Gratitude 80

I am grateful for education, all kinds of education.  From my days in kindergarten and primary school, through elementary, middle and secondary school , to almost two years of an unfinished college education, I am only grateful, regardless of its inadequacies, for formal education.  What would we do without it, without public, publicly funded and universally accessible education to ensure a literate public?  And to only imagine the long term benefits of completely free, publicly funded post-secondary education.  I would have graduated with at least one degree had this been in place.

I have had to resort to a lot of self-education.  This is not always the most effective or efficient way of going about it.  There is no one around to mentor, encourage, guide or correct.  We have to find and search through our own resources and there is little remedy for not stalling in dead end alleys.  It's been a very desultory trajectory for me, though I still feel that I've benefited, and more than benefited.

My fluency in Spanish is a shining example of the best things that can happen through self-education.  I did have three years of Spanish in high school, and I think this provided me with an essential foundation from which to explore further el idioma de los angeles, or should I say, the language of the angels.  I think my passion for the language took charge and I exploited every source, opportunity, nook and cranny and rock underside to learn, improve and amplify my knowledge and ability in the Spanish language.  I listened to radio programs in Spanish, bought and studied dictionaries and grammar books, wrote out my own lessons and exercises, bought and read (at first with huge difficulty) novels and other books in Spanish.  Whenever I found a bookstore I would go inside and ask for something in Spanish.  I would ask people questions and this way I gained access to low cost and free classes and social arrangements for practicing language exchange with native Spanish speakers who wanted to improve their English.  As I saved money I began to travel to Costa Rica, Mexico and Colombia where for a month at a time I immersed myself completely in the language of Cervantes.  And I practiced, relentlessly, daily, even faking conversations in Spanish on my cell phone.  I made friends with Spanish speakers. 

This has also opened up my interest in the history and political realities of Latin America.  I have learned a lot, through periodical articles, radio broadcasts, YouTube documentaries, books and conversations with Latin Americans.  Even if my knowledge seems impressive to some, it is still but elemental, so I have devised a plan.  I am going to start reading up on Latin America, on the Internet, one country at a time.  I have started today with Uruguay.  I have just learned the tragic history of the genocide of the aboriginal people of Uruguay, the Charrua, by the Spanish.  In 1833 the last four surviving Charrua were taken to Europe where they were put on public display, as though animals in a zoo exhibit, in Paris.  They died soon after.  There was a surviving baby, who also died shortly after.

I am dedicating this blogpost to the memory and honour of the Charrua people

The further I go with the Spanish language, the more I learn about Latin America.  The more I learn about Latin America, the more I still want to learn.  I have reported this previously on these pages, but I think it bears repeating.  When I was in Bogota I became quickly aware that many people there have been traumatized by the violence and bloodshed from the bloody fifty year civil war involving FARC and the paramilitaries and the government forces.  I have since become interested in the idea of collective trauma and I have come to wonder if this can also include entire nations and cultures, especially those that owe their roots and evolution to constant violence and cruelty, as is the case throughout Latin America.

I also wonder if a lot of the research and reportage here in North America that is done about post traumatic stress disorder might be a little too focussed on the individual and individual experience and pathology and not enough on the collective experience of trauma brought on by forces often beyond our control.  Just a thought, Gentle Reader.

Gratitude 79

I am very grateful that since receiving my first pension payment in my bank account last weekend that I am now officially old.  I don't feel old, neither do I look it.  Even though younger people have given me their seats on the bus, today it didn't happen.  The seats were offered to older women, some of whom seemed younger than me.  I might have appreciated the offer of a seat, given that I was carrying a big umbrella and a bag of groceries, but the bag was light and I managed to comfortably lean by the back door.  I did have a seat by the way but the elbow of the fellow next to me kept getting uncomfortably close to my rib cage while he was playing with his little tech toy and other seats were occupied.  I am also well aware that I am likely in better shape that a lot of people half my age (this you are hearing from a guy who walks five to ten miles a day).

Even though I am now safely over sixty (sixty-one, if you must ask, Gentle Reader, and it is rather better than being dangerously over sixty) I am not exactly a Boomer.  I am from a rather different cohort, also known as Generation Jones. We were born between 1954 and 1965 and a lot of us have not known the privileges or the excesses of our slightly older siblings, the Boomers.  We are the early precursors of Generation X.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about us:

Key characteristics assigned to members are less optimism, distrust of government, and general cynicism

also

The generation is noted for coming of age after a huge swath of their older brothers and sisters in the earlier portion of the baby boomer population had come immediately preceding them; thus, many Generation Jones members complain that there was a paucity of resources and privileges available to them that were seemingly abundant to those older boomers born earlier. Therefore, there is a certain level of bitterness about and a "jonesing" for the level of freedom and affluence granted to older boomers but denied to their generation.

Or, let me put it another way:

The Boomers gave you Woodstock; we gave you...Punk Rock.

I was only eighteen when I became independent but already all the low-hanging fruit was gone.  We were entering into an epoch of economic uncertainty and all the goodies that my older brother's generation had enjoyed were already swallowed up by the time I was of working age.  This, I think, is the real reason why my brother did rather well in life and I was left with the crumbs.  He was also a ruthless competitive bastard with a nasty violent streak (so sue me, Rick Greenlaw.  I will sue you right back for assault.)  My brother, who is three years older than me, and I have not seen each other in almost twenty years and I am okay with our never seeing each other again, by the way.

So, now I am old, and enjoying the kind of robust good health that might see me past my one hundredth birthday, if I'm not hit by a truck first.  Not that it really matters.  I take care of my health, through a healthy diet (following a dinner of home made gallo pinto with black beans, brown rice, cheese and miso, broccoli, and a sliced tomato, I just enjoyed a dish of fresh mango), rest, exercise and maintaining a robust involvement with life.  Even though poor, I enjoy a decent quality of life.

I have no idea what to expect over the next several years before I trundling trundling into the death zone.  I spent much of my youth taking care of seniors with compromised health and the terminally ill.  I often wondered how I would age, what would happen to my health, will I become a cancer statistic, or will it be Alzheimer`s?  Will I always enjoy good vision and hearing?  Will I avoid the worst ravages of arthritis?  Heart disease?

It really is one day at a time.  Absorbing all the beauty of life that surrounds and fills me.  And giving back to life by serving others in the community, by making my life a healing influence in society.  The other details will be taken care of.  They always are and they always will be.  Forgiving others is also a good start.  I could even begin with my brother.  Maybe tomorrow.  Today?

Gratitude 78

Every now and then I witness or, even rarer, am on the receiving end, of an incredible act of kindness from a stranger. This happened this afternoon.  I was standing in line at the local food Dollarama, also known as No Frills, when a woman in the next line invited me to go ahead of her.  She had a very full shopping buggy and I was carrying just two items (a box of crackers and a bag of chocolate chips).  The thing is, I wasn't even in the same line as her.  She actually reached out to me where I was standing and asked me to step out in front of her.  Wowie-zowie, that was just really cool!  I promised her I would be quick, and I was. 

This was a refreshing note on a day that was rather too full of examples of human selfishness and stupidity.  There was the belligerent idiot on the bus this morning, the crying baby in the Starbuck's whose parents couldn't imagine taking their kid outside for a minute or two to calm down.  When my client and I moved to the patio to escape the child's noise a rather convincing argument for natural selection decided to fill the space with his cigarette smoke.  I could go on, but really, why even bother?  It's all negative and even though this blog doesn't exactly do censorship or Pollyanna, well, to everything there is a limit.

Things got better.  My client wanted only a short visit, leaving me extra time for a walk and a visit in my favourite café for the next hour and a half with my sketchbook.  My next client also wanted to finish early, leaving me more than an extra hour (paid for) to take a beautiful long walk through the fabulously wealthy neighbourhoods of Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy.  Not that I really think a lot of wealthy people.  I was just dumped by a wealthy ex-friend, likely because he came to find my relative poverty to be a bit of an embarrassment.  It's just that this is an incredibly lovely area for long walks, full of trees, lovely big houses, gardens and solitude.  I stopped at the bank to double check my client card which went through the washer and dryer yesterday along with everything else in my wallet.  It seems to be working, sort of.  Then I dropped off the month's paperwork in one of the offices where I work out of with opportunities to chat a bit with a colleague and then with a client.

The weather has been incredibly lovely these last five days or so and the clouds and cooler temperatures return tomorrow.  I was just listening on the CBC this afternoon to a report on marijuana and adolescents.  There is a substantial and very legitimate concern that cannabis use causes brain damage and can induce psychosis in developing brains.  The psychosis, among other things, manifests as claiming that God is speaking to you and that you are called to great things.

Hearing this really gives me pause.  When I was fourteen I was a light but regular pot smoker for about six months.  Then Jesus and I found each other.  As I said to a friend yesterday, ever since that day I have had a sense of God's presence and of being called to a higher purpose in life.  Naturally I'm going to wonder how much this might have been influenced by the operations of THC in my little teenage brain.  Especially given what an academic underachiever I turned into.

I have decided not to worry.  My sense of God has never involved hearing voices, rather having a sense of his presence and guidance.  This has led me at times into rather scary places but I have also had to accept that my capacity to hear God will always be imperfect and there are going to be risks and mistakes.  So we learn.  As for being called to a higher purpose, this has never had anything to do with being greater than others nor of having influence or status.  Rather this has involved following Jesus' call of unconditional love in my life expression and my interactions with others.  Just another sheep in the flock.

I don't think marijuana has had anything at all to do with my life and call as a Christian.  It might have created a bit of a shortcut, but hey, I could have done worse.

Gratitude 77

I would like to express my gratitude for Sundays.  I used to go to church almost, well, religiously.  I have been taking a lengthy furlough for reasons already explored in other posts on this blog.  I certainly am not at a loss for things to occupy myself. 

I always do my laundry Sunday mornings.  I am generally up early, between five and seven am and just following my shower I go downstairs to put in my weekly load of wash.  Oh, and I am careful to get dressed before stepping out of my apartment.  It is a shared laundry room, just three washers and three dryers for more than sixty tenants, but usually there is no one there early on a Sunday though this morning I did see there my Honduran neighbour.  She is a mature woman, perhaps sixty or so, of African heritage.  A woman full of joy and mirth who smiles with her entire being.  We always chat in Spanish together, as we did this morning as I was loading and unloading the machine.

Breakfast is usually full strength coffee (Cuban dark roast, lately, organic fair trade), orange juice and a couple of slabs of homemade bread slathered with peanut butter and jam and cheese on the side and a banana.  Sometimes I put the cheese on top of the bread.  Kind of gross, I suppose, the combination of cheese, peanut butter and jam, but I love it.  There is something very satisfying about this mix of food.

I am always listening to the CBC Sunday mornings with snippets about daily life in my city and throughout the province, music, often classical, and real conversations with ordinary people and how they get on with their daily lives.  There is often a guest on talking about wordplay, another is a music historian, another is a horticulturist with tons of interesting information about local trees.  Then comes the Sunday Edition and its interviews and programs that tell us not only how the world is going to hell but offering discussion and conversation about what we could do about it. 

I took time today to read some more of the weekend Globe and Mail (I buy the weekend edition Saturday mornings), then finished one drawing and started another.  Here is the hummingbird I just finished:

Isn't he pretty?

Here is the bird I just started today:

It is a Tyrian Metal Tail.  I am painting it from the back view, which is a beautiful iridescent green.

I stopped at the bank machine.  My wallet had gone through the washer and dryer this morning and was still on the wet side.  Thanks to our polymer bills, none of the money was affected.  As I feared my bank card did not function that well and I had to put it through the bank four or five times before it would be accepted.  I will try to dry it more thoroughly,  The good news?  Canada Pension has deposited my first monthly payment.  It isn't a lot but it is perfect for balancing my account and leaving enough left for me to eat for the next couple of weeks.

I arrived in the café an hour ahead of my Latino friend and got a lot of art work done, surrounded by some gorgeous paintings, since it also doubles as an art gallery.  My friend arrived and we chatted an hour in Spanish, then in English.  We have become close friends and we seem to be able to talk about almost anything without fear of judgment or rejection.   I especially admire his frank honesty and his sincere desire to help.  He is a rare gift among friends.  I am not going to do anything else to identify him as he will probably be already plenty embarrassed when he reads this.  Later he helped me move four paintings from my apartment to another building run by the society in charge of where I live.  They are having an art show that I have opted to participate in.  I am doing this more as a kindness to More Than a Roof Housing Society than out of any desire to promote or sell my art.  I have been incredibly mad at them in times past and have used my art as a bargaining chip for venting my anger with them, simply by refusing to participate in any of their art events.  I am treating this as an effort towards reconciliation, I suppose.

Later, my friend and I walked a couple of miles to Stanley Park where we enjoyed the incredibly gorgeous azalea gardens, now in full bloom.  We walked back together downtown then went our separate ways.  I stopped to buy milk and eggs and I have been at home for the last two and a half hours, doing art work, writing this blogpost, making and eating dinner.  I will likely spend more time in art, reading, watch part of a documentary in Spanish and likely finish the evening quite early,

I don't know when I'll return to church.  I am incredibly grateful for all the beauty that fills and surrounds my life and some of the wonderful people God has granted to reveal himself to me in.

Gratitude 76

I don't write often about these things, but I want to report to you, my Gentle Reader, a mystical experience that I had today.  As you might discern from yesterday's post I have been under a bit of stress from the untimely ending of a friendship.  These things can play havoc on me at times, because, as another dear friend observed, I place a high value on friendship.  I would imagine that having no family, and sometimes being myself a rather challenging friend to have, can at times leave me feeling particularly anxious and needy, especially when someone has bailed on me.  Indeed, the unexpected email from my former friend left me feeling upset, angry, and anxious.  It also almost wrecked my sleep.  This morning I was still angry at this idiot.  I realize I am also angry with myself for allowing myself to be befriended by persons who clearly will not respect me.  I have a long history of this, likely stemming from my childhood experience of abuse and mistreatment by my peers, and only now do I seem to be making a bit of a change in this toxic dynamic.

I was in my favourite forest this afternoon, following almost two hours of drawing while inside my favourite café.  I sat on my favourite bench, which commands a view of the forest.  There is something especially splendid about the way the afternoon sun shines through the trees, the boughs and foliage.  Yesterday, I was also privileged to be introduced to the gentleman who donated this bench to the forest.  We were seated on the same bench and had a very enjoyable conversation.  He is older, in his late sixties.

There was no one present while I sat there today, which is rather unusual, given how busy the park can get on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and the place seemed unusually silent.  I was perseverating about yesterday's problem and things related to me and the church.  I found myself again ruminating and despairing over never being able to find a church home or church family where I would feel welcome, at home, and as a good fit.  Then, I noticed the light in the leaves and the surrounding trees become brighter, more luminous and the silence became profound and I knew suddenly that I was in the presence of the living God.  A deep hushed peace came over me.  And even now, here at home, watching the day come to an end, I am feeling better, less burdened and more confident about the future.

There are times when all it takes is a sense of the presence of God and suddenly everything is resolved and there is the confidence that "all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Gratitude 75

I am grateful for friends and for friendships and for the many people God has blessed me with.  From time to time a friendship can founder.  Nothing lasts forever, but I think that for any friendship to stay healthy it has to be worked on by both participants.  This means, for me anyway, respect and open dialogue.

A friendship of eleven years that I have cherished has just come to an end.  This has been not my choice but on the initiative of my ex-friend.  He is not well psychologically.  This can make things rather difficult whenever it comes to his identified triggers.  If he can't deal with anything then he uses his mental health diagnosis as an excuse, rather than having to go through the hard work of accepting responsibility for his behaviour and apologizing for the consequences of his actions.

Here is how our friendship came to an end:

I was invited to a soiree in his home that also coincided with my birthday.  He decided to tack on celebrating my birthday to the occasion.  I am going to eschew certain identifying details because I still love this person enough to not want to openly humiliate him on this blog.  And he is fragile.  I tried to cancel going to his party, knowing that I was struggling with a lot of my own issues (earlier that month I was threatened by a pit bull type dog, which traumatized me, and then other things went south for me at work and with management in my apartment building.  The toxic domino effect.)

When I arrived at his home I was not greeted at the door.  I saw instead a list of rules, one of which I found particularly unreasonable, being the expectation of wearing a name tag, and I chose not to do this.  When I found my way to my friend, he was clearly too busy with guests he appeared to like better, so I went to another part of his home where I passed the time with some of his other friends.  We had in the hour I was there, but three interactions: when he scolded my for not wearing a name tag; then to make casual conversation with me for two minutes before returning to his preferred friends, and finally to get everyone to sing happy birthday to me.

I felt already depressed and overwhelmed, on top of not feeling welcome in his home.  I also had to be up at the crack of dawn the next day for an early flight.  I left after an hour.  My friend and I saw each other again two months later in a coffee shop.  He aggressively lashed out at me for contaminating his home with my "anger".  I explained to him that I was dealing with trauma and exhaustion and also found his demands unreasonable.  He apparently has refused to accept this.  I did send him a follow-up email a week later, not wanting to see our friendship go down the toilet.  Here it is, somewhat redacted to protect my ex-friend's identity (as if he deserves such protection):

I understand that you find it difficult to be open and direct with me.  I appreciate that you took that step with me. I think things might have been said more respectfully.  There is a difference between being direct and lashing out.  I felt  accused of things that I had no control over, nor is it true that I drive my friends away, though I fear that you might be trying to drive me away. I think we can do better, and I'm sure you feel the same way.

We are both trauma survivors, and our friendship can be either constructive or harmful.  I want to aim for constructive. 

I didn't feel welcome in your home, by the way. If you want, we could talk about it during future visits, if you still want to see me. If you prefer, I don't have to be included in your soirees to be your friend.

I feel that the charge of me infecting anger on your home is both unfair and untrue and I would like you to  retract that.

I want to go on being your friend. I think you and I are much better as friends than not and I hope that you feel the same way.  I say, yes, let's be open and honest with each other, but let's do it with civility and mutual respect.  Humour, too?

I work in the mental health profession and I have seen over and over again people using their mental health diagnosis as an excuse for not taking responsibility for their behaviour.  I believe that this ex-friend, rather than valuing me and our friendship enough to apologize to me, has taken the coward's route and has chosen to bail on me.

Well, with friends like that, who needs enemas?

I am still open to reconciliation with this person but my expectations aren't high.  In the meantime, I will go on valuing those who are still in my life, and also give thanks that they at least have some integrity and honesty in their way of conducting their friendship with me.

Gratitude 74

Sometimes I'm just grateful to get through another day.  Like today.  It hasn't gone at all badly, and in some ways better than expected.  Still, it is always nice to come home from work, just as it is gratifying to have a job I can leave home for every day.  They balance each other, I suppose.  Of course, I do have to work, and not just for a living, but also to contribute to the common good.  If I have any quibble about my job it is simply that they might pay us a decent wage and make it possible to work only part time.  This isn't because I dislike my work.  It is stressful and demanding work at times and in order to do this kind of job well, no matter what the position, it is much better to do it part time than full time, unless you can do this kind of work full time without burning out.  The pressure of having to pay the rent, the bills and feed and clothe myself can also feed into the quality of my work.  If I work more, I make more money.  If I work less, there will be less and I could easily find myself living paycheque to paycheque, and I do actually.  The stress this creates can also compromise the quality of care that I provide to our clients.

It isn't that bad.  I've really done okay in this career for thirteen years and in less than four more years I can collect my full pension and reduce or completely eliminate my contracts and still enjoy a decent standard of living.  I will likely go on working into my twilight years because I really thrive on being able to contribute and the extra pay is a bonus. 

Despite the flies in the ointment, and there will always be flies, my life works.  At times I can feel a bit isolated, if none of my friends are available to visit for much longer than a week, but this also teaches me to be independent and to take time to care for and know myself.  I have no family, by the way, and this can really make me feel isolated if I don't take care of things.  My apartment is usually quiet and pleasant, despite occasional noise from the elephant upstairs or the lost boys who live in the hard to house facility next door.  And there is also construction racket.  But I have earplugs and they work.

Food is always good.  I eat whatever I want, but I always try to err on the side of good nutrition.  I just made a great gallo pinto.  I started it last night after dinner.  I put two cups of dry black beans and one cup of dry brown rice in a big cooking pot.  I added six cups of water, heated to boiling and let it simmer for a couple of hours, adding soy sauce, miso and garlic powder.  Today, after work, I took the gallo pinto out of the fridge, put it on the stove, and added a lot of extra sharp cheddar and four teaspoons of  Dijon.  Delicious, and so pleasantly this dish reminds me of my recent month in Costa Rica. 

This brings to mind another thing I am grateful for.  On my low income, I can still travel every year in Latin America for a month, learn about the culture, enjoy the climate, improve my (already fluent) Spanish and meet old friends and new ones.  On twelve glorious bucks an hour!  In one of the most expensive cities in the world.

My rent is still affordable, always calculated at thirty percent of my monthly income.  I could have a good thirty or even forty years left to my life, so I can't fairly say that I am waiting to die.  This evening, as usual, I am happy to spend my time writing this blogpost, listening to interesting news and current affairs stories on the CBC, drawing and painting, emailing a friend, or Skyping,  watching a documentary in Spanish, giving time to prayer, sacred reading and meditation, and going to bed early, reading for maybe a half hour or longer a novel in Spanish.  I also will likely be watching a video lecture as part of an online course I'm taking on ancient philosophy (Aristotle, and rather boring, but good mental exercise)

Hardly an exciting life.  Certainly meaningful.  Very satisfying.  Thank you, Lord Jesus.  (Well, Gentle Reader, I am a Christian, so that is the name of whom I am going to thank!)

Gratitude 73

I am thinking often these days of collaboration, of how important this is for our wellbeing.  Even with my art, I am increasingly asking others for colour ideas.  It began all very innocently two or three weeks ago.  I was enjoying my break in one of my favourite cafes in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver.  The owner and her staff appeared to have nothing to do.  They were hanging out chatting or doing their Sudoku or crossword puzzles.  So I asked them each for a colour.  One said blueish grey, the other burgundy.  I tried something a little different on my next drawing in order to incorporate these unfamiliar colours.  I was so pleased with the result that, since then, I am asking different people to name two to three colours, then I try to use them in my next drawing.  This is stretching me and I think it's helping me grow as an artist.  So much for the romantic nonsense of the artist as individual and tormented loner.

People aren't always quick on the uptake when I ask for colour ideas.  Not everyone, it appears, has much of a colour sense, and I am hoping that through their collaboration with me that they will also experience an enhanced sense and appreciation of colour.  It turns out that a lot of people don't have this appreciation.  They are not necessarily colour blind.  I just don't think that colour is a huge priority with a lot of people, though, ironically, everyone is affected and influenced by colour. 

The soft and vibrant greens that surround us in nature during the spring, I think, are an example of how we are influenced by ambient colour.  It improves the mood.  Of course, the warmer temperatures also help, but without the surrounding colour green, how much poorer our lives.  Industry and business are always exploiting colour to manipulate us.  You will never find a lot of blue a grocery store or fast food place, and there is a reason for this.  You will see green in a lot of institutional settings, but no red; yellow in budget grocery stores but not purple or orange.

It is all collaboration; not necessarily conspiracy, which is why I generally laugh at conspiracy theories.  It isn't that we have little secret powerful elites meeting together clandestinely to conspire to rule the world and amass to themselves all the wealth and power, though it would appear so to a lot of people.  I think our instinct towards collaboration drives us to plan and work together on things even when we don't know that we are doing it.  We are constantly being bombarded by the influences of others while hatching our most original (or so we presume) ideas.   This is how things really get done.  It is the air that surrounds us.  It is the soup we are all living and participating in.  Things have never been otherwise accomplished.

We owe our existence as a species to collaboration.  Alone, we are too weak and vulnerable.  Together our minds can fuse and we can learn to think as one brain, because there is no such thing as an original idea.  Everything is derivative because it is all so uniquely human and that is what makes us perpetually interesting.  There is nothing wrong with this.  It's just a fact of life and of our human existence.

Humbling, perhaps, but who couldn't benefit from a little bit of humility?  More than a little bit?

Gratitude 72

I'm grateful that I work in one of those "cool" occupations, which is to say that I am a mental health peer support worker.  The pay is, of course, abysmally low, as it generally is with cool jobs, but there are tradeoffs.  Living in government subsidized housing also helps.  As a peer support worker I do not have the kind of clinical distance from our clients that other therapists take for granted.  This is because the very essence of my position involves what I have in common with my clients.  As a peer, I am a role model for recovery and wellness.  I also help mentor my clients towards an enhanced level of wellness and improved quality of life.

My work teaches me and mentors me to be a better person.  My clients teach me to be a better friend.  My friends teach me to be a better worker.

There is a tendency in my work, and at times a tacit pressure, that I refer to my clients as peers instead of clients.  I am not comfortable with this.  Because we are so much closer to our clients than their case managers, psychiatrists or rehab therapists, we need all the more to have healthy boundaries that we can maintain with our clients.  Calling them peers simply blurs that boundary, which I need in place given how much my arrangements with clients often come to resemble friendship.  Referring to them as clients does absolute nothing to diminish my respect for them, nor interfere with my ability to work well with them.  I did say that they often become like friends, didn't I?

So here I am, in this cool occupation, for the past thirteen years, which I am likely still to be involved with post-retirement, which happens in three years, nine months, eight days, five hours and forty-five minutes. I will soon be able, with a little process, to refine it down to the nanosecond!  Like most cool jobs, there is sweet f-all in professional status.  We live at the bottom rung of the ladder in our hierarchical mental health system and we also pick up the lowest pay, less than a dollar above minimum wage.  There is no holiday or vacation pay, no dental coverage or other benefits.  This is one of the most horribly managed jobs, for structure, lousy pay and benefits, I have ever worked in.

I could say more, but there is never any telling who is going to end up reading my drivel, so I will heed the ancient wisdom behind these little words: "Never piss off those who have the power to hurt you."

All things considered, I still appear to have enough money left in the bank every year to fund a month long vacation anywhere in Latin America, which is very propitious for polishing and improving my Spanish.  Today, I saw three clients.  The first lives on the east side of town, near Commercial Drive, my stomping grounds for almost ten years and one of my favourite neighbourhoods.  So, I walked four miles to see my client, enjoying the fine summery weather of this perfect spring day, admiring vintage heritage homes and gardens and trees.  Then I walked another mile and a half to the bus stop, simply for the pleasure of feeling my legs move.  Following my second client I walked another two miles through another beautiful neighbourhood, surrounded by lovely heritage homes, gardens, trees and flowers.  Following a thoroughly enjoyable visit with my third client, and the other two were also very enjoyable, I walked another two miles before grocery shopping and bussing the short remaining distance home.

Everything went well today, as it usually does.  I enjoyed plenty of exercise and fresh air while surrounded by beauty.  I had the pleasure of interacting with and participating in the life journeys of three awesome people. 

And I get paid for doing this!

And so far, no one has complained about the warm weather!  Can it get any better!  Well, a raise would be nice...

Gratitude 71

I am grateful for our shared humanity.

Cue the Kumbaya soundtrack. 

But seriously, Gentle Reader, yes, we are selfish, annoying, treacherous and greedy.  We are also generous, inspiring, altruistic and kind.  We would be all in the exact same place without one another.   That's right, Gentle Reader, we would be nowhere.  We would all have died off way before the first Ice Age if it wasn't for one another.  Part of being human  is our need for one another.  If ever there was a collaborative species, indeed, a species that could not exist without being collaborative, then we are it. 

Yes, we do have to take the bumps with the grinds, as well.  For example the young douchebag who just a few minutes ago dropped his paper beverage cup on the pavement in front of my building and pointedly ignored my polite but assertive remonstrance that he pick it up and dispose of it appropriately.  He had his girlfriend on his arm and, no doubt, he wouldn't dare compromise his already questionable manhood in front of his chief source of nookie.  As if!  One of the big deal breakers for a lot of girlfriends happens to be loutish boys like him who behave like they're the centre of the universe.  I have very little doubt that she is soon going to send him packing and soon his only lover will be his right hand, unless he's left-handed.  (he might even be ambidextrous!)

Of course, we can all be pretty annoying.  I tried to escape to peace and quiet in our big urban forest today, only to encounter a lot of families, some with squealing small children.  Yes, it is lovely that the little kidlets are getting their nature fix while having quality time with mommy and daddy.  A bit sad, it is, too, that outdoor quiet space has become virtually nonexistent in this ever growing and densifying city, but perhaps the lesser evil is to engage with the extra people around, since none of us is going away, anytime soon.  And I have to admit, I found almost everyone to be sweet and friendly, so there is a tradeoff, eh?

I will provide you, Gentle Reader, with this one very simple example of how collaborative we have to be, if only for me to write this bloody blog.  First, I need my little laptop computer to write it on.  This came to me courtesy of Telus who allowed me to pay it off in fifteen dollar monthly installments.  The computer itself had to be delivered to my home by Canada Post.  There must have been thousands of persons with their various disciplines of skill and expertise in making and manufacturing my laptop, not to mention the good people at Downtown Computer who have on two or three occasions serviced and made functional my computer.  Then there are those who acquired the raw materials, all the petroleum product to produce the cables and wires, the various metals that had to be mined, and so much more.

I would also like to mention the teacher in grade ten, Miss Ussher, who taught me how to type, and all the other teachers and educators involved in teaching me to read and implanting in me a love of words and literature.  Not to mention all the thousands of years of civilization and knowledge and learning from which I draw every day in order to find inspiration to write the blogpost de jour. 

We are many.  and so we must be, or else, we simply would no longer be. 

Today's blogpost is brought to you by thousands and thousands of people and years.  Happy reading!

Gratitude 70

Today I told a much younger friend that there is absolutely nothing that I miss about being young.  He replied, "You were young?"  And I said, well, I can't rightly remember.  I suppose that was when large animals still roamed the earth or maybe the earth's surface was still cooling.  I qualified it a bit.  When I was eighteen I had already survived being kicked out of my father's home (long story, but, really, he did not like me, nor did he want me for a son) and then having to leave my mother's upon finishing high school because she was shacked up with a dangerous idiot whom she was planning to leave.  I was still eighteen when I had my own apartment and was working fulltime.  The idea of post-secondary education was completely out of the question.  First, I had to survive.

I survived.  And that's all I did, until I became too exhausted from trauma to be able to continue, but I was already in my early forties when that happened.  In the meantime, I coped.  I went to school for a couple of years, till I ran out of money and had to get back to working fulltime.  I was still only twenty-two.  I spent the following years working for a miserably low wage wiping other people's bums and tending to the special needs of the dying, among other things, as a home support worker.  My sense of interpersonal, social and global responsibility as a young Christian hugely outweighed any desire to go out and have fun.  I would imagine this seems rather pathetic to some of my Gentle Readers, but shallow, not so much

I have always lived with a sense of having a higher purpose in life.  This has not prevented me from making unwise choices nor have I always taken the best care of myself.  My own unmet needs to feel wanted and needed by others often got in the way of common sense and I eventually burned myself out while reaching out in Christian love to the marginalized and the ungrateful.  Going out with friends for dinner and drinks and a show or looking for love in the wrong places never seemed like an option.  For me it was all rather meaningless, and besides, I felt there were too many people in need of help and ministry languishing outside of the restaurants, bars and theatres to leave me with a clear conscience.  My life was to be consecrated entirely to the service of Christ.  I still don't think that I  actually chose this way of life, but rather, it was chosen for me and I have simply consented to God that he have his way in my life.

I don't feel that I have been cheated, nor deprived of anything.  I am older now.  I am definitely more content, and, dare I say it?  happy.  I am sixty-one and enjoy good health.  I have a decent affordable apartment and work that I find fulfilling as well as lovely and decent friends.  I have enough money to travel every year.  I find it interesting that my recent travel experiences have done much to heal my anxiety and facilitate a fuller recovery from PTSD, much as my early start at independence has made me a tough and fearless free spirit. My life is more quiet than before.  And fuller.

The Lord is my Shepherd.  I shall not want...for anything.

Gratitude 69

I am exceedingly grateful for those things that money will never be able to buy and that will never be sold.  While reading this blogpost, Gentle Reader, please click this link and listen to this song, "Latinoamerica", by Puerto Rican artist Calle 13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWRHxh6XepM

I am going to focus on the refrain of this song:

"Tu no puedes comprar el viento,
tu no puedes comprar el sol,
tu no puedes comprar la lluvia,
tu no puedes comprar el calor,
tu no puedes comprar las nubes,
tu no puedes comprar los colores,
tu no puedes comprar mi alegria,
tu no puedes comprar mis dolores...
Vamos caminando,
vamos dibujando...
tu no puedes comprar mi vida...
mi tierra no se vende."

Here is the English translation:

You cannot buy the wind,
You cannot buy the sun,
You cannot buy the rain,
You cannot buy the heat,
You cannot buy the clouds,
You cannot buy the colours,
You cannot buy my joy,
you cannot buy my sorrow...
We will keep going and struggling,
we will keep drawing (persistent creative expression)
you cannot buy my life
my land is not for sale.

Hello?  Still with me?

You cannot buy the wind.  It is a force of nature and for me, as a Christian, the breath of the power of God.  It can move, carry and destroy.  As climate change from global warming, the bitter and venomous fruit of human planetary greed accelerates, the wind grows in its force and might as hurricanes of unprecedented force wreak the wrath and vengeance that we have sown.  On a gentler note, who cannot help but rejoice at the touch of a breeze on a spring or summer day as the soft wind caresses our faces and we hear the voices of the earth and heavens singing together in the rustling leaves overhead in the trees? 

Who can buy this?  Or sell it?

But we can also rely on the wind for its energy, clean renewable energy and force that will one day, if we can survive the wrath brought on by our greed for fossil fuels and their environmental havoc, replace the fuels of death.

You cannot buy the sun, which for millennia was worshipped as a deity, since without it, nothing can live.  We are also at the mercy of the sun's wrath for the same reason as the wrath of the wind, and we can hope that solar energy, with the wind, will make fossil fuels obsolete, before we are made obsolete by our reliance on the energy of death.  Still, that first warm kiss of the sun on our faces, following a cold winter, and the glory of its light filling the leaves and making incandescent the water, and the colours of the sky when it rises and sets.  How could this ever be bought or paid for?

You cannot buy the rain.  And we will never cease to be dependent on the rain to water the earth and give us grain, fruit and vegetables to eat and sustain us.  Climate change is disrupting our weather patterns, creating droughts in some places and floods in others, and we see here in Canada how this is worsening as many people are losing their homes now to unprecedented floods brought on by historically heavy deluges.  We also have the soft warm rain of spring and summer and the sweetness that fills the air.  Not an item for sale and you will never find this in a shopping mall.

You cannot buy the heat.  The sun gives it to us all for free and we all share it.  For free.

You cannot buy the clouds, and no one can prevent us from enjoying their beauty and majesty, whether like gentle sheep grazing on a blue pasture of a sky, or like the black terrifying thunderclouds that often sent lighting and thunder and torrential rain onto the city of Bogota when I was there.

You cannot buy the colours.  They are free, to dazzle and delight us all.  I do have to pay for art materials of course, but the time I spend on a drawing or painting is absolutely for free.  My delight in art has nothing to do with selling it or collecting money from an art sale.  In fact, getting paid for a painting has often felt for me like a bit of a letdown (but don't let that stop any of you!)  The process of creating is its own reward!

You cannot buy my joy.  It is my joy, to give and to share, for free.  Money would cheapen it and kill it.  Joy is the fruit of love.  How could anyone put a price on that?

You cannot buy my sorrows.  They are also mine.  You cannot pay me to paste on a fake smile when my heart is breaking.  And you cannot co-opt my suffering through the cheap sentiments of pop songs and market advertising.  You cannot sell back to me what I already have and possess.  Neither can you comfort me with your cheap sweatshop trinkets.

We will keep going and struggling as we fight against this insanity of globalized greed and its many tawdry seductions.  We will continue making art.  I will continue drawing and painting as my perpetual visual anthem of protest and jubilation against market greed and shallowness.  You cannot buy my life, the human soul is not an item of sale or barter.  And I do not care a tinker's damn about real estate values.  THIS LAND IS NOT FOR SALE!!!!!!!

Gratitude 68

I spend a lot of time on my art.  I don't paint a lot these days, but I carry my sketchbook and pens and pencils everywhere and often spend up to three or four hours a day on making art.  It's better than taking drugs.  Cheaper, too.  And more productive.

I don't paint to get high, by the way.  I don't draw to get high, either, nor can I say that making art produces in me a noticeable altered state.  The process of making art is very calming.  Why?  I don't know. 

It could be that I'm just giving expression to one of the most essential facets of our humanity.  Human beings are born to create.  Not just procreate, but to actually make things, create things, give visible expression to ideas and inner realities.  We seem to be the only animal that does this.

It is really incredibly satisfying, this process of making art.  It really doesn't matter that I am no longer showing or selling my work.  I never became an artist in order to become famous or make money.  In fact, I never intentionally became an artist.  All I started doing was painting, and eventually drawing and it's wonderful.  It is one of the few things I can simply do and do and keep on doing without getting bored to extinction.  While in Costa Rica two months ago I was often spending up to eight hours a day making art.  It did not feel like work.

I never seem to run out of ideas for making art.  Focussing mainly on tropical birds makes it easy.  All I have to do is a little research and there is a new idea.  It might be a bird I've already interpreted many times over.  It still always comes out a bit different: different colours in the background, different lines, different shading, varied compositions.  It's always original and all I have to do is get out my sketchbook and my embarrassment of riches for a variety of coloured pencils and pens and Bob's your uncle.

I have resigned myself to the idea that I might never show or sell any of my original art again.  I don't care.  This is also why I have gone from painting to drawing.  I can produce far more work without having to worry about how to store it.  It also feels somehow easier to gift my drawings than my paintings.  I don't think drawings are taken quite as seriously as paintings on canvas and so people are a little more relaxed about accepting them as gifts.

I suppose I could also publish a coffee table book of my best drawings.  All I need is money and a few connections.  Anyone out there willing to help?  No advice please, just help me do this.

Thank you, Gentle Reader.

Gratitude 67

I am very grateful for my art, especially for all my paintings.  They are truly mine now and for one simple reason.  I have decided that my art is too good and too precious for a snooty art world that eats its own for breakfast then shits out their bones before lunch is served.  I wasted ten years trying to please those bastards.  Nothing I turned out was pleasing to them.  Was my painting really that bad?  Well, I have sold more than one hundred paintings and have clandestinely observed many strangers praise my art.  Only twice has it been dissed, to my ears only: by a loutish boy who said, "it's just birds", but then his girlfriend retorted, "But they're so pretty."  I said thank you.  You should have seen the look on her boyfriend's face!  Then there was the really miserable, and ugly (maybe because she was miserable?  She wasn't just miserable because she was ugly?) woman who muttered to her friend that my paintings were "badly done.  Just badly done".  This was in a café.  I looked up and smiled and said to her.  "Well, you can't please anyone, I guess."  The look on her puss.  Her friend, by the way, seemed to like my art.

However, the incredibly snotty and insular art world is full of ugly bitches such as Ms. Mub, or Miserable Ugly Bitch, and their criteria for what is acceptable in art is every bit as obscure as it is strict and inaccessible.  In the meantime, Gentle Reader, let me treat you to some images of my work, and you yourselves can be the judge:

   

I know that birds are popular these days.  However, none of the birds I paint are local.  This of course brings on the judgment of tropical kitsch concerning my art. And the local art establishment seems to believe that only local and regional are appropriate to be shown on their walls.  Something about being geographically correct?  But I don't want to paint local birds.  The tropical ones are far lovelier and more interesting.  Oh, sorry, that's all about aesthetics.  Another dirty word in the art world.


 

I favour bright colours.  But the West Coast palette is supposed to be subdued, sombre, and dull, just like our weather here ten months of the year.  Aesthetically incorrect, I suppose.  But I intentionally paint bright colours as a counterbalance to the dreary hues of Vancouver, as a counter against the depression and resulting dysphoria this brings on.  Of course, this implies escapism and exoticism, or, shall I say...Kitsch?

 


I am not interested in painting to a post-modernist beat of a politically-correct and culturally informed drum if it means turning out aesthetically inferior garbage.  One famous Canadian artist really damned me with faint praise when she recommended a gallery that promotes "Nice" art.  Her name is Gathie Falk.  (so sue me, Gathie.  And never piss off a blogger!)

 

 

I have come to the conclusion that my paintings are exactly that.  They are MINE.  I love my art.  There are others who appear to as well...

 

But until I meet a good, well-connected agent, who really appreciates and respects my paintings, and who equally appreciates and respects me, the person who made them, my art is staying at home, with me....



At least I'll know where they are, and they will be loved and appreciated...



All the rest of you can go to hell, and stay there, until you have figured out that by your intransigence you are disabling me from making my contribution to the world and you are depriving the world of the unique beauty of my paintings...



I have recently come to understand that I am in the middle of a very quiet, prolonged meltdown over my rage and wrath at the art community, which has betrayed and screwed me around in more ways than I can recount on this page...



I am going to reserve my pearls for worthier swine...



There is still room for repentance, if anyone is willing to step up and help me move my art forward.  I cannot do this alone.  I lack the time and energy, because of my work demands and the importance of stewarding my emotional wellbeing.  I also lack connections.  Unlike almost every artist who has made it, I do not have back up: no family, no partner to pay the bills, no space for a studio, nor the funds to pay for one, and no available time or energy to be my own agent.

I am not interested in advice.  I need people who will step up and help.  If you're not prepared to do that then please do me the favour of shutting up about it.

I am writing this blogpost in honour of my late mother, Joyce Greenlaw.  Here is her posthumous portrait that I painted in 2008.  And here are some of the most important words she ever said to me.

"Don't ever let anyone shit on you."  


Thanks, Mom!

Gratitude 66

I am grateful for the illusion of security.  Now, you cannot get more bourgeois than carry this quaint obsession with being and feeling safe and secure in a very uncertain and perfidious world.  This sense of denial of reality really began to develop in the fifties during the postwar era.  Everyone was sick to death of the sense of danger and uncertainty that the Second World War had visited on us.  No one wanted any more news of battles and bombs and blown to bits bodies of loved ones being buried in foreign graves, and of Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and other people that Hitler didn't like getting gassed to death.  No one wanted to wonder if tomorrow enemy planes and warships would be crossing their skies and docking on their shores.  No matter how sexy the war, the destruction, the sense of danger and the not knowing if tomorrow your name would be another bombing statistic, everyone was glad it was over.  Husbands and boyfriends were back home in bed with their loved ones where they belonged.  Now everyone could make babies, raise spoiled and ungrateful little Boomer brats, and live happily ever after.

The absolute brainless fluff that characterized much of the incipient US pop culture of the fifties all kind of imploded when John Kennedy was shot in the back of the head and the war in Vietnam came to dominate headlines and newscasts.  The racial strife throughout the US with the battle for civil rights told everyone in North America that maybe our false sense of security was coming to an end.  More riots, burnings and bombings broke through following decades.

When the Twin Towers fell in 2001 everyone in the US suddenly knew, for the first time in their lives, that the world is not a safe place.  It took them a while, but they finally began to catch up to the rest of the world, where that illusion of safety never had time to take hold in the collective mind.

Twenty years earlier, the odious spectre of child killer Clifford Robert Olson haunted us here in Vancouver and almost overnight teenage children suddenly were no longer hitch-hiking, families were paralyzed with fear and terror of lurking pedophiles and before we knew it, children were no longer allowed to play outside unless they stayed within a securely-fenced yard under perpetual adult supervision.

Now we all seem to be collectively traumatized by fear.  We are afraid of terrorists, afraid of climate change, afraid of the Great Deplorable in the Oval Office, afraid of child molesters, afraid of becoming homeless and afraid of global nuclear war.  Among other things.  Our steady diet of breaking news, thanks to internet technologies has left many of us in a state of chronic angst and emotional paralysis.

We finally know now that the world is not, nor ever has been, a safe place.  When large animals roamed the earth, our ancestors were in danger of being eaten by cave bears and sabre tooth cats.  Then came developing ancient civilizations, the invention of war and the gruesome tortures and executions meted out to anyone who offended the gods, the priests or the ruling monarch.  The enlightenment brought us democracy, liberal values and the industrial revolution.  The world still wasn't safe, especially if you were a woman, a child, poor, or a black slave.   As nationalism grew and advanced and colonialism wreaked genocide on aboriginal societies the world continued being unsafe.  As we invented yet more sophisticated and deadly, lethal means of warfare, the world went on being unsafe.  Now we are all whistling in the dark while awaiting global environmental collapse.  Anyone still feel safe?

In order to really and fully recover from trauma it is essential that we take charge of our fear and learn to embrace life again.  Life is not safe, nor does it carry any guarantees.  All the same it is life.  This is the time to step outside of our small tepid wading pools and move out among others again.  This is the time to risk with others, with the world around us, meaningful contact.  This is the time to laugh death and danger in the face.

We are all going to die, sometime.  Yes, there is a reasonable expectation that we take care of ourselves and others.  Still, any life that does not include risk, especially the risk of love, of reaching out to one another and making ourselves vulnerable, but not in a stupid way, is not life at all, but a prolonged and living death.  We know we're really alive when we can go on hearing our heart beating without fearing that it will one day stop, all the while knowing that eventually it is going to stop and accepting with joy that we too are going to die.  But let's save death for when it's our time to go, and to now get on with becoming truly present in the world and meaningfully touching one another's lives.

Gratitude 65

I am grateful for the gift of personal responsibility.  This has nothing to do with going out and getting a job and paying the rent on time, though that is also a type of responsibility.  I mean the kind of responsibility that people with issues of trauma often overlook as something essential to their recovery.  I am referring to the importance of not blaming on our illness or emotional issues the crappy way that we treat others.

I have both used my PTSD diagnosis as an excuse for mistreating others, and have been similarly crapped around by other trauma survivors.  This of course sucks like anything.  I was just recently on the receiving end and now a cherished friendship just might be about to end, if it hasn't ended already.  I was unfairly blamed by this individual for wrecking his soiree because I was not in a good way at the time.  I really did, neither said, anything regrettable or offensive, to anyone.  I simply refused, calmly, to wear a name tag, since this is a practice I am very uncomfortable with.  I asked if I had to leave his home for not wearing one, since he appeared adamant that I wear a name tag anyway, and he said I could stay.  It had already been a horrible month.  I had been traumatized by a vicious dog and things were also spiralling out of control for me in other spheres.  Still, I was taking exceptional care with my behaviour, knowing full well how one PTSD trigger could end up ruining the day for everyone.  Domino Effect, anyone?  I think that I did handle myself well, but how exhausting!

My friend, or ex-friend, confronted me just two weeks ago.  We hadn`t seen each other in over two months (I had been in Costa Rica in March and he was away in April).  He proceeded to rant at me that I had ruined his party by poisoning his home with my anger and hatred.  All because I didn't wear a nametag.  I managed to calm him down and once it was clear to him that I had not done anything intentionally nor unintentionally to ruin anyone's party, and that really, I was struggling to the nth just to hold myself together, he seemed to accept that maybe there was nothing to be taken personally.

However, he did not bother to accept responsibility for his part in our quarrel, neither did he think of apologizing to me for wrongly and unjustly accusing me.  To him it appears to be all justified because he was going through a PTSD trigger, thanks to me, and that he couldn't be held accountable for his behaviour.

Well, my friend, I am holding you accountable.  If you cannot dignify our friendship with a simple apology for mistreating me, then perhaps it's time that I looked elsewhere for a friend.  And maybe you should look somewhere else, as well.

Gratitude 64

Will I ever run out of things to be grateful for, Gentle Reader?  Let's hope not.  Today I am grateful to two different ladies and their expressions of concern and kindness.  This afternoon while waiting for the bus, the middle aged woman next to me politely indicated that one of my shoes was untied.  Truthfully, it was but half-untied, had been in that condition all day, and I really didn't feel like bending over to do anything about it, besides which, I would be arriving home within five minutes where I'd be taking them off anyway.  Still, she was so sweet about it and said she wouldn't want me to trip or fall, which I've done in the past.  I thanked her for her kind concern and I really hope she never loses that light in her.  I think it'll always be there in her.

Likewise, when I came to the front door, one of the tenants who was waiting for a visitor opened it to let me in.  Then she mentioned that my knapsack appeared to be open.  It wasn't really, it just tends not to close very tightly.  Still, she was so sweet to take the time to advise me about my bag and hoping that no one would reach in to try to steal my wallet, that all I could do was thank her for being so kind.

I think that if we look carefully enough then we will see that our lives are full of small acts of kindness, and even if we don't notice such acts, what is there to prevent us from performing them?  There is a tendency among many people to rush from one appointment to the next, completely sealed in their own little tech universe, so that they are completely cut off from their environment and, by extension, from those around them.  This is particularly troubling among Millennials, or anyone who cannot turn off their listening device or put away their tech toy long enough to know really where the hell they are.

Maybe part of the solution is in taking regular and daily tech breaks.  Not just while you're sleeping.  When is the last time any of you crossed the street or went to the store fully aware of your surroundings?  Hmm....Didn't think so.

We have been irreversibly brainwashed, it seems, by the whole cult of self that the advertising media and pop culture keep dishing out on us twenty-four/seven.  The only thing that matters is our own self-fulfillment and personal convenience and to hell with everyone else.  I think this is what makes technology so seductive.  No matter how dependent we are on others providing us those services we simply bask in the sweet tepid puddle of our own narcissistic pleasure, texting, watching, listening, and remaining blissfully entertained while totally oblivious to all the harsh and mind shattering beauty that surrounds us. 

We have to start paying more, not less attention to those around us.  What if we were hit by a huge earthquake?  Whom would we be relying on to help us?  The people closest to us.  I dread the potential scenario that would likely unfold, given the flock of useless tech-addicted morons so many have turned into.

By the way, the two women who spoke to me so kindly today were not listening to iPods, neither were they focussed on their dear little phones.  They were two rather poor looking, humble and very decent ladies. They were aware of their surroundings and they actually cared enough to reach out in friendship.  Doesn't say a lot for the rest of you, does it, Gentle Reader?

Gratitude 63

Wow, Gentle Reader, I'm grateful now sixty-three times over.  This has become such an easy way to blog, I could go on like this, well, forever.  Why?  There is something invigorating about gratitude, or in this case, about bending my perspective just a little bit so that a positive spin can be put even on the most dismal and depressing news. 

Today is Mother's Day, and I am grateful for my mother.  I spent this morning with my birthday twin.  We are not related by blood but we were both born on Leap Year Day in 1956, here in Vancouver and, I would imagine, in the same hospital.  I will have to ask him about this.  Both our mothers have passed on and we spent part of the visit memorializing our mothers.  I did feel a bit disappointed in myself, and in my own mother.  Why?  Because I could only think of her best ever advice to me in the words "Don't ever let anyone shit on you!"  My fondest memory of my mother?  This happened when I was ten or eleven years old.  My father, a commercial fisherman during the summers and an auto collision repairman the rest of the year, was gone for the summer on his boat, my young adolescent brother was away with him, and peace reigned in our household.  I was no longer getting beat up by my brother.  He was gone for two months.  I was no longer being verbally, emotionally or sexually abused by my father.  He was away fishing, adding to our household income and leaving us in peace.

I say "us" because Mom seemed incredibly calm and happy while the other two males of the house were away.  I know that her relationship with my rebellious, high-strung and violent brother was often tense and difficult, neither was her marriage to my alcoholic and philandering father a match made in heaven.  With both those difficult people gone, Mom became gentle and enjoyable to be with.  She never hit me during those times.  When Dad and Rick were around throughout the fall, winter and spring, I was a regular target of her frequent beatings, when my brother wasn't punching me out, and my father picking up the slack with his own style of abuse.  For two glorious months, I was not a battered child.  Mom and I were friends.  We would go for long walks together by the river, and sometimes we would go out for Chinese food.

That is my best memory of  Mom.  She was not a heroic parent, though she did her best.  She has been dead now for twenty-six years, from lung cancer.  My own adult trajectory has been difficult and full of challenges, since I am a childhood trauma survivor.  I have almost always lived in poverty.  But now, though alone, I am for the first time in my life truly content.  And happy.  Now, I have everything I need, even if I don`t have a family.  I miss her sometimes.  We did become friends.  And now, my body no longer remembers the beatings.

Gratitude 62

I am grateful for my recovery from trauma.  In the meantime, please click on this song by the Strumbella's for a soundtrack while reading this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9kXstb9FF4

It is basically a song about living with PTSD, and even though my own trauma issues weren't related to combat, war or guns or the military, it all still relates.  I only just heard the song this afternoon while relaxing with the weekend Globe and Mail and listening to a literature program on CBC Radio One.  They played this song.  And it resonates so strongly with my experience for around three years before I really moved into recovery in 2002.

Then, in the newspaper, I noticed a troubling photo.  In Venezuela an elderly man in a demonstration against the Maduro government kicking at the plastic shield of a young riot cop.  All those riot police armed to the nines against protesting grandmas and grandpas who only want a better life, a better country and a better government.  I was reminded of my first visit to Mexico City in 2009.  I was taking a long walk through the principal park and green space, Chapultepec Park, where the president of Mexico, then Felipe Calderon, has his official residence, a mansion sequestered on top of a very well-secured hill.

As I walked through that area I came across a huge phalanx of riot police, shields, weapons, everything and they were blocking the road.  I politely asked one of them in Spanish, a young woman, if I could pass through.  She smiled and said yes.  Then I saw something that really surprised me.  There was a large crowd of people, senior citizens and young mothers with infants and small children, marching in a demonstration against a new and costly energy policy in their town that they could not afford.  There were maybe two hundred of them.  I have never seen a demonstration of such vulnerable looking individuals, and greeted by riot police ready to inflict serious harm?  This is an image that will never leave me.  I walked with them for a while, chatted with some of them.  They seemed to really appreciate the support from this visiting Canadian.  It fortunately did not come to violence.  But what an image!

Then I suddenly found myself thinking of one of many rather horrible things that happened to me while I was still just recovering from trauma.  There was an individual, his name was Jeff, who was stalking and hounding me with a personal vendetta.  He had exaggerated a series of minor offences (I had not been sufficiently friendly to him and I was unkind to his girlfriend with whom I once lived in community)  He would trail and follow me on foot, on his bicycle, in a car, threatening me with violence.  This, while I was already traumatized and all he could do was add to my trauma. 

Jeff was brutally murdered one night thirteen years ago, almost to the week.  I had nothing to do with it.  A mutual friend ended our friendship when I refused to attend his funeral.  On the advice of my then psychotherapist, my presence there would have been highly inappropriate.  I was then participating in a support group for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse.  I did not like this group very much, finding people there to be particularly harsh and aggressive.  When I told them during my debriefing about Jeff's murder and how he had been hounding and frightening me they were unanimous that I ought to be dancing on his grave.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Regardless of how repugnant his behaviour was towards me he was still a human being and no one, but no one deserves to die the way he did.  I soon left this group.  I still remember Jeff, perhaps not fondly, but, yes, with compassion, despite my anger at him.  Jeff Hendry, may you finally rest in peace.  And may the bastard who so wrongly and cruelly took your life be finally found and brought to justice.

Gratitude 61

I'm sixty-one and this is my sixty-first installment of the Gratitude series.  I am very grateful that I have lasted this long, in relatively good health and that I enjoy fairly decent living conditions.  Here, in the world's third most expensive city, following Sidney, Australia and Hong Kong, I can still live in dignity in my small but very affordable little bachelor apartment.  The available supply of government subsidized housing is still criminally scarce in this city.  I am truly one of the lucky ones.

It would be even better without that bloody Tate tower going up behind my building.  It has blocked out most of my view of the sky and the noise from the construction work really impacts on the quality of life in my neighbourhood.  I would likely cut a little more slack if these were affordable, non-market rentals being built, but no.  They have all, or almost all, been pre-sold, most of them to foreign interests for the purposes of investment and flipping.  These are not homes, but investments.  Adding insult to injury, not only does the noise and the sheer visible blight of this monstrosity make my neighbourhood less liveable, it is also a vile insult to those who suffer because of the housing crisis in Vancouver, those who have to move out of the city because it's unaffordable and to our many street homeless.

I often have to close my window because of this racket.  I fear how that could affect things in the summer when it becomes really warm.

I remember having had a brief conversation with one particularly ignorant young woman,.  If she has ever voted in her life it's likely been for the right-wing parties and their deplorable candidates.  When I mentioned the inconvenience that construction noise causes in my neighbourhood she simply brayed like an undereducated donkey, "Well, people have to live somewhere."  As if!

These eyesores have absolutely nothing to do with providing homes.  They are investments for lining the pockets of developers, realtors and shadow flippers.  It is absolutely egregious that our government leaders have allowed those bastards to buy them and in turn to sell the rest of us down the river in the name of foreign investment.  Yes, great for the economy, but how often does the economy ever really serve the people, especially those of modest means and the desperately poor?

If those psychopathic monsters who build these ugly condo towers really want to do something to redeem themselves, here is where they could start:

By earmarking fifty percent of their units as rental housing.  Fifty percent of those units have to be government subsidized to accommodate people living on low incomes where a rent of no higher than thirty percent of their monthly income would be legally imposed.  Would this impoverish the developers?  Not likely.  They're already rolling in profits and they can easily afford to give back.  Why don't they give back?  Because they don't have to.  However, if we keep organizing, then they are going to find that their very survival is going to depend on working cooperatively with the people who live in Vancouver, and this also includes our poorest residents.  This can be done, and it is going to be done.

Don't think so?  Well, that's what a lot of men said about women's suffrage and now half the current federal cabinet is made up of women.  White folk, mostly men, also once said that about slavery.  Oh, wait a minute, our neighbours south of the border just had eight years of Obama, arguably their best president since  Kennedy.

Enjoy your profits, developers, because your days are numbered!

Gratitude 60

I am also grateful that I appear to have recovered from my own chronic dysphoria.  To be honest, I have seldom thought of it, lately.  I can't even remember when or how I recovered.  I do recall once, twenty years ago, while taking an excruciatingly long urban hike, that I felt like a complete social outsider.  I would notice people around me, or in cafes and restaurants and they all seemed to have such normal, safe, comfortable and well-insulated lives.  I felt none of those things.  We seemed so different.  I felt that I was visiting from a different time, or rather, dimension.  This experience was very common for me then.

I began thinking of this today, following a chat with one of our clients in one of the sites where I work.  It turns out that this individual is living with a similar condition, though it appears to be more entrenched with him.  I admitted to him that I had been through something similar.  I also disclosed that I could not remember how or when I got over it.

I think extreme poverty helped reinforce this experience.  I was gravely underemployed and couldn't even afford bus fare, making it necessary for me to walk, sometimes up to twenty miles a day, if I wanted to see my handful of clients when I was still doing home support work.  I had also been through six to seven years of a very intense experience of Christian community, street ministry and spiritual warfare.  I really did not feel like I belonged.  Anywhere.

I was not aware that at that time I was also becoming ill.  I had been through my first major breakdown in recent months.  I felt persecuted by others (not delusional, by the way, there were people in powerful positions who were against me then) and was suicidal.  I was getting zero therapeutic support, for the simple reason that I didn't know I was ill and I had no idea where to look for help even if I did know.

I soon became homeless, in the couch-surfing sense, and got even sicker thanks to the stress I was living under.  I was threatened and harmed by people who had been in positions of trust with me, and I went through, during those ten and a half months, two more breakdowns.

There were still friends there to help me get through this difficult time.  I found housing, not very safe or stable, but it helped, and for three years I simply coped.  I was on welfare, unable to hold down a job (I was looking, but I didn't realize then that I was not well enough to work).  I avoided people as much as possible, outside of my few trusted friends, and tried to paint and promote my artwork.  During this period I suffered through four more breakdowns.

When I started seeing a psychiatrist I felt like I belonged to some other species rather different from human and not of this planet or dimension.  This was not a delusion, since I didn't believe this, but merely a personal feeling that I had trouble shaking off.  I soon found affordable housing, then long term employment.

I don't know when things started to change for me but gradually I have lost this sense of being different from others.  Aging seems to have helped.  I really feel a lot lighter than I used to, as though things just don't matter as much as they used to.  I also feel connected to others and integrated in society.  Nothing really has changed that much.  I think my work in mental health peer support has been particularly helpful.  All this time I spend with others, listening to their stories, and walking with them towards wellness, I find that I am not as strange as I thought I was.  Many others suffer much as I suffer, and many more suffer worse.

Becoming fluent in Spanish and befriending and interacting with many native speakers of the language of the angels from diverse countries and cultures appears to have also had an impact, along with almost ten years of international travel.  I find that the more I interact and adapt to other cultures, the less strange I feel.

To conclude, I think that making an effort to care for others, to show friendship, interest and to be helpful wherever possible, has really pulled my head out of my heiny and left me with a powerful impression that really, everyone feels isolated and alienated from others, each in their own way.  There is something about the failure to connect with others that leaves us feeling lonely and unwanted, and like a strange, unwelcome species.  My way of life has not become any more conventional or socially correct.  I am still what would be considered by others to be very eccentric and individualistic.  By the same token, I am really no different than you, Gentle Reader, because under our skin we are all very much the same, and we are all very much different.

We need one another and the more we accept and try to meaningfully touch one another`s lives, the more tolerable our own lives, and the more beautiful our journey across this earth.