NEVER LONELY

I live alone. No pets. Don’t enjoy TV much. Don’t eat out. Cook alone. Eat alone. I walk alone. I sleep alone. I am the victim of ageism. Sometimes slander. And have been assaulted and am occasionally threatened.
I am not afraid. And I am not lonely.
When I encounter a person, a stranger, I make a point of saying something gentlemanly like “Good morning. How are you today?” and I sound like I mean it; because I do. I do care about how they are today. When I find a reason to expand on the one-liner and perhaps mention the weather as being pleasant or find some other relevant anecdotal comment to include, I watch their reaction with extreme care and I find in their hint of a smile, which I aim and look for, a contentment. I hear in their voice all of their humanity and sometimes it seems I notice an ancestral presence too. I can usually tell them them if they’re European, Irish, Brit or American and they find that charming. Sometimes, when I'm on my game, I surmise that they are a parent and tell them how many children they have and which genders (has to do with micro-observation, their breathing etc.). And usually, within a minute or shorter, I can find something humorous to add. And then there in their face I see the handwriting of God. It is in this brief exchange that I am filled. The magnificence of their humanity has touched me. I have been, as it were, topped off. 
Good to go.

THREE TELLING HOURS

The SWAT team in Orlando arrived and rather than taking immediate action to gain ingress to the nightclub where murder was in progress took positions outside the club and waited. For three hours. They waited and listened to the gunfire for three hours until an armoured vehicle was finally dispatched to go in through a wall. By then 50 people had been slaughtered. How many of them had been killed after the SWAT team had arrived and proceeded to do nothing?  What explains why they waited? Could they not have used equipment to locate the shooter and then gain ingress at a point where they would have been safe?

This isn’t the first time this lethargic sort of response has been the order of the day while mass murdering was going on.

It may not be politically correct to call it this way but this writer sees cowardice. And the lack of action could be argued to be criminally negligent. These members of this elite fighting group need to take their own pulse, and come alive. We have evidence of men acting frightened to the point of immobilization at the scene of a horrendous crime being undertaken by one gunman. One. Where were the stun grenades? Sleeping gas? Snipers? Anybody doing anything for three hours?

The American SWAT team has become the SQUAT team.

Gun Crazed Consequences

The Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando is the latest scene of mass murder in the U.S. Fifty people no longer have a pulse and that is the direct consequence of a gun-crazed culture. 

The Yanks will never get it. Their movies (with the actors' complicity); their TV and video games; their whole culture is driven by gunplay. The Second Amendment ('Right to bear arms') was written  when horse thieves were hung.  Who needs an assault rifle (700 rounds a minute) today, in a land of the free?  Not even the bobbies in Britain are armed with lethal weapons and the murder count there is almost non-existent.  

All this grieving and day after condolence-giving is meaningless. Amend that Amendment and make it illegal to own assault rifles and make it extremely difficult to even own a gun. 

Create theme parks where people can go and use rifles and guns under controlled circumstances. 

Institutions like Canon cameras and Nikon could lead a campaign against the NRA to eliminate trophy hunting and replace that weird 'sport' with trophy photography. Assist the gun retailers with switching over to camera and video equipment sales. Make movies instead of killing living beings. 

There are ways to satisfy this gun-crazed desire. 

But as long as our movies and video games glorify killing with guns, and the guns are at hand, we're all victims-in-waiting. 

Leadership Please

Dear Editor:

WITH LEADERSHIP ANSWERS ARE SIMPLE

As to our housing ‘crisis’ in Vancouver, may I suggest a simple resolution? Track where the money came from to purchase these homes and if the purchase funds are illicitly gotten as in Chinese criminals laundering their funds through third cousins etc and Hells’ Angels profiteering  in real estate from their dope-dealing activity then expropriate all those properties backdating 20 years and put them back on the market for legitimate immigrants and the at-risk-of-extinction Canadian Vancouverites.

Vacant homes would no longer dot our landscape and our neighbourhoods would become alive (and healthy) again.

Taking a stand against money laundering requires one little element in play: Leadership.

Curiouser and Curiouser

When completing a book manuscript I feel a tremendous sense of gratification on several levels. That I finished it at all. That it is a creative completion. That it is an offering made with thoughtfulness to entertain and educate the reader. That it required discipline. That it will read well for generations and that it is a statement of the times and of my perspective being offered with some humility to contribute to the pool of knowledge by which we may guide our lives to new dimensions of happiness and continuity of joy. 

Then the response. Nothing. My neighbours haven’t read The Dead Sea Revelation or Raising a Banner on a Path of Heart. Included in this non-readership,  my relatives. Two of my neighbours actually returned the Banner book, unread. The library claims of the two Dead Sea books, one was stolen; and one was damaged but they haven’t reordered.

My neighbours and acquaintances like to introduce me as a famous author – or at least an author – but that’s it. No readers.

I explore and write about human potential. And the absence of curiosity about my work is telling its own tale.

I happen to believe I am now writing from the dark side of the Doomsday Clock given that we as a species are facing the very real possibility of annihilating ourselves as we continue to strike an imbalance thanks to the wealth-addicted one-percenters. I wrote Leonardo DiCaprio, head of a New York based ecological foundation and recently winner of an Academy Award with a suggestion we establish a dialogue to help his foundation become much more effective. After some string-pulling to get the letter into this celebrity’s hands, no response.

This across-the-board disinterest is getting curiouser and curiouser. In a depressing way. For more than ten years I have been e-zining this English Bay Banner and there have been almost no comments posted. 

Soon enough I won’t exist. And my words having been dismissed before being read will wilt away.  And people will go on reading the fashionista and foodie columns in the ad rags masking themselves as newspapers and live(?) as usual scratching away in darkness at the interior wall of their cave of fear. 

When our globe is finally exhausted and collapsing, the last of the whales beaching themselves and the bumblebees having become extinct, people will still be texting, looking at fashionista pages in our puerile papers, becoming foodies and laundering their money. And those guilty one percenters will have a tremble in their step as they make their last trek to the bank.

Barber shops in Vancouver are starting to look quite spiffy, recalling the shops of yesteryear. This one, The 18th Amendment, is located on Cordova Street in Gastown.

The Adventures of an Urban Wizard will be released to the reading public this month of February, 2016. A public reading by Harry Langen at the Vancouver Central Library on February 20th at 2 pm. will present this work.

Dear Mr DiCaprio:

I am writing to you today from the dark side of the Doomsday Clock.

Is it too late? Can all we do now is just mitigate the inevitable upheaval we legitimately expect: this annihilation of innumerable species and the irreversible damage – already underway – to our planet. Our place in the universe is now tenuous at best.

I believe I have ideas which may go directly to resolving this dilemma of global proportions.

As a professional writer and newspaper publisher since 1978, I have witnessed with profound discontent the downward swing of civilization and there it is having proceeded from my generation and now lurking at my doorstep.

Yes, we can save this earth. There is one word which, with the leadership of enlightened individuals, can awaken people to having hope again. We can enjoy enthusiasm again; and even innocence if we could but implement this word. If we can just drive this peg in.  

This letter is not intended as a tease from some hair-brained egomaniac but a query really as to whether you would enjoy a dialogue with a man of conscience who is enduring daily the misfiring of the media with  distractions to which the programmers are witheringly wed. Creating conflict and grief and relentlessly exposing young minds to this crude display in their movies, TV shows and throughout the print industry is precisely not what the doctor is ordering. We are as a people being betrayed and action now needs to be taken.

The resolution(s) I have in mind involve big ideas and in the working of them, courage. But those few righteous leaders among us may be given a wider audience crammed with people hungry for information of a nature which will make them feel useful and allow them to enjoy – with continuity – participating with Creation. Let’s satisfy their beseeching; and enjoy the thrill of that: meaningful action.

If interested, get back to me.  

WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP?

Letter posted to Globe and Mail

Dear Editor:

Waving the French flag. Describing the acts as “barbarism” and “outrageous” and declaring “solidarity.” Blah blah blah. Lip service at this point is simply cowardice. The civilized nations of the world are late. Had they declared war a year ago there would very likely have never been such a crisis of refugees washing up on beaches with families cramming themselves at border towns throughout Europe etc.etc. 

Civilized countries need to declare war simultaneously against the membership of these extremists so no one country can be singled out for retaliation and put so many boots on the ground that the jihadists would be overwhelmed and obliterated, town to town. Stop dithering! Where’s the leadership? Where’s the global backbone? Why do we have a military?

A RECIPE FOR PERFECTION

He was awakened by the musical jingle of his telephone and after patiently nodding to his mother-in-law’s instructions, he placed the receiver down, blanching at the thought of doing her troublesome will. It was time to shake a leg so he stripped for his shower and put the memory of that shrill voice on his back burner. The warm water cascading down his back and legs, across his chest and through his hair had the desired effect - deglazing him of the week’s trivial worries. It was easier now to contend with his tribulations retiring them, taking them as importantly as grains of salt. He enjoyed a dollop of a warm, chocolate pastry downing it with his fresh-brewed ‘ethical’ coffee. He remembered why he first bought it: he was searing with anger at the treatment of the labourers by multinational companies soaked in their own greed. His was a minor contribution but it helped restrike his moral compass; as did practising as he was wont recently at resisting all temptations, learning to covet nothing and desire little. It was an awakening of its own sort: realizing he could actually be free of anxieties and fretfulness related to these illusions of joy.
   This was his day off and he resolved to enjoy a walk alone in the  quiet park before joining his wife for lunch. Lunch with his lover was all the luxury he would indulge today and later as he strolled under the canopy of autumn leaves he was to experience a peacefulness and a kind of tactile pleasure quite privately, as though the Creator had written this day his name only. And he saw something else that afternoon before lunch that inspired him. In all of this natural upheaval given continuously by an intelligent and loving force for naught but his edification and enjoyment, that it behooved the aware man to tend this garden he called earth. It wasn’t enough to be a gentleman. Well-mannered and considerate. Not anymore.
   Every living thing in the park that day, the flocks of birds and even their songs, were beseeching; the myriad, multi-coloured leaves; the squirrels and the swans in the small lagoon all cried out for his protection. This he knew he could not retire to the  convenience of a back burner. This brew he would let boil.
   It was necessary now, incumbent upon his humanity, to reverse the hands of the doomsday clock and herald a new age of an earth at peace. Though he was approaching his senior years he knew this challenge belonged to him now; to defy the global rapists, the wealth-addicted.
   And it became obvious to him that once a man knows that which is right then that man is called upon to conduct himself righteously. Even if this meant a radical departure from his cozy lifestyle, an abandoning of the mundane. And now, as he was making his way to lunch, he was enjoying a new aroma, the scent of a meaningful departure from the listless. And the profound pleasure he was experiencing was affirming him; every aspect of creation was assuring him that he indeed was on the verge of knowing a recipe for his
perfection.  

Salvaging the Soul of Gastown

Can't Go Wrong with this man's music. Go brother, go!

Hey folks! Guess what? Steam clocks don't talk. Boo hoo. So no matter how many pictures you take of the quirky little machine which pretends to run on steam, you will hear nothing from it that can deliver to you the one simple message: Where is the soul of Gastown?

James singing and playing hauntingly beautifully.

Dale, whose passion and note perfect play, will stop any thoughtful listener.

That answer can only be found in having conversation with those human beings (my cultural heroes) who almost every day earn their keep entertaining you with their songs, their voices, their guitar picking, their drumming and their passionate commitment to music. Here is a just a sample of some of them at work, for you.


So next time you're strolling in Gastown and browsing at the T Shirt and trinket shops, high end restaurants of dubious service and food, why not express your own humanity, make a new acquaintance and perhaps appreciate the real soul of Gastown, the one that you will find in the concerted efforts of these fine people.

His hands whirl about the skins of his drums as he raises money not only for himself but for young drum students who can't afford to buy their own instruments. His motto: More drums. Less guns.

Landon, Bongo Drummer of PEI and Saltspring Island, taking a break to exercise his dog at Andy Livingston Park.

Most Capable Artist and Happy Conversationalist

Native artisans, a happy crew at the lemonade stand; artist; and the Fertile Artists Post card duet.

The Other Half of Fertile Graphics

Fertile Graphics ebullient saleslady and artist

Happy Lemonade Stand  (reminds me of my little stand!)

Native Artisan

Mathew Lennox

Just trying to get home...

Wild Cat Gal

Postcard cover image of Harry Jerome furnished by Fertile Graphics. 

Chameleon

Upon arising, colours of my nightmare flee and dissipate to paleness.

Defeated.

Upon my first walk in the late spring that billowed morning, a flush of pink begins to bloom on my cheeks.

Upon my first conversation, contours of empathy begin their sketch outlining the revisiting of pleasure.  Coral-coloured tongues singing so pure.   

Upon my first eruption of laughter, all the hues of humanity race across my countenance and erase those etchings on the dank enclosure of my cave of fear. Its walls asunder.

Away! Away I push the foreboding thunder. I am alive, alive changing colours.

The Lightning Probes

The lightning is my brush and my ink-stained quill;

Peering and probing.

Throwing scarlet daubs across a pale-faced sky.

All reddening now this trembling canopy

By the fierce voice of a misfired strike.

By happenstance the lightning has pierced the vent,

unlocking the vault,

Where the colours of time have been in store.

All imbued now with that rich array of hues and dashes, monstrous clouds crashing;

Standing amidst I, newly attired, at last festooned with violet textures;

This deliberate blooming, create wild weaves ripped across my torso.

Standing there now in concert with the strikes of light, thrown by the mortal-minding hands of gods, all having lit the grey fuse.

Giving rise to the ghostly chariots delivering the death-carrying hues,

One more day. One more I insist to chase away the phantoms, away by will;

Not one more sunrise will I lose. 

The Litter Issue

I’m picking up litter to keep our streets clean. 
I work for your donations. Thank you!

Q for Mayor:
Why doesn't the city offer $2.00 a bag full of litter per carrier? Keep the fussy unions and bureaucrats away from this resolution, PLEASE!

Witnessed at MacLean Park

At Gore and Pender,

I witnessed about 12 adolescents practising their Tai Kwon Do poses while the litter in front of their school was left unattended. What happened to their teacher's sense of community? Couldn't those kids practice their Captain Kung Fu routines while raking the loads of litter right in front of them? Boy, have we got our values on backwards here?

The Right Idea

This man has the right idea.

Vancouver City and the B. C. Province and all their unions and attendant bureaucrats can't manage to pick up litter. But Todd can. He works for all of us; picking up after us. He works for your donation.

Then we could all be laughin'.