Pandamondayum!

Hey hey... just my little weekly personal panda therapy. But this is my best little compilation yet. I hope you give it a look!

Sleep Wars

I have been hugely sleep deprived for at least two years with very rare inexplicable hibernation periods of a day or two at a time. This has made me permanently groggy, stupid, lazy, unwise, petty, intolerant, impatient, unloving, unproductive, crippled with pain, financially handicapped and fatter than the average oliphant. Why some of my friends have stuck by me through this I do not know. They must be fools.

The challenges to sleep are: sleep aopnea (a CPAP machine), lack of financial commitment to service it properly, compromised lung capacity, breathing issues from dust and allergies, erratic shift work, daylight infringement, hip, shoulder, back and ear pain, an uncontrollable noisy dog and other house noise, other discomfort issues and subsequent secondary issues deriving from this list.

The specific battles which manifest from the above, and combinations of the above (negative feedback loops galore), make for an even longer list and the specific tasks I must achieve in order to fight all these battles and make good sleep possible or even probable is so long you would not believe me if I told you. Usually, to this compromised brain, it feels impossible to even make an attempt.

I realize with more and more certainty that sleep is the central battle of my “life” (or rude facsimile thereof).

I basically cannot walk anymore but awkward painful specialist appointments all fail to explain precisely why. I feel like a crash test dummy on the verge of hitting the wall, and frankly I don’t know what happens after that. To be honest, I wish I could be institutionalized and forced to submit to some horrible therapy of diet and exercise.

However! I have made inroads of late that feel to be of a different nature. I have summoned some real commitment two days in a row and made some real progress against the hoarding barrier. I have also tinkered with strategies around pillow arrangements, CPAP machine therapy settings, and more effectively managing my (thoroughly standard) caffeine addiction and nutritional balance so as to more optimize my pitiful energy levels, which is key to the prospects of interrupting this giant vicious circle. There have been other small inroads around preventative stretching and exercise.

It feels certain to me that this is my last chance. If I fail now… life as I know it will be finished. I don’t say this with dread, but with real optimism.

If you know me in person, please do not be kind at this time. Kick me in the ass as hard as you can and tell me to get my shit together. Thank you.

Then they get you...

The bi-weekly dinner-and-reflection gatherings at the church where I am not a congregant but through whom I volunteer, have become virtual gatherings for the time being (of course). Here is the latest reflection:

"...You are invited to share an experience, observation or story where you felt a special connection to another, or others by reaching out or helping out;  or where you have been inspired or moved by the way others have reached out or helped out in a special way."

My response:

On the last day I left the house I ran into trouble with pain and mobility issues at the specialty grocery store. I used the shopping cart as a sort of walker and prepared to get through it. A cashier saw me as I approached and grabbed a chair and brought it to me, then took the cart with her, scanned my groceries, bagged them and returned them to me. I paid when I was ready and at the door another employee stopped me from pulling the bags from the cart and accompanied me to my car instead and brought the cart back to the store for me.

Then at the liquor store (ahem... I just go there to buy the gift bags; yeah that's the ticket) I waited in my car out front for 25 minutes for the store to open. In that time about 35 customers arrived and lined up, distanced, on the walkway. Then an employee emerged to gradually invite them in. The line kept refilling, and I began to wonder if I'd get in all day. The employee saw my parking tag and invited me in at once. I said "No but pick a spot down the line for me and then let me in when my time comes." Immediately all the people near the front of the line objected and insisted I go ahead. So I did.

As I struggled to carry out my bags a young man ran over and carried them out for me.

Arriving home there was no parking spot anywhere near my home but a neighbor saw me (I don't even know his name) and rushed over and said "Hang on. I'm going to move my car. Take my spot." I refused immediately but he wouldn't hear it and moved his car.

I have vowed to stop slamming the human race for a little while.

"Yeah, they're horrible but the problem with human beings is, as much as you may want to dislike or disapprove of them... then they just do one wonderful thing and they get you back in again. It's an abusive relationship."--Jerry Seinfeld (to Ellen DeGeneres; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee)

Cumbersome

Almost every day I am either at home with all of my time at my discretion, or on a security gig getting paid to be there with my lap top and nearly all of my time at my discretion. And in non-apocalyptic times I do some volunteer work as well.

One result of all this time on my hands is that I do a ton of research. And as such I often have excellent advice to give. Solid advice. But rarely, I think, do people take my advice. Because people are absolute shit at making wise decisions for so many reasons.

Case in point:

Okay maybe that wasn't the best example.

Pandamondayum

And on a Monday even.

I finished my April A-to-Z "challenge" for maybe the third time in seven years? Something like that, and completed my modest April camp goal (15K) at about 15,500 words. Now to keep some momentum going.

Vitality… painted over

Hey so back over to the A-to-Z we’re finally unveiling the previously postponed V-Day. The assignment was too good not to treat right. It came from the valiant, vibrant, venerable, infrequently verbose and too-frequently valedictory; my very valuable friend, life coach and visionary, the venturesome Vietnam Vagabond; the Eloquent Potter. And it is:

Varnish

Varnish is the shit…

…that is everywhere.

Let me look back at just the last, oh, thirty-six hours.

I watched a video about quantizing and auto-tune. Exactly how this shit is done. The anatomy of this phenomena that has made the overly-safe, overly-simplified, corporate-dictated pablum we call main-stream music so grotesque to my ears; so obscenely, vulgarly, morbidly anti-human. Why modern mainstream music reeks of death. It is not real. It is varnish. The musicians who are tricked into selling out have suffocated within this varnish. Of course the saving grace is that there are heaps of amazing music being made every day. You just have to hurl your fucking radio into the fires of Mordor and go looking elsewhere. Bandcamp for instance. Soundcloud.

I stopped for gas and saw that my drink was on sale: three for seven bucks. Varnish, it turned out. I went inside, picked my three and was charged not $7 but $13.

“Huh?” I says.

“Oh the special isn’t working,” says the corporate slave.

The special isn’t working.

When I was young no one ever uttered the words the special isn’t working. No context existed where such a phrase could bear any meaning. If I had said to my English teacher for any reason “the special isn’t working” I would certainly expect to be told I would be repeating the grade.

Oh we had computers when I was young. But computers were still tools at the time; tools which served the user; the human being who operated the computer tool; the human being who still maintained sentience. Today a gas station cashier is literally a tool of the computer.

Of course the pumps themselves are varnish, aren’t they? This is not where oil comes from. It’s ripped out of the ground in manners which compromise the biosphere, it is taken from a place where it served the biosphere as a filter and then it magically makes our car go zoom zoom zoom (a little TV varnish) and what we don’t see through that particular varnish is the cloud of toxins formerly filtered from the ground now being burned and fed to the sky where it will fuck us over real good.

Yesterday morning the alarmingly nervous, high-strung, OCD basket case of a day shift guard came in to relieve me and spotted my coat hanging from the back of a chair. She sputtered and agonized trying to find words for the occasion, finally pointing: “That doesn’t look good!” Coats over chairs is not proper varnish. The reality is that we all use coats. They are not hurting anyone (in the office I mean). If you could actually follow the trail of your coat’s creation you will find harm somewhere. I guarantee it. If not a furry animal or sheep or a sweatshop third world in-effect-slave there are still more avenues of suffering in the trail of a textile factory. Suffering we do not see through the layers of varnish.

I saw the faces of Ford, Trudeau and Trump because you cannot access the internet without their weaselly little faces weaselling onto your screen one creepy way or another. Their entire existence is varnish. They are the curtain between we and those who have our money and control us. They are talking idiot-boxes. They are court jesters, juggling their balls and pretending that they are the real show while they are not.

Maybe we don’t mind living this way. Maybe the varnish is nicer than the reality. And here’s where I get stuck. I know very well that the rewards for embracing reality are so much finer. But to fully explain why will make me sound like religion, when I am not. And so people will turn away. Oh well. Fuck em.

The Venturesome Vietnam Vagabond is an angel to me at times. He is not fooled by anything - anything external anyway. I think he knows that reality is better than varnish.

“Do you have a coaster for me?” I asked.

He laughs and gestures at the grand wooden table with its myriad of markings. It is a mural; a family history. And tonight we will eat well and drink copiously and add another stroke or two to this wooden canvas; this time capsule. And we’ll say not a word about sports, weather or headlines. We’ll unearth more reality and lay ourselves bare. Thank heavens there is still a place to do this.

I could go on and on. Anywhere you look you are seeing varnish. Give it a thought and you'll start to realize the illegitimacy of anything you happen to witness.

Varnish is the shit that is everywhere. It is what we have built our society out of, instead of celebrating life. 

The ecZiting A-to-Z conclusion

Let’s see: I postponed the letter V essentially for health reasons, I declared X-Day a holiday (it’s not a real letter) and to complete the cop-out trilogy I’m outsourcing Z to the youtubes.

I never did assign Z to a friend. I kept it to myself and here’s what I have to say:

Thiz guy iz my new favourite youtuber becauze he crackz me up. He’z got a few little enterprizez going on as he getz a bit of cred az a major influencer and internet reporter. But what I like bezt iz hiz straight-up commentariez.

He’s got a great sense of humour, a great accent, he’s not afraid to liberally apply the F-word, he’s got a brain and a social conscience. He is:

OZZy Man

Yogi, Smokey, Boo-boo and Pooh

Hey hey kids… it’s Y-Day today because Y-not? And we have been enthusiastically directed by the yellsome yackity youngster who is my three-year-old nephew. And he has dictated the subject:

Bears

So I give you a silly poem. It’s a little A-to-Z within the A-to-Z!:

This is an ARCTIC bear. He’s learning how to swim

Because his snowy home is now in terrible danger!

This is BOO-BOO Bear. He is Yogi’s little friend

He has to warn him often: Don’t upset the ranger!

These are the CHICAGO bears. They are football players

Thirty four years ago they won the superbowl

This is a DO-IT YOURSELF bear. You donate the labour

Then you get to keep the bear but sixty bucks in the hole

This is Marian ENGEL’s bear. He has some troublesome habits

He likes to hang out in libraries among the shelves of books

This is jokester FOZZY Bear. He likes to draw the laughs

But all his jokes tend to get is lots of funny looks

GUMMI bears are colourful and sweet

While they’re gummed up in your maw

HUGGY BEAR had the bum’s eye for clothes

But his profession was against the law

Tanner is an INFIELDER for the Bad News Bears

He is a little scrapper who’s always getting dirty

JACK Nicklaus is the Golden Bear, a golfer yes he was

He would score lots of pars and also lots of birdies

The KOALA bear is not a bear at all! It’s true!

Some bears you find in bars for LGBTQ!

The entire MOVIE “The Bear” was framed from bears’ points of view

It was filmed in the Dolomites in Nineteen eighty-eight

In NATIVE Legends there are no symbols

But the Bear so mighty and great

OWLBEARS are monstrous things

They’ll engage you in a hostile fray

PADDINGTON is a gentlemanly bear

He lives in the U.K.

The Bear Creek QUILTING Company

Will service your quilting bee

You’ll find The Bear RADIO station

At one hundred point three

SMOKEY is a safety bear

It’s forest fires he dreads

TEDDY is the kindest bear

He’ll cuddle you in bed

The UNIVERSITY of Alberta

Has Bears in the basketball game

The VANCOUVER Grizzles, mind you

Once did just the same

WINNIE the Pooh bear’s always getting stuck

But fear not, he’ll be okay

eX-BEAR Ditka is on the TV

With always much to say

YOGI Bear just might be

The most famous bear of all

While the Z-BEAR builds you home-made bears

You can give him a call 

X

Screw you, X. Nobody likes you.

You’re not even a real letter.

All you do is team up with the CTRL button to delete things. Well guess what Mother Trucker? Today I'm deleting you! From A-to-Z.

Welcome to A-to-Z-except-for-X. Have a great day!

WALK AWAY FROM THIS POST

If you know me in real life this post is not for you. Be a mature adult, take my warning and just go away and forget about it.

For those who don’t know me, it’s W-Day:

Weary, withering, wasted…

The wonderful, worldly, we-oriented, World Citizen has whisked these words along from the west coast:

Wake up! 

And it is magically, hilariously, precisely relevant. I am absolutely one atom away from being asleep right now. My brain is a wreck. Just coming up with the above alliteration has drained me for the day. After an almost-week of mildly less then normal sleep performance I have spent a couple days doing almost nothing but sleeping, and yet in the few-hour segments in between epic naps I remain dead tired.

I will catch up on the V column one fine day when I can almost-function again. For now I take this critical W assignment and give it a quick hatchet job as best I can. Ready?

Environmentally you could say there are two kinds of people in the world; those who are apparently ignorant or uncaring with regards to the “planet” and the future of humanity, and those who appear to care but are deluded as to the reality of the situation.

Many of the nicest people I know are online getting all romantic about the environment and how it is getting a much needed break from us. And some jump to the absurd notion that we are starting to wake up! (and smell the coffee environmentally)

It is the death of all hope if the people we count on to lead us to salvation have no idea what they’re doing.

For countless reasons, over and over through decades, thousands have said "People are finally waking up!" No we are not. At best, precious minorities of people have woken from deeply deluded dreams into slightly less deluded dreams. In general we are more asleep than ever and falling into impossible traps to escape from. The very best and very worst case scenarios for Covid-19 are the same scenario: That the human population, beautiful, pitiable and perfectly insane, will be drastically alarmingly reduced.

Have I lost the last reader now? Good. ‘Cause no one will want to read this:

These messages I hear about how great it is that mother nature is getting a well deserved rest is precisely this:

A Nazi shoots a machine gun into a crowd of prisoners as they gradually tumble to their deaths. But then he throws the machine gun to the ground, pulls out a hand gun and begins killing them one bullet at a time. And one well-meaning stander-by says “Ah, how great they’re getting a well-deserved rest.”

I can’t seem to find another human being who actually understands how causality works (they all think they do) or another human being who understands the complex components, system and fragile configurations of the biosphere, which humans, even at this moment, are systematically dismantling it at an utterly unfathomable speed by any realistic cosmic context.

Am I going to do anything about it? Of course not. But I’m also not going to hide from the truth. And I’m not going to hide from the truth because I have a relationship with truth which no other human I know appears to have. (Tolle does, by the way). As for the biosphere’s plight; I am useless. Group one above is also useless as is group two.

Am I angry about this? No. But sometimes I am frustrated because communication with other people about the core dramas of our reality is fucking impossible and there is a kind of loneliness there which sometimes frustrates me. A lot of that frustration is aimed back at myself: for why have I failed to teach anyone anything despite all the research I do?

Here’s a great bit of comedy: Michael Moore has released a film Planet of the Humans. I haven’t watched it yet even though, as my brother noted in an email about it, it’s right up my apparently-narrow alley.

It may be vain and foolish to assume the film will only reveal the epic load of crap I already know, such as the preposterousness of practically every mainstream green organization and the utter fallacy of “industrial green clean energy.” All industry is a bullet to the head of the biosphere, including windmill and solar panel industries. There is no escaping this reality. But I can’t help instinctively making that assumption and I don’t feel quite in the mood just yet for going down a dark ugly rabbit hole that I already know like the back of my hand. (I promise to report back once I actually view the film.)

A part of the problem is that I assume that Moore (knowing how he rolls) will get caught up in the facade and guilt of things which I don’t really care to get wrapped up in. I don’t want to point fingers. Global human insanity starts at the core of the illusion; the gap between real instinctive mind and our outrageously flawed stuttering early evolution of consciousness. And we’re all in this together.

For a long long time as I say little about this matter, sensing no will around me to hear it, I have held a vain hope that some genius would come along and tell me why I’m wrong about the simple reality of biosphere and industry and just the other night I managed to get in on a webinar regarding green economy (what a wonderful fantasy) with none other than Noam Chomsky the special guest.

This could be my big chance! To get this question to him?

But the question panel grew fast and immediately and I realized I had no chance. But half way up I found a very similar question, framed around the claims of Moore’s The Planet of Humans. I discovered that one could comment on a question though it was rarely done. So I did: “I pray this question gets up-voted. It is critical!”

Lo and behold the comment, regardless of its content, visually drew attention. And immediately people were hitting the vote button and the question gradually rose to the top and was addressed. The host completely bungled it. It was not worded perfectly and the host made it worse. Chomsky gave an awkward 3-or-4 word dismissive response.

Thanks host. Thanks humans. Thank you for being so reliably; so tirelessly useless.

But did Chomsky fully misunderstand the question? I don’t really think he could have. Why did he not try to address it better?

Could he still be in the dark, environmentally? Brainy as he is? Perhaps?

Or is it this?

Does he see the same dilemma which concerns me?

Does he feel that to communicate every truth to the masses, were it accepted, result in complete despair and disorder; chaos?

Even if climate change is largely a red herring (not for being untrue but for being ultimately irrelevant), is it a placebo in effect which might keep cold-hearted humans acting responsible because there appears to be hope?

There is another reality here, perhaps most important of all. Nothing is immortal in this universe. Not humans, not Earth. Not the sun. But our living experiences are immortal because we experience no beginning or end. We are not aware of our own birth and death. That makes for A LOT to think about.

The end is inevitable even if sadly coming way sooner than necessary (except perhaps for the lucky grandchildren of the ultimately criminal super-duper-pooper rich who have been stealing from us all and will afford trillion dollar seats on Elon’s Mars rockets maybe?) well so what?

Why not exist at or near the inevitable end? Why take it as tragedy? There is still opportunity to evolve our minds and to love and to seek survival within whatever like-minded community we arrange ourselves. And if necessary to go out not with a bang but gracefully; respectfully; lovingly.

Have I been at all coherent? I don’t know why I write this. I don’t want to stomp on people I love who have been writing so hopefully and romantically and with flawed logic. They are good people. But I do get deeply, unwisely, lonesomely frustrated sometimes. I am far from the top of my spiritual game…

Stuff to think about.  

Notice of postponement... and a baby panda!

V-Day shall be delayed, folks. In the last five days I have averaged 4 hours sleep per day with 3 hours each in the last two days. The V piece deserves a little brain work and I can’t summon much of a brain at all in these circumstances. But for now there’s always:

Pandamondayum!

… actually Pandasundayum until April A-to-Z is complete. Right now Sundays are the only sanctioned days off.

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.