The Rational Act?

Some time more than 10 years ago, I asked in the original editorial of The Nelson Village Voice after fulminating somewhat, "Is suicide a rational act..?" in this day, era. And then after, within this context we describe as time, a friend committed suicide. He was to others a healer. A homeopath. With a Phd in biochemistry.

He left behind a wife and son. Somewhere in that mix was his problem I suspect. He used a gun. And he left a few people bewildered and shaken.

He was my intellectual partner for decades and the man whom I modelled the character of Eric Summerman after in my book. The depth of his anguish is beyond me and I'm sure his son too. But all our prayers now will help him escape the misty grey zone (which he visited while human) and his sense, every wave, of being so lost.

Rest in peace, brother. Your laughter and joyous moments will be remembered and will continue to increase the body of God.

The (unwitnessed) Magnificence of Man

For the first few years after I returned to Vancouver from the Kootenays, I walked and shopped alone. Having been on my own since I was 16 arriving from Toronto at English Bay in 1968 to join the sand mites, I was accustomed to my aloneness and park benches. What I didn’t expect this time in this new millenium was the indifference of everyone I encountered. Perfected indifference. Zip for progress in the spiritual zone.

From my perspective as I strolled by these people who thought they were tuned in, they were just i-puddled, completely under the human climate, almost subterranean in their awareness of their fellow human beings. And they think that’s cool. To me it’s cold. Very. The only time I heard a human voice aside from someone taking my money at a counter was when I heard, “Sawhee,” or something similarly spoken by another disinterested neighbourhood shopper who manages to bump into me with their human lights turned off.

And the house I’ve lived in for years is populated by isolated individuals whose show of politeness borders on seething contempt. And they’re all depressed from what I can gather. So I’m escaping. The property janitor acts like a Lord while he mumbles about the property unintelligibly and the security guards who live here spy at my quiet-as-doormouse visitors imagining that we’re all cooking up crack every night. And they report this slander to the arrogant bully of a property manager who took over control of the house from an 82 year old female owner who sells her long-dead husband's clothes on the sidewalk and keeps the lights indoors turned off to save ten cents. Sometimes, the tenants here have gone without shower services for three days because of this unabashed greed and fear of paying plumbers. Yawn.

It's all in keeping with this 'new age' of unadulterated greed and self-indulgence. People in this mass media age are throwing off words like the sensationalist newscasters they listen to every day. Meaningless, and resulting word by word in the unravelling of any sense of civilization.

Sneermeisters in their super-cars pumping and braking at every little light in the west end (raging?) and urban pet owners with their stretcho-leashes pompously hogging the sidewalks are all wasting their humanity as they overlook that vastness of the individual who walks by, head up, and looks them in the eye, to absolutely no avail. The doggie-freaks preoccupied with being bent over as they are scooping the excrement of their little precious.

In the case of that individual where his charitableness is automatic, he is the one of true wealth, who upon each encounter with another human being will detect beauty, the depth of God’s love and mercy and the magnificence of man. Upon every encounter joy and the full wind of freedom will reach him.

And who would know if the one passing you by was the Righteous Teacher? What do we do? We sweep past them grandly gazing at the sidewalk, pondering, ever pondering. How would you know? Keep staring at the sidewalk listening to your bizarre, self-chilling tunes. Another animated corpse, "...less than a scratch on the surface of the earth."

Considered Master

I ask you not to speak of our father's will. While I continually falter in my own will to serve the deserved, I aspire and believe without doubt even in this wicked, chaotic world honour will be served true. Considered master, your emanicpation merits service... even here in the long, radiant shadow of that unspeakably sublime will.
-Stephen (the swimmer)

Duck Ponds and Dog Days of Summer

Ducks, little to my foreknowledge, quite enjoy sticking their asses up for a special tan and while paddling their orange tootsies, manage to feed themselves unabashedly. All quite hilarious as Stephen and I watched nature in all her bounty at the edge of Lost Lagoon. We can sit for hours.

We have found special benches where we can sit again in quietness and enjoy peace while observing the loveliness of Stanley Park from what seems like unlimited perspectives. Once, when we found what we thought was an unpopular trail, one man came struggling through the underbrush furtively and managed to examine us without a word; and then another from the other direction and then I realized we were in a gay zone of anonymous sex fiends. Oh well. They were surely not predisposed to conversation… panting and exhibiting animal propensities. Perhaps they succeeded in finding each other but they didn’t succeed in communicating the vastness of their humanity. Stephen and I were equally repulsed.

But for some comic relief we always watch the urban dog-owners with their stretcho- leashes which command the sidewalks until they have to bend over and heel as they 'scoop' their dog's remainings. Ah, and who's the master.


I am gratified that Stephen can make tuna salad sandwiches and his sense of generosity is so plain he reminds me of the hospitable maritimers I am so thankful to have as my ancestors. He continues every day to come to life, swimming sometimes as though baptised again and it is a mercy to witness. Hope.

Colours in the Sky

When the hordes of people were flowing towards English Bay for the first night of the fireworks, Stephen and I were going in the opposite direction. We were strolling (or loping as Steve does in his rather mystical way) towards Lost Lagoon and hoping to find some quiet spot away from the mob where we might catch some of the celestial display.

On a path before the Lost Lagoon area, we found a spot, hesitated there and watched when the boomings of the fireworks began and looked up and discovered that we had actually found a perfect little place right on that path which afforded us the best possible and private view of the spectacular fireworks. Tucked in between the canopy of the trees. Every colourful explosion in the sky we could see. And somehow we knew it was for our private pleasure. A tremendous gift from the personality of the infinite and it went on for long enough for Stephen and I to know we were being given something.

Thus Man

The divine breath is an explosion. It takes form, gives rise to voice and then to words. And words, their insistent meanings compel the existence of other souls. All by perfect necessity.

The voice sets the original harmony which establishes the form for all pleasantness of hearing. The severe words enjoin curiosity with adventure and creativity. This song is daring the void, impelling a response.

Thus creation. Thus continuity.

Thus Man.

The Elders

(the unedited version of letter published today in Globe and Mail)

Dear Editor:

Re: the Elders

Your article was particularly fascinating to me. Ten years ago I hustled Pierre Trudeau in Nelson, B.C. for an interview. He declined at first but then he read my letter and back issues of The Nelson Village Voice which I was publishing at the time. He wanted to respond to the third and last question in my letter: Is there a necessity to put in place (in writing) a moral imperative as in a global creed by which all countries, corporations and religious fiefdoms must abide?

He replied that indeed, “Yes. A Charter of Obligations. We have a Charter of Rights. We need a Charter of Obligations.”

He informed me as I escorted him around town that he had indeed been working with former heads of state (including Jimmy Carter) known as the Interaction Council on a document entitled The Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities.

After subsequent correspondence with Mr Trudeau, he graciously permitted me to become its publisher (even before its “ratification” by the Council). Unfortunately, this important document, though on the internet and published by me, received little acclaim. That edition which featured it was even trashed by the Nelson librarian for “lack of space.”

It is most gratifying now, however, to see a similar moral creed being advanced today by such luminaries. Mr Trudeau would be thrilled to see these saints marching in.

Friends and Sprites

The day before yesterday I was sitting out front with my dear friend, Stephen, and while we were enjoying each other's company - quietly as he is disposed to be rather untalkative - we saw what appeared like a little sprite dancing about the lawn right in front of us. It seemed like its personality was playful and mischievous. I was quite excited having seen my first faerie, the whole while Stephen seemed to be taking it all in his usual stride, which is a kind of lope and sweep. Finally, my upstairs neighbour, Jim arrived and saw the origin of this little light emanation - it was a reflection from his upstairs neighbour, John's yellowish, glittering fabric studded with rhinestones all being windblown.

Oh well. Maybe I'll find a leprachaun sometime before I expire and tell you all about it.

Meanwhile, I have been hosting guys living 'rough' and one at a time they sleep on my floor, snoring in peace at last and help themselves rather aggressively to the fridge. I think they eat out of fear of starvation. But they are each great company for a man like me. They're adventurers and just need some TLC. And a bigger fridge.

B.C. Surplus?

Dear Globe and Mail Editor,

So Carole Taylor and her criminal partner, Premier something Campbell (see Hawaii driving record and his hesitation to admit to his identity at the cop-shop) are now boasting about a $4.1 billion provincial "surplus."

Ask anybody who considers themselves a Vancouverite and then tourists: Why is this city suffering such growing numbers of helplessly depressed and then deliberately addicted numbers of young and old alike? These sons and daughters and otherwise (when not desperate) decent human beings have been tossed off welfare (that extremely inadequate monthly pittance) so this creepy government and lovely Carole and her 'budget' shoes can brag and dance about reducing the bean-count of welfare recipients.

Would somebody please rescue this province from this ethical evacuation we call leadership here? Corky (former NDP leadership candidate): Are you out there? Mr Evans, please?

Published, July 9, Vancouver Sun

Dear Editor,

Re Disabled Veterans

Despite the Ontario Appeal Court's technical ruling against the disabled veterans and their families which supports the vile act of the Brian Mulroney parliament to disown veterans and their families of their estates, the moral outrage is alive and visceral.

(My own father was a war hero who was wounded at Rimini, Italy.)

Even the judges in the original case made it plain they were holding their noses in favour of the technical right of parliament to block interest on veterans' pensions before 1990. Throughout this ugly process over the years, judges have characterized that parliamentary move as outright theft. Ottawa has always admitted mismanaging the veterans’ funds as far back as the First World War, by failing to invest the money or to credit them with any interest.

Only Prime Minister Stephen Harper can set this moral compass right. That sole responsibility during these trying times among our soldiers and their families belongs now to him alone. Now that all the fed lawyers have been paid (at enormous taxpayers' expense), make a decent offer, Mr Prime Minister.

Visages of the Slaughtered

THE POLITICS OF COURAGE

Pale and distressed, the man had the look of a poet or doctor. He might have been 32. His face was sensitive, intelligent. From the black and white video it seemed clear that his hands must have been tied behind his back. The source of his distress was clear; his head was under a boot and a heavy knife was being drawn against his neck, like a violin. A thin line of blood and an inarticulate utterance followed it. The excellence of the audio became all too clear when the knife was re-applied with cutting force, and the head wiggled strangely and screamed. The Nova Scotia professor in our group was unable to sleep for two nights.

We had gathered in the bar of the Caviar Hotel in Bogota, Colombia, to hear a presentation by Jose Fernando Ramirez. He is an executive committee member of USO, Colombia’s national oil union. His bodyguards could be seen waiting outside in the sunlight. Jose had survived seven assassination attempts, the last one the previous Tuesday. The dark-tinted SUV we all crammed in to go to supper, like the bodyguards, was provided by the government, except the official “risk assessment” for Jose did not qualify the vehicle for bullet proof windows. I thought about that as I sat in Jose’s seat speeding through the city. I kept an eye out for high cylinder motorbikes.

The snuff film was a Chechnyan import. It was used by Jose’s employer at the refinery to send a message to the union. Also on the laptop we saw “mug shots” of the union leaders. The employer posted these to the paramilitaries, complete with full names, addresses; telephone, social insurance, and employee numbers; alleged links to the insurgents; and even colourful nicknames like Pinky, The Boss, and so on.

I was in Colombia to help the Federation of Agricultural Workers’ Unions, FENSUAGRO, celebrate 30 years of survival. OSSTF was an ally. With me from Canada, the U.K., Australia, Spain, and Ecuador were other unionists, organic farmers, academics, and “international accompanists” like the Christian Brigade. At lunch by the hotel pool, we were watched by soldiers with machine guns. Jose observed that the presence of internationals like us was an even stronger protection than bodyguards.

The previous month in November, the International Trade Union Confederation, based in Geneva, had released its Report for the WTO General Council Review of the Trade Policies of Colombia. It wasn’t pretty. Colombia remains the undisputed king of anti-unionism, accounting for nine out of every ten trade unionists killed globally. “In 2005,” the ITUC adds, “44 of the 70 trade unionists killed were working in the education sector.” The report stresses that the “involvement of state authorities needs to be underlined.”

Of particular concern for Canadians is the alleged involvement of CIDA and Canadian corporations in the repression of Colombian unions. According to the NGO, Mining Watch, CIDA has had a hand in re-writing Colombian mining law to allow for the diminishment of energy sector unions and the setting of fabulous royalty rates for Canadian and other resource extraction multinationals. These companies, in turn, sign “corporate security contracts” with the Colombian army/paramilitaries, which then take video, helicopter, and chainsaws out to measure community and union dissent.

As we pulled up to Jose Fernando’s home, we were met by yet another bodyguard, the last chill in our evening. Inside everything was warm. There were books, art on the wall, food and drink. The hospitality made us jovial. We played a game. The prize was a book of poetry by Jose’s old friend, a metallurgical worker assassinated two years previously. The room swelled momentarily with feeling.

Although assassinations take place in the city, most of the carnage is rural. Over three million Colombian peasants have been forced off their land, making Colombia second only to the Sudan for numbers of internally displaced persons. Most are women and children. Many are Afro-Colombian or Indigenous. As we found out, a trip to the country takes you through mountain towns scrabbled over by soldiers. When the bus blew out the first of two tires along the way, police watched our driver put on the spare. We struck tourist poses.

At our eventual destination, FENSUAGRO’s experimental organic farm, La Esmeralda, a military helicopter flew overhead as we walked among the sugar cane and the coffee plants. Every member of FENSUAGRO’s executive is on the paramilitary list for execution. Not so long ago, two workers on the farm were butchered by the army, their heads placed in their stomachs. The farm was temporarily closed.

As we were about to leave, Liz, the solitary Australian in our group, finally made it. Jose had had to help her extend her stay, visiting a government office that morning. She had made the mistake of mentioning FENSUAGRO when she got off the plane and was immediately whisked away for interrogation. Jose did not risk the trip to La Esmeralda with her.

Jose is a handsome, cultured man, a lawyer. His wife and three daughters are beautiful; the eldest, a singer, was heading to university. I had taken photos. Their faces were intelligent and sensitive, also faintly distressed. Thinking of his employer’s rogues’ gallery of photos, I asked Jose what his union actually bargained for. He replied, “Our lives.”- Roger Langen

Dancing on Burrard

Worried about the meeting I arrived early, dressed to the ‘nines.’

Of all places, right outside the building where I was to have the 9th floor meeting was an eight man blues band all hooked up to their electronics and Kenny Wayne on the piano singing his ass off. The jive was spot on and I danced in the sun and in front of at least 200 onlookers on a bright day in that business district of Burrard St amidst all those splendid, sparkling glass buildings. And I danced and cadenced like a 17 year old and then I realized I was being watched.

All that observation increased me somehow as I was not then self-conscious, but I was aware of being watched there in my jacket and tie, old briefcase to the side, snapping my fingers and shifting my hips etc (dancing, gotcha?).

After the band finished and I proceeded to my meeting in the building, on the elevator the first woman (a lovely Asian) told me “I wanted to dance with you.” On my way out, on the sunny street a couple confessed they would have enjoyed to dance with me. I was surprised and said, “Sometimes, as you may recall, we have to dance.” We laughed remembering our youth.

It was a pleasure to dance for them all. And Kenny Wayne and his band knew and appreciated it that glorious few moments on Burrard.

Hippie Who?

Not too long ago there was a piece published about 'hippies' and I am pleased to have forgotten the name of the common media which permitted the article and the writer fella who talked about how 'hippies' were so important. The word itself - hippie (as in being one who is hip) - was thoroughly repugnant to social revolutionaries of that day.

Had the phony knower known or been a part or experienced anything from that era of intellectual challenge, even been a minor member to assault the establishment of the day, the word 'hippie' would have smelt clearly to him as a betrayal. The so-called 'hippie movement' was reposited in a burial parade in 1967 in San Francisco at Haight-Ashbury. Trust the common media and some idiot, google-defect scribbler to fumble history.

"In 1963, Beatniks were fleeing North Beach to take advantage of the cheap rents and available storefronts of the Haight. But a sea change took place between the scruffy existential Beats and the earliest denizens of the Haight: LSD. Haight-Ashbury was the site of a remarkable syncretism, an admixture of influences that coalesced over time into the psychedelic eddy that Haight Street became. Like the collection of thrift-store finery and period costumes the original hippies fancied, their philosophy was fashioned from Eastern mysticism, comic books, science fiction, and the Beat writers who acted as a filtering agent through which the younger poets picked and chose their reading. Similarly, acid-rock emerged out of a grab-bag of styles: Be-bop Jazz improvisation, folk and bluegrass modalities, dabbed on a heavy impasto of garage-rock primitivism. For the hippies, LSD was their communion, and rock music their liturgy.

"At first the scene was remarkably self-supporting, with small venues catering to a local group of cognoscenti. In 1965, there were an estimated 800 hippies in residence. By 1966, new arrivals had flooded the Haight, with an estimated 15,000 hippies in residence. A more disturbing statistic, but at this point hardly a blip on the radar were the 1,200 runaway teens who flocked to the Haight as if guided by some special teen-alienation magnet. Shops, boutiques, restaurants, and clubs sprang up to cater to the new arrivals, and an activist collective, the Diggers, provided for the needs of the more indigent among them with a soup kitchen, crash pads, and later, a free store.

"The year 1967 started off optimistically enough with the first 'Be-In,' a massive free concert and showcase of the local musicians. A hippie parade in the Haight-Ashbury district, 1967. It was by all accounts a magical event. The next logical phase, or so it seemed to the movers-and-shakers of the community, was to invite the youth of America to the Haight for the summer.

"They envisioned a kind of hippie training: the youth would come, get turned on, and return from whence they came with the blueprint for a new culture. It didn't quite turn out that way. Young people did arrive for the summer, but they were not the beautiful people the Haight habitués anticipated. 'They had bad teeth and acne scars and it was easy to see why they hadn't been voted homecoming king or queen back in Oshkosh or Biloxi or wherever they'd come from,' wrote Jay Stevens. 'These kids were rejects; they'd come here because they were losers, and while they had a certain Christian appropriateness, it was not what the Council for the Summer of Love had expected.'

"By summer's end, the dream of a self-sufficient urban conclave of tripping Luddites had dissolved in a miasma of hard drugs, runaways, and incipient neglect. The fragile social infrastructure the counterculture had built was overcome by the onslaught. Tour buses and sight-seers flooded the district, as did reporters. Their dispatches only added to the throng of destitute, addled kids. The indiscriminate use of every variety of drug was legion, as were drug busts, hence informing and informers.

"The language was Love," writes Hunter S. Thompson, "but the style was paranoia." That October, the Diggers held a mock burial of the "Hippie, son of Media" in Golden Gate Park. It was a pointed bit of street theater, but it was after the fact. The wave had surged and broken, leaving human jetsam in its wake. By then, the Haight-Ashbury pioneers had already fled to higher ground."

Joachim Foikis wouldn't even pause to piss on that local writer's grave... too busy dancing.

Lost Child of the Sun

He strode to the Pacific in only his ragged blue shorts ruffling in the wind. His shoulders could carry burdens and the recalled souls of many children, his musculature clear but his swagger mysteriously timid. It was a gait his grandmother would know, love and dearly want to protect. This private march in the tricky sand and the presence of that skin called all the gods out. As witnesses and protectors.

He hesitated in the bright formless, blue sky before his toe touched the ocean. He proceeded into that grey vastness of stories, poked about to his knee length and then paused to look back at a friend as though asking for reassurance. The wind was making his hair. His hands were delicately upraised as he gingerly stepped deeper into Father Ocean.

He knew the coldness of that body now; then holding his nose he baptized himself. The sun celebrated when he reappeared. Then he dove and swam. And all his fears were left... in that fleeting breeze.


He cleared the water, wiped his face; returned to the baked sand of the beach amidst the dormant crowd, thumbed about his breeches for a good wind there and with a newly invigorated stride accepted momentarily his affirmation as child of the sun and given of good earth. Though distant and vague to him, his possibilities were pronounced by his shoulders carving a new form of the mountains behind.

His name is Man. He is my friend.

Taliban Threatens Canada

New words have entered the traditional Cdn’s vocabulary of late and all seem to add up to a level of bewilderment not seen by this writer for a thousand years. These words include Hamas, Taliban, Al Kite-ah! Sunni, Shite (sp?), Fatah, insurgents; and then phrases and acronyms like suicide bomber, IED’s (improvised explosive device – true sneekiness) and collateral damage (costing zillions more lives than 9/11) while still looking for 6.5 foot Osama-been-there-before; and the stories of heroes at war are now scripted very differently or buried in terms like Friendly Fire. The word Christ obviously got lost in this new vocabulary among all these insurgents and God-Lovers. Allah be praised and blah blah boom boom. How endlessly and mortally exasperating and why for the love of Allah are not moderate Muslims striving every day to end this brtual, life-sucking nonsense? It’s really up to them to speak that language.

Only through communication and the courage of commitment to the holiness of life will this profoundly grievous warring in the Middle East of Nowhere ever end.

But hey: they’re buying Ipods and tuning out over there too. So much for communication and hope. Humanity rots on the vine of our indifference to each other as we pass by on the sidewalks sneering because we have the latest tune-out device plugged into our heads.

Gooda-lucka.

And wait till the chaos comes here to Vancouver – which previewed its emergency awareness during the drinking water “crisis” of last year. Instant panic. If the Taliban suicidalists make their threat true to visit Canada watch for new levels of frenzy among us, the sophisticated and sneering and woefully unprepared - for the lack of any real moral commitment to anything.

The Death of Joachim Foikis

He died dancing.

I met him when he was dancing and I took his hand as we skipped about the fountain at what is now the art gallery on Georgia Street – which was then a courthouse where the RCMP had a detachment at the Howe Street side, so Joachim’s dancing was also a challenge. The Vancouver Town Fool as he allowed and prided himself to be called was blessed with a voice, demeanor and courage which combined with his unintimidating physicality and gentle manner spooked the sad little bureaucracy that Vancouver was morphing into under the ‘leadership’ of frightened little men like Mayor Tom Campbell. While the desperately wasteful Vietnam war and other intellectual assaults were commonplace in a time when men needed to hear the voices of champions of good thought, Joachim Foikis stood tall, and while dancing high on a precipice above a band at Victoria harbour fell to his divinely scripted demise. Way to go, Joachim.

Brad Firmino's Genius

Now here's a guy I am lucky to know and who was generous with his artwork when I was selling menus to pay the rent. He's living in Montreal now and obviously (see below) that city is inspiring him - which is no surprise considering the spirited Gallics. Watch this boy's work carefully. If the Canadian media ever awaken to the burst of new and profoundly interesting talent in this country, the name Brad Firmino will take its rightful place among our stars.

miraculum.gratias.adquietum... et iam.

Monuments Worth Erecting

I heard recently that those two entwined rings at English Bay (my version of a cheap prize in the bottom of a box of CrackerJacks) are finally coming down and are to be installed at the Port of San Diego. Bon Voyage! It took months to install these cheesy trinkets. Good luck to the Americans. Divorce never looked so good.

And might I suggest we Vancouverites awaken to the fact that that we are not Eskimos and that the much slavered over Innukshuk doesn't really have a place there at the bay either.

With Captain Vancouver's 215th anniversary of his discoveries coming up this June why not commission the striking of a proper statue there at that Two Ringed Circus site of the visionary man who was reviled in his home country until his early death? And where the slab of stones is now, why not erect a statue of Chief Khatsalano who was unceremoniously evicted from his home at Stanley Park, peering stoically across the inlet at his namesake community? Real figures of history sharing the same beach and different visions where they probably met each other on occasion and shared a few laughs.

Besides, wouldn't such an artistic initiative help in the process of distracting tourists as we go about sweeping away our homeless and hoisting hordes of colourful banners tilting in the wind at the downtown eastside?

Reasons for Optimism

A brisk walk this morning along the English Bay beach facing a wind that could be described as ebullient, I realized that every day brings with it another reason for optimism. Yesterday, for example, I met a couple of gentlemen at a bar on Davie Street and both of whom were interesting and showed an interest in me. The handsome blonde of a very striking face, full of intensity, was also a trembling man, lips quivering, facing his limitations I suppose. The elderly burly Hollander invited me for dinner which I declined only because by then I was a little tired. But they both pleased me and reminded me of the value of my humanity.

The streets of the west end are really spectacular with the magnificent trees spanning the width of the thoroughfares, their leaves mingling with the trees across. All of this loveliness would be so much more appreciated if we could as a citizenry look after and show personal care for the homeless and the desperately unemployed. Why can't we find a leader who will show simple compassion? Even the Roman autocrats of yore kept corn bins available to the hungry. The indifference of our current leaders is an embarrassment to all good people and all those people who keep voting for these city and provincial leaders are guilty of a kind of sneering inhumanity that puts Vancouver to shame. Why would we want to put this on global display at the Olympics?

But early morning walks around Lost Lagoon (and occasional runs) help to reconnect me to godliness as there is an absence of people who, unfortunately, with their lack of manners and choosing to be tuned out can be a blight upon the overall scenario. We are yet a long way from a climate of goodness but these walks and my contemplations about the possibilities of mankind remind me that we each have a powerful means to make those changes which ultimately could bring peace and comfort and even occasional bliss to all.

Puddling Along

I was two years old when I saw my first television test pattern. There was me squatting in my puddle all ready to be tested. The virgin mind. After 50 some years of exposing myself to the programming efforts of ad copywriters, bellringers, sound mixers and lighting wizards, plot developers, casting couch predators, snake oil producers and creative directors of more gravitas than God, I venture to suggest that I’m pretty much the same blob of personality I was way back then staring at the Indian chief, peeing in my nappies.

And that’s gotta be trillions of dollars later. Wall Street advertising agency executives would sell their grandmothers to discover the formula for penetrating my psyche. But they’re catching on. They’re getting their numbers in order having plumbed the fact that a brand needs to be placed in view of the consumer at every possible turn and its slogan must be repeated as often ("Two mints in one!") and with the same reverence as one might chant a private mantra ("…when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent."). After all, it’s your disposable income at stake here, the holy grail of consumerism.

And now that advertising strategists, the Freuds and Carl Jungs of today’s circus barkers ("Head on…" groan), have determined that repetition is the name of success ("How do you spell RELIEF?"), the only companies who can afford this kind of extreme exposure are the multi-nationals. And among them we find the psychopathic corporations selling us their reasoning for why they allow people to die from AIDS rather than provide an affordable remedy; pharma-ceutical giants advising us about "possible side effects including heart failure and in rare instances, death …" and Hummer peddlers who deny global dimming straight-faced. And with the limitless arrogance of a smug real estate agent remaxing his Platinum Card, would it surprise anyone to find the ad industry types planning a new category for their next awards party: The Moses Fangs Memorial Award for Mendacious Marketing?

We are finally at risk of being programmed to desire shit. And to take shit. We are buying into banks managing our money for us while stealing us blind with henpecking fees. Ever since they got away with corralling us into the interior architecture of ropes and stands in their little line-ups we have been willfully subservient. Your RRSP return is pathetic but you are told to hurry before it’s too late to make your "contribution." What a lingo. At Investopeadia.com I average more than 40% return on my portfolio of stocks.

Some poor sucker of a tree hugger is out there in the cold drizzle on Vancouver Island, teeth chattering, trying to get the attention of a Vancouver Sun reporter to his cause while the Canwest media conglomerate, the owner of The Province, The Vancouver Sun and dozens of other formulaic papers, reduce the forest by megatons every year to pay occasional lipservice to ‘green’ causes. Two sections on Driving in every Friday edition of The Vancouver Sun says it all.

The conventional media, recently involving both broadcast and print, by its being beholding to its shareholders and the whims of its majority owners are compromised. Publishers are appointed by MBA’s and editors dare not tread beyond a certain party line. Investigative reportage is ultimately circumscribed by corporate agendas which demand room for all the unchallenged repetition that successful campaigns for their products demand. Recent political polls clearly indicate that the body politic is confused, unprincipled and tilting with the latest breeze, including backwards.

Wholesale immigration policies which favour the wealthy without inquiring as to the source of that wealth (criminal or otherwise) tend to weaken democracy altogether in that new voters will cast their lot to protect a healthy economy before a just society. The elite herd with the elite. And when it comes to breezes stirring a panic, witness the electronic stampedes at the markets. Again, no principles, no rationale for the occasional mob frenzy trying to outpace the lemmings. And curiously, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange that afternoon traders were frozen out of calling their bids. So much for built-in securities.

This whole house of cards called the economy is verging on global collapse. As is the balance in the ecological affairs of our planet. Having cast an infected blanket over the delicate face of earth, no accident there. The foul smelling Climate Jam we’ve allowed the greed-addicted to concoct is only a manifestation of the malaise in our spiritual climate. When Vancouver’s charity runners are bounding over blanketed corpses littering their streets there’s a serious disconnect in the societal works. Our collective lack of will and compassion will invite disease and right now pneumonia threatens to invade lungs indiscriminately, crossing class platforms and depositing its victims into ‘emergency’ wards already backed up by 12 hours. It’s no surprise the well-heeled are screaming for private health care.

Nature itself is advising us. With wild weather phenomena and melting ice caps, and the list of endangered species growing in rare frog leaps, how much more obvious and dramatically can the point be made?

Life was given perfectly for the enjoyment of humanity. All of humanity. Hording and continued industrialization are threatening the sources of survival for all of us. Eco-criminals need to be singled out and stopped. We have the science, or will soon, to use the innovativeness and that same wit that created these problems in the first place to dismantle them. We have a natural responsibility to return the earth to a state of grace.

We need to come alive as a spiritual force, a humanity with a character of godliness where saints are ordinary and living with our inherent magnificence and an automatic charity are expected. Damn right this is a radical shift from mediocrity but it’s this brisk awakening or return to that sheepish little line-up, barely trudging forward while the mavens of this establishment continue to escort us to our dismal, obese and truly pathetic fate.

In the thrilling event you concur and sense this same urgency, raise your voice. Raise a Banner.

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Address at First Vancouver Salon

Thank you Mary Anne for opening your home tonight. And I thank each of you for the opportunity to make this brief presentation about my work.

And I thank Larry Martinello, my high school history teacher who permitted philosophical discussions in his classroom back in ‘67. It seems just like yesterday when Larry was teaching us one day that Einstein believed man was defined by his relationships to his fellow human beings, that he was who he was in relationship to others (a brother, a son, a sister, a father, friend or lover). So I am thankful to Larry for hearing me when I ventured to disagree.

I took the position that man is who he is in relationship to God.

And this position set me on a course of contemplation throughout my life which has permitted me to explore in different ways than most people. Not better. Just different.

And one of those ways included my bald self strolling with Prahbupad A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, chanting mantras and listening to him explain that “once Krishna has injected himself into your spiritual bloodstream you may leave him, but he’ll never leave you.”

Shortly after fleeing the L.A. temple later that day, this 17 year old was in the back seat of a beat-up station wagon parked in a driveway in San Diego waiting for my host to return from the biker party to find me a place to crash. I was nodding off by my packsack, when suddenly I felt something had cracked over the crown of my head and I experienced a downpouring of bliss. And during this exquisite sensation, I heard words which I sensed were being spoken from a bygone relative who assured me that I was part of the infinite. I was thankful that night too.

That experience had a profoundly reassuring effect on me … and affirmed my relationship – though vicarious – to what I now call the personality of the infinite.

One more noteworthy experience to mention about my formative years occurred at Big Sur CA where I had found a kelp-covered cave on a secluded beach to overnight in with fellow hitchhikers. The next morning, high on psilocybin, I pretended to be orchestrating the tumbling of the clouds while hallucinating that wise feminine faces were smiling down upon me. After a day of reckless leaping from the rock outcrops onto the beach, I lay prone, unconscious and exposed to the incoming tide. My bluish teenaged body was carried back to the cave. The long-haired strangers left me in a heap by the fireside.

It’s hard to say whether I would have died or not… but for the voice I heard. And it spoke only one word. So beautiful in its timbre and full of loving authority and as though thrust from a great distance and across eons. I tried to emulate it, repeating this word over and over. The other occupants of the cave, my dopesmoking saviours, were annoyed at my repetitiousness - attempting to respeak that word just the way I had heard it - and they shook me to arouse me from my stupor. At that instant I became self conscious and the mystical experience dissipated.

So I was becoming who I was in relationship to that fierce, authoritative, explosive, daunting, seemingly arbitrary, and wickedly ironic personality of the ever-expanding cosmos who has told us all before: “By single-minded and intense devotion that form of mine may be completely known and seen and entered into,” but then added “I am come as time, the waster of the peoples, ready for that now that ripens to their ruin.”

Recently, it has dawned on me that to enjoy a kind of safe harbour, all I need is to reconcile myself to this Infinity.

Through simple observation and contemplation I may be fortified with knowing. By just respectfully walking alongside, as though just within earshot of a master, we may all hear and absorb the affirmations from nature which signal us in ways to come to life.

By permitting godliness in every interaction we may be enshrined in a state of grace; attractive even to Nature; and then to discover saintliness as ordinary.

The first thing a seer sees is that this exalted state may belong to all of us; and is accessible equally to each of us. This divine experience is nothing less than our birthright.

Along our way we hear many ideas and witness innumerable souls beseeching us to follow them. Sirens and lights, soothings and promises… but the prayerful and most quiet among us permitting godliness, will have attuned themselves to the signals from the personality of the infinite who directs us to take refuge in knowing.

And there is something intimately mutual and rewarding being exchanged as the memories of a good man increase the body of God, and so are retrievable. And God focuses through us on all that He has given and takes His greatest pleasure from the enlightened individual who explores with a random exhilaration.

Modern science is on the verge of acknowledging this organic relationship as it examines our biological and cerebral reactions to acts of goodness.

This living individual is constantly sampling from the knowing which is omnipresent and ultimately distinguishes himself to his fellow knowers, each unique in their radiant perfection.

This commingling of entities born into a state of original grace and ultimately sustaining that grace may create an exalted spiritual climate.

Knowing our vital place in continuity, enjoying perfection and speaking the language of Creation - all this is being heralded now as it is this generation which will discover that we have used these edenic faculties before. The vague prompting to “be here now” is infantile in comparison to living as participants with creation.

And as we thrill to know how close we are – despite the harbingers of doom and the apparently overwhelming challenges we face in the crisis of our current spiritual climate and reflected here on the brink of ecological ruin – we will hurry to heal and bring healing as we finally realize: There is no time, There never was. Just your relationship to the truth… and perhaps for you the extreme and intense peace of knowing.

We’re that close. Now all we have to do is continue finding the words which will thrust us forward, shield us and throw light on each of our long-lived souls.


My first book, The Dead Sea Revelation, expounds upon these ideas which tonight I am touching upon. This book represents to some extent a clearing of the road ahead as it deconstructs guilt-drenched theologies and scary dogmas. Hopefully it will simplify for people the way to enjoy a state of holiness in their day to day lives. A private state of quiet thrill and steady but visceral joy.

Such peace and blessedness is the triumph of humanity.

Wish you were here?