Category Archives: Planet

200602x Today is a New Day

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You’ve probably noticed I don’t make too many posts here. I do that in Facebook. I use Facebook as though it is my blog. I will make long posts which I will also post in the form of a Note. Which Facebook makes available under “More” on my Homepage.

COVID-19 has kept me stuck at home since the beginning. After a point, I needed to get out and go for walks. It was hard to find washroom facilities so that cramped my style a little bit. But the panorama at the top of this Page was taken during one of those walks.

When COVID-19 started, I had a hard time believing it was true. There were things going on in the United States that seemed implausible. In Europe you were hearing about right wing radicals taking over the governments. And besides all the other weird things going on in the World (China, the Middle East), I thought the right wing government had taken over and COVID-19 was an excuse to make everybody stay indoors. And everybody had bought in and were actually eager participants. Until people started threatening to block me on Facebook if I didn’t “buy in” myself.

That was very awkward and difficult. It was the end of the World as I knew it. I could refer back to books like “1984” and “Brave New World” for predictive examples. I could refer back to innumerable apocalyptic books and movies that predicted a virus or some other agent taking over the world, infecting everybody, or not quite everybody, and there was a battle for survival by the uninfected few. Movies like “Terminator” seemed to have come true. It was no longer a free world in any sense at all.

And now we are still not allowed to gather in any great numbers. In the USA there are riots going on like you would read about in books and see in apocalyptic movies. And the president was threatening to call out the armed forces to put down what appeared to be the rebellion. As the common people were protesting over police brutality and murder.

I am getting old and long in the tooth. I wonder how much longer I will be able to hold out in this world and society. I can’t go see people. If I want to see people, I will have to learn the software. I have an opportunity this evening. I had my first opportunity yesterday and it was successful. The only thing was, the day before I had to figure out how to download the new version of the software we would use or it wouldn’t come off. Somehow I succeeded.

Sitting at home so much of the time, I am not as physically able any more. Even in the early days of the COVID-19, I knew that if I was cooped up for too long, I would die of weakness due to not getting any exercise in my usual form, long walks, rather than the COVID-19. I was not afraid of the COVID-19. I would either come down with it or I would not. It would be either serious and I might die or it might be mild. But if I got weak from inactivity and died that way, the point would be moot.

I will be 72 in 1 month and 1 day, July 3. I love music. I like to take photos on my walks (see above). I follow physics, cosmology and NASA, like the recent SpaceX launch of 2 Americans from American soil astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). I follow archaeology and fossils and evolution. History and prehistory. Green issues to some extent, only it seems we are not taking these too seriously. Like one day we won’t have needed to address them in the first place or something. We are hoping technology comes along and does it for us, or something!

I write poetry. I am good at a number of things. Yet I haven’t worked for money since 1976. I get by, wth more difficulty as the years go by for more reasons than just lack of money. I used to get together with people in a number of settings. I used to go to the occasional “rock” show, about 2 a year. I am not happy with having to stay home to get most of my social interactions. I don’t want to stare at my computer endlessly for this. I am very sad. It is nice to use the new technology. Like it was something that was going to come along anyway and it has just happened now. Like we are using the bought into COVID-19 as the excuse to socialize in any manner at all. Like it was going to happen anyway, the COVID-19 imaginary, that it doesn’t exist at all, and the governments and the people are just using it to force everybody to buy into the new system, most of our interaction online. Because it was going to happen one day anyway. So we have made it “now”.

Of course, everybody who has lost people close to them, family or friends, to the COVID-19 are very extra sad right now because the COVID-19 has taken away a few more people than would normally have gone in any short time. Stay 2 meters apart. Practice social distancing. Wash your hands. Be safe. Be kind. And we shall get through this together.

Today is a new day. It’s a brave new world we face. I am sure we will get through it. Chin up, as they say. And I love you.

-George Chris Michas

Paradise is at your door

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pILVdNFMQkywt9LVQjQeVg_thumb_2f0eWhen I got up this morning, I felt awful. I got out and out the door and went a long way. It was hot. I couldn’t take it. I took a different route just to see where it took me. I was 12 minutes late. I looked at the room and the door entered at the front, and everyone would see me walk in. I was uncomfortable. I sat in the lobby 10 minutes playing with my phone. And left.

I went back to Skytrain and went home. I laid down. I was still awful. But not so hot. The heat of the outdoors had not reached inside yet. I’d left only one window open. I thought that was smart. I ate the flat of strawberries I got Thursday throwing out 4 or 5 that did not look the same. I’d eaten the other flat the last two days. Two flats for $20: I thought that a bargain but was wondering if I would get through them.

I walked past the building above on Thursday. It wasn’t so hot and I felt good. I don’t feel the same any more. I am 68 and will be 69 on July 3 next week (2017). Canada Day July 1 is on Saturday but will be observed on the Monday July 3 conveniently my birthday. My birthday is a holiday this year, not especially for me. In 1608 on July 3 Quebec City was founded by Samuel de Champlain of France, exactly 340 years before I was born. Now isn’t that exciting. I had to find something special about my birthday when I was young and growing up and this was the special day I found. I learned more recently that Prince Charles of England was born in November 1948, so I am a few months older than him. I am glad they did not get the babies mixed up. I would not want to be in Prince Charles’ position. I would not want to be Prince Charles. He has all the money in the world and privilege to boot but it must be boring.

I have done many things in my life. A lot of people like to travel. Not for me. I lived in Toronto for 23 months but otherwise have lived in British Columbia: in a small town called Chemainus (my first memories) until Grade 3. And then in Metro Vancouver for the balance. When my parents first married, they lived in a basement suite in the upper reaches of North Vancouver. When Mom’s parents moved to Duncan, they let Mom and Dad live in the vacated house in Vancouver. I spent the first year of my life there.

Now I am an old man not so old but fading it seems because I am getting tired of my little ills that seem to be increasing and I hate it. I have been fine up until almost a year ago. Now I am getting very tired of all the little ills that are popping up. The doctor says they are normal. Thanks a lot. I try to eat perfect diet, get lots of exercise, and get out and see people. I often feel people don’t like me much. I have never been good socially. It was only in 2003 that I realized that it was fear that was stifling my ability to learn how to socialize a all. When I was 55. People had been saying to me around that time it was best to take risks socially. And when I started doing that, I figured out the fear part. I think I have autism. I am very smart and functional.

I have no specialty or special interest. I have many. You have to be an expert at one thing to do a job. And I have never been able to decide on one. I think they are either too easy thus boring, or too hard and I can’t do it. You have to start somewhere. Maybe that is the lesson I just learned now. Instead of pandering my little body day in day out, I should pick something and start at the beginning. What am I good at?

151021 I make posts periodically in lumps

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I don’t make posts here too often. I will write more often on FB. Personal things, poetry, Shares with my comments, just like everybody. It’s like lots of my writing is for that group of people, and I don’t wish to garner a large following here on WordPress. I could write about lots of things. For example, yesterday I went for a few long walks. The first one with a MeetUp group of people. The other 2 alone. For my MeetUp walk, we met at Yaletown rapid transit station and left there at 2pm. The walk took us along the seawall to and through Stanley Park to Prospect Point, overlooking the First Narrows / Lions Gate Bridge at the entrance to Vancouver’s inner harbor. We would make pitstops from time to time, and pause to take pictures. From Prospect Point we then walked over the Lions Gate Bridge to Park Royal shopping centre, where we completed our walk with a meal inside the Osaka Supermarket.

I left there around 5:15 and took the bus back downtown arriving at Granville & Georgia a 5:45. I walked East to Britannia library at Commercial Drive arriving before 6:30 because I was going to another MeetUp: Choir practice at Wise Hall at 7pm. I always seem to be early when I go places because I’m afraid I will be late. For the walking MeetUp, obviously you have to get there before they leave at 2pm. But I got there before 1:30. So, I walked around the neighborhood and took a few pictures. And made a pitstop of my own at Yaletown Community Centre. Wise Hall is only a 5 minute walk from Britannia library, but I noticed they were putting out books for sale by donation, that I guess they found no need for any more. I bought 5 and gave them $15. One was a book of poetry, a 2nd a book of Canadian literature, one by Richard Dawkins, the 4th named Caesar Against the Celts; the 5th named “Medicine Woman” by “New York Times Bestselling Author” Lynn V. Andrews.

Andrews is a First Nations (aboriginal) woman. “Medicine Woman is the autobiographical account of a woman’s search for identity in a Native American culture….” (San Francisco Review of Books) As you can see my reading appreciations are eclectic. I love things about other religions and people living in other belief systems than my own. I find them intriguing and I often take something away to add to my own acceptance of the World. Different people see things so differently from each other – based on their life experiences and the societies they grow up with. A brief look at Christianity, for example, says that anyone who isn’t a Christian is pagan. A lot of religions believe in a similar exclusivity. But you add up the total of all the beliefs and you arrive at a great swath of knowledge and information.

My opinion is that no one religion is right or wrong. They lend to the whole. In a way there are as many “religions” as there are people. Because no two people believe exactly the same thing simply because they are individual / different people, with different backgrounds and experiences. Even any two Christians (I am closest aware of them) do not believe exactly the same thing as much as they might say otherwise. Otherwise, why would there be, for example, Bible studies to try and figure out and determine and agree on what it says, never to completely reach that end?

It’s exciting. Two of the earliest gods were the Earth and the sky. The Earth the symbol of fertility because that is where we find our food and crops and therefore female. And the sky which provides the Sun and the rain to grow those crops like perhaps semen, and therefore male. Just for example. I will leave you there…..

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