Life As Performance Art 56

When you are reading this little blogpost, Gentle Reader, please remind yourself of the title of this series. Life As Performance Art. So, while I want some of this writing to be taken a little bit seriously, that you also keep in mind that this is performance art. Because life is performance art. Yes, it is or can be very serious, this thing we call life, but at the end of the day, duckies, it can also be kind of fun, if we can learn to laugh our way through some of the inevitable misery. But that is exactly what we need to do, and it takes years, nearly a lifetime to acquire this so very essential life- skill, so that by the time we seem to be just beginning to get it right, then the Grim Reaper comes a-calling and it's game over. Seems kind of unfair, eh? It is kind of like playing. Maybe a little bit serious play, but please, duckies, always keep your tongue close to your cheek while reading this, because I sure am. Do I mean all the awful things that I write about some people, places and things? Well, yes, sort of. But even if I am not smiling when I write these things (often I want to strangle a few people while writing this blog!), I often am smiling or even laughing later, and I want this to be your experience too, Gentle Reader. I still mean all the awful things I have written about the Anglican Church. My experience of that um....sacred....institution has been at best mixed, at worst, nightmarish and traumatizing. It seems that only now in this past year are some of the horrors and abuses that I experienced finally being addressed. And this also speaks praise to the current archbishop of this Diocese of New Westminster, Melissa Skelton, who is kindly looking into my claims of abuse and my desire for an apology. That did not happen under her predecessor, Michael Ingham, who was a disaster as a bishop, and never responded to my letter when I detailed to him some of the problems I was incurring from clergy. Quite likely one of his helpers intercepted it before it arrived on his desk and shredded it without even troubling to open the envelope. maybe she thought it was a letter bomb. But no one else in the church seemed to want to talk about it, or help me with the issues. In fact, any priest I wanted to talk to about the harm that was done to me seemed in an awful hurry to make themselves as unavailable to me as possible. As though I was carrying some deadly virus and they didn't want to catch it. Yes, yesterday, I heard the priest at my church explain that he had been traumatized by all the hate mail he received around that time over his support for marriage equality, but the way he went about things was quite pig-headed and stupid, so he did sit up and beg for it, so I am reserving my tears for a worthier tragedy. Will I ever actually renew my commitment to the Anglican Institution? Time will tell. I am in no hurry, much as I like the people in my church, and my priest as well. Life is a gift, even more than play or performance art. This day, I receive from God as a gift. This beautiful quiet morning, the sunshine, the nature bursting at the seams on this last day of May, and the opportunity to see friends, make new friends and go through this day with open eyes and an open heart, and hopefully with an open mind. Also open hands with which I can both give and receive. It isn't going to be perfect, neither are things going to go according to my expectations. But really, darlings, shouldn't that also be accepted as something good? Happy Friday!

Life As Performance Art 55

It's easy to talk to people. Strangers, I mean. On the bus, on the Skytrain, anywhere. I should say that it is easy for me talking to strangers. It could be that I don't believe in strangers. I think that we are all connected somehow, which basically strips away all excuses for racism, prejudice and exclusion. If you are prejudiced against anyone for whichever reason, then you are really prejudiced against yourself. DNA evidence documented through years of research shows that humans are one of the most closely related species on the earth. We show the least difference or variation of DNA of all animals, and there are closing in on seven billion of us. This of course, really gives the lie to the fixation some people have with the superficial differences of race. Especially when you consider that even though I am a Caucasian, my DNA could be closer to a black person from Rwanda or a Filipino than to another white European. So, what I'm saying is how easy it is to talk to people, and for the simple reason that I already feel like I know other people, that we are not strangers. Even if they might not happen to share this perception with me. I don't know how to trace any of this. Apparently I was always friendly, or so my mother used to tell me, even as a young child, very unlike my brother who seemed to hate almost everyone who didn't subscribe to his formula of cool and went on to be a highly successful radio broadcaster and drug addict. My kind, peaceful and loving nature helped me wind up in low wage employment and living in a subsidized apartment. But I am still happier, and likely still a lot happier than my successful miserable brother. Not really seeing others as being different, or "other" also has made me less competitive, so I have turned out to be quite a decent, if less than successful human being. Unless I could boast about being successful at being human. A couple of days ago on the Skytrain I noticed a man wearing a very beautiful yarmulke, that small skullcap or Kippah that Jewish men wear to synagogue and on holy days and other notable occasions. It was so lovely, white with an embroidery of little colour emblazons, rather like spectrums, that I had to tell him how beautiful it was. He told me that his mother had made it for him. When I asked if it was a Jewish holy day, he replied that he had just been to the funeral of a friend of his family, that he was one of the pallbearers and had also helped in the burial, which apparently is part of the Jewish funerary custom. It was an interesting, and educational chat, that lasted unfortunately for only two Skytrain stops. I could see that he was a bit stressed from what he had just been through and was glad to be there for him to vent and unburden a little. But we also got to share a couple of laughs and I really enjoyed his sense of humour and the kind, sensitive soul he was showing. When I got off the train I felt all the richer for having made a new friend, and that I knew a little bit more about Jewish practices. I regret that we didn't learn each other's names. There wasn't enough time for introductions. I was also left wondering, as I always have, why are there such large populations among us of hateful fear-ridden idiots who hate Jews? Who hate anybody? I have never understood anti-semitism, or anti any class of human being. It could be because I have never ceased from being that friendly child who will approach almost anybody. I never became cool like my miserable brother. I hope I never do.

Life As Performance Art 54

Lately "other" has turned into a verb. When you are othering someone, you are treating them like an outsider, a stranger, someone who is not quite human, the other. When we think of people as categories instead of persons, we are othering them. This is my objection to the way the Anglican Church wants to continue their bromance with the First Nations. They don't appear to be focussed on individuals who happen to be aboriginal (that would be my focus), but as aboriginals who might also happen to be individuals. It is pure identity politics. They were doing the same thing when they wanted to embrace gay people as they sought to legitimize marriage equality twenty years ago. if you were queer and in a same-gender relationship or seeking to be in a relationship, then you were welcomed with open arms. But not because of who you were, but because of what you were. It gets even more complicated when people occupying these categories, be they First Nations or African, actually want to be viewed and approached through the filtre and lens of their group identity. It is as though, now, persons no longer matter, or they no longer matter as persons, they are simply their demographic. What I also find troubling, is the way their appointed, or self-appointed spokespersons presume to speak for all aboriginals, when it could be reasonably alleged that there is going to be a much greater diversity of perceptions and opinions in their number. We are now all being viewed as manifestations of our group identity. This is scary. As we spent the sixties and seventies challenging the racism in our country, there was a huge push to stop looking at colour or other superficial differences, and to see and embrace the person. Race became a myth, an illusion. This is where my thinking still lies. By the same token, equality became the presumed result of whitewashing, which is to say, the more white, or British European Colonial you became in your identity and behaviour , the more accepted you could feel in the general community. Like the Asian Banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside), or the South-Asian or African Coconut (brown on the outside, white on the inside) But then, in the seventies, white people started wearing their hair in Afros, followed by the equally unfortunate trend of dreadlocks during the nineties. I remember an African-American Christian band called the Jeremiah People who were visiting and performing at my church back in 1971. One woman in the band quipped about how ridiculous a white guy looked sporting an Afro, with his white skin and blue eyes, rather like a chunk of blue cheese stuck in a Brillo pad. It still makes me smile. Now we call this cultural appropriation, but I think the offense taken to be a bit exaggerated and out of proportion, and really it's simply a pathetic demonstration of how culturally starved and deprived your average white North American must be. I have never othered people of other races. From childhood, I had friends from backgrounds, Japanese, and First Nations, then African and Chinese, Jewish, South Asian, among others. More recently, I have a lot of Latino (racially mixed folk) whom I count as close friends. My first contact with people of African heritage happened when I was fourteen. I had just converted to Christianity, and the church the Jesus People were involved with was the Fountain Chapel, a black Pentecostal congregation in the Strathcona neighbourhood. The pastor was an African Canadian named Sister Ann Walker. We used to talk and visit in the church basement, and I was deeply touched and comforted by the warmth and kindness she showed me. Likewise for all the indigenous people I have known. They have never been for me the Other. From age fourteen, on, I have known them, respected and loved them as peers and friends. For me, they, like everyone else in my life, have existed purely, and primarily as persons. I have always respected their culture and their experiences as members of minority cultures in a less than welcoming and often hostile society. But I never thought of myself as white, nor as them as Asian or indigenous or black, because we were persons, friends, all navigating together our way through life. I really do not understand this paternalistic and patronizing obsession that Anglicans have about group and identity. I find a lot of those people, especially some of their clergy, to be appallingly stupid. They still don't seem to get it, that we are persons, all of us, and that our group identity plays perhaps a very limited role in shaping who we are, and that the postmodernist crap coming out of the universities and seminaries hugely exaggerates the play of culture and social and class interactions and conflict. We have to start rediscovering the value of the person and of people as individuals, and get entirely away from this poorly disguised racism with a big fat smiley face painted on its backside.

Life As Performance Art 53

Living at close quarters with socially challenged idiots is no walk in the park. I do have more sympathy for NIMBYs these days, not because I agree with them (I don't), but because having neighbours who do not know how to coexist with others in society is problematic, and this is something that doesn't get properly addressed with the way they house people who are getting off the street. This isn't to say that they're all bad, and there exist in all populations idiots who just love to crank up their stereos and serenade the neighbourhood with their lovely shit to the ears. I think the problem here isn't so much street people making noise, but young selfish street people making noise. Just as in market rentals the noise problems usually come from young selfish people who likely have never lived on the street and still expect mommy to wipe their filthy stinky little ass for them. Not everyone knows how to coexist, for the simple reason that our last two generations have been raised in an environment of selfishness, narcissism and entitlement (remember the eighties? The Me Decade?) And now that we have increasing population density, the need to address this selfish mentality has never been higher. The sound technologies for stereos were developed during an era when it was taken for granted that almost everyone lived in detached houses, so they could crank it up as loud as they wanted. Now that we have a burgeoning population, less land, and high housing and building costs, many of us have little option outside of living stacked one on top of the other, or crammed in skinny little units side by side. Peace and quiet is not an entitlement. It is a legitimate human need for mental and physical health and wellbeing. No one should be allowed to play their music or have parties at a level of noise that is going to harm the wellbeing of their neighbours. Telling someone that they have a problem with noise is not helpful. We are not wired to live well with chronic, invasive noise. This has been scientifically proven over and over again. I know this, because I have to live with this here on downtown Granville Street, where I live in a tiny subsidized apartment downtown. If I could afford to move into something better, I would have been out of here years ago, but the reality of living in Vancouver has made a lot of people on low incomes into hostages here. At one time, if we didn't like where we were living, there were still plenty of low rentals around if we wanted to move. Not any more. This is like having to endure living in a bad marriage because you can't afford to live on your own, so that unless you want to wind up homeless, you remain shackled to an abusive monster. Fortunately, my housing providers are not an abusive monster, but the neighbourhood is: it is horrible, dirty, full of people with drug and alcohol problems (there is that little money laundromat, or should I say, Spirit of Howe liquor Store, next door to my building), and selfish idiots who are afraid of people and stagger down the street glued to their lovely little tech toys as though they are the only ones occupying this universe. What doesn't help is when staff in the Granville Residence next door lie to me about there being no noise coming from any of their precious tenants, since they are usually too lazy to check, or too arrogant to tell the truth. Fortunately, the other workers there are pretty good. I suppose the best option is using earplugs all the time and buying an extra fan, since I can't always open my window during the summer weather with the noise coming from the party monster next door. This is demoralizing, and what is even more demoralizing is the lack of support in dealing with this situation.

Life As Performance Art 52

I find it interesting how at polar opposites I always seem to find myself from the official party line of the Anglican Church. So, we have it from our parish priest that at this recent synod they have decided to go on with their bromance with the First Nations, and absolute nothing has been said about supporting the homeless and anti-poverty work. I think there is an elephant in the living room that needs to be named here... Even though Anglican churches do have community meals, in some of their parishes, and even if a few have partnerships for affordable housing (but not many), as well as some community outreach programs, it is my observation that the Anglican Church falls way behind other Christian denominations in outreach and support work to the poorest of the poor, and for one simple reason: Anglicans tend to be well-off (often old money), stuck in their ways, selfish and greedy, and they also hate any challenge to change their lifestyles and sacrifice comforts and entitlements, if only to identify even a little bit with He who became very poor for us. They cling to their single malt scotch and other pricey booze, their lovely sumptuous homes and pricey possessions ensconced in some of the toniest neighbourhoods, their lovely expensive cars, their luxury cruises, all of them the usual obscene entitlements that separate them from the rest of humanity. This is beyond disgusting!!!! And I don't care one single shit who reads this or who gets offended. This is the very selfishness and greed and hypocrisy that Our Lord railed against and that sent Him to the Cross for us, and I see no reason why those rich poobahs should be let off the hook. Our parish priest says that the church is listening to the Holy Spirit. HA!!!!! If they are, then it is with very selective hearing that they are listening. After the kind of shit and abuse that I have been through from some of those whited sepulchres (fancy-shmancy Bible talk meaning whitewashed tombs) I am not about to cut them slack, nor am I going to believe anything that comes out of their mouths. As to their relationship with First Nations, that is somewhat admirable, but they also run the risk of being held hostage to guilt and manipulation, because the Anglican Church does not seem at all interested in engaging with persons as individuals with dignity and who make or refuse to make moral and ethical choices, but as broad categories fueled by the kind of politically correct postmodernist bullshit that gets churned out of their theological academies. So comes this ridiculous assertion that all white people are privileged, and by extension, well-off and successful. People like me, who will be stuck on a low-income, though Caucasian, and in social housing for the rest of our lives are ignored and not given existence in the Anglican Church, because we challenge their intellectual laziness, and destroy their false sense of security in making broad and mindless stereotypes. Well, hear this, my dear privileged Anglicans: We are not categories. We are persons. All of us. Some of us, myself for example, would prefer to not see race or colour and choose instead to engage with persons away from categories, stereotypes and convenient little boxes, and you are making this supremely difficult. Not all First Nations people think the same way. You will find every bit the full range of opinions and perspectives among them that you will find among other people, so stop presuming that you know what is best for them. It is their lives and their responsibility and we have to know when to step back and respect them as autonomous persons, and not as a disenfranchised category that merits your pity. These are individuals worthy of respect, and there is something of this lacking in the Anglican formula of political correctness and identity politics. Take Colten Boushie, for example. Not one single person seems to want to have a balanced perspective or sense of proportion about him, which is simply this: a guy goes on a joyride with his friends, probably drinking, they run out of gas, try to steal a truck from a local farmer and he gets shot to death by the farmer over it. Those are all the ingredients. It doesn't matter that he was aboriginal, nor that the farmer is white (not a settler, he was born here.) So, a young man refused to make an acceptable moral choice, and a farmer also refused to make an acceptable moral choice, took out his murderous rage on him. This is actually a morally complicated scenario that speaks much more of the very human drama that we all share in, regardless of race, culture or heritage, and we have to start seeing each other beyond those labels and stereotypes, and we also have to start showing real and unmitigated kindness and mercy for everyone, aboriginal, white, coloured, or whatever. We are not categories. We are persons. We all hurt the same way, we all bleed the same shade of red.

Life As Performance Art 51

Interactions with strangers who behave badly can be very tricky at times. Sometimes it is better, and more prudent, just to say nothing and walk on. That fine balance between coward and rational self-preservation. But not always. It is because so many people are cowards that idiots think they can get away with anything, as though no one is watching, or as though the universe is their own private, personal walled garden, and that they are the only beings that exist. Yesterday for example, while walking on a leafy residential sidewalk, I saw this incredibly stupid woman (I am simply judging her by her behaviour at the moment), playing catch with her boxer dog, off-leash of course, and free to run and bark and bother other people to his little heart's (and even tinier brain's) content. Fortunately there was no one else walking there at the moment, especially no one afraid of or traumatized by dogs. I was going to avoid that side of the street at first, out of self preservation, then decided that I would risk it, since she had no business monopolizing it like that for her precious four-legged child, and if there were any problems with privileged doggie (oh, he looked so smart in his expensive little red rain jacket), then I would let both him and his brain-challenged human have it. The lady with the dog had the good sense to get off the sidewalk and go to the other side when she saw me coming, then I yelled to her (Ma'am, what you are doing with your dog right now is very irresponsible and also very stupid). She ignored me, naturally, but I think the point got driven home. Nothing else happened. Then, on three occasions later on, I had to tell at idiot drivers, all women (ironic, given that they are usually better drivers than men), two were all set to plough me down at right hand turns when the pedestrian walk signal came on, one was attempting a left hand turn while staring at her lovely little smartphone. Then there was the idiot African guy in dreads at the neighbourhood Shopper's Drug Mart. I was inviting him to come over to the cashier where I was finishing my purchase as I didn't want him to have to wait unnecessarily in line. His expression of gratitude? When he saw that I was purchasing the weekend Globe and Mail, like a taunting child (I really understand now, why my big brother used to beat the shit out of me!), started lecturing me that it was fake news and propaganda. I was not going to indulge the child with an argument, but when it became clear that he wasn't going to shut up about it, I calmly said, "Look, I promise to keep my religion to myself if you promise to do the same for me." The cashier seemed to like my comeback. He just stared kind of stupidly, and I walked away. You cannot reason with people under those circumstances, there is always something else motivating their behaviour: this man could have been having a bad day, though I suspect he was mentally unbalanced; I also wonder if he was venting hatred at me because of my race; or he might have felt some legitimate concerns about the source of news that is printed in a corporate publication like the Globe and Mail, though I suspect he has probably never read a newspaper in his life. Fake news is really a useless catchall that includes reportage of dubious provenance combined with things that you don't want to hear or choose not to believe. The Globe, which I buy every weekend, is not perfect. I have noted that they have their slant and biases, and it all seems to bend in an arc towards upper middle class Canadian interests. But not all of it. There is an interesting and nourishing plethora of news, opinions and ideas in that paper, but as with every news source, it is always going to be, sometimes anyway, buyer beware. Reading the news, no matter how legitimate the source, does not let the reader off the hook for fact-checking and doing their own thinking. Reading the news is not an exercise in what or how to think. It is simply raw material and it is our responsibility as to how we are going to process and digest the information, and how we are going to let it form and direct our thinking and the course of our lives. in conclusion, I have the Globe and Mail to thank for an article they printed in February, 1994, about the Monteverde region of Costa Rica. Two months later, I sold a few of my paintings and with that money went to visit that place for the first time. This motivated me to learn and become fluent in Spanish, travel in Latin America and to make Monteverde along with some lovely friends I have made there, my second home, and I do it all in fluent Spanish.

Life As Performance Art 50

My building is next door to a liquor store. This morning, before seven am there was a delivery truck making noise in the alley just behind the establishment. Now, our ex-mayor, that ableist bike airhead, Moonbeam, now finally gone, during the winter Olympics decided that stores could have delivery trucks come any time of day or night, no matter how many local residents were kept awake by the noise and racket, and since many of those residents are going to be low income folk bleeding dry the public purse in their social housing buildings, then of course, punish us further for not making shitloads of money, even if a lot of us also go to work every day and pay taxes. I have suspected for some time that liquor stores are targets and hubs for money laundering. Especially this one downstairs, which is privately owned. Heck, I am going to name them on this blog, even, and maybe someone who sees it, could help launch an investigation. It is called the Spirit of Howe and they are located on the 1200 block Granville St., downtown Vancouver. I suspect criminal involvement, for the really bad vibes I get off of people who work there. One fellow, a manager, looks like a scuzzy little drug lord, and I sometimes see him hanging out in front or in the back smoking a cigarette and looking quite sleazy. Another, was a staff of theirs who was very rude to me when I asked him politely not to smoke in our doorway. Then there was the owner, a fellow with a Middle Eastern accent whom I phoned early one morning about the noise from their delivery trucks. He was particularly rude and churlish. These do not sound like run of the mill entrepreneurs just trying to make an honest buck. They seem rather like scum, if you ask me. We have endured them next door for the past twelve years. Even though this neighbourhood already had its problems, the presence of that liquor store has only helped multiply them. Still there is that garden in the back, just across the lane, a hermetically sealed little paradise where that white-crowned sparrow is still singing. It is raining, the air is cool, and things are quiet again, so the cool sweet air of a damp May day is again blessing my living space. The blessing is always present, even if the forces of darkness make themselves visible. We are all like this. We each have in us darkness and light, shadow and luminescence. Unfortunately the darkness is often dominant, for our collective desperation to survive and make it through this horrid night that threatens to envelop us. We have to focus on the light. I remember the eighties and nineties, when there seemed to be a celebration of the dark, enfolding the earth as unfettered greed and selfishness became the acceptable coin for barter. Everyone wore black in those days, as if to celebrate evil, or perhaps as mourning garb for the beauty and light that had already died. We want it back, this light. We need the light. Especially now, when greedy and power-drunk potentates threaten to swallow us all alive, and transform our sacred earth into a dead black cinder whirling in space. I think we are teetering on a new threshold, and this could determine not only our next direction as a species of humanity, but whether or not we are going to survive to see the next generation. hold on to the light!

Life As Performance Art 49

Yesterday has been for me a stellar example of how good I have things in this stage of my life. I left the apartment at around 9 am, and I was able to combine three activities in one without difficulty or awkwardness. I was able to enjoy a leisurely three mile walk through the beautiful West End of my city, stop in the No Frills at the Denman Mall to buy eggs and broccoli, walk back to Burrard and Davie to wait at the community garden (full of gorgeous spring flowers) to meet up with my client, who unfortunately was not able to make it today, walk on to buy milk at my neighbourhood Shoppers Drug Mart, which I brought home with eggs and broccoli, where I enjoyed a light lunch (not eggs and broccoli, but a banana with yogurt), a conversation on the phone with my client, who had an accident on his way to see me, do some art, then I walked three blocks to my next professional assignment where I stayed twenty minutes at a community centre for people on low incomes, called the Gathering Place, where I connected with clients and coworkers. For everything I get paid for four hours. Even if I am horrendously underpaid for what I do, this still is not a bad arrangement at all. Then I went for a walk to enjoy the azaleas in Stanley Park, only slightly ruined by the braying young mother who would not get off her cell phone and kept following me while braying yet more and more on her precious little phone till I had to change my route just to get away from her. Yes, I did glare at her, and yes she did notice. I think she might even have heard me mutter, will you please get away from me! That, fortunately, was the only fly in the ointment of the day. Walking back, I stopped in the deli to buy rosehip jam, then stopped in a French cafe, choosing the table by the open window where I sat for more than an hour. I enjoyed an americano, one of the best chocolate almond croissants I have ever tasted, and watched with wonder and amusement and a certain tenderness the incredible human parade that is Davie Street in the afternoon, while working on a new colour drawing of a hummingbird from Brazil. The weather was incredible. Sunny, warm, but with a slight cool undercurrent, and a day full of the pure and unblemished colours of May. At home, I made cocoa, rested, did more art, read, ate dinner, and spent nearly two hours on Skype with my Colombian friend. We do about a half hour in Spanish, but I'm already fluent, so we put in extra time in English. Right now we are reading together in English an online novel he has selected for his language practice. Days like yesterday, have become increasingly typical, and wonderful. As I mentioned to my Colombian friend yesterday, the whole thing that really matters is receiving and accepting life as a gift, and with gratitude. Everything else eventually falls into place. Could do worse, eh?

Life As Performance Art 48

I am awake too early again on too little sleep. I suppose this can be partly blamed on stress. There are always battles at work about hours and income and maintaining my dignity in the face of my idiot employers, as well as counting the days till I retire and will no longer have to rely on those stingy losers for my sustenance and survival. I have 648 days left, and I may, before that time, leave my least productive jobsite, since they are particularly slow at generating clients for me to work with. Time will tell. I still have enough time left to really shoot myself in the foot, or two years minus three months, but the consolation is that with each day, the magnitude of potential damage lessens, leaving me feeling a little bit safer than the day before. I have so far not sabotaged myself, and time will only tell before I fall victim to the lurid temptations of the Pyrrhic Victory. I am also undergoing simultaneously job and church stress, and those two never pair well, so I am likely going to have to distance myself a bit from church, since religion does nothing to pay the bills. This could also be difficult. My relationship with clergy is always difficult, given that they seem to expect from me a kind of deference for their status and title that I don't believe they either merit or deserve, and few priests there seem to be merely content with being treated with the respect that I would have for any ordinary mortal. I neither like, nor do I trust clergy. I simply do not believe in their office, nor do I accept that they have a special anointing or empowerment from God that isn't available to everyone who approaches him with a loving and humble heart. I simply do not believe in priests. They are a class of people I have come to know way too well to believe in or love. So I would prefer to approach them as individuals, as human beings hidden behind the dog collars. It is very hard for Christian ministers, I have noticed, to really check their ego at the door. And now I have this suit pending with the Anglican diocese for just redress for the problems and trauma that I incurred over the years from various clergy of different parishes. The good news is that the current archbishop seems actually interested in supporting me through this process. I will go into detail in a few months, after things have been settled. In the meantime, this could be a little bit onerous. Maybe also my reason for not getting enough sleep. This does not prevent me from enjoying the day, nor from embracing it as a gift. I was commenting yesterday to a coworker that I have been living without a cellphone for much of the past two years or so. This was a cause of concern, almost panic, to another coworker who was trying to coordinate a meeting with me. He was anxious that I couldn't be in contact every few minutes to determine my quadrants, so to speak. I replied that we would have to try it the old-fashioned way and see how we cope. I was not able to connect with said coworker, by the way, but this is because my stingy employers will not give me a new cell phone, since they will not do this for underpaid contract workers, neither are they going to give me a raise, which means that I can't afford my own phone. So, I rely on my landline and my laptop to communicate with the outside world and when I am out, I have to rely on my surroundings and my own intuition in order to see my way through the day. It is actually pretty good. I notice a lot more, I'm not distracted, nor addicted by a smartphone, and lately, I actually stop and pause to look at the beauty around me. Especially with everything so new, pure and bright in this glorious spring season. I pause now, to really look at the light in the foliage and flowers and grass, and I touch and run my hand along brick and stone surfaces to appreciate the cool hard and rough texture, such moments I receive as gifts from God that help me forget about the pathetic, sad, tragic and selfish idiots around me

Life As Performance Art 47

There is a white-crowned sparrow singing outside, often in the mornings, and sometimes in the afternoons. I think they are nesting in the garden across the alley. It looks like a lovely place, nestled between two apartment buildings, one of them like mine is for social housing. I would like to think that it is their garden as the market rental tower next to them appears simply too soulless to merit something so beautiful. It is a private garden, and likely I will never get to visit, which in a way is unfortunate as there is such a paucity of public gardens and parks in the downtown core. The sparrow is still singing, as though nothing else matters than defending his territory and seeing with his mate to the thriving of their species for yet another generation. I am thinking how that little garden has helped make my time living here tolerable, especially now that most of my view of the sky has been blocked by a thirty story condo tower across the street. For social housing, one could do worse than where I am living, here in Candela Place. This is a nice building I live in, and in my experience, well-managed, and the tenants seem for the most part, nice, decent and friendly. One could do worse for living downtown, especially rent, which in my case is so heavily subsidized that I end up having to pay but a pittance every month. I would otherwise be sleeping on a sheet of cardboard on the sidewalk, if I still wanted to live here. It is rather an odd state to be living in. On one hand, it is as though there is always a sword hanging over my head, but I feel safe and cared for where I am. The weather this May has been mostly lovely and often summery. And the flowers and the trees in their new foliage are nothing less than spectacular. The white crowned sparrow has stopped singing for a while and I have just enjoyed a good breakfast. My day at work will be a meeting with a colleague, followed by a visit with a client, and maybe three hours in between to walk, maybe sit in a friendly coffee shop with my sketchbook. After recently visiting the ostentatious homes of two couples in my church, I do not feel all the worse for my poverty, but blessed for what I do have, and even more blessed for what I do not have, because even now I have maybe a little more than what I truly need, and I do feel at times very sorry for those who have way more than they need. What a burden that must be for them, even if they don't seem to know it at the time. This having to serve two masters, to live a christian, or ostensibly Christian life, while enjoying such luxury and comfort as to keep one safely distant from the poor,k for whom the very Lord we purport to serve became himself so very poor. It seems I have always lived rather close to danger, and especially death has really marked my life in so many forms and ways, with the passing of so many loved ones, but my safety isn't in my circumstances, but in the living God who keeps me safe and joyful in the midst of this delicate and intricate balance of life. The white-crowned sparrow has begun singing again, and his anthem of life will resonate across this beautiful new day.

Life As Performance Art 46

Physically, I am trying to push my limits a bit more, partly to help control my weight, which always threatens to rise above a certain acceptable limit. So, instead of walking just three miles, I try to walk five. Instead of six miles, I try for eight. Instead of seven, ten. So, the last couple of days have been particularly active. I have long been in the habit of getting off the bus at Granville and Angus Drive, then walking three miles down to the coffee shop on Fifty-Seventh, or if it is Sunday, to the Anglican parish church I attend just across the street from the coffee shop. Then I will walk back four and a half miles, if I am going to buy groceries at the No Frills on Fourth Avenue, or three and a half miles if I decide to get on the bus somewhere between Sixteenth and Broadway at Granville. Lately, especially with the beautiful weather this May, I have been extending my walks. I get off the bus now at Fifteenth Avenue, then cross the street at Sixteenth and walk up the steep hill to the area of Shaughnessy on the other side of Granville, wind my way through the streets, cross Granville again at Balfour, then wind my way taking extra detours, until I reach the coffee shop, having covered between four and a half and six miles. Sunday, following church, I detoured west, taking a zig-zag route till I ended up in Pacific Spirit Park, where I continued to hike in the forest till I reached a bus stop. I covered about nine miles. Yesterday, despite the dismal damp weather, I extended my walk in Stanley Park till I covered the whole length, while walking in the woods. Altogether I walked about nine miles, plus an extra mile, later in the afternoon. I know this is is all good for me, especially given my age, though I really haven't much to crow about. I am sixty-three, and now I hear about folks in their eighties, and even at ninety plus running marathons! I seem to remember a time when if you squeaked past ninety, regardless of how decrepit your state of health, you were considered a hero. Now, if you are over ninety and not running triathlons, they are going to wonder what is wrong with you and why didn't you take better care of yourself when you were younger. People are never satisfied. Like the radical vegans protesting in front of the Vancouver Public Aquarium. It was a small protest, between twenty and thirty perhaps. I mentioned to one of the leaders that having been vegetarian for the last going on three decades has given me more reverence and respect for animals. That was when she tried to shove veganism down my throat. I politely shrugged her off, though I could have just told her to mind her own business. But really, militant vegans are every bit as obnoxious, and stupid, as religious fundamentalists, and they really do a lot to damage worthy causes by their self-righteous preaching. Humans are not biologically designed to be purely plant based. We are omnivores. I don't like the idea of killing other animals, so I still get my animal protein (needed) through eggs and dairy. No, I don't approve of the way chickens and cattle are usually treated, but I am on a low income so I can't afford to spend higher prices for ethical animal husbandry. But I already knew what a waste of time it would be explaining any of this to those people, so I just took a polite, less is more approach and got away from them. You cannot reason with people like that, anyway, so better to save your breath for something that is worthy.

Life As Performance Art 45

Everybody on CBC Radio seems to have nothing more interesting to talk about than Game of Thrones. I have only seen little segments on YouTube, I am not interested in watching it further, and really, it completely escapes me that something so puerile would be so popular. (the acting is terrible, by the way) Oh, wait a minute. I just answered my own question. Of course it's going to be popular. It is puerile, and people love garbage. Perhaps because I don't have TV. This forces me to have a life, because I don't have other people's versions of reality to sink into my empty and vacuous little soul. This hasn't left me immune, on occasion, to binge watching Schitt's Creek or vintage sitcoms from the sixties and seventies+. But those have been like passing viruses, and I always recover well. I'm also repelled by the violence, sex and nudity in Game of Thrones, and this is likely because I am older, more squeamish with age, and no longer have time for watching things that could upset or disturb me. Not so much a problem with nudity, as I am fine with the human body, which really is a sublime work of art, but sex is something private and I just don't want to see or hear what goes on behind closed hotel room doors, and violence is just simply horrible and gross. What I also don't get is how many adults (or de facto adults) get hooked on those dumb TV shows and when they go to work, that is all they can talk about to each other. Could this be a very sad reflection on how empty and dismal and monotonous your average human Canadian life has become? Methinks, yes. When you consider how completely absorbed one becomes into education, career, home, family, child rearing, and simply staying alive through it all, no one is going to have a lot of time left over for having much of an interesting life. And folks are going to want to have something in common they can talk about in the staff room. So, bring on Game of Thrones, or whatever is on screen de jour. I am reminded here of the wife of a client whom I was helping her care for some twenty-five years ago or so. She was a proper British lady, upper middle-class, and her husband was a stroke survivor. I would come in on Fridays to help him with his bath and breakfast and hang out with him while his wife was busy with other things. Lovely people. We got on marvelously well. She mentioned to me one day that she was going to attend some frothy, sweet and light musical theatre production with her friend. She added that she really had no time for profound and depressing dramas, since life was already difficult enough. Even though I have a preference for profound and depressing dramas, considering her life situation, having to care for a disabled husband, I could not blame her one bit for wanting escape. I suppose this could be true for Game of Thrones fans, though I also wonder if there is such a deficit of drama, colour, and imagination in their lives that they have to get it on tap, thanks to HBO. As for myself, I already live surrounded by plenty of drama, here in my downtown neighbourhood. Just yesterday, we were being serenaded by a psychotic woman in the building next door, flying into prolonged fits of screaming and swearing. There is also the drama of chronic addiction and chronic homelessness and broken hearts outside our front door. When your life is already sheltered, cossetted, and just plane stupid ass dull, then you are going to want your TV dose of safe fantasy and drama with plenty of gratuitous violence, sex, and exposed girl and boy bits (especially girl), I'm not going to fault anyone for loving this toxic Kool Aid. Life, as most of us have been conditioned into perceiving it, simply has very little colour, so why not crack open a cold one, turn on the TV and get yourself all lost and titillated. Plus, you will never be at a loss for something to talk about the next day in the staff room.

Life As Performance Art 44

I was listening this morning to a program on philosophy, I think it is actually called the "Philosopher's Zone" from Australia and it is broadcast here on CBC at 4 am, Sundays. It was basically about how science always fails to adequately factor in subjective experience. This also certainly affects scientific rationality and objectivity. Which is to say that, in science, as in everything else, we love to play God. Rather like children playing at grownups. But nothing is objective, not as perceived by human beings, since our perceptions, however scientifically and clinically detached, are always going to be subjective. Science never entirely gets it right, and any scientist worth their salt is going to admit this. It is a constant unfolding process of inquiry, experimentation, discovery, and more inquiry. It never ends. So it is with this human dance that we all seem to be caught in the middle of. Even if we go sit in the balcony and peer out at all the participants, by our mere presence and existence we are also participants, even if we are merely peering from the balcony. Or, as a wise man told me once, many many years ago, even if I am watching others while enjoying my decadent Saturday night on the town, there is still going to be someone watching me. Basically, we humans, are modified apes with oversize brains. We all tend to think too much. Can't be helped, I suppose. I have been accused of thinking too much, but being to the manner born, this is something that cannot really be helped or avoided or prevented. So, I had might as well have fun with it and keep writing this dear little blog. You know, this is why I also find myself having a good chuckle or two whenever I hear about born again atheists of the Dawkins church, wrapping themselves around a telephone pole trying to objectively prove that God could not possibly exist, when, at the end of the day, all they can come up with are rather pale and limp excuses for venting their spleen about their hatred for God and the universe. It's equally funny when egghead Christians and other brainy theists try to use science and logic in order to prove the existence of God. Only agnostics can no for sure and they sure ain't gonna say it one way or the other. Well, Gentle Reader, I don't know how to break this to you, but either the Almighty is real for you, or he is not, and until, or if that moment of revelation every occurs to you, maybe instead of stressing over such existential headaches, you would better spend your time on Facebook or Instagram, or maybe Skype with that nice friend of yours in Colombia, or go bake brownies, or build a birdhouse or something. Life is a gift. Give thanks and enjoy!

Life As Performance Art 43

Anybody here remember Jane Jacobs? She was hot ten years ago. I don't mean that kind of hot and please pull your dirty little minds out of the gutter, Gentle Reader. She was already in her nineties and still writing and thinking. Even I got on the Jane Jacobs bandwagon for a while, bought, read and inwardly digested her last book, Dark Age Ahead. (I didn't actually eat the book, but I'm sure the merits of the dietary fibre could be argued!) She was a famous urbanist, noted for her many ideas and theories of how to humanize urban life, making cities and especially their downtowns liveable, attractive, interesting and community inclusive. She really took off at that time, just as real estate was already starting to escalate, and was soon the chosen guru of many a mayor and city council bound and determined to make their cities attractive and liveable and inclusive. Except for one or two little details, and we shall name those little details "Real Life". Jane Jacobs meticulously and carefully named and explored those details of Real Life: the importance of cohesive community, family life, good and accessible education, housing affordability, among other pillars of common sense. I find it curious that her loudest proponents coming from city hall were also the most oblivious to her warnings. So, our then famous and fatuous Mayor Moonbeam, shamelessly toadied to the international developer scum, while chanting the name of Jane Jacobs, as though these utterings contained in themselves a kind of magic mana that would excuse and absolve him of his egregious greed and shortsightedness. Yes, let's get people living downtown, he cried, and so his wealthy developer scum friends tore down heritage buildings in the downtown core and built, and built, and to this day, keep on building, even after they have run out of millionaires who can afford to buy their expensive condos. And all in the name of Jane Jacobs, who likely is turning in her grave by now. Now we have a downtown that people live in. A downtown that people can scarcely afford to live in. And it is a downtown that is still essentially unlivable. There are still few adequate resources for homeless people, and for those of us on low incomes, there is no affordable grocery shopping within walking distance, and for people with disabilities and elderly, this is essential. But there are lots of nail spas and dog boutiques. Our homeless still sleep, beg, and essentially live on the sidewalks, there is still not enough available housing for them, and so they do add local colour to our inner urban neighbourhoods, for brave well-incomed folk who want to buy into a neighbourhood that has a little edge to it, though the local homeless are still better behaved, more house-broken and toilet trained than the children of prosperous suburban burghers that descend on us in the evenings and on weekends, turning our neighbourhoods into communal toilets. And we won't mention the noise, which is everywhere: racket and din coming from sirens, construction, stereos, folks screaming in torment from mental illness and drug addictions, garbage and delivery trucks. But what really dissuades me from stepping outside, especially in the evenings, are the ongoing streams of people who walk and behave as though they are the only ones there, completely focussed on their little phones on which they wear out their thumbs like they are electronic rosaries, and generally moving along in zombie rhythm,as though no one lives here, as though they are scarcely alive themselves, and the self-absorbed indifference of those idiots can be downright paralysing, sometimes preventing me even from wanting to just walk to my neighbourhood Shoppers Drug Mart to buy milk and a carton of eggs. I don't think that most of us in this city really know how to coexist.

Life As Performance Art 42

The church is the people. The people are the church. That is why I go. If it wasn't Anglican it would be something else, but for now it is Anglican. The church is not the idiots who make up the clergy and administration that presume to direct and run the organization. They are hopelessly out of touch, and except for a few rare exceptions, I really don't think that any of them has a real relationship with God. I am sorry to say that I really feel for those people a lot of contempt and hostility, and, if you have been following this thread of posts, Gentle Reader, then I'm sure that I won't have to explain why. Would there be a church without those clowns? Yes. Would it be a better church? Who only knows? It seems that whenever anyone presumes to run or administer something, that it just turns into another ridiculous role to walk into and inhabit, making complete, often venal, idiots out of otherwise decent people. I have no idea what do to about this, except expose it on this blog and otherwise laugh it off, since it really isn't worth taking seriously. Fortunately they have not found a way of infiltrating their Kool Aid into the communion chalice. I simply will not permit anyone, clergy included, to do my thinking for me, and even in a relatively inclusive and benign entity as the Anglican Church, there is always a very dangerous nearness to falling off the precipice into insular and toxic cultism. I have seen this happen before. It is not pretty, and I prefer to keep my distance from those kinds of risks. Would I do a better job if I was in charge? I would be horrible. I would make a complete ass of myself, and I would morph into a walking human caricature. I said that these are roles, as in theatre, that are walked into, inhabited and basically turn into a kind of incubus that controls and subsumes the identity of the unfortunate person who has taken on such responsibilities. I will not permit this to happen to me. I really think that the Anglican Church is on its way out as a prominent sacred presence in our lives and communities, and that my role in my parish church is going to remain supportive and palliative. I am only interested in friendship with the people there, and, despite some of our glaring differences, they are lovely people with whom I would be honoured to be a friend. Even with our parish priest, if she can accept my point of view. I am not interested in inviting others to church with me for the simple reason that I don't think it would make an iota of difference to anyone. Will I be surprised or disappointed if I am proven wrong and the church somehow revives, restores itself and becomes a Sacred force to be reckoned with? Surprised, yes. Disappointed, no, rather, I would be delighted if that ever happened. I just don't believe that it will. Or, that if it does, the church will first have to be pruned and pared down to practically nothing. This doesn't mean that I am going to make myself a problem for the clergy and administration of the AC, simply that, apart from what I write on this blog, I am simply going to go on living as though they do not exist. I will simply smile indulgently at their politically correct guilt trips, say nothing, and continue to do my level best to be a good and faithful friend to others in the church, even to the clergy, if they are willing to overlook my distaste. It isn't that I disagree with their positions, by the way. I just simply resent having stuff shoved down my throat and for this reason I will be maintaining towards them a safe, polite, and self-protective distance.

Life As Performance Art 41

There are fourteen Anglican churches in the tony West Side of Vancouver, including downtown and the West End. The diocesan office happens to be located smack dab in the backyard of the wealthiest church in the wealthiest neighbourhood. There are just five parishes in the poorer and more populous East Side. Go figure. Most .of the West Side parishes are made up of congregations that reflect the local high income stats. Not so sure about the east side churches, though the three that I have visited indicate that they do not especially represent their neighbourhoods. For all the tub-thumping and grandstanding the Anglican church tries to do for marginalized people, especially for Queers and First Nations people, and especially for Two-Spirited, since they happen to be both native and queer, they are not very willing to actually be the people they want to so publicly defend. Some clergy, especially if they are women, very proudly display their solidarity with First Nations people by wearing clerical garb and chasubles with native art motifs. Cultural appropriation, anybody? And they are careful to call themselves "settlers", just to show how very guilty they feel for being white and privileged oppressors, or at least the descendents of the white privileged oppressors, since they have coasted through life on White Privilege. They are likewise solicitous of the queer people, and some even have rainbow-coloured stoles that they take out of mothballs for Pride Week. I even know some openly gay priests, some married to their same sex partners. But I find it hard to be persuaded that they weren't ordained because of their sexual identity and not despite it, or because it wasn't an issue. Now, keep in mind, Gentle Reader, that I am a queer man myself, asexual and not part of the gender binary, so I am being very careful about where I throw my stones. But the gay male clergy I have known have been the most useless and inexcusable twits that I have ever seen behind a clerical collar, and I am persuaded that they were appointed out of a hidden program of affirmative action in the Anglican Church, because they have appeared primarily focussed on advancing LGBT rights (nothing wrong with that!) but as pastors and theologians and people of integrity they have all been sadly wanting! Yes, very noble, and such solidarity. It is nice that some churches have meal and outreach programs for people on low incomes. But I remember once when a former rector of St. James in the Downtown Eastside, Canada's poorest postal code,, now deceased, long ago crowed proudly at me about how in his lovely church, rich and poor all met together at the same high altar. And I replied, "and that's the only place where they meet." Now, I am actually, having a much better time than this at my current parish church, which does seem to have a lot of well-off burghers and gentry. But at least I'm making friends with some of them, feel treated with respect as well as kindness, though I have to admit it is still damn awkward. I don't expect any of them to become voluntarily poor must to make me feel comfortable. Neither do I want any of their money, though I won't grumble if anyone shells out for a couple of my paintings. But it's still awkward, and I often feel like I'm on some kind of strange and unknown territory, which I likely am.

Life As Performance Art 40

I am going to begin this post by grumbling quite openly about how frustrating it is getting anything typed on this laptop. Either I am not able to properly capitalize letters, or the cursor jumps all over the page, causing me to truncate and interrupt sentences, so that I have to waste valuable time figuring out where the errant sentence went, then to carefully highlight, cut and paste it back to where it rightfully belongs. I will actually try to mention today when this happens, if only, Gentle Reader, to give you a heightened sense of appreciation of the hard daily grind it can be shoving out these various thoughts and insights and other little jewels and pearls that your loyal scribe might have to offer. This is a (I have to stop in order to properly capitalize the t in This) helpful seguey as well into what I want to write about this morning. Accepting, using and celebrating limitations, flaws and imperfections in order to convey profound and beautiful truths is the theme today. I am thinking particularly of a conversation I had recently about an Anglican clergy conference (held in cushy, luxurious and decadent Whistler, that world famous mountain resort favoured by the uber-wealthy) about the problem of Paul, which is to say, that Paul, the apostle, St. Paul, to some evangelicals, the Fourth Person of the Holy Trinity (please vision me smiling as I write this!). Well, for Catholics, it's the Mother of our Lord. I still haven't figured out who it might be for Anglicans. Oh, that's right, if they don't want to believe in something, then Anglicans will revision it out of existence in order to suit their prejudices and preferences and blindspots of the day. This is what they are doing about Paul (small p, have to correct it), or so I heard from this conference. Anglicans (better capitalize the a) traditionally do not like Paul. He wrote not very nice things about women, homosexuals and slavery, positions that simply do not square with contemporary, postmodern Anglicanism. There latest whopper? Paul didn't write those letters, someone else did. Or, rather, that Paul wrote only the good parts that don't offend postmodern Anglicans. The nasty bits about women, homosexuals and slavery, were the product of other contemporaries of Paul, but simply ascribed the writings to the great Pharisee. Uh-huh. And maybe the Archbishop of Canterbury does karaoke impressions of Madonna when no one is looking. I simply conceded to the priest who told me about it, that they could be right, but only because I didn't feel like getting into yet another useless argument. But, really, I don't know. And you know something else, Gentle Reader? None of those Anglican clergy really know who really wrote those nasty parts either. It could be true, but I still have my doubts, not because I happen to agree with Paul's alleged views on women, homosexuals and slavery, and I certainly don't agree with him. But, rather, by so simplifying things in order to suit postmodern Anglicanism, we are left off the hook from having to really think, struggle, accept and, yes, even celebrate paradox. They were doing the same thing recently about the traditional take on Mary Magdalene, that she couldn't have been a prostitute, and was likely simply a successful businesswoman. I have also known my share of savvy hookers, who have done very well at the oldest profession. But this is still revisionism. This isn't to say that Mary Magdalene wasn't a sex worker (just copping the politically correct terminology here, Gentle Reader). Maybe she sold shoes. Or sexy underwear. Or who only knows? Or cares? But likely, some of the postmodernist feminists in Anglican circles were simply so offended by that traditional take on the woman who loved Jesus that they simply had to rehabilitate her image, making her more like them, or at least more like they would want to perceive themselves. Even though I have no difficulty accepting that other scoundrels just might have written the nasty parts of Paul's letters, at the end of the day, does it really matter? I rather like the idea of an imperfect limited Paul, never quite entirely free from the limitations and prejudices that hobbled his insights, being so infused and filled by the Holy Spirit, that he can simultaneously write some of those amazing paeans and anthems to the glory of God on one page, and on the next page, scribble some drivel about slaves obeying their masters, or that homosexuals cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. It is fully conceivable that he did hold those points of view, that he did write those despicable words, interposed between his wonderful word hymns to the glory of God. (the cursor just jumped, so I have to cut and paste) , And let us not forget the less than auspicious beginnings of Anglicanism:of how a corrupt, venal and murderous despot wanted to divorce and remarry so told the pope of the day to bugger off, so he could marry this French girl named Anne and so he became the head of the Church of England, even though there were no discernible improvements to his character. This is the way God meets us. In our imperfections, and he still fills and uses and channels through us his love and grace despite ourselves, our imperfections and our downright dumb and offensive personalities. For us, it is still going to be our job, whatever era we happen to be living in, to struggle and muddle our way through it. Did Paul write all those things? I don't know. And neither do you. What I do know is that none of us ever gets it right, and that God's patience with our stupidity is inexhaustible, just as inexhaustible as his love for us.

Life as Performance Art 39

For those of you who want to know why I am counting the days before I get my full pension, I have one explanation: as a contracted worker, I have absolutely no job security, which simply adds insult onto the low wage (14 dollars an hour and maybe a raise to 15 next year) that I'm already stuck with. Yes, I am grateful that I have a job, and at least I live in social housing so I can pay my rent, eat and save money, etc. But there are still no guarantees. One of my supervisors has just gone off for three weeks vacation, slowing down the process of my taking on new clients. My supervisors in the other two sites where I work, I am still waiting to hear from them about new clients. Quite simply, if I don't get clients, I don't get paid. If I don't get paid, I don't eat. Simple. So, in less than two years, I will be free from this clinging anxiety about money because by then, when I am sixty-five, I will have a guaranteed income. I have been living with this anxiety all of my working life, and this is the crappy hand that gets dealt to a lot of low income contract workers. Having been homeless for the better part of one year has also done its share to help making me nervous about my financial situation. I simply don't want to go there again, and with housing being so tight and expensive in this city, and homelessness still a crisis, I am often even more nervous than before. The priest in my church doesn't have a clue what this is like, for the simple reason that she has always enjoyed privilege, and I think this is why I get particularly annoyed when she and other privileged and well-incomed white folk simply assume that me, being a Caucasian male, am also going to enjoy the same privilege that she and others take for granted. But I have never lived inside their little bourgois bubble, and I certainly don't envy them for it. During her sermon on Sunday she referred to herself as a settler living in this country. More politically correct nonsense brought on by the wholesale guilt the Anglican Church of Canada has bought into for all its righteous grandstanding and public breast-beating about the way they treated indigenous peoples. I suppose I would be more on board if it didn't seem like such a hair-shirted show. But really, I am not a settler. I was born in this country. My parents were not settlers. They were born in this country. My maternal grandparents were not settlers. They were born in this country. My paternal grandparents were brought here as children, making them de facto settlers, I would imagine. Does that make my living here every bit as legitimate as it does for First Nations People? I really don't know. None of us has much control over where we were born, so neither should we be held accountable. As a white person do I owe indigenous people anything? Well, I owe them respect. They were here first, and like it or not, regardless of my relationship to them, they have been horribly and brutally treated and traumatized by white people. Am I part of this? No. I didn't treat them this way, neither have I ever benefited from so-called white privilege, which does seem to be a fact of life for some (usually the ones with money and social advantages), but not for all Caucasians. I have always been poor. And marginalized. So, I feel actually more on board with aboriginals than with other white folk. But no one is going to believe me because of my skin colour, which is to say that there is still racism in Canada, and some of it is also directed towards white folk, if they happen to be poor and not very successful, I mean. But neither do I feel comfortable living in Canada, for all its advantages and stability. I have always felt like a squatter here, not because I'm a settler (which I am not) nor because my grandparents or great grandparents might be termed as settlers. But maybe it's because Canada for me, is little more than a polite and beautiful fiction, cobbled together by arrogant European males who thought it their duty to suppress and wipe from the history sheets any trace of the indigenous presence and history that is the real Canada. Maybe I won't call myself a settler, but this is primarily because I categorically reject anyone's attempt to define who I am according to their terms or labelling, and not for a lack of respect for the first people who lived in this land. In another 657 days, I can stop worrying. I will then be eligible for full pension. Will I continue to work? Part-time, maybe, but at least I will no longer have to live with anxiety about pay and survival.

Life As Performance Art 38

Well...because life IS performance art, Gentle Reader. Yes, all the world's a stage, a film or TV set, a YouTube or Netflix menu. Of course it is going to be more, much more than that, but we have become so saturated with entertainment while always craving yet further diversion, that I can't imagine too many of us, after having been around for a few decades, really wanting to take any of this too seriously. Of course, it is serious, dreadfully, gravely and so awfully serious, but that perhaps is exactly why we shouldn't have to be. For example, my conversation yesterday with my parish priest, who took exception with a recent blogpost of mine where I wrote that the bloated and huge salaries of Anglican clergy and bishops help keep them firmly entrenched in the values of the middle class while permanently estranging them from the grueling reality of the working poor, or people who are not very likely to be found inside an Anglican church. My parish priest insists that her gross pay of $60,000 a year, and her take home value of not much over 40 grand, is really a modest paycheque and where did I get the idea that clergy are high earners? Well, I don't know which balance sheet she is reading from, but from a vestry meeting I attended ten years ago or so, the rector was listed as getting a higher than that salary, plus a generous housing allowance (he had his own apartment), and the math added up to rather close to 100 K. To my parish priest, I have this to say: unlike you, nor anyone else in this room, I have never in my life earned even a living wage and I have worked bloody hard all my life! I would be lucky to top $16,000 on a good earning year, and without the blessing of BC Housing, I would be living on the sidewalk. You might think you are squeaking by on sixty grand. I would be grateful to be getting half that, or the average income in Vancouver, which is roughly half of your sixty thousand. This actually highlights one of my major complaints about the Anglican Church. They are so out of touch with ordinary people's lives. By ordinary, I mean restaurant and coffee shop workers, Shoppers Drug Mart clerks and mental health contract workers stuck on just a little more than minimum wage. Rather different from the economic demographic in the Anglican Church. Should clergy accept a salary cut? I wouldn't cry for any of them if they had to, though I still don't think that would persuade a lot of them that they are called to serve a Jesus who became very poor for all of us. And not all the politically correct Botox that the creaking rich old lady that is the Anglican Church injects into her decrepit skin is going to do squat to make one iota of difference. As for me, sticking with the Anglican Church has become something of a zero-sum game, I suppose. It's almost like providing palliative care to a dying patient. I rather think that the Anglican Church is going to continue dying away until there are only a handful of faithful left, maybe having to meet in each other's beautiful West Side homes because all the church buildings will have been closed, deconsecrated and turned into community halls, condos or museums. But maybe, by that time, that remnant handful of faithful is actually going to get it right and will actually and really follow Jesus, and become a force for God to be reckoned with. We are nowhere near that quality of discipleship in the Anglican Church, nor is it welcome, and neither is anything of consequence going to come out of our churches until we have really begun to rend our hearts and not our garments.

Life As Performance Art 37

Outside there is a white-crowned sparrow singing, as he does every morning. It is 5:27 am. Unfortunately one of the tenants in the building next door has just turned up his radio as well, so I have had to close the window. Something I am loath to do on a spring morning. If it hasn't changed in a few minutes I will phone staff there to complain. Or I might simply close my window for a while, much as I would prefer to feel and smell the fresh cool air of spring, but I will soon be outside, anyway. But the white-crowned sparrow is what I want to focus on. He still sings here, every morning in the spring, even though we are downtown. Even with the threat looming large of massive species extinctions, such as we haven't seen since the end of the Cretaceous (though, contrary to the assumptions of some younger people, Gentle Reader, I was not around during the Cretaceous, and I am a bit less than sixty-five million years old.) The most irresponsible journalist (if she can be called a journalist!) who writes for the Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente, has written this weekend that there is no danger of species extinctions. And all because some of the dire predictions about world hunger from thirty or forty years ago, or so, have not materialized. and this she uses as evidence for her uninformed opinions. But Ms. Wente is neither a scientist, nor is she informed. She simply spouts her half-baked opinions in order to please her right-wing backers and this style of journalism is a disgrace to a paper of the prestige and level of journalism of the Globe and Mail. At least, almost all their other writers are good. This isn't to say that things are necessarily going to pan out as expected. They could end up worse, maybe not quite so bad, but everyone who knows what they are talking about is agreed that things are going to get worse and that there is very little chance that we are going to significantly change things much, and that we are going to have to learn how to tough it out, roll with it, and find ways of helping each other survive, because, believe me, baby, this ain't gonna be no picnic. The ilk of Margaret Wente can happily stick their heads up their ass, and leave them there, for all I care, but this woman's writing is an insult to free speech and the Globe should have fired her, yesterday, if not years ago. The white-crowned sparrow is silent now and the first golden light of the new day is caressing the buildings outside. My neighbourhood seems to have turned off the radio and all is well, quiet and beautiful on this morning in May. Who could only imagine what might be waiting for us around the corner? We are so fortunate to still have such moments of beauty and tranquility to cherish. We don't know how many more there will be for us, and we will not allow the looming threats to extinguish our joy.

Life As Performance Art 36

It's a beautiful Saturday morning of yet more summer in May. Rather similar to last year, when that entire month was uncommonly warm and July-like, giving way to a damp and chilly June, followed by real summer and scorching temperatures and bush and forest fires and smoke-clogged air so that for two weeks in August it all looked like the Apocalypse looming over us. This seems to be part of a new pattern in our weather: cold winters, hot summers and beautiful springtime. It's also dryer. This is climate change in action and it probably is largely caused by human interference with the planet's weather systems. There is actually little room for doubt. Some people think we can still beat climate change. I am not so optimistic. Then there are those who think this is the end of the world and we will all be wiped off the planet by 2050. Meh, methinks not. Here is how it's going to happen. While populist leaders and demagogues keep lying to their people and toadying to Big Oil and Fossil, and while the rest of us do the little we can to sweep the sidewalk clean before the tornado hits, it is all going to come crashing down on us at once, and we are going to be in lots of big trouble. I think we will get through it, but a lot of people are going to suffer and there could be millions of deaths, mostly poor and vulnerable people. Canada will have to welcome millions of climate refugees and we can only hope wish and pray that our country will retain throughout the coming catastrophe our reputation for sanity, common sense and good will. In the meantime, we all do what we can, or so we like to think. I have been big on the three R's, reuse, reduce and recycle, I think, since I was a teenager, some almost fifty years ago, and decades ahead of my time when all my peers were only interested in getting a good job after graduating, two nice cars, and getting laid frequently, and no one thought even once about the welfare of the planet, much less other species. Now, everyone wants to perfect themselves. You know, getting your makeup and hair just right as you're getting ready to face the firing squad. Yesterday a friend and I (we are exactly the same age, though sometimes I do like to remind him that he is eighteen hours older than me!) were talking about how we are both looking forward to a good healthy and robust old age in our nineties. Then I mentioned how just a few years ago, it was considered so strange that you wouldn't be already broken down and decrepit if you lasted that long, that it was simply considered normal. Now, with all the super-seniors we are hearing about who are running marathons in their nineties, if there is anything wrong with you once you hit your seventies, folks are going to wonder why you didn't take better care of yourself. But, Gentle Reader, I really can't help but read something else into all this desperation for self-improvement, perfection and uber-wellness. It is really as though we're delaying the already inevitable, and not simply this irrefutable fact that we, like all living things, have been genetically-programmed to die. It is even more than this. We all feel, subconsciously, rightly or wrongly, that none of us have a lot of time left, or that if we do, it is still going to be something rather difficult, ugly and painful, and we don't want to be reminded. Well, how about a compromise? Let's still take good care of one another and ourselves, let's still do what we can to shore up for the coming disaster, and let's really focus on gratitude and lovingkindness. This isn't going to keep us from dying. And it isn't going to magically buffer us from drastic and disastrous climate change. But we will be better prepared to face what is coming, work with it, and most important of all, live and work with one another in the hopes of rediscovering community in our midst.

Life As Performance Art 35

There is a lot of agonizing going on right now among Anglicans about how to fill our pews with the bums of the faithful. I suppose that I might have written that a bit more elegantly, but we'll go with this metaphor anyway. I have never liked this idea, nor the Come Back To Church Sundays, nor the other mission efforts of getting those backsides onto sanctified wood. Even now, at my parish church, there is at times subtle and palpable pressure for us to invite people along with us on Sundays. This is something I have simply never done, and likely never am going to do. If someone actually would like to visit church with me, well, of course I am going to make them very welcome, and also with the expectation that others in the church are also going to welcome them. But I refuse to proselytize. Not even in that subtle, insinuating, underhanded and passive-aggressive and cowardly style that is oh, so typically Anglican. Hmm...Maybe, Gentle Reader, you are already getting an idea of why I don't invite people to the Anglican Church. And, seriously, we are not all like that, at least not as individuals. In terms of the collective personality of Anglicanism and the bloated bureaucracy that runs the church, my opinions aren't quite so charitable. I will also take issue here with the bloated salaries of overpaid clergy and bishops, and should there be any wonder that they are going to piously whimper about not having enough money for the real work of the church, which involves feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and housing the homeless? But they love to overpay their clergy, since Anglicans tend to be wealthy (though some, like me, are poorer than church mice). They want their priests and bishops to be able to enjoy the quality and style of life to which the average parishioner is accustomed. So they can fill their homes with the same lovely antiques and art, so they can live in similar big lovely homes on beautifully landscaped properties, so they can enjoy the same luxury vacations and Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises, so they can dine in the same lovely and expensive restaurants. And I should be expected to invite a friend or coworker, likely as poor as I am, into that kind of ambience of wealth and privilege? To encounter the same Jesus Christ, who became very poor for us. Oh, yes, Gentle Reader, I do get it. I do really get it! There is a kind of chronic mental torpor involved here that really prevents the faithful from seeing just what they are doing to the name of the Saviour who hung naked on a cross for us. I was chatting over coffee with two of them the other day. A lovely elderly couple, West Side Gentry for years. And it was really difficult to help them wrap their heads around the concept that most of our local homeless population are indeed as local as much they are homeless. That it has been this nonsensical propaganda, likely fuelled by the BC Liberal Party when they were in power and those who voted for them, that that is why we have an epidemic of homelessness in Vancouver. Not because of international money laundering, not because of unchecked developer greed, and certainly not because of the loathsome and poor-bashing policies that they enacted in 2002 or so that kicked already vulnerable people off of social assistance and onto the pavement, thus escalating our homelessness stats by four hundred percent, and it is still getting worse. I will begin to invite people to my church, when it is clear that we really are willing to risk enough of our wealth, comfort and privilege to truly honour the Second Person of the Godhead who became poor for all of us. Until then, I will simply direct them to Jesus in whatever way they choose to conceive and embrace him. Church can come later, once they are able to fathom the hypocrisy.

Life as Performance Art 34

I am attending a small Anglican parish church that is located in a wealthy West Side neighbourhood of Vancouver, attended largely by wealthy West Side gentry. This is so strange. I am neither wealthy, nor am I gentry. I still haven't figured out just how I could have ended up in a Christian denomination full of well-heeled and well-moneyed folk, as is often the case with Anglicans, often old money, especially given that I have always been poor, my roots are decidedly working class/ proletariat. I did not finish university, for the simple reason that I was too poor and struggling to stay alive. I only stumbled quite by accident into the Anglican Communion when I was a callow 25 years of age. I should not feel at home here. I feel at home. Yes, it is awkward at times talking with some of them and visiting in their homes (hey, I have been invited into their homes! Not at all bad, this!) I seem to be able to fake it rather well, except for one little detail. I have not been faking it. I am at home here with these people. I have spent time in other Anglican parish churches. In St. Paul's, by far the most diverse and least wealthy, I did the absolute worst, where I was treated like a pariah by parishioners who would have been assumed to be my peers and likely my best friends. I think this says something rather poignant: that the good will and love of other people is indeed going to go quite a bit further for building community, than being around people with whom you have a lot in common, but you all seem to hate each other. I still want to challenge some of the burghers in my church about their privilege. I am not sure that they really appreciate what they have, nor that they are aware that they represent a very privileged minority. I have absolutely no expectations here. I am not a gold-digger, and I harbour no expectations of being funded or getting a free ride for being poor. I do sense that these people are serious about their Christian faith, as I am. I also recognize that I have a perspective and wealth of experience in life that some of them lack, primarily for my own experience of poverty, the street, homelessness and having to live very creatively on very little. But many of them also have a wealth of life experience that is in some ways going to be similar, in other ways, completely different from mine, and this is where I stand to learn from them. I think this is also God's way of building community by bringing together in his love people who come from very different life circumstances. This week I will have been in this church for one year. I still want to keep coming back each Sunday. I still want to go on building relationships with people here, as they seem also to want to do with me. They have helped make this possible in the way that they have helped me feel welcome, at home, wanted and needed. These are people who, like me, honestly want to be friends, and I sense that, like me, they value friendship. And that for us friendship is a force for good that has to extend beyond our own lives and social and class circles to include and welcome in others from diverse backgrounds and experience. When we love one another, there is no other.

Life As Performance Art 33

I am speaking out more at work these days. Yesterday at a monthly meeting in one of the mental health teams where I contract my services I had to make something perfectly clear to the team after one of the case managers seemed to assume that I didn't know how to do my job. This is an insult that peer support workers have to live with constantly, as part of workplace stigma, and I for one am not taking it any more. I let the comment go for a while, but towards the end of the meeting I mentioned, for all to hear, that peer support workers are fully trained and knowledgeable about our work, including goal setting with clients and it is part of the process of our job description. Said case manager did not like being embarrassed like this, and later in the file room, he quite screamed at me for being aggressive, which is an absolute laugh because at that moment, if someone was being aggressive, it certainly wasn't me. I just laughed, because it is rather funny, and I really don't know whether to say anything or not to my supervisor about it. I probably won't, as I like to think that I know how to fight my own battles. As I near retirement, for me, the gloves have truly come off. I have almost nothing left to lose and I am certainly not about to lose my dignity. So, I am going to fight, and I am going to continue fighting. I still don't know how retirement is going to look for me. Speaking of my supervisor, I mentioned to him yesterday that an advocate had turned me down some seventeen years ago for filing for disability because she thought I was too well, and I decided to take her up on it. My supervisor commented that I must have found that very empowering. I just smiled and said that it's helped make me every bit the arrogant shit that I am today. He laughed and said, and sometimes you are! or something like that. I could not disagree. And of course I'm going to graciously accept a compliment! I have never been on disability. Yesterday on the bus I was chatting with a tenant from my building. We are both original tenants here at Candela Place, having been here since the place first opened seventeen years ago (count 'em!). He mentioned that, being some four or five years my senior, has already been retired for the last two or three years. It doesn't look good on him, being retired. He has quite aged, and has some major health concerns, partly brought on by his heavy cigarette addiction, which for him remains his only consolation, given that he is, like me, totally alone in the world. It is also for him a very expensive addiction, leaving him with barely enough from his scant pension to live on. I would estimate that if you are smoking one pack a day, you are likely going to be spending up to four thousand dollars or more every year. That is the approximate cost for me of a month in Costa Rica, a good and very enjoyable month! Or, sic weeks in Mexico or in Colombia. I am glad to say that I have never had a problem with smoking, and even though I was a light smoker for three years during my dumb twenties, it was easy to quit, and to remain completely free of that toxic addiction. But my little visit with my neighbour on the bus yesterday is making me think a bit. What kind of retirement can I expect? Should I, perhaps, still walk with a bit of caution in the workplace, given that I will likely still want to stay available for picking up a couple of contracts post-retirement. This is also conditional upon whether or not my occupation will still exist in two years (yes, they are that nasty, and worse!). I do plan to keep on writing, and making art. I plan to keep on praying and celebrating God's love, and, if they'll still have me, to stay with my church. I also plan to go on taking care of my health, to keep walking everywhere, to spend as much time outside as possible, to eat and sleep well, to go on reading and learning. I plan to further polish my Spanish fluency, and to continue communicating with and visiting my friends in Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico. I also have every intention of going on being a pain in the ass to people in positions of power who love to abuse their authority, as well as living in compassion and empathy towards those who suffer. I suppose that all means I will go on being a badass. Well, could do worse, I suppose!

Life as Performance Art 32

i just heard on the news this morning of the death last night of Jean Vanier. He was already very old, 90, even though I feel sadness for our loss, and for many this will be a huge loss. Jean Vanier was the son of Canadian privilege. His father was a governor-general. This did not prevent Jean from going to France where he lived with mentally challenged adults, advocated for them, accepted and celebrated their gifts. Thus was born the L'Arche community, which now has homes all over the world. I have never visited, lived or participated in L'Arche. I have been greatly influenced and mentored by Jean Vanier. I first heard of him, I think, while I was still just twenty. I was living in rather an odd situation, sharing a tiny house with two rather eccentric Jesus Freaks. It was heated by a wood stove, and we all slept in the small bedroom. We had many visitors, among them a young woman of just eighteen, with a strong desire to serve God. She gave me one of Jean's books, titled "Be Not Afraid." It was a collection of his poetry and photo images of the people he had chosen as his adopted family. He focussed on how we need to face our fears with courage, especially our fears of being vulnerable and helpless, and over and over again he brought forth the theme of weakness in strength. This had a major impact on me, as I was seeking to hone and refine the spiritual direction of my life. This helped mentor and encourage me towards spending time with people with disabilities, with socially marginalized people, with people who were rejected and unwanted. People like me. It wasn't rocket science. These were my people, and I was one of them. This in a way helped brand me, and move me forward in a life of ministry and service. i worked at whatever I could. I spent a year in community college, but this wasn't possible to continue. I was too poor, I couldn't live with my parents, and I had to work to pay the bills. Night classes were out of the question. I was simply too tired after work to retain information. But I stayed open to others. I was often working part time, earning just enough to keep the wolf away from the door, but not off the street. I lived in very uncertain and short term situations. From the tiny shared house, after four months, I found a one bedroom apartment in a very old east side building. for a while, three young guys were staying with me, but two of them wanted to simply sponge and the other had an agenda with me, and even though he was attractive, I simply was not ready for this kind of involvement. I threw them all out and lived alone (I was 21), spending my time between jobs meeting and talking to as many different people as I could. I became friends in a new place I moved to, a housekeeping room in an old house, with a young lesbian coping with extreme poverty, mental health issues and a recent sexual assault. Then I live three months in a communal house with two young families and single young adults, all seeking a spiritual path. From there, I was in Dilaram, a particularly brutal intentional Christian community, but I was able to dedicate myself fully to ministering to the poor, or to other poor, despite the destructive idiots running the show. Traumatized, I left and ended up again with my lesbian friend, and for almost two years, continued to stay open to her and many others as I stumbled my way through life, seeking to connect meaningfully with others. At that time, I became a home support worker, which I continued at for well over a decade, caring for the sick and dying, and then again eight years in intentional Christian ministry to people dying from AIDS and survival sex workers and street punks. Then followed some difficult years of extreme trauma and homelessness. I have since ended up in social housing, and have worked for fifteen years as a mental health peer support worker, again, continuing the legacy of Jean Vanier, as, for a scandalously low wage, I walk with people coping with mental health issues and social stigma towards recovery and an improved quality of life, still moving forward with this work in my life. I owe much to Jean. Even though I am poor, and likely to stay poor for the rest of my life, I cannot think of another path I might have taken, that in so many ways, would make me so rich. I remain critical of the wealthy, it is simply because I see how impoverished they really are, otherwise they would not have to take refuge in material things. Thank you, Jean. And thank you, God, for giving us Jean Vanier, and may he find in you the eternal home that you promise to all who love you.

Life As Performance Art 31

One of the theatres where life really becomes performance art is in church, particularly if it happens to be an Anglican church. I have been attending this particular parish situated in the depths of our wealthy neighbourhoods for almost a year now. I never really intended to start attending until it became clear that that was where the finger of God was pointing. I still harbour absolutely no regret for taking this new direction in life. I still want to return each Sunday, I still want to see the people there, know them better, meet and welcome newcomers and worship and enjoy Christ's presence among us. So far so good. This weekend, I have been privileged to visit two different couples in their homes. These are people who could be considered pillars of the church. They are very involved and connected, wield a lot of influence and are, themselves, very good, kind and decent people. They live in lovely homes, in the first case a sprawling luxury condo, and in the other, a sprawling luxury house of a certain vintage. The purpose of these occasions was partly social, but also as part of a project for discussing and determining the future direction of the church. It has been interesting hearing of different people's experiences, positions, feelings and opinions. I am already becoming better acquainted with a number of people through these luncheons. I am also reminded of just how much we live at opposite ends of the social spectrum. I would never be able to reciprocate this kind of hospitality, primarily because my place is so tiny, so that it's hard enough to comfortably seat just one visitor, much less a half dozen or more, particularly given that I don't have a table for meals. They own their homes. I rent mine. I not only rent my place, it is partly subsidized by the government. I think I am probably the poorest member of this church. By far. Particularly visiting this house yesterday, I have to admit that I felt like a cat being introduced to a new home. It was pretty overwhelming. The home is palatial, beautifully appointed and decorated with antiques, art, and simply immaculate. The back yard is like a botanical garden, and probably takes up at least a quarter acre, along with the front yard, perhaps a bit more. Before we all went indoors for a very formal lunch in their elegant dining room, I was the only one of six or so visitors who actually had the temerity to sit down on one of the chairs at a patio table outside. Folks were good enough to gather round and visit and socialize with me, but no one, not even the hosts, would dare to sit down as well, even though there were plenty of empty chairs and benches. And we stood, and we stood, and we stood, till it was clearly time that we all sit down and eat. While waiting for lunch to be served, we all stood around the long beautiful dining room table, each behind their appointed chair. Then it was that I realized, that we probably were not expected to make ourselves comfortable. We were guests. And, though surrounded with all this beauty, elegance and loveliness, we clearly were not at home, and that was to be part of the performance as was the conversation, all intelligent, good-natured, and often quite witty and in places, profound. I was the first to leave, and only when I was three blocks away or so and the host was driving towards me and trying to block my egress with his car, did I realize as he smiled, opened the door and handed it to me, that I had forgotten my knapsack. I never forget my knapsack, except perhaps while distracted, or under stress or duress. A very kind and noble gesture on his part. I would like to think that I had forgotten it because my mind was so full of insights, thoughts and ideas from our very stimulating lunch conversation. I am still trying to persuade myself that it was not due to the mild and sustained panic that I was trying not to feel while visiting my new friends in their sumptuous home, and that I wasn't simply feeling overwhelmed by the opulence of my surroundings there, nor that I wasn't feeling suffocated by a strong and tacit expectation that we all had to behave well, and neither that such lovely homes and gardens are places to admire and envy, but not to make yourself comfortable in.