Oy vey, its been a while. Six years to be precise. Its a timely return to semi-public life too.
I mean to get back to writing regularly again - its a great outlet for the general spleen that I hestitate (less and less successfully!) to vent on my social compadres who mostly don't want to hear such serious talk. I guess if you're coming to a blog about politics, religion, and philosophy, you're kind of asking for it, so consider yourself forewarned. There seems to be an abundance of blogfodder these days too, I'm spilling over.
Its very likely that I will NEVER talk about masks or social distancing here, aside from maybe to discuss the COVID-19 impact on my own mental health, so if you're here looking for advice on how to deal, you won't get any. Its been eight months, you should already know what the smart move is.
Anyway, I bought a cute little 1940's-built house last year to renovate, so I do have many tales give you many tales of fixing, weed pulling, and experiments with the garden harvest. Its been so spiritually rewarding - a blessing in stressful times to have something to put some creative energy into - choosing paint colours, installing light fixtures, growing veggie starts, then seeing it all come to fruition. I've brought out the canner many times this fall to aid with my astonishing bounty of tomatoes.
I'm surprisingly glad also, in the current political climate especially, to have a little piece of land to compound up in for the zombie apocalypse - the feeling of relief is actually palpable, I really recommend it if you are suffering from anxiety over the current state of affairs in the world. I write to you from Vancouver Island specifically, and the Comox Valley to be more precise, which even in the context of the idyllic Vancouver Island is sort of like a piece of paradise (photo), so that is helping to keep me grounded during the political turbulence. It feels good to be physically separated from urban chaos by a large body of water. Even though Vancouver isn't exactly chaotic (yet), it is my genuine belief that when STHF, the big cities are going to be ground zero.
Paradise aside, I have watched in horror these past several years from my little compound, as every prediction I made becomes made real (see my post on post-millennial evangelism here). The current state of affairs in our once-great neighbouring country is philosophically distressing, and it is alarming to me how many times The Handmaids Tale (not the TV show, the amazing novel by Canadian Great Margaret Atwood - required reading for anyone with an interest in politics) has creeped into conversation recently.
Not much that I can do about it all though, sadly, aside from poke the fire of dissent with my metaphorical stick - which I do on the regular. I revel in it, even though it makes me kind of sick and sad to have to do so, but I feel I have no real choice. Acceptance is not an option.
