There is a larger question here. How do we live, any of us who are affluent, in the awareness that our neighbours are impoverished? Yes, moderation, modesty. But then there are those nagging examples like Francis of Assisi.

What is, after all, my responsibility? My call? And who lives a called life anymore–besides my siblings maybe, and Francis? A calling is so non-postmodern…or is that non-postmortem. (Do see the wonderment of English?)

I decided—for the third time—that I wanted to write, maybe be a writer, when I was living at 2.3 Acres—and empty lot just off downtown Victoria. I had a spot behind a willow, a sleeping bag, a chewed Bic pen and scraps of paper. I wrote "thoughts." I never dared to show or tell anyone.

And here I am, still writing scraps of thought. But daring to show and tell, and hoping occasionally to write with heart, wit, humility, intelligence. And hoping to have my work mean something. "My work!" Now that sounds lofty. I’m a whore for an approving glance. ("Approving glance," is a phrase I stole from James Alison.)

And now I’m flat. I have nothing. Perhaps what I had, if had, is gone. I feel a depression moving in. I’m so celled in by comparison. I trudge like a tramp through this late half-lit smoggy afternoon. I park my slight shadow on a bench. My shallow collapse will not register. There will be no butterfly effect. The water will close in leaving no trace of me.

I was afraid of that empty conference hotel room. I needed the distraction of a large screen and a remote. Where have my victories gone? “The Victorious Life…” Do you remember that Sunday-morning salvo arching toward your chest like a live grenade? Kaboom!

Hold on, wait, I do have a "victory,"…a wife who is a friend. Oh, and a quiver full of kids–precious, you know, hmm…like things that are precious (thanks Moe Szyslak). Oh yes, and I have a divine community that I can slink back to, sink into, that will give me a glass, and even help me raise it.

And I have Emily and her lilies and Teresa the Little Flower, who when asked to choose one of many coloured ribbons said, "I choose all." And I have Jesus and all that wine and spikenard.

Enjoy life in time. Enjoy its gifts for to refuse them is an offence. Endure life when you’re lost or stuck. Roll with it. But look for brightly coloured hallways. Be generous without evaluation or comparison or consternation or judgment. Recall that all flesh is grass. Recall that grass blooms and flowers and dries up and waits again for spring rain. Fast. Pray. Cultivate peace. Move to simplicity. Resist little. Don’t harm; farm.

What?  a head of state showing respect and deference to other leaders? What? a president with humility? What of the Western code? What of American hauteur? lordliness? Oh the subservience, oh the obsequiousness, oh the howwah!

Here’s a tame sampling of what’s being said.

"Americans don’t bow, especially presidents!"
"Personally, I’d rather have my President throw up…"
"How low can he go…?"
"Obama is a disgrace and a complete joke!”
"This muslim is such a apologizing freak…!”

"It was bad enough when "Husain" Obama bowed to the Saudi King, but now he is bowing low to the Japanese Emperor.”

What this last quote is referring to, if you recall, was the other bow, six months ago. Well, do you see a pattern? It’s a dang bowgate!

Once again only the fake news can inject some sanity into the bilious reaction of the patrioteers. (end of clip zeros in on the Saudi bow)

So glad I live in Canada where I can have complete confidence in a leader who’ll never bow and scrape.

Ya see–not even close.

Say, as well, that you’re of the mind to enter something like a smoke-laden gambling quonset–and walk through fields of flashing and bleeping electronic slot machines, without pause…except for perhaps an AK Amber. If so, the rest is rudimentary.

Upon checking into the Gold Eagle, ask for the complimentary "Play and stay" coupon–referencing the casino. When properly redeemed, it’s worth 10 bucks. But before rushing off and staking your claim, perhaps you’ll want to settle in–however that works for you. Then, for example, after watching the first part of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, just before it gets into the freaky foreshadowing of Allen’s own life, head to the casino.

From the lodge, it’s a short walk across a Saskatchewan parking lot. Which means it’s wider and broader than most lots on earth. So yes, it’s a longish walk–especially I suppose, if your flesh is flaccid from Naugahyde chairs and your chest sunken from deflecting strobe rays.

Watch for the front doors…not hard to find. Enter. Show your coupon. A lady in a blue Player Card tee-shirt will exchange this for a voucher which you will take to the cashier. But not before she asks you to sign up for, yup, the "Players Card."

Fill out the form, watching what you check off. There are options for receiving Casino "specials," in the mail etc. Note: curiously you can use a "preferred name," affording you some anonymity. (Having seldom come up with something clever on the spur of the moment I didn’t disappoint myself and used my own name.)

The payoff? Signing up gets you another 10 bucks plus a 5 dollar coupon for a meal in the adjoining Kiwiw restaurant. So altogether you’ve got 25 big ones just for checking into the Lodge…something you had to do anyway–right? Plus the hotel is clean, spacious, and relatively cheap.

So if you’re hungry, your "winnings" get you an 8 out of 10 meal with enough leftover coin to drop into the concession machine down the hall. (It’s been so long since I had Hickory Sticks.) Otherwise, if you don’t need the grits, you just got 20 bucks without breaking a sweat, unless you have a cigarette-smoke allergy. And it’s all legal. But remember, it’s bad form to take your loot and spend it at Tim Hortons.

Now, for the global citizen, the odds of cruising the flatter reaches of the mighty Yellowhead are daunting, but should you be this fortunate, the Gold Eagle is something to watch for.

Yes, I guess it’s true you can get swine flu by hanging around pigs, but it’s the mutation capability of this flu, and its leap to human to human transmission, that has us wiggling. According to authors/researchers, Richard E. Neustadt and Harvey V Fineberg, it’s a "slippery disease…you know, like a greased pig.

So, what of the endemic come pandemic? 1976 should serve as a wee lesson. When the s-flu swept through the barracks at Fort Dix, and one soldier died, President Ford ordered enough vaccination for the country. Twenty-five people died as a result of the vaccine and another 500 plus developed Guillain-Barre syndrome. Subsequently the government paid millions in damages to people and their families.

The sky was falling and then it wasn’t. At the very least this bit of history, happening as recently as it did, should serve as a caution. That’s not to say we shouldn’t take this seriously and it’s not to say vaccines don’t have their place. It is to say, relax a little. We are a panicky people. We, like the swine of old, get the devil in us and run down the steep hills and drown ourselves in the lakes.

Instead, do the practical things. Wash your hands, cough/sneeze into your sleeve…wash your shirt. Stay out the way of phlegmy pigs. And if you see the influenza virus–it’s globular in shape, and is approximately 100 nanometers in diameter–report it to the authorities. Yes, and have some pork tenderloin.

Final thought: Is it possible, upon hearing the term swine flu, not to think of Peter Sellers?

It signals me to move on…enter this year already…take a moment to lift the hem and let some February light in.

But hanging on is what I do best. I can live with all kinds of demons just because I know them. I dare say (archaic Jane-Austiny phrase) I’ve lived with a couple of them for a score of years or more. And why? Just because I fear their their replacements more than their residence. They are nauseating tenants; and I’m an unhappy landlord. But if I kick them out, let myself stand empty for awhile–what in this economy?–I may end up begging them to come back and be okay when they bring a bunch more of their nutcase friends with them.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m not the tenant inside my own inside. I have about as much control. My hand is forced. I keep lowering their rent every time I’m threatened. It’s crazy.

Control over my life is what I want but it’s also something I dread more than identity theft. (‘Course without any control I have no identity worth stealing.) And when I say control over my life I’m not talking about the grand Enlightenment notion of the autonomous agent dictating his way through life like Alexander the  Great charioting his way across the psychological plain in full command. I’m taking about making up my mind to be honest, even if it hurts me and others. I’m talking about recognizing that I have a choice in how I respond to fear. I’m talking about overturning some old hay bales to clear out the nests of mice. Even now, I’m scared the mice have already been taken over by large rats.

All those rats may have a place but not inside me where they just rummage and rub their backs on my diseased skeleton. And then, like they’re on some ravenous vacation, head for my liver.

Yeah, I’m Dostoevski’s Underground man.

Okay, I’ll start with that. There was at least honesty there. And even in his contorted psyche, the possibility of a healthy self-ownership always played at the horizon. Even if the gloaming always looked like it was coming in at him from a hole in the ground.

The bizarre thing is, I end up grasping for control anyway. But it’s in all kinds of pathetic ways. Most of them are superstitions. Like the order of washing myself in the shower. Or whether to wear a watch, or whatever. Keep the order, and the day has a better chance of working out. Miss my table at Starbucks and I’m screwed.

And then there’s resentment. Curiously, it too is a form of control–well, not really of course–but I use it, unconsciously, as a hideout, a shield, and finally, won’t it become sword?

Well, you might be reading this and say to yourself, get this man a shrink (another archaic nomenclature–nomenclature, a neat change-up for name) and you’d be right. For we all need counselors. Geez, I have them in my family–I live with a very good one, and I have a brother who moulds and shapes people into becoming them. And yet, too close, right? We need an array of counselors, from friends to people who are shaped for it, and you pay some hard earned cash to, and tremble in front of.

You also might be reading this and say to yourself, "I have no idea what he’s on, but I must remember to always cover my drink." If so, I genuinely commend you, and freely drink to your health…from a broad-brimmed martini glass.

For me, I have to say, I’m sad and a bit scared that the orange blinking Christmas lights have gone out. But it did signal something. Could be my harbinger? Okay, I’ll use it. But I swear, this is the last time. From now on, I’m off Christmas lights.

So, scrambling for some relief, as well as a way to spur on healing, you can imagine my delight in stumbling across the Vibra-finger.

I admit to having had some reservations…but then I saw the Dentist recommendation and his picture, right there on the ad.

The sweet part, besides the great price, is that I can dab some vitamin-E on the finger tip, right under the finger nail, plug the baby in and find that perfect Gum-spot for quick therapeutic respite. Oh the wonders of our age. And it’s sanitary and comes with a travel case!

Villainous? Yes. But it was adolescent retribution with cause. The eye-blinder  was for all the pinches, puckers and nicks he put into my oversized ears and skinny neck over one year of forced and anguished visits.

Before each haircut I pleaded with my dad, showing my scars, revealing iniquitous horrors, but he must have had some kind of mutual commercial agreement, to wit: Mr. N– bought our Springside Shopping Center groceries, and I, with father’s coin, got his Pool Hall and Barber Shop haircuts–bloodletting thrown in at no cost.

As for my friend Kenny, he had a vested interest in the crime, although to a lesser degree; because, after a couple of regrettable Kenny croppings, his dad gave in to my friend’s protests and stopped sending him.

The barber was probably not what we had imagined him to be–part senile, part shell-shocked. But he was shaky. We assumed it was from age, or from whatever went on at the Legion.

It was the clippers’ never-to-be-changed blunt edge of the sickle that tore the skin. And whenever he went for it, snapping the electric servo into rabid life, I slunk into his black leather barber chair so far that he had to give the hydraulic foot pump two more kicks to get me back to slashing height.

But when he was on me I stayed stone-still. Only my dilated pupils moved, darting this way and that, trying not to seize on the leather strop hanging by my side, or stop at the shelf by the window where the straight razor soaked in a fluid-filled glass jar. A dermatological tailings pond.

My motionless state didn’t matter. There was hamburger to be made. And when all the cuts were stanched–some requiring time–I left shorn, but looking like I had an angry English hedgehog dragged over my head and down the back of my neck. Quitting the chair and emerging from his shop was like a scene from Hellraiser.

So I didn’t feel bad, when on that bountiful sun-sweet day, he came racing out the front door brandishing a comb still dripping with blue Barbicide. Me and Kenny just flattened ourselves into specks. Mr. N–, confused, finding nothing close by, recalculated and lifted his head to our horizon. But at that distance he couldn’t make us out, let alone make the chase. So he shook his comb in our direction and retreated into his den twisting the Venetian shutters closed.

Kenny and I took an exaggerated circuitous route back to the Shopping Center, where I lived, and which happened to be right beside the barber shop. We slunk through the back door and into the basement, put the mirror back in its place, and setup living with our perfect transgression.

I’m still living with it. You see, to me, long hair was more than an anti-establishment statement, it was also a safety measure. Even now, 40 years later, I resist the shearing chair. It had crossed my mind, but I’ll not start my new year with a haircut. Cheers!

Happy New Year! Love to all!