Chagal4's Blog

Why do I write this? It is pontification, words thrown into the air to fall wherever they may. Today my words are about the homeless. Millions of words have been written and spoken about the homeless. It is as if they are now a separate species. As if they passed the point where they were a problem that could be solved and entered a state where their existence must be endured, where a border must built in our minds. Our condescending, concern accepts the unfortunate necessity of it. Retrieves the retrievable, rewards the “Deserving Poor”, those who prove willing to pull themselves out of their “condition” and climb the ladder of civilized society again.

As if this is a condition that they somehow brought upon themselves and choose to stay in. And this contrivance is as old as the idea of “haves and have nots” . It is a contrivance that admits no connection between the haves and have nots, certainly no responsibility beyond a vague charitable concern for our fellow humans. It would be an absurd proposition, to suggest that any of what we have, has been taken from, or reduced what they have …to the point that they have…nothing.

But this pontification, and I write it as one who is not homeless…even though I have at times been very close to that state…enough to know that it is a state. It has internal rules and boundaries, means and methods and cultures and communities and a form of society, because while each, like all of us is an individual, to live, survive, without a home, requires alliances, relationships. There, now I’ve said it, accepted the notion of a separate state whose members are not like us. Well It’s true isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Oh for sure, come on. Now we have to talk about our whole society and its various arrangements and compromises. Let us look for a few sentences at the super rich. There is getting to be a very large number of them, some well known to all of us and some who quietly remain as anonymous as their paranoid ancestors. I have been convinced for years that they are a separate species, some self made , many born into it. WE all know there are separate rules forth…life styles that most of us can’t even imagine. WE know that they posses enormous wealth and power…to do and be whatever and whomever they like. Not an exaggeration. These are the aspirations of capitalist society. There are wealthy people whose lives are conducted in ways that separate us from them in exactly the same way as those who are home less… a separate state. Works that way for whole countries, rich ones, poor ones, ones so devastated and exploited that even homeless people on the street here in Canada may be better off than people who have been bombed and blasted to death and whose towns and cities have been reduced unliveable rubble.

The punch line is that they did not do it to themselves. They didn’t create these separate states of existence and maintain them. We all did. We all created the species of super wealthy and the state homeless have nots. Yes we did. Over the past hundred years our comic growth has become so rapid and pervasive used on new technology and means of production that created explosive wealth…But as a society we saw the wealth become concentrated and soon the wealth itself was generating wealth. Meanwhile those with little or no access to means and opportunities had to be employed by those who do. Then those who had the wealth ( here comes that separate species) used the power of it to advance technology and science and reduce the need for so many employees. Oops. Dilemma . People were still needed to buy the stuff that kept super Yacht gassed up. What to do? Well they got there government on their job. Calculated the numbers of consumers required to keep the wealth machine going and growing and came to their conclusion that governments would need to employ people and also subsidize business and the wealthy (Oh no, really?) .Then we all noticed that people were being squeezed out the edges. Lost jobs…not just jobs but whole factories and industries. Lost families, lost homes, farms, businesses. Became part of the under state.

O.K. let’s wrap this up. They’re not a separate species, neither the poor and homeless nor the super wealthy untouchables, They’re subcultures of our whole society and they are connected to all of and us to them.

And that final pontification is my suggestion of a starting point to think about these things in a different way. Or just more words into the air on a humid Saturday night. For the moment I don’t care, I’ve said what I wanted to say…I’m going to finish my bourbon and go to bed.

Blues: 14 09 24

I didn’t watch the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Like millions of other people in the U.S. and the world I felt a surge of relief that somebody besides President Biden was going to run against Trump. I stopped writing my blog months ago because I just couldn’t keep myself from venting my frustration about the insane circus that American politics has become. Since then it has become clear that similar patterns have evolved in European countries and the Middle East . The temptation is to view it all as a shift to the right and authoritarian conservatism around the world but it is more than a simple political trend. It is a deep and significant shift in the socio-economic culture of all of these countries.

The fundamental inability of governments to address and solve the multitude of complex, inter connected grievances of working and middle class populations has led to distrust and failure of confidence in any government , left or right. Regardless of the orientation, neither left nor right can deliver solutions on the range of issues emerging in the twenty first century and more significantly, the policy making processes and priority setting machinery are trapped between twentieth century, obsolete, party policy agendas and more modern, technological, data based, systems that could help balance the resources available with the issues most relevant to people and enlist their assistance in addressing the most pressurized grievances . Instead, we see retrenching of rigid positions and confrontation politics with irrational conspiracy theories and a growing hostility that ensures that force becomes the most likely lever for change.

I was tempted to watch the debate with the sound turned off on my T.V. to see if it changed my perspective. On the surface there would be two well dressed, middle aged, respectable looking, people in civilized surroundings, engaged in a debate. Nobody waving arms or throwing things. Nobody charging across the stage. nobody collapsing in hysterics. With the sound off…it might have been bearable. But I couldn’t do it. Because I knew that this was never going to be an exercise of reason…it was always going to be political theatre. So in the end we are back to the people…whether they like one character or another…in the absence of any clear understanding of the consequences of either being a winner. And I don’t just mean in the U.S. They same game applies in Canada and in Europe and elsewhere. Maybe the problems and solutions have become so complex that no politician or media outlet can explain them reasonably…let alone offer hope that they will be addressed. One of my friends called this “Best Chance Politics” , that people should vote for whomever they think has the best chance of accomplishing something. The corollary is that people will vote against whomever has the least chance or…who has not demonstrated any such chance currently. Not good news for modern democracy.

Blues 13 09 24 (Friday)

Who knows where the madness comes from. There are no little trolls like this living next door but they live somewhere. They come out with guns and knives and slurs and rage and hatred and fill our screens with obscenities to a point where we are used to it. And we shouldn’t be. I heard on the radio the other day a man asking: “What if Christ had came again in the last hundred years…and got blasted and buried under rubble in one of our countless wars?” . Good question for Cristians I suppose. For me the question is why guns are for sale at Walmart? Why in the most powerful country in the world, wealthiest, supposedly smartest, are there almost as many guns as there are people? Why are hand gun manufacturers anodizing their weapons in pretty colours to attract women buyers? Why do we shake our heads and walk away after every mass shooting?

Of course there’s a phone book full of “why’s” and a scribble on the back of a used envelope with the answers. I just can’t remember where I put that envelope. Old age I guess.

Have a nice day…

Blues: 12 09 24

Blues 11 09 24

It was pretty mundane actually. It was early spring and the last bite of winter had faded away…there had been a couple of little heat waves where the temperature spiked up to the thirties C. The season of head colds and aches and pains. You want to get outside and see that first pale green of buds on the trees. In the post covid world even if you’ve had every available vaccine, you get nervous if a cough lasts more than a day or two. Both Louise and I had nasty coughs that lasted a while and we checked ourselves out with the Covid test kits…and they were clean. We decided to see our doctor to find out if there was a bronchial virus going around. That led to a chest X-ray for each of us. Both of us had some lung issues , hers led to a bronchial specialist and mine led to a CT scan.

The short part of the story is that one test led to another and a date with a thoracic surgeon. And a diagnosis of lung cancer. More tests and biopsys confirmed it was stage four melanoma and it was also in my prostate. I’d had melanoma as a skin cancer a dozen years ago, had surgery and three years of follow up and got on with my life. I had learned a lot about melanoma and hearing that it was in my lungs was a chilling news. Nothing really prepares you. Louise was with me in the meeting but in the moment there is a feeling of total aloneness. In that moment alone you know that you will die. After a certain age every body “knows” that they’re going to die and for most of us it’s an abstract concept. In that moment alone it’s no longer abstract…it’s concrete. Personal. There may not be a date but it is none the less specific.

At that point you have to , I had to step back from that abyss and say “O.K. what now?” . And “what now?” is to get with the program, meet the oncologists, learn the options and as my niece says you learn how to live with lung cancer rather than surrender to the idea that you will die from it. Yes, of course I will very likely die from it…I’m eighty two years old. I would have died from something pretty soon anyway. Might have fallen off my bike. So the inevitability of it becomes a littler less intense. I’ll live with it until I die from it or from something else.

Are there “life lessons” in all of this? No, I don’t think so. I think life lessons are what our lives bring us every day. If we’re very lucky, there are a wide range of them and each one shapes who we are. So I’ll just keep on keeping on, thank you.

It has however, made me think a lot more about the nature of love. My love for my partner Louise who is living this with me and the constant reminder that I’m not alone. My love for my friends is deep and abiding and they are all supportive and I appreciate it. I don’t think we express it enough, that love. I come from a generation that barely was able to express it at all…inside or outside of a family. Maybe the generation before me lost too much…too many wars, too many disasters, too many loves lost. And they closed those doors. It has taken a long time to open them again, to let love in and out. And yet, looking around, I see and feel the anger and frustration, the conflict and hatred flaring and bursting into flame and I also see people pulling those doors closed again…fearing to love… fearing the loss implied.

Hate does not heal, love does and I think we need to work on that. Share it. Spread it, remind those we love that we do…love them. Like I love you. I do.

When this started I wrote to my friends and told them I wasn’t going to keep or write a cancer journal and this note is not that either. Lung cancer doesn’t define me. It’s not who or what I am. What I choose to write in this blog should be about what is.

Blues: 10 09 24