm in our culture.  The myth of independence.  Yes, we do each need to stand on our own, inasmuch as we are able, but at the end of the day we cannot live without one another, our existence, our very lives are contained in one another.  How are babies born?  How do businesses stay in business?  How are children educated?  Who takes care of us when we are sick, and who disposes of our remains when we are dead?  I could go on.

Our complex and often violent human history is no doubt like a huge and incredibly complex tapestry in process.  It is hard to visualize how it will all look in the end.  Given the wars, massacres, the wholesale brutality that marks a lot of our history, it is hard to be optimistic.  There have also been innumerable acts of kindness and brazen beauty.  What will we see at the end? Maidens and unicorns?  A massive field of gray and black soaked in red blood? Dragons and minotaurs?  Maybe all of these. 

We are each a thread in the tapestry and our work has only just begun.

A Beautiful Fiction

When the first people who lived in this country that is now called Canada are no longer confined to rotting structures in government legislated rural ghettoes, and they have taken claim of the lands and resources that have been taken away from them, and their children and grandchildren have full access to education, meaningful employment and the quality of life that many here take as an entitlement....

When all fossil fuels are rendered irrelevant and all our power and energy needs come from renewable, nonpolluting sources....

When the division between rich and poor disappears and economic and social equality becomes an entitlement to everyone who lives here....

When everyone has decent, safe and affordable shelter, a home and access to good nutritious food and meaningful well-paid employment and homelessness has become obsolete....

When every person who lives here has access to all levels of higher education regardless of their income status....

When having money and accruing wealth cease to have value in our social myth and the value of each person and occupation is ratified by the priority given to ethics, morality and virtue....

When prisons become obsolete and constructive, redemptive and non-punitive methods of rehabilitating criminals become the norm....

When no woman, queer person, person of colour, or disabled person needs to live in fear of their safety and wellbeing no matter where they go any time of day or night....

When the wellbeing of the environment is no longer an elusive dream....

When we abolish the military and truly become a nation of peacekeepers....

When all these things finally happen, Canada will no longer be a Beautiful Fiction.

How Not To Get Rich, 3

My life has improved, immeasurably.  I am steadily employed in meaningful work (more than twelve years now) and live in a decent, if small, apartment (fourteen years) that is also affordable.  I have new, great people, for friends, and I am able to flourish with my gifts.  I do not have a lot of money.

My job is simple enough, I am a mental health peer support worker, which means that even if I am one of those few peer support workers who has never internalized mental health stigma, I will still professionally have to carry that label for as long as I am employed in that field.  I am sixty years old, which would make difficult finding other work, and employers in other fields would be less than likely to consider me as a candidate if they knew my mental health history, and saying that I am a peer support worker, of course, automatically outs me.  The pay is criminally low, just twelve dollars an hour, no benefits.  But this is work that accurately reflects and honours my values: I am able to walk with my clients on their path to recovery, not as someone different, not as someone higher, but as someone who identifies fully with their suffering.  This is the work of Jesus, who took on our broken and wounded humanity, and for this reason I am deeply honoured to work in this field, in this capacity.  I do not have a lot of money.

I pay only thirty percent of my income for rent.  I am good at budgeting.  I am vegetarian and my needs are very small and very simple.  I still do not have, nor want, a car.  I am happy to bus and walk everywhere and be out in the open air and breathe freely among my brothers and sisters, humans, birds, mammals and trees and flowers.  I do not have a lot of money.

I have become fluent in Spanish, through sixteen years of study, hard work, practice, and the good fortune of connecting with many fine people who speak Spanish as their first language.  I also sometimes support Hispanic clients in my work.  I do not have a lot of money.

I travel every year, for one month, in Latin America-three times to Costa Rica, five times to Mexico, twice to Colombia, where I have learned immeasurably about the cultures, places, people and histories of these countries as well as making awesome friends and improving my Spanish, which is all that I speak when I am there.  I do not have a lot of money.

I have a home library of some five hundred books, more than two hundred in Spanish.  I have a savings account.  I do not hve a lot of money.

I am happy.  I am content.  Even though I had a health crisis last year, I still enjoy good health and lots of energy.  I sleep well at night.  I feel loved by the people in my life.  I do not have a lot of money.

I write this blog every day and more and more people are reading it.  I often use this blog to promote political and socisl justice issues, doing my small part, if not to change the world, then at least to get people in strategic positions, with power, to think and rethink their positions on homelessness and the environment and peace.  I paint almost every day at home with the expectation that soon I will be doing art shows again.  I sit quietly in coffee shops every day with my sketchbook, drawing with coloured pencils and pens beautiful tropical birds.  I walk five to ten miles a day  I often sing when I am out walking.  I do not have a lot of money.

If I can be happy, positive, content, and full of the joy of the Holy Spirit and love for others, if  I can revel in the moment, the sacred present moment inhabited by the sacred presence of Christ and know that all my small needs are taken care of then I really want for nothing, nor am I tormented by the hunger to have and to gain.  For this reason I don't have a lot of money, don't need a lot of money and I don't want a lot of money.

I am already rich.

How Not To Get Rich, 2

When you consider my mentors when I was twenty-four-Mother Teresa, Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and Simone Weil-it stands to reason that home care work would amount to being for me a dream job.  I had a huge desire to serve God, not just in a furtive, I hate my day job sort of way, but as a way of really and fully serving the poor, suffering and outcast of society.  The pay was dreadful but I managed to cobble together a fulltime position taking me to private homes all over Vancouver.  I cleaned house, cooked, shopped, bathed and ministered to the personal care needs of elderly, disabled, mentally ill and dying people.  I received on the job training and a frightfully low wage.  I was happy to have a job, much more a job that aligned with my values.  I was not able to access other, better paid employment for one simple reason: no matter where I looked, no matter who I talked to, I could not persuade anyone to hire me.  I lacked experience, training, credentials and most of all, connections. 

So, I accepted home care, or, home support work, as a gift and call from God, while settling to pay low rent in a basement apartment in East Vancouver, while eschewing having a car (cost and environmental concerns were great disincentives) and basically living on a tight budget.  Gradually things eroded.  I tried to take night classes in order to work towards an English degree but found, following one semester, that my demanding job sucked all my energy.  It was not going to be both and.  As policy and training requirements began to tighten in my field of work I realized that I never had quite enough money to pay for the required extra training and credentials.   The right of centre government in my province began to slash funding and hours in home support and I soon had to struggle to get enough hours to live on.  My inability to access extra training kept my wage low.  I still wasn't able to pay off my student loan.

As I felt called into fulltime community and Christian street and bar ministry downtown, my job soon became a hindrance and I soon was doing poorly at it and had to resign.  I ended up in grinding poverty, with a partner in community and ministry who refused to pull his weight and then others joined us and provided us with funding.  The ministry flourished for a while, then personality conflicts and conflicting visions destroyed everything.  Funding ran out.  I had no idea where to turn vocationally as our community and work of Christian ministry died an unnatural and prolonged and agonized death.  I had been out of the paid workforce for most of three years, so I took part time work as a home support worker.  The slash and burn policies of our governments left me with part time hours and no benefits.  I was living alone again and just struggling to get by.  I didn't have the energy to find other employment.  My mental health began to suffer from all the stress along with some very evil people who were out to destroy me.  I ended up homeless.

Almost a year later I found housing, got on welfare and was also working sporadically as a housecleaner and a professional artist.  I also had PTSD, making fulltime, and even most part time employment out of my reach.

After three years of unsafe and inadequate housing I was given a subsidized apartment and then my life began to turn around.