Sister

Since my last post I have been thinking a lot about my sister who, until last night, I hadn't spoken with since May '04. We were both going through difficult emotional situations then, especially her at that point. We loggerheaded over a sensative family issue and we stopped speaking to each other. Our silence troubled me greatly, even though I was convinced she'd never speak to me again regardless of what I said.

Christmas Day I spoke with my brother in Oakville and he told me my sister has just been in hospital and the doctors found a tumour the size of a grapefruit in her abdomen, probably on her uterus, that is growing and probably malignant. The news sickened me. I called and left her a message while she was still in hospital saying I would be happy to help any way I could. She returned my call last night and we talked for more than an hour. Her attitude about the cancer is very positive and she expressed great interest in my welfare. She even took some of the responsibility for the rift between us even though I had no idea why she was so hostile for a year before the rift happened. I was totally pepared to forgive her though I wasn't buying her entire interptretation of what happened. Anyway, she is driving in from Langley tonight to meet me for dinner. I had no idea how much I this change would impact on me. I rarely cry, but last night in bed the tears kept flowing. They weren't tears of sadness or joy, just a release of stress I no longer needed to hold onto.

Mela and Sera

In the blue light of early morning I tottered to the window and saw sheets of white snow already blanketing the sheets of ice from yesterday. So I returned to my own sheets and blankets to dream some more. When I felt the 'big empty' I got up, had some corn flakes and a hot shower. It is still snowing heavily on this 11th day of siege but today I am in a great mood knowing that it is at an end. By the weekend it is forecast to rain for three days and get up to +8C. The nightmare is almost over. My Team Leader just chuckles when I call in now and just says he hopes to see me before the New Year.

Last night before bed I took a melatonin capsule. On days when with lots of mental activity (e.g. playing lots of computer games lately) seratonin builds up in the brain. Seratonin (no relationship to Sarah Palin, though both induce lethargy and foggy thinking) is a sister to Melatonin and they react, like most brothers and sisters, when they come into contact. In this case Mela metabolizes Sera, which I'd gladly do to my sister if I could figure out how. Mela metabolizes Sera during the brain wave spikes that happen at the start of a dream, which means each time they metabolize a dream begins. So I take melatonin and spend the night dreaming. My dreams are weird and wild as I have a vivid and playful imagination.

Last night I was at some kind of residential job site and I had to leave. I was wandering the corridors of this labyrinth building in my underwear, towing my sleeping bag behind me, looking for my lost bicycle and the rest of my clothing and stepping over all these other half-naked men cuddled up and sleeping on the floor. Next thing I know I was on the sidewalk, clothed and selling tickets for Phantom of the Opera, which I have never done before, though I was a bar tender for the show in Toronto. I had to give out the tickets, for some unbeknown reason, with two blueberries each and I was having a problem finding suitable good ones in my basket. It was the blueberries that reminded me I was hungry and that woke me up. So, who needs other drugs or a date when you can go to bed with melatonin?

The last dream reminded me of the time I was a bar tender for the Phantom along with my bf Joseph. He was 11 years younger and always had to be the centre of attention. He was hot and complimented on his looks all the time, but he was as much of a headache as a pleasure most of the time. He was also flamboyantly gay and made a big point of being my bf, which was a new experience to me. One day one of the other bar tenders named Robin, an attractive straight guy a few years older than Joseph, came to me and said, "Your boyfriend" (with the agitated tone that said this was my problem) "has been offering me beginner lessons in blow jobs!"
"He has?" I faked surprise, stalling for time and trying to suppress a smile.
"Yes!" he responded, waiting to hear what I'd do about it.
"Well I guess that's alright..."
"What?" he was taken aback.
"But if he offers you intermediate lessons," I sighed and shook my head slowly, "he's not qualified."
He looked like a deer in the headlights until a smile gradually crept across his face. He nodded at me and turned and left the room. He never complained about Joseph again.

Hallelujah! The snow has just turned to rain!

.

Freeze Out - Day 10

I didn't make it up to the Sunshine Coast with my Faerie friends on the weekend for fear that the snowfall on Saturday night/Sunday morning would prevent me from getting home for Monday morning. I didn't want to call in to work long distance saying that I couldn't make it in.

I've been house bound since then, except for a one block -13C trip up to my favourite breakfast diner Saturday morning. The snow started late Saturday evening and continued through Sunday. Monday the skies were clear but there were more than 15 cm of snow with snowbanks half a metre high where the plows had been. The sidewalks looked mostly clear so checked it out when I took out the garbage. It was worse than it looked with cars throwing up large sprays of slush onto pedestrians and sidewalk ramps at intersections being blocked by snowbanks left by the plows. I went out the back to take out the garbage and it was a total mess there too.

But the snow was melting and there were rivulets of water everywhere. I was hoping to get to work today. I dressed, make my lunch and left full of determination but I couldn't even leave the property. The front steps are sheet ice. The part I use where there is something to hold onto on both sides has been used to pile 60 cm of snow, now frozen solid, and the courtyard which had melted into a small pond is now a skating rink.

I'm really sick of staying home. I have busied myself making a stained glass calla lily box and I have started a sun catcher (window hanging) of a calla lily too. I have no idea how upset my Team Leader is over my repeated absence from work. I leave messages. I have taken these photos too.

Homeless death

Tuesday morning, 3 days ago, I stopped by the 7-11 convenience store to buy bus tickets. A pleasant but weathered older homeless woman stood by the door greeting people as the entered and left with a donation jar in her hand. Though I usually refuse to give to the many beggars in our streets, often more than one each block, I gave her a dollar. In weather like this I knew she would need it.

This morning at 4:30 am she died. She had tried to build a shelter in a shopping cart, wrapping herself up tightly against the -12C cold and trying to use some candles she had found to stay warm. The candles caught fire and that was the end of her. Another homeless man ran into Blenz Coffee a block and a half down the street, the only establishment open in our neighbourhood at that hour, screaming that someone was on fire. But the staff had already been dealing with a few incidents of screaming homeless people earlier that evening so they ignored his pleas for a few minutes until another person saw the flames.

I slept through it all the ensuing police, ambulance and fire alarms, quite accustomed to the sound sirens and of homeless cat fights on the street below. The retaining wall pictured above is part of the commercial section of the property I live at. The steep sidewalk and ramp onto Hornby St in front of the foreground are still covered with a layer of ice making me treacherous to go there.

I am holed up in my condo above the shopping cart, having phoned in sick again, unable to keep warm under my many layers of clothes. It is 1pm. My co-workers have just left for the annual Christmas lunch. Yesterday my Team Leader met with me to discuss his discomfort with me calling into to say I cannot safely make it into work when I am not sick. I have fallen 3 times in the past 10 weeks when there was no snow and I have broken ribs and my right leg on previous falls. I have narrowly avoided falls a couple times this week because he feels I should make an effort, even when that puts my well-being at risk. He also had monitored a call and had a few negative comments to share. His comments are always negative, never encouragement, support or praise. I have no heart for my job these days but I still need it. I'd have no home without it. Perhaps I'd be smoldering in a shopping cart below.

How can one keep a positive attitude and his sense of humour of days like this?

Breathe

7:30 - I am lying under the fug of my blankets listening to the hiss and slosh of tires on slush. I don't need to get up to know that it's snowing, but I do, only to put on a Joni Mitchell CD and listen to the sultry saxophones, funky bass and her smoky voice singing, "Come In From The Cold".

8:30 - I call in to work saying that I can't make it to the bus stop safely. I'm not going to risk breaking my leg again, especially when I can't get up when I fall and I always fall when I slip. Life can be a bitch some days. My Team Leader says he's sure the sidewalks will be salted soon. Yeah, right after they have been reduced to pack ice. I am more concerned about what will fall the rest of the day if I do go to work as it shows no sign of letting up. It's chilly as hell in my condo but I can't stay in bed all day. I set the shower water as hot as I can stand it. In spite of this, even the shower curtain feels cold against my skin.

10:30 - The weather forecast shows that it will be going down to -10C and -12C the next two nights. It will warm up slightly on Sunday, just enough for it to start snowing again. I have the two front burners of my stove on medium to help warm the place.

3:30 - It has almost stopped snowing. We have about 12 cm or so of the wet stuff. The trees are beautiful but the streets are treacherous. Apparently city buses aren't going down the steep hill to the back door of my building where I would usually get off because they lose control. I am glad I stayed home. I never would have made it in one piece.

Freeze Out - Day 2

I'm sitting at work, having successfully arrived here without falling. It wasn't easy getting those leotards on. And they don't make those things with flies either. No wonder women take so long when they go to the toilets. It wasn't that cold, really--just cold enough keep the ice on the sidewalks frozen. I was able to get out the back door and to the bus stop on Davie St without hitting any major patches of ice, but I won't be able to use the bus stop closest to home when I return because it stops beside the community garden and the sidewalks beside the garden are a frozen nightmare. I'll have to ride an extra two blocks, cross the street and cross again to get around that major obstacle.

The kicker that got me to risk the sidewalks to come to work, besides the stained glass gifts I had made for seniors, was that as future forecasts unfold the temperatures are just getting lower. By Friday it will be -12C (10F). I can't justify taking a whole week off. If the flurries on Tuesday night/Wednesday result in real accumulations then I might have to take the last three days of the week off. The last time the temperatures remained below freezing for a whole week was over Christmas 10 years ago.

I'm doing my damndest not to fall. It won't be easy to last the whole week, but at least it isn't -29C with a windchill of -45C as in Winnipeg! Small mercies. On the plus side, those pesky pine beetles are getting their asses frozen, finally.

Under siege

I made my first tentative outing this morning. The wet snow had packed hard but it was melting where it had been salted. On Sundays, with many businesses closed and regular condo maintenance people off, most of the sidewalks were still ice. The worst parts are the sloped ramps at the intersections where the snow has been packed hard by hundreds of pedestrians. I simply can't climb up them without losing my balance.

I only went half a block downhill to Cafe a Go-Go where the Faerie Coffee happens every Sunday morning. The ramp crossing Hornby St was very slushy but I was able walk down it and shuffle across the street like a penguin without falling. Even that half-block trip, as slow as I took it, was precarious. I felt my feet slipping a bit a few times and by the time I reached the cafe my heart was pounding hard.

I went only because my good friend Danzante was coming. Three others Faeries, Aunty Tinkerbell, Dragonfly and Butterfly Menace, joined us and we had a pleasant little visit. Danzante drove me up the hill to return some videos and post a letter and then drove me home to the ice-free rear entrance of my building. Gawd bless my friends.

I am safely inside now and plan to stay here for rest of the day. I will probably not risk the trip into work and back as the forecast is for -10C (14F) tomorrow am. It's impossible to catch buses that have room during morning rush hour this close to downtown. Taxis can only drop me off on the steep sides of the building where the buses don't stop and it's hard to get to the entrances from there, but even if I caught a taxi it is nearly impossible to catch a cab home at 4:30 when they are all changing shifts. It is possible to catch a bus if I could maneuver the 3+ blocks to get to the bus stop. But if I fell at -10C and couldn't get up again I'd be in serious trouble so I doubt I will risk it.

Tuesday it will be slightly warmer (-8C) and only -6 on Wednesday, but it's supposed to snow that day too. Thursday, after the snow, it will be -9 again. Lovely. My guilt over not working and the prospect of being unable to leave my building has me all anxious as if I'd had too much coffee. I can't imagine 6 weeks of this.

Winter

I hate winter. My muscles hate winter. They fail me when they get too cold and I fall. That is one good reason I live in Vancouver, but not the actual reason why I moved here. I did that before I knew I had a problem with my muscles.

Vancouver usually only has 6 weeks of winter, instead of 6 months or more like most of Canada. So it should be easier to handle it, right? Wrongo. Our situation has made us all wooses. We can't even deal with snow flurries let alone a full blown storm. When it hits freezing we think we're going to die. Most of the winter months in other parts of Canada we love to brag about our prolonged autumns and spring flowers while everyone else is still digging out, but when we get hit with the white stuff it's everyone else's turn to make fun of us and our inability to deal it. The worst of it is that no one has any sympathy for us when it happens.

I am the biggest woos of all. Ice and snow depress me, given that I fall at the slightest slip and can't get up again. I dread each winter and celebrate the first flowers with extra enthusiasm. I worship Global Warming. Bring it on.

Friday's weather's forecast said "snow", the first of the season. The city went into emergency preparedness, as though a tornado was approaching. But I knew it was a false alarm as the high was 4C and nothing would settle. I checked the weather before I left home. It was still wet and windy, a crappy day, but no snow and it was already above 3C so I headed out in my running shoes, as usual. It was a miserable walk but I made it unscathed. All day my co-workers were anxiously awaiting for an announcement from management that we could all go home early in anticipation of snow stopping the buses and trains, but I guessed it right. The flurries came and left without leaving anything behind. The walk home was quite pleasant compared to the trip to work.

But the real danger is yet to come. The rain ended last night and it was supposed to stay mostly clear over the weekend. Then the temperatures were going down to -9C!(!!) Sunday and Monday nights and remaining below freezing all day. My legs can't handle -9C. The last time I tried it in January 2005 I fell and that cracked my femur, which led eventually to a full-blown broken femur months later. So today I swallowed my pride and bought two pairs of womens' stockings at the drug store. No one would see me wearing them under my pants and besides, they will be very useful compliments to my drag next weekend when myself and other Faeries gather on the Sunshine Coast to celebrate the Solstice like good Pagans should.

So I felt prepared for the cold and since I thought it would stay dry until Wednesday I had nothing to fear. The spent the evening watching an old Jane Fonda and George Siegal film after having spent the afternoon making three stained glass sun-catchers for the Gifts For Seniors box on Monday. Then, fifteen minutes ago I looked outside and caught my breath. It's snowing! It's already a couple inches deep and it already -3.6 and falling. This stuff won't melt for several days, as the forecast says when it warms up again the snow will start again. The real danger is HERE!! (help!) :o(

And here I thought if the snow could only hold off to Christmas I could survive this winter.

RJ

Last night I attended a rather lame 40s-50s gay men's discussion group. The topic was "What is the future of gay neighbourhoods?". The group is intended as a social club but not much happens socially, just a bunch of men trying to impress each other with their insightful comments that solve nothing. The discussion topics are often vague or uninteresting so I don't make it a habit. The next topic is "Masturbation techniques", as if at our age we need to learn how to do it. We should just be grateful that we still can.

On my way home I stopped into the Fountainhead Pub, our local gay watering hole. The regulars are often found around the bar, "Cheers"-style. The only guy there was a fellow I hadn't talked to in a couple years who once used to be a regular. His name is RJ.

RJ is a doctor in palliative care. He is a friend of a friend, a bombastic, often-vulgar character but quite likable most times. He's totally image-conscious, works on his sizable muscles regularly and wears a baseball cap to hide his bald head. He also his very well-endowed and a total "top". He doesn't mind whipping it out in the bar to show prospective pick-ups what they could be in for.

You get the picture? As far as I am concerned he sees mostly my disability. The idea of losing his muscles, like what is happening to me, is so horrible to him that he can only imagine that I must want to die. Every time we have talked over the past few years he has offered to "be there for me when the time comes", which means assisting in my suicide. The first time he did this I was so stunned I didn't know what to say, but now I just play along, like asking when he wants to do it and whether he fantasizes about it. I introduce him to others as Dr. Kevorkian.

Last night was no different. He started off our conversation saying that this week he has "pulled the plug" on three clients and reminding me that I should keep in touch. He said I must be bitter about what life has done to me, but couldn't explain in what way I demonstrate this. But he admitted my deterioration isn't visibly noticeable over the past couple years and that I am looking particularly handsome for my age and affliction. His compliments have that sort of back-handed Sagittarius crudeness to them.

He eventually made a pass at me, which he always does when he is horny. He told he wouldn't mind as it would be an exotic experience doing it with a disabled guy like me. I insisted I wouldn't be that good as I am more into affection than sex, that is, more cuddly than volcanic. That always turns him off, or at least depresses him by making him think he is losing his sex appeal. On a down night I wouldn't want to be anywhere near him but last night I found him hilarious. He had me laughing most of the time.

He turned his attention to the new bar tender Isaac, a handsome 30 yr-old hunk who he admitted is unfortunately straight. Isaac lives on a boat in False Creek and I engaged him in talking about life on a boat. RJ though only wanted to talk about sex. He says he has written a few books in his younger days under the name RJ Marsh, books of pornographic fantasies, such as his first ever experience in a shower room when he was 16 with the captain of the St John's wrestling team. RJ was the captain of his hockey team. Every time he started into the nasty (but interesting) details of his story Isaac would walk away. I never did hear the end of it as every cute ass that passed distracted him. We ended up sharing a snack and two beers. He said he wanted to pay for my share of the snack and one beer, but I left him $10 and headed home when he went for a bathroom break.

17 years ago

17 is my lucky number. This is what happened to me exactly 17 years ago, back when I was athletic and stronger, back when no one could tell me from my bicycle since we had never been separated:

I was in my 10th month for traveling by bike from Portugal to India via Norway, around the 15,000 km mark of my trip. I was in Baluchistan, the SW province of Pakistan on the underside of Afghanistan in the great valley where Alexander the Great had lost most of his army returning from India 2300 years earlier. I was traveling NE towards Quetta, the capital, with four others, 2 straight Dutch psychiatric nurses (Coen and Vincent) and a young couple from Britain (Kate and Stephen).

The Lonely Planet Guide Book for Western Asia warns travelers to stay out of this area, not to try to cross it unless with an armed police escort. It is mostly a lawless desert area filled with smugglers with machine guns slung over their shoulders fading in and out of the desert. The Pakistan military mans the occasional outpost along the one lane "highway" that runs 700 km from Taftan, the border town with Iran, to Quetta.

From Taftan to Nok Kundi there is only an unpaved trail weaving through the rock desert. The guide book offers "Places to Stay" in each town, but for Taftan its single word recommendation was "Don't." We all crossed into Pakistan the day we arrived because the visas for the two Brits were expiring. After the local smugglers were kind enough to cook us a humble dinner of fried potatoes we headed off into the desert without sufficient food or water. I had to choice but to follow them.

The trip to Nok Kundi, only 85 km, took two days because our tires kept sinking into the sand, especially mine as I wasn't riding an off-road bike. Fortunately we found a military outpost that had a good well and, in Nok Kundi, some dal, rice and fruit. From there too the road was paved, thanks to the UN, since tax monies in Pakistan are used exclusively on the rich and the military. Nok Kundi was the first town where we were pelted by stones by the town's children as we approached, a favourite sport in the area which I attributed to lack of TV or shopping malls to occupy them. We slept in police compounds for safety from thieves and kidnappers, and fortunately the police didn't rob us.

About 4 days along the distant mountains, that at first seemed to be sunken beneath the horizons on either side, had gradually closed in but the valley was still flat and wide between the ranges. And then, as if in a dream out of a French Foreign Legion film, a beautiful oasis town called Dalbandin appeared. It was so picture perfect at first we thought it must of a mirage but it wasn't. Villages we had passed through before had had a temporary feel to them but I could see the ancient history of this town in its architecture.

We found rooms in the Boys and Girls Club, an extension of the Boy Scouts organization which the Pakistanis take very seriously. We spent the evening relaxing and preparing for two long days of cycling to the next town over 150 km away. We made a large afternoon excursion to the local market place to buy supplies. While we were there we saw our first "magic" tree. It was a sort of desert-acclimatized willow and when the breeze rustled in leaves it produced the sound of running water. It held us spellbound for several minutes as it was too great of an illusion to ignore. Later, when it was dark, Vincent and Stephen inquired around and eventually bought a sheet of hash paste (ganga) for $5, enough to keep us stoned for a few weeks.

The next morning we set off. Two km outside the town we stopped while Stephen and Vincent rolled a cigarette of tobacco and hash and smoked it. That put me off, as I reminded them that it was dangerous enough in this area without being stoned out of our heads. They ignored me. At the 16 km mark, Kate let out a whoop because we reached our first sand dune. It wasn't large, maybe 100 m long and shaped like a boomerang with one arm parallel to the road and perhaps 20 m off the shoulder.

We never cycled for long as the two Brits were heavy smokers. This was as good as any place to have another break, I suppose, but then Coen climbed to the top and let out another whoop! On the other side, hidden from the highway, was another magic willow, many km from the next nearest tree. We moved around the far side to sit under it while the Brits smoked. Then Kate announced, in her privileged princess ("Fuck you if you don't like it!") way that we must spend the night sleeping under the tree.

I was pissed off enough to have to stop every half hour with or without shade to wait for she and Stephen to have their cigarettes, but we had only enough food for two days and we just covered 16 km of a 150+ km journey that we had to cover in two days. But more than just this senseless selfishness, there were somewhere between 300 and 400 holes in the sand at the base of the dune, some as close as 4 m away. Some were big enough around to stick my foot in without touching the sides and others much too small for my hand. No one said a word about them. I moved away to the far end of the dune away from the others in the offhand chance of finding my spiritual balance again. Eventually it was Vincent who came to seek out my opinion.

"Did you see those holes around the base of the dune?" he asked.
"Yeah," I nodded.
"Do you think there is anything living in them?"
"It's a sand dune. It shifts constantly so the holes would be filled in a few days if they weren't occupied."
"What would make those holes? Could they be birds."
"No. Birds wouldn't make holes in the ground. They'd make them on a cliff face and they would all be the same size."
"Do you think they are gophers?"
"No. I don't know if gophers live in this part of the world, and besides, they would have mounds of dirt outside each hole, which they don't."
"Well, do you think they are snakes?"
"Well, snakes come in all sizes and there's no mounds outside their holes. I can't imagine what else they could be."
"What kind of snakes do they have in Pakistan? Would they be poisonous?"
"Desert snakes are often poisonous. Maybe they are vipers or adders. Certainly those are poisonous."
"But they'd have to be HUGE snakes to make holes that large!"
"No doubt."
He pondered this a bit, then said, "Well, do you think they'd bother us?"
"That's very unlikely. They would avoid us because they are unfamiliar with our smell and that would make them cautious."

So, believe it or not, we all bedded down under the "magic" willow, listened to the rustle of its leaves and dreamed we were sleeping beside an idyllic stream somewhere in an English meadow. The smugglers and thieves that might have passed on the highway could not see us behind the dune. Fortunately no one had to get up to pee in the night. In the morning the desert sun rose quickly and we woke around the same time. We got up and looked around us. Kate uttered a slight gasp of astonishment and the others stood in silent amazement.

There were no snakes around us, they being night crawlers, but in the sand we saw the trails they had made all around us less than two metres away. Each hole had radiating 'squiggles' in every direction, as they had been in and out hunting all night. Some of the tracks were 20 cm (8") across and the squiggles more than a metre from side to side. Some of these snakes must have been at 4m long and weighed more than 50 kg. Any one of them could have probably killed us. Our small patch of undisturbed sand was a small island in a large span of tracks that extended a great distance in all directions. It was certainly a strange feeling that we had been tolerated as inconvenient visitors by this city of snakes and that we had survived to see something few people have seen. We soaked it in quietly while eating breakfast. As soon as we were finished we packed up and left without discussion.

Politics

There's a political meltdown happening in Ottawa in our federal government, though no other countries have yet noticed. Seven weeks after winning an increased minority in our Parliament the ruling Conservatives have riled the three opposition parties so much that they say they need to bring the new government down. The Conservatives created this situation by introducing legislation to prevent federal workers from striking, to remove the right of women to use pay equity legislation to file complains about inequities in pay and, most of all, changing rules for political party financing that would ensure a fiscal advantage for their own party. In spite of thousands of auto and forestry workers being laid off every week the Conservatives introduced a new budget that offered no economic initiatives that address their situation.

The election in October wasn't exciting and really changed nothing. The voter turnout was a record low. But this showdown has upset the nation and stirred voter interest. I had hoped it would work against the Conservatives and possibly help bring them down, but the immediate general reaction has been in their favour, putting them in range of a majority government if a new election is called. The public seems to be saying the opposition parties are only interested in gaining power at any cost and not doing this for the public good.

That poll, released this afternoon, has me in a funk. I am suddenly sick of all the speculation and hype. The Governor General, Michaelle Jean, has allowed the Conservatives to suspend (prorogue) Parliament until the end of January to allow the situation to cool and to delay an opposition coalition from deposing the Conservatives next week. At 30 below, January can cool a lot of things down in Ottawa, but the problem isn't going to go away. The government might call another election at the end of January if the budget fails as expected. I just hope it doesn't result in a majority for the tyrannical Conservatives. Both sides will be bombarding the country with their side of the story over the next seven weeks. On top of Christmas hype this will be overload.

To prevent us from turning down their forced wage offer, the Conservatives have offered federal government workers like myself a $4,000 signing bonus. Hopefully our union can get their act together to have us ratify the offer before the Conservatives fall from grace (power). In a lose-lose situation it is best to get what one can.

Counting

From the time I was 5 I have had a habit of counting things. I don't know why. When I cycled everywhere I kept track of the number of kilometers my bike had gone, adding up totals from odometers that had died long before my bike did. (I did over 61,000 km in the first 12 years of owning it, before I had to stop.) Some friends reacted with confusion or amusement, others with disdain. Some thought I must be obsessive/ compulsive and urged me to stop though I never considered it a problem.

To me it was just a curiosity of how long a bike could last. Perhaps I should have kept my eccentricities to myself but I find it amusing how others sometimes try to control what others do even though it has nothing to do with them. Such as when a visitor uses my bathroom and takes the opportunity to rearrange how I hang my toilet paper or shower curtain. Now who is being compulsive there? Anyway, it doesn't upset or change my preferences.

One thing I do count religiously is the number of times I fall. I record the date, location and circumstances. I began that record in January 2004, after it had begun to concern me that I was falling too often. I decided to try to improve my concentration to avoid falling, for I have a wild imagination that likes to hop from cloud to cloud or from past to future while I walk along. The next thing I know I have tripped over some rise in the sidewalk and I am down on the ground.

I set out with the best intentions to go all year without falling if I could, but 3 days later I fell. And so it went. By mid-June the same year I had fallen 10 times, an average of 17.4 days between falls. I decided if I fell 20 times that year I'd buy a scooter and stop walking to work. That decision improved my focus and I only fell 4 more times that year. The next year I only fell seven times, and the following year only 5. The past two years I have only fallen four times. By October 4th this year my average reached an average of 102.3 days over the last 10 falls.

Since then I have fallen three times, something I suppose I should eventually expect as my strength and balance deteriorate. But I am determined to keep up the struggle in spite of this bad stretch. If I avoid falling before the end of January I'll regain my 100-day average, and if it lasts to the end of February I will set a new record. This is one obsession that serves me well.

Wish me luck!

The Fall

I fell this morning leaving the building. I lost my balance, tried to catch the wet railing but it wasn't enough and over I went. I hit my head on a concrete retaining wall, scraped my scalp, 3 fingers and cut the end of my middle finger on my right hand. As the day wore on I realized I bruised my right thigh where I landed.

My weakened arms and legs makes it very hard for me to get up when I fall, especially after the shock of the fall and especially when I hit my head. A timid little middle-aged Filipino woman had the misfortune of seeing me fall. She obviously didn't want to stop and more obviously didn't have a clue what to do. I knew instantly she wouldn't be any assistance to me. She meekly asked if I had fallen, then if I was hurt but she was afraid to really look at me. After she saw I was bleeding she became even more rattled. She fretted about setting down her bag on the wet ground--it was raining. I am sure she wouldn't have had a clue what to do even if she had. She watched me helplessly as I struggled to hoist myself up on the first wet step. As soon as made that minor achievement she ran away as fast as she could, not to get help but just to put as much distance between us as she could.

I was able to push myself up onto the second step and from there pull myself up to a standing position. At the time I didn't even notice my bleeding knuckles or scalp. My first impulse was to just continue on my way to work but my finger was bleeding too much. I went back inside, waited a small age for the elevator and eventually reached my bathroom. There I washed myself up a bit and bandaged my bleeding finger before setting off to work again.

I didn't want to dwell on the fall. For 5 years I have carefully kept a record of each fall and the average number of days between my last 10 falls. In the first half of 2004 I was averaging only 2.5 weeks between falls. I was able to improve my focus and learn to walk more cautiously so for the next 4 years my record improved until 2 months ago when I was approaching 15 weeks between falls. But I have fallen 3 times in less than 8 weeks, and so has my average which is now at 93 days. It is discouraging to losing ground but I suppose that is inevitable given that my condition is deteriorating.

My doctor has been advising me to buy a scooter for the past 3 years, but at present that isn't feasible. My condo strata council refuses to consider installing a wheelchair ramp. There used to be wheelchair access to the front door through a side courtyard, required by an agreement with the City of Vancouver when the office building was renovated into condos in 1994, but the strata has locked the courtyard recently in violation of that agreement. The City has sent 2 warning letters to strata about the violation, which were totally ignored, and has now decided there is nothing more they can do. There has just been a recent City election so once the new, more socialist Council is settled in I will try again through one of the Councilors to get action. If that fails I might need to take legal action against the City and the strata.

Not exactly fun stuff. Not cheap either.

New student

I have a new student as of today. I am teaching her the techniques of stained glass, the copper foil method I always use. She's really raring to go. Apparently she has had a bit of experience and has made some small jewelery pieces, which was apparent as she was instantly good at cutting. She has chosen to make a 16-piece sun catcher, an iris, and chosen to pay by the hour. Today she chose her pattern and glass and cut the first piece of her iris. She is quite excited about it.

My price for lessons is lower than normal, but then I don't have the overhead of paying for the rental of a workshop space. I use the "den" in my condo, an area of about 5 sq m, or 50 sq ft. It is quite sufficient except for projects more than 6 ft long. I don't like working with anything larger anyway. Students are great as they help me use up some of my scrap glass. The piece shown here is 40" long by 15" wide. It has 270 some pieces, an original design of mine. It is a scene in Guanajuarto, Mexico.

Obama-rama

Like so many other millions around the world, I couldn't wait to get home and start following the US election results last night. I was lucky living on the west coast for the results were beginning to trickle in by the time I got home at 5pm. I stayed glued to my computer (not having or wanting TV reception) long after I knew mathematically that Obama was elected. By 9:30 I was so emotionally exhausted that I couldn't stay awake.

Poor Obama. It's hard to imagine all the various meanings put on his election by those who are celebrating, but completely impossible that he can come near fulfilling all their expectations of him. American Democrats are celebrating a great relief after 8 yrs of Shrub & Co., a chance to undo some of the wrongs, a landmark election of a Black man and a likely end to the war in Iraq. They want their country back on track. But ironically to the rest of the world he means much more. The celebrations overseas have no limits, no 48% McCain supporters to placate. Obama means an end to American aggression and intimidation against enemies and allies alike, a chance for the world a reprieve from the "Evil Empire". In many ways, Obama is everyone's President-Elect and the face of the planet from China to Africa to the Middle East is smiling.

But this morning my joy was mixed equally with anger at the success of Proposition 8 in California, successful same-sex marriage bans in Arizona and Florida and further loss of rights for gays in Arkansas. It brought back memories of all the anger and hurt from the 80s when I struggled with other activists to get out from under police oppression and establish gay rights protections across Canada. My signature is on the first copy of the Bill that brought gay rights into the Ontario Human Rights Code in 1986--the first gay rights bill in North America fought in the headlines (Quebec and Wisconsin had already passed protections without media coverage in 1977 and 1984 respectively). When it passed, the politicians who supported it signed the front page of the first copy and the lobbyists signed the last page. That copy sits in the Lesbian & Gay Archives in Toronto.

When same-sex marriage was established here in 2003, the first place to approve it outside of Belgium or the Netherlands, all legal forms of discrimination against gays were eliminated and the need for a gay liberation struggle ended. It was a wonderful but strange new landscape. In my heart I was happy to retire into this new reality.

But the full intensity of my former anger returned this morning. It is more clear than ever in my mind how fundamentally wrong it is to allow the majority to vote on whether a minority should be allowed to share the same rights they enjoy. It is like having an open and binding vote for Germans and Danes as to whether Germany should annex Denmark. Just because Germans out-number Danes 10 to 1 doesn't make that a legitimate democratic vote. That is not democracy; it is tyranny by majority. Each time an initiative is brought forward to a general vote it reaffirms the right for straights to deny us our rights if they want to. Each time we give our power away whether we win or not.

I am not sure what we should replace it with, at least not yet--certainly not violence or any other confrontational method that would further justify their tyranny. But last night's vote underscored the fact that in spite of expectations for Obama, there has been no enlightenment happening south of the border. No awakening yet, no revolution of change. The votes shifted slightly from 50-50 to 51-49 in the climate of a bad economy brought on by greed and mismanagement from 8 years of Bush-dumb, in spite of his heinous crimes committed against American democracy, just enough to cause a few close-vote states to land on the Democrat side of the fence and give the illusion of a landslide. In spite of only a 28% approval rating for Bush, the actual vote shift was less than 2%!

There must be constitutional protections for all minorities in a healthy democracy so that right-wing patriots and frothing fundamentalists cannot strip bare the dignity of their human rights. Mahatma Gandhi once said that while all past civilizations were once measured by their wealth and the size of their empires, all future civilizations will be measured by how they treated their minorities.

Kal-loween

The weather forecast shows rain every day from here to eternity, but it's not that bad. Rain is a no-brainer during our wettest month of the year, but the rain we have been having is quite light and intermittent. Halloween evening was surprisingly dry, as was today even though it rained before I woke up. That evening, I walked with my friend Kal to his place and he made me an incredible curried lentil soup. Gawd, it was good. They say a way to a man's heart is through his stomach--though I once thought that was just for men into fisting. His place is really hot too, but he has unfortunately had to put it on the market so I might not see it much before he moves.

After dinner and two bottles of wine we walked 20 min back to my place which is beside the gay village. After a short pit stop we went to The Fountainhead Pub, which is a mixed gay/straight pub almost next door. We figured we'd just stay in one place and let those in costumes come to us, as the ones who have the most elaborate costumes are usually into parading (not unlike a Radical Faerie gathering).

Kal had been invited to a party on the far side of the West End and decided he'd prefer not go all that way just to come back again. Sure enough the host David and three friends showed up in costume (a clown, Elvira, a cowboy and a 70s disco stud). They chided Kal for not showing up but then when they met me they said they understood that he had distracting company--a flattering compliment that made me blush as I don't see myself as attractive.

Kal was hanging onto me, hugging and kissing me and proclaiming in front of his friends how much he loved me, though our relationship has been strictly platonic until now. I met him many years ago when we worked together and at that time he was strictly straight and busy raising children. A year ago when his marriage dissolved he began the process of coming out and we have gradually begun renewing and strengthening a friendship. That evening was the first time I visited his place and the first time we sharing so much in depth about our past loves, etc. So even I was questioning where our friendship was headed by the end of the evening, since earlier in the evening he had suggested that next weekend I should visit again and sleep over so we could drink as much as we wanted without worrying if I could make it home again on my wobbly legs.

When he went to the washroom his friend David questioned me if there was something between us or if I wanted there to be. He was trying to sell me on Kal, though that was not a hard sell as Kal has so many talents and qualities that compliment his good looks. David was obviously trying to incorporate me into Kal's circle of good friends not just for that evening but in the future too. When Kal returned they all begged me to come with them to the Oasis Pub up the street. I was flattered again but I left them and returned home alone. I was shy about having his friends see me struggling pathetically up the stairs to the pub. I hate my disability to be the first and most memorable aspect about me when I meet other people, but I was also tired from lack of sleep the night before and from the wine I shared at Kal's place. He holds his alcohol much better than I do.

I have become horridly shy and protective over the past few years after convincing myself that a man over 50 with an obvious disability is totally unmarketable in the gay community. I have focused on building and maintaining friendships in lieu of anything more intimate. Kal really does like me and doesn't want to close the door to something more intimate between us. Neither do I, though it will take some time to relax enough let down my walls. I still feel horribly inadequate, which I need to let go of before a relationship would work. Fortunately I think Kal needs as much time as I do as he is also not really ready to commit. It's also a difficult choice to make too I suspect as at least for the present my condition continues to deteriorate. Without a treatment or cure I probably will not be able to walk much beyond the next two years.

But with a treatment around the corner, probably, and many of my debts paid off recently I am definitely feeling a positive change in the air. Maybe love will be part of that positive change. :o)

A Community Garden

Weekend mornings are my favourite times, before I have actually spoken with anyone. It is grey this morning, except for the vibrancy of autumn leaves, those still on the trees and the trampled remnants of those that have fallen. The Pacific air is surprisingly warm for the first day of November. Leftover bits of last night's celebrations decorate the sidewalks: a yellow feather here, some sequins there. People are up and moving silently, calmly about their business. My legs feel strong this morning, or at least stronger than usual. They carry me up the hill to my regular diner for breakfast and then further to a local market to pick up supplies. As I am coming home the first sprinkles of rain begin to fall.

In spite of them, I stop to marvel at a corner lot near my home where a gas station stood last spring. It was removed along with the PCB-tainted soil last summer to make way for another high-rise mixed-use condo, as if we didn't have a few hundred too many already. But the development has taken an unexpected and surprising turn. The land has been cleaned and leveled and a community garden has taken its place. A simple country-styled fence surrounds the lot, which has been divided into slightly raised plots of different shapes filled with sheep manure that still greets my nostrils. There are straight and diagonal cedar-chip paths between them and a lattice arch entrance welcoming visitors. Simple lattice screens have been erected near the centre and comfortable-looking wooden benches scattered around the edges facing inward. No hint of security here.

Of course the plots are still empty as it has just been completed, but how fascinating that such an enterprise should spring up on the corner of two major streets in the core of the city. I wonder how long the garden will remain before the high-rise replaces it. Obviously they intend it to be here at least a year or two after all this effort. And how will it work without security? I imagine vegetables will not last long with all the homeless and dumpster divers in this city, and the low fences make no effort to exclude them.

Perhaps the boldness of the plan, the deliberate lack of security generally unknown these days, will be respected for the minor miracle that it is and it will succeed. I hope so. Considering the massive amount of construction and changes going on in this pre-Olympic city, this garden is the most interesting piece of development I have seen in years. I wish I could still garden.

Muscular Dystrophy and IACAR

I think I have had MD all my life. I was a skinny kid and was never able to see much muscle growth from working out in a gym. I'd just tone up and then "plateau" so my memberships were always disappointing. Then when I reached 35 and hormonal changes that occur then my body gradually started to deteriorate. I lost the ability to run up stairs two at a time and I put this down to simple aging. I began to lose the ability to sit unsupported for 20 minutes while I meditated and keeping up with my friends while hiking up hills became an increasing challenge.

At the back of my mind I knew something was wrong, that I was having more difficulty than I should but I was very athletic at that point of my life, often spending whole weekends cycling up to 300 km just for fun and exploration. But while other cycling friends in their late 30s continued to increase their strength and stamina beyond 40 mine was gradually waning.

But it wasn't until I started falling without warning at age 42 that I began to become concerned. At my 43rd birthday I decided to join a gym and get a trainer to strengthen my leg muscles, but when she tried to get me to do lunges with weights I always fell over sideways. She knew something wasn't right and sent me to a specialist in sports medicine who in turn sent me to a neurologist who bluntly and mercilessly revealed the truth of what was happening to my body.

MD is not one disease but a classification of any type of disease that causes muscle wasting. Lou Gehrig's (ALS), Becker's and Duchenne's are three better-known types. No one knows what type of the 40 known types I have, though it is a type of limb-girdle dystrophy that will not likely be fatal as it is not spreading to my heart or diaphragm. Mine is also very gradual, other than that the only thing I have learned is that in many cases as my muscle cells die through exercise, stretching or lack of use they are being replaced with fat cells instead of muscle or not being replaced at all, which is why my strength is waning. Over exercise, such as using weights at a gym or rigorous cardiovascular exercise accelerates the muscle loss, as does lack of exercise. My type of MD is very gradual. I was diagnosed in June of 1997 though I probably started losing strength around 1989 or so. Now though I am reaching a critical stage where my ability to walk and move about is becoming increasingly tenuous. At moments I feel like it is like a quicksand and I have reached the point where I have sunk up to my neck. It is difficult to imagine what life will be like in 3 or 4 years.

Having my type of MD has many advantages over having any other type of serious disease affliction. It is not painful, unless I fall, doesn't come with terrifying surprises and sudden turns such as cancer or AIDS and it is very inexpensive since there is no treatment or medicines that slow or reverse its steady advance. I have tried many things: acupuncture, vitamin therapies and gentle exercise with no apparent changes in the rate of erosion.

But cures and treatments are 'just around the corner'. If you ever get a disease like this don't listen to your friends when they say "Never give up hope!" Hope is the first thing you should give up because to have it dashed against the rocks of disappointment is to have the floor in the room suddenly disappear over and over again, each time filling you with a sickening horror that races up your spine and leaves you crippled and whimpering for weeks. No, it's just best not to think too much about the past and things you once could do or the future and the things you might soon not be able to do.

In 2004 an American scientist discovered a way to modify the muscle-producing genes so that the body would automatically create more muscle and overwhelm the cause of the dystrophy and even reverse all the muscle loss that has occurred. He slipped the modified genes into a harmless virus that spread throughout the patient's body and all muscle groups started re-generating simultaneously without any apparent side effects. All this was done on animals. Then experiments were started on humans with one of the most horrific forms of MD, Duchenne's, which cripples and then kills children. Duchenne's garners the most sympathy and research funds but the Duchenne's molecule is also the largest so finding a virus cell large enough to carry it became the stumbling block.

Then, 3 weeks after my MD specialist told me there would be no significant developments coming down the pipes for a few years, a new treatment/cure was announced using brain stem cells. In a few weeks golden retrievers who could scarcely walk were up running and jumping fences again. Then news of the research stopped.

The bottom line, as I mentioned a couple entries back, is that research companies, the big pharmaceuticals I suppose, aren't interested in developing a cure. There's no profit in cures that require only one treatment. I imagine they buy the rights and sit on them to prevent them from being further developed, much as General Motors buys patents of renewable-energy "green" cars to prevent them from being manufactured. They needed a product that would not cure but was an effective treatment over time.

Last year that happened. Schering Plough developed a new drug which they called IACAR, which it plans to market under the name "Acadesine" that tricks the body into thinking it has 'hit the wall' that marathon runners hit when their bodies run out of carbohydrates and begin to consume fat cells that are harder to burn. Literally, it causes the body to consume fat and replace it with muscle cells. Rats who were treated with no treadmill or space to exercise gained 55% muscle strength in only 5 weeks. No doubt this will be the next big vanity drug, perhaps bigger than Viagra since both men and women and more age groups will want to use it. Goodbye gym industry and goodbye MD.

But hold on..... it's not that easy. In spite of people dying from MD every week, federal authorities have held up research and release of Acadesine out of fear that Olympic athletes might take it and no one would know, so all efforts were switched for a year into developing a reliable test that would show if someone had taken it. Now the other huge stumbling block is that a human would require 10 to 15 grams per day and at present the price is $120 per gram. Perhaps that will drop drastically once it is released for public consumption but even still not many will be able to afford it even at 1/10th of its present price tag. (No doubt, like Viagra, it only cost 15 cents/gram to produce.)

There are still obstacles to doing human testing it seems, but after years of constant deterioration and frailty I am beginning to accept the likelihood of recovering much or all of my lost strength (and maybe more) in the next couple years. But it's still a strange concept and I am not quite ready to invest my hopes in something that looks promising but which is still tentative. I am trying my best not to feel impatient and anxious about its release. Besides, who knows what the side effects might be. Still, any improvement would part the clouds and let me love life again. The thought almost makes me want to pray to a fictitious gawd. Almost. I'm not so desperate to embrace an imaginary friend yet.

Letting go.....

Over the past summer several of my closest friends seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. One couple decided to move back to Tennessee to live in a tent in the woods on the side of a mountain in communicato, away from the trappings of modern life. A friend of theirs we shared in common stopped visiting after they left. Another moved up the coast 3 months ago and hasn't answered my e-mails or phone calls since, but he still finds the time to e-mail jokes to his group mailing list so at least I know he's alive. And another good friend has been consumed by a new house, a new marriage, a new job and a new baby boy-- a combination that would definitely kill me!

To make matters worse I also felt it necessary at this time to terminate a long standing friendship with an oversees friend who was once very dear to me but who had become increasingly disinterested and inconsiderate. It was a painful but long overdue decision. Last spring he told me he is still worried that someone might find out that he has a friend in Vancouver, as if our friendship itself is an embarrassment to him even though he has come out to his family and has had bfs who have met his family.

I suggested we spend a couple weeks to reacquaint ourselves last summer, hoping this would help cement our friendship and make it seem less of a threat, which is retrospect sounds rather forgiving of me. I even magnanimously offered to pay his airfare from Europe. But after waiting for over half a year to get an answer to my offer, I had a pain in my chest growing like a cancer. I decided to take action so my situation would not feel so pathetic. I deleted his e-mail address and saved messages so that I would have no way of writing to him until he wrote to me again. Next week I was planning to have my e-mail address changed too. He probably hasn't kept my address and he wouldn't likely write a real letter anyway, so e-mail is the only way he has to contact me.

Then 2 days ago I received a newsy, unconscious e-mail from him with no reference to my ignored offer. I pondered which I should do; write back to him but come off cool and disenchanted, tear his head off by recounting past injustices, give a sarcastic response making accusing inferences, make him wait 7 months like I did for a response or simply never respond at all. In the end my wiser side won out. I wrote him a strong letter describing how upset I had been and how our friendship won't continue if he continues to be ashamed of it. Duh!

All of this has left quite a hole in my chest that lets the cold autumn winds whistle around my heart, so to speak. Nothing seems to warm me up and life feels empty. I guess I need to look at the autumn winds as part of a healing process and learn to let go of those people and things I am holding onto that no longer add to my life--like letting go of autumn leaves. I want to feel less needy. Actually, I haven't felt this needy in years, since the late 90s in the 2 years following the news that I had degenerative muscular dystrophy and there was no treatment. The depression isn't so deep this time. I can and will pull myself out of it as I adjust to my changing situation.

I have tallied up my list of closest friends and I have more living out of town now than ones who live convenient visiting distance from me. That needs to change! I have to get out more and maybe even try Internet dating -- a true Halloween nightmare to a man over 50 with an obvious disability. I have to look for other groups too, just for the social contacts. It's friendships I would be seeking mostly, not sexual contacts, though.....

Tomorrow night I will attend a "Men In Touch" event organized by Sequoia (a healing touch specialist) and Alfred dePew (a management consultant) that will an evening of learning and building intimacy. My mind and heart are open to it. I just hope the exercises aren't going to be physically impossible or awkward for me to do. I hate being an imposition to a group.

Breightenbush

Twice a year, once in February and once in August, the Radical Faeries gather at a hot springs resort in central Oregon called Breightenbush. There are about 180 of us, maybe a few more. Most stay in shared cabins, some in tents and at least one in the main lodge, and that's me. I'm having a rather bad case of muscular dystrophy these days and can't manage the stairs into the cabins but the lodge is accessible.

I shared a ride from Vancouver with 2 rather unfocused drivers, a gay couple whose wedding I attended just over a year ago, who managed to get lost and so consumed with errands along the way that they stretched an 8 hr trip into 10.5 hrs. If they had bothered to buy a map I would have navigated for them, but that wasn't going to happen when that afforded them so many reasons to nag at and accuse each other. Really, just because we've won the right to marry up here doesn't mean that we should do it. Actually, it was quite a bit of fun when I just zoned out and promised myself not to get involved unless they asked.

The gathering felt wonderfully comfortable this time, this being my 4th one in three years. I must have known almost a quarter of the guys and they were happy to see me and full of compliments. I usually get sick on Breightenbush food, though it is healthy vegetarian fare, because they use a whack of ginger in many dishes and I am allergic to ginger. I'm the only person I have ever met who is allergic to ginger. In spite of me specifying my allergy on my application no meals were labeled when it was used. I learned that curries also have ginger in them, which explains why they give me trouble too. So I did OK with the food at the gathering but the highway food upset me each day. Thank gawd for Immodium.

One of the best things about the gatherings is of course the hot pools, but the weather was so hot (over 100F, or about 40C) that soaking in the pools was uncomfortable. I only visited them early in the mornings when the air was coolest. The other problem was the wet winter that provided a record number of flies and mosquitoes. The flies where everywhere inside and out, crawling on the food, the furniture, our clothes (the parts of us that were still covered up) and our skin. During the hottest parts of the day I stayed in my somewhat cooler, north-facing room in the lodge that was somehow free of flies. I slept so much the first day after we arrived but it was too anti-social to remain alone for too long.

One of the my favourite aspects of Faerie gatherings is all the gender-fuck drag and other outrageous costumes. Those who dress up arrive late for dinner and parade around the front deck, through the lobby and around the dining room before visiting the back deck. Hoots, cheers and the tinkling of forks on glasses follow them as they move around. Most never parade but others come with trunks of outfits. I don't mind relaxing in a T-shirt and a pair of embroidered silk granny panties, in a comfortable shirt, negligee or too-too but I can't be bothered with all the other accessories like make-up and wigs. I love being a boy but prefer to wear comfortable clothes without drawing too much attention to myself.

There was a fashion show on Thursday and a Talent/No Talent show on Friday, both held out on the lawn in the evenings when the air began to cool down. They were both fun and funny with very little "No Talent" in the talent show. The auction to raise Faerie funds for those who cannot afford the whole fare was held on the last night. My "Penis In A Too-too" window never made it. I managed to crack one piece in the window when I was loading it into the car. The driver ran a large speed bump somewhere in WA state and broke another piece and then shortly before the auction it was broken again by someone stealing a peak at it or perhaps by throwing something on top of it. I just wrapped it up and took it back home. :o(

My good friend Bad Dog (aka Joe) drove me back to Vancouver after stopping for a night in Salem, his new home. It's a pretty little town and it's pretty quiet too. BD surprised me with a knitted comforter/blanket for my bed. I was really blown away. He showered me with other smaller gifts too, a Bodem coffee press, a little toy and other souvenirs. What a treat to be away from all those flies, and the unbearable was replaced by cool rain.

Pharmaceuticals

"If you get any sweeter, Lou, they'll have to give you insulin."
- a line from the Mary Tyler Moore Show

Diabetes is just another something going wrong with my body. At least unlike muscular dystrophy there are medicines that help control it. I was diagnosed four years ago when I turned 50. So far there is no apparent damage to my eyes, the circulation in my feet or my kidneys. It was caught early on before it did any damage. My doctor and I had been watching for it as it runs in the male side of my family.

So far I have not needed anything more than Metformin to control it, a pill that suppresses the liver's ability to release sugar after digestion. Unfortunately, Metformin, although inexpensive, has many side effects such as cramps, gas and diarrhea. For the first 3 years I could not take a whole pill at a time. The doctors have wanted me to increase my dosage but my system couldn't tolerate more that 2 per day. Gradually my blood sugar was rising but the good doctors at the St Paul's Diabetes Clinic would not prescribe me insulin or a new medicine that works with the body's insulin to help it open the doors to the cells to let the blood sugar in, not at least until I tried once more to increase the Metformin.

Last November I was suddenly able to tolerate more and I doubled my dosage. My BS levels took a nose dive down into very acceptable levels. Months went by without major digestive problems so I began to assume everything was alright. I had more tests done for the Clinic last May but I was on vacation when they set my appointment and they did not set me another one when I asked. Normally I would have followed up but I assumed everything was fine. I eventually checked with my GP who always gets copies of my tests and I learned that they had risen again, even higher than they had been before. Yikes!

Visions of living life with blindness and amputations haunted me, especially after getting that out-of-control reading on Pride Day afternoon of 18+, more than double what it should be. I set about doing bringing my diet and BS levels under tight control. First, I fasted for almost a day until the levels fell. Then I started a record on my computer that tracked when and what and how much I ate, when I took my pills and what the corresponding BS levels were. Of the 29 sample tests I have done in the past week, 21 were within acceptable levels. The increased amount of Metformin really upset my system though, but I have my diarrhea under control with the help of Imodium.

This is how the pharmaceuticals get us by our short and curlies and wrap us around their little fingers! One drug causes side effects that can only be controlled by another, and so forth. I am fortunate that my muscular dystrophy has no available treatments. I admit though I'd pay a fortune to get my muscle strength back. So far scientists have found two cures (so far only tested on animals) that not only stop the erosion of one's strength but totally reverse the muscle loss. The problem is that muscular dystrophy is quite rare, even when you combine all the 40 known types, so there's not much demand for treatment from a pharmaceutical company's point of view so research has stopped. Besides, they don't want to invest in permanent cures. Where is the profit in that? Sometimes it's hard to keep one's sense of humour but I am tempted to laugh at my situation from time to time.

Today my friend Danzante, the big guy on the right below, told he has heard of a new drug in the final stages of testing that (of interest to him) increases the body's metabolism to burn fat and increases muscle growth (of interest to me). It's like a gym workout in a pill form. Yeah!! In fact, in my sweetest dreams, it might also cause the body to burn off more blood sugar to make that muscle. Bonus! Or it might increase the blood sugar but then I might be able to get an insulin prescription for that.....

It leaves me wondering though what side effects it might have.....

Pride Day

A week ago Sunday was Pride Day. I spent from 9:30am until after 3pm on the deck of Milestones restaurant at the corner of Denman and Davie with five friends watching the phenomenon of Vancouver's Pride Parade. There were supposedly 500,000 people watching, which is rather scary, though I doubt I could see even 1,000.

The patio of Milestones has to be one of the primo spots to watch the parade from as it is reasonably comfortable seating and it is raised a metre or so above the sidewalk, making it easy to see and take pictures of the passing 164 entries. We arrived more than two hours before the parade, which because of its added length this year, took quite a while to reach our location more than half way along the route.

To get a seat on the patio on this day takes good connections. One of my friends, "Aunty Tinkerbell", has those connections with the staff as this was once his favourite hangout. As usual, he brought 'accoutrements' which this year were rainbow feather boas and his own hat which featured a swirl of netting and silk butterflies around it. He's the one on the right above with our waitress and her penis tiara.... Immediately below them in the feather boas are, from left to right, Randy (Mentor Aum), Peter (Rainbow Strongheart), Gerry and his husband Danzante.

The other nice aspect of the patio vantage is that it is in the shade, at least until shortly after 1pm, and that means less sunburn. So many places along the route have no shade and no place to sit. My feeble legs could not hold me standing for a long time and without this wonderful seat I was not prepared to watch the parade. If AT ever loses his priviledges with the restaurant I may never see another parade.

As I said, the route was longer. It still goes south-west along Denman St, turns south-east on Pacific and then Beach Ave to Sunset Beach, but this year it started on Robson St and went downhill (northwest) to reach Denman. It now takes more than 3 hours from start to finish.

It was a decent parade with some decent floats, not too commercial all in all, but it could have used more clowns or humour in general and definitely more music. It's too bad the Radical Faeries didn't have an entry because the parade could have used some of the "outside-the-box" imagination and irreverence. There was one terrible incident up in the Davie St Village when someone went biserk and started attacking patrons on a patio at The Majestic bar with a hammer. He sent several people to hospital, including two staff, though none of the injuries were life threatening.

After the parade I walked with several others along Pacific to Auntie Tinkerbell's new place near Davie and Pacific about 2 km away. There we had a pot luck dinner of sorts. I didn't eat much, just some chicken, corn chips and a few veggies. Two friends were kind enough to give me a ride up the hill afterwards. I measured my blood sugar once I got home. It was over 18 when it should have been no more than 10!

Writing

I don't like calling myself a writer. It feels pretentious. I prefer to say I write. But then I haven't actually written during much of my life and certainly not regularly, at least not for the long haul. And I'm not published. That actually feels like a relief. Gawd nose what my life would become if I ever became a successful writer. I don't really like idea of notoriety, of interviews and having to travel from city to city to speak to burgeoning crowds of half a dozen or more to flog a book. Then there would be the publisher's expectations that I produce yet another marketable creation. Makes me want to hide under the covers.

I am part of a writer's group, just three of us actually nearing the ends of our respective first novels. Ronnie's book is about the lives of four different gay men between 1979 and 1983 told in four parts, one for each man, as they intertwine and link to one another as they move across western Canada. It's almost like a play in that there's little author comment and it is told in the first person, present tense.
Stitch's book oscillates between two very different lives, a 12 year old boy in central British Columbia living on a farm and an underemployed 33 year old gay man in Seattle, whose lives never intersect at first but they seem to reflect each other. They are both having a rather traumatic summer. They meet at the end of the book 20 years later at the historic first Radical Faerie gathering in the New Mexico desert (I think).

Mine is an historic piece set on the north coast of British Columbia. It traces the impact of European (British Anglican) culture on the native Tsimshians of that region over a period of 50 years. It is told through the eyes of a gay Tsimshian man who is raised in a traditional village, then around a White trading fort where guns and alcohol start tearing his people apart and then in a Christian Utopian village guided by an Anglican missionary. It's half fiction and half historically--to the best of my ability--accurate. I wanted to reveal a very interesting piece of Canadian history, the story of this amazing Christian community that thrived for 20 years but which has now almost totally been forgotten, and detail what happened to native people in Canada, by far the weakest link in Canada's human rights record. I also wanted to show how Anglican Victorian and Tsimshian values clashed and how someone might survive spiritually after the life he has discarded all his traditional values to embrace betrays him completely.

I loved the idea of having my first novel being an historical one. So much of the plot is decided for me. Each historical event or recorded happening is like a fence post for the novel, which itself is the fence. Then it's only a matter of creating the characters and plot details that will move the plot believably from one fence post to the next. Of course it means much more research if one cares about authenticity, which I do. And research is not always rewarding or successful. If you find anything useful it always comes out of some text like a dried flower that you find pressed, forgotten and missing a few pieces between the pages of a rarely used dictionary. You then have to try to imagine what it would look like rehydrated, reconstructed, growing and blowing in the scented breeze in amongst the all the other flowers around it. The other challenge in trying to write about a lost culture is to reveal it slowing and clearly, step by step without sounding like an encyclopedia, while the plot compels the reader along. If you don't explain enough you will lose the reader and if you explain too much.... well, you know.

It is a lot of work, but more than that too. I let the whole project go to fallow three years ago after it had soaked up over half my free time for 17 months. It seemed to grow just to big for me so that I lost my clear perspective of what I was creating. It was over 300 pages at that time.

The other thing that bothered me at the time is the degree to which the writing 'took over me'. I honestly feel much of the time that I had little to do with the writing. The words seemed to come from elsewhere, some other plane perhaps, and that I was just channeling what someone else was writing through my mind and body. After all, none of the characters resemble anyone I know but they each come out distinct and well-formed (I think). Whole conversations and developments came out of nowhere without planning. Often I'd sit down to write just to find out what was going to happen in the plot that day. I'd get so engrossed that I'd short-change my sleep and forget to eat meals. My whole body seemed alive, filled with some strange energy I always associate with creating. Amongst my friends I became a total bore, only talking about what I was writing and having little interest in anything else.

Of course, friends don't want to hear about it because they don't want to read it. They fear they will insult me with their lack of enthusiasm or by saying something they shouldn't. I don't blame them--I've read some stories that really were poorly done, though I'm not usually very critical. Sharing creative works is almost as dangerous as borrowing and lending money between friends. Something could go terribly wrong and destroy the friendship. I don't fear that but they often do. I love some of the excuses they make up though.... "O, my doctor says I should avoid reading because it might cause cataracts," or "I'm sorry, I only read cereal boxes..." Well, I suppose one can't go around with an open mind all the time. He might get something in it. :o)

Somewhere along the line I have lost my fear of receiving feedback, a necessary survival skill if I ever do find a publisher. What I'd like to do is to lose my need to be interesting or to win people's approval. Then of course there's my fear of publishers......

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass by."
. - Douglas Adams

Outrageous!

I finished my window "Stepping Out" this morning. On Sundays I usually meet the local Chapter of the Radical Faeries at a local coffee shop. I brought my camera which had the photo of the window still on it. It got rave reviews or at least lots of laughs. My 18-yr-old nephew paid me a visit today. He brought a buddy along. Before they arrived I hummed and hawed wondering if I should leave it in the sunshine of the window sill or hide it in my studio. In the end I left it in plain view and they loved it. Kids these days are so cool. His buddy, who had never met me before, and who has always had a very sheltered life, just loved it and wanted to photograph it. Something to tell his girlfriend I guess. :o) I suppose if one is going to be a gay uncle he has an obligation to be outrageous, or what's the point?

So I'm auctioning it off at the Radical Faerie gathering in Oregon next month. Any guesses on what bid it might fetch? I am thinking of doing a series of these, penis action figures. It could be all the new rage!

Faerie-esque

This is a test, only a test. Should my first blog entry be profound? Am I feeling profound? Hmmm. It's Friday afternoon just after work. I'm on free-float, stress release, after coasting home on a warm summer sea breeze. 23C, sunny with a slight haze. Eminently gentle and delicious. Too forgiving to inspire thought. Too nurturing to be profound.
I am thinking about what the weekend holds in store for me. I might have a date tonight, one of those situations where it is hinted at by someone who likes me but someone who rarely follows though on his word. I am debating whether to give him a call or just to enjoy the freedom of a commitment-free evening. In a minute I'll have a shower and think about it.
I have to do some stained glass work this weekend. I have a tall, narrow window to design for friends in Calgary, some big, tall irises. Irises on steroids, large enough to fill a 2m window. First though, I have to finish a project I am doing for myself. I call it "Stepping Out". It's a large, reddish penis in a too-too in the foreground with a closet door hanging open in the background. Pretty simple actually, just 68 pieces and about 17 types of glass. 17 is my lucky number. I only wish I had been able to aesthetically make it 69 pieces, which seems more appropriate.
The window will ride down to Oregon with me next month, to the Radical Faerie gathering at Breightenbush Hot Springs SE of Portland, if the border Nazis don't seize it first. The subject matter alone should get me banned for life if they find it.
Stained glass isn't my profession, just a hobby, but also not a just a hobby. Next month will mark my 30th anniversary of doing stained glass art. It's about time I began doing something more interesting than just flowers. I don't know why I stuck with it so long, why it stuck to me. At first I only learned it to help overcome my fear of sharp edges. It worked though I still cut myself. But it always offers me something new to learn; new glasses, new techniques and design ideas.
Sometimes new ideas come from clients wanting unusual things, but "Stepping Out" was inspired by a caustic comment I made to my friend Danzante last summer after I received news that my art would not be accepted for the gay pride week show of local artists, "Pride In Art", because it did not meet the politically pre-determined theme of "Gender Twist". I have nothing against quality control, but I was pissed off that some non-artist should be telling me what is appropriate for me to be creating in a pride week showcase of local artists, a show that should give exposure to as wide a range of artists, art expressions and themes as the gay community has to offer. So I said to my friend, "What do they want me to create, a bearded drag queen or a penis in a too-too? Danzante responded, "Why do I like those ideas?" and since then I have been musing over how to do a realistic penis and/or a too-too using different types of glass. I really like how it has come together.
So, as I have no place to market such a project and no space left in any window in my condo to hang yet another creation, I am auctioning it off at the Radical Faerie gathering to raise scholarships funds (Faerie funds) to send others less fortunate to a future Faerie gathering. It is perhaps the most Faerie-esque window I have ever done. I'll post a photo when I am done if I can figure out how to do that.