A Little Query

Is it a source of pride to members of the gay community that rates of HIV and syphilis infection are highest among their social ranks? 

Excerpt from The Adventures of an Urban Wizard

The Old Sycamore Tree at Victory Square

“Diog! Diog!” The voice as from a great distance and in some turmoil or at least dismay roused Diog from an unusually satisfying slumber. So as not to waken his beloved he shifted off the bed and slipped into the kitchen where dawn colours were glowing on the white granite countertops.

“Diog!”

“What? Who is this?”

“Come now to Victory Square. I have little time… little time.” And as an afterthought but urgently: “Bring Lyla!”

Whoever belonged to the disembodied voice from seemingly afar he knew about Diog and his secret lamp, Lyla. Peering out the kitchen window below the decorative red and green stained glass bar he noted the spring wind, the leaves rustling madly and opted to bring his green cloak, both for himself and the keeping of Lyla.

Arriving at Victory Square he approached the magic tree which had called him.

“You have come. Now climb in before you are noticed. It is time.”

Awkwardly at first and then as though with the aid of the ancient tree himself Doig with Lyla swinging in tow made their way the first joint in the old maple. He threw the cloak about his body and its green velvet melded with the leaves, all verdant and dazzling silver undersides. 
“Greetings Diog. Those buildings there you see, the Dominion and the old Sun Tower building, aren’t they hummers though eh? They are like hallmarks of a different era, when the artists who designed them were inspired by the victory of moral life which cried out for beauty as a rejoicing.”

“Yes, so it seems,” agreed Diog.

“I have heard and seen so much. My little messengers, the Grundlers you call squirrels, and the many varieties of winged wonders, the most gossipy of them all, those Werdlings you call goldfinches. The hummingbird is an annoyance but quite telling. Now I have been storing their stories and have captured in my joints some images that recall these tales and conversations my little messengers have witnessed. Peer into that very joint there Diog and see and hear.”

Diog knew the old sycamore had his ways and didn’t doubt the veracity of his words and so did look into the old tree’s joint. And looked harder.

His face had to nearly bury itself in the old limbs to get a view and to hear the exchange of what appeared like foreigners. Now his face was fully engulfed in the joint of the tree and he did see two old oriental gentlemen considering the bid they’d place on purchasing that block of Hastings Street from the Queen of Repugnant Window Displays and John Wayne Gacy Memorials. They chortled as they schemed to make their pitch when she was drunk. Then the scene changed abruptly and Diog could see Arab robes on princely men as they pointed and scanned the block where the Vancouver Art Gallery stood, there by the fountain and right over to Robsonstrausse. They too had an offer in mind. Other Asians now appeared and the old Hudson’s Bay came into view and that of the new American owned Nordstrom’s. The owner of the Vancouver Hotel, Majid Mangalji, appeared to want in the game to parlay with the Arabs for the old Courthouse. The one thing missing in all these discussions was a sense of history or the personality of a country. These dealings were banal despite their reach and ultimate consequence. It saddened Diog. The insignias of a country were on sale.

“I don’t suppose much rejoicing will be erected in the architecture thereabouts.”

“No I suppose not,” lamented Diog.

“Now arise and alight upon another joint of mine up a climb there.”

Once again Diog had to plant his face into the joint to see the images and make out the muddled voices. Not unlike getting a snootful of armpit but in the sycamore’s case it was aromatic and damp in a pleasant way. This time he was aware of men huddling, making complicated arrangements, colluding and swapping papers. Their language was secret and ugly for its cadence and twisted syllables. The atonal hemming and hawing went on relentlessly and it came to pass toward one end only – the amassing of somebody else’s money. Then he realized to whom he was listening. They were wigged lawyers and pencil-chewing bureaucrats gleefully baking cockroach cakes and playing games on bedbug infested tables. In their childish glory, all; their pale, gaunt faces precursing their death masks. Ready to serve. “Take a breather, Diog. Here have some syrup.” 

And Diog beheld a slender branch begin to leak its golden draught. And thereof he drank. 

“Diog, I have witnessed much and heard stories and conversations over the decades. You would have enjoyed Rudyard and Oscar as they sat there on the grass at my base. Hilariously drunk and full of mirth, Rudyard bragging about the little properties he bought up in Mount Pleasant and Oscar on about that picture of Dorian Gray, a story Rudyard could seriously not get his inebriated head around. Rudyard had his Sabu and his elephants and Oscar had his silken jacket puffs, cigarette holders and between the two of them they could drink the hobos dry. There was a great mutual respect and even love in their conversations and ones I’ll always recall with a true contenting.

No TV in those days. One solid newspaper per city, none of these free nonsense dailies regurgitating everything twice and blowing all over every acre of greenery left. What unearthly waste of my fellow trees.

“Alright now Diog. Another joint if you please.”

While reluctant, Diog acquiesced to the old Sycamore wondering what might be in store. Aside from a brief glimmer during the Rudyard and Oscar telling, the light of Lyla’s lamp remained dormant.

This time he saw uniforms and heard the roar of motorcycles. He smelled sweat. And urine-soaked alleyways. And cheap wine. And blood. He heard chortling again, but gruff and ghastly. And suddenly a vicious dog salivating and wild-eyed leapt right into the face of Diog almost knocking him from his perch there in the joint of the maple. He held on to a firm branch swinging. Then he pulled up and returned to peer in again. This time he could make out the armory carried by the men: truncheons, taser guns and bullet-loaded guns, helmets, gloves and leathery interiors of dark, push-bar cars showcasing shotguns. And in concert with them were old and bedraggled, bearded, beer-bellied gangsters wearing their colours cavorting with their painted women. Then two of them started rubbing noses together. And Diog could hear them, “My mind to your mind,” accompanied by their frightened cackle. Soon though, this weird parlay was drowned out by the eerie echoes of zombiefied addicts on their Pride Parade playing little boy drums marching solemnly to the monotonal refrain, “Rock, powder, down…” And down they marched. Down into an abyss of anxiety-driven horrors. Then, to the shallow steps of a jib dancer, one frolicsome zombie handing out candy-flavoured rocks was rushing his one-liner: “Some baddie touched my dinky when I was ten, when I was ten, so I get to be a brat, a brat all my life, all my life or better yet, better yet a dopey dick, a dopey dick, a dopey dick. Yay.”

Then one of the bearded gangsters got in the push-bar car and started the engine and one of the helmeted guys with a shield got on the Harley and roared it into action. This was confusing. Diog gave his head a shake and taking a moment envisioned all these players in their bumper cars at the carnival giddy with delight, unabashedly indulging their juvenile dreams riding shotgun and juggling their blood-spattered truncheons. And something was missing in this joint. This joint seemed more like a shallow grave to Diog. Even the dog looked sick. And the grave was missing a corpse. And of this one he had had enough.

“Yes,” said Syc the old maple, as if reading Diog’s thoughts, “There is something missing there. You see, Diog, how I live according to the law of nature. This is my ground and upon it I have grown, oh since the 1890’s now, and my leaves very tender every one blow and toss in the many winds and are put upon by the many forms of rain and throughout all we have that law of nature bestowing upon us more life, more thrills in the sun and billowing about under the marching clouds and in all of this there is a respect. A great respect for nature as she respects me and all of my creatures, even my limbs and leaves, roots and canopies. But man has lost something. He needs not only to live by the Law of Nature but to live by a Law of Men. And this Law needs to be enforced, enforced to preserve the freedoms of man and his mobility as I have mobility but differently so.” (His branches lifted and bent to a brisk wind.) “What was missing in what you were witnessing was the Enforcement of that Law of Man. And now freedom is appearing more like costumed funnymen purveying chaos. And there is no rejoicing in Chaos.

“The litter of the addicted is a perpetual visual blight all about my skirts. They use their holy gift of speech to whine and curse and bemoan their fates. Even the natives are littering. The wisdom of the aboriginals who never did believe in entitlement to private property has been betrayed. Now, rather than acknowledgment of the Sun Chief as giver and holder of all titles they hire mouthpieces to smudge over their new version of entitlement. All I see around my park here are empty bottles and once proud men who have demeaned themselves into dereliction. Well I suppose they feel entitled to that too. And the sloth I witness. People young and old will sit idly all day here and let the litter grow like weeds all around them, not lifting a finger. At least you can upchuck.

“See all those luxury cars that drive by here? Oodles of money to go the same speed as that jalopy there, jerking back and forth in the same stream of traffic. They revel loudly in their wealth every chance they get. But what do I hear of them at the witching hour? Weeping. A lamenting of their loneliness. Even the sister moon has taken note.”

“Syc, what will you have of me?”

“Another joint, Diog. Onward and upward.”

“Oh dear.”

“Not to worry. The worst is behind you. Or pretty much.”

Diog climbed higher. The view was enlarged now to include an impressive vista of buildings, windows populated by solemn workers and other trees backgrounded by layers of ancient mountains; flocks of birds and streams of cars and coughing buses; clouds scudding across the pale blue and the occasional plane and sounds of subways and trains.

This time he witnessed the simple goings on of ordinary looking people doing their day to day chores with little élan but stalwart and plodding. Upon deeper scrutiny he picked out the occasional slippery maneuver, gladhander and double dealer among even these ordinary folk. And the little knowing glances, the gossip and hurtful exaggerations, the passing of paper and the arousal of greed were becoming more common until this malaise was becoming the ordinary, the expected. And their brows became stitched with the workmanship of the long suffering. No reddish flash of the fierceness of the righteous. The scenario was becoming nauseating for its mundane routine, lack of originality and loss of personality. What somebody had used whose special vacuum to suck out all that human spirit? At least the mountains remained impervious.

“There’s something to be said for being impenetrable, eh Diog?”

“Reading my mind again, Syc.”

“Just one more joint and you’ll be done. Now two important points. This next one is dangerous in that it is very tempting. It might be described as a life event of sorts. And now the other point is: Syc is not my name and you of all people should know how religiously important a name is. My name is my history. The embodiment of my spirit. I have become as it were the manifestation of my name. But later. For now, rise to the top joint.”

The first thing he noticed was the scent. Very alluring. This joint was truly seductive. It had an airiness, vapours of hopefulness seemed to rise as though from a pristine pond at daybreak. A smartness about it as though a man attired beautifully were hosting you with utmost concern for your comfort. And the hole from which all this was emanating was vast. Young faces appeared, all willing to serve you. All appealing to your enjoyment of attention. Songs and ditties arose from the joint, all playful and promising and Diog, after being so ruthlessly bandied about by the previous joints was finding this one quite to his liking.

He peered deeper and therein he saw a billowy swirl and smelled cigar smoke. This wealth smelt just fine. It was his wealth he detected and he liked it and he liked the bringer of it. He got in closer. Ah, the women. The prestige. The swanky car. The luxuries, all of which he could manage humbly he was sure. He was truly deserved. All this he felt belonged to him. Just that paper to sign, that one profferred by that handsome mature fellow whose gait was one of success and windy confidence. Even the man’s face was pulchritudinous and engaging, so reassuring; and he was – what was he doing? – he was… puckering? He was puckering! Puckering! Diog flew back so hard he bumped his head on the limb above him and now was swooning. Dazed he vaguely heard Syc’s old voice, “Hold on there, Diog. Hang on. Can’t fall from there!”

“Whew. Ouch. That’s an owie. Dang! Who was that man? I recognized him from somewhere just in time. Devious. Yes, he was devious. And cunning. Oh my. Very cunning. And God he was wearing lipstick! He was preparing the kiss of death. No. It was more than that. It was the kiss of the death debt. God it was my bank manager!”

“Now take it easy, Diog. You’ve managed now to get through all the stages of my joint rot. And you’re going to be fine. Just take a deep breath. And try to relax. Enjoy the view.” The wind picked up and the whole tree rustled about and Grundles scurried down the limbs. Birds took flight and even the insects seemed to be on the bailout. And there came the rumble. A mighty unearthly deep and strange rumble.

“What’s going on Syc? What’s happening?”

“Diog! I told you that’s not my name. My name is…” and then the old tree gave out a horrendously loud cracking sound.

“Diog! Get down now! Get down!”

And Diog obliged and gymnastically swung limb to limb bearing toward the earth while the old maple began its toppling. Right there on Cambie by Pender it crashed and Diog in all the cacophony thought he heard the tree utter one more word. Just two syllables. But he couldn’t make them out. Even though they sounded similar to that of a lumberjack calling. Diog was more intent on surviving this collapse uninjured. It was a calamity to be sure. Old Syc, or whatever his name was, had truly met his demise right there on the street atop two vehicles.

While everyone there at Victory Square were agog with the aftermath and busy trying to unpuzzle what had just transpired, Diog made his way home cloaked. There his wife was dutifully chopping the garden’s delights for a dinner salad to be served with that lamb roasting. And thence Lyla lit up nicely and the day unfolded with a loveliness. Just before the setting of the sun, Diog spied a Grundler on his window sill nipping at a nut.

He divined that the Grundler was there to communicate something of import to him so quietly and without disturbing the wife at her porch chair, reading, he ambled over and lent his ear.

“Did you hear the old maple on its way down. What he said?”
“No. I was too distracted. All that thrashing and such.”
“He was naming himself I believe.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I heard clearly two syllables.”
“Yes! Come to think of it, so did I but I couldn’t make them out.”
“I could but it was as though he hadn’t finished by the time he hit the street.”
“What were the syllables?”
“Well he said, in a holler like a lumberjack, ‘Van Koo…’ and that was it.”
“Ah. Yes.” And despite all he had seen that day, Diog chuckled. He laughed wistfully remembering the old Sycamore with affection and gratitude.

The Ordinary Criminals Among Us

If love is necessary to a man’s life, necessary to the survival of every individual on the face of this planet, then gossip is a spiritual crime.

Hem, Haw and Dither

Putinistas shining it on Obama from a desecrated graveyard in somebody else's country. Alongside them tap-dancing are a just 're-elected' Syrian dictator and Lybian and Iraqi tribesmen, holy fucks of Al Quaeda and a camping Nigerian girl-raping demigod. And that picture of his blushing wife holding her home-made sign "Bring our girls home!" must be, I'm sure framed in silver by now at the White House bedside. 

CIA geniuses charging around throwing billions of Yankee dollars at secret projects of their dashing choosing. 

Go Barach go. Or spread your hawk wings, fast.

The longer and faster you chant "hem-haw-and-dither" in the shower and no matter how many repetitions of that mantra you can squeeze into a minute of air time means nothing more than chaos getting out of hand... like a bar of wet soap.   

An Open and Fetching Letter to the Lonely Hearts Club, Vancouver Branch

With all this Vancouverite loneliness being discussed and restaurant owners plotting ways to introduce strangers to each other and all that useless texting and hopeless, anxiety-driven cell phone calling, and given the absolute popularity these days (witness our sidewalks) of the dog, I suggest a resolution to once and for all settle the issue of the lonely hearts club, Vancouver Branch. Date your dog.

The Noble Pooch. Just imagine. Well I did and here’s my list: Smoochie Poochie picnics in off-leash zones; Pedicures for all fours; Dog salon visitations to experience intimate de-licing techniques; Dog-breath sunsets; Panting salivations to accompany Al Green serenades on the dance floor; Slop tongue remedies for facial hangovers (and acne); Doggie instructions on how to catch the poop; Shopping for new boots to fit nipped ankles; Speed-dating with Greyhounds; Binge-drinking with St Bernards; Double-dating with underfed pitbulls; Watching Sylvester Stallone movies with 101 Dalmations; Powdering your Silky Terrier’s nose; Lap-dancing with your Pomeranian; Tickling the chin of your beloved Shih Tzu;

Private lessons in removing Shih Tzu teeth clamped on bleeding nose; Naked Tummy Rubbing Competitions at Wreck Beach for the salacious entertainment of the RCMP; Fetching sticks (quickly) for your occasionally misbehaving, irritable Doberman; Playing Frisbee with your Japanese Spitz Fire. A photo album to die for – oh, and speaking of which, there’s always taxidermy. With science just purring along these days it won’t be long before you can just wind up ol’ dead Yeller and take him on that heavenly stroll down memory lane, being kept of course on a long leash so all and sundry can swoon and gander, and pet and tickle your fur-shedding zombie pup.

THE DILEMMA OF THE COMMON MEDIA

Postmedia, a giant in the newspaper industry in Canada, has recently announced that it is revolutionizing the make-up and presentation of some of its primary metropolitan newspapers. There will be a new focus on internet news reporting for transfer to mobiles and tablets and such. As with any corporate announcement this decision is money driven and is accompanied by a note that advertising revenues have been falling off the scale dramatically since the rise of the net; and the arrival on our cyber-doorsteps alternate sources of entertainment information and news.

Read all about it! The newspapering formula seems to have flopped.

In my view it flopped a long time ago. About when the editor’s pen was handed to him every morning by the advertising department head. Editorial integrity died unceremoniously without the hint of a somber parade, piping dirge or modicum of witty repartee at the scribe’s saloon.

Blaming the global demise of the newspaper industry on the mildewing and blowing away of advertising sources is disingenuous in the extreme. Once the editors began kowtowing to the advertisers, they betrayed the trust of their readership. And a readership, as any editor worth his ink should know, is built painstakingly article by article, editorial brick by brick, with scribes on the front lines and in the back rooms armed with torches and recorders, pens and notepads poking about at all hours to get to the bottom of the story to get their lead ‘tits above the board’ - on the top half of Page One and in those glorious days when even contemplating selling any ad space on Page One would have gotten you a free one way ticket to obscurity.

But alas, the ones who were eventually assigned their place in the annals of the obscure were indeed those very those editors who balked at publishers who insisted on a servile, obsequious approach to those wizards behind the curtain, the bland CEO’s of the mega-corporations. Those faceless bean-counting button-pushers controlled the movement of mountains of advertising revenue, squeaked out every three months at significant discounts for being such ‘loyal’ newspaper supporters.

Conrad Black’s old partner – you know the one, that Radler guy who back-shanked little boy Black when their shell game got tougher to hide behind the smoke signals - knew all about firing writers and editors who stood their ground in the integrity department. The shame being: they are probably still unemployed, wasting away on a tab in the scribe’s saloon but at least their last laugh was well-earned, toasting their old bosses decked out behind bars.

When independent ownership of newspapers in Canada dissolved into those mega-corporations (as did most big city dailies anywhere in the world) we could pretty much kiss the editorial life of that paper a long good-bye. And now those newspapers are distressed trying to establish themselves once again as being even the least bit relevant let alone of any editorial bone whatsoever.

TAKE NOTE PUBLISHERS: You can’t betray a readership twice. Loyalty doesn’t offer itself up to your corporate footballing. You’ve priced yourself out of the market because you obliterated that market with your high-handed mediocrity.

By suck-holing to the advertiser in the first place, you strangled the editorial interest of your own paper. You've spilt the juice.

The irony would be exquisite and worth a cackle or two except for the grim fate assigned to those heroic chain-smoking writers of real integrity upon whose backs were written those cheques which inflated those newspaper barons.

The English Bay Banner does not, never has and never will depend on advertising to serve its readership. The last of a dying breed? You bet.  

Sketchy Memories and Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons. That’s what I’ll blame. For all those cockeyed screw-ups, impulsive decisions with sober consequences. Trying to keep up with everyone else’s version of wealth and happiness. We all reflect each other at times. We are so intimately connected sometimes we mirror each other.

At other times we may stand alone and actually show some courage or a moment of true principle. How easily I can intellectualize the righteousness and morality demanded of a circumstance; but I notice I’m not experiencing much of anything. Reminds me of the Dalai Lama’s answer. Some impertinent reporter put the question to him: “Are you enlightened?”  Well, excuse me, but that stopped the train. A sacred hush descended upon one and all like a flock of dead doves. Our holy man of that giddy giggling (should get betrothed to Desmond Tutu?) did seriously pause and entone, “No.”

But for some reason my major moral misfires have been visiting me of late. Raise money for a project. Great excitement. Jubilation. Run out of money and raise some more. Do that more than a few times and you have entered into a habit worse than addiction.

Being nickled and dimed to death doesn’t work either for an entrepreneur of grand schemes – and the word ‘schemes’ does not necessarily infer conniving or duplicity. One needs a scheme to win a chess game. And a scheme to best an immoral employer.  When a great idea works, it works big. I was accused once by a former editor of a local Vancouver rag that I had great ideas almost every day of my life.   

But alas: the square holes and round pegs bewildered me. And cost others. Darts anyone? Maybe with a picture of Ponzi front and centre. 

In all of these remembrances of backstroking through cesspools, trying to dredge up enough detritus to haul oneself out of financial mire, I am fondly reminded of attending Mass every Sunday and really listening to the sermon. That weekly occasion of standing, kneeling and singing and praying shoulder to shoulder was more critically important than I could have realized. That one hour connected me once a week to all those other desperate people and a brave priest fumbling about with us tinkering faithfully with our moral compasses; and there we mingled with all those tricky mirror neurons, trickier even than the spooky house of mirrors at the local carnival all those bumper-car-crashing decades ago.  

And I for one could survive with increased comfort hearing words well spoken of love and the magnificence of Man every day.  

Bang, bang, You're dead! Or not.

Why do we call it the “big bang” theory when no one was around to hear it? Creation, while fierce, is a quiet wind impregnated with myriad souls, each eternally reflecting facets of the endless fountain, all full of colour and breathing forms. Each form, each body a reflection of perfection.

“Nothing in the human body was designed to cease functioning.” Ted (Sideras) Pirtle, 1979.          (Artwork: Steve Cross of Melbourne)

A lot of wrinkled people know this inherently. That’s why they keep saying ‘I feel young! I don’t feel old. I don’t feel the way I look in the mirror.’ They mean it. They want to be accepted for the way they are and were when they were young – because they are young. But today’s youth – in their wisdom – seem all to be judging the elderly by their ‘covers.’ What hopeless snobbery. And this judgment, so common and overbearing, is ultimately dissuasive of the older person’s optimistic self-assessment.I envision within the next few generations (if we don’t succumb to crack addictions et al) that the life span of  those who have sustained a simple healthy lifestyle, and a diet and exercise regime will easily crest 150 to 200 years. Science is quite reassuring even now. Genome analysis; stem cell cures; respiratory remedies; organ transplants etc. etc. 

The other component to long life is right-headed thinking. One’s belief system needs to be more than belief. One needs to know that one’s energies may flow freely from spirit to mind to all corners of our biology. As we are affirmed per footfall and per syllable by the surrounding nature, our bodies will act as though thankful and live up to their infinitely expressed designs. I envision people living within their enlivened spiritual bodies which then are sustaining the perfect health and vigor of the carnal hosts. One’s gait becomes a dance; one’s voice a source of melodies; of meaning. One’s utterances the conductors of new genetic streams, engineering enhanced spiritual fields.

What peace then knowing this when all but 20 years old. What bliss. What happy anticipation… all confirmed per sunrise by the personality of the infinite.

"Imagine if you can..." Living as co-creators and being created daily by that which one hears, sees, smells, touches, tastes and experiences. Even our most intimate rhythms and far-reaching observations and the hearing of Kepler's skies all set out in that one divine exhalation, on-going yet.

More Vancouverisms 

So Canadian corporations are avoiding paying their fair share of taxes to our federal government by hiding their incomes in overseas parent accounts. So much for their patriotism - about as big as their shriveled wigglers they hide under their rolls of fat behind their corporate boardroom tables. Kudos to their precious lawyers.

And how ‘bout that Canadian lawyer who got the organ donation law changed so as to prevent organ donations as being automatic as prescribed on drivers’ licenses? Protecting somebody’s rights I guess while he murders thousands who can’t wait any longer for a transplant. Thanks pal. What exactly did you get out of that deal anyway? Your name in the paper?  

PROPERTY VALUES TRUMP HUMAN VALUES

West Vancouverites protesting the establishing of a seniors’ care home in their neighbourhood? Worried as they are about their property values diminishing. I guess those snobs didn’t have grandmothers. 

Winding Up The Corpses

We are the hoarders. We are the opinionaters and slanderers who value our long-leashed animals crowding the sidewalks more than a child of God passing by. We talk foolishness to animals because we don’t know how to talk to each other. We remain desperately lonely painting our faces and polishing our shoes with anxiety. We consider infatuation to be the crest of love. We evacuate the company of the divine and go on private head trips. We allow sloth into our bones and blame it on depression. We steal from and lie to people we call our friends. We parade about with broken moral compasses and find splinters of fault in everyone else… blind to the logs in our own eyes. We hit and run. We kick when the man is down. And run again. We persecute the righteous.

We even judge our children and speak unkindly to them.

We are less meaningful than the ugliest insects, which at least serve a purpose in their activity. Snakes have more nobility. They have a reason for being. And by trivializing our neighbours with our gossip we diminish ourselves. We stagger forward while our souls are burdened by a million judgements. 

And we expect the Heavenly Father to pay us a personal visit. To force His rescue mission upon us.

If the Heavenly Father of Mercy did arrive and spoke to us, we wouldn’t hear Him. His words would be so strange in our ears we would find Him offensive and ask Him to leave.

So dine alone. As usual. Welcome back to your nightmare.

You are an animated corpse.

Dog-Paddling in Purgatory

So, according to the specialist, I waited too long for new treatments to become available to treat my disease. Heard this two weeks ago. Now am being referred to transplant committee who hold in their cards my winning (or losing) hand. Up to them I guess as to whether I qualify. I wonder if I should be practicing my tap dance? Joke-telling maybe? 

Meanwhile, as of today, there is in fact a tolerable (for me) new protocol which indeed may rescue me from this dire predicament. Will know more when I go back to see specialist. The cost for oral protocol? $55,000. Thank God (again) I’m on disability. The ministry can either pay for the protocol or (if I  ‘qualify’) the transplant.

It does get a bit itchy when one must rely solely on this system when one’s imminent mortality hangs in the balance.

Faithful readers (ahem) will note that I don’t much believe in prayer beads and desperate last minute appeals to the Heavenly Father.  But I would seriously appreciate finding a GP who actually gave a shit. My specialist I like (thank God for that). I got dizzy visiting my GP as he whirled me in and out of his revolving door patient visits, furiously writing scrips; not picking up the phone to answer one quickie little question forcing me to spend 1 + 1/2 hours to see him so he can hear his precious Chah Ching per five minute visit.

Oh well.. all of this bodes well for my experiencing a new perspective. For however long: specialist gave me 50/50 chance of survival over the next two years without transplant.

Time to dog-paddle in purgatory. Will keep you posted when my head isn’t swimming.  

And Now for a Few Words from The Distant Thunder

Why did God let that happen to me?  A loving God wouldn’t have taken my son! Why would a loving God let mankind become so evil? Where is He? Etc etc.

Boy, have we got a laundry list of complaints for St Peter when we get to those pearly gates (if you believe all that angel-and-harp nonsense).

Let’s keep this theology stuff simple, O.K?

Let’s start with one thing we can agree upon: we call God, Father, don’t we? At least the lion’s share of us do. O.K. Now since when did your father want to be worshipped? Mine didn’t. Any daddies out there expecting to be worshipped? Now I bet not one would stand up and declare, “Yup! That would be me!”

O.K. So why do we think the Heavenly Father expects to be worshipped or for that matter, lived in fear of?

So what does a father want of his children? To be acknowledged, maybe? To be known? To be loved and appreciated? To know that his love is known and appreciated?  To embrace his children, laugh with them and share every possible aspect of life that he can get his hands on. Why not? Sounds healthy to me.

However: how many fathers do you know would be thrilled with an invitation to a hoarder’s filthy apartment? How many fathers do you know would accept an invitation from someone who has just accused him of being cruel and indifferent? (See above.) How many fathers do you know who would like to hear his name being used as a cuss word? How many fathers would enjoy being trashed for not supporting his child’s drug habit?

O.K.? Why can’t we apply this same awareness to the Heavenly Father… a somewhat more grand figure? Wouldn’t you say it might behoove us to clean up our homes, do the dishes as it were and be prepared to set a nice table before inviting the Heavenly Father to pay us a visit?

Until then, who can blame Him for remaining at a distance? Rumbling like "the still small voice" of distant thunder.

We can hardly blame the Heavenly Father for making Himself somewhat scarce while we the teddibly impahtant know better than Him anyway.

As to His rather lackluster response to our invitation to join us: I can hear the words of distant thunder now: “Thanks but no thanks.” 

Organic Words and Genetics

Recently, scientists have finally published their theory that "conduct and behavior" can change one's DNA.  The genetics of the host. The good conductor. 

Let's just have a longer ponder here. This may lead to good conduct increasing in goodness the spiritual field (well orchestrated genes) of our descendants, which I've been writing about for 30 years. 

What about going from the conductor outwardly?


The well spoken words of charitableness and empathy, the example of generous conduct all heard and witnessed by the impressionable child leads to a biological change not only in the Speaker but as importantly that child. Generations may be born into this enhanced field. Until a spiritual field is perfectly set for a visit from the Heavenly Father, as it has been set out and created buy our collective good will. Perhaps a private village would be enough.

We create heaven. We make the way passable for Him to return and Live among us. Wake up, all. Wake up to this undeniable connection between science and theology - the link between God's creative intelligence and good will and man's discoveries of that will at work. 

Wake up to Words spoken in Light.

Vancouverisms and Morbid Parlours

In the Parlour of the Dying 

Recently, I was sidetracked with a free ambulance ride. St Paul’s in Vancouver took receipt of my body and after I borrowed their bucket and toilet for blood-filled evacuations, my stretcher was shipped by elevator to the 10^th floor for an operation. The only thing I recall about that was a doctor awakening me to tell me to open my mouth wider… so he could insert his instrument down through my esophagus.

The next place I awoke was on the fifth floor in the parlour of the dying. There I was visited by specialists and teams of students all agog.  I spent three days in this ‘holding cell’ listening to the long-winded death throes of a man in particular who pretended to be so disoriented that he thought it was fine to holler all night and attract attention to himself while keeping the rest of us awake. Healing requires rest. Maybe somebody should have mentioned that to all those nurses endlessly fussing around him, and the doctors and students rambling through.

One fellow was shipped elsewhere and replaced by another curmudgeon who couldn’t stop pressing his nurse call button to everyone’s chagrin.   The third man needed ‘help’ with his gown, “down there” by his crotch every time the prettiest nurse showed. Being the father of a hospital board member may have indeed helped his member chances.

So there lay the four of us. Waiting for Godot I guess. I was strung up with two IV units, one in each arm and plastered tape over my hands to hold the needles in. Try going to the bathroom with that configuration. I got tangled in wires every time. My only visitor turned out to be my schizophrenic boyfriend who dutifully brought me some clean clothes and a book to read. I met a few doctors who were working on their impersonation of Goebbel’s bedside manner. Apart from that a volunteer brought me Ladies Home Journals and National Geographics to thumb through. 

After blood transfusions and a infusion of white blood cells I survived and returned home.

My General Practitioner, who’s usually out of the loop about my health anyway, did manage to comment after seeing the hospital file, “You would have died if you didn’t get to the hospital when you did.”

Interestingly, at least to me, I had earlier that week received a visitation from my father’s father, long gone now but whose last breaths I witnessed. I was there in his modest room again, there in New Brunswick, listening to his slow rattling.  He seemed so present in this visitation. This grim reminder of my own mortality. Within the week there I was in the parlour of the dying.

The most disappointing discovery in that room of imminent death was the behavior of my neighboring bedridden fellows. They were worse than brat-like: ignoble, frightened, faithless and hopelessly inconsiderate. So much for whatever theology they misspent their lives on. Boy Scouts are better prepared to light a match. All these guys could manage was to darken my day and keep me awake at night.

If, as Hindus believe, we become in our next life that thing we think about last in this life, I shudder to imagine what they are crawling about like now.

I followed up all this attention from specialists with a visit to my general practitioner. He seemed alarmed and I couldn’t help sense that he didn’t feel adequate to the task of being my caregiver. Then it dawned on me he never really was; more of a pharmaceutical delivery agent operating revolving doors. This suspicion was pretty much borne out when I called for a quick telephone consult (thirty seconds please?) to sort out a question re my prescriptions. After I called over a week pleading with his secretary/traffic manager to get him on the line, he won out by not returning my call, forcing me to visit so he could hear that precious chah-ching.

I’m going to include him in my Last Will once I’ve googled what is an appropriate gift for a pig in a sty.

*   *   *

VANCOUVERISMS

Some American outfits (Conde Nast mag etc) recently selected and congratulated Vancouver for being North America’s most ‘liveable’ city.  Most resistant. Most this-and-that. And now a buzz word Vancouverism is making the rounds of urban plights everywhere.

Allow me to introduce my own Vancouverisms – O.K? Ready?

THE ROADWAYS

Drivers throughout this beautiful gem of a city choose to gun their way through, clipping at pedestrians (offering involuntary pedicures), running red lights even in Go Slower districts like the downtown eastside; honking horns and flipping birds indulging their rage at every opportunity.

Very disappointingly the vast majority of these drivers are oriental Asians (according to my daily head count). If they’re importing the driving habits of Hong Kong or whichever other ditzed out, mean-spirited war zone, maybe they should take a refresher course in where they’ve landed. Traditional Canadians are polite, sometimes even meek and obsequious but overall just harmless and civil. Stop targeting us. Should we examine the ethnic stats of whoever is generating this new wave of hit and runs? Might that examination be telling?

It’s always gratifying for me to see the speedsters held up at the next light while I stroll past them from that corner where they almost clipped me.

This Vancouverism will find its genesis in the wild-eyed and underplanned promoting of ‘multiculturalism' – opening of the Pacific Gate and all being “good for the economy.”

THE BUS DRIVERS

Witnessed!: Four runners in a downpour charging to a bus stop out in Port Coquitlam on a highway. They were easily seen by the driver well in advance of the stop. They arrived on time to slap the back of that bus to alert the driver. The driver ignored them and pulled away, leaving them to get soaked for a half an hour on that unprotected stretch of highway. I phoned to register my complaint and heard a recording advising me to write a letter. I did and heard nothing back – not even an offer to reimburse my bus fare. Go Translink Go! (Keep going and going and going, then disappear with your heartless Translink cops.)

Other patrons at bus stops being driven right by. Bus was not loaded. Lots of room. Patrons got bus-splashed.

Drivers threatening broke welfare recipient trying to get to his hospital: “I’ve got your picture on record now!”

Barrelling through red lights (witnessed on many occasions).

THE POLICE

Too often police can be witnessed bullying the mentally ill or addicted on Hastings Street. Sneering.

The police are charged with our protection and the enforcement of the law. They have chosen not to enforce the law when it comes to drug dealing one block away from their headquarters in Vancouver. They blame that (from what I can surmise) on the system which permits these poison peddlers to get back on the street the next day, including the illegal immigrants. Their job of enforcement does not entitle them to make these kinds of decisions that find them turning a blind eye to the crack trade downtown. Let the system work itself out – but they have an enforcement job to do. Citizens want their sidewalks back – not to be obstructed and bullied by cretins barking “Rock, powder, down.”

By cutting off the dope solicitors, they will have made a significant negative impact on the gang leaders who control the traffic of these unearthly drugs. How would the cop feel if it was his 14 year old daughter who was becoming the crackhead?

Witnessed!: Driver standing next to his parked vehicle waiting on driver of other vehicle to swap insurance papers re teensie wrinkle-fender while parking. No visible damage whatsoever. When the two female cops show up in a screeching blaze (thanks to some rat), they breathalyzed the standing-by ex-driver, impounded his vehicle (which he relied on for his work) and handed him a “regulatory prohibition” (new vague law) preventing him from driving for three months and ultimately costing him his job and $7,000. Next time the gals are not getting enough of each other, maybe they can pick on some real criminals – like the gang members selling all that crack a block away. No amount of their cackling can hide their ineptitude (they screwed up the ticket twice) and poor attitude. 20 years ago, a male cop would have said, “Go home, fella. Leave the car here. Sleep it off.”

As to all the accusations of police brutality, I have personally witnessed none of this aberrant behavior but given these overkill attitudes expressed when dealing with extremely minor cases, and their collective sheepishness to take on the gangs, I suppose it wouldn’t take much of a stretch to suggest that they have some unresolved issues to work out, and sometimes under the cover of darkness in alleyways.

Check out their new choice of car design. And the design they’re fazing out. Looks like Darth Vader rolls victorious over Bambi. 

This new design should accompany their new recruitment ad for which I happily submit the following text: Bullies Wanted. Wear a dark uniform with an array of weaponry. Be licensed to kill. Leering and gum-chewing allowed on duty. Camaraderie over drunken pool games in public bars encouraged. No high school diploma necessary. 

Depicted above: Darth Vader aka ThugMobile

For possible daily quenching of bloodthirtsiness, apply today. Get to put siren on hood! (No graduates from Sensitivity Training Programs Need Apply.) 
                                                         Below: Bambi

THE VANCOUVER STOCK EXCHANGE

(Closed due to corruption. Need anyone say more? Well, O.K. go ahead and ask the pump-and-dumpers; and maybe check in with Nelson Skalbania, Murray Pezim and cronies.)

PRACTICES OF NEW CANADIANS

The port trucker strike had an interesting genesis. The New Canadians (this time mostly East Indians) undercut the traditional drivers so seriously that these drivers just quit in disgust. These New Canadians went on strike to force new wages – those same wages to which they undercut themselves, in order to shaft the traditional drivers. To our shame, they won some points after capitulation by the feds.

CONDO KINGS AND THE HOMELESS: Other New Canadians who bought their citizenships through the now defunct federal program of selling Canadian citizenship to the rich for an amount which of course was “good for the economy.”  Well the birdies have come home to roost, except not to live in all these Condo investments. These architecturally sterile shrines remain empty shells not generating one iota of social activity: grocery shopping, community centre memberships, coffee shop chatterbugging etc in the respective neighborhoods while these glassy monoliths loom over the blankets of the homeless sleeping on heat grates below.

Job placement activity is alive and well for Filipinos. Just ask the young Canadians who have left resumes at fast food restaurants lately. Coming to a Mac near you: MacFlips. Now MacDonalds restaurants and Yes, even, Yegads! that bastion of Canadiana - Tim Horton's - are being investigated nation-wide for possibly abusing the foreign worker program. Wave a flag for Filipinos forever becoming New Canadians.

So a pile of bureaucrats (including Vancouverites) huddled together for a year, spent 1.2 million dollars to try to figure out how to resolve the homeless problem. By gawd! Eureka! They found the answer. Provide the homeless a home. Gosh, jolly! Money well spent.

Before I upchuck I thought I’d lighten this load with a song:

SIDEWALKING

Carts of empty cans pushed along

By wrinkled faces and broken hands

In this place of opportunity

For people of distant lands.

Bicyclists and roller-skaters blow past

Men in walkers blaming life for their latest infirmities,

Scooters, hooters and tooters race by the last,

Of old wrinkled ladies of the little hobbled knees.

Long-leashed poodles whose masters declare

Clear the road! Clear the road!

Don’t for one second you dare, you dare

To think for you I care, care , care.

Not for one second do I care, do I care,

More for you than my poodle dear, my poodle dear.

Lessons in sidewalking

No charges, no charge

To avoid skateboarders from behind looming large,

And everyone else freewheeling to the max,

Forcing the elderly to be watching their backs, watching their backs.

Knots of students studying English,

Hog the whole walk, the whole walk,

While they incessantly smoke and talk, talk, talk,

In Mandarin, Korean, Cantonese and Peckanese,

Talk, talk, talk, blocking the walk, and wheeze wheeze wheeze.

Lessons in sidewalking

No charges, no charge

To avoid skateboarders from behind looming large,

And everyone else freewheeling to the max,

For lessons in sidewalking, make tracks, make tracks.

Feel better? Good. Because now we have to back to shoveling. One must shovel first before one can plant the seed.

Underlying attitudes in Vancouver expose broken moral compasses. To wit: plush neighborhoods organizing petitions to keep half-way houses out of their area. Ye gods! Our property values will plummet! (Not.) 

The stuff of Stanley Cup Rioters still brewing in Surrey and Burnaby. When they get really bored, they come downtown for a round of gaybashing.

Vancouver City is the landlord of many bug-infested, unhealthy living environments. Where are the provincial health inspectors? Try visiting the foot long rats after 2 a.m. any time. The bedbugs and cockroaches are generously non-classist. They’ll infest the west side as soon as the east side. No petitions will help. The new development plans for the downtown eastside refer to providing much more ‘social housing’ – which has nothing to do with what a welfare recipient can afford.  And the slum landlords raise their rents as soon as the welfare pittance is raised. These are the same landlords who cash an addict's cheque (who doesn’t live there) and takes 35 – 40% of that cheques for the ‘service.’

For a stroll through the most pathetically unhappy Chinatown in North America, find Pender Street. Service with a scowl now paying out negative dividends. Chinatown Business associations are appearing at City Hall, spare-changing.  

Waiters and waitresses complain often about poor tipping in Vancouver. What about the waitress (Witnessed!) at the Gastown pub who twice tried to shortchange me in two servings (after catching sight of my minor roll of 50’s). The manager took her side. Both times. Or the waitress who got me barred for complaining within her earshot about how seriously bad her service was. The manager took her side and barred me for years – waiting for an apology from me. They’re still waiting. It’s that pool-playing bar in the Denman Hotel. I only tip when the service merits a tip.

Our two centrally located hospitals are overcrowded and one, St Paul's, is made of old red brick; the kind of brick structure that Big Q’s would just luv to rock and roll.  In any morally wounded environment, social panic is always just under the surface of anxiety and fear. When there was a clean water warning instructing the Vancouver populace to boil its drinking water, west enders (for example) almost trampled each other in-store as they stampeded for kegs of water on sale. All those nicely dressed, creased and sophisticated west enders showing their true colours. I wonder how the petition signers of the west side managed their behavior? Can't wait to play shutterbug during the Big Q.

Millions and millions were spent in the land of the homeless on studying the impact of making our beer, wine and spirits more accessible. After years of navel-gazing and head-crunching they approved a new strategy. Resulting in the opening of two new outlets in all of Vancouver. 

But throughout all this turmoil, one thing remained steadfast and true – the paychecks made out to all those bureaucrats who are likely of the same cloth as the ones connected to the federal government who are charged with dispensing funds to natives and veterans and whose bureaucratic bill in doing so usually tops the amount intended for the original dispersal

So, to top off my little hit list of Vancouverisms, suffice to say that while we all take credit for being members of a pretty city, we each of us must carry that truthiness card in our wallets, you know the one that reads:  The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. That's one for your prayer beads. 

Resolutions to be posted soon.

And, by the way: For a real gusher of obsequiousness, see host of http://wn.com/welcome_to_vancouver__the_most_livable_city_in_the_world!

Merry Hypocrites

So there was this young married couple with child in tow visiting Vancouver at Christmas. Infant child became seriously ill. Young couple arrived at the Emergency ward at St Paul’s Hospital. Mother, back at home in the B.C. interior, discovered to her dismay the circumstance of her son and daughter-in-law and grandchild. The parents were spending Christmas Eve in the emergency ward waiting on news of their infant. Mother, poverty stricken, made every possible effort phoning restaurateurs, to get her family a pizza or dinner delivered to them. All she got was NO. Too busy.  

I would be very interested to publish the names of every restaurant owner who snubbed her. Merry Christmas you pricks.

The Movement of a Righteous Teacher

He didn’t talk or yawp. 

He spoke. 

His words created Life. 


He didn’t fumble about. 

He walked with grace as he was Grace. 

He didn’t fret with his hands.

His animated fingers were instruments of Creation. 


He didn’t giggle.

He laughed with abandon and utmost Joy.


He didn’t hesitate.

He behaved with Continuity.


He didn’t creep up on his environment.

He was the Holy environment, all of it.


He didn’t compete in conversation.

He attempted to share his secrets for all to know his Bliss. 


He didn’t squirm in fear.

He was Love which vanquishes fear.


He didn’t wince at a surprising sound.

He was the trumpet of all sounds.


He wasn’t bedazzled by the stars and the heavens.

He was their mystic turning and their music.


He didn’t meander aimlessly.

His every footfall a stamp of Beauty,

Unearthing ragged mountains, and provoking windstorms.


He didn’t dwell on the mundane.

His eyes pierced the veils of Mystery and enchanted more.


He did weep privately.

For His children deaf and blind,

Remained indifferent to His majesty.