From Christianity Without The Insanity: how to move forward in dark times

When life gets hard -- and for most of us, it's getting harder by the month -- many people search for meaning and guidance in their religious/spiritual traditions. Yesterday, such guidance spilled across my screen and I thought it might be interesting to break it down and hopefully de-Christianize it a little for people who don't have room in their lives for 'God talk'.  Because there is great wisdom here. This has been paraphrased from the Book of Acts.

Before I tackle #1 up there -- which I bet has the non-Christians in my audience cringing -- I want to talk about "resistance to a violent empire". 

Of course we know America is an empire. But there's a difference between knowing and experiencing. Up until six weeks ago, we existed comfortably in America's shadow, unimportant and largely unthought of: "a few acres of snow", as Voltaire had it. American media swamps us to the point many Canadians think they're American...I've seen more than one Canadian, towards the right end of the spectrum and the red end of the necktrum, complain that his "First Amendment rights" have been violated. Okay, dude, I'm not sure who tried to stop you from referring to Manitoba as a province, but the first Amendment to the Canadian Constitution says you can do just that.

Now, America's shadow is suddenly ominous. 

In previous blogs both here and on the book of faces, I have lamented how the enemies of democracy have been conspiring out in the open, and now we know the details: the world is to be carved up into three spheres of influence. The United States gets the North American continent; Russia gets Europe; China gets most of what's left. (China already owns most of Africa and South America: Beijing thinks in centuries, not fiscal quarters.) It's entirely possible -- fairly likely, in fact -- that Trump, Putin and Xi have pledged to help each other realize their imperial dreams. Given Canada's geographic location, that prospect is chilling.

And so we face a(t least one) violent empire. Unless your name is Danielle Smith the traitor Premier of Alberta, you want to resist it. In this hockey-mad land, we call it "elbows up".

Many Christians recognize that Rome was an empire in Jesus' time in the same way Canadians might have paid lip service to the idea of an American empire until just recently.  But Rome was actually near its peak when Jesus lived and died, and then as now, the faith Jesus called "The Way" was a profound threat to the powers that were.

Jews were mining the prophecies like mad in search of a saviour. Many candidates emerged: as Jesus Christ Superstar memorably had Pilate say, "you Jews produce Messiahs by the sackful." But one of them went so far as to turn everyone's notion of power topsy turvy. From Jesus Christ Superstar again, this is Jesus speaking: 

Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand,

Nor the Romans nor the Jews

Nor Judas, nor the Twelve, nor the priests, nor the scribes

Nor doomed Jerusalem itself

Understands what power is

Understands what glory is

Understands at all

Understands at all

It took Rome three centuries to strip all the meaning out of Christianity, neutralizing it by turning it into its opposite: Christian Nationalism. You might recognize that Christian Nationalism (I like to call them Nat-C's, for short) is on the march in the United States today. This inversion of the faith mocks everything Jesus stood for and embraces everything he didn't. 

If you're not a Christian yourself, you might pooh-pooh all of this. Please don't. It's the furthest thing from blasphemy to suggest the following instructions can be applied by any one of any faith or none, to good effect.

Yes, even the first one.

First, though, let me reframe these ten instructions the same way I was taught to reframe the ten "commandments"...as commitments. (You shall know you have committed to The Way when you (embody) ....") To see the reframe of the Decalogue, click here.

1) Faithfulness to Christ as King and no other.

Oh, yikes, that sounds awfully religious.

Relax. I want you to take the word "Christ" here -- which is a title, meaning the anointed (or chosen) one -- and de-Christianize it. A reminder -- and something many Christians aren't aware of -- Judea was lousy with Christs before one of them superseded the rest of them. 

What this is telling you to be is "in, but not of" the world. Don't accumulate wealth (be that money or "stuff") for its own sake. Likewise fame and popularity, likewise anything that gets in the way of your making yourself and your world a better place. That is, after all, what a Christ would do: make the world a better place.

Since you don't have the reach of Jesus, concentrate on your world. Like ripples in a pond, your thoughts, words and actions will spread out.

2) Gathering together regularly to share meals

Both verbs in that sentence, gathering and sharing,  are VITALLY important. Two heads are better than one; twenty heads are better than two. And sharing freely enriches everyone you share with, including yourself. 

3) Caring for the stranger, the widows, and the poor

These are the people often forgotten and thus most in need of care. They're also the people Jesus surrounded himself with.

We're living in suspicious times, and so people tend to think of strangers as dangerous rather than as friends you haven't met yet. But I have found in my life that most people live up or down to your level of trust in them. Treating people with respect and compassion usually gets you the same in return.

4) Living with joy and gratitude despite circumstances

Some of the most materially poor countries on the planet are also some of the happiest. That goes against everything western civilization has tried to instil in us, but, well, western civilization only goes back -- depending on your definition -- 100 to maybe 150 generations. Humans have been around for 300,000 generations. Most of what you've been told is "human nature"....isn't. 

If you seek out the little joys and cultivate an attitude of gratitude, you will shortly come to realize the world is a good deal more abundant than you had believed. I don't mean that manna will fall from the sky, but it's simply a matter of mindset, as your parents probably told you. If you concentrate on what IS present and what you CAN do, it's easier not to be overwhelmed by what's missing and what can't be done.

5) Repaying evil with good.

Hard to do...so instead let's do a simple equation. Let E be Evil. Now, add E+E and you have twice as much evil. If you're in a group, the evil can quickly become exponential, not 2E but E-squared, or cubed, or raised to the power of Greyskull. 

It really is simple (but not easy). To oppose, one must empower the OPPOSite. Adding hate to hate just yields more hate.

6) Practicing generosity towards the needy and sick

This isn't any different from 3) above. In the same book this list came from (Acts), you will find the following:

11:29 Then the disciples, each according to his ability...

...

4:35 "...to the emissaries to distribute each according to his need."

If you recognize Karl Marx, gold star for you.

7) Showing kindness to your enemies

This one pairs with 5). Same principle; treating an enemy poorly simply invites retaliation and adds more hate into a world with entirely too much hate in it as it is.

8) Refusing to compromise to idols

This echoes 1). An "idol" is anything that matters more to you than your spiritual life. It could be money, and often is, but it can also be power, status, success, sex, fame or anything else that should not be seen as an end unto itself. 

9) Choosing simplicity over excess

This will become easier by and by as excess goes away. But the choosing is important: it's a conscious act of will (in other words, magic). 

10) Praying daily with persistence

You need not pray to a deity, you know. Common misconception since people have invented some fucking NEEDY gods. You can pray to  Life, the Universe and Everything, to your Highest Self, to Humanity, to gods or goddesses...there is no difference in the end. The persistence, again, is important because it is willful, and each of us has a will more powerful than most of us realize. (Realize: literally, "make real". ) Compare the word "amen": "so be it". 

These ten commitments will stand you in good stead as the world spirals. Keep your eyes and your heart on what matters: yourself and your loved ones.

WHERE I STAND

One of my closest friends is the only person I know with triple citizenship: Canadian by birth, American by choice (thirty years ago), and the European Union by ancestry (Dutch). 

By any measure, Jay has lived a successful life. But it's comical to us how often he moves, only to move back to the place he abandoned -- in one case, the exact same building.

Jason moved to California in the mid nineties for social and professional opportunities. Since then, he has:

--had a home built in Las Vegas, only to get there before his stuff and immediately hate everything about the place; he moved back to Cali before the paint had dried

--moved to Florida, this time being smart and engaging a short term rental first. He hated it there, too, so moved back within a week. 

--moved to Scottsdale AZ and actually stayed there for two or three years before deciding that no, California was still better: back he went

--moved to Leiden in the Netherlands, JUST beating California's covid lockdown...and guess where he just moved back to, ten days before a certain election result.

Jason and I talk fairly regularly, and we've been anticipating anomie -- social breakdown -- for nearly two decades. We had no idea exactly how it would play out (how could we?) but we've both read history, and more importantly paid attention to those who have read and lived a good deal more history than we have. Such people have been jangling alarm bells for a generation now. Only recently has the pace of events forced the mainstream media to catch up. Sort of.

It's fair to say we predicted Trump or something like him. We did NOT expect something like him to come after Canada. Even with the rise of Russian-backed propaganda currently washing our country from coast to coast to coast, we had foolishly considered Canada a safe haven, at least for now. I thought maybe the U.S. would come after us in ten or twenty years, but then asked myself why, when the current trade deal basically gives America everything it could want anyway

I'm kicking myself for this and so is he. We've explored at length just how many similarities there are between Mump and Tusk and a certain regime out of Germany, without ever once bringing up lebensraum (living space) acquired by Anschsluss (annexation through economic force).

The idea of German/Austrian unification was around for decades before it actually happened. ("Manifest Destiny" has been in the American imagination for 180 years). In 1933, the leader of Austria proposed a referendum as to whether the country would join Germany or remain sovereign. Hitler didn't like the idea of people actually voting; they might vote contrary to his wishes, and how could that be allowed to stand? So he invaded and forced the Austrian chancellor to resign. Later, a plebiscite (not a referendum) was held. Threats and vote manipulation meant that "99.7% of the population voted for Anschluss.

Trump is claiming the border treaty of 1908, which delineates the  U.S/Canada boundary through the Great Lakes region of Ontario, is invalid. Funny how nobody else has thought so in the last 117 years. But he wants to annex at minimum the whole of the lakes and "maximally" a goodish chunk of Ontario, including my current and future home, my dad's home, and the homes of multiple people I care about.

 How do I put this gently? Trump can fuck himself with a running chainsaw. Right in his gaping cunt. Is that gentle enough?

I'd be 4-F in any draft. That doesn't mean I won't fight for my home and native land. And the U.S. of all countries should be terrified of guerrilla warfare. History shows they don't do so well with their tech neutralized. The Houthis have shown how to take on a superpower: $2000 drones are holding their own against multimillion dollar missiles. You don't have to beat them militarily; you just have to bankrupt them. (That's if the looters headed by Elon Musk don't do it for you.)

Will it come to an invasion? I hope not. I have an American friend who poo-poos the whole notion, saying the military will never follow through on an order to invade. All this means to me is that Trump will discard whoever won't follow the order and find people who will, but what do I know?

But even without an invasion, the U.S. has the power to crush us economically. The fact crushing us will also crush them doesn't seem to signify to Trump, which is another indication his party never intends to face voters again. 

Justin Trudeau, our erstwhile PM, is a good man in a crisis and a numpty most of the rest of the time. He was forced out in a manner reminiscent of Biden.  Russians and low-information Canadian voters have of course seized on the fact the new leader, Mark Carney, has not been "elected", not bothering to recall that in Canada we NEVER elect Prime Ministers. (Here, we vote for local representatives; the party with the highest number of seats has the right to elect as its leader the Prime Minister of the country.) An election is required by law this year, simply because elections are required by law every five years here.

The new guy, Mark Carney, is exactly what we need right now, in my opinion: a proven crisis manager who successfully navigated the 2008 financial crash in Canada (note: as governor of the Bank of Canada under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper). Some people might bristle at the fact this man served under the government of one party and now leads the other, but I find that refreshing. It says to me that he cares more about what works than what party it came from.

Britain headhunted him to become the governor of the Bank of England, and he guided that country through the clusterfuck known as Brexit....about as well as anyone could have. Yes, this is the man to face Donald Trump. Even better: it sounds as if our former deputy PM Chrystia Freeland will have a prominent role in Cabinet, perhaps as ambassador to the U.S. Freeland is a strong woman so Trump, of course, despises her. 

I was never going to vote Liberal under Trudeau. The man is stained by scandals and stale in the bargain.  Now? I can't in good conscience vote anything else. Carney's not perfect -- I'd prefer the shade of Jack Layton -- but any port in a storm, and Pierre Poilevre is the storm.

There is no telling what economic chaos awaits us. It is imperative that we seek out new trading partners yesterday. It may make for some uncomfortable bedfellows: India is a tempting market even if human rights are increasingly under attack there. (Human rights are increasingly under attack everywhere.) It heartens me that we've been through this before: in the early 1900s there was a similar ratcheting up of tariffs with the goal of annexation and Canada simply pivoted and traded with Britain instead of the U.S. of A. 

If this crisis is at all navigable, I trust Carney to navigate it. And maybe, just maybe, Jason will be able to retire here if he wants to.

Stay light on your feet, folks, it's gonna get rough out there. Elbows up!

What Makes A Man

 I just saw someone on Facebook say: "Other men are so bad, it made me realize I'm non-binary."

I goggled.

People have been questioning my manhood practically since infancy. When I say "people", I mean a broad cross-section from total strangers up to and including my closest family members. It goes one of two ways: either I'm a butt-puncher or I'm a girl. My parents leaned towards butt-puncher. My uncle always called me a little girl. The schoolyards were pretty evenly split. 

So masculinity, sexuality and the relationship between the two...I've put a lot of thought into this over my life.  

And I do feel like (many/most) men are....bad. I see misogyny and other toxic behaviour daily, almost always emanating from someone who fancies himself not just male but the epitome of Masculine Manly Maleness. Shut up, hole. I'm gonna rape you til you like it. Behold my balls. Smell this chest hair. SMELL IT!

Every single woman I know has been victimized more than once by a man who saw her as nothing more than a receptacle. You hear "any pussy will do" enough times -- once was once too many -- and you realize that yes, many men see women as walking genitalia. I'm sure there are women who think of men the same way....but I've yet to find a woman who considered herself a connoisseur of dick pics.

Oddly, being called gay and being called a girl feel pretty similar if you're a guy. You're being lessened, that goes without saying. Dismissed, nullified or at least minimized. An interesting example: our soon-to-be-departing Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. I've seen him called gay quite frequently; I've seen him called "Justine" even more frequently. These are people with FUCK TRUDEAU signs...maybe we ought to be questioning their sexuality, what do you say? Even more interesting to me is the objectification of the Prime Minister (cue Jeremy Hotz: "it even SOUNDS like a cut of beef!" He's dismissed as a pretty head of hair, or -- memorably --  "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Socks". Notice how feminine these insults are. A lack of substance is supposedly, somehow, feminine. 

Put 83 men and 17 women in a room and the men will say the numbers are even. Put 66 men and 33 women in a room and the men will say the female presence is overwhelming. Men routinely overestimate both how many words women speak and how much time they spend speaking...by three hundred percent. Yes, I think it's fair to say the misogyny is deeply entrenched.

_______

I had enough people insisting I was gay that I had to experiment and determine I'm not. But I have never once questioned my gender no matter how many times I was called a little girl or told to "man up". I'm a man, yes I am (and I can't help but love you so). I've often said, truthfully, that I despise my gender and wish I was anything else...while always knowing that I am, in fact, a male human being. Just not a conventional one. It occurs to me I should ask the several tomboys among my female friends if people saying they are too masculine makes them want to up the masculinity at all.

Many years ago, back in my Price Chopper days, I was witness to something impossible. 

Danone was one of the three (at the time) yogurt companies we stocked. Danone had two lines: a full fat line called Creamy and a low-fat version called Silhouette. One of them was produced in Montréal; the other in a suburb of Toronto. So there's no possible way I could be holding a Danone Creamy cup with a Silhouette lid firmly in place.

Guess what I was holding.

I think about that mislabelled yogurt cup every time I consider trans and nonbinary identity. Yoplait or Astro didn't put that Silhouette lid on the Creamy cup. People are complicated. 

A quick lesson for those who may feel otherwise:

 You can be born appearing female, but have a 5-alpha reductase deficiency and grow a penis at age twelve. 

You can be born male with X and Y chromosomes, but your body is insensitive to androgens, and you appear female.

 You can be born legally male with an X and Y chromosome, and have a penis and testes AND a uterus and fallopian tubes.

 You can be born legally male with an X and Y chromosome but missing the SRY gene, and you'll appear female. 

You can be born legally female with two X chromosomes, but one of the Xs has an SRY gene which gives you a male body. 

You can be born with both XX AND XY chromosomes

I think someone's gender is not dependant on the actions and behaviours of any other person or group of people. I believe people know what they are on the inside, whether or not their outsides match. But having always known myself, I may be wrong about that. I can see how that might be. 

One of my friends uses she/they pronouns. Another, a trans man, uses he/they.The hullabaloo over pronouns is yet another case of people taking things too damn literally. "They is plural!" shout the bigots who insist they're simply grammar purists. Ask your friendly neighbourhood English major: singular "they" predates singular "you".

"Okay, sure, but that's for ambiguous cases where the gender is unknown."

How is that any different from looking at somebody and being unsure what gender they are? Can ambiguity be claimed? (You bet your flippin' Bic, it can.)

"It's just one person!"

"I contain multitudes..."

I can see how in a different world I might have decided to use different pronouns. I, too, contain multitudes, and some of the mes don't get voiced often. But I've never wanted to alter my body in any way, much less to appear more feminine. And hell, in some ways I am your quintessential guy. Just ask me to find the big thing staring me in the face in the fridge.

The other thing that bothers me about "other men are so bad, it made me realize I'm non-binary"...it feels like a way to dodge accountability for any "so bad" behaviours. If I'm non-binary, I can't possibly be behaving like a stereotypical man, can I? It feels like a cop-out.

Why can't we just let people be who they are? Let's widen the definitions of male and female so that rigid gender roles and expectations go away. Let's leave room for the in-betweens. And let's be true to ourselves. How hard is that really?

No More 2024

This is going to be the shortest year-end blog I've ever done. Writing is a struggle right now. 

I am working on  getting past the depression and anxiety that have really sunk into me over the past two months. I've been caught in this sick whirlpool swirling between caring far too much about everything and not caring at all about anything. This is being medicated, so far without much effect. I've been struggling through physical illnesses as well -- a horrible, uncontrollable cough and a really dark gastrointestinal festival I'd rather not detail and you'd rather not learn about. Plus overwhelming fatigue which really has been the worst. . It's kept me off work for such a long time that I'm apprehensive  to go back. 

I'm not ready to write at length about the reasons for my anxiety and depression. You can probably guess one of them, and if your guess has something to do with a recent election and its results, please step forward to claim your chicken dinner. I have an e-friend who went on a weeklong bender in the immediate aftermath of that election,  which I feel was a more than appropriate response. I have neither the discipline nor the budget to bend, so instead I just sank.

I'm coming up, slowly, and I have a new light in my life who is really helping. I'll tell you about her in a moment. 

_______

One undeniable highlight this year: the trip to Chicago with my pal Craig to see the CSO perform Mahler 2. 

I'd been hoping to get somewhere and hear something with Craig for decades. He's invited me to some pretty exotic locales. Chicago was one I could afford, and Mahler's Resurrection Symphony is not to be missed. 

The performance didn't disappoint in any way, but I enjoyed the time with my friend at least as much. I love music and Craig lives it, and it was loudly and proudly blasting all the way across Michigan and back. I so rarely get a chance to listen to music without headphones. I'm sure we got more than a few side eyes from passersby, what with opera going and two Bruckner symphonies coming back. 

And Craig being Craig, we got two visits in to the Barrel of Crackers. I so dearly wish Cracker Barrel would come to Canada. 

____________

For several years now I have sensed big changes on my horizon and watched, apprehensively, as the horizon approached. Much of this year -- in fact, the last couple -- have seen us in a holding pattern. Early in October, that horizon came into view with the passing of my mother-in-law and it looks a lot different close up. 

The original plan was for Eva and Mark to go to "the farm" -- a 42 acre property about ten minutes' drive outside of the village of Marmora, ON -- and for me to stay here and take in a tenant. Three weeks apart made it clear that plan was untenable: we are a family unit, the three of us, and we don't function well apart. 

And so, late spring 2025 will see us discard this house Eva and I have lived in for 20 years, and Mark for eight. We will go east, and I will adapt to a whole new lifestyle.

It wasn't just the absence of Eva (and Mark, when he's accompanied her to the farm) that changed my mind so emphatically. I've spent several days with Eva up there and the instant I first walked into that home without its longtime matriarch in residence, I had a feeling wash over me I've only previously felt in two places -- neither of which is the home I currently live in. Peace. Tranquility. Security. A feeling of rightness, a you belong here, and soon feeling I wasn't expecting at all. 

I don't ignore such feelings. Especially when they're that strong. I have been back a few times since, and the....healing vibes wash over me each time. It's quiet -- the five wiener dogs (and two lovebirds) we've inherited are finally getting socialized, and their behaviour is night and day from what it was when Anne ruled the roost.

It's deliciously dark at night. When twilight deepens into darkness, the feeling of oasis is unmistakeable. 

And while it would take some work to move it off the grid, that work can be done.

This is what we have always envisioned: detaching from the economy and the culture at large and doing our own thing as much as possible. To that end, I have begun the incredibly painful (for me) process of separating myself from the world of pixels. I deliberately leave my phone at home sometimes, downstairs when I go to bed sometimes, and otherwise ignored at other times. Facebook has become all but unusable and most of my posts pass unnoticed, so I'm doing a slow fade from there as well. And most notably, I have changed my New York Times subscription to games only (Wordle is a Ken/Eva ritual and I adore the Spelling Bee). I've cancelled my WaPo sub outright. I am actually able to go an entire day without checking the catalogue of calamities that is the news these days.

Barter is common up there on the farm.  We have close family friends who visit daily and the doors are always unlocked for them.  It will be a Lifestyle Adjustment (tm) to be sure: our current home may as well have a moat around it. 

________

I normally include in these blogs my favourite media I was exposed to this year. But do you really want to hear Welcome to the Black Parade in Old English? Didn't think so. You do, however, want to see Something Rotten. Second funniest musical I've seen, just behind The Book of Mormon.

_____

Five years ago, someone new came into my life. We were only partners for five months or so, reasons too personal to detail but about 99.7% my fault. She faded into the background -- the deep background -- but we never quite lost contact. 

Half a decade on, we've both grown, a lot, and now we've rekindled the relationship on a more solid footing. Nikki is behind me right now -- she's spent the last three days here -- and she fits so well into the rhythms of this house. Eva even let her cook unsupervised, which is high praise. Best of all, she's promised to come up to the farm at least once, and may be spending substantial time there depending on how things work out. 

Never mind Trintellix and Rexulti: Nikki is the superior antidepressant. We face 2025 battered but unbeaten, as a family. 

My philosophy of love, sex and Friendship Part 3: Friendship

I'm not great in bed. 

I try to be, but I'm held back by two issues, one of them physical and the other mental. The physical is that as I'm as flexible as your average erection three seconds before orgasm, so certain positions are beyond me. The mental is that I'm incapable of roleplay. If you want me to pretend to be someone else, go be with someone else. I won't mind. But it's..limiting.

I'm told I have skills to compensate.

I'm not great at love.

I try to be, but I'm held back by my own need to be loved. Like so many of my flaws and shortcomings, I think I've conquered this and it recurs on me at intervals.  

My wife would disagree vociferously that I'm not great at love. We muse often that we were clearly meant to be lifemates largely because we're the only ones who can put up with each other. (Mark has since proven we aren't entirely alone in the world.) And, I mean, I do try hard and succeed more often than I fail nowadays. But my failures can be pretty spectacular. 

I'm told I have skills to compensate; I've built my life augmenting them.

_______________-

Friendship now. Not only am I not great at it, I'm downright awful at it. Always have been. I lacked a sibling to show me the ropes, and I didn't get to interact with many kids my own age early on. That persisted into school: for the first four years, junior kindergarten to second grade,  I kept to myself religiously. I've told you about grade three, which started well and ended badly. Gordon stuck by me; Mark Stanski started as a friend and for reasons never explained turned into my first enemy. He was the guy who crept up behind me and squeezed my balls like he was trying to pop them. They turned black. My mother told Eva many years later she was certain that incident had sterilized me. 

My stepdad John came into my life in the summer between grades two and three; he married my mom in the summer between grades three and four. We moved to London and I've related this story before, too. I got glasses the same summer, so I'd left grade three a veteran of kissing tag and entered grade four as SUPERNERD! The bullying that had actually started late the last year took hold with a vengeance.  Nobody would dare to be my friend that year, and I can't blame them. Not only was I completely unfit, befriending me would have just given the bullies a BOGO. 

My friendless state was not acceptable to John. He booted me out of the house and told me to "go make friends". I didn't know how to "make friends" any more than I knew how to make duck a l'orange, and so I'd ride all over London on my bike, come home and detail all the fictional baseball games I'd played with "friends" whose names suspiciously matched the characters in whatever book I was reading at the time. I spent hours and hours talking to dial tones. (The modern equivalent would be texting yourself while pretending to text someone else.) I was pathetic. The bullying was only my just deserts.  

In  grades five and six  I had all of one friend and I have no idea how or why he became one. His name was Tim and we were polar opposites in many ways. He was an avid birder; bird chirps at 5:00 a.m. only made me wish I had a gun. He was in every extracurricular activity known to man; I considered homework an extracurricular activity and it was enough for me. But we meshed somehow. His was the only "normal" friendship I ever had. By which I mean we did the sorts of things boys tend to do, and little Ken-who-still-sometimes-felt-like-a-baby-Kenny had never considered these sorts of games.

We worked together at Cornell's Fruit Farm, which was long ago paved over. We'd pick up rotten apples from the ground and whip them at each other. Rotten apples only: the fresh ones would hit like rocks, whereas these would just kind of splooze on your shirt and REEK like nobody's business.

You have to understand that this is NOT the sort of game Kenny ever imagined himself playing. Kenny had seen all manner of things thrown around his home years earlier, and he'd seen more than enough of those things connect. Rotten apples weren't the same, but at first they felt the same. Why would friends throw things at each other? Soon enough I realized the energies felt completely different and began to appreciate how this could be fun....even if it horrified my mother, who did the laundry.

We built snow forts in my backyard in the winter. We had sleepovers at his place, played the first generation of computer games on his Tandy, and had an apocalyptic raisin fight in his basement. We emptied a bag full of boxes of raisins. Hundreds of them. He and his family were still finding desiccated raisin corpses years later. 

Friends.

Until late in grade six when his parents, out of the blue, decided I wasn't Tim's kind of people. Probably had something to do with the crush I developed on his sister. I never did anything about that crush, but soon I didn't have the chance to.

Losing him was awful because for the first time in my life, the loneliness I felt had a name. Before Tim, I had no idea I was lonely, having never experienced any other state of being. (Even Gordon and the girls in grade three didn't really touch the loneliness because they were very strictly school friends. I went to Gordon's house once; he came to mine in London, once.) 

Grades seven and eight. New school again. "Gifted" program. No homework. No friends, either: us "gifties" self-segregated from the (mun)"'danes" that made up the rest of the school, and the kids in my class were actively hostile since their "gifts" (in math and science) didn't match mine (most of the other subjects). There weren't many social skills to go around those classes, either, as you might imagine. 

I do remember one incident in grade eight. We were going on a field trip to Ottawa, which really deserves its own blog: it was eventful and the trip home was calamitous. But before any of that, there was the rooming arrangements to work out. We were four to a room, two queen size beds. Mom hit the roof: that meant her son would be sharing a bed with another boy. She didn't actually say this was going to turn me into one of those dreaded homosexuals...but I know for a fact that's what she was thinking. She called the school and put a few people on blast. I ended up rooming with Johnathan McPhail and ONLY Johnathan, so I had my own bed and so did he and guess what? That didn't stop the gay chatter. The privacy he and I had compared to everyone else was proof positive we'd at least sucked each other off, according to the rest of my class.

He was the closest thing I had to a friend that year.

Grade nine. Another move. Oakridge S.S. No friends here, not in grades nine or ten. This sounds insane and I swear it's true...I was asked probably fifteen times when my parents did for a living on the first day. My answers were damning, and I was shunned from that moment on. I'd walk into the cafeteria, pick a table to sit at and no matter which it was, every body at that table would get up and find room at other tables. I took about a week of this before eating my lunch in the music room.

It wasn't until grade eleven and Westminster S.S. where I found a welcoming environment and managed to make friends -- two of whom are still friends today. And I don't know how I made either of them.

Oh, Darlene was a case of love at first sight that I had to tamp down all year long. She taught me a lot about friendship by allowing that friendship and nothing else. Craig, on the other hand...complete mystery. I guess taking an interest in his trumpet playing, which was so far beyond the typical high school student's that it had me in total awe, was enough to seed that friendship, but I'm always amazed anyone would want to BE my friend anyway, thanks to all those periods when nobody did. 

I was at Westminster for grade eleven only. It was the best year of my schooling career.

I skipped grade 12 and found myself at Ingersoll District C.I. for grade 13, what's now called OAC year. I didn't want to be there at the beginning of the year and didn't want to leave by the end. By this time I had sanded down my rough edges (some of them, at least) and nobody shunned me or bullied me. I sometimes think any high school student does a cost-benefit analysis on befriending anyone new. Do other kids beat this guy up? Does he, to use the modern vernacular, pass the vibe check? In grade 13 I did, and I made a small cotillion of friends, headed by Kieron and Jen. Both attended my wedding twelve years later, the latter at my side next to my best man, whom I ALSO met in grade 13 but didn't befriend until he called me up out of nowhere the following summer and proposed rooming with me at Laurier. "We're both quiet, we both like classical music, we're both not fans of commotion, what do you think?" Jay asked me, and that first year we were the Odd Couple. His side of the room was spotless, his bed made with military precision each and every morning. My side reflected the fact I no longer had a mother hovering over me to ensure I did pointless things like make my bed. (I'm just going to get into this tonight, what's the big deal?)

I'll stop this compendium of friendships now. Other people came and went, waxed and waned, throughout my adult years until this very day. The wanings were and are difficult for me to deal with: they provoke ancient abandonment issues, but more notably it's like someone tore off their piece of my life's tapestry and forevermore whenever I look at that part of the whole, I'll find a part and a hole instead.

In a few instances I KNOW I am at fault. As I confessed at the beginning of this little trilogy, I haven't always been loving towards those I love. (And of course I love my friends...a friendship, to me, is a love with  no sex and no romance, but can be every bit as deep as a relationship that DOES have sex and romance in it.) But where I don't know, I'm never told.

To be clear, I'm not owed an explanation. But where one exists, I'd sure like to know it so I don't inadvertently push other people away the way I pushed you.

Why have I told you all this? To show you the pattern. Growing up, I didn't have friends, then I did, then I didn't again, over and over. A very deep part of me lives in terror of losing the friends I have. A slightly less deep part of me has learned over time that expressing that terror makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

And so I hesitate. What's the correct number of times to text a friend in a month? Nobody tells you this shit and it's CRITICAL information.  Too seldom and they think I don't care. Too frequent and get away you fucking needy clingy barnacle. Then there's the CONTENT of the texts. Gotta maintain the balance of light and heavy, serious and sarcastic.

It doesn't help much that you humans have taken vitally important questions and statements and turned them into small talk that may or may not mean anything. I'm thinking primarily here of two examples, though there are others.

1) "How are you?"

Don't answer this question honestly.  You're not supposed to. You are expected to lie and say you're fine. The more not-fine you are, the more earnest your lie must be. Everyone is expecting "fine, and you?" and then they'll say they're also fine (even if they're suicidal) and get to the real point of why they're talking to you. 

An experiment. The next ten times somebody asks you how you are, answer "shitty!" in a bright, smiley tone. Even odds it'll go unnoticed; I've run this experiment more than once. I'm reminded of an old, old game show where the host asked the woman contestant what her husband did for a living (because this was how women identified themselves in the early 1960s) and one woman told the host her husband had been dead for three years. "Oh, isn't that special," said the host, and moved on.

I'm not like that. If I ask you how you are, I'm fully prepared for you to announce you're at the end of your rope.

But "how are you" is nothing to "we should get together!"

Really? Really? You really mean that? I bet you don't mean that. Most people don't actually mean that. Wanna know how I know? I've made a complete ass of myself more than once following up on those words. "Hey, wanna get together? How's next weekend?" "Oh, sorry, I have to iron the cat that weekend. I'm going to be sick. (Yes, somebody once told me they were going to be sick at the time I offered to see them; needless to say, I never spoke to that person again). Often there's this pause as the person goes through their excuse Rolodex; what it feels like is "get together? With you? EWWWWWWWWWWWW." Now, when I hear "we should get together", I thank the person and wait to see if they mention it again.

Rare.

I'm 52 years old and very much a child when it comes to this stuff. The friends I have managed to keep are cherished not just for themselves, but for their willingness to put up with me. Few have that strength, it seems. 

Every love, for me, has friendship as a base. My wife is my closest friend. Any other partner is likewise a friend first. I think I do that out of self-preservation: it makes it easier to keep the friendship once the love has changed character. Apart from Eva, it inevitably does.  As such, virtually every former love I have is still a friend of some description. That really means something to me. 

I've been pretty hard on myself here, but that's pure authenticity: I've always found friendship difficult to navigate. I've always gotten along better with girls than boys, largely because I am a creature of many, many emotions. And so I have lots of "friends who are girls who are not my girlfriends". Male friendships, by the code, are private things. I would take a bullet for Craig and somehow it never seems appropriate to ask him the simplest details of his life, even though he's told me he's an open book to me. I don't need all the details to love the guy like a brother, mind.

Nor do I need to see you in real life to consider you a friend. But it is my preference.

_________

NEXT BLOG, POSSIBLY NEXT WEEKEND, NOT BEFORE: FUTURE PLANS COALESCING

My Philosophy of sex, love and friendship, Part II: Love

So the first thing I'm going to do is tell you this next bit is not about sex. As I have been saying for years, sex is an expression of love -- one of millions. It's a potent expression, and studies have shown an orgasm has very strong bonding qualities...but so does a hug. 

So let's put that one expression away and stop pretending it stands in for the whole concept of love. You don't think it does? Is a lover someone who loves you, or someone who fucks you? 

________

The first girl who told me she loved me was in grade three. Laura wasn't the first girl I kissed, nor, in fact, the first girl to see me naked...two years earlier a girl named Allison (and not only do I still recall her full name, but her address at the time as well) came to my house while I was in the bathtub, darted past my mom, and made it all the way into the bathroom and started to strip before Mom arrived on the scene and somehow made it unhappen. Bet she didn't imagine THAT happening to her son when he was six years old. 

But Laura now. Of course it was puppy love, but at the time we didn't see it that way. I bought her a bracelet that said "Let it Be" on it. She bought me a teddy bear and named it Laura. I shared her with a friend of mine named Gordon; she shared Gordon and I with her friends Sonia, Anna and Catherine; none of us had any issues with kissing tag every recess. I don't ever recall anyone getting greedy except as a joke: Catherine once pushed me to the ground, sprawled full length on top of me, and kissed me about twenty times. This is the same girl who demanded we all swap clothes one day in the tall grass behind the schoolyard. I never saw so much as a flash of flesh, and Gordon and I really did get cajoled into it...these days I have little doubt we'd both be expelled and charged regardless. But it was innocent to us, or at least to me. I wasn't having sexual thoughts at nine years old...give me a couple of years. 

But oh, I loved to kiss in grade three and I still do now in grade 48. I didn't kiss anyone again until grade 13...not for lack of fervent wishing I could.

Of course we don't have to kiss for me to love you. Love without sex or romance of any kind is called "friendship"....and my friends me just as much to me as my beloveds. 

I practice love by allowing the person in front of me to be who they are, especially on days when they're not themselves. The first thing to confess is that I fail. Often. I have treated people I love in much less than a loving way. But I keep trying, and I think that's why I'm blessed to still have so many past loves in my life in some capacity today. Some of them have become friends with each other, which means just as much to me as their relationships with me. 

The kinds of love required vary day to day and relationship to relationship. If the person I love is in front of me in real life, it's much easier to read their energies and respond accordingly; if that person is online, I simply mirror their treatment of me to determine how close to get in any given day. If that treatment grows cold and remote, I'll ask why; if I don't get an answer, I'll simply assume they don't want to be in my life anymore. That door will close, but you'll have to be the one to lock it. 

I can't talk about love without talking about Eva, whose love is central to my life. Her philosophy of love is very much like mine: expansive and inclusive. There are quite a few people we consider family and many, many, MANY more we would consider family. For both of us, the question "who do you love MORE" doesn't signify. There really isn't more or less here, there's just different. Obviously, the people closest to you get more OF your love, by virtue of their seeing you day in and day out. But it doesn't mean we love others LESS, just differently. 

The nature of our love was  evident from the very beginning. I'd fallen in love before and I have since. That's a giddy stomach-droppy almost ill feeling. This had a bit of that but what it mostly felt like was relief. Like after so many years of being apart before we met, we were FINALLY together. And we both expressed that to each other on our second date; we were essentially married three weeks later, even though the formality of the ceremony was sixteen months away.  

We did the things young couples do. Shared catchphrases multiplied to the point we can now have entire conversations using only other peoples' words. I read books to her, including the entire Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. But what we did (and do)  more than anything else was take care of each other. Because that's what love looks like to us. 

Mark takes care of Eva in ways I can't. To name just one of many, he's a retired massage therapist with thirteen professional designations. He is her partner (of ten years now) every bit as much as I am her partner, and we take care of him, as well. 

Other relationships exist, and they find their space in the tapestry. The people in the relationship are more important than the relationship. There are people I used to be close to who barely exist in my life at this point. I love them both; I doubt I'll ever see either of them again but that's always and forever up to them. 

To me, that's what love is. No expectations beyond basic courtesy (and I'll accept SOME mistreatment on that score because some days, basic courtesy is just too much). No obligations. Wants, certainly. Strong desires, quite possibly. But my feelings are not up to you to reciprocate.

It's a vibe and a tribe whether you're next to me in the real world (always and forever my preference) or part of my Web web .... I love you.

My philosophy of sex, love and friendship. Part 1

PART ONE: COOKIE MONSTER IN A KISSING BOOTH

It should be acceptable for men to openly discuss sex.

It should be even more acceptable for men to discuss love.

And most of all, it should be acceptable for men to discuss friendship.

This man's about to do all three. 

Perspectives voiced in this series of essays are mine and (often, it seems) mine alone. I do not claim to speak for all men; in fact, I usually end up spreaking against most of them. 

_________________________

To those who say men never shut up about sex, I hear you. Like starving people and food, right? It's all they ever talk about. But not really. Not (haha) deeply. And especially not sex and how it may interlink with love and/or friendship. None of these are fit topics for a man to discuss, for reasons that have always escaped me. 

I am not suggesting the details of your sex life....what you do in and out and in and out (and in and out)  of bed/floor/backyard hammock should be public. Gods, no. It's intimate information that only you and your partner have a right to. Sorry to disappoint you if you're looking to hear about who I've been with and what specific chandeliers we've swung from.  

Now that I've disappointed you, I hope I don't offend you by telling you what you probably already know: I practice ethical non-monogamy (ENM), and have for ten years now. I won't dwell on this: search "polyamory" on this blog and you can read for days. It really did seem as if I was a "lifestyle ambassador" there for a while. I feel like I should formally apologize for that. 'Mine is not a better way; mine is only another way.' What looked evangelical was really just me trying mightily to clear up a whole lot of misunderstandings. The biggest one: it's not cheating, it's building a web of interconnected relationships and letting them settle wherever feels natural for all involved: there will be much more about this in the next entry, "Love". The second biggest misconception, and what drove me away from identifying as polyamorous: I'm not trying to get my dick wet. The ONLY true detail I will give you is that I have a LOT less sex than almost anyone knows. I bet it's less than you have and I'd win that bet nine times out of ten.

I might have had a (w)hole lot more sex if I could stomach (or even accomplish) doing it casually. The reason why I can't is apparent in the last sentence: I have always regarded "casual" as a synonym for "meaningless".  "A game of poles and holes", I've called it. That's because sex, to me, is the most intimate thing two people can do together. As I love to say, other forms of intimacy are "into me see"; sex is literally "into me be". 

I realize many, perhaps most people don't feel as I do on this. For many, sex is just this thing that feels good, maybe like how any other shared activity among friends feels good? But then there are marriages in which extramarital sex is fine but "feelings" aren't. This is particularly common among swingers. I mean, you can see where the disconnect is for me. "Sure, sleep with her, but you better not care about her." WTF?

 Prostitutes almost uniformly regard a kiss as A LOT more intimate than any amount of parallel parking could ever be. For the same reason, passionate kissing is rare in porn. I get it. FOR ME, it's not true. I have kissed a whole lot of people with whom I've never tested a single mattress, I mean, duh. 

Deliberate wide exposure to different people and attitudes broadened my mind considerably on this. I'm unsure I could have sex myself with a mere friend -- if she expressed an attraction, depending how vividly, I would almost certainly have no issue, but the aftermath might be messy. All I ask is that you demonstrate I mean something a wee bit more than a dick to you. I don't feel like that's too much to ask. Dicks are everywhere; you don't even need men attached to them. In fact, I have it on good authority that B.O.B., the Battery Operated Boyfriend, is better in bed than most men could ever hope to be. Men, you know what this means, don't you? She doesn't need you to be satisfied sexually. She never did. That industrial juicer she's wielding that you think of as your rival? That's your teammate. Develop some chemistry between all three of you and she'll thank you later, after she regains her breath.

I no longer get het up about you enjoying casual sex even with total strangers, so long as it's consensual and clean.  Just yesterday I ran across a demisexual sex worker, a concoction I would have thought impossible. (Demisexual: capable of arousal and sex if a strong emotional connection is present, and usually incapable if not; in other words, me. ) This sex worker said her demisexuality made her very good at her job, because she felt no attachment at all and just regarded it as an acting performance. I asked her how she got aroused if she wasn't even attracted to her clients and she told me her body just does it without her feeling much of anything.

I found myself wondering how many intimate interludes I had been part of wherein my partner didn't feel much of anything. I know it's happened; I hope it hasn't happened in at least 25 years.

Somewhere in THE STAND by Stephen King -- can't recall if it was Harold Lauder talking, but it sounds like him -- a man was musing about how the human penis is as simple as contraption as is allowed to exist in nature. You stimulate it, it responds.

Not mine. Not always. And it's not erectile dysfunction. It's an almost impregnable barrier called desire. Not mine...yours. Mine doesn't exist without yours. Show me yours and by golly sonny Jesus I'll show you mine, but if you ain't got none, hun, neither do I. No matter the shape of your buns. 

This is one of the other things people don't get about me. When I don't go gaga over random celebrities, or even weirder to me -- fictional characters -- people assume I must be gay, not noticing I don't go gaga for any random celebrities or fictional characters even if they're male like me. Or they assume I'm asexual, which is MUCH closer to the truth, but still not right.

I seized on "demisexuality" when I ran across it for the same reasons anyone adopts a label. It's a relief to know that if I'm broken, at least I'm not the only broken one. But I'm not a born demi. I made myself this way. 

 There's a very good reason buried in my high school history: I wasn't always like this. There was a time when every woman who shared a class with me shared a hell of a lot more in my fantasies. I was much more typical of the male of the human species.  And then came the day of the kissing booth and adult Ken was born. If you don't know the story, I do urge you to read it: it explains a lot. The more I reflect, the more it explains.

That ancient kissing booth is why I just can't kindle a fantasy about anyone (or anything) I know doesn't want me fantasizing about them. The thought can't even form in my head.  This includes every woman I don't know, all but three, at present, of the people I DO know, and  also most of the somebodies that  I used to 'know' (even in the Biblical sense). On the flip side, it's ALSO why if you initiate sex with me I'll tumble in short order, possibly even if I'm not really ready. Tell me you want me and I'll perk up. Show me you want me and I may not stand against you. Being desired is...desirable. 

That kissing booth is, of course, why consent is paramount to me now. I never got in so much as a word of trouble from the school for my behaviour...I didn't have to, the whole place saw my horrified reaction when the women started crying...I ran bawling out of the cafeteria. But I got in trouble with myself. That incident installed any number of checks on my libido that need to be patiently unlocked. It's at least three or four times before I'd feel sure enough you wanted me to initiate anything myself. 

It's why I'm terrified of "using" somebody and disgusted at the thought of being used. Because I used those women to make up for what I felt at the time was about eight years of stolen kisses, and they did not consent to that. 

And I've finally internalized, deep down, just how much it poisoned my attitude about casual sex. It's truly as if I thought everybody else had my kissing booth experience and didn't change a thing about their approach to women. Which is flatly ridiculous. I mean, I'm not other people. Like DUH! Why do I keep forgetting something so freaking obvious? 

I said in that linked blog that I would scrub that day from my life if I could, but you know -- without those tears I might have become something worse. I do regret, however, how JUDGY I was up until far too recently, how quick to assume motives that didn't exist, and how much pain that caused.

____________________

I discovered my genitals pretty early. Both boys and girls typically masturbate in the womb...suffice it to say you notice right quick how good it feels to play with it. Here's a bloody weird confession: the first bunch of time I recall it getting hard were directly in response to Cookie Monster. 

So I didn't want to fuck the puppet, or be pegged by the puppet. I didn't even know what sex was at four: my "pee-pee" was just this thing that flopped around between my legs and produced "pee" every so often. But for unknown reasons, watching Cookie Monster devour anything inedible caused my pee-pee to get hard. There's an episode where Cookie and Harry "share" a bicycle that may as well have come off the favourites list on this four year old's version of Pornhub. I just rewatched that...not so much as a twitch, but....the vestiges of one? Like, something seems vaguely exciting in how wrong that is. 

No idea where that came from. I've joked that a psychologist would have a field day. 

Yeah, those actions in grade nine have loomed very large over my life. Cookie Monster, not so much. I think I know why that is: I kind of focused on him before I knew anything at all about sex. Couple years later, who knows, I might have ended up with one hell of a rare kink. As it is, all I have to thank ol' Cookie for is a powerful oral fixation.

STUFF I'VE LEARNED:

1) The filthier the sex act, the more intimate it feels to perform it (if it's fully consensual).

No, you don't get to find out what I'm referring to because (a) you didn't say the magic word; (b) there IS no magic word; see, it's none of your beeswax and (d) I said it largely to make a point related to the point I just finished with. If you engage in some kink I don't get...hey, there are lots of things I don't "get". Doesn't delegitimize any of them. Not for me doesn't mean not for anyone. It bothers me to no end it took me so long to get here. I'd keep thinking, "yeah, I get this point" and then some other "weird" thing would catch my attention and out would come the judgment again.  

2) Laughing during sex is intoxicating. Just be careful you don't snap your cock in half. 

2a) A good way to accomplish 2) is to find a funny song with a good rhythm and sing along as you frolic. I leave the soundtrack up to you, your choices are infinite. Baby Shark. Wait, that one actually IS erotic for a large number of married men with children of that age: hey, sweetie, the kids are going to be busy for the next half hour: would you like some gland-to-gland combat? Hell yeah, don't mind if we do do do dodo dodo!

3) For at least some people in my experience, "I've got a headache" -- so long as it isn't, you know, a migraine -- is a good reason to have slow, gentle, loving sex. Sex is good for headaches for some people. No, wait, bad for headaches.

4) If you can't cut the mustard, you can always (mmmm) lick the jar. 

Anne

We lost a giant of a woman.

My mother-in-law, Anne Hopf, passed away last Wednesday.

The word I'd use to describe Anne is "awe", and I mean that word in its original sense, of inspiring wonder, reverence and a little dread. She had a sharp tongue and strong opinions, had Anne, and she did not suffer fools at all, let alone gladly. If you didn't know her, and sometimes even if you did, she was beyond intimidating. 

But my God was she loved. And for good reason. Many good reasons. 

Anne was a highly successful tax accountant. (Her late husband, John -- another man who elicited widespread awe just by existing -- was a longtime caretaker of a cemetery: together, they were known as "Death and Taxes".) She was exceptionally good at her job because she took care of not just her clients' accountancy needs, but whatever else she could possibly help with. There are a lot of distraught people surrounding Campbellford, Ontario right now. 

That was one facet of the woman. There were many others. She lived in an overgrown doublewide trailer  on a farm with all manner of traditional "redneck" accoutrements scattered over the property -- and for many years she was an absolutely insatiable, omnivorous reader. She watched things like Pawn Stars on repeat, but could don elegance with ease. And holy hell don't you dare underestimate this woman. She cultivated that in both her kids, too. What a trait to have, and to pass on. 

At home, Anne threw herself into hobbies with a will, discarding them once she'd mastered them and picking up new ones. Her motto may as well have been "go big or go home".  At one point she had over 250 ducks, geese, swans, and chickens to go along with her five beloved wiener dogs. 

She was Mom to Eva and Jim, who were raised on resilience and drive. She was Gramma to Alexa and Lily, whom she loved deeply. She was "G.G." to little Emily, the granddaughter of her best friend Danielle. She was "Miss Anne" to Danielle's daughters Julia and Sarah, who are family.

And to her, I was "the invisible son-in-law". I never got to see her enough, which I regret mightily. 

From the first, I felt tested. I was not Eva's usual run of boyfriend and her folks didn't know what to make of me until they made out enough of me to see I loved their daughter very much. But even so, I felt under scrutiny there, and probably overtried not to offend.

The woman was blunt, memorably so. I recall being at the funeral of her mother, who was not religious and who did not want religion in her service. There was entirely too much religion in that service. Anne strode out of it at the end and with the finality of a coffin lid closing tinged with bitter graveyard dirt, she told us that if we predeceased her, "You won't get none of this crap. Crispy critters, then you're done." 

That she herself is now a crispy critter -- though not done, at least not in my belief system -- I feel quite sure would make her laugh. Anne's laughter was the sweetness behind her sternness. And while I never perceived the woman as anything close to touchy-feely....according to the many people mourning her in messages public and private, she gave the best hugs.

What comes out again and again in testimony about Anne Hopf is her utter dedication and devotion to the client -- or granddaughters -- in front of her. "Above and beyond" was the baseline in so many of her pursuits personal or professional. 

Eva can tell you stories, not all of them pretty. There was a time when "hate" might not have been too strong a word to apply to that relationship. But as everyone matured and mellowed, Eva and her mom grew into the best of friends. It's been a delight to watch that evolve. 

I feel like it's almost a cliche at this point, obligatory in eulogies, to mention the strength of the woman, but damnit, Anne was a rock. She endured physical pain I can't even comprehend and made it so as you'd never notice if you weren't attuned to it. She was fiercely independent, freethinking, and the most utterly unsentimental pragmatist I've ever met. I've come to appreciate that ruthless logic, which lives on in my wife, Anne's daughter. It's the polar opposite of my own run of thinking, but it has its uses and its place. 

There will be some form of memorial service at a future date. 

Rest in peace you've truly earned, Anne. 

Religion As It's Supposed To Be

 Anyone who has or can make the time, PLEASE go watch this.

I especially mean that for people who reject Christianity and religion in general. I don't think even the most devout atheist would find overmuch to quibble with in here, aside from certain choices of words. The man uses "God" because he is a Christian, but he makes abundantly clear and even says outright something I believe with my whole heart and have been preaching since high school: there are many paths to the sacred.

Put into my own words, which I have spoken and written many times: mine is not a better way, mine is only another way.

_____________

My relationship with religion has been...complicated. I was baptized Roman Catholic at a year old and again at fourteen -- something that is not supposed to happen under any circumstance. I never grasped the theological complexities as to why the first baptism was found to be invalid; I had about as much interest in religion at fourteen that I did at a year old. It was something forced on me by my mother, and mother-forcings were not to be questioned in any way lest it summon the dragon. 

Church was a sometimes thing for me throughout my childhood. My babysitter, Martha, lived next door to me and her family -- which included a daughter named "Faith" -- took me to Sunday school tolerably often, until I moved to London at nine. I bounced back and forth between the Catholic and public school boards. Other than extra added ritual, there isn't much to differentiate the two educational options: I actually got a damned good grounding in world religions that weren't Christianity at Sir Arthur Carty Catholic School in grade six. 

But religion meant little to me at that age. I barely touched my Bible; my mom had obtained a book of Bible stories (from the Watchtower Society,  which means post divorce when money was nonexistent, likely the only reason she accepted that book, as you'll soon see). They were considerably easier to read. At six years old, fables are fabulous, not fabulistic. And as I grew up, I found church had more questions than answers. I was particularly unhappy whenever I was told "it's a mystery". A mystery? You seem to care very much about Jesus and God but you've had two thousand years to solve the "mystery" and you haven't even TRIED? You're all frauds. 

Or I'd routinely hear "it's God's will" as a thoughtstopper. Who are you to question the will of God? Especially when it just so happens to align with the will of a Christian taught never to question the will of God? There's a simple, direct way around that prohibition: turn "what would Jesus do?" into "what would I do if I were Jesus?" The hypocrisy stinks to high heaven, no pun intended. 

In grade thirteen I had two unlikely friends. One, the Kieron I have mentioned at intervals, was a very strong atheist, which suited my temperament at the time. The other was Johnathan, who was raised strict Jehovah's Witness. The three of us made an odd trio: I often found myself mediating theological and philosophical arguments between two wickedly intelligent and diametrically opposed minds. (Johnathan graduated high school with a near perfect average, including all the science course he memorized but did not believe.) 

Jehovah's Witnesses do not permit higher education. The waste of Johnathan's febrile mind fundamentally offended my best friend and sincerely puzzled me. I asked to borrow one of Johnathan's Watchtower Bibles, wondering what could possibly be in there to so enslave and stunt a person of such smarts. 

My mom hit the roof. I may as well have brought home a copy of the Necronomicon to summon demons with, as far as she was concerned. She threatened to burn the book, and I got the distinct feeling she wouldn't have cared if the flames jumped to me and consumed me along with it. I took it out of the house, leaving it in the shed until I could bring it to school, and then I read it over the next few months, surreptitiously, while listening to teachers drone on about stuff I mostly already knew. 

Their Bible is, um, fundamentally different from the one I had a glancing acquaintance with. JWs explicitly deny the divinity of Jesus, instead stating Jesus is the archangel Michael incarnate. They also don't believe that the "Holy Spirit" is anything other than the will of God. These seemed like trivial differences to me at the time. I was more interested in the JW belief that only 144,000 people would enter the higher levels of heaven. 

As of 2023, there were a shade under nine million JWs in the world. Somethin's gotta give. Expressing the 1990 equivalent to Johnathan yielded little more than a shrug. "We all  do our best to qualify," is all he'd say. 

At the same time, in grade thirteen, my Classical Civilizations teacher was making religion and spirituality accessible and relatable to teenagers, no easy feat. I've praised Reverend Roger "Uncle Rog" McCombe to the high heavens, because quite frankly that's where he is right now. He was there throughout his life, too. He was a man who saw the holy in everyone everywhere all the time...the closest thing to a saint I've actually met. He was especially interested in the Greek gods and their stories, and he would relate them using terms from Christianity and other religions interchangeably. Uncle Rog opened my mind, my heart, and my spirit.

In second year university, my girlfriend at the time lived in the Lutheran Student House at Wilfrid Laurier. I was living there rent-free for almost the entire school year, in blatant but unpunished defiance of their beliefs. Sex was had. Often. By more than just Cathy and I in that house. I can tell stories.

Because Cathy was Lutheran, and because she didn't seem at all God-besotted, I tried attending church with her. This time was a little better: I could at least see the truths behind all the dross. I undertook to read the Bible thoroughly, with commentary, and mostly succeeded at that (never mind all the genealogical tables, a man can only read the word "begat" so many times). 

Buried under centuries and centuries of ground axes and (often purposeful) mistranslations, if you dig hard enough and refrain from taking everything so gods-damned literally, there is a message there.  A very powerful message. In the video linked above, the Texas Representative and seminary student James Talarico distills that message to an essence and presents it in direct opposition to what Christianity has largely become in the U.S: Christian Nationalism. 

Talarico's vision of Christianity is both expansive and much more historically grounded than what often (not always, by any means)  passes for the faith in the political arenas Americans and many Canadians call churches. He insists that Christianity is blatantly political, but not in the way many of its adherents think. Jesus was, after all, an activist who pissed off the people in power with a message that sidelined them. 

He died for that. Powerful people don't like being bypassed. That doesn't change with the historical era. 

Neither does love. 

As Talarico notes, Jesus himself was not Christian. He called his faith "The Way" -- and it represents nothing less than a complete repudiation of the values driving society, then and now. It actually aligns very closely with my own values -- which really ought not to be a shock since, again, there are many paths to the sacred. 

Jesus' faith was highly communal. His followers shared land and possessions. They greeted one another "with a holy kiss". It wasn't top-down; it was bottom-up. Many of His followers were the literal bottom, the  dregs of society, which would have alarmed the Pharisees. The most dangerous thing in the world for an artificial overclass (and all overclasses are artificial) is for the rabble to realize they are collectively more powerful than even the most brutal tyrant. 

Jesus never elevated himself above his followers. He explicitly told them "these things and more will you also do". You can see him patiently explaining that the value system his disciples had learned was upside down. They continually ask him who will be the greatest, the most powerful, among them and Jesus continually redefines their notion of power in response. 

Talarico is like this. He doesn't seek to import his religion into politics: he seeks to import a certain kind of politics into his religion. A radical kind of politics that says, among other things, "by their fruits you shall know them" (not their power, not their status, not their bank accounts). 

This to me is the essence of Christianity -- and it's not much different from the essence of any other religion, or the basis of secular humanism, for that matter. I no longer get hung up on God talk even though I don't believe in the Christian God. There are many paths to the sacred. Taoism even calls itself "the way" and there is nothing in Taoism to negate Christianity.

I still do, sadly, get hung up on individual Christians. To my mind, more of them ought to be doing what Talarico does, calling out the hypocrisy. But then I remember I'm an idealist and frightfully naive, often. For instance, I question anyone's belonging to a church that fully endorses, defends and even encourages child sexual abuse. The Catholic Church has more blood on its hands than any other organization in the world and I question how much good can come out of something so rotten.

In the secular realm, I'm just as disgusted with any person or entity still using Twitter. So I guess I'm consistent in my naivete. 

I'm glad to see someone who truly understand what religion is supposed to be for. I'm doubly glad to see he's bringing his faith to bear on real world issues in a similar way to how Jesus would. And I'm in awe the guy is only, as of that video, in seminary. He has a bright future...sharing his Light. 

52 Pickup, Part 2

 As promised, the other half: random facts about me

27) Chores I don’t mind doing: 

--Dishes. I've had dishwashers for maybe two years of my life: three of them in total and they all broke within months. That's okay. There's something therapeutic about dish-doing. Meditative. The water feels good on my touch-starved skin. 

--Laundry. I've done about 99.5% of the laundry in this house for 25 years. It's a lot easier than it may be for most since none of us here wear business attire, ever and folding? Waddat? You put the shirt on, stretch it over your capacious gut, and presto: Wrinkles removed. Almost like an iron.

--Lawnmowing. Now that I have a decent cordless electric mower, anyway. Before, with a cord, it was low-grade torture. The safety features on our old mower -- and you want those, if you're me -- meant wrangling the cord with one hand while clutching the handle of the mower unnaturally tightly and steering with the other.

--Winter driveway maintenance (most of the time). I have a small electric snowblower to handle mild to moderate snowfall. It's the winter version of the lawnmower: it makes my life much easier. But unless I've been seriously dumped on, I truly didn't mind manual mode. I can take a small measure of pride in that when I'm done, not only is the driveway and sidewalk clear, so is a chunk of the street. It thwarts the evil trickster plow god Snoki. 

28) Chores I hate: Most of the rest of them, with special emphasis on litter, bathrooms, and anything on a handier man's honey-do list. Chore that goes BEYOND hatred: putting anything together. Eva does the heavy lifting on this, for which I em eternally grateful, but she'll ask me to hold something and...okay...how tight? If I feel it moving, am I supposed to let it move or not? Where EXACTLY do you need me to hold this? Guaranteed to put both of us in bad moods pretty much instantly. 

29) Song currently in my head: Johnny Cash covering "Hurt".

30) Collections: Outside of my books, the only real collection I ever had consisted of between 200-250 dinky cars. All different makes: Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Corgi Jrs, Majorette....I miss them, honestly. The thing I'd WANT a collection of: strange and unusual clocks. My dad had a couple:  a genuine Black Forest cuckoo clock, a Mexican souvenir clock where the 'pendulum' was a guy swinging a whip.

31) What humbles me: I'm no more special than anyone else. For every supposed quality I'm told I have, I can name you two qualities I should have but don't. My shitty vision and the disconnect between my eyes and my hands KEEP me humble. So does the sobering realization I've only ever been "good enough" in this house, nowhere else. 

32) Memory from childhood: Camping in our 1970 Trailmaster tent trailer, first at Oastler Lake, then later at Grundy Lake. As a kid, it was a near weekly thing through the summer months. We'd go into Parry Sound first thing, see my Gramma Breadner and Aunt Dawna and Uncle Ted, among others, and stock up at Dominion, a grocery store that's long gone. Their slogan, painted on the back wall of the store, was "Mainly because of the meat". But for us the shopping list always included two things that scream childhood to me: that ten-pack of Kellogg's cereals in little box-bowls...and butter tarts.

33) Memory from my teenage years: Grade thirteen orchestra practice. My friend Jason spotting a spider on someone's violin and calling "Helen! There's a spider on your G string! .... Now it's crawling into your F hole!" I couldn't breathe for thirty seconds, I was laughing so hard. 

34) Next big trip, at this rate, it's going to be Eva's and my 25th wedding anniversary trip next year. It was SUPPOSED to be to the Just for Laughs festival in Montréal, which I just found out has gone belly-up and won't be back. Son of a BEEYOTCH. EVERY time we plan something, it gets kiboshed. Either something expensive breaks and steals our trip money or festival organizers get wind we're coming and say "absolutely not". 

We thought about taking the train -- or flying -- to Halifax, doing the Cabot trail, and training/flying home, but that is (a) crazy expensive and (b) very hard to plan. We are brainstorming alternatives. Agawa Canyon is high on the list. We'll see.

35) How I’d like to die: Instantly. 

36) favourite pun: I gotta million of em. This one's courtesy Spider. For this, you need only know there's a book called SHARDIK,  by the same man who gifted the world with WATERSHIP DOWN, and SHARDIK is about an empire ruled by the titular enormous, semi-mythical bear.

Now, the only way to become a knight in Shardik's empire was to apply for a personal interview with the bear. This had its drawbacks. If he liked your audition, you were knighted on the spot--but if you failed, Lord Shardik was likely to club your head off your shoulders with one mighty paw.

Even so, there were many applicants--for the peasantry were poor, and if a candidate failed for knighthood, his family received, by way of booby-prize, a valuable sheepdog from the Royal Kennels. 

This consoled them, for truly it is written:

"For the mourning after a terrible knight, nothing beats the dog of the bear that hit you."

36.3333) I think I'll just let that sit up there a minute.,

36.6666) Isn't that awful? Isn't it GLORIOUS?

37) My favourite comedian deserves a HELL of lot more fame than he has. His name is Derek Edwards. His delivery is SO good. We've seen him once and we'll see him any time he gets within a four hour drive of here.

38) Lesson I learned that stuck with me: in grade five, I turned in an assignment four days late. My teacher gave me a 96% on it...and then subtracted 15% for every day tardy. I can still remember the huge 36%, circled in red. I don't think he let that affect my final grade...but I didn't know that at the time, and since then, I have never turned a single thing in late. Nor have I ever been late myself, barring circumstances utterly beyond my control. 

39) Something I am always losing: I hate to admit it, but my glasses. They're $1300 or so and they SHOULD be in a case every night and I know that but it doesn't happen as often as it should. And when it doesn't, it's hell, because without them on there is almost no way to find them except by lucky touch. Seriously, folks: without these things on,  this screen is completely unreadable more than eight inches from my eyeballs. I CAN'T SEE.

40) Something I wish I'd never lost: OMFG they're making these again! Mine was plastic. I just had an attack of YEARN. My ball clock was destroyed  in a move and (pants like a lizard) want want want want want...

41) My most left wing belief: For some reason this is dismissed as hopeless idealism, beyond communism, but here you go: If something is necessary for life, it should be a crime to sell it at a profit.

I believe that with all my heart and CRINGE every time I hear somebody refer to "earning a living". What a fucked up statement people just ignore. If you're not making money for somebody else, why are you even alive? is what that says to me.

42) My most right wing belief: immigrants should (a) fill a need here; (b) obey all the laws and norms of our society and (c) shouldn't be here at all until there is infrastructure to support them.  Note: I don't give a pig in a poke where they come from, what colour or gender or sexuality they are. I don't feel like this is too much to ask, but my left wing friends lambaste me as some kind of Trump supporter if I let that out.

43) My biggest flaw...now which of ten million should I choose here? Thank dog for the very few people in my world for whom I am good enough. But I think my biggest flaw is probably my aversion to turning play into work. Most people invert that and turn work into play. My mind refuses to think like that.

I have two things -- and only two -- I could ostensibly make a decent amount of money doing: writing or composing. Writing's easier--the putting words on the page part of it anyway. The rest of it? The full time job (UGH) MARKETING myself? The constant rejection? The need to write umpty-dozen hours every day just to keep money coming in (hopefully)? The knowledge that less than a hundredth of a percent of people actually live off their words?

I'm going back to bed.

44) Hottest temperature I've experienced: 39 with a 47 humidex. That's 102, feels like 117. Coldest: -48 (-54) with a windchill of -72 (-97). 

45) Favourite stores:

Groceries: Costco, Sobeys

Clothing: Mark's Work Wearhouse, Pure Muskoka

Books: Bearly Used, Indigo

46) Products I would shill for:

Mr. Clean Magic Erasers

Dawn dishsoap

Hawkins Cheezies

Kawartha Lakes Dairy (Chapman's, too)

Mac computers

47) An expensive thing I bought that was worth every penny: The Sleep Number bed. No longer available in Canada, which really bites because we need a new bed. Our Sleep Number gave wonderful sleeps for many years.

48) Favourite game shows: The Price Is Right, Joker's Wild, Pitfall, Just Like Mom

49) Favourite card game: Cribbage (and reverse cribbage, where the goal is to amass as FEW points as possible...takes three times as long to play a game, but it's an absolute hoot. Knowing me I'll see the only 29 hand of my life in a game of reverse crib.)

50) Favourite hour of the day is in the middle of the night. Silence is golden and dark is dark. 

51) The best sleep I ever had: that tent trailer I alluded to earlier. Rain outside pattering on the roof of the trailer. Blacker than midnight in an asshole. I think I may have spent that night dead. 

52) Funniest things I have ever done: Judging from the reaction, and I've told this story before, but the time I was in a donut shop with my dad. I was maybe four, and I was trying to read every word I could see. The place was packed, as Canadian donut shops ALWAYS are, and thirty conversations magically fell silent at the same time  that my piping four year old voice triumphantly announced: "OPEN! 24! WHORES!"

I can still hear the shocked laugher.

Thanks for reading.