Life As Performance Art 25

It is quite a balancing act, this living between two realities, the personal and the ontological. We are caught between a volcano and a blazing desert, it seems, the desert being our personal lives where we are often scrabbling to find or create meaning, and the volcano being that world around us and we never know what form it's going to erupt into, but we are not going to like it. Sometimes we end up living right on the volcano, where the most fertile soil can be cultivated for crops, the most fecund and dangerous place. Like any metaphor, this is going to have it's limits. I think what turns many of us into such grumpy old men, and women, is that when we get to a certain age we know we have not done a great job of straddling this difficult balance. We have, at best, realized but a fraction of our dreams, and in most cases we have not risen to our level of expectation. Or we realize, too late, how we've been duped. A materially prosperous life with that perfect lovely home, two cars, career, fat pension and investments, lovely spouse, perfect kids and even more perfect grandkids, has somehow stymied our spiritual and moral development as complete human beings. We have drunk the Kool Aid, lived drunk on it, and now we are waking up with the grandmother of all hangovers. We have bartered our lives to make sure we are living. I have never known any of those successes and I live very modestly in a tiny subsidized apartment, where I just might end up having to stay for the rest of my life. My possessions include around five hundred books, half of them in Spanish, my art, clothes, dishes, kitchen utensils, the odd ornament, and furniture. Nothing else. I have enough. I am not like the prosperous burghers leaving their lovely big houses to be rendered uninhabitable as the Ottawa River keeps overflowing its banks. I have never had that much to lose. I rather feel sorry for them, they have never known the reality of loss, and now they are finding out how temporary it all is. I have no family, I have a few friends, but none of the ballast that most Canadians of my age take as entitlement. I am not envious. I enjoy good health, I have meaningful employment, and most of all, I am blessed with a grateful heart. I am very strong on gratitude, but I think that gratitude only has a lot of power if we believe in God, and if it is he, the creator and sustainer of all, that we are directing our thanksgiving to, because it's just giving credit where it is due. There is nothing we can do to change the world except in our own small spheres of influence. But we cannot let the stupid venality of our leaders and the destruction that is being wreaked on our planet to prevent us from rejoicing, because there is plenty to rejoice over. And that is better than nothing.

Life As Performance Art 24

I'm going to try to backpedal a little bit today. I was mentioning that noise from certain people nearby could really impact my ability to enjoy my home, which is true. I an noise sensitive, and seem to do best when there is lots of quiet. I was not intentionally slamming any of those people for living with mental illness, nor for impacting my own comfort and wellbeing while I am off duty, since I work professionally with persons living with mental illness. The thing is, this can get very tiring and draining, and when I am resting and recovering from some of my more intense professional sessions with some very challenging clients, the last thing I need is visible and audial reminders of my day-job. This is merely a complaint. It is not an expression of dislike or discrimination against people with mental health disorders. I also imagine this could make me appear as quite a hypocrite, given some of the Christian content in my blogposts, such as yesterday. I love my clients and my neighbours. But I also am human and just as fragile as anyone else, for which reason I also need to rest and recover, especially if I am going to do my job well. This can also get complicated given that I have a couple of friends who are also living with mental illness. I like to be available as a friend, and I enjoy them. Sometimes, if their illness is driving some very uncomfortable or negative behaviours, I have to distance myself, and for the simple reason of self-preservation, while acknowledging that I am not in a position to be their therapist, much as I do like to offer support where I can. It is a delicate balance, between self-care and being a good friend, and I am not sure if I will ever get it quite right. It is also rather difficult for me to separate between my professional engagements and my friendships, as there is going to be a lot of unavoidable overlap there, and it is hard not to morph into, by default, everyone's therapist. This is especially given my professed calling as a Christian and the ongoing mission I live with of sharing and expressing God's love to all people. This cannot be neatly shut on and off or compartmentalized because this is the very thing that sustains me. Despite my complaining at times of exhaustion and burnout. I think I am also fielding leftover stress from the two difficult weeks that followed my recent visit to Costa Rica. So, the noise sensitivity is a little bit higher than usual, but really, at times it is intolerable. I just had to shut my window in order to hear what's on the radio, because of a particularly noisy garbage truck outside. Really, I think that most of us are living with more noise than what is really healthy for humans and those who say they are not bothered by it are either lying, or they have become a little too used to something that is actually harmful. Like the frog in boiling water, anyone?

Life As Performance Art 23

¡Feliz madrugada, Gentle Reader! Madrugada is a Spanish word that cannot be directly translated into English for the simple reason that it defines the time of day between midnight and the early dawn, or I could say, Happy small hours of the morning, Gentle Reader! I'm no longer sleeping well, at least not every night, and right now I am coping on five hours or so and it is just past four in the morning. There are a couple of suspicious looking guys chatting in low voices outside my window, so I have closed the window so I don't have to hear them. Ambient noise is always a problem in apartment living, and so much the worse if you happen to live downtown. There is a woman in my building who has a loud shrill and very annoying voice and has a tendency of getting in people's face. I think she might be on the asperger's spectrum, and she has taken to having chats at the doorway of a tenant who lives on my floor. Fortunately the chats are brief, but her voice is very annoying, and I don't think I like feeling exposed to people's mental illness symptoms when I'm off duty from work. But this can't always be done, especially when twenty-four of the tenants in my building are living with mental health disorders, which means that the rest of us get to live with their symptoms, sometimes, whether we like to or not. Well it is a couple of hours later now, I have had breakfast, a long luxurious nap and I feel almost human. I have switched off the radio because they are playing unlistenable garbage this morning and have settled instead for my Bizet CD of the Carmen Suites. Rather nice with Cuban dark roast coffee. Yes, noise. It's everywhere, and somehow, if you don't seem to like noise then other people are going to imagine there is something wrong with you, not because the noise is bad or awful but because no one seems to value or appreciate the value of silence. But for the grace of God and earplugs go I. I understand why most people don't like silence. It is frightening for many people. They then have to hear the voices inside their head and they are not going to like what they are saying. Or they are going to be confronted with their own inner void, emptiness and lack of soul, and that is terrifying. It is like kissing the abyss. I seem to be one of those rare beings who not only can tolerate, but also loves silence. But I have long ago made peace with my voices and my demons now all live in securely locked cages. And I am not afraid of being faced with my own emptiness. I think because God feels close and it is God who fills the emptiness. This reminds me of one night, my third time in Mexico City, when I was just getting ready to go to sleep. When I turned off the light I had a sudden terror of death, of suddenly being nothing. I was also soon facing a health crisis that might have easily sent me over. But as I lay there, paralysed with fear, I quietly cried out to God. I told him exactly what was terrifying me and I asked him for help. Suddenly, I went into a deep state of repose. When I came to, I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace and rest, knowing that all was well, that all manner of thing shall be well. I have never been struck by that kind of fear since that night seven years ago, and I know that in the silence I can meet my creator, just as when I die and enter into the ultimate silence, there he will be waiting for me and welcoming me with open arms of love. Gentle Reader, even if you do not yet believe, please know that God is always there, that he is closer to you than your own heartbeat, and if you cry out to him from the depths of your heart, he will hear you and you will receive an answer. But you must cry out from the very depths of your heart, for that is the prayer that gets heard.

Life As Performance Art 22

From time to time I come up with a brilliant idea. At least, at the time it seems brilliant, then later, after further reflection, thought, input from others, study and research, I will find that it maybe wasn't so brilliant after all, and might even be quite hare-brained and stupid. But this idea, I think is going to be brilliant, enduringly brilliant, and here goes. It is about housing and money-laundering here in our fabulous berg of Vancouver. I began today, shortly after waking, thinking of all the huge congestion in some parts of my city, particularly in the West End and downtown core. And I was thinking of how utterly asinine that they are still permitting the developer scum to build forty story or higher condo towers in an area that is already past its peak in density. There simply is not any room left here for squeezing in new towers, but they keep doing it anyway and this is only going to further compromise the quality of life for those of us who already live in these places. There is still tremendous resistance against increasing density in many neighbourhoods, especially on our tony and fabulously expensive west side. I say, Too Bad! They should have started putting up towers in some of those privileged hoods long ago, starting with erecting a thirty story condo tower right next door to Moonbeam's mansion on Point Grey Road. Moonbeam, as many of you will know, was our mayor, Gregor Robertson, here in Vancouver these last ten years and it was he who opened the Pandora's Box, letting in all the greedy developer scum, thanks to whom this city has become affordable only to the wealthy. With the BC Liberals running the province and the federal Conservatives in Ottawa, our country was basically being governed for several years without a moral compass and the venal greedy idiots in our own city hall simply helped exacerbate things. It seems almost disingenuous that so many people seem surprised that likely billions of dollars have been laundered in Vancouver casinos and in real estate transactions, particularly in Shaughnessy Heights. Palatial homes are being bought and sold in this real estate shell game, criminals fattening their pockets on dealing fentanyl and other lethal narcotics are living in them, and no one is lifting a finger to bust those bastards and kick them out of the country. This has nothing to do with racism, by the way, and not all the culprits are Chinese. It has everything to do with regaining control over this beast that threatens to make Vancouver unliveable to all but the uber wealthy. The drug dealers, their gangs and associates, and their clients who now live in these mansions bought with fraudulently obtained money all have to be flushed out, put under arrest, tried, jailed and where appropriate, deported. That's right, Gentle Reader. The City of Vancouver, with appropriate assistance from provincial and federal levels, is going to have to get those criminals out, and expropriate the houses that they are illegitimately occupying. Instead of reselling these mansions at a profit, they need to be renovated into duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and apartments, and they are going to have to be made available to tenants earning the full range of income, from the relatively well off, to the street homeless. That is correct, Gentle Reader, co-ops and subsidized housing, and really, why shouldn't such beautiful neighbourhoods be accessible to everyone who lives in this city? No one has the human right of occupying for themselves alone and their small families and servants mansions of such dimension and proportion that they could easily house up to twenty tenants in well-designed apartments. The growing crisis in density and the fact that our population is going to only keep on growing makes unthinkable and obscene the very idea that one person should be allowed to live in a mansion occupying half an hectare. Without badly altering or damaging the esthetic of these wealthy neighbourhoods, population density integrating a full range of incomes should not be impossible, and only the greed inspired snobbery of certain wealthy idiots is going to prevent this from ever happening. Mansions, as single family residences, have to be declared obsolete and illegal. They are certainly unethical.

Life As Performance Art 21

Mika Jiang, the right wing fiscal conservative from Shanghai has responded to my reply to his reply about my comment on Quora from yesterday. I have decided that I have no time or energy for educating asses, so I have deleted the notification unread. Online and social media discussions with strangers are often quite the exercise in futility, and for one simple reason. Outside of what we write online, it is impossible for us to know each other. Which is also to say that it inhibits mutual understanding. No matter how hard or how much we bend over in unpleasant postures to explain ourselves, it is not going to work. Especially when you come from incompatible cultural and social and economic experiences. Besides which, I do not know what is happening in that person's life. I have no idea of what has shaped or influenced hi. I do not know if there is any particular suffering or hurt there right now, or id perhaps he is simply a sheltered and cossetted spoiled rich kid with all the empathy of a slug. Neither is he going to have any way of understanding my perspective, where I have been in life, or what might be going on with me right now. And I will be damned if I am going to try to reveal and expressed such privileged information to someone who more than likely simply is not going to get it. Better to save our pearls for worthier swine. China, where this man lives, is also a notorious human rights abuser and even though it is not quite cricket to conflate the Chinese people with their horrible government, it is also noteworthy that compassion is not a strong Chinese cultural characteristic. It is a very strong Canadian characteristic. I was invoking compassion in my argument that it certainly is important that wealth be redistributed through taxation so that the poorest and most marginalized members of society do not suffer too onerously from the success of the wealthy. But if you are not grounded in compassion, then you simply are not going to get it. It's kind of like a generalized systemic psychopathy that affects people who live under repressive governments, and an online forum is the worst possible way to communicate across those barriers. So, I will let the gentleman from Shanghai have the last word, and I am also likely to never know what he has to say because, frankly, I no longer care. My priorities today are going to remain very simple and basic. I am going to finish writing this bit of nonsense, have some breakfast, (not necessarily in that order), get my clothes out of the dryer, do some art, go for a walk, and meet a good friend for coffee. Later, I will probably walk around in the sunshine. What could be more perfect, Gentle Reader?

Life As Performance Art 20

I am up incredibly early. Following three and a half hours of deep sleep, I woke at around one am, got up shortly past two, had a shower and now I am waiting for my eggs to boil while sipping on decaf, and I expect to be going back to sleep within the half hour or so. I am also listening to the wee hour documentary programs on CBC radio and they, as always, are so interesting that I wonder that they are never broadcast during normal waking hours, but there is an explanation here. These are broadcasts from the BBC, from Germany, Australia and elsewhere, and simply not very Canadian, and the CBC, being the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is obligated to broadcast only Canadian content during waking hours, no matter how mediocre or inferior to this rich and super informative material they have on between one and four in the morning. My sleep difficulties do not worry me so much. This is partly from my natural rhythm, and part work stress, and I will be taking a long nap soon, so it's not going to be a total loss. Anyway, here is one of the many rich items I have heard on the radio this morning. It is about reusing plastic containers, refilling them, instead of melting the plastic down to make into something else. And this makes sense because this way it is much less an environmental impact. One of the co-narrators did say something rather stupid, and very indicative of what's really wrong with us. He insisted that he can't refill his shampoo bottle and for the simple reason that he has a special boutique brand of shampoo that he must always be using, citing consumers' rights to choose whatever they want. They made a good-natured, if embarrassed joke about it, but here is where the problem lies. We are spiritually bankrupt. Now my eggs are boiling so I have to attend to them, and likely will not resume writing for a few hours...I'm back from my nap. But, yes, about being spiritually bankrupt. Most people live lives that are quite divorced from the presence and reality of God, and this makes them shallow, incomplete, empty, and sadly lacking. So, they crave, they become prone and vulnerable to addictions, because there is in each person a God shaped hole that only God can fill. Without God we are left empty and wanting and needing. I think this is the real reason for the epidemic of alcoholism and drug addiction. And consumerism is a kind of drug addiction, hence that poor wanker's insistence on his special boutique shampoo and his lame excuse of consumer rights........I will conclude with my reply to a right wing individual who replied to one of my comments on Quora. I have no desire to publish what he said on this blog as it is quite bad but here's my response: "I will reply with the last sentence of my comment: If you don’t like poor seniors and families and single people on low incomes having equal access to free medical care, affordable housing, and higher education, then why not just say so and spare us the quaint little monikers? I do not advocate any political or economic ideology, not even socialism, and certainly not capitalism. I think I’m more of a social democrat which integrates free market with socially progressive policies, similar to the Scandinavian countries, which are social democrat and not socialist. Nothing wrong with opportunity and doing well, but not everyone is equally equipped or able to succeed and if we want to live in a country that isn’t plagued with homelessness and poor people dying on the streets then we all have to be willing to compromise, including on our ideologies. I like the idea of a society that is generous and compassionate, and you are not going to find that in the model that you have proposed. If that is something you prefer, then you are entitled to your opinion. I personally do not want to live in a place that is characterised by greed and selfishness, for which reason taxes have nothing to do with anyone being robbed but of everyone sharing. It is only selfish mentalities that will frame this as stealing. If you wish to respond, you are free to, but please be respectful, but please do not take my writing out of context, and please consider how people who are less fortunate and able are going to benefit."

Life As Performance Art 19

I am getting used to work again. My income for this month is going to be very modest, but there are compensations. I should have enough leftover funds from my recent trip to live on for another couple of weeks, plus CPP gave me a rather generous bank deposit for March, completely unexpected, so I will be okay. And I am taking on some new clients for May. There is something really ridiculous about my employment. Basically, we are stranded at an obscenely low wage, yet our supervisors don't even blink about putting us in risky and sometimes dangerous situations with particularly difficult clients, and I hope that this gets addressed. If they aren't going to pay us for unsafe work, then they shouldn't assign it to us. If I had to pay market rents, I would have to quit my job and move to another city or province, and at my age that simply isn't going to happen. I don't know what I would have done without BC Housing. I know that a lot of people, on knowing where I live, are going to judge and stigmatize me, because people are generally pretty mean-spirited and ignorant. but I have a decent and affordable roof over my head. I can pay my rent on time, eat decently, and save money and travel. I am not free to move or change residences because for people on modest and low incomes who live in Vancouver, this simply is no longer an option. We are hostages to market forces, and this entrapment is spreading rapidly to people on moderate and even liveable incomes. The absolute stinginess of my employers certainly hasn't been helping, nor the lame excuses and the lies they respond with whenever we try to address them about their lack of generosity. This isn't the end of the world, or not yet anyway. We went through an era of unprecedented prosperity, following the Second World War, and now reality is biting our asses. I heard something quite inspiring on the As It Happens program on CBC a couple of evenings ago. I cannot remember the name of the guest, but he has travelled, written, and done climate change research extensively and he was saying quite openly that our future and the future of our planet is largely going to depend on how we take care of one another. I couldn't agree more. The individualism and nonstop progress and innovation and discovery of the so-called Modern Era that had its beginnings in the Renaissance is going to have to give way to quite a different dynamic if we are to chart and survive this horrendous and wild trajectory that we have set ourselves and other species on. The changes that are coming upon us are unstoppable, and we have to adapt and we have to pull together if we are going to survive. The resistance of our governments to this reality is telling and alarming, and this is where the people are going to have to lead, then maybe our leaders will follow. I don't suppose there is a lot that we can do as individuals, but really, what options do we have? If more of us start to act positively and proactively, within our limited circles, and if we do what we can to reach beyond these limited circles, then we will gather the power and momentum that is going to be needed for us to survive the coming changes. Unfortunately, there is going to be a lot of pushback and resistance, especially with this rise of populism and conservatism that is sweeping major parts of the world. We really have to learn to work strategically and we have to work smart in order to counter this massive wave of collective fear and stupidity that threatens to drown us all.

Life As Performance Art, 18

Yesterday wasn't bad for an Easter Monday, despite the rain. And the cold. I don't think the mercury went above nine degrees yesterday, which is unusual for April 22. It was also Earth Day yesterday, and we are all singing before the abyss. We have no idea how it is all going to look, but it ain't gonna be pretty. We are living these days, as they say, in very uncertain times. Dramatic climate change from human caused global warming is already becoming the norm. Governments are scrambling to make cosmetic changes to environmental policies while still performing the same obscene acts with fossil fuel corporations. It doesn't look pretty, and no one is wearing protection. But yesterday was still nice, despite the rain, and the cold temperature. After doing some work at home I managed to drag myself outside for a good seven mile walk underneath my big black and blue umbrella. The trees are luminously green in their unfurling spring foliage and flowers and blossoms splash colour throughout the streets, yards and gardens. The robins and finches are still singing, the Steller's jays are still screaming, the crows are still cawing and the wealthy neighbourhood burghers are all frightened and bunkered into their electronically monitored and barricaded palaces, counting all their laundered money while their queens are in the parlour eating bread and honey. I try to ignore the people who live in these obscenely wealthy neighbourhoods. At those moments I simply don't want to care who lives there, or why those expanses of quiet streets are so peaceful, green and fragrant. I don't even want to see the inside of their mansions, or, not most of them, anyway. It is an extended and gentle labyrinth of curving streets. Eventually I have to come off the magic mountain, walking back into the common overpriced neighbourhoods where even well-incomed professionals struggle to pay the mortgage. The houses are smaller, closer together, but old and charming. The gardens are wild with the joy of the new spring. The air smells like fresh new soil, new leaves, flowers and tree sap. In the No Frills grocery store I am reminded again of that mad scramble we call life, as shoppers compete and have to scurry around each other for products, perhaps budget priced, but still costly. My reusable bag is heavy with bounty, and I easily find on the bus a seat, because standing with heavy groceries and a big umbrella is not easy on the bus, but younger people usually don't have to be reminded and usually give up their seat without being asked. In the safety of my small subsidized apartment I have to shuck off the anxious fear that is often a byproduct of a crowded bus ride following a shopping trip in a busy supermarket, because dodging the oblivious can induce panic attacks. But in less than a minute I am fine again, as I put on a CD of the Mozart Requiem, followed by Charpentier's Te Deum. I resume work on my laptop, this time research on Mexican painters. Then I get up to make a pot of hot cocoa from scratch.

Life As Performance Art 17

I am reminded, frequently, of what I do not like about where I live. Primarily it is the location, on downtown Granville Street, on the scuzzy end by the Granville Bridge, and the dysfunctional neighbours in Granville Residence, whom right now are playing their music or radio at an unacceptable volume, even with my window closed, it is not yet 7 am and so I have to wear earplugs, once again. I did mention already that I feel like a hostage living here, because there are no options. Even though I work for a living, I am stuck at a low wage and moving is not an option because I live in subsidized housing and any place like my apartment in a market rental would start at well over 1,000 a month. Right now, I pay less than one fourth of that sum. Plus, I can save money and travel every year on my scant earnings. Everything else about where I live is okay, for which reason I will simply wear earplugs, and if the noise continues for a while, phone the staff at Granville Residence to complain. Except for the odd idiot, most of them are pretty supportive..........It's an hour later, I've had my breakfast, the usual two soft boiled eggs, two slices of toasted homemade whole wheat spread with natural peanut butter and apricot jam, and a slice of rather tart Gruyere cheese. Yummy! And now, no noise from next door, and the good news is it seldom lasts very long, maybe because my neighbours with all their many issues have the attention span of a squirrel, but it is much nicer now, and once again, I love my little apartment. Speaking of squirrels, on Good Friday I saw an interesting interspecies interaction. I was walking to church for the morning Good Friday service and on the calm pavement of Angus Drive there were a crow and a little black squirrel having a turf standoff. Both were foraging for something to eat, and every time the crow got too close the squirrel chased him off. That little rodent ruled and he had no trouble at all keeping the big black bird in line. This is particularly amusing given how crows spare no quarter to adversaries many times their size, including humans walking under their nests in May and June. I tend to get on well with crows, given that I sometimes feed them, especially in the spring, so that they will leave alone should I come anywhere near their precious little ones. I actually learned this tactic years ago while walking in the woods. I came across a fledgling crow looking up at me from the trail. His parents were understandably freaking out from overhead. Instinctively, I picked a ripe salmonberry and dropped it in the young crow's mouth, then gave him a couple more. His parents calmed right down, and the next couple of days I walked there, I would feed their little junior more salmonberries and mommy and daddy stayed quiet, calm, chill and happy. Right now there are a couple of crows in the Angus Drive area who seem to have adopted me, and often one or both of them will accompany and fly and walk with me for several blocks. Yes, they expect to be fed, but their body language also suggests that they have become rather fond of me, so it's kind of nice having them around, especially given that even if I go several times without feeding them, they still seem to want to hang out with me. I guess I could try to be as kind to humans, even if they happen to be my neighbours!

Life As Performance Art 16

It has become incredibly difficult coordinating to meet up with friends. Some are just neurotic and precious (and, I think rather self-centred) and cannot imagine going to a coffee shop after 2 in the afternoon, even though they are retired and really have all the time in the world. Others have more reasonable obstacles to contend with, such as an erratic and demanding work schedule, or family and spousal commitments that have to be fulfilled for their own lives to hold together. In my case, my work is stressful and I need downtime, often away from other people, even from friends. This has absolute squat to do with the nonsensical and fictitious binary of extrovert and introvert and everything to do with the fact that when I'm working with needy adults, I morph by osmosis into everyone's caregiver, including my closest friends, and even from them (sometimes especially from my friends) I will particularly need a break in order to rest and recover. Socializing in the evenings does not work, because that is when I am usually most tired and really I want to get into bed by 9:30 every night, if I want to get a decent sleep, start my day reasonably early and keep somewhat tolerable this vicious cycle. I also live downtown. My neighbourhood tends to get rather ugly with people out for a good time after 6 in the afternoon, and this makes stepping out onto the sidewalk all the more stressful and unsafe for me, when really what I am needing is peace and quiet and relative solitude and refuge from selfish and narcissistic idiots in order to recover from the day, and prepare myself for good restorative sleep, so that I can be any real use to others the following day. A lot of people I know are in the same boat as I am, so it is really hard for us to coordinate our schedules. It never used to be this difficult, and I hear this from a lot of people. So, what happened? Are we really that busy? Could it be that so many of us are so distracted by social media and our little tech toys that we don't know when to put them down, or better, leave them at home, and actually engage more with real, living and breathing human beings? I don't have a mobile phone, yet it is hard even for me. But my job is particularly demanding and stressful, and I am not young, so I need more rest than I used to. And I also want to live with balance. I'm not really sure how I'm going to do this. I think if we're all willing to be more flexible, and if we value one another enough, then we will be able to, then we can hold together, and we can help build a real sense of community against this monolith of greed and misery that our governments have been forcing onto us. This could be well worth thinking of during this spring and Easter, this time and season of rebirth and renewal. At the very least, to stay in touch with one another and remind us all that we are in this together and that even if we are too often absent from one another there is still a silent spiritual cord that bonds us all together.

Life as Performance Art 15

I am drinking French Colombian Decaf this morning. It is a bit on the pricey side, given that I buy premium quality beans from one of our better local coffee purveyors, Bean Around the World. It isn´t marked as Fair Trade and there is no telling what kind of exploitation and injustice is steaming in every bitter cup. I used to be big on fair trade, and ethically, I still am, but I have had to come to accept that fair trade caters to a niche market of which I cannot possibly be a member, and for one simple reason: I don't earn a lot of money, and fair trade is expensive. In order to provide a fair and just remuneration to all the pickers and other workers, it has to be costly. But I earn less than a living wage and I have bills to pay, and I still want to enjoy a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. I have decided to stop blaming myself for one simple reason. This is not my fault, nor is it my problem, but it is the responsibility of the people who employ me to start paying us a decent and living wage. And so it goes along the entire spectrum of low wage earners. By default we are made party and participants in the exploitation of vulnerable workers, and all because our employers refuse to pay us a decent wage. I have already told a friend who describes himself as frugal that, unlike him, if I have enough cash flow coming in, I can be very loose and easy and generous in my spending habits, and that it's only because of my ungenerous employers that I cannot afford to shop according to my conscience. My regular coffee is fair trade, by the way, and organic. Cuban dark roast. Buying, brewing and drinking coffee puts us in direct contact with the hands and the fingers that have worked day after day, often in hot and unsafe conditions, for long hours, picking the coffee cherries, often for a miserably low wage. It puts us in contact with the people who spread the beans out to dry in the sun, who operate the machine that remove the skins, the hands that clean and sort the beans, and the trained eyes that determine the best quality. We are connected to the people who bag and ship the beans to overseas markets, and then when they arrive to our privileged northern shores, we are still connected to those who drive the trucks that ship the beans to the plants and stores and cafes where the beans are roasted and packaged. The simple act of making a cup of coffee, of cooking an egg, toasting a slice of bread, spreading peanut butter and jam, of slicing and eating a bit of cheese on the side, all these actions put me in contact with a very diverse and often very unjust world, and it is not very far away, neither are any of those people different from me. And unlike them, I can afford to visit them in their country. They cannot come here to visit us in Canada.

Life As performance Art 14

It's laundry day today. It is my first day off. All my weekends are three days now and because of Easter Monday it's going to be a four day weekend. Today is Friday. Today is Good Friday, the Friday we call Good. We remember today one of the most significant deaths of our human history, if not the most significant. A death that did not end in the tomb. A death that still does not end in the tomb. I woke very early this morning, but I have registered six and a half hours deep sleep, which works well as my minimum daily requirement, and I am feeling well-rested. I woke at four minutes before four this morning, following a rather bizarre dream where I was running to catch a plane. It was bound for London, and I was in it at first, but found that I was in the wrong section, near the front, and that I had also not boarded legitimately. So, instead of moving to the back and explaining my plight to the flight attendant, I got off the plane and left the terminal and ended up running on a pedestrian walkway to the correct entrance onto the plane (the interior was large, spacious and white). I don't think I would have quite made it, but you never know. That's when I woke up. I got up at around 4:15, had a shower, cleaned my place and now I am almost ready to go downstairs to put my clothes in the dryer, after which I am going to make a cheese omelette for breakfast to enjoy with my dark roast fair trade organic Cuban coffee. I will be leaving shortly after eight thirty to attend the Good Friday service in my church, following which I expect to stop in the local coffee shop and buy some more coffee beans. My body is still carrying and feeling some of the stress from the last couple of weeks, which highlights the importance of rest and taking it easy for this four day weekend.........I have just finished folding and putting away the clothes. It is just past seven, and the cloudy morning is gently bright, but not brilliant, and I hear a house finch singing nearby. They are very common birds here in Vancouver, but no one seems to know they exist. Look up the image on Google, and you will find a sparrow with a bright golden-red head and breast. Look up their song on YouTube. They sound rather like canaries, but with a certain wild beauty. Our lives are full of things, often things of incredible beauty, that few of us ever seem to notice. This precious and holy weekend of spring could be an ideal time to slow down and to really begin to take note of this beauty, to make ourselves vulnerable to Christ crucified and risen and to the hidden beauty that threatens to ambush and overwhelm us.

Life As Performance Art 13

It's about moving forward, relentlessly forward. Taking rest pauses as needed, of course, but not giving up. I became ill when I gave up. I didn't feel that I could go on. I don't know, maybe I could have kept going, but I had really lost my direction. And there were no supports available, just my difficult father to stay with part time in Robert's Creek, and equally difficult friends with whom I was also couchsurfing in Vancouver. None of them were stable and I have to say that I am no longer friends with any of them, and that my father has now been dead for ten years. My life had come to a full stop and there seemed nothing that I could do about it. I had full blown PTSD, or that's the narrative, anyway. I had quit my job as a home caregiver in July 1997, and tried to throw myself into painting and promoting my art full time, but there was no support base to see me through. I refused to go back on social assistance, because that had already been turned into a bureaucratic and shaming nightmare as to make Kafka proud. I decided to throw my lot on God, since it was really hard to find suitable work, and no one seemed interested in hiring a man in his early forties with a limited skill set to offer, nor was I physically strong enough for labouring positions. On top of everything else, I had just come through roughly ten very traumatic years, including my mother's death from cancer. I spent a lot of that time navigating a very dysfunctional Christian community, and we were simply immersed in tragedy, deaths from AIDS, suicide, overdose and murder, as well as tending to the ongoing needs and psychic and spiritual wounds of the many marginalized people seeking us out for care. This isn't also to mention how damaging we as a community were to one another. The community had come to an end and I was living alone in a bachelor apartment and barely able to pay the rent. I did have a lot of friends at the time and we were all loosely connected in some form of community or other, but everyone was unstable, unreliable and usually broke like me and I was generally considered the least screwed up and the most sought out for support. No wonder I ended up tanking. So, I embraced homelessness and my uncertain future, knowing that Jesus was walking this labyrinth with me. There really should have been more supports in place for me, just as there need to be for others going through this kind of fall, but our society and governments still tend to take a sadistic pleasure in punishing the weak, and I certainly was not exempt. I happen to know that God has been with me through all of this, and that it was God who brought me safely through, relatively unscathed, that it was God who opened the doors for affordable housing, psychiatric help and vocational support and now because of God's many eleventh hour interventions, I am now facing retirement and this next stage in my journey in good health, in a decent apartment that I can pay for and with rewarding and enriching employment, all the while enjoying the privileges of foreign travel. It has never been this good in my life. And I am not ready to gloat.

Life As Performance Art 12

What has made a difference in my life is my tendency of facing things head on. I have always been like this, much more so now that I'm older, but even as a young man, it never seemed like an option for me to avoid or shirk responsibilities or duties or obligations. Some things I didn't do that well. because of my low income, I did go through periods of no phone service, for example, because I couldn't pay the bill. By the same token, sometimes my rent was late. But this was because of difficult circumstances. But on the whole, facing life as it is has always been a priority. I actually wonder if the failure of doing this, this failure to face truth, to confront unpleasant facts and realities, and to proactively address them, if this failure of action can be a main vector in facilitating mental illness. I imagine this does not exactly square with the harm reduction crowd, and that it does sound uncomfortably like right wing mouth-breathers that believe if every one takes personal responsibility then no one will be homeless, everyone will have food to eat and not only a roof over their head but a three to four bedroom house on God's Green Acre. Well, that isn't how it works either. It's one thing to decide to not coddle oneself or hide in one's own private cave from reality. It is quite another thing depriving others of basic services and needs because you don't believe they are trying hard enough. I do believe that accepting responsibility can be key to rehab, wellness and recovery. But that it isn't all that is needed. We are all in this together, and we need one another and by not accepting this, a lot of people end up getting nowhere fast. This is why I have come to reject the political and ideological binary of left and right. Each takes a certain truth and takes it to a ridiculous extreme, while getting pilloried for not seeing this. Facing stuff used to be very hard, often painful, always frightening. I kept doing it anyway, not just to get things done, especially stuff that no one else was going to do for me, but also for me to grow as a human being. When I think of the trajectory of the last two weeks, since preparing to return home from Costa Rica, I see that I have spent much of this time tackling unpleasant and difficult facts and realities. It started with having to fight that dumb busdriver for my baggage, refusing to let him wrest it from me, and certainly not letting him take it away from me. I had an early morning flight the next day and I was not in the mood for putting up with nonsense. On the way home, I had to face and sort through the unpleasant nonsense of navigating customs and border patrol at the Pearson International Airport. I still haven't filed a complaint, but that is soon coming. Then there was the flight to Vancouver with Mr. Testosterone poking me in the back from the seat behind, having to shut him up when he objected to my complaint, then explaining everything to the flight attendant to whom he complained after I cussed him out in Spanish and in English. She was sympathetic and helped me relocate to a better seat. Arriving home, I had the nonsense of addressing my building managers about my still unfixed toilet, not notifying me about the flood while I was away, etc. I also had to straighten out the mess and untie some knots with Canada Revenue, Telus and my bank. The day after, I had to negotiate the end of a toxic friendship, including getting back a work of original art from the idiot because he had disgraced our friendship. Then there was getting back to work, and having to deal openly, frankly and tactfully with colleagues and clients. It has all been very intense, I have faced every single challenge alone and unsupported. There remain some other issues pending that I am soon going to get around to, after a bit of a rest, and curiously, I feel fine, I am sleeping well and enjoying each day. For me, there seems to be something very tonic about facing and dealing with stuff. It makes me stronger, and more robust. And, I think, happier and more content. All for now, Gentle Reader.

Life As performance Art 11

It's been a gentle re-entry into my work, since returning from Monteverde. I have had more than the average number of client cancellations, all of which I still get paid for. I am still short on hours, but I have managed to save a lot over the last year and from my travel expenses in order to invest in my living expenses for the next few weeks while my bank balance has time to regenerate. I am taking advantage of this quiet time to walk more, work more on art and writing projects, for prayer and reflective thought. I am also surprised, pleasantly, how unscathed I seem to be from this past difficult week. There have been none, so far absolutely none, of the usual PTSD red flags and I am beginning to believe that I am experiencing a full recovery, though I do remain vigilant. Life has many ways of pulling an ambush, and I am too old and wise now not to know this. I am sleeping well. Better, actually. Eating well, maybe a little too well. I am getting out every day to walk and enjoy the fresh air. I am seeing people, in touch with friends. I am doing lots of good art. Writing too, as you are currently reading, Gentle Reader. No depression, no sadness and doing well as I return to work. And thanks to my Skype friend in Colombia, I still get to speak tons of Spanish twice a week while helping him with English. We are having here rather a chilly and rainy April, but so full of flowers and new leaves and birdsong. I am glad to be home, though I still think daily of Monteverde and the people I know there. Even though I feel well, it is premature to say that I'm well, hence this desire to take full advantage of every opportunity to rest and enjoy life. I am listening rather too much to CBC, and right now they are interviewing a particularly odious professional pothead known to be a spoiled whiner prone to little meltdowns when he doesn't get his way, and this all has to do with the coming 4-20 pot protest that occurs every April 20. I will not dignify the event with further comment. Coming back to noise is always an issue. The elephant upstairs was rampaging across my ceiling on the weekend. I suspect she goes through manic episodes. The police, fire and ambulance sirens are every bit as intolerable. The drugged out knuckle draggers in the building, Granville Residence, next door, are still making earplugs a necessity. and there are the chronic coughers. It is a sad irony that most of the people who still smoke are those who can least afford to buy cigarettes and their incessant coughing can be maddening, whether from across the hall or from Granville Residence, I also needed earplugs in Costa Rica. Hotel walls are often thin and other guests can be insensitive morons, and often are. So, it isn't that bad. I am still having a fairly good time.

Life As Performance Art 10

It feels longer than just ten days or so since my return from Monteverde and Costa Rica. Much longer. It is as though I was never there. Being away was like a dream. I wonder why. I just read a blogpost from my visit, and it all seemed very concrete and down to earth. Getting home hasn't been easy. I have been through quite an obstacle course since leaving Monteverde: a bus driver who threatened to steal my luggage; rude customs interrogators in Toronto and a nearly missed flight home to Vancouver; a testosterone addled jock in the seat behind me on the flight to Vancouver who kept jabbing my back with his fingers on the touch screen and his knees getting driven into my lower back; coming home to a a toilet that still hadn't been fixed during the month of my absence, even after I had previously notified the building managers three times before leaving on my trip; paintings being left in disarray upon opening the door to my apartment (there was a flood in my building during my absence, workers needed to check the damage and, even though managers had my email contact, no one notified me about it) news that Telus was still nagging me for a payment I was sure I had already given them, only to learn that the money had been diverted to Canada Revenue and so I spent my first full day back straightening out that mess between Telus, my bank and Canada Revenue; and negotiating the end of a friendship that had gone very bitter. I have also needed to get back to work right away, because, even though some of you don't seem to know this, some of us have to work in order to survive. I have received an apology from the bus company in Costa Rica for the shabby treatment from the driver, and my friend in Monteverde and I are in regular contact. I have finally recovered from my travel fatigue, and this usually does take a week and a couple of days. I am sleeping fairly well, eating well, enjoying long walks and visits with friends. I am also trying not to complain too bitterly about the cold temperatures and rain, given that we're in mid_ April and one would hope that the city is going to feel like spring, but at least it looks like spring and everywhere is full of flowers and new leaves. Could things be better? Things could always be better. Could things be worse? Things could always be worse. Am I happy? Ridiculous question. I'm almost always happy, except for the occasional depression. Do I miss Monteverde? I always and I always will miss Monteverde, even while I am in Monteverde. Am I glad to be home? Very glad. But now, I also live in Monteverde, even if it does feel like a dream, and this is because Monteverde is always going to live in me. The people who live there, their style of Spanish, their warmth and friendliness, their pride in their land and community and their humility as persons; the natural splendour will always live in me: the huge trees, the birdsong, the wind, the vines, flowers, leaves and moss and ferns, the cloud forest, the butterflies, especially the morphos, birds and especially the hummingbirds, the armadillos, the agoutis, the coatis and the monkeys; the amazing views, the rainbows and the killer hills to climb. I expect to return there next year, but not to live, because I live in Vancouver first, and second in Monteverde, and perhaps eventually also in Colombia and in Mexico. I do also miss speaking Spanish every day and all day, but even here in Vancouver there are ways of staying fluent. Today, I am going to work, which I have also missed while away. But not too much!

Life As Performance Art 9

I am not needy. Nor do I lack friends. So, my reasons for writing in the last couple of posts about the inability of most people to secure or value close and lasting friendships has nothing to do with me personally. This is merely a social observation and it is meant only to be interpreted as a social observation. Nothing else. So, if you have read the last couple of posts, Gentle Reader, then I will thank you to stick your personal judgments of my character up where the sun don't shine. I have lost more friends than I could begin to number on this page. Many through death, others for having simply disappeared, some have abruptly and at times violently ended our friendship because of a stubborn refusal to reasonably discuss things and seek paths of reconciliation, and many have always had the same useless, lame excuse of being too busy. I really believe that we can do better and that we need to do better than this. But it also seems that outside of our own families, and outside of the people they are having sex with, most people have a very limited attention span, and this strikes me as shallow, selfish and pathetic. It is reptilian brain in overdrive. Or am I the only person on the face of this earth who has ethical values? I am really beginning to think so. I even wonder if I'm just wasting my time staying open to others, in my desire to reflect Christ, since I always end up casting the same pearls before the same swine and I am really getting fatigued from all this. I have had the opportunity to know some wonderful people. Others, not so much, I'm afraid. It also depends, I think, on the venues for meeting people. For example, I have met a lot of people from Latin American countries and from Spain, thanks to the Conversation Exchange Page, but most of those people want to learn or improve their English for business and professional advantages. They are going to be competitive, greedy and amoral little capitalists, for the most part, usually lacking a moral compass and it goes without saying that people of that ilk make the worst possible friends, so then, is it any wonder that I have been constantly disappointed by those little wankers, since they are simply life supports for a reptilian brain? There have been a couple of notable exceptions, but they are people very hard to find anywhere. Most people are selfish little consumers, out only for themselves and no one else, and at least I am learning to quickly identify and distance myself from those idiots. Sometimes, I can't wait for climate change disaster to so overwhelm us that we are going to be forced into working and living cooperatively if we don't want to perish. And hopefully, by that time, natural selection will have already wiped out all the selfish idiots.

Life As Performance Art 8

We all have a strong tendency of treating people like commodities. I actually called a language partner from Madrid on this. In his marketing attempts he wrote a spiel that he ran by me for my approval. Since English was not his first language, of course I would look for casual errors and misappropriations, but what really got me was the way he referred to people as commodities. I called him out on this, explaining that commondities in English is used not for people but for merchandise, unless you are intending to refer to other people as merchandise. He took real offence, and apparently, referring to people as merchandise was exactly what he had in mind, without even the slightest tincture of irony. He got even more hostile when I tried to address him around his evident lack of ethics. That, by the way, was our final coffee visit, and we were both glad to see the end of this friendship, however brief. I think there are many reasons for our treating one another as objects. Capitalism has set a particularly dangerous precedent in the way that people relate to each other. We have been so corrupted by commodification that we tend to treat relationships as conusmer transactions. No longer interested in forming lasting relationships with persons, we appear to have no interest in other people as human beings. It is all about exploiting their utility to us. It all becomes a matter of what we can get out of them. We have transferred consumerism into our human relationships. My psychiatrist was especially bad for having this kind of attitude. When he didn't seem to like my choice of friends, he would ask me about what I could possibly be getting from the friendship. He meant well. But I am a Christian, and my choice of friends has little or nothing to do with utility, and all to do with the fact that I like them, that I even love them, and what I get out of then has nothing to do with it. It is really hard to convey this kind of thinking to a lot of people, because most of us have really lost our ethical moorings. We tend to see others in terms of their utility or entertainment value, or of what they can do for us, and I am frankly sick of this. When I recently heard again that claptrap about friendships having a shelflife and people going in different directions I just found myself gagging, because this comes across as really selfish. I tend to see friendship as a life commitment (for me, anyway), and for this reason, I have been rejected, ghosted or tossed aside over and over again because no one seems to share these values with me. It's like we have become a ravenous mob of greedy vampiritic zombies, or life supports for an appetite. This isn't to say that problems don't occur in friendships, and that people can really make life difficult for others, especially when they don't come clean about their bad behaviour (you know who you are, Gentle Reader!), and this can necessitate negotiations and time outs. But to erase someone from your life because you're tired of them, because they no longer do anything for you, because they're bored with you, or as in my case they are tired of having their poor ethics beingconstantly challenged, or because they have found other friends and interests? That kind of thinking, for me anyway, I have always found unconscienable. I have only ended friendships because of abuse or safety concerns. I know, it isn't the same as marriage, but really, marriage itself has become so user friendly, that no one seems to expect anymore to stay hitched for life. It takes two, I suppose. If I wasn't already so isolated, then maybe this wouldn't be important to me, but wait a minute. Even when I was in full contact with my family, I still felt this way about friendship. This doesn't mean that people have to always do things together. But whatever happened to loyalty? To actually caring for others in the longterm? This is a reflection of how we see community, and this is a sad reflection indeed, because without stable longterm relationships, not necessarily of a conjugal nature, there ain't going to be no community, and we will each be just staggering arouind in our empty selfish little hells, like perpetual bedbugs looking for the next host to suck blood out of.

Life as Performance Art 7

Jesus is quoted as having said "Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will grow cold." This is such an indicator of the times we are living in. I have just been through the dissolution of yet another friendship. I mentioned this earlier this week and I will copy here some of my final letter to my friend, disguising any revealing details: "I have these final things to say to you... I accept that friendship between us, for you, was likely never an option. Perhaps because I am much older than you, maybe also because of the humble circumstances of my life, maybe also because we come from very different social classes and our perspectives and values are in many ways different, in some ways opposite. This has been difficult for me, but as you began to distance yourself and became gradually less available I realized that it was time to let go of our friendship. Here are some of the clues that all was not right with us as friends. First of all, you would sometimes speak to me in a rude and derisive tone, which is really a kind of verbal and emotional abuse. I don't know if that is acceptable where you come from. Here in Canada it is considered a form of bullying, and this has really hurt me. Also, it is profoundly disrespectful, especially given that I am old enough to be your father. When you are ready to come clean about this with me, I will welcome you again as a friend, if you are willing, but this has caused a lot of harm between us. I have already given you an example of this. You have denied it, which simply makes it worse for me. I do not accept your version of yourself, as your actions seem to reveal rather a different person from the one you claimed to be. This isn't to say that you're all bad. You have at times been a very good and, I think, compassionate, listener, and I think for a while you were interested in understanding better some of the issues that concern me. There have been other signs that I found concerning. Any time I would invite you to my home, or to meet some of my friends, you would refuse or make an excuse not to. You also showed no interest in introducing me to any of your family, nor to your friends. It appeared that you found me an embarrassment and that you didn't want to have to explain me to anyone. Neither did you want to invite me to visit you in your home, even though I did give you housewarming gifts, and you did mention that you did intend to have visitors. I guess you didn't consider me worthy. When I wrote in my email to you the words "Whatever. Peace" it was not to insult you but it was an expression of resignation after not hearing from you, and a kind of acceptance that you were likely ending our friendship. As I have already mentioned I was also in the midst of a profound depression (and you did nothing to check in to see how I was doing), partly fueled by the loss of your friendship, though there were other factors at play. I am still puzzled that you would find those words offensive. I was merely giving my consent to ending our friendship, since that's what you clearly were wanting. I could go on and write more, but I think this covers all the areas of concern. Unfortunately we can't sort any of this out, because you don't appear to be willing. If you ever change your mind, and decide that you want a constructive and respectful dialogue with me, then you are most welcome to get in touch and we'll see what we can do. I cannot unsay or unwrite anything here because this is the truth of how I have experienced knowing you. I do hope that in the future we can reconcile. I don't burn bridges. Till then... Goodbye." I guesss it's partly because all my family is gone, and so many poeple have rejected me or walked out on me or ghosted me, but I do not feel very safe around people these days. I was also severely burned by another friend last summer, who inappropriately commented on my blog, and it is still a struggle for me to restore trust between us. I am really fatigued with people turning on me, often for no clear reason, except that perhaps they are bored, furstrated and unhappy with their lives, and looking for a scapegoat on whom to vent their fury and I often end up being picked as the scapegoat, I think because I am so vulnerable, and because I try to be kind and welcoming to others, no matter what, so i'm an easy target, I guess. We are all so broken and wounded, and living in very uncertain and dangerous times. It doesn't help that friendships have become so user friendly and uncertain. I really want something more stable with people, but almost no one seems interested. I really hope I can become the change that I am seeking in this world. If only some other poeple would come on board with me and not walk away when things get boring or uncomfortable, instead of trying to work at and build community with me, with others. Anyone willing? Anyone out there?

Life As Performance Art 6

The older I get, the harder it is to take anything seriously. I have long lost familiarity with the names of trending film and TV and music stars, for the simple reason that I simply no longer could be bothered. I do see the occasional film, usually on a flight, sometimes on YouTube, but going out to a cinema? Too expensive, too late, and too may idiots. Except for two brief years in my twenties, I have never had TV at home. I read books instead. Trends of course always are changing, but the underlying human needs and cravings remain virtually unchanged. We are still largely idiots, even if somewhat better informed and more educated idiots, we remain nonetheless idiots. Cynical? Not really. This is more acceptance. I am just worn-out and fatigued from participating in the race and now I have opted out. Ageing is exhausting enough without having to obsess with keeping up with the times. I would rather focus on things, activities, and people that I enjoy, than look or sound or dress au courant. A coffee visit or walk with a friend is all the socializing I need. Walking in quiet nature, preferably away from jogging idiots and moronic two wheeled ablists, is my favourite recreation. I don't need to spend money in order to have a good time, even if it's a fairly good time. I don't even need to have a good time. I am alive and in reasonably good health. That for me is, at the very least, having a fairly good time. Even when I was young and in my twenties I could never quite relate to the frantic obsessions of my peers with partying, drinking, using illegal drugs and fornicating like random bunnies. I suppose this could be blamed on my Christian faith, but it isn't a matter of blame. Having a spiritual centre in Christ has been enough to satisfy those needs, hungers and cravings that drive a lot of especially younger people into wild and self-destructive behaviours, even if it's all under the label of going out for a good time. Even when I found myself in those situations, I always felt like an awkward visitor. I simply did not have the same need, the same emptiness of soul as was driving so many of my peers, and goes on driving generation after generation of spiritually and morally unmoored young people. Neither have I any desire to morph into a cool geezer who can't stay out of the discos. I really cannot fathom this obsession with noise that so many people seem to have. For example, trendy restaurants where they crank up the music and you have to strain your vocal chords and wreck your eardrums in order to have a conversation. For me, give me silence, give me the quiet places, interior and exterior. I am quite happy to take a seat up in the balcony, or in the nosebleed section, while the rest of you knock out your poorly used brains on the dance floor.

Life As Performance Art 5

People take themselves very seriously, and everything else too. You would think that the world was about to end. But maybe it is about to end. The prognosis of accelerating climate change due to human activity is anything but promising. But, aside from the scientific models, which are generally pretty accurate, we aren't there yet, so we can't know for sure how it's all going to look. I'm still optimistic, but maybe foolishly so. I always like to to believe that there is going to be a day after. I might not know, or approve, of how it is going to look, but there is another day following this one, and we are going to be facing new challenges, new difficulties, and possibly even new opportunities. There is one particularly menacing spectre awaiting us, and this is the possibility of hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions, of human deaths over the next generation or two, if galloping climate change isn't somehow halted. Not to mention species' extinctions, which is to say that this is getting only worse, and that this is the sixth great species extinction since when the earth was a formless void. So, then, how dare I not take any of this seriously. But I do. I simply don't think about it all the time. For one thing, we are all in uncharted territory, for which reason, we still don't know exactly what is going to happen. I have had in the course of my life a lot of contact with death and other catastrophe. As much as I might enjoy the relative stability of my life over the last fifteen years or so, I know that this is not to be taken for granted. It could all be swept from under my feet, in the twinkling of an eye, and then what? I would still go on. There is no other option. I could wind up in prison, should our human rights protections erode significantly, and given my inability of keeping my mouth shut, or I could wind up in intensive care from an accident, or gravely ill, or homeless, should our governments further renege on their promises to the most vulnerable members of society. Or, and more likely, none of those things will happen, and I have only to look forward to a comfortable retirement in two years, and then what? There are no guarantees in life, only variables. What I am left with is a huge sense of gratitude, for what I already have, for what I have had in the past, and for this future all unknown. For this reason, I often feel sorry for those who have no religious faith. There is in their lives no sense or cause for gratitude, because they do not see that God has done all these things for them, and that it is God himself who sustains and nurtures us, and gratitude, as we all know, is the source of all joy in our lives.

Life As performance Art 4

I really get sick of other people, especially with the game playing, the neediness, the way we exploit one another, the lies, and our absolute inability to cope without one another while constantly lying about our supposed rugged independence and autonomy. No one is autonomous, and no one knows this so well as the person who lives alone. We're really just a race of half-formed beings, and really, we take ourselves way too seriously. You especially run across this throughout social media. I have been for more than ten years a member of the website Conversation Exchange, for people who want to learn or improve another language in exchange for offering support to those learning or who wish to improve theirs. it's been a mixed blessing. I have met some decent people on this site, who have helped me move forward in Spanish, as I have offered them help in English. I have also met on this page some absolute idiots. And I have made friends, though right now I am negotiating the end of a friendship with a Spanish-speaker that has become toxic. I have with this website one particular quibble. Your age is posted right there on your profile. That is the first thing people are going to know about you. I am 63 years old and this site is dominated by people younger than forty. And most of them are ageist. I have contacted dozens of people on this site, who never respond, because they do not want to talk to someone who is 63 years old. I have contacted older people as well, though they are very scarce on these sites, and likely for a lot of reasons. It isn't all that bad. I have a language partner in Colombia and we are in contact on Skype twice a week, and he has become a good friend. But I would like to also have contact with Spanish speakers who live in my city. Except they are all younger and none of them seem to like older people. So, last night, I had a look at the site. Every single person whom I had contacted in the last two or three months, was still searching for a language partner, and not one single one of them had bothered to even respond to my queries. So, I sent each one of those little losers a one word message. Adios. That's all. One of them actually responded with the lame excuse that he already has a language partner. What I think he was really saying was that he was holding out for someone his age. In the meantime, as a joke, I have redone my profile on the website: " Description Adios, pendejos. No voy a perder ningun mas a tales imbeciles engreídos como ustedes. Hobbies and interests Ya soy viejo, y la mayoría de ustedes son zopencos agistes. No me aburren mas." Here is the translation "Goodbye you useless dumbasses. I am not wasting anymore time on such stuck-up imbeciles as the likes of you. I am old now, and most of you are snotty little morons., Don't bore me. I am sure that no one is going to respond, and I no longer care. I just want to tell those selfish little bastards what I think of them and move on. Already my Spanish is fluent, better than their English, so they probably need me more than I need them, though I do enjoy speaking the language of Cervantes and Goya. So, I'm not taking any of this seriously, though it is fun to smack the little wankers around a bit, just to let them know what I really think of them.

Life As Performance Art 3

Everything is impermanent. This can be particularly hard to grasp. It is for me a hard and difficult concept, not because it cannot be understood, but because of how simple and absolutely cruel this can become. A lot of us like permanence. I like permanence. I want to see beautiful old heritage buildings preserved for posterity and I get upset whenever another lovely old house or building in my overpriced city bites the dust because of developer greed. In a documentary I saw on my flight home last week, named Anthropocene, about human impact on the planet, there was one particularly disturbing scene of a church in Germany that must have been almost one thousand years old being torn down to make way for an agricultural development. I felt almost sick from seeing this awful spectacle of destruction. I like to think that all friendships will last forever. This really doesn't happen very often, though, and I know this. I am right now in the midst of a friendship that has been unravelling for the last year right now, and now seems to have finally ended. I have only to get back a piece of art I gave to this person a couple of years ago. The art was made by me, by my own hand, a particularly beautiful drawing of a parrot, and it was given to this individual as a symbol of our friendship. Of course he is all hurt and offended now that I want it back, but as he has chosen to end our friendship, that drawing he has in his possession is a piece of me, and for that reason he is no longer entitled to it. A bit cruel, perhaps, on my part, but this person was frequently emotionally and verbally abusive, and like most abusers, is completely in denial about his abuse, so I have had to distance myself for my own emotional wellbeing. I could probably be taking this a little more seriously, but I refuse to. Yes, I do take my wellbeing seriously, but after a while I can end up taking it too seriously, become totally self-absorbed, and emotionally unavailable to others. So, I am treating this whole spectacle as performance art, or a kind of tableau vivant spread across the universe, which I get to dance, sing and act in. I have already said to this individual that I am completely open to reconciliation, but because there is an expectation of an apology for acts that he has conveniently forgotten, I don't think this is very likely to happen, or get very far. So, I have decided to set us both free from each other, and this is simply one of many concrete examples of just how unconcrete our lives are in this sorry little vale of tears we all share in common. And I never say never again, when it comes to ending friendship. I try to stay open to others who want to return, renegotiate, and resume friendship, with the exception of unrepentant abusers, of course.

Life As Performance Art 2

I have been sometimes accused of taking God too seriously. The first time I heard those words was from my father's live-in girlfriend. I was seventeen, it was November, 1974, and I had been kicked out of home by my father just a month earlier. I moved to Vancouver where I lived in the booming metropolis of Duncan with my mother and her live-in boyfriend. I was in Vancouver for the weekend, staying with friends in Vancouver. I phoned my father about visiting. I was invited, I think reluctantly, for dinner. I was upset, and said that I felt unfairly treated by the way he kicked me out. He got angry and upset and started screaming at me about throwing it in his face. As I was leaving, his girlfriend could think of nothing else to say but that I take God too seriously. I replied that I didn't really know what that had to do with anything. We did agree on a kind of unspoken truce, and I do recall being there for Christmas, even staying a couple of nights, though it was hardly what I would call a heart-warming reconciliation, just a matter of not bringing up anything that would upset poor old dad, which is to say, to not speak the truth in his presence (he was an alcoholic, you know). Following the November fiasco, I visited a friend, and when I told her about my father's girlfriend's advice about not taking God seriously, she just spat out, "How else are we supposed to take him!" There are many different ways of understanding this statement. I think this is because there are many different ways of expressing and being a Christian. There are those who are so solemn and sombre about their faith that they are sometimes privately mocked as walking religious caricatures. I have been like that in the past. My take on it is that there is a process of spiritual maturation, in which we learn to balance things with our faith in God. It takes a while to get there, and it is usually a long, painful and often humiliating process getting there. I think that what really happens is that we grow into an experience of the living God, and that this becomes our fulcrum, our axis and our starting point. The reality of our faith becomes so internalized, that without even thinking of it or being aware, it begins to influence and inform many of our actions and attitudes and perspectives. God becomes always there, and always present to us, and so we don't have to posture or pose about what we believe. It is as real, and even more real, than the air that we breathe. This is really for me a huge relief. I already know that God is always present with me, and this helps me relax and be comfortable (though not complacent). It also introduces a lighter sense of what it is to be a Christian in a world that is hostile to this faith, and it really helps one nurture and develop a sense of humour. Humour, especially when it becomes part of your personal foundation, can open you in many ways, and chiefly for me, this has helped me take things with more joy, and really a sense of delight and laughter. This isn't always present, and neither would it be appropriate in every context, but it sure helps me get through the day.

Life As Performance Art 1

Since I have mentioned this in my recent travel blog a couple of times, I thought why not explore the concept a little on these pages, now that I am back in ordinary life, Gentle Reader? I will begin with a conversation I had yesterday with the fellow who was fixing my toilet. He was interested in my art, which he saw hanging all over my walls, including in the bathroom, and he had previously studied art history. I somehow began talking about how my career as an artist got started. Now, it can be very interesting the kinds of conversations one can end up having with the person who is fixing one's toilet, and this was no exception. We somehow got on the subject of death and dying when I was telling him how my mother's untimely passing from cancer led to my career as an artist. I was doing a little art therapy as part of my grieving process, taking coloured felt markers and making all kinds of spontaneous abstract drawings on paper. Eventually the drawings began to work as pieces of art, some of them becoming quite beautiful and intriguing. I showed them to a local painter, whose response was that I have to start painting and taking my talent more seriously, which I did. He only had to bark at me to quit arguing and do it, and that was enough to get me started. Or, in other words, he kicked me in the ass. A year later, his girlfriend became my agent and helped me sell four big beautiful parrot paintings to a pommy Brit architect to beautify the hotel he was working on and the rest, as they say, is history. At that time, I had been reading about the Monteverde region of Costa Rica, not yet quite on the tourist map, and I was resolved to somehow get there, even though I didn't have the funds to travel. Then the said girlfriend of said painter saw by happenstance my art show in a local coffee shop, and she phoned me and we started working together. The proceeds of the art sales went quickly into the purchase of a plane ticket and travellers' cheques (that was back in 1994), and just following the summer solstice of that year, and a false start when a bumbling travel agent had tried to book me a flight to the wrong San José (California instead of Costa Rica), and before I knew it I was luxuriating in the almost otherworldly beauty of the Central American mountain tropics. My two weeks in Costa Rica prompted me to become fluent in Spanish, as I wanted to return to that beautiful country, but also to be able to communicate with and befriend the local people, since I didn't want to experience the place only through the prejudiced eyes of white foreigners who were living there at the time. I am now fluent in the language of Cervantes and Goya, and have been enjoying a number of visits repeatedly back to Costa Rica, as well as Colombia and Mexico, where I have the opportunity every year of practicing and strengthening my Spanish skills, as well as doing tonnes of art in my sketchbook. Even if I have missed my mother terribly, I am not really sure that my life would have taken this kind of direction had she lived. In a way, she had to step out of the way for me to really get on with my life, and for me to take a direction that was for me the most appropriate. This also suggests to me how beautiful things and new and meaningful directions in life can come out of the bitter process of death and bereavement. This is the whole process of redemption at work. The perpetual creative dynamic at work here begs no explaining, but there has been in this process, despite the many setbacks, obstacles and traumas that I have also incurred, an underlying thread of joy and celebration, and this is why life for me has become a kind of living art performance. Life is a gift, and only those who receive it gratefully as a gift can grow into the joy that is really our due and calling as human beings. My single regret is that it has taken me this long to begin to learn this. But I am also grateful that I have come to clue in at all to this beautiful mystery. There are many who never seem to ever get there. Which is really unfortunate, because if there is a secret to ageing well, then joy and gratitude must play a significant role.

Costa Rica 6, Final Installment

"Hola Quiero escribir algo de mis experiencias del chofer del bus desde Monteverde para San Jose, miércoles,, 3 abril, 2:30 por la tarde. Cuando bajé en frente del aeropuerto Juan Santamaría a las 6 de la tarde, estuve esperando mi equipaje. Fui la última persona, y solo se quedaba una maleta, lo mia. Presenté al chofer la factura de la etiqueta apegosa que colocó en mi maleta antes de subir en Monteverde. El no lo aceptaría, insistiendo que lo entregue la factura de mi boleto de tránsito. No lo pude encontrar en mis bolsillos la factura, y su manera agresiva me ponía nervioso, por eso fue difícil encontrarlo. De precisión lo describí de mi mochila: de color negro con un sol pequeño que pinté para identificarla con facilidad. El no me hizo caso, aunque no mandó lo mismo de los otros pasajeros. Amenazó que llevara consigo mismo mi mochila hasta San José, pero no lo podría permitir, porque tuve un vuelo temprano de la próxima mañana de regreso a Canadá. El no me escuchó, y por eso saqué mi maleta para llevar conmigo. El chofer agarró mi mochila y tuve que arrancarla de sus manos con mucha fuerza. Lo maldije en buen Castellano, y subí a un taxi. Tengo planes de regresar a Monteverde en el próximo año y tengo miedo que tal chofer me rehusara de llevarme por su venganza en mi contra. ¿Es posible que se pueda hablar con el para indicar que su comportamiento no fue apropiado, y también que se ofrecen a el por mi mis disculpas por mis malas palabras, porque también no fue acción aceptable por la parte mía, y acepto también mi responsabilidad por mis acciones? Espero que ustedes me respondan, por favor. con saludos cordiales desde Vancouver, Aaron Zacharias" Here is the English translation. "Hello. I want to write to you about my experience with the bus driver from Monteverde to San Jose, Wednesday, 3 April, 2:30 pm. When I got off the bus in front of the Juan Santamaría Airport at 6 pm, I was waiting for my baggage. I was the last one, and there remained only one piece of luggage, mine. I showed the driver the stub from the sticky tag he had put on my bag before I got on the bus in Monteverde. He wouldn't accept it, insisting that I give him the receipt for my bus ticket. I couldn't find it in my pockets, and his aggressive manner was making me nervous, so that I had trouble finding it. I precisely described my bag: black with a little sun that I painted on it to easily identify it. He ignored me, even though he didn't make such demands of the other passengers. He threatened to take it with him to San José, but I wouldn't let him, because I had a flight early the next morning back to Canada. He didn't listen, and so I took my bag with me. The bus driver grabbed my bag and I had to pull it forcefully from his hands. I swore at him in good Spanish, and got into a cab. I am planning to return to Monteverde next year and I am afraid that this driver will refuse to give me a ride out of revenge. Is it possible that you could speak to him to indicate that his behaviour was inappropriate, and also to offer him my apology for my swearing, because that also was not acceptable on my part, and I also accept responsibility for my actions. I hope you will reply, please. with friendly greetings from Vancouver, Aaron Zacharias." So passed my last full day in Costa Rica. I am neither going to further accuse the driver, nor justify myself. Everything you need to know about what happened, I have written in this email that I spent to the driver's employers. I slept poorly, that night, maybe three hours, which for me, before an early morning flight is nothing unusual. The flight to Toronto was without incident, and I slept much of the way, surrounded by friendly and good-natured passengers. Pearson International Airport in Toronto is a nightmare to navigate, and we had to claim and recheck our baggage. I was also directed to the immigration police. Fortunately, the young man who interviewed me and searched my luggage, was respectful, and he did seem nonplussed about finding little more of interest that my art, art materials and devotional literature. I was concerned about the amount of time it took, an hour, and how poorly staffed the room was, and with some immigration police who were real bullies, especially towards a small elderly man, possibly Middle-Eastern. Then I had to find my way to the appropriate check-in area, which was not easy. I did catch my plane on time, but just as people were boarding. The flight to Vancouver was difficult., The passenger behind me kept poking me in the back, either with his aggressive way of touching the screen, and digging his knee into the back of my seat. I was still tired and unable to rest from the disruption, and fortunately, the flight attendant redirected me to a different seat. Upon arriving home, real life has really been smacking me across the face: problems with Telus, my bank and Canada Revenue, and after several phone calls and a visit to the bank, everything is resolved. I also learned that, not only did my apartment managers not fix my toilet, but that the sixth floor had a huge flood two weeks ago, which is still being cleaned up. Today, someone fixed my toilet. I am still a bit tired, not from jet lag, since there is only one hour time difference, but the simple exhaustion of air travel and the culture shock of returning home. But everything is back in order and I was also enjoying a long walk among the abundance of spring flowers in Vancouver in early April. My fridge is again full of good food, and I expect to sleep well this weekend. Thanks for reading.

Costa Rica 6, Twenty-Sixth Day In Monteverde

This is my last full day and night in Monteverde. Tomorrow afternoon I bus down to Alajuela, and the following morning, Thursday, I fly back to Vancouver. I have spent today tracking down various individuals I have come to know here, to say goodbye to them, and to pass on to them my contact information should they want to stay in touch. It has all worked quite seemlessly. I began in Cafe Caburé where I said goodbye to one of the waitresses, then walked to Santa Elena where I was able to do the same with a few others, as well as back to Tramonti's, the Italian restaurant, for tiramisu and a chat with a couple of the staff there. I don't know if I'll hear from anyone, and it really doesn't matter, though it would be nice, but I think it's a significant gesture, and it helps for people to know that they're liked and cared for. I can't think of a lot else to say in this post. I did have a lovely encounter with a morpho butterfly, and also with an agouti, which is a large and very cute local rodent. It really feels like I live here, and even though I don't expect that I'll ever actually move to Monteverde, it is nice to have another place on earth that feels like home. This is also an incredible luxury and privilege. Anyone who doesn't know me well might easily assume that I must have quite a lot of money to be able to do this and I don't, but God has directed my life circumstances so that this has become for me a possibility. I sometimes wonder where this is all going to lead to, since I don't have a map to read, but I am feeling these days kind of like a spiritual cartographer, or map-maker, as each day I explore this world, both exterior and interior. It hasn't been so brutally hot today, and there has been a steady strong and cooling wind.

Costa Rica 6, Twenty-Fifth Day In Monteverde

I don't think I'll be going back to the Cloud Forest during this visit. I feel more concerned with seeing people before I leave, and it seems that the reserve, by now, has served its purpose for me. There also appears to be a marauding dog in the area. Yesterday morning I was taking an early morning walk, and I was going to walk up towards the reserve when a large black dog, rather like a German shepherd, seemed intent on blocking me. I didn't get close enough for it to actually try to approach me, but he was standing stiff and erect and watching me from ahead. I know from difficult and bitter past experience that that is a dog's body language of warning, and that if you approach any closer he may move in to attack. So, I am feeling a bit nervous about this possibly happening, but for now I'm okay with it. I was there four times, and that feels like enough for now. And it was wonderful. Today, I collected for a couple of my drawings that they want to put up in two of their rooms. It wasn't a lot, $100, or $133 Canadian, but its better than nothing and it's still something and I have been well-treated at the Mariposa. I might have asked for more, and probably was entitled to more, but it's only money, and even this little bit is making a difference, if a small one, so best to accept and move on, and it is not going to affect our friendship. I did stop at the Cafe Monteverde and had an enjoyable and very interesting visit with two of the staff here, both young men in their early twenties, I think, one of whom in particular seems to be becoming a friend, and I'm hoping we will stay in contact when I return to Vancouver. I think I've already mentioned him here, that he is a classical musician (violin-cello, and other instruments). We had some really interesting conversations today, especially around the subject of tourism, travel, ethics, consumerism, and attitudes and perspectives towards the people who live in the places that we like to visit. I also ran across some more Canadians, a very snooty young couple from Toronto (natch!) and then a lady from Hamilton (not at all snooty!) who lives in Monteverde six months of the year. That was when I mentioned to my friends working there about how the rest of Canada is not particularly fond of Toronto, much as the rest of Costa Rica doesn't much like people from San Jose, Mexicans don't much care for the Chilangos (people who live in Mexico City), Colombians don't like Bogotanos, or how the British don't seem to care for Londoners etc. Then later at the Italian restaurant, a couple of the staff (the waiter, especially) were weighing in about how much they would miss me, so tomorrow I'm, coming back for tiramisu and to say goodbye again. I can't really complain at all about how I've been treated on this visit, not even with the art sale (hey, I did sell something, anyway!). This has been a particularly enjoyable day (crowned just now by a glorious sunset), of a particularly successful visit here. One of the guys at the cafe told me that to him I'm more a local than a tourist, and it seems that others here have been taking on this perception of me, and well, it's also become my self perception, given how different I feel from the many tourists I see here. Oh, by the way, speaking of tourists, Gentle Reader, I have finally figured out why I enjoy making fun of German tourists. A lot of them look so tight in the rear end that they probably need colostomy bags!