Agendocide

Agendocide: This is when an entire population of healthy goals and planning and diarizing gets gunned down by a lazy slob - or by someone who is hampered by serious medical and mobility issues but who is never entirely sure if they might actually secretly just be a lazy slob.

This one is celebrating Agendocide Day with a pretty serious bout of productivity:

I brushed my teeth today, spent some time outside, had a coffee, engaged in numerous phone calls in response to urgent affairs in Grampa Munster's corner (more on that later), spoke to a Health Network to clear up some medical needs and schedule an occupational therapist assessment, worked on an important video (more on that later) and did a little planning with a great pal with regards to April Camp Nano and April A-to-Z blogging.

And yeah: welcome to A-to-Z blogging! I'm gonna be busy plopping posts on this page six days a week. Sorry about your luck.

Question A: What non-traditional ANIMAL might you like as a pet?

Hmmm... honestly, a Bengal tiger because I could make him a mascot of the lacrosse team. I think he'd help draw a pretty good crowd. And hopefully not eat them.

Untouchables

Hey hey… U guessed it. It’s U-day, and the fine upstanding, unsinkable, upbeat, uncensored (and unbalanced of late due to foot injury - oh and on that note, ulcerated and under-utilized) Urban Bard (a.k.a. the Flaming Liberal) has unleashed this upon us:

Restorative Justice

I know. I know. Only one U in there and it’s not even at the beginning. Also not much of a challenge since restorative justice is so ubiquitous in my life. But here’s a brief story which I think says something important:

Soul Man and I addressed a small class at Redeemer University. Let’s face it, it was his presentation and I was little more than his driver. On the trip there it occurred to me that I might be asked why it is I do what I do; volunteer my time with such pariahs of the community; such monsters. I gave it some brief thought and found no immediate answer and was distracted by something else.

After the presentation I was asked that very question, and by a particular girl who had been coming across as being perhaps less than comfortable with our perspectives. It was phrased “Why would you want to work with these people?”

The irony occurred to me immediately. This was Redeemer; as in Christ the Redeemer. Was redemption really a foreign concept here?

This may seem strange, but working in this community, in order to keep the greater community safe for children (for that IS the prime factor here) has not felt like the morbid chore that many people seem to assume. It in fact feels like a privilege!

In an environment that is draped in shadows of victimhood and flawed justice and brokenness and where great barriers loom against healing and trust and happiness and normal relationships and normal pursuits and mental well-being, where one of the nations largest institution flounders in vain attempts at insight and justice… where we celebrate each small victory with profound lovingness and where even in the rarer moments of failure and in the very rare moments of tragedy, all hands report on deck and immediately care for one another; and where the lines between offenders and volunteers have been made irrelevant…

… in a place where every day, humanity has all the cards stacked against it, it is a privilege to find in this place that somehow or another, every day, humanity wins.

There, Here & Everywhere

Hey hey, it’s T-day, ready or not. I am tired and trippy and trapped on the night shift, to be followed by much sleep I pray, so there is no putting this off. I will type a tiny tumble of text and let you get on with your day!

Today’s topic is thrown to us by the tidy, talented, talkative, tasteful, tactful and tactical; the tireless, tenacious, trustworthy and true, and a tad tubby; the thorough-thinking Thoughtful Educator, and it is:

Turtles

With tin can in hand I attended Poetry Corner. Such a fine variety of creative projects were shared, and then my turn: I held the orange-striped tin before me.

“I am going to creatively eat this entire box of turtles,” I said. The crowd seemed nonplussed. My god I think they believe me.

“Just kidding.” I popped off the lid and revealed 192 colorful cards inside; no chocolate caramel pecan funny-business. I explained the game I had invented. Here There & Everywhere it’s called. And there is a card for every Beatles song on every Beatles studio album.

Some of the cards are special: hero, place or widget cards, which reflect the nature of those special song titles. The hero cards have unique special privileges: Mean Mr. Mustard, Lovely Rita, Eleanor Rigby and Polythene Pam for instance. The widget cards have special powers: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer for instance. And the place cards (how lucky that the numbers of total cards and of place cards worked out so perfect) randomly placed, form the diamond-shaped array on which all other cards are stacked, in essence forming the game board.

Its a bit like the game of Concentration where you are turning up cards looking for the ones you want, but you win by collecting all the cards (songs) which complete one of their albums.

There are a few interesting parameters but that’s the gist of it. I would just like to find a way to make the game conclude a bit faster without changing its nature too much. The group was actually useful in making a few suggestions which I have written down for later perusal. I just might Get By With a Little Help From My Friends…

No leavesies!

Halden is a 75 acre complex consisting of many buildings. It opened in 2010 and received the Arnstein Arneberg Award for its interior design. It facilitates around 250 guests.

Each 110 square foot living unit contains a private bathroom, TV, desk, mini-fridge and a tall window for plenty of natural light.

There are more than a dozen common areas each with fully-equipped kitchen, dining area, couches and a video game system.

The site also offers such amenities as sports and gym facilities, jogging trails, a library (books, films and music), chapel, English lessons and other education programs, counselling and even a music studio with broadcast functions.

There is also a fully-featured chalet guesthouse where a tenant can entertain their entire family for a 24-hour visit.

Staff areas are small and spartan because staff spend most of their time forming a community with the residents. It’s like a small village with a balanced focus on living, working and recreation.

Hmm... Are you wondering if this might be… the world’s most liberal prison or something! Well, I assure you there are no weapons here. No watchtowers, barbed wire or electric fences, and the only surveillance cameras are outdoors.

There is however a very big wall around the place and guests are confined to their rooms at certain hours.

Yes, it is a prison, widely considered the most liberal. It’s in Norway, and it houses inmates of the most serious and dangerous kind as well as a bevy of drug offenders. And yes Norway is in Scandinavia, that magical land where they are always decades ahead of the rest of the messed-up world in terms of social intelligence.

I was first exposed to Halden Prison in a Michael Moore film. It has the feel of a Canadian half-way house (I have visited such places in volunteer roles), as if the convicted have skipped prison and gone straight to a parole circumstance but without unescorted leave privileges. Halden Prison shocks a lot of people because a lot of people really have little clue how to think critically, quite frankly. Some people assume that they are somehow innately superior to convicted criminals as opposed to privileged benefactors of advantageous environment, circumstance and/or mental health. And some people assume that criminals deserve all the punishment they can get without realizing quite how bad they actually have it or how badly it aggravates and harms society when we bend more toward revenge as opposed to rehabilitation. The revenge model, rarely so determinedly celebrated than in the United states of America where incarceration has become a self-propelling Big Fucking Profitable Business, creates such a chasm between the convicted and the non-convicted and such barriers to re-normalization, that the so-called “released” have almost no choice but to seek the aid of their criminal associates whom the justice system has so eagerly afforded them, thus increasing crime rates.

But my god, how dreary I am of explaining this shit. I once worked in a Community Corrections Centre (a step between prison and half-way houses) and I can absolutely assure you that a slight majority of guards at this particular shit-hole were far more despicable human scum than most of the tenants. I would sometimes stare at certain coworkers in awe thinking I can’t believe you’re on this side of the glass.

To be fair there were some most-excellent human beings among the guards as well, and they have remained good friends.

The last time I checked: In a list of 223 nations Canada ranked around 85th best in terms of incarceration rate at around .107%. That’s about 32,000 inmates. Nothing to celebrate.

At all.

I think the nation of Liechtenstein had two at the time. Two whole inmates! I mean, it’s a tiny nation, sure. But two! Perhaps they’re simply the nicest people ever or maybe all their convicts are quietly murdered after a couple nights. I don’t know.

India was ranked about 12th best with around .03%

Norway, you ask? Around 30th best at .06%

The USA ranks a distant dead last with a staggering .655% or more than two million inmates. I’m pretty sure they are going about things the Wrongest Way Possible.

I saw how badly the Community Corrections Centre residents were treated in subtle terms; the environment, the policies, the vampiric management style (not so much the way they were spoken to in normal moments necessarily) and I started to understand how challenging it was for convicts to embrace rehabilitation efforts with sincerity. I could see how easy it would be to fall back on the criminal community for support; the community which gave them more respect quite frankly. The community which was pushed together by society’s determination to marginalize them. When I saw this I knew I had to volunteer. I knew how much better our helping hands had to be, than the alternative, in order to win them over to our side, and to the long hard road to attain a normalized life again despite all the barriers, many of them permanent.

A co-volunteer (and self-starting organizer) in this community, who once started out a brief inmate himself for frankly preposterous reasons, is one of my favourite people ever. I call him the Noble Punster. His life is now deeply dedicated to helping ex-convicts reach their potential in every way possible including spiritually, where applicable.

I had hardly known him on the occasion he asked me what I needed in order to get out of the very difficult circumstances life had squeezed me into at the time.

“Honestly,” I said. “I need seven hundred dollars for car repairs. I don’t know where I can get it.”

He wrote me the cheque on the spot, and was eternally gracious while it took me a year and a half to pay it off.

And today, for N day he requested:

Norwegian prisons

False start: Day 1

Here’s a little suggestion for the few of you who still come peeking around here now and then: If you’re home from work now or otherwise diminished from the COVID19 business, keep a little isolation diary. It’s a healthy pursuit for different reasons, and a chance it will help you learn from the experience by facilitating reflection. Solitude is critical to real learning.

The virus has stormed into my life like Ganesh and bulldozed nearly everything in sight:

My security shifts
Circle meetings
Dismas gatherings
“Poetry Corner”
Write-Ins
Movie Club
Regular visits with Gramps and the Flaming Liberal
“Tigers” training camp
Scheduling and preparation of video shoots and Trivia Night fund-raisers
Sponsorship endeavors
Family gatherings
A paycheque...

Oddly my cell phone has been simultaneously knocked out of commission which prohibits still other activities!

It has not bulldozed:

Work on the kids easy-reader storybook.
Work on the Crazy Legs race horse novel
Blogs (I have another anonymous blog)
A ton of other writing and research projects
Work on Tigers web site, social media, articles, research etc.
Prep for April A-to-Z, Camp NaNo and Story-A-Day-In-May
Reading
A plethora of video pieces and board game projects
Bedroom restructuring
Sleep improvement project
Diet change
Exercise (no pools though)
Several other self-improvement endeavors…

Somehow it has forgotten to knock out Mindcrack and the youtubes. Day-one I did too much of these things. My only productivity was in correspondence and failed attempts to fix the cell-o-phone.

Perhaps it is up to me to manage the distractions and diversions and to make use of this golden opportunity to put some of my life back on the rails.

And I wonder… I dare to wonder… could solitary confinement be part of the answer that allows me to re-engage spiritually again; to value people again; to retreat from some of this contempt, back toward pity, back toward love. I know the wisdom of it. I have not forgotten.

Absence has made the heart grow fonder before.

L is for Lights

Grandpa Munster called me on my new cell-o-phone that my new employer made me accept. I admit it is a convenience at times, though at a great cost, and often too much of a convenience.

He was looking at another bill; a phone bill from Koodo which was chock-full of extra penalty dollars because he was running behind. I have let him run his little financial picture into the ground again while I’ve been blind to his account details since getting the new laptop and losing some login codes including that for his bank account. Careless of me I know but at the time I thought things were under control.

“I don’t have enough money for this,” he said, and his voice became unstable as he tried to find his way through a jumble of words: Trillium, GST, Pin money…

“Okay well I’m at work but I’ll tell you what. I’ll call your bank and make an appointment for us. We’ll get your account back on my laptop and we’ll sort it all out... Gramps…? Gramps are you upset right now?”

“It’s going to be a terrible Christmas,” he choked out. I knew he was crying now.

“Hey hey! Listen up. I’ll make the appointment right now. We’ll get your finances all sorted out within a week. I’ll do another study like last time. We’ll find out where all your money goes and how to get it under control. And I’m gonna be free Christmas day. We’ll find something fun to do.”

My own family gathers on Boxing Day. My own finances are looking up. I can loan him funds short-term when necessary. He doesn’t even have to know about it. I’ll find a restaurant that’s open through the holidays. The house will give him one good turkey dinner - either Christmas day or eve. I’ll take him out for dinner on the other evening. I’ll figure out some modest gift for him. We’ll play some Crazy 8’s. And I’ll do some research with regards to the more spectacular Christmas lights displays. He likes that. We’ll take a tour.

D is for Defeat

I pick up Grandpa Munster and take him out for coffee. He seems to have given up shaving for good now. More significantly he has given up thinking that Detective Biff or the Faux Counsellor will ever let him graduate from his 810 supervision orders. He has come to peace with that, and the fact that he will never fight these renewals in court even though he can’t lose. No judge would ever support the ongoing renewal of these temporary orders under Gramps’ condition but that doesn’t matter. He is too intimidated to stand up to those who he views as his oppressors, and is afraid they will lie to get their way and that the judge will believe them and not he.

I am actually fine with this. I think it’s the best outcome. The orders do not get in the way of the ersatz lifestyle he is saddled with. It just means he will have to continue with the faux counselling sessions every week or two even though he finds it unpleasant and sometimes predatory.

It’s better than life behind bars, which at one time was a likely fate.

It’s good to finally put this behind us and move on.

A little crack

At Poetry Corner last night - okay it’s not called Poetry Corner but it’s a very friendly, fun and supportive monthly gathering where folks share their poetry and any other creative efforts. Okay: At "Poetry Corner" I shared my finished Red Herring game.

Ivan the Tolerable taught us a bit about the accordion and then on his own very snazzy one he wheezed out the Godfather theme and some other Italian ditty, much to the gleeful approval of Papa Italiano who then shared this little brain-buster:

that that is is that that is not is not that that is is not that that is not is that it it is  

This is supposedly a perfectly valid paragraph if you insert the correct punctuation. Most people take a few minutes to figure it out if at all!

Soul Man made some much-appreciated magic with a couple classic Spanish guitar pieces, Math Teacher shared her watercolours and a couple “passing” spectators were prompted to share their favourite travel story as a contribution.

Cradle Man was in rare form this night, rarely given to his almost-permanent compulsive stereotypic (rocking) motion. He sang entirely unique covers to a couple 80’s tunes in his favourite single tone and pitch and his very special fluctuating time signature! I personally love these joyful train wrecks!

The Native’s Wife managed to get us all on our feet to sing and dance a native song. I have no idea what it meant but hey, it was a new experience! I shall have to find out more about it.

The Lonely Lumberjack and his poetry were the impetus behind this creative tradition many years ago now and besides Soul Man, it’s most steady participant. And it was through Poetry Corner, which he himself invited me to, when he was a tenant, and myself a guard, at the local correction centre, that I became associated with this charitable community before eventually becoming a volunteer.

This night we learned that he had stayed home with illness. So someone dug out their speaker-phone-cell-o-phone-machine and we called him up as Soul Man strummed a flexible intro… and as soon as he answered, we launched into song:

When the night has come and the land is dark

And the moon is the only light we'll see

No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid

Just as long as you stand, stand by me...


I don't ever sing at these or other community events except on the rare occasion I present one of my own songs on my own guitar, but this night I made an exception and joined in. We sang it complete while through the phone we heard old Mr. Lumberjack whistling along with us!


Oh and if you want the answer to the riddle above, here it is:

That that is, is.

That that is not, is not.

That that is, is not that that is not.

Is that it?

It is.

It’s an exercise to illustrate the importance of ambiguity and punctuation.

At the close of the session Soul Man reported his conversation with the gruff, taciturn and oft-cantankerous Lonely Lumberjack who confessed that he was deeply touched by our musical sneak attack and even surrendered a tear in his eye!

Every once in a while a little crack appears and his little old heart emits a ray of light.

And now here's a special treat:

Together

I’m noticing, over the last few days, how increased mindfulness (or wakefulness etc.) doesn’t only avail wisdom but also the simplest intelligence. I have had many meetings and social engagements lately and have been a little more on the ball and have noticed how much clearer I see the relationship dynamics without the nigglings - the wisps - of pride and paranoia twisting my perception. All these relationships look so much more joyful, beautiful and worthwhile and full of possibility through detached observation.

The word detachment seems to scare people off though. I’m talking about perception that is without these false filters of need; dependency; expectation. I find this hard to describe. For me it comes through organic trust in the lessons I have learned, first-hand, about the illusions spun by instinctive mind. For me detachment has no negative connotations. It is not about lack of love, for instance. In fact it avails so much more love.

I’m sure that Tolle or Buddhist literature would describe a different path for finding this detachment; a path or paths which I seem to have forgotten precisely. I recall these readings too dimly at the moment. For me it came through the habit of creative solitude and a bottomless fascination for truth; or more accurately it turned out, the absence of truth and the forensic study of its displacement. It is why, in my more powerful state of former years, I was strong in leveraging influence; nudging people more toward creativity, before I began faltering and eventually withdrawing, more intentionally of late.

I am reminded the advantages of clarity when one is not so self-interested in the dynamics of relationships. It is enough that we are all alive, human and imperfect together, and taking on this great drama together, as witnesses to the universe, and to our own potential as a creature of harmony; both internal and collectively.

Merry Dismas

“Merry Dismas,” I said to the old-time-crook-turned-volunteer-over-the-years, as I arrived at the church. Dismas by the way, (we are told) was the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him.

Soon I was reminded of two of the core talents of this large motley crew of ex-cons and the parishioners and other weirdos who find the time and wherewithal to fall into their lives (or too often the facsimiles thereof) in the interest of community safety (in the interest of basic humanity is more like it): Which are… cooking and singing! The meal was perfect, tender and tantalizing and the notes, pitch and acoustics which followed, upstairs in the sanctuary were… damn fine. I closed my eyes, sealed my lips, ignored the lyrics for the most part and just.. savoured.

After all had filtered out except for Soul Man, the High-Flying Dutchman and myself, the Dutchman indulged himself with the grand piano. His home model is an upright. I relayed the sad state of my slow dysfunctional explorations into classical music and was rewarded with a lively and wickedly effective demonstration of the basic differences between Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Chopin, as I leaned over the bouncing strings and hammers, really feeling them and realizing that I really need to scrap these classical collections with their random moments and actually sink my teeth into one composer at a time. And from what I heard, I knew I had to go straight for Bach. I’m exploring now; starting with organ pieces; some of them of the “fugue” persuasion. Probably not the right starting point. Oh well.

This Dutchman fellow always intrigues me. He’s super-well read, a clear thinker, smooth talker. I hope to see more of him but I did not propose this last night. I am not currently brimming with confidence that my company is much desired by others at this time. Perhaps I will try to get some of my shit together. It's resolution season after all.

Demented

All but $150 of Grampa Munster’s monthly allowances (at least 90%) go directly to the group home to pay for his rent, food and the illusion of care.

I convinced him to print off all his chequing and savings bank statements for the year and I plugged them all into a spreadsheet. Regular Trillium Fund subsidies and tax refunds just cover his phone and cable bills. His clothes are charitably acquired. Of the $150 per month remaining, he has been spending… $270 - almost entirely, per my careful investigations, on Tims coffee, junk food and coke. As in Coca-Cola I mean. Oh, plus an extra $16 per month average on totally unnecessary ATM charges. His savings, once $3000, are now depleted.

We had a long talk. I am keeping a much closer eye on him now with regular phone calls between visits. I also convinced him to show me his Medic Alert bracelet which verifies my suspicions. He has dementia. I have some research to do now, and new strategies to develop, I imagine.

The Lonely Lumberjack is perhaps a little less lonely

I saw him wheeling past me; leaning into his walker, barely an arm’s length away, on the other side of the cafe window where I sipped a fine coffee and nibbled an outrageously large and delicious donut following the collapse of far more humble plans. I downed the last morsels and set out to catch up to him but the old man is deceivingly quick.

It had probably been two years since I last spent any moment alone with him one on one. I’d left his apartment moments after a pair of snarling bigoted tirades aimed at two different minorities. Well, maybe not tirades. Let’s say… tiradettes.

For two years we’ve politely nodded, waved or smiled at group functions, and sometimes even briefly chatted. but given I was probably his second-closest male friend, and officially the executor of his will, there was always the elephant in the gymnasium. He does not make friends easily and maintains perhaps a trio at best. Often, in my more wakeful moments I have told myself I should at least explain the reasons for my aloofness and try to give him one more chance. I don’t need him to change his mind necessarily, but only to keep out of my face the product of his albeit-honest misperceptions which he gleaned in prison; viewing the worst possible behaviour from certain associations while succumbing to tribal illusions. I understand his view, and why it is natural and why certain logic escapes him. In ways he is very wise and in other ways very unwise, but I want no part of his prejudice. It is offensive to people I love more than he, and I don’t wish to feel unfaithful.

So I lingered in the neighbourhood, sitting on a bench, writing on an adorable onion-skin air-mail writing pad surely manufactured a half-century ago which I found in a dusty variety store across the street. Sure enough he eventually came rolling back and I called out to him.

He brought me up to his apartment. I was in financial decrepitude at the time and eagerly accepted a hearty pasta meal with plenty of meat in the sauce. I declined seconds but while washing up in the bathroom he slipped another bowl out undetected and I much enjoyed it again.

“Watch out for that [Theatre Guy],” he suddenly warned me. He’d no doubt seen us sitting together. “Never trust that ___ hole.”

So here it comes again. ‘Well, I’m on his circle.” I said. Well we’re already good friends, is what I wanted to say. Better friends than you and I. And furthermore, Theatre Guy is straight. And you’re a dumbass. Sometimes.

I don’t know why Mr. Lumberjack respects me so much. No man alive meets the rigid standards by which he judges men. Me especially I would think. Women meanwhile are sacred.

We met up again recently without incident and soon I will take him shopping for clothes again.

I don’t know if he understands why I cooled off with him. I’d previously warned him a couple times about bigoted conversation but he assumes I’m simply naive about it, and too generous in my appraisals. I wasn’t bothered by his words at the surprise pasta dinner; only disappointed. Perhaps we’ll be able to maintain an understanding going forward and remain friends.

Kindness

I had to climb the porch stairs in the dark in order to verify the address of the giant old house before returning to my New Old Clunker at the curb in order to fetch my big old offering and the remote control that goes with it.

“Does it have a built-in VHS player!” Muzic Wizard had messaged me upon seeing the ancient catalogue image I sent him.

“It does indeed,” I replied. “And I can’t promise there’s no cheesy 80’s porno tape jammed inside it.”

“Oh the porno tape would be a plus.”

So now I’m lugging the beast up a couple short flights of creaky stairs as the smell of pot grows stronger.

Muzic Wizard answers the apartment door barefoot and slit-eyed. “Cool!” he says and begins checking out the input/output ports at once. “Yeah, this’ll work.”

“Oh, a TV!” says his girlfriend, appearing in the doorway.

They are both grateful for this contribution to the nostalgic art installation they will construct for the 3-day In The Soil festival. But I am just as grateful for the opportunity to be rid of it. We are all happy.

I journey back to Scooterville, catch a short sleep and arrive at Grandma’s in time to get us to breakfast at the nearby diner where Uncle and Aunt and Aunt’s husband await and where I counted on using a $10 coupon as my contribution. Instead they whip out a stack of 2-for-1 coupons. I am teamed up with Aunt’s husband and he declares that he will pay our bargain bill.

“I must accept,” I say, and report to them these direst of employment circumstances. Ye Olde Security Company seems to have me down to seven shifts per month. I am getting aggressive in the search for a new or second employer - if I haven’t mentioned that.

As the gang departs I see that Aunt’s husband has left a mathematically-justified three dollar tip. I want five left instead but I have no toonie to add; just a single twenty dollar bill. I ask Aunt if she can make change.

“Hold on,” she says, and fetches the requisite small bills from the waitress in exchange for her own twenty. She gives them to me but refuses my own twenty in exchange. Again I have no choice but to accept. Then she reaches into her wallet.

“No!” I say, but she presses another $40 into my hands and I am too choked up to debate.

I then go to meet -- Damn. What excellent nickname do I have for the sight-challenged Circles program director who exudes kindness and sweet music everywhere he goes? Soul Man? That will do for now. I meet with Soul Man and drive him to his appointments for the afternoon and take part in them also. I do this for him one day a week. It’s unclear if I will ever begin to receive mileage reimbursement for this but it doesn’t matter. I track the miles for now and find ways to absorb charity which I convert into gas money for this purpose.

We wrap things up just after three PM which puts me at the Good Shepherd Centre just in time to rub elbows with Scooterville’s homeless and enjoy a free hot meal which today is weiners (premium jumbo weiners even!) and beans over rice with a simple salad and balsamic dressing. I skip the dessert and koolade and choose water.

I’m agog at the great many volunteers who are cooking, serving, busing and… shepherding. What a beautiful contribution. And at times surely a challenging or even dangerous one.

My role as a Circles volunteer has much expanded of late as has my health and financial deficits. It is with a special warmth that I find myself slipping into this alternative economy of the heart.

Reflections: Fear

Roast beef with gravy AND horseradish! At the same time! Mashed potatoes, cooked corn and carrots, coffee and mint-chocolate chip ice cream!

Not bad for a free meal, eh? Well, I dropped a fiver in the collection box which I do most of the time. Otherwise, when times are tough, I wash a few giant pots and pans as a contribution.

The topic at this circles dinner celebration is fears, and how we have conquered them.

Some extolled the comforting virtues of their Saviour. Others had more earthly entities to praise. One excellent dad talked about the actual nightmares from the early days of parenting: in which terrible dangers loomed over his offspring who were always just out of his reach, and how he had to finally trust in the benevolence of higher powers, and relinquish absolute custody in his mind; something that bears relevance to my own mind and the troubles it so recently suffered, but which I truly seem to have finally found legitimate peace with.

I spoke of the fears which still haunted me at the age of thirty-one; fears so common they were not perceived as fears at the time, but which I suffered for nevertheless, unequipped to figure the accounting:

The fear of being poor; of being disrespected; of being unpopular; of being wrong; of getting caught in a lie; or losing my job; my car; my house; the love-relationship which seemed to garner popular admiration for its longevity, and for how darn cute we were in public.

While being monsters at home.

And I spoke of the unexpected solution: getting dumped from that relationship after twelve years-and-change, and then just days later, getting laid off from the occupation I had coveted for an equal duration: How I seemed to have lost everything, including the house.

But that I discovered how the groove I thought my life had been in, was really a rut.

How that blessed period of material freedom (via generous severance package and home equity) and this new freedom from societal investments in the mind of a person with mature perspectives on the world - compared to the usual free-minded of our society; the youths who conversely lack experience to draw upon, presented a very rare and golden opportunity, and a rare salvation.

The soul searching, the decision to write, the blank page, the questions and the search for truth. The courage and self-accusation, the discovery of illusion in the gap between consciousness and instinct, the immense ubiquity of it, but finally the mastery of context and the break-through to the wisest, universal perspectives… and the resulting freedom from the great majority of fears that nearly everyone inherits without knowing they have. Ninety-nine per cent of fears are the product of illusions, and simply evaporate once you see clearly.

Not everyone can have the privilege of losing everything around age thirty. That is a shame.

But most can find more time for solitude and creativity, which is where the process starts. It doesn’t require talent to win the best prizes that art offers. It’s all in the experience; not the product.  

Reflection and recovery

Due to the snow I was a good half hour late arriving at the group home.

Grandpa Munster collapsed into the front seat while Foxy D. folded and wedged himself into my puny back seat and we inched our way back westward. Twenty five minutes later we’d crawled into the down town area normally only about four minutes away.

“I should have taken the bus,” said Foxy.

“You still would be stuck in this same traffic!” barked Munster.

“No I wouldn’t. Buses can go through red lights.”

“No they can’t.”

“Yes they can. I was on a bus the other day and it went through two red lights in a row and a cop pulled us over and said it’s okay, you’re allowed ‘cause you’re a bus.”

Gramps rolled his eyes. Foxy drives him more nuts than ever now that they’re neighbours.

After an eon or two we hit the west end Hortons where we’d planned to hang out for about two hours before proceeding to the Circles Christmas dinner celebration. Instead we spare only fifteen minutes.

In that time we drink decafs and Gramps gives me a Christmas card which I’d taken him to the Dollar Store to acquire a week ago. In it he’d sweetly written: “For a dear friend.”

Does he mean that sincerely or is it a means to garner material support? (Does your dog rest his chin on your knee to comfort your knee?) I don’t need to know the answer to that. It’s fine either way. But could I bring myself to write the same endearment in a card from me to him? I don’t think I could. I wouldn’t know if that was honest either, and in that case it would matter.

Foxy takes this opportunity to whip out an envelope addressed to himself and claws at it until it finally releases a battered holiday card which shows ample evidence of his attack. The card contains it’s stock greeting, a brief personal message and a photo of a man whom Foxy proudly states is his friend. As he shares the photo he crumples up the envelope and card (unread) together, into a tight ball and shoves it in his coat pocket.

At the church banquet room the priestly types and their spousely types are seated together; the best dressed. Core members and volunteers are scattered about. My riders gravitate to a table which is shaping up to be the designated slow table. It’s unusual for this community to arrange itself so cliquey. Perhaps it is more or less a random phenomena this time around?

I decide to be generous and take a seat between Gramps, who smells terrible - perhaps a seven on his Personal Reek Table, and a silent man whose name I still do not know, who never takes off his coat which smells like he has smoked a million of the world’s most evil-smelling cigarettes in it. The combo is slightly ghastly but I decide that the taste of dinner shall overcome it, and that’s that. Sometimes I have the power to make these kinds of decisions, where I just make peace with a circumstance and that’s that. Not recently so much but perhaps this is a good sign.  

I talk briefly across the table with skinny Mr. Chief, more stone-faced and dead-eyed than ever. He is still working at the bottle recycling plant and still does his jigsaw puzzles. He has twenty completed ones taped to his walls. I don’t ask if he’s still on the court-appointed drugs which have essentially substituted for shock treatments for decades.  

Later the Noble Punster, who is too great a guy for me to describe immediately (I will share his story some day), takes one for the team and sits with us also.

After a fabulous traditional Christmas dinner and some clean-up we migrate to the oddly-shaped vaulted sanctuary where I like to think I receive my only authorized Christmas present every year (Mom spoils me despite my occasional protests); which is the singing. The words are patently ridiculous to me; every song rejoicing in some one or two of the sum five-or-so brief concepts which defy logic and any but the most ungrounded flights of fancy the human mind ever convulsed…

But the voices!

How this unlikely crew of misfits manages to form such a choir blows my mind every year. I guess they really dig it. I guess they’re pretty inspired. And there are a few with rare talent who know how to belt it out and lead the way. And the acoustics of this seemingly awkward room structure is the real deal.

Still the magic has faded a notch this year, perhaps because the storm dealt us a smaller crowd.  

Driving home with Chilliwack’s Fly at Night a welcome gift from the radio, I am thinking about Neo and how, after a crisis and reunion, our friendship feels stronger than ever. There is more to figure out and I look forward to that. He spoke to me with a new kind of confidence it seemed. He has endeavored to be generous in accommodating the gap between our perspectives and I certainly intend to bend likewise. I suppose that that gap may have just about closed at a conscious level. Perhaps it’s more how we bring things together logistically that is the challenge. And there I can afford to be generous.

I reflected on much in his absence and gained needed clarity. I’m pretty sure he did the same. Interestingly I feel little relief or specific joy over this, but more of a calm strength from a valuable bond which no longer invites any peril or liability.

It’s quite wonderful but I’m taking it in stride. I’m not wondering where the lions are.