That Wondrous Stuff

Sometimes we just let magic be magic... that wondrous stuff through which every day we move.

It becomes clearer, more ordinary with every charitable act.

As in forgiveness.

Which oddly, requires no energy.

Every experience we have every day; every light and sound we see and hear (all those colours of both); every bad thought we don’t enact; every thoughtful word we speak to a stranger is what makes our life and our death mask a thing of beauty.

KNOWING = PEACE

An Oil Transport Resolution?

Dear Editor:

Re Transporting Oil

All this fuss about oil transport, safety, environmental concerns, job creation etc etc can be rather easily resolved. Taking the Northern Gateway Pipeline as an example: Build the structure so as not to interfere with animal migrations or the growth of pristine habitats. With our super-science and technology today, surely we can do this, barring greedy corner-cutting. Then ship the ‘liquid gold’ in tankers HALF THE SIZE, thus almost absolutely eliminating the real threat – the dreaded oil spill. This possible resolution depends wholly on the oil companies to cooperate and stop overloading ludicrously long tankers and trying to shove them through a tangle of gulf islands and unpredictable seas.  

Advice to a Young Man

Hello young man,

Seldom have I met someone so young whose wit is so acute. Add to that, you’re a sight for sore eyes and some bell is ringing somewhere tolling: “This man is going to succeed!” But alas, bells can be off key. Depends on the ringer. That would be you. 

So I understand you’re taking a year off the schooling business to perhaps examine your options. Probably a wise choice. “Probably” because if you squander this year, it makes you vulnerable to that insidious disease, TV-itis.  That machine with its lights flickering constantly and people on a relentless screen showcasing an act of an act is a serious threat to a good young mind. It’s OK to remove that pacifier before a weird kind of sluggishness creeps in.

So allow me to make a couple of suggestions: take some time to read, perhaps study other languages (French and Spanish?), or cultures; read or pick up a pen and learn better your own language as you script your observations. Daily? Read about nutrition and the thrilling happenings in science; even the old farts are immensely enjoying their doctorates in genetics, physics, medical research and so many more avenues of light. They’re on a frontier and they know it.

Youth and beauty, through which you are just beginning to bloom now, are enchanting not only to others but even to yourself. The difference between a man and a flower is of course, free will. You can actually manage your own beauty and grow into a wise youth. And in that there is tangible pleasure. As your life takes on meaning, perhaps after all your schooling, you may notice how deeply satisfying it can be.

I urge you to use this year profitably… not just monetarily but more importantly intellectually. A man cannot enjoy a spiritual body of any worth leading to a secret continuity of pleasure if he hasn’t developed his intellectual muscles.

Yes, I have a few ideas about how you might make the most of your year off (assuming you intend to return to school which I totally and unreservedly support).

Perhaps a few words from you as to what you want to do with your life in that money-making department might help me give you at least advice that is pertinent.

A career in the creative world is full of twists and turns and tribulations and a horde of egomaniacs, all deluding themselves about the value of celebrity. But that is not to say that such careers wouldn’t be gratifying and potentially very lucrative. (I have two books in the library, another on the way, and I am still faced with ‘making a living.’ Now there’s a term I abhor: Life is given. Only the personality of the infinite can make a life.)

I’ll share in more detail the few ideas I have for you that might be helpful in the event you find anything here of interest. Whatever you decide and whenever, I do wish you well.     

My Hallowed Weeny Experience

Quite at the last hour before the festivities around Gastown, I got the impulse to go out. I had the brilliant idea that I would take a big brown paper bag, illustrate it with my coloured inks and pencils and make it into a mask. Well try finding a big brown paper bag these days. Used to be everywhere at all grocers etc. So I went home, now even more determined, and used 8 sheets of white paper out of my printer and began my Mickyangelello effort. By the time I was finished I had a tight fitting gruesome thing over my head and the closest I can come to describing it is to compare it to Heath Ledger's Joker in Batman. All raggedy and bloody-faced. I completed this look by wearing my Peruvian jacket zipped right up to the mask and crowned it all with my fedora. Off I skulked to the Blarney Stone where they don't charge me the ticket fee nor allow me to wait in line (my dancing is still appreciated).

When asked what was I? I started by answering "A bedbug" and swept my right palm down my left sleeve and asked in return, "Would you like to dance?" Well that wasn't working out too well, so my later reply was "A Bug" and then I got some dance action while having to re-jig my mask so the eye slits would realign themselves to my eyeballs; and eventually through my more dishevelled eye-slits managed to skulk home again with a few hilarious Boo! memories.

Open Letter to Stan Lee

What fun it was to find the nearest store within a mile and for 12 cents find your next books... Spider-man, Dr Strange, Daredevil etc... I had my own gang leaping across the fences in those days.

Why after all these years of my enjoyment of your words and Steve’s Ditko’s artistry (Spider-Man and Dr Strange, Daredevil etc) did Steve leave you?

How is Steve?

I hope he is well-compensated despite your troubles with Sony.

You always use to give us these comic book readers the straight goods.

‘Nuff said.

HARPER'S CASKET

At last. Our P.M.'s office has been exposed. 

Harper's Duffygate works for me. 

Finally, our mortician has found his own casket.

Hello Vancouver. Is anybody home?

Our American friends visiting us are staggered by creepy attitudes and hours of service in this squeaky, pretentious town called Vancouver… named after a brave man.

Who gets their newspaper before two pm? Why is the beer store closed at six?

When you want service with a scowl, go to the most boring Chinatown in the world (right here) or visit your local post office.

And by the way, try the sidewalks these days. The youngin’s think you’re invisible. They walk through you with their stretch-doggie leashes. And you can always depend on skateboarders to roar up your ass. Or get an involuntary pedicure by aggressive hit-and-runners. They paid their way here and don't give a crap about Canadians (my family coming here from the mid 1700's.)

Oh, did I miss something? Read both newspapers written by the same hacks.

DEATH BED FANTASIES

Open letter to anyone to whom I am guilty of writing:

My words about life are meant to be a titch of advice about your philosophy and theology. That's what I contemplate. Not always Your Life.  

Everybody's O.K. to be a philosopher; O.K. to be a theologian; not O.K. to realize on one's deathbed that they got the theology wrong.

Each of us has a private relationship to the personality of the infinite. Sure beats withering with TV violence and politics (the eternal sea of Maya).

The last image I want playing in mind is that after all, I had no idea. 

I hope they clean the sheets.

Your body is your friend telling you methinks the same.

Dear Reader:

STAYING UNDISTRACTED:

Uh, that subject was meant to be a titch of advice about your philosophy and theology. That's what I was thinking about. Not Yours; everybody's. O.K. to be a philosopher; O.K. to be a theologian: not O.K. to realize on one's deathbed that they got the theology wrong.

Each of is has a private relationship to the personality of the infinite. Sure beats withering with TV violence and politics (the eternal sea of Maya).

The last image I want playing in mind is that after all, I had no idea. 

I hope they clean the sheets.

Your body is your friend telling you methinks the same.

The birds are there to free us from our thinking... and expose the grandeur of heaven.

Stonewall the Putinistas
Just one question for union leaders, port managers, liquor store owners, bar and restaurant owners around our quivering globe: is this weekend not an auspicious time to finally close the door on homophobic hatefulness? How? End all movement of all Russian products. Period. Stonewall the Putinistas. You know - those real men who lay out the glittering red carpet in the palace of the King of Communism after jailing our gay athletes. 

FOR:
gaybratbieber.com
AKA:
tom jones and liberace.

Throw more panties!

Brutal Interference

USELESS, BRUTAL INTERFERENCE

During a personal milestone in any individual's life, birth and death for example, it is a time for absolute peace. But the brutal common media does not respect this… unless of course it’s about the cameraman or the commentator’s personal life. Then perhaps (not likely for long) might they appreciate the need for absolute privacy. With all of this celebrity sucking, don’t count on it. This deep snooping will not abate.

Let Mandela, Prince Phillip and others of good note pass away on a quiet note, you morons among the common media. Consider. Consider your own relationships to the personality of the infinite and then consider how would YOU like it if everybody stuck a camera and microphone in your face during your last moment of prayer… you bloody morons. 

We are the words we hear. We are the words we speak. Speaking is a way of sustaining mental health. Agree or not to agree doesn't matter. Engage and allow your humanity to be engaged. Eventually you may discover peace through words of grace.

Finding a Family

After 40 years someone in my immediate family found a broom and found me. About which I, as a great uncle, uncle, brother etc, am pleased.

Close the zoos.

They are not the healthy environment for any animal. Send the animals back to their familes, their natural territories. Let elephants prance with their cousins. Let the tigers find their prey.

Open more museums and science centres for children and the rest of us to understand the globe we live on. Punishing animals for our minor entertainment and little edification is worse than inhumane.

One day in California by the sea I heard the voice of angels laughing and when I looked upward at the tumbling clouds a face appeared. Wise and etched with compassion. Not a grim countenance but a hint of a smile which that day helped me to recover. That same day I heard – and I’m quite sure – that “still small voice” which spoke the one word which also helped me. That word was “persevere” and that face was yours.

And having persevered, I met you. Thank you for everything since then.

Enjoy your youthfulness and during those moments when you are frightened, perhaps you will recall that “There is no time. There never was. Just your relationship to the truth… and perhaps for you the extreme and intense peace of knowing.”

As always dear: best wishes. - Harry

Honey Did I Miss You?

Honey did I miss you?

Where were you?

Where were you?

I was alone, alone.

Waiting. Waiting. Where were you?

Did you pass me by? Pass me by?

I was there, waiting. Waiting.

Honey, did I miss you?

Be beside me. Beside me. 

I need you here beside me.

I was there waiting, waiting, waiting for you.

And you passed me by. You passed me by.

Hooligans everywhere. Finding excuses anywhere. Soccer games. Hockey cups. Rage drivers. Mobs.

What’s the answer? Police brutality? Kill them all? Will that extreme response rescue us from their moronic conduct?

(See for example: BC coroner rules: Dziekanski death at hands of RCMP a homicide,)

Nope.

With all our science, which is good science brought to us by your neighbourhood geek, can’t we find another response? A response to conclude this outrageous inciviltity?

Yes. Yup, there is an answer.

The sleep bomb. 

Use drones to drop and fumigate these bastards with the consequence of their immediate sleep… and make sure they wake up with a hangover and go home whining to mommy.

Let’s start with a biggie bomb.  North Korea.

Tickee, tickee, boom...

Sleep, sleep sleeee…

The first country to industrialise was the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution, commencing in the 18th century.

Here we are in the 21^st.

Since Industrialization, we have, according to economists, progressed.

Our earth and our oceans are now under extreme pressure. No economist is going to resolve that irreversible greed.

The globe we live on needs immediate repair.

Leave it alone.

We may eat again from our gardens healthy food. We may drink delicious water. We may get educated without spoiling this planet we call home.

Stop this madness.

While it may ‘cost’ us three generations, do it now,

De-industrialise.


Good Men Lost

How many more?

No matter their minor sins, they remain committed to goodness… and why can’t the rest of us at least see their goodness?

Who among us, dear reader, can say with ease, “I have tried.”

May we, with your permission, increase or at least allow goodness?

All of us, reading now.

Allowing goodness works.

Encouraging goodness is courageous.

The love of a frightened man is a good love.

Dear Editor:

The 2^nd Amendment was not written by God.

 It was written by men during a time of necessary protection to win a certain war which gave strength and continuity to the United Sates of America.

 This is a different time.

 Now is the time to change or amend the Holy 2^nd Amendment.

 Assault rifles are way beyond the original idea of home protection.

 Just change that amendment. Amend it. Stop sucking up to it… all you REAL men.

 Let President Barach Obama win this point and bring peace.

 And then enjoy hunting, as I do. 

CRAT CALLING

Happy and Prosperous New Year to all and sundry 
- (whomever THEY may be).

Having watched a few episodes of Duck Dynasty I was inspired to create my own whistle call.

Background: In case you didn't know, Duck Dynasty is based on a real life entrepreneur whose family is making a fortune selling duck call whistles.

So here's my fortune coming along: I have invented (patent pending) a 'Crat Call.' Very simple: next time you're dealing with (either in person or on the phone) a bureaucrat, and are getting much frustrated, just blow my Crat Call. It sounds like a troublesome and ineffective series of grunts related to your worst bowel movement.  

Blow it long and hard. 

Send me a cheque. Or am I supposed to send a bill first? GST? HST? 

Pucker up.