2½ Minute video for FLTV cable television in upper state New York, for their 3x weekly, Words of Peace TV series.  Words of Peace is broadcast in over 60 countries, on hundreds of TV networks, including Bell Expressview, Vision-TV and CTV in Canada.

The sun was out today, which is always a blessing in Vancouver.  But in my little suburb of New Westminster, I took an early morning walk in the Amazing Rays, and – almost at my destination – I saw a curious enigma at a bus shelter located across the street from where I was walking.

Here, the bus shelters are often constructed with clear plexiglass walls, sometimes with advertising posters sandwiched inside them.  This particular bus shelter, bathed in the long rays of April Morning Sunlight, had a very striking pattern of what looked like steam or condensation on the back panel of the shelter, behind the bench where people normally sit.

The condensation displayed itself as a “halo” or “aura” – outlining distinct shapes of 3 human bodies, almost looking like they had hats or some sort of head-gear on as well.   I found it quite amazing!

So I took out my camera, braved the traffic to get to a narrow concrete median, where I precariously balanced myself while swapping lenses on my camera, and took a series of shots from the concrete median.  Then a short time later I took more shots on my way back from my destination breakfast cafe.

The photos are all quite striking.  I couldn’t help but think of the three people who lost their lives yesterday in the tragic bombing incident at the Boston Marathon.  My poetic rambling self thought, “well maybe these light-halo enigmas are the three souls saying good-bye to us and awaiting their ride out into the Light… “

Whatever the case, it was incredible.  I didn’t find it eerie or frightening at all, just mysterious and somewhat magical.

When light and shadow meet, you get some really interesting metaphors arising as The Art of the Found Moment.

You can see the gallery of my Bus Shelter Ghosts by clicking the link on the side-bar to the right, or by clicking HERE.

As a web designer, I’m particularly sensitive to design dynamic and ambience, as well as to the substance of messages being communicated. If you have something of import to say, the words themselves will communicate the message; you might say the ‘intent’ and the inherent life-energy behind your message will speak for itself. I’ve seen powerful messages put forth on very “plain paper”, in a sense, with regard to page layout and design.

I’ve also seen up-tempo, “stylish” hyper-active flash-based sites, with all their eye-catching pyrotechnics … which actually say nothing. Nothing, except, “look at me”. Kind of juvenile attention-getting scheme, as is exemplified by the Hollywood ‘fast-food’ injections of exploding cars and police chases in movies.

A lot of websites – and sadly enough – site designers as well – have opted to “pimping” their websites for advertising, either these pop-up style “click me” windows, or that cheap and crass “google advertising” spread across their top and side bars. In most cases, these people will likely never see a penny from the ‘lucrative’ ad revenues they imagine, and they will have insulted, distracted, and otherwise wasted peoples’ precious time with only more nonsense-that-we-don’t-need splashing in front of our eyes.

Indeed, from what once promised to be an interesting city of character homes, the internet is turning into an ugly cardboard cut-out suburban cul-de-sac blight, rife with it’s “Walmarts’” and “Costco’s” and frantic people driving their SUV’s into Information Madness.

Thankfully, those of us who are GOA (Grumpy Old Anarchists), can still express ourselves and establish our own unique designs without being arrested by the Google Brain Police. As long as there’s a thread of freedom in this crazy Online Shopping Mall, I personally vow to use it to propagate freedoms of artistic, anarchistic, and surrealistic expression.

There! I feel better already!

Public opinion is brewing and shaping and people are getting wind about what Big Money, Big Politics and Big Oil are up to.

It’s partly our fault: for sitting in the padded ignorance of our own comfort zones, numbed like a junkie, while the media keeps us distracted by cops and robbers stories and pop-culture trivia that are strategically moulded to provide those empty calories.  And, we do love our comfort zones, don’t we?

But, comfort zones are getting stretched.  Already massive, destructive storms are hitting a little close to home, too close to ignore, too close to escape from.  And the reality of Climate Change is standing with its naked, monstrous self, directly in front of us.  The polar ice caps are melting.  MELTING.  I mean, this alone should be enough for any person in his right mind to ask, “what the f*ck is going on?”   But we remain quiet, polite, subservient – the way we always are – chit-chatting with friends and neighbors about the usual confetti, the day to day concerns of drunken lives, lives lost in the wonder drug of prescribed entertainment.

And politicians lie to us.  Daily.  Big Media lies to us.  Daily.  Big Oil and their sleazy campaigns lie to us: constantly.  Have we lost the taste of what Truth really is?  Have we been so bombarded by industrial lies, political promises and cheap ad campaigns for so long that we just eat it up because it’s “convenient”?

It’s amazing and heart-warming, that people are speaking up.  They are saying “NO” … in a voice clear and loud.  They are tired of lies and empty promises and environmental travesties hidden behind the cheap facades of “regional prosperity”, “national economic growth” and the time-tortured 4-letter word, JOBS.    These little plastic carrots dangled in front of us are no longer garnering the devotion of the Chronically Stupid: people are being informed, updated and are seeing behind the camouflage and lies.

And the interesting thing is, they’re not getting this illumination from mainstream media like CNN, NBC, ABC, FOX or even *sigh* CBC.  They’re getting it from friends, relatives, strangers and others who are taking advantage of the connectivity of social media, websites, video, sharing on all levels the real word about what we are up against on this Planet, at this Time.

It’s time to MOVE.  It’s time to ACT.  There really is an amazing call for change, for accountability, for truth … taking place on the planet right now.  It’s exciting to be a part of it.  It means that WE as human beings can begin to engineer a better world for all of us.  Inhumanity, corruption, environmental destruction and greed have no hiding places any more.   They’re all being ‘OUTED’.  Wow.  Now, that’s pretty cool.

It won’t happen without a fight.  Money and power and time-tested control will not be letting go easily.  But it will happen.  It will because we are demanding.  Not politely “asking” for it.  We demand it.   Accountability, transparency and visioning a world that all human beings can thrive in peacefully is what it’s all about.  And it can happen.

All it needs is YOU.

Dear Mr Harper,

This is a letter to you, and to those who form your caucus.

For the first time in my life, I am embarrassed to be a “Canadian”.

I was born here in this country, almost 60 years ago. I’ve lived and enjoyed a peaceful, plentiful existence, in what has been up ’til now, a democratic nation, peopled and governed by human beings who respected each other,and who also took the time to respect our environment, all the richness and splendor of nature that we’ve been so bountifully blessed with.

And now, in front of my eyes, I see you and your government – step by step- disassembling democracy, decimating the environment, and above all, acting in secretive, dishonest ways to bulldoze through legislation which will leave our country and its citizens vulnerable to whatever financial and economic powers want to walk in and literally plunder our resources.

I’m sorry, but the tired old line, “jobs and economy” doesn’t cut the mustard any more. It doesn’t work in a planet whose atmosphere is being poisoned by fossil fuel. It’ doesn’t work, because it’s more than Canadians and their pretty little back yards who are at stake here; it’s the whole of civilization and species as we know it. It doesn’t work, because no line you can give us is going to provide an excuse for the sleazy and embarrassing tactics you’ve used to back off Kyoto and other commitments to planetary cooperation with other nations in easing the carbon payload in our already overburdened atmosphere.

And now, you’re wanting to ship this oil – the dirtiest of all oils, to the biggest polluters on the planet, who will further burden our eco-system by refining this “guck”, and even further by burning the end-product and spewing it into the air? You must be joking.

Already, climate change has taken hold of this planet so severely, that science itself is beginning to quake in their boots at the prospect of what is to come. The polar ice caps are melting. Outrageous oil spills have decimated the environment in sensitive Eco-systems that will never be the same again.

And you’re wanting to send this sludge in pipelines, across pristine wilderness, to be placed into tanker ships the size of the Empire State building, which will be plying dangerous waters off the BC Coast to take their horrendous payload to China? “China” – who you’re giving unprecedented sovereignty to, to walk in and plunder our Eco-system and resources?

Who is going to benefit from these disastrous mistakes, these miscalculated tragedies-of-outrageous-proportion just waiting to happen? You and your cronies? Tycoons who have invested in these toxic companies? A few pipe-fitters, welders and machinery operators will have beer and pizza money for a few more years. “Wow”. All this in exchange for decimating our environment, and making us a laughing-stock in the eyes of world citizens who care about this beautiful planet?

I am insulted by the deceit, the arrogance, the irresponsibility and the lack of courage that you and your government are portraying to the Canadian people and to the world at large, in the way you are handling the responsibilities of government.

You are responsible not only to us, in terms of honest and transparent government, but you are also responsible to the people of Canada and the people of this planet Earth in terms of fostering and creating a sustainable future for our generation, and for generations to come.

You are failing in all regards.  What you are doing amounts to Global Environmental Sabotage.

I am ashamed to be a Canadian. For the first time in my life.

Gary B
New Westminster, BC
CANADA

That was “my era” – the 60′s – my growing-up years, my elementary-school chapters, my living room on a middle-class street in a middle-class town in a Middle-Class Life.  There are few things in that era of my life that were truly “traumatic”.  Life was predictable and rubber-stamped, day-after-day.  Excitement lived in the extra-curricular seasons of my friends and in the changing imprints of the times. The hippie era, the Vietnam War, the Beatles and the gradual “colorizing” of the drab, mercenary post-industrial baby-boomer value system, fraught with materialism and the predictable charade of status quo.

November 22nd, 1963 began like any other day with the rituals of school and life.  By the end of the day however, the world had changed irrevocably, and the hearts, minds, and emotions of millions were in turmoil.  Somewhere in the early afternoon, we received the news in our elementary school, I even recall alarms and sirens going off; all systems seemed locked down and security alerts in place.  School was suspended for the day and we all went home.  I’ll always remember the headlines in the paper: “Kennedy Killed – Assassin Sought”.

My memories of that day and the character of this event were more like emotional energy imprints, rather than inventories of actual events.  The shock that  permeated the entire culture seemed to be more an expression of some huge unknown atrocity that had happened, containing archetypal imprints of the most horrendous artifacts of humanity’s “shadow” – violence, murder, death, fear, lies, deceit, coercion, propaganda and one of the largest-scale betrayals to be pulled off in Western Civilization.

I followed the Kennedy conspiracy theories from an intellectual distance over the years. It was lumped in with the other pop-culture tabloid concerns that our society chews and spits out: Elvis, Hitler, UFO’s, Crop Circles, The Great Wars, Large Sharks and on and on.

Lately, however, I’ve re-blossomed as a light political-environmental activist of sorts, and in this mode, I’m looking more closely at political leaders, their relationship with money and industry.  How does this pan out in terms of transparency, accountability, impact on our fellow humans, and on the planet itself?

It’s so obvious – not only from the content of this movie, but from gut-level and intuitive feelings that inform me in my life: that we live in a society whose machinery is controlled by those immersed in silent contracts. These unspoken connections of finance and convenience, this unbending loyalty to the rules of a military-industrial complex whose control over our lives is far-reaching: deeply enmeshed into our culture, our character and our mindset, often beyond what we are able to fathom.

We have learned not to question, not to acknowledge or trust own inner gut-level understandings, but to implicitly respect, obey and at times worship, the matrix of beliefs and values we are handed  by societal institutions.  We are so afraid of making waves, that we would opt to drown in a sea of deceit rather than to question some of the basic tenets we’ve been spoon-fed all of our lives.

From understanding a little of Kennedy’s life, he was a peace-maker, a visionary, a leader who wanted to dis-assemble, neutralize, and hold accountable the vast powers and  power-brokers of the machinery that ruled America.   In doing so, he crossed the lines of the many who were benefactors of the industrial / war machine, and he paid dearly for doing so;  he paid with his life.

And then, the legacy of just more ‘corporate’ leaders: more liars, more traitors, more imbeciles who wore the distorted face of power, control and “smooth talk” – the actors, the Hollywood scripting in politics, the boys of the “old school” .  Paperback “heroes” who hide behind the facades of  “family values”, religion, and business-as-usual in order to carry out – consciously or unconsciously – the destructive and anti-human agenda of greed, control and manipulation that sits at the heart of corrupt politics.

But this is more than just JFK and all the actors in the movie that played out, both in real-time and on the screen.  This is about us as humans and our own real voice, the voice of our intuition, our guts, our hearts, our spirit: the voice that knows the truth – the truth at least for self - our path, our real place in life, our real purpose, real celebrations and struggles, our real real reason for living and breathing on this Planet at this particular time.

Where is our real voice, who is our real voice, what words does is speak, what song does it sing?

For some of us, this little voice is internalized and lost.  It’s buried under the deep and rigid architectures of parental control, polite deference and obedience,  overcoats of religious propriety and morality.  It hides behind masks of the learned male and female emotional protocol, and years of serving the unspoken rules of the majority: what is “right”, what is “called for”, in the minds of generations preceding us.

I think that those who felt betrayed on November 22nd, 1963 wanted to scream.

Scream in pain and betrayal.  Scream in the agony of deceit and massive violence.  Scream forever and ever at the masked men and the fake smiles and the smug gun-toting criminal machinery that kept all the “I’s” dotted and the false paperwork framed on the thin walls of this so-called democracy.   Scream at the shadows and fear that control the hearts of men and women and children all around the world.  Scream that enough is enough – there is no more room for shadow, for darkness, for pain, for deceit.

Scream that it’s time to turn on the lights for all of humanity.

We each have the power and the privilege and the birthright to live in the light of peace and justice. To trust the true voice that guides us on the inside, the voice that wants to celebrate life, liberty and love from a place of knowing. 

The Silent Scream of Mankind, buried ‘alive’ within us, buried for centuries untold, is finally making its way to the surface of humanity’s matrix.  This voice is our own, one that can both vanquish the darkness from within our own castles, and and shed light for once and for all on the forces that shape the world we live in.

We are Leaves.
We are Trees.
We understand the Small Words
Between the Sentences of Things.

Leaves are Alive in their Demise.
Laughing at Eternity and it’s Approaching Fingers.
We all go There.

Some with Less Color.
Others with Loud Voices.

I talk to you about Escape
And  you tell me  your Dreams are too Comfortable.
I point out the Holes in the Fence
But you refuse to Bend and Fold

if only to crawl Hands & Knees
into the Arms of Beauty

I have Wasted Only a Day
In the Kingdom of Flowers
in the Dignity and Dying Embers of Fall.

these Colors I take Home
and serve New Gravy
on Old Casseroles
to the Guest …

… who Comes and Goes with the Wind.

The Call of Fall.

It speaks and we Listen.

There’s something reassuring about this.  It’s the smells of dying leaves and the colors stirred by November’s winds.  Perhaps a Childhood we once knew.

It speaks of Cycles.  Old Age.  Endings and Birthings.  Nature’s voice – again – among our many Trials and Distractions.  We settle into the warm winds and let them take Umbrellas for a ride.  Like Mary Poppins we Fly.  Over trails, worries, hills, dread, sabotage, relinquishment, hibernation, dreams.

And the familiar song calls us back.  “Us”.  Our Life.  Our Path.  Our feeling of wholeness, belonging, resolve, rest, arrival.

Doorsteps for our Footprints.

It’s a beautiful time of year.

Our region has been blessed this fall with some Days of Sun.  This is the Best Way – in fact the Only Way … to truly see the beauty of the season.  Vancouver’s perennial rain has taken many tolls on many souls.  We won’t get started on that.  Let us instead, dear congregation – sing the Hymn Of Autumn Sun.  Spectacular!  Uplifting!  Cinematography at its best.

So, the Triumph.

The war with no battle.  The win-win situation of this Elemental Nature that gives and gives and gives.  Our only challenge is to engage in it and bathe in it and delight in it and drink from it and revive our tired tissues in its fragrant and nourishing breezes.

This is the “church” of the “god” that really DOES exist.  The jubilant voice of Nature, within us and without.  Pay attention to the within … and you’ll be blown away by the without.

Without the within, there is no without, or the without – at most – is just passing scenery, a foreign movie by an unknown director.  Within the within, there is the Director, Producer, Cameraman and Audience … all-together-now breathing in unison … this infinite, momentary, delicious and delightful nugget of the sublime: one moment in the passing fad called “My Life”.

Noteworthy, I assure you.

Appreciation.  Of this time we have.  And it does pass by faster, as we age.  We’re told this, and we acknowledge this.  Something about the cycles and seasons and Wheels of Fire that spin us: they burn an important message into our heart: “Mortality”.

Mortality.

*Hmmm.*

A friend recently narrated an experience she’d had at a party, where the hostess made a sarcastic remark about looking in the mirror and seeing the signs of age progressing.  But after that off-handed dismissal, the subject was changed, and not re-visited.

And she wondered why.  And we shook our heads.  Well we know why.  It’s one of those unwritten, but blindly obeyed rulings about what we can and can’t say.  The “approved discussions” at social gatherings include, movies, politics, the weather … but not Mortality.  Well, isn’t that peculiar.

We all celebrate the Day We Arrived.  Every year. And others’ Big Days. The congrats and confetti.  And may you enjoy many more.  But that “other” big day … the one that awaits us all … *uh* … let’s not go there.

Well the TREES GO THERE.  Look at that one right above us.  Those leaves are not coming back.  And in their passing, Their Mortality … they Dance.  They Delight.  They speak beauties indescribable to the eyes.  They literally sing.

Perhaps they’re humble.

Perhaps they haven’t accumulated SUV’s and RRSP’s and little picket-fence cabins on the Lakeside.  They don’t boast and swagger and hesitate and doubt and waste endless time pursuing fantasies of an endless “mind”.  Perhaps they’re just obeying their innate blueprint.

Perhaps the only problem is that we don’t know the sweetness of our Mortality, something like the smell of November Leaves.  The sweetness of our Mortality is that it’s touched by the Breath of Our Immortality, the immortal within.  Without the knowledge of this, then, all we have is religion, beliefs, the mascara of the mind, the man-made perfume of the pundits and priests.  That Old Musty Smell.

So, my Blueprint Sings on this Quiet day.  Another setting sun.  Another leaf departs from another branch, never to return.  Never to look back, to lament to regret, to grieve.

This is one Doorstep all of our Footprints will pass over.  No need to knock. But something in the Dance of Life carries us, loves us, informs us, whispers the Essential Notices in our ears.  And our True Nature Speaks.

We Listen.

Now they’re here. Yay!

These are the Queens of Spring, and more importantly – the Queens of New Westminster’s Queens Park Neighborhood. They show up every spring to party for a week or two, and then leave us panting on the edge of our seats, hoping that Summer will be half-as-much-fun as this Great Drag Show of Spring.

They are shocking and unapologetic, for their shameless excess. They are right-in-our-face with their glory, their thinly disguised Macho Femininity.  Their bravado with overdone makeup, mascara and pink, pink, pink … enough to make Callgirls Blush.

Yes, brothers and sisters of the Sidestreet.  They are Magnolias.

And they have been decreed, by the Great Gary Gustaf Bandzmer, to be the Official Drag Queens of Spring.

They come in various shapes and sizes.  Mostly of two persuasions: Pink and White, along with permutations and inter-marriages of the two.   Some are “auto-erotic” – like the Pink Floozie in the upper left Boudoir.   Others do it in two, groups or whole-tree orgies.  Yes, I’m shocked as well.  But … bear with me and I will do my best to explain the juvenile behavior of these wayward blooms.  Be warned though: it may overcome your senses to the point of intoxication.   Find a designated driver for the trip home.

When the Season finally arrives, well … these young princesses are hardly what one could call “shy”.  They begin emerging at the slightest Hint Of Spring.  It’s like, they want to be the first ones on the block with all the color, and they truly do make the most visual noise, often quite deafening to innocent passers-by.

The white ones attempt to appear more “spiritual” – but it’s a ruse.  Outwardly they try to convince  you of their godliness, cleanliness and austerity.  But soon their unbridled passion and thinly disguised extravagance shows though.  They are not the stately nuns and priests one would expect in such wardrobes.

So, these gay, screaming fools basically take over the neighborhood for weeks at a time.  There’s no stopping them.  You can call the Police, you can write letters, you can have private chats with the clergy, for all that matter.  But it’s known by the elders and crones, to be a complete waste of time.

And, as some might say: they take over the whole town.   That’s right.  There simply is no other show that competes.  They blow those other dancers right out the door.  Japanese plum blossoms?  Good luck.  Any others, of any shape, size or color: they simply don’t match up.  The Magnolias run the show.  “Mob connections” – you think?  The chances are good.  Their competitors never had a chance.  You’d think they’d been ‘whacked’.

Well, it makes us all feel inadequate.  Lousy lovers.  Even with our best – and finest – wardrobes, and you girls: with your most expensive, environmentally-correct makeup, your new color-coordinated accessories … it all falls desperately short of the allure of the Magnolia Queens.

They own the streets and they’re here to stay.

If there’s one thing they teach us about Spring, it’s this: Love Is Not A Polite Whisper.  It’s Led Zeppelin.  It’s Janis Joplin.  It’s the Music turned up to Number Ten.   If Love and Life wait for no one, then Spring is the first out the door, led by the Mad Magnolia Queers.  Talk about “Parades” or doing it in public.  They are not ashamed of being who they are.  In all their glory: they amp it up, they stretch and bloom and arch their velvet, pouting petals in every majestic direction they can: reaching for the Sky, the Sun — and everything in-between.

So, this is a little late.  The show began a month back, and the Majestic Ladies are now showing their age – the few that are still left around.

Such crude and unrefined show-offs, they don’t even try to disguise their age!   The big floppy, velvety, soft, sensuous petals begin to brown and wither … and soon, within days or even hours, they are lying on the ground, inebriated, dead-drunk  – willing to rot or surrender to the merciless rake of the Japanese Gardener.  Whoosh, scritch-scratch, they are gone!  Unceremoniously dumped into some mundane back-alley disposal unit to end up in the civic land-fill, remembered by  … who?

Well, they don’t care.  They’re not egotistical enough to ask for a “Magnolia Graveyard”.  Or will it be “cremation or burial”…?  They care not for paperwork and diplomacy.  No one will have a “Celebration of Life” for them.  Paradoxically, their LIFE is their “Celebration of Life”, not their death.  They celebrate life, by stretching, dancing, yawing, screaming … into their extravagant unique amazing individuality, and they take it to the Nth degree.  Not polite and reserved like us Canadians.

So, here it is, May 14th.  Spring is finally feeling the Fingers of Summer and the White-Gloved Hand of Winter is gradually letting go.  It seems that it is these courageous blossoms that have paved the way.  They announced Spring, by announcing themselves.  They made a Big Noisy Party and Winter could stand it no more; that Quiet, Icy, Catholic Nun left the house.   And Summer, on it’s Harley-Davidson arrived with a Roar.

Oh, to Live That Way.

Those humble and exotic flowers can teach us so much.

If we care to listen to their song.

How can you miss it?