Country Shopping

This part of Canada, like a lot of parts of Canada, is beautiful.  People come from all over the world to visit because of its beauty.  I love this part of Canada.  Sometimes the beauty is almost indescribable.  Two days ago we had a freezing rain storm.  To people who don’t live in this climate it’s a difficult one to describe.  It’s a rain that freezes as soon as it makes contact with something.  Where we live it’s the most dangerous type of precipitation.  The ice virtually congeals around the twigs and branches of trees sometimes so much that it will bring the tree down, often onto power lines cutting out electricity.  We get a ton of snow here most years in the Gatineau Hills but that inconvenience is nothing compared to freezing rain.  When we were commuting to work in the city and there was a freezing rain storm it meant that we weren’t making it to work that day.  Just walking to the end of the driveway and remaining on your feet is a Cirque du Soleilian effort so forget about driving.  But the point is that notwithstanding all of that, freezing rain can cover nature in diamonds.  It takes this beautiful place and puts jewellery on it.

You need to do stuff outside in order to get through a Canadian winter.  We have a vast series of cross-country ski and snow-shoe trails about 15 minutes away that we try to utilize a couple times a week.  There’s a decent ski hill about an hour away that I get to a number of times a season.  Sometimes usually later in the season, after there’s been a thaw or rain and then a flash freeze the lake can be transformed into the most amazing skating rink.  And we walk the roads a lot also in an effort to embrace it.

Canada’s a cold place.  Today’s the 24th of February.  In a lot of places with four seasons people are beginning to see Spring manifesting.  This morning when I got up it was minus 20 C/-4 F.  I have the furnace, the fireplace and the wood stove all active this morning.  I’m booked on a week long ski trip to the Quebec City area on March 21 and the conditions will still be excellent.  Winter is really long here.  I don’t delude myself any longer.  By my educated estimate what I affectionately refer to as the shit season starts on November 01 and subsides no earlier than April 15.  That’s six and a half months of shit.

I’m four and three-quarter months through my last Canadian winter.  I hereby make the following covenant in writing:  We will be somewhere else between November 01/22 and April 15/23.  The only way that we will not be somewhere else this November will be indicative of my tragic demise.  Unfortunately this is a distinct possibility for a couple of reasons.  First, there are a lot of miles on this sixty-one year old frame and second, ol’Vlad has officially invaded Ukraine today so there’s a chance there won’t be anywhere left to go.

Suzanne and I have spent the last couple of months scheming where we will end up.  I should note that we would already be somewhere else if weren’t for a couple of reasons.  Reason number one is that on November 30, 2021 the Trudeau government, based on the science, made it mandatory for the safety of all people in Canada to be vaccinated before boarding an airplane.  If there’s another country in the world that has this mandate I have been unable to find it.  We’re so lucky to live in a land that listens to the science.  As it was pretty clear at that the time of this announcement that vaccinated people could transmit the virus and that the person crammed into the seat beside you could be an unvaccinated international traveller transiting through Canada who chances are may not have needed to be tested, maybe it wasn’t really based on actual science.  As this plan was announced during the ($630M) 2021 election campaign and wasn’t enacted until two months after the Liberals “won” (gaining three seats more that the 2019 election), maybe it was based more on the science of headlines and public opinion.  Oh reason number two you ask?  Suzanne is not vaccinated.

So one of the main reasons I want to spend less time here other than the severe Canadian climate should be somewhat obvious.  It’s because of parenthesis usage.  Do you see them up there in that paragraph above?  Politics and me are no longer good bedfellows.  Politics and social media actually.  Politics, social media and other people’s opinions really.  Okay, okay - politics, social media, other people’s opinions, media, mass consumption and consumerism, ecological unsustainability, religion and the concept of free will along my own inherent contradictions are no longer good bedfellows and I think moving to the Andes with a continuing regimen of psychoanalysis and maybe the odd ayahuasca journey will be beneficial.

I guess I blew the punchline huh?  The punchline is Ecuador.  Why Ecuador you say?  Let me tell ya.  We had a few criteria that needed to be met.  We needed to find a place that was temperate.  Not too hot and definitely not cold.  We plan on being out of Canada a little longer than the average snowbird, possibly up to nine months of the year.  There had to be great diversity.  Culture shock is the best.  It had to be affordable and allow us to maintain a certain lifestyle.  It had to have a sound infrastructure as I’m old - Suzanne is ageless but I’m old.  It had to be reasonably accessible and preferably a single day of travel away.  And it had to provide a gateway to other travel opportunities.

Once we hit on Ecuador it ticked all the boxes and more.  It’s a reasonably stable democracy with a centrist (possibly right) party presently in power.  As I mentioned I’m old.  As I also mentioned I’m sick of politics and opinions so I won’t share one here other than to say it’s a stable democracy.  There is solid, very reasonably priced dental and health care.  In fact it has become a destination for health care tourism.  Great internet too so I can efficiently get rid of all social media.  The climate is amazing.  There is the coastal area, the sierra (Andes) and the Amazonia.  The coast provides myriad beach towns and all the fun that entails.  The Andes are spectacular and the elevation creates these little micro-climates all over the country.  So a two or three hundred metre difference can have an immense impact on the weather of different areas just a short distance apart.  And then there’s the freakin Amazon jungle.  I’m a little embarrassed to say that prior to beginning this exercise I didn’t really know the Amazon basin encompasses half of Ecuador including a number of tributaries of the Amazon River.  You can leave Ottawa in the morning and be in Quito in the evening and although it’s on the west coast of South America it’s the same damn time-zone.  As you’re probably aware, the name Ecuador derives from equator and this means that the sun comes up at 6:30 in the morning and sets at 6:30 in the evening, 365 days a year.  Quito is also a jumping off point to the rest of South America so travel opportunities abound.

Kinda sounds like paradise to me.

We’re hoping that something happens with the restriction and we can do an exploratory trip in May for a month and then we’re going to rent our place here for a year in November and do it.   Now if the restriction is not lifted then the bad bedfellows come back into play because as it turns out you can board a plane in progressive ol’Canada without being vaccinated.  The thing is that you just have to be a rich Canadian to do it.  Rich Canadian’s must have a different physiology or biology from regular or poor folks or something because you don’t need to be vaccinated to board a private plane in Canada.  I didn’t know it but I guess Covid can somehow tell how much money you have in the bank?

We’re not rich.  We’re just regular schmucks.  I’ve done a bit of research and it looks like we may be able to swing a seat on a private jet for somewhere between $5-10K.  That’s fucking insane and will definitely rule out an exploratory venture but if the restriction’s still on as November draws near it may be an investment we’ll be willing to make.

The only real resource we’ve got is time and that seems to be depleting at an exponential rate and with bad bedfellows and guys like ol’Vlad around I don’t think we should wait.

Diversity in the Neighbourhood

I have an ex-military neighbour who’s so right-wing while self-describing as a centrist (or as they like to call themselves - fiscal conservatives) who one time mentioned without a hint of irony that he was kind of fascinated with Augusto Pinochet.  That although he seemed to bully his critics and political opponents and generally appeared to not be a very nice guy, he did indeed spur strong economic growth in Chile.  My neighbour had been to Chile once or twice with the military and observed that “the people” really didn’t have that much bad to say about the guy.

Is it just me but I seem to recall back in the olden days there was a little more room for political curiosity and healthy skepticism?  The climate seemed more open for dogs to play with cats and colouring outside the lines was not quite so threatening a concept.  Regular Joe’s seemed to have more room to be inquisitive and prone to scratch the surface in order to gain some purchase on what makes things tick.

Itch relief and mechanical discovery in the case of the Pinochet reign would indicate militarily taking control and ousting a democratically elected government with the backing of the US and installing economics that included banning unions, killing dissenters, getting rid of certain tariff protections, imprisoning dissenters, privatizing a large number of government industry including social security and selling well below market value to (you guessed it) people within his own circle, torturing dissenters, and all the while amassing a personal fortune over the seventeen years of his iron-fisted dictatorship.  Did I mention he killed dissenters?

Pinochet used the influence of the “Chicago Boys”.  The Chicago Boys were a number of American educated Latin-American economists that had studied and believed in a libertarian free-market system of deregulation and privatization applied to heavily controlled economies.  

It’s worth noting that the Heritage Foundation credits them with transforming Chile into Latin America’s best performing economy and one of the worlds most business-friendly jurisdictions.    I just broke out in hives typing the Heritage Foundation.  I just did again.  It’s also worth mentioning that this training program was conceived back in the 1950’s by the US State Department as a kind of apprentice program between the University of Chicago and Chile’s Catholic University.  And again it’s worth noting that while the original project from the 50’s has ended the training program continues to this day.

I wonder when Milton Friedman, arguably considered one of the greatest western economists, was loading these boys up with all this good wholesome economic theory whether he clearly understood the symptoms usually associated to a “heavily controlled economy”.  I imagine it was a pretty sweet gig being one of the “smartest” dudes around and your behemoth government, so existentially terrorized by any other form of socio-economics outside of free-market capitalism, hands you a continent and a half of perfect petri-dishes in which to perform your experiments on like real people with like real lives.

Remember  - no irony, he meant it.  Should I admire that kind of conviction?

We All Gotta Problem Man

I recently found an extremely competent psychoanalyst.  Psychoanalysis apparently starts out like most things these days - with the ticky-box exercise.  There are numerous backgrounder forms that must be completed and supplied back that for some inexplicable (to me at least) reason appeases the governing college and prevents culpability or liability that would allow the insurance company to reject a claim. 

I’m not cynical enough to be saying that anyone other than my councillor is reading the content of these forms. I’m just saying that someone is saying that their completion is integral to help prevent some sort of bad outcome.

So my therapist asked me to fill out the forms and as I’m really trying not to make this a performative experience like I have every other time in the past when I’ve gone through the therapy process, I answered every question honestly.  Some really good shit too.  Things like under “What prompted you to seek services at this time”?, I gave the ol’ “the fact that the job left but the anxiety didn’t” and under “Please give a brief account of the history of your problem, from the beginning - I threw down “I have for forty years been anxious about work and how others perceived me and how some affectation continues” and then under the oldie but goody - “Is there any other information you think may help the therapist”?, I delivered - “I have spent my life working, toiling and playing in the matrix.  I’ve always dreamt about breaking free from it and live my true life.  Now that I have the chance to do this I still seem to keep my foot on the brake, afraid to pull the trigger that will free me up to do it”.

Oh and under - “Are you using any recreational drugs or alcohol for coping”?, I responded that “although coping is a big word, I do drink, primarily on the weekends and occasionally will consume a cannabis edible”.

Go ahead and guess which response seemed to illicit the strongest comment.  I’m guessing you guessed it.  How often are you consuming cannabis? was the closing question from my first session.  Her concern and I really found it to be quaint was that it can cause psychosis.  Holy fuck, do you not think that tug left the jetty a long time ago?  And this was after trying to describe to her how many times as a young explorer acid provided me an immediate line to “god” and the clarity in which it described back to me how we waste almost all of the beautiful blip in the space time continuum we’ve been granted.  

Vonnegut wrote: “maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists”.  Maybe I should have just written that down.

Regardless of this and myriad more subjectivity, I will endeavour to continue to veer away from the performative and offer up some faith that just talking about all this shit will aid solace as the blip dwindles.

I Gotta Problem Man Part Deux

Okay, maybe quantification hasn’t completely fixed it.  There probably shouldn’t be a throbbing mass of anxiety pooling in my solar plexus every night the backlight on the Kindle escape pod is extinguished if it were the appropriate retrofit right?  Since I’ve retired this quivering gob seems in a fit of exasperation and has gone downright revolutionary since my Kid got that cancer thing.

Anyway I thought prior to my diagnosis I should probably do the responsible thing and seek out some help.

I Gotta Problem Man

I suffer from a form of existential angst. 

Thankfully it’s easily quantified. 

I am simply stressed by the injustice that at some point a long time ago, be it by design or evolution, humanity fell into a perpetuating system of socioeconomics that behooved a teeny weeny minority toward wealth and allowed the chips to fall where they may for everyone else. 

That’s it. That’s the sum total of my malady. 

Thank god I wrote it down. I’m all better now. Bye. 

We’re Just Boomers in a Dangerous Time

Recently Suzanne and I were again mired in my favourite fun-loving conversation - the pandemic realpolitik.  You know the one - how critical thinking has somehow morphed into group think and how blessed we’ve been to be recently surrounded with such plentiful virology expertise, the pro’s and con’s of the science of isolation and curfew and blah and blah and blah.  You’d think we’d worn holes in these subjects long ago but mercifully something just then caused a small dent in the space-time continuum and the conversation pivoted to more of my recent favourites -  identity politics, free speech and gender.  

Oh goody!  

Suzanne argued that being cis-gendered individuals we far too often default to heteronormativity and as I’m a product of generational toxic masculinity and she of white feminism, it’s easy to ignore the totality of the gender spectrum.

I agreed that of course this vast spectrum exists and suggested that we’re all just a product of a number of undefined things - possibly a pinch of objective reality, a dash of biological evolution, a smidge of some obscure spiritual fatalism, possibly a dram of free will or merely just some crafted voodoo combination of a million things.  What it really boils down to is semantic as clearly nobody knows, why the hell does it matter and who the fuck is anyone to pre-suppose?  Just be kind to everyone and stop having all the answers.

It was at this point that Suzanne noted that our white oppression is intersectional and that no matter how much gas-lighting or how many micro-aggressions I do this was the truth and it was also true that I would be cancelled if my words got out.

I didn’t know what it was that I could possibly be cancelled from but it sounded kind of nice.  Just then another humane dent appeared and I remembered that the last quarter of the Rams/Cardinal’s game and the final round of the Sony Open were downstairs waiting on PVR.  Maybe I’ve been wrong all this time.  Maybe there is some beneficent control-centre floating atop a cloud somewhere.

Opinion or Mis-information?

Remember having an opinion?  I seem to remember back in the olden times when there existed the ability to share an opinion with someone other than those who’d unwittingly been trapped into a Faustian commitment that rendered listening to your babble inescapable.  Boy has that changed.  I recall those old timey opinions.  They were subtle or nuanced and sometimes unconventional enough to feel like a treat or singular enough to be goose-bump inducing.  

These new kinds of opinions are inclusive.  That’s another word that doesn’t appear to mean what it used to.  What is it with all these words that don’t mean what they used to?  Seems to me now it just means that opinion makes you in or else it makes you out.  These new kinds of opinions often times appear to me to be conjured and curated by whatever club you’ve attached your sorry ass to and anything that slightly contradicts the groupthink alchemizes into propaganda or mis-information.

I’m giving up having opinions.  It’s become too damn dangerous.  My political opinions used to come easy and with such clarity but now they just make me ponder bad things.  Bad things like:  how can I be anti-trucker and still think it’s insane that our government can subjugate rights by invoking the Emergency Measures Act?  How can I despise all discrimination and still think freedom of speech is integral?  How can I feel that humans are free to identify any way they want yet still feel sex on this planet is binary?  So many questions, so much danger.

Oh and then there’s the pandemic.

I remember a time when I was comfortable spouting my opinion that pharmaceutical companies were keenly directed toward markets that would maximize their profits.  You know the good old days before big sickness became ubiquitous in the first world and was really just a concern for the poor.  Like way back in 2015 when according to the UN 1.6 million people in Africa died from malaria, tuberculosis or HIV.  The drugs to prevent these deaths existed in abundance and were extremely affordable, problem was only around 2% were manufactured on the continent and that created a dearth of affordable medicine and the general population couldn’t afford to buy imported treatments.

Oh yeah and also from the UN in’15 - “many African political leaders and development experts believe that the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to offer technical support to African manufacturers. For example, in 2001, 39 international pharmaceutical companies dragged the South African government to court to challenge its plans to manufacture and import cheap, generic HIV/AIDS drugs”.  

The UN is a big husky brute of a bureaucracy with a befuddling mandate but sometimes they sure can put lots of good words together into sentences.  

But now apparently that we’re faced with this great big batch of white first-world sick all of a sudden if you’re to believe what your own eyes are reading or watching, some grand mal seizure of altruism has come over the pharma bro’s.  They’re now unbiased science with a big ol’twist of benevolence and with this motivation have discovered in the relative blink of an eye the vaccines to allow for us to scratch our way back to a semblance of normalcy.

Now I’m all for science.  It’s just that science is tied to the free market and the free market has historically been given a pretty wide berth for priorities possibly being open to manipulation and maybe just maybe a little too much emphasis gets directed towards profit and not so much to making all the people feel better.  Kinda like how the priority of vaccinating the planet quickly shifted when Omicron hit stride and boosters for the first world once again put worrying about those people on hold.

There’s are a number of terms for “priorities possibly open to manipulation”.  My favourite one is corruption and don’t start with the “but they’re businesses and they have to make money” stuff.  Free market capitalism wasn’t concocted with the idea for anyone to make this much money.

This here opinion might not make me guest of the day at the next neighbourhood barbecue.  In factually based information, when I judge this here opinion based on the stuff my own little beady eyes are reading or watching, I’m pretty sure it’s not an opinion at all.  It’s a lead ingot thrust into a fire metastasizing into mis-information gold and apparently I’ve shape-shifted into “one of those”.

These days I spend a lot of my time being anxious and wary of being the sucker momentarily cornered by some buffoon with similar righteous indignation.  It’s always so vehement and exacting and forthright and immediately indicates if I’m in the right place.  I’m usually not.  

But then, this is just my opinion.