Working From Home Today

It hasn`t been that bad.  I'm not used to being around home all day so there is a certain native restlessness that needs to be reckoned with.  It works best if I divide up the day.  I was suppose to have two meetings with supervisors at work today.  Both were cancelled and it was recommended that I work from home on the coming art project this fall.  I began with a three mile walk between nine and ten, then went right to work for two hours researching on the Group of Seven and their artistic legacy while figuring out ways of condensing and simplifying the vast plethora of information without dumbing down and still keeping it fresh and interesting.

At around noon  I took a break, had a bowl of Harvest Crunch for lunch (for me, comfort food) then went down for a nap.  Being sleep-deprived after three weeks of extreme stress from coping with bedbugs in my apartment I was still tired and napped about a half hour longer than I intended, following which I took another three mile neighbourhood stroll then an hour in a local Mexican café where I worked on my current drawing, a northern carmine bee-eater surrounded by philodendron leaves:

Isn`t he beautifulÉ (oh dear, Microsoft has ruined my question mark again.  F--king Windows 10!)

Here's one in flight:

I got the bedbugs courtesy of some pencil crayons my supervisor gave me that had been found by one of our clients who likes to dumpster dive.  I didn't know they had been found in the garbage otherwise I would have refused them or I would have insisted that they first go in a plastic bag and be frozen for three days before taking them home.  I am still hoping that from now on they will be a little more careful about these details at work and I have been working hard at not blaming anyone.

When I came home I spent another two hours researching the art project during which I made from scratch a pot of fair trade cocoa served in a beautiful ceramic cocoa pot I bought in Mexico. Then I took a huge batch of books out of the freezer where they had been for three days, put them on the shelves then emptied the freezer of ice trays and frozen vegetables in order to cram in the final huge plastic bag full of books for the next three days.  For the first time in two weeks I can sleep tonight with the lights out.  I had been sleeping with lights on to deter the surviving bedbugs from coming out, since like all evil things they hate the light.  Let me explain: The exterminator came in to spray my unit two weeks ago.  I only was informed afterward (thanks you guys!) that I had to wait a couple of weeks for all the bugs to die, meanwhile having to brace myself for being an ongoing human buffet for repulsive insects.  In the meantime, my most infected books went either in the garbage or into plastic bags to put in the freezer for three days as a rapid execution for surviving bugs. Unfortunately some of the bags tore and were too big to double bag so I left them in the kitchen with the stove light on all night to discourage them from coming out.  I live in a small bachelor unit, by the way, so of course I have gone to sleep every night with the light on, likely affecting the quality of my sleep.

Tonight I am looking forward to a normal sleep though I might still keep all my clothes on and sleep on top of the bed, for the next few nights anyway.  Following the research I treated myself to another walk, this time on the Yaletown Yuppie Walk (False Creek Seawall) while making the observation that far too many people own and drive cars.  I chatted a lot in Spanish on my phone to my invisible friend, Fulano (Spanish for what's-its-face) then made dinner upon returning home.

I am still feeling tired and I hope the bugs are all gone now.

The Conversation We Are Not Having

I have already blogged about physician-assisted suicide and I have sent it off everywhere.  There has been no response, perhaps because I am assumed to be a mischievous crank or an anxious nutter.  Fair enough.  It is very easy to let our emotions run away on such matters.  I do not believe that I have committed this sin by the way. Here is the post if you wish to refresh your memory, Gentle Reader: http://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.ca/2016/04/kicking-and-screaming.html

My Member of Parliament, the Honorable Hedy Fry, has been so kind as to reply to my email when I sent out this post.  Here is what she wrote, in full:

Dear Aaron,

 

Thank you for writing to my office with regard to Bill C-14 and physician-assisted dying. I welcome hearing from constituents, as open dialogue is a vital part of my role as a Member of Parliament.

 

While I did not vote for C-14, I should clarify for you that I do support physician-assisted dying. My views are informed by my work as a physician, by discussions with colleagues, experts, and constituents, and by my understanding of the Supreme Court’s Carter ruling.

 

For a full explanation of how I reached my decision not to support the bill, please see this editorial which I recently wrote on the subject: http://www.straight.com/news/707976/dr-hedy-fry-why-i-did-not-vote-favour-bill-c-14-physician-assisted-dying. If you are unable to have access through this method, I have attached a copy of my statement.

 

I understand that many remain uneasy about the prospect of physician-assisted dying. Fundamentally, however, this is about the rights of individual Canadians to control, under specific conditions, their own end-of-life decisions free from undue restrictions imposed by the state.

 

I firmly believe that the Supreme Court gave us, as parliamentarians, an important opportunity to enact a legislative framework which respects and upholds the Charter rights outlined in Carter v. Canada. And while I could not support the bill in its current form, I am prepared to support it in the future, should the government accept Senate amendments that would address the concerns shared by me and by many of my constituents.

 

Once again, thank you for writing to me about physician-assisted dying. I appreciate the chance to discuss my views with you and to offer an opportunity for greater input. Please do not hesitate to write again should you have any further questions, on this topic or any other.

Sincerely,

 

Hon. Hedy Fry, PC, MP

Vancouver Centre

I greatly appreciate that Ms. Fry should take the time to write.  I also greatly respect her position on physician assisted suicide even if we don't entirely agree.  I believe that in my earlier post I conceded that this horse is already out of the barn.  The people have spoken and even if I think the people are wrong, last I heard, we live in a democracy and this also means having to accept measures and legislation that I don't necessarily agree with.

But this is the conversation we are still not having.  I can accept a person in grievous distress wanting to end their life, and I also understand the reasoning behind opening this possibility to persons who are so ill, disabled and likely to die anyway that it would appear to be the most merciful option.

I am not comfortable that this is a line that has been legally crossed, placing in the hands of physicians, who have vowed to do no harm, this power, however limited, over life and death.  I am concerned that physicians who are people of faith, and perhaps some agnostics and atheists as well, will find it morally and ethically difficult as well as mentally and emotionally distressing to be party to ending a human life.  I am also concerned that by crossing this line some physicians could actually grow a little too used to having this power and could even wind up playing God with human lives. 

On the radio this morning, the Early Edition program on CBC Radio One, to be precise, there was a caller who suggested that palliative care might be a waste of money that would be better spent on healthy young people with something to contribute to society.  How do we value a human life.  By monetary ciphers.  Practical usefulness.  I have long been under the impression that the value of any society can be determined by the value they place on their most vulnerable members.

This is what the Hon. Hedy Fry did not address in her reply to my original email and blogpost about doctor assisted suicide.  She said nothing about guarantees and protections that need to be enshrined in this kind of legislation to protect the most vulnerable persons in society, people such as myself (almost a senior, poor and without family), other low-income seniors dependent on government largess, people with physical, mental and mental health disabilities, again completely dependent on government support, residents of government funded nursing and long term care facilities, youth in foster care, people on welfare, prisoners,  street homeless adults and youth, poor social outcasts and misfits of any description but nonetheless poor and therefore not likely to feed the Economy Beast.

Especially now that we are facing one of the largest waves of mass retirement as aging boomers leave the work force and many end up having to rely on social support systems as well as maxing our public health care system to breaking point, legislated doctor assisted suicide could easily be abused and employed as a kind of passive euthanasia and this is not a feature of a civilized nation.  Ask any of the thirteen million victims of Hitler`s death camps.  Think I`m being alarmist.  Think this could never happen here.  Think that those who ignore the lessons of history are not doomed to repeat its mistakes.

I shall conclude this post with an open request to the Hon. Ms. Fry.  Hedy, I and I think many others, especially those of us who are among society`s vulnerable, would be ever so grateful if you, the Prime Minister, and other elected Members of Parliament could promise and guarantee that protections be enshrined in this legislation for doctor-assisted suicide against any harm, excess or abuse that could result especially to those of us who could be considered a financial and social burden to society, that these amendments be given teeth and that never will any of us who chose to live will be forced, coerced, manipulated or pressured to want to consider suicide, and that new legislation be tabled and passed to guarantee us with sufficient decent housing, health care and access to food and community inclusion, including palliative care enhancements and improvements, to make it absolutely impossible for anyone but the most dreadfully ill and wracked with pain and mental suffering to even want to think of leaving this earth before our appointed time.

This is a reasonable expectation and it needs to be openly talked about.

I await your reply, Hedy, and in the meantime I ask all of you, Gentle Reader, to please pass on this post to as many as you can.

Learning From The Birds

I had a conversation yesterday in the forest with a friend about birds.  I mentioned with my usual irony that birds exist in order to remind us that we cannot fly.  My friend suggested that they also inspire us to soar high without limits.  I am sixty.  My friend is in his early thirties.  We are, one could say, in rather different stages and situations of life.

Having learned a little too well from my own youthful arrogance I tend to think much of Icarus.  He was the strapping young son of Daedalus of the Greek myth.  Father and son were imprisoned on the island of Crete.  Daedalus, being an incredibly inventive fellow with a gift from the gods, had already designed the Labyrinth of Knossos, the home of the fabled and dreaded Minotaur, the horrifying man-bull to whom the Athenians were forced as tribute to feed seven of their sons and seven of their daughters every seven years.  Minos, the king of Crete, did not want Daedalus to divulge the secret of his labyrinth for which reason he had him and his son imprisoned.  So Daedalus fashioned from found feathers, beeswax and string two lovely sets of wings, one pair for himself, the other for his son.  When they put them on he warned his son to not fly too high or he would get close to the sun and the heat would melt the wax on his wings.  Icarus, like a lot of teenagers, ignored his dad`s advice and, carried away by the exhilaration, flew way too high.  The sun melted the wax and down he plunged and drowned in the sea.  His grief-stricken father made it to the mainland alone.

I can understand why my friend would have a Jonathon Livingston Seagull approach to birds.  He is entering a new stage in his life and career and definitely wants to soar as high as he can go and I completely support him.  As a good friend I will also try to be near in case he flies too close to the sun and will even do what I can to soften his landing when the wax melts from his wings, just as the wax melted from my own wings when I flew too high and plunged to the depths.  There was no one there for me.

I think it is inescapable that when we are young we are Icarus.  How else can we learn our limits unless we test them and end up falling, often many times.  So we learn, and so we get up again.  Unlike Icarus, we don`t have to drown.

Coping With It All

Ah, Gentle Reader, but the world is a very troubled and troubling place.  We have in the United States of America a billionaire imbecile with bad hair garnering enough popular support to make him a credible candidate for the White House and enough selfish myopic idiots to help put him in office.  In the Middle East major portions of land have become uninhabitable because of dictators, Russian warplanes and ISIS creating a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions.  North Korea has the bomb and China is flexing its economic and military muscles.  Africa has its usual problems and Venezuela is coming apart at the seams.  Could it get worse?  Well?

We have so far avoided World War III.  Globally the average human lifespan is longer than ever.  Basic human rights are also enshrining same sex and transgender rights in a growing number of countries.  Capital punishment and torture have been discontinued in more countries than still practice it.  And global warming through climate change threatens to shut down the whole conversation.

Is it really that bad  Probably.  Is it really that good (Windows 10 is once again screwing with my question marks.  Thank you so much, Microsoft!)  On one hand, we in the lovely liberal West enjoy equal rights for women people of all races, genders and sexual orientations with special accommodations for persons with disabilities.  Here in Canada, the Great Envy of the Earth we enjoy universal health care (with notable exceptions) a robust economy (and record poverty and homelessness) and natural beauty as far as the eye can see (through which they are going to run pipelines for environment contaminating bitumen).

I could go on, but I think I am making my point very clearly.  I'm paying too much attention to problems way beyond my reach that I will never be able to solve and that no one will ever listen to me about should I complain and write emails. I really ought to content myself with walks in nature, art, music, friends and good food and outings in nature.  I really ought to focus on the many things I have to be grateful about.  I ought and I ought and I ought...

Is it time to disconnect.  Of course it is.  But first I want to see whats going to happen next.  WTF!  Did you hear what Donald Trump just said!  Goodbye.

The Future Is Now

On the bus today I was not able to get my damn compass card to work, you know the kind I mean? 
So the compass card didn't register, I tried again but the bus driver, obviously in a bad mood, snarled at me to not worry about it.  I remember of course the good old days of cash.  In God we trust, all others pay cash.  Now we have to purchase these high falutin cards that we reload by machine.  This of course was all brought about to prevent fare evaders from cheating the system on our Skytrain.  So, they put in gates that can only be opened by the smart card, the new high tech system that our public transit provider, Transtink , which is to say Translink, blew millions of dollars on to prevent a minority of poor people, most of them unable to afford to pay the fare, from riding for free.  The fact of the matter is that very little money has been saved and the majority of those who were stung while trying to get a free ride ended up having to walk instead.  And in the meantime the transit cops, hired to enforce against fare evaders are, last I heard, still earning an enviable wage.  Does any money get saved?  Probably not.  But the cardinal offense of trying to get a free ride, especially in this era of unfettered, rapacious, greedy and winner-takes-all capitalism, is duly addressed and punishment is meted out.  Because our economy is run by greedy douchebags with all the social conscience, ethical awareness and moral compass of a pyramid scheme.

Oh how the times have changed and are a-changin' still.  On the bus today I was seated across from an aging Gen-X mama and her little girl who was trying to persuade mommie-dearest to let her get her belly button pierced for her seventh birthday.  Oh but the kid was acting on her ma like a pro and I'm quite sure she'll do very well at whatever slightly less than legit career path she carves out for herself.  She will probably make a great real estate agent.  Mom tried to persuade her to wait till she is eighteen.  She will likely get it done behind her back when she is twelve.  When I was a kid neither body piercings, nor tattoos, were ever even conceived of and getting your ears pierced was considered particularly radical, especially if you were a guy.  What do I think of piercings and tattoos?  Two or three words will give you a clue: dumb and self-mutilation.

Just fifteen or sixteen years ago on the sidewalk I heard two women discussing laptops and soft wear.  Though I was not yet computer literate I did know that they were not talking about comforters or afghans (and I ain't talkin' about the Taliban)  I was still only forty but already was feeling distinctly old and middle aged as I perceived myself as standing at the shoreline as one generation after the next came pouring onto the wet sand like a wave of the incoming tide washing over and around me and making me feel very small and very insignificant.

I simply shudder to think of how things will look a year from now.  On one hand we are facing a Huxleyan Brave New World where everyone is drugged, happy and obedient to their corporate masters.  On the other hand, we could have such an outbreak of anarchy because of growing social and income inequality that our technological advances in weaponry will get most of their play as they are employed to try to keep down the seething masses.

Where I really want to scoff and laugh is when famous eggheads like Stephen Hawking insist that our future survival will be in outer space.  This is such typical scientific nonsense with its built in arrogance formed around the mistaken notion that humankind is somehow detached from and above nature.  Regardless of how many robots and droids are manufactured to rule the world we will always be part of nature and our deeply collective yearning to be reunited with our Mother Earth will be such that it is going to eventually trump technology unless technology can somehow be employed to help harmonize us with our natural state of native humanity and I really don't see that coming, not now and not ever.

F'Art

I used to think I was an artist.  I took it very seriously.  I began to paint seriously in 1993 and a year later I already had done nicely on early sales of my work.  An insufferable British architect with an insufferable accent and an insufferably insufferable attitude decided that he wanted my parrot paintings to adorn his snazzy new hotel in Richmond.  I unfortunately have no surviving images of these four paintings, except for some photos that are so deeply hidden somewhere that it wouldn't be worth my while to excavate them.  I will here describe them.  Each is a painting, four by three feet in dimension (please do not ask me for the metric), acrylic on stretched canvas, depicting up to nine parrots all of the same species.

I have just conducted an exhaustive (and exhausting) Google search.  There are no images of these paintings on the internet and this doesn't surprise me given that I had painted and sold these works in 1994.  Here are some images of the parrots I painted for the pommy Brit architect.  You can tell that we didn't exactly hit it off but he did buy the art so I will leave it there.    These are, respectively, hyacinth macaw, masked shining parrot, crimson shining parrot and red capped parrot.

When I returned from my first vacation in Costa Rica (thanks to the proceeds of the art sale) it was with the full expectation that unfettered success waited for me as an artist.  I could not have been more mistaken.

I will not go into here all the setbacks, interruptions and doors slamming in my face that I have had to endure, not only concerning my art but about many other things.  I did manage to eke out a very meagre second income on sales of my paintings but only from rigorous networking and showing anywhere that space could be made available, which usually meant cafes, restaurants and hair salons.  I was working only sporadically in those days which gave me a lot of time to paint and schlepp my paintings.  I was sometimes showing in as many as seven consecutive places at a time.  Art galleries were usually out of the question for the simple reason that I couldn't get anyone interested in my work.  It could be that my work isn't good enough for a self-respecting commercial gallery.  I'm not sure.  I have been lied to so many times that I no longer know what to believe.  I still keep painting and drawing because I feel that I have to and that I need to somehow further develop my style and improve my technique.

In all, in about twenty years or so, I have sold approximately one hundred paintings.  It has never been enough to live on and I remain unknown as an artist.  I still paint, but not as much as I used to.  I am too busy and consequently too tired from my day job to promote my art.  I do a lot of drawings in a sketchbook using coloured pencils and pens and most of this activity occurs inside coffee shops.  People are often kind and sometimes will stop by to praise my work or say hi.

I know that I have to do something about the two hundred or so paintings that clutter my tiny apartment and fill my storage locker in the basement.  I am still reluctant to donate or give my art away.  It isn't for lack of generosity but that I have lost too many friends over this.  I have long been a sucker for any friendly person who will seem to like me enough to want to hang out.  I have since realized that for most of these people I have been at most an item of curiosity and I have since learned to run the other way screaming whenever someone tells me they like me because they find me "interesting."  To many of these same losers I gave away some of my paintings as a token of affection and friendship.  They would eventually become distant, absent or would make up all kinds of excuses, usually the words "I'm busy" to relieve them of the embarrassment of being seen with me.  So, free art is still out of the question.

I really don't care if I make a buck off my art or not though it would be nice to get some remuneration, if for no other reason but to supplement my meagre wages that come from my fulltime day job.

I don't really think of myself as an artist, just as a person, another human being.  I am so much more than my art and I have a wide range of interests and activities.  But I still have to create, to make art.  It is a compulsion with me, whether I sell anything or not.  Part of my raison d'etre is making art.  But not all of it.  I make art but I am not an artist.  What am I then?  I am the person you see.  And the person you don't see.  I don't believe in labels and if anyone tries to imprison me with a label then they had better get out of my way, fast.

I know that I do have to get off my ass and start making at least a few inquiries.  If I only had more time.  And more energy.  And a few reliable friends to back me, support me, help me network, but none of my current friends have those kinds of connections and really their friendship for me is its own reward.  Besides, I am not user friendly with people.  Being my friend means you are my friend, without conditions and you don't even have to like my art in order to qualify.  It is going to have to be small steps for now.  Tiny steps.  But a foot forward is better than a foot backward.

Whatever Became Of The Moral Compass

Once again, Gentle Reader, Microsoft with their little stink bomb, also known as Windows 10, has wrecked my keyboard.  How do you like this for a question markÉ  I don`t like it either.  They really seem to not give a damn about how they impact us.  They are like sociopaths.  They have no moral compass.

I really wonder what became of the moral compass, the sense of right and wrong.  I was just listening to a current affairs program on the radio.  It was being argued persuasively that people end up in prison largely for being black, aboriginal, male and poor.  Change the race, gender and social status and you come up with a law-abiding citizen.  Someone who is never poor enough to want to steal or commit extortion or sell drugs or their body.  With a loving family that gave him lots of hugs and encouragement.  Who has always been surrounded by a complement of cheer-leading friends who are always there for him.  And also with lots of disposable income.

No one is expected to actually accept responsibility except for society and an unjust economic system that failed him.  While putting a billiard ball in a sock to crack someone`s skull open, none of these little thugs seem really interested in the right and wrong of what they are doing.  They have not developed or learned empathy.  They have not experienced real love.  And no one has really taught or shown them how to develop a moral compass.

I think that the retreat of religion from our lives has created for many of us a moral and ethical void.  This doesn`t justify the many abuses that have been perpetrated (and still are being perpetrated) in the name of religion.  And this isn`t to say that there is anything wrong with secularism.  There is an awful lot that is right about secularism.  But secularism does not provide us with a conscience.

Is this to say that religion is necessary in order to be and do good.  Not in the least.  What it does mean is that we have to rediscover, in our public discourse, morality and ethics.  Marginalized racially visible boys who have grown up in poverty have had very little opportunity to develop a conscience, much less anything else except for a festering hatred for authority.  Our ability to be moral is the outcome of our social and family and community interactions.  We learn as we interact, but only if it is healthy interacting in nurturing environments.

I still think that even the most hardened criminal has a sense of right and wrong.  For whatever reason they have abdicated from caring there are going to be many good reasons, and a few bad ones as well and in the final analysis we are going to find it very difficult to pin blame on any one party.