Pluto in Capricorn & in Opposition – Pandemic & Retribution.

Last February as I made my way by subway to the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing arts, the season’s latest opera was on that night – of course, what I then did not know, was that the rest of the opera season would eventually be cancelled – the most jarring thing occurred. A young Amerindian male with the glossiest black mane, took two steps back on the TTC train platform and dropped his black gym bag. “Are you fucking talking to me? No bitch, I’m talking to you! Did I invite you into my country?” The rage and the booming power of his voice was arresting. The tall effete Caucasian male tried brushing him off as though he were so much raped and abandoned non-whitedom. Before I knew what next, The five-foot-nothing, proud Amerindian punched his adversary square in his girly man face. Crying out like a right candy-arsed sissy, the Caucasian weakly protested, all whilst rushing backwards. My proud Amerindian brother was just getting started. Of course, I, who have grown soft for making peace with being a black male in this racially suffocating society, cried out when the first punch landed. Bam, another punch to the face as the much shorter warrior defended his land, his people, pride and history. “Yeah you, did I fucking invite you to my country?” and another blow. Bloodied and cowering, the all-mouth, cowardly closet cocksucker was resoundingly handed his arse and put in his rightful place.

The opera, Hansel & Gretel, was beautifully staged – set in the stark isolation of Toronto condo living. I was, though, never fully engaged as I spent the next several days readjusting to having had that young warrior shaman heal my spirit by his very proud actions and the conviction of his words. The next several days, I kept returning to the incident with the proud Amerindian. My reaction at the time had stunned me and in hindsight, I kept revisiting why I chose to be so upset at the attack on the arrogant male, who was being pummelled. He had taunted and dismissed the Amerindian male – a socially aggressive behaviour from whites with which one was long familiar. I realised that so many times in situations as then, we as blacks are programmed to sublimate and ‘take it’ rather than defending oneself from the hideous ugliness of the spiritually stunted.

Then something quite remarkable happened, the murderous lynching of George Floyd in callously stark veracity that cell phone ubiquity has afforded in the modern age. The event was seismic; the raw brutality of the racial predator on the hunt was so glaring, so jarring that it set ablaze protests across the planet. Indeed, the cell phone, like the beating of Rodney King, has been able to capture the ugliness that is whiteness which prior to, meant that one could lie away and grin away with exquisite triumphant glee, fucking with the enemy – an enemy on whom one preys never having been preyed on by that enemy. Slowly, the exoskeleton with which one straitjackets oneself in order to make peace and to be a black man peacefully making it through one day to the next, began losing its grip.

Scenes like in the early days of lockdown 2020, I was in line at Pusateri’s at Yorkville Avenue and Bay Street to pick up a couple of bottles of VOSS water. Old, ugly as fuck, the woman in line ahead of me turned around and began screaming at the top of her hateful lungs in a scene that could easily have been played by her in South Africa. She demanded that I get the hell away from her because I was clearly not practising proper social distancing and remaining more than two metres apart. Of course, this had nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic but everything to do with her seizing an opportunity to be a hate-filled racist boor. As much as I wanted to readily turn rapaciously vituperative and tell her to try 2 metres below ground; instead, I took two operatic steps back and coolly and eloquently boomed with scathing condescension, “Look at you! On your hind legs and everything! Seriously though…” With that, after having laughed a vulgar dismissive breath, I impatiently strode to the back of the line to be rid of the fugly parvenu boor. Everyone, staff and clients, froze. She, of course, squawked and grumbled as I focussed my discriminating attention to a conversation via Whatsapp video about dinner with my transitioning spouse at our art-filled home, who on the eve of Bob Marley’s birthday, two decades earlier, I wedded at Montréal’s Palais de Justice both decked in gold-threaded, crisp white linen Yoruba agbada with her a matching gele. As can be expected of cowardly fare, the anaemic-looking young couple now two metres in front of me, simply ignored the social dustup by hungrily face-fucking in their best escapist Bonobo turn. Naturally, the old harpy got from the line to kvetch to whomsofuckingever and when the cashier asked if I wanted a bag, I declined, telling her that I would rather be kind on the environment. Turning to leave the tightly spaced store, I paused and shot down her evil glare by raising both VOSS waters, one in each hand, and shouted, L’Chaim! That ought to have left her pissy knickers smelling louder on leaving the store.

Soon enough, the acts of racially predatory social aggression became more frequent and pronounced. There was the incident one cool morning where a hirsute covering of blond furred redhead stopped jogging in front of me, grabbed a hold of my bike’s handlebar and began screaming as though I were both blind and deaf as he demanded that I keep the hell off the sidewalk. It wasn’t enough that cell phones had exposed their murderous ugliness but as though to protest, whites have grown more emboldened with the affront of blacks and Black Lives Matter movement to demonstrate and demand change.

By early June last year, 2020, I had had enough, each morning on the ride to work through tony Rosedale, I was being accosted by various burghers of the beautifully tree-lined streets – then again, which Toronto residential neighbourhood street is not beautifully tree-lined. There was one Jew in particular, who caused me to go out and get the above bodycam. Each morning, as I am a creature of habit, he was in the habit of leaving the sidewalk to come into the middle of the street, approach as I bike-ride to pepper me with hideous racial slurs and demand that I keep the hell out of the neighbourhood. Good morning, Shithead! Good morning you black piece of shit. Get out of here! Finally, one morning, having quite had enough of him and his special brand of ugliness of spirit, I told him to go fuck himself to which he incredulously demanded at the top of his lungs, unlike his usually sotto voce delivered insults as he approached the bike, “Get back here! Get back here now! I’m talking to you. Come back here now!” The nerve of some people. That last incident occurred on a Friday and thank god for Jeff Bezos, by Monday, I had me a bodycam. So as my special kind of fugly, hairy back and arsed nuisance came bopping off the sidewalk, ready to be racial predatory white male asshole number 1 billion, 500 million and 99, he caught sight of my bodycam, lights on and all, and like the bipedal, über poilu Rottweiler-hybrid that he is, he readily retreated for the cover of the sidewalk. I have never seen him since and, of course, I had ignored everyone’s advice to take another route to work. What the fuck for? As I am born in the year of the Rat, I am no different to any other rat; we live firmly self-aware that rats fear no one.

A few months back in between spells of too much snow, I abandoned my bike and elected to take a ride. On the way home, as I go from job A to job B, I told the unibrowed, wild-eyed driver that I was in a bit of a hurry and would show him a shortcut to my place. He again said nothing, just as he hadn’t as I got into his ride and said hello. Though, I wore a colourful silk mask over the daily disposable N-95 mask, his shitty ride I swear, smelt like what no doubt just-fucked camel pussy does. Told to take a left off Yonge onto Roxborough, finally not surprised was I when he proved a short-tempered fuck whose pointy fingers on that wheel had me dismissing him as so much forgettable small-cocked fare. He barked rather than spoke that he followed the GPS, which had called out to make a left onto Crescent so many metres ahead south down Yonge Street. Thus, we ventured, clearly grudgingly for him, along Roxborough and as we approached, I announced that I wanted him to make a right turn onto Wrentham to Crescent. Immediately, the über-poilu beast, which made me think Ursa hybrid, stepped on the gas drove east past Wrentham, down the hill and pulled onto Mount Pleasant without so much as having looked left in the process. As it was rush hour, there would be no left turns south of Bloor along Jarvis which Mount Pleasant becomes before Gerrard Street East or possibly Shuter Street East. To be sure, I was more than a little bit pissed off when telling the inbred, short-fused jackass to turn off of Mount Pleasant, onto Elm and turn right at Sherbourne North as had been intended. “You fucking idiots, who the hell are you people to talk to anybody like you own something?” Then he violently broke the car, just north of South Drive and demanded that I get out of his car. Coolly, I got out and left the door open and when he swore at me and demanded I shut his fucking door now, I told him I thought I would do him a favour and air it out, seeing as how it stunk of camel… the camel-fucker did not, of course, get the insult. Readily, I pulled out my camera and told him, ‘yeah come out here and get some of this.’ He got out of his shitty little car, cut the beady eyes at me, slammed the door shut, told me and my people to go fuck ourselves to which I replied, “happy black history month to you, too…” By the time I got onto Sherbourne North, my Samsung S20 had died. Naturally, thanks to coronavirus, I had no cash and there was no way to call a cab or Uber. In this neck of the woods, a random taxi was a nonstarter.

Foreground Bloor & Parliament in St. James Town, to right distance, Yorkville, Centre distance, One Bloor East currently tallest condo at 76 storeys, at Yonge & Bloor, Centre mid-distance Sherbourne to Church (east to west) Upper Gay Village or more pretentiously south Yorkville (ha!).

Doggedly, I decided to simply walk it home, just as I got unto the Sherbourne Street bridge, I began experiencing an anxiety attack. Years earlier, I had witnessed someone leap from the Jacques Cartier bridge that spans the St. Lawrence in Montréal. Suddenly, out of nowhere as anxiety attacks tend to function, I was in the grips of crippling fear. I knew that there was no way that I could cross the bridge, even to try and make it back seemed a feat, there was a sudden desire to start running, which I knew that I could not do. A young Amerindian couple in the city, for the first time it turned out, crossed the bridged, going south on the west side – same as me. I explained my dilemma and asked if they would call me a cab. The proud warrior-looking man, barely into his 20s insisted that I simply conquer my fear by walking beside him and his beautiful girlfriend. I tried…. I wanted to. I could not, though, as I began shaking… just the sheer weight of why I was there in the first place simply for being black and asking the driver to take a preferred route – it all seemed so absurd, yet it is an indignity that one endures at every turn in a million ways every frigging day in this society. The warmest eyes winked at me as he smiled and the Beck taxi came up the bridge made a U-turn and the young warrior closed the door on me, wishing me well. Eventually, I got home late and when I was done job B where I fundraise in the arts and remain unrivalled, I wrote a detailed account of my ride with the bigot who kicked me from his car and was summarily refunded. As if Jazz the blasted motherfuck were invented by unibrowed, camel-fucking, hairy back-and-arsed dreck.

Days later, and still black history month, I was riding my bike through the wet streets of Rosedale where the snow melted fast after the latest snowfall. As I emerged onto Crescent Road from the footpath which Scrath becomes, to cross the bridge that spans Mount Pleasant Road, a white female in a black, skin-tight, jogging suit was way in back of a group of jogging white males whom I had seen with fair regularity. She was clearly not part of their group. Jogging in the street as she was, she moved to the side as I approached and then with the arrogance of the truly somnambulant, aggressively called after me in a tone that was both accusatory and possessive as I moved past, “Excuse me, where are you going?” That morning, I happened not to be wearing my bodycam as when I got downstairs, realised that the snow had sufficiently melted such that I could actually ride my bike rather than take a cab. Without so much as missing a beat, I broke hard and stood straddling my bike when reaching into the shallow depths of her sphinctered psyche, “I’m going to your house to fuck your man!” She stood there arrested, catatonic as my use of language was both vulgar, rapacious. “That’s right, I’m gonna hog-tie that fucking cocksucker of yours and fuck him good… Yeah, you wanna come watch? Come on!” Arrested in place, her eyes welled up as mine remained unflinchingly enraged, her lizard-thin upper lip actually trembling. With that, I resumed riding my bike to job A to which I was already running late. In this the age of Trump, some whites at every chance, turn racially predatory at the drop of a hat.

Then there are the casket fugitives; these blasted tiresome, overstayed boomers, who simply will not stop showing off and just crawl the fuck in their caskets. What other generation but boomers would find a new way to show-off in their smelly diapers and drug-wasted dotage? They, these lost souls forever hurrying about way off-piste, are ever bitching and at times raising their silly poles at me, demanding that I not ride on pathways but dismount and walk. Once confronted by a turkey-necked mannish boor, I leaned in and asked near-inaudibly, “Don’t you tire of breathing? Go on, go chill the fuck out in your casket”

And then November 3, 2020 turned into January 6, 2021 as that porcine pathological compulsive liar – America’s biggest loser and racist swine, finally left the stage with crooked tail between his fat thighs with the Eurotrash escort cum parvenu snob in tow. The cold-blooded murder of George Floyd, staged or simply instinctual racially predatory behaviour, like the big fat coward that he is, having miserably failed at leading and taking command of the pandemic, Trump latched on to the murder of George Floyd to win the vote. That’s right, it was all about not haemorrhaging the white vote; thus it became all about cops and law and order – all code language for white privilege and racist white supremacy. Well, it did not fucking work! Fuck you!

Not only did Trump fail to steal the vote by declaring Marshall law and leading an insurrection on the Capitol, he and his racist ilk’s poster boy for racially predatory murderous scum was convicted on all three counts. George Floyd’s murder occurred at the Pluto opposition in Capricorn and thus the past four hundred years of murderous racially predatory blood sport of blacks finally led to George being anointed as the One. That’s right, for the first time in 400 years, a cop has been found guilty of the murder of a black male. For blacks, America the past 400 years has been nothing but a giant game reserve where they are hunted with the arrogant impunity of police getting off time and again when murdering blacks. Let that sink in for a moment. America the land where whites can murder whilst dressed up in the hunting gear of the police uniform – all the while, other whites the world over perpetually on holiday having predatory sex with minors whilst everyone looks the other way. Thanks to his murder, and trophy-hunting racial predator Chauvin having been found guilty of murder, George Floyd became a martyr who has broken the long 400 year tradition of the justice system in America condoning the racially predatory murder of blacks at the hands of police. Pluto in Capricorn indeed. The hijacked American justice system where blacks are corralled to spike the profit margins for BlackRock shareholders… talk about genius, indeed.

Always… with every breath… it is quintessentially Jazz!

Recent ride through Rosedale because of whose venal classist/racist aggression, I have taken to wearing the bodycam. As ever, Jazz permeates my every breath; how could it not when my father’s first cousin, the recently deceased actor Cicely Tyson was wife of Jazz genius Miles Davis? A new friend with lots of past-life history, asked why I am always singing the same Jazz tune when cycling; it is a form of meditation, I shared, as I move from job A to job B. By vocalesing and singing a favourite Jazz tune, I am getting refocussed to the task next in hand – fundraising in the arts… at which I am damn good. In the above clip, at the 06:24 mark, one can clearly see the septuagenarian white female with bags in hand, walking north in the southbound bike lane. Likely she chose to do so to avoid being too close to persons on the kerb. Either way, her choice and no business of mine. Minutes as I got further down Sherbourne Street, at which point, I had stopped recording, as I was now going south in the northbound bike lane a total of 3 white female passing, violently yelled and called me every kind of asshole imaginable. White females are ten times more likely than white males to be verbally abusive in such situations; however, non-white, non-black males and females almost never engage in such predatory social aggression. The idea that I am going to time-waste by yelling at someone for simply going in the opposite direction of the usual flow of bike traffic in a given lane is beyond absurd. So fucking what? Last winter before getting the bodycam, there was a white male in early forties with about 4% body fat running north in the northbound bike lane along the Sherbourne Street bridge. As I approached at a leisurely pace, I could tell that he was wearing air buds and not wanting to surprise him simply rode pass saying and doing nothing. Shocked, though not surprised, was I when he upped his jogging pace and began running alongside on my right. Yelling as though a drill sergeant, he began calling me an asshole and demanded to know why I had not used my fucking bell when passing him. Not jogging on the kerb was he, nor was he jogging towards oncoming bike and vehicular traffic; yet, he and his perceptions had perceived me as being at fault for riding alongside and passing him without having given him warning of my approach. This world is overrun by truly blind assholes, very well-armed, truly blind assholes.

A few days ago as I hopped off my bike with time to kill between jobs A & B, I slipped into the reconstituted shrine to Canadian ice hockey which became the flagship store of Loblaws, another of the Weston family’s retail gems. On entering, there was a police officer just inside – a new pandemic feature. Tall, handsome and of South Pacific heritage, the male officer engagingly greeted me, willingly, I ambled over and he commended me on the bodycam. Said he, every person of colour ought to be wearing one; indeed, I agreed, it amazingly affords one peace of mind and a harassment free ride about town. He laughed when told of how hostile the burghers of Rosedale can be, adding that he was not surprised in the least at the account of in-your-face open bigotry.

With nimble vivacity me and my paniers whisked through the place, emerging minutes later with organic ginger, beautifully pungent organic turmeric, Ocean Spray’s Cran-Grape drink – this drink screams sugar is the drug y’all – and of course, the most exquisite cheddar cheese. Whether at tea, with pâté or dark chocolate, the President’s Choice (Loblaws house brand) aged 5 years crumbly cheddar cheese is as musky and satisfying as a full Moon night spent indulging rugged mansex in the moss-saturated bois of Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Slipping outside, as I loaded up my paniers on my trusty brown Schwinn Gateway, the four bottles of VOSS water made the paniers hard to close shut – larger than the VOSS available in Yorkville, who needs Pusateri’s and Yorkville’s parvenu pretentious bullshit anyway?

As ever, life is like a flying dream; if you look down, you’re fucked. Enjoy the ride and fear no one!

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©2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.

The Racial Predator and A Fistful of Dreams. 2.0!

Toronto

*After having spoken to WordPress, I was assured that they did not delete this blog post of dreams and commentary which was originally posted on February 20, 2015.  Again, if you find anything herein objectionable just move along because, just so you know, apologies and obsequiousness are both foreign to me.  Again, if you follow this blog and believe in an artist’s right to be free from all forms of terror and censor please do reblog this post. END.

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Dreams involving travels in consciousness to anchor point metropolises are always welcome.  These next dreams represent just such travels to far-off distant worlds as transported to via the astral plane and through the expediency of the dreamtime. 

At the time, it was Monday, September 4, 1995 and the dreams were audiocassette-recorded on tape number one hundred and ninety-eight.  As such, they will yet be found in Volume XX of the XXV volumes of dreams.  The Moon then transited both Capricorn and my eighth house. 

As has been previously stated, my Saturn retrograde is posited in the eighth house which, in concert with my Venus/Uranus conjunction in Leo, afford me this commendable facility which I would trade for no amount of platinum on this or any  other world! 

Speaking of worlds far-flung or otherwise, what a maudlin little backwater world of a planet we’ve got here.  This past Tuesday, February 17, 2015, I was well aware that it was an 8 day and with a life path of 8, there are times when on such days it is best to stay indoors and avoid it all.  This past Tuesday was just such a day, nonetheless, I elected to head out into the big bad world. 

As I am never late for any of the three jobs at which I income earn, I had headed out 1.5 hours before start of shift.  Before leaving my Jazz saturated home, I had mapped out how best to do my banking whilst en route to work.  Off I went through the icy streets of Toronto where there a few water main breaks which left spots of the route an icy mess. 

Luckily, I had long weeks earlier switched to my steel-studded winter bike wheels which when partially soft make riding on ice or in snow feel as though riding on sand.  Alas, no need to go slipping and crashing for no good reason.  I rode along the bike lane on Wellesley Street East, hung a left and headed south down Sherbourne Street. 

The major water main break just south of Dundas Street East had me abandon the bike lane for the street where the single southbound lane was an icy slushy mess.  I was rather impressed at how well my steel-studded wheels navigated the thick ice without incident.  The past couple of days have been the coldest, snowiest, iciest and windiest in long memory. 

At Shuter Street, I hung a right and headed westward to Church Street where I made another left and headed south to Queen Street East.  There, at the southwestern corner of Queen Street East and Church Street is a Scotiabank in one of those old buildings which has been around since before the start of the last century; however, this being Toronto, it is highly likely that in 1.5 decades it will have been gutted to form the podium of yet another condensation-prone glass and steel condominium; these gems are readily gobbled up by offshore investors and soon infested with parasitic parvenu dreck that have neither class nor intellect. 

As all the bike stands on Church and Queen Street East close to the bank were buried in at least 1.5 feet of frozen-solid snow to make a path for pedestrians, I ventured into the large-interiored structure which I have always favoured.  A few years back, when I worked in the neighbourhood fundraising for the Royal Ontario Museum where I brought in three times as much money as the second best in sales, I loved frequenting the lovely building to do my banking. 

Having safely left my bike in a corner where I could clearly see it, I progressed south down the length of the narrow bank and waited in line where there were two female clerks attending to the male and female customers.  I smiled and readily turned off the front light on my helmet when the teller on the left whose hair was a hennaed affair, much reminding me of Québec, dramatically frowned and covered her eyes. 

Since I noticed her from time to time looking away from the dumpy Sri Lankan female before her at the counter, I made a point to avoid her and use her blonde coworker when the other customer took his leave.  I had left the light on the back of my helmet on – as for that matter the lights on my bike on, one in back and front. 

Even though this was a less frequented bank, I had a good view of my bike and kept on looking at it.  Back in late 2011, whilst riding westerly along Carlton Street and coming up on Jarvis Street where to the right in the low-rise condo the actor, Gordon Pinsent resides, I had a man in a black Ford F-350 with monstrous tyres open his door without looking whilst talking on his phone. 

I went flying and nimble soul that I am I got from the streetcar track and scurried me and my trusty bike to safety.  I then watched a grown man with the softest blues eyes become a nervous wreck as he cried and profusely apologised for having opened the door on me without first looking.  I had actually clearly seen him in his side view mirror and he honestly hadn’t been paying attention.  Though I had cautiously rung my bell, I was just as surprised as he would be after the fact when he opened his door. 

Since then, I have worn lights on my helmet and kept them on regardless the time of day – you can never be too safe; besides, vehicles sport lights all hours of the day so why not bikes. 

As I can spot a racial predator from here to Times Square in a heartbeat, I elected not to go to the teller on the left as both customers simultaneously took their leave of the tellers on concluding their business.  Approaching, I watched the menopausal woman with a bit of darkened fur on her upper lip leaning to her blonde coworker and say something. 

At the time, the blonde was busy finishing up the paper work from her last customer.  I approached and avoided the faux redhead whose looks were hostile and predatory.  Leaning in, she said something to the blonde who immediately looked up as I approached her.  She was both startled by what the faux redhead said and the sight of me wearing two balaclavas, a toque and earmuffs  beneath my helmet – being in motion on a bike in -37° Celsius. 

As I have several times over the years frequented the bank and in past winters entered said bank in my winter face bike gear, I specifically chose it as branch into which I could slip where it would not be too heavily peopled and therefore would not have to take my balaclavas off and all that head gear – the nylon balaclava is a great fit but it is the most bothering thing to both put on and even harder to take off when sweat sheened. 

Though I had not paid the faux redhead any mind and was now standing before her blonde coworker who fixed me with a cautious smile, old dry-pussied, displaced lazy haus frau just had to prove my instinct for spotting racial predators to be still sharply focussed.  Again, though I was not at her counter – why would I? – she spoke up stating,

“Please remove your mask, we feel threatened by you?” 

Imagine that, the racial predator has now evolved to the point of being telepathic even empathetic… NOT!  Of course, it does go without saying that many of the university-educated other bank employees who were comfortably seated in their offices to my rear had seen me whilst I waited and some I recognised and they too recognised me from my many visits to said branch. 

However, our estrogen-challenged faux redhead just had to go proving that yet again when you assume you make an ass out of you and me.  At no point did the blonde utter a word; frankly, I rather suspect that she was more in shock by having been prompted into fearfulness by her coworker faux redhead than anything else. 

Meanwhile, one of the bank managers, a jovial large-bodied fellow, left his office and walked past me to go and speak to a contractor in blue uniform towards the back behind the tellers.  I had seen this man before on prior visits to the bank and naturally, I should think that if he found my attire threatening, he would have approached me and said something. 

In a cool but civil tone which readily betrayed my loathing for having to deal with bullshit of any kind, I graciously greeted and informed the blonde that I would like to deposit my pay cheque into my account. 

“Remove your mask; we do not have to serve you.  You are threatening us with your mask.” 

My god, what if I were carrying a gun and intent on holding up the bank?  Did this dumbass think that she would be the first to deflect a bullet with her stupid insolence? 

“You have no such right to tell me to remove my balaclavas.  When was the last time you asked a Muslim to remove her burqa because you found it threatening?  That’s right, you don’t find that threatening but strangely enough you find me threatening.” 

She began mouthing off yet again at which point I interjected, “Tell you what, I will just go to the main branch where they know me.  Happy Black history month to you, too!” 

I took my red Scotiabank card and cheque placed them in my red Metro Toronto Convention Centre marvellously waterproof, wind and winter jacket all-in-one and began the long stretch of the bank to my bike.  I was not surprised, on turning back, to see old hirsute-lipped monster come into the aisle to approach me. 

That’s right, the same one who claimed to have been so threatened by me, leaving the safety of her counter to come address me.  She looked down the way at me with that vapid smugness her ilk owns so well when letting me know that she was putting out an alert on me so I would not be served anywhere. 

Regardless of the fact that on the video any Legal, Human Resources, Public Relations professional at Scotiabank would readily conclude that this faux redhead did not provide their customer with good service.  What could possibly have possessed this supposedly threatened woman to come from behind her counter to face down the aisle at me as I got my bike to leave the branch? 

Again, whilst she called out to me that she would alert the other branch, I wished her a happy Black history month to which she callously laughed after replying, “Yeah whatever, same to you!” 

I got from my bike and left the branch, headed down Church Street and made my way westerly along King Street East crossed Yonge Street and headed a block still westerly for the main branch at Scotia Plaza’s gaudy, blood-coagulated-maroon, 68 storey marble edifice.  I got in line as I had many times before in the same winter gear.  This time an Indo-Canadian teller turned around when free and noticed me.  I could not make out if she had gestured for me to join her or not.  As my bike was locked outside, I carried both bright yellow paniers in hand. 

As I watched, I noticed the same teller saying something though she was alone; perhaps she was speaking via intercom to someone.  Again, she gestured, this time her motion was less confusing; she really meant to invite me to join her.  I walked around the circular island and said hello and placed my card in the handset and entered my PIN then signed my cheque whilst sharing that I would like to simply deposit it. 

Whilst finishing my signature, along came another Indo-Canadian female.  The look on her face was rude, ugly and confrontational.  Right away, she launched into her racially predatory assault, “Remove your mask or leave the bank.  We are not serving you until you remove your mask.” 

Again, as elsewhere, I informed the ignorant boor – whose clit failed to have fully descended leaving her, for all intent and purpose, a lifelong-frustrated pussied man – that I had no intentions of inconveniencing myself by removing my balaclavas which were not a mask simply because she said so.  Too, I pointed out that there was no need for me to remove my balaclavas when she would never make any such request of a burqa-wearing Muslim. 

You can bet she was full of more bile as she let me know we were not talking about that but I was being threatening and she would rather I left that bank than not. 

The intense racial animus from this woman was so repulsive that I simply took my card from the machine picked up my paniers off the floor and said, “Hey, Happy Black history month to you, too.” 

I now got from the bank feeling more than a little bit impatient.  I am never late for work… ever.  By now, it was within an hour of the start of my shift which for me is late.  I rode along the sidewalk and turned onto Bay Street heading north for a couple of blocks to the Scotiabank on the west side of Bay Street between Queen Street West and Richmond Street West.  I managed to tie up my bike atop a two-foot frozen bank of snow to a bike rack. 

Once inside, I recalled what inordinate focussed grace I had had to impart when a few weeks earlier I had been to the branch to deposit another cheque and replace my demagnetised bank card.  For more than 40 minutes, I had been asked a million questions and kept waiting again and again.  At the end of it, the beautiful, raven-haired Muslim teller had laughed and said in a lowered tone to me, “You are a very smart man…” 

She, of course, knew that the rest of the tellers – almost exclusively White save a lone Black woman who was segregated to sit by herself at a desk in the middle of the floor where the rest of the public comes and goes – were doing their best to provoke an impatient response out of me. 

To say the least, it was not going to happen and did not.  I got my card replaced that day, though, they made every attempt at having me return to my home branch at Yonge and Wellesley Streets and for no good reason. 

Finally, it was my turn to see a teller.  A tall White male with facial hair likely in corporate security and wearing a tattoo on his right forearm proved the most remarkably human and civilised interaction that I had had that day. 

He very charmingly began by letting me know that he would prefer it if I were to remove my ‘balaclavas’; I replied that though he had been the most civilised customer service representative thus far, he was not within his right to ask me to remove it anymore than he would presume to think that any Muslim woman would remove her burqa when asked. 

More to the point, I asked what kind of society is this when you would never think to make any such demands of burqa-wearing Muslims as you would myself being racially profiled during Black history month. 

As I like giving as good as I get, I charmingly reminded him that in this Black history month, it bears mentioning that Blacks have not flown planes into buildings, shot soldiers in their backs or stormed Parliament et al.  He smiled, my balaclavas remained in tack and when he assured me that if security were to ask me to remove my mask I would have to. 

Cutting to the chase, I assured him that I was well aware that he was corporate security and both he and I knew that he had no legal right to ask me to remove my balaclavas as it was not summer outdoors, it was not a mask and I was protected by Canadian laws against being treated differentially with regards to a burqa-wearing Muslim entering all three branches visited in the last hour whilst trying to make my way to work on time. 

Finally, he conceded and with a smile reminiscent of the raven-haired Muslim teller of a few weeks earlier, asked me to sign the cheque which already had been.  Addressing me as Mr. da Braga, he asked if I would like any cash back or just a straight deposit. 

Of course, I knew he was corporate security as he appeared in the teller area soon after I entered and proceeded to call out that if anyone strictly wished to make a deposit to please see him.  I was the second person so inclined of the six or seven of us in line. 

Damn right, it was high time I got service that I deserved. 

Of course, it goes without saying that a good one-third to forty per cent of women in the workforce are emotionally unfit to be in professional life.  Period.  The only cause for concern either woman at both banks should have articulated is if I had presented in balaclavas whilst it happened to have been 30° Celsius outside in July.   Just so happens that it was -33° Celsius that day.

Naturally, I had switched to Scotiabank close to a decade earlier when on leaving my employ as civil servant after 15 years of what was truly no end of constant workplace harassment and strife, was then made to wait for three-plus hours at the Bank of Montréal’s 72-storeyed headquarter branch at Bay and King Street West.  As part of my separation, there were two settlements one was in a cheque for several tens of thousands of dollars. 

When first presenting the cheque to the teller, the little silly-looking, cumfarting twit took off to go lisp and snicker to his equally otiose coworkers.  Naturally, there was much snickering and giggling as one experiences of Whites when being racially predatory towards Blacks in public.  This is behaviour they exclusively engage in and reserve just for Blacks. 

After 20 minutes, the little cumfart – who would probably suffer a collapsed lung of sneezing and coughing incessantly from the sight and smell of pussy for the first time – approached and thanked me for turning in the cheque and asked where I had found it.  Within a femtosecond the thought of pinning his empty skull beneath my booted foot and fucking his brains silly was soon dashed aside as it would be just what the little manginaed twit would hungrily, noisily crave at any of the few bathhouses left in the city. 

After several hours of being made to wait whilst their ignorant staffers made calls to god-knows-whom and passed off the cheque to several of their colleagues to shuffle about whilst dicking me around, I asked for the cheque went across Bay Street to the Scotiabank headquarters and offered to start an account with them using the cheque; they were only too happy, with one look at the cheque, to have started the account. 

That cheque in 2006 was the result of my travails with the same corporation which made it possible for me to continue my employ whilst living in Vancouver and Montréal.  Of course, on arriving in Vancouver from Toronto, I had finally been made fulltime and sought to buy a first home.  I had been looking at condos and naturally my Bank of Montréal branch on Denman Street had had to be in touch with my employer as I investigated getting a mortgage whilst looking at condos in the West End neighbourhood. 

Just like that, I was thrown out of work and when returned to work five months later did so, on the proviso that at any time whilst on probation for 24 months I could be fired.  Naturally, a stipulation for my return was having to see that little Egyptian Semite who told me on my final visit that Merlin, in fact, never existed that he was all, like my dreams, a figment of my imagination. 

There he sat within mere feet of me pouncing and ridding the planet of him with that little blissfully smug grin on his face known only to the fraudulent few who feel themselves chosen of a fictitious god. 

From arriving to work in February 1994, to being dismissed in November 1994, I was on a daily basis harassed with glaring, alarmingly perverse intensity; I was after all the first fulltime Black male in the workplace in Vancouver.  On four separate occasions, I had my cheque withheld for a day or two. 

This only ever happened when a former police officer who allegedly had been kicked off the force for targeting visible minorities would hand out the cheques and let me know that my cheque had not arrived.  Too, it involved being constantly name-called an ‘anti-man’ – West Indian term for Gays, by a thuggish Indo-Canadian lout from the Southern Caribbean. 

One Saturday morning – November 5, 1994 – whilst I worked overtime in a bid to save towards purchasing a condo, I had the usual onslaught of racial animus as two White female coworkers next to me carped on about both the Susan Smith case and the O. J. Simpson arrest and upcoming criminal trial. 

Whilst I slowly did neck rolls and deep breathe – it was my first autumn in Vancouver and the constant rains were making a mess of my back and neck injuries from a decade earlier when dancing.  One woman said of Susan Smith that she at least had the perfect alibi; it was too bad that she had to be found out.  Meanwhile, the other said of Black men that they were all nothing but trouble and should be all put away. 

Soon, the one who had spoken of Susan Smith’s perfect alibi got up and went to get the Indo-Canadian louse for a supervisor and lied when claiming that I had been sleeping rather than working.  Of course, her shift never got overtime so clearly there was some degree of grudge. 

After being relocated and made to stand, I then had the Trinidadian louse claim to his Japanese-Canadian manager that I had three times been to the bathroom and when told to go home rather than do the overtime was told to fuck off and that I was not going anywhere. 

I stood there not believing what I was hearing.  Though I protested, the Japanese-Canadian manager claimed that being insubordinate was unacceptable and for that reason, he asked that I leave.  Said he, I was free to file a grievance if I felt I ought not to have been sent home.  With that, I returned to my locker, which twice I had had to move – once there was nigger scrawled across one, the other had been smeared with faeces. 

As I came downstairs from the lockers, there was the fat overbred swine cackling his head off with, surprise surprise, the White ex-cop.  To avoid the hideous sight of them, I elected to take an alternate route and returned to the area where I had been initially working to sign out using the electronic system. 

Whilst standing with my back to them at the machine when signing out, the shorter of the two women yelled, “Go home and don’t come back!” 

Turning around, I spat in their direction and told them to fuck off and go to hell.  Quite the little ham, the dwarfish troll screamed out, “Oh my god!  Oh my god, he spit in your face!” 

She immediately began calling for the supervisor who had speciously had me sent home – just like she was speciously alleging I had spat in someone’s face who was more than ten feet away from me. 

As I left the area and exited the building the portly bigoted Indo-Canadian from the southern Caribbean and his equally racially predatory White male ex-cop colleague came chasing after me as I exited the building. 

I got home that Saturday, November 5, 1994 and had a good phone visit with my father who promised to make a gift towards buying my first home; it was also his birthday that day.  The following Monday morning, I received a registered letter informing me that I had been suspended for having physically assaulted a coworker and then leaving work without permission. 

I was dumbfounded.  What proceeded for the next 4.5 months was the most soul-gnawing travel through the six million levels of hell thanks to the venal invidiousness of the union rep who can only be charitably described as a hybrid bipedal bastard of Jabba the Hutt’s. 

That Monday, I met with the porcine fucker at dawn at the union offices where she informed me that since I was a member of two known high risk groups: Blacks and Queers, I needed to immediately go get an AIDS test and let her know the results because my faux accuser, in whose face I had not spat, and her family were hell-bent on pressing charges and they were fearful that I might have infected her with AIDS. 

I assured her that I did not have HIV/AIDS and had no intentions of jumping any hoops of hers by going out and getting tested.  What business was my medical history of hers or the faux accuser?  As agreed, I provided a copy of a letter to the accused wherein I apologised for my inexcusable conduct.  I made it perfectly clear in the letter that in frustration at being sent home, I had lashed out her when being profane but beyond that, I categorically refused to apologised for having spat in her face when I had not. 

A couple of hours later, we met with the employer’s labour relations and human resources personnel plus the very two persons who  had laughed their heads off whilst I made my way from the locker to sign out days earlier that Saturday. 

Both thuggish supervisors sat across the narrow table from me whilst I was flanked by two union reps: Jabba’s offal and another female, also Jewish.  The letter was proffered and though I was made to believe that it sufficed and that it was understood that my actions were isolated, I received another registered letter later that day informing me that I had shown no remorse and was indefinitely suspended. 

For the first time, I truly considered suicide as I crumpled to my bathroom floor and came undone.  Finally, pulling myself together, I decided instead to sacrifice my full mane of thick gorgeous hair and cut it all off.  For the next several months the only thing that saved me was doing volunteer work with persons with AIDS and offering my West End home as a place where PWAs could stay overnight whilst they were in town for a battery of tests and appointments. 

Too, during that time of unemployment, I discovered and became readily devoted to the sexual bacchanal in the deep woods of Stanley Park just a few blocks away. 

For the next several months, Jabba’s Goy-hating offal lied, lied and lied with hungry relish about when I would be returned to work.  Naturally, for being a unionised worker, there was no chance of filing a human rights complaint into the matter.  Eventually, after someone from the union’s regional offices assured me that there was nothing to be done because, ‘let’s face it, she is a Jew and you are Black and she is just not going to be challenged,’ I knew that other avenues had to be explored.  

Finally, when I told the porcine boor that I had been in touch with Labour Relations Board who felt that I definitely had a case, I was hastily offered a meeting with her at the union offices where the fugly scum proceeded to demand that I, in essence, submit the exact same letter of four-plus months earlier to be returned to work. 

I got up and walked out of the union offices got home and proceeded to unload on her by phone the most violent verbal abuse I had to that point articulated.  She had actually had the fuck-all temerity to huff and gag because this is truly how she breathed and talked, “You know, I do think that you are anti-Semitic.” 

The next day, the Ides of March, 1995, I was offered to be returned to employment without a letter of apology as she refused to put in writing her demand that I take an AIDS test. 

Too, before walking out, she had stated that anyone could have typed up a letter and back-dated it, then made a photocopy of it; this said of the photocopy to the original letter of contrition offered in an interview which was all about racial predators having a field day. 

There was I returned to work then having to see a psychiatrist for 24 months whilst on probation for being an out-of-control, violent Black male in the workplace about whom people felt unsafe, unsure and uncomfortable. 

During those 24 months, Jabba’s offal had cunningly provided work for a Jew with whom she was well-acquainted, she had shared in that none-too-charming way she had of name-dropping, when telling me of the terms for returning to employment.  With that, the chance of buying a condo had taken flight. 

Whilst in the workplace, I endured no end of intense harassment whilst the O. J. Simpson trial endured and most definitely thereafter, for such is the power of television to fuck with the sphinctered and well-groomed-into-somnambulance collective psyche. 

This included having my return from breaks, arrival at work changed in the computer to reflect tardiness.  I was spat on… surprise, surprise.  I was pushed, twice got crazy-glued to my combination lock.  Further, I had a rather beguiling-looking Muslim supervisor, who was featured in the corporate magazine as a sign of the company’s diversity – she with the uncanny resemblance to Benazir Bhutto – tell me with lethal calm, “Get out of my sight before I don’t kill you.” 

She was being confronted on yet again having changed my time, though, she and every supervisor swore up and down that there was no way for them to change one’s time in the system.  Of course, a Rhodesian-born Chinese coworker whose husband also happened to have been a supervisor told me that there were at least four plans in the works to have me terminated – one apparently involved me seemingly leap from the company’s rooftop. 

Alas, somehow, I managed to have upped my frequency and spirited my way out of that hellhole.  The day that I had gotten my transfer to Montréal, I took off a few days to pack and it was known that I would be returning to work for half a shift to clean out my locker and say goodbye; I never did go to my locker because who wants to be crazy-glued to a lock for a third time? 

Naturally, as Jewish guilt knows no end, there was phlegmy Jabba’s hybrid offal standing outside the doors to the office on the sidewalk.  She had actually had the guts to air out her bedsores by getting off her fat arse at the union offices to come by the workplace and gawk. 

Naturally, Jabbette was standing there talking to someone or other whilst making sure to lock eyes with me as I exited the building.  Of course, as I never miss a chance to give back, I paused whilst making for the attendant cab and hissed, “Of one thing you and I are both certain, you will rot in hell eating your god, Hitler’s arse.” 

With that, I returned home, took a nap, dreamt my last dreams in Vancouver then made my way to the airport and caught an overnight flight for Montréal.  Just when I thought Vancouver to have been a god-awful work experience, Montréal was hell-bent on giving it a run for its money. 

Boy did Montréal prove a marathon and then some… Stay tuned, for as you shall yet see, until you have lived in Québec, you cannot truly claim to know Canada… 

For now, sweet dreams as ever and may these dreams continue to richly inspire your own spiritual journey.  For your support, I remain ever grateful.  I love you more. 

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A Lagoon Nebula

This was a night-time dream and the first that was set in an amphitheatre.  I had had to step-in for the host who had fallen ill.  The crowd was large and this being at home in St. Kitts, to say the least, they were hostile.

Though nervous, all audaciousness and charm, I stepped up to the mic.  Once centre stage, I began eulogising for Euleka Gumbs; Catherine Angelica Montpelier’s daughter.

Whilst speaking, I did see a woman who reminded me vaguely of her but I was not certain that it was so.  I then went on to thank Juan-Carlos de Madrid for his work as host.

Whilst standing there looking over the crowd, I saw a ball of white light explode.  This was the most glorious sight imaginable.  From it shot the most joyous spray of white light sparks.

This was something that resonated with the soul itself.  This was on the order of the uplifting essence contact experienced in that dream on Tuesday, September 22, 1992 – it is dream blog entry herein entitled A Rose Like No Other.  The same degree of inspiration and sublime beauty was experienced again.

For having experienced this manifestation, there was no way that one could not have had an ecstatic moment of transcendence.  For having overcome my fears, of going out onstage, here was I having the most blissful of experiences.

Funnily enough, no one else here experienced the manifestation.  This was such a thoroughly grounding experience.

Once I was onstage, the audience soon became hushed; they were readily impressed by my eloquence and discernible intellect.  I was really pleased to have seen Euleka Gumbs whom later I would learn was indeed Catherine Angelica Montpelier’s daughter.

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Pericles da Braga and I were together, in this the second dream, and I had to fast take control of the situation.  He began insisting that I was sexually obsessed with him.  Talk about taking oneself way too seriously.

We were face-to-face and, despite there being some serious bones of contention discussed, the energies were rather intimate.  One had a true sense here of Pericles’s true nature.

There was a deep sense that he was fearful of me.  Somehow, it was as though he knew at the level of soul that he had reincarnationally wronged me in past lives.

Thus he has been plagued with a sense of dread and fear of me that, somehow, I would get him.  There has never been any such scheme in my thoughts.  I have been keenly aware of this man’s manipulativeness and have always guarded myself against falling prey to his head-trips.

His eyes here were strong, clear, direct and shamanic.

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A Sting

Sting, the performer, was backstage waiting to go out onstage in this the third dream.  Goodness, this was such a lucid experience.  Sting was very real with a real puckish glint to his playful eyes.

Eventually, I ended up going out and introducing him to the stage.

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A Tupac 2

Here, in this the fourth dream, I progressed up the paved incline into a large schoolyard.  There were lots of Black and Hispanic kids playing here.  A large glass and steel, black tower in the style of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe that was very minimalist in design looked over everything.

Sleek and nondescript it most certainly was.  These were Babel-like buildings in proportion; they stretched on for some six city blocks.  Easily they were, the smallest ones at least, all 100 storeys plus.

They were quite layered affairs with some storeys having an architectural theme.  One to the other, the sections were vastly different.  The school building had a second section that had walls which, rather than vertically, moved outwards from the base.

These sections were each ten or more storeys and maintained a single architectural theme.  Even though it was an overcast day with heavy grey clouds, I could clearly detect klieg lights to the southwest.

I then asked some of the kids for directions but they were non-too-forthcoming with me.  I could immediately sense that there was some danger in their being so guarded with me.

I passingly joked about gangs when next, a dark-haired guy and I were being hotly pursued by Black youths from a gang.  This decidedly was astral plane an experience in its intensity.

We were then cornered on a side street before a large building.  This did not at all feel as though here on Earth.  What with the massiveness of these buildings, it may well have been part of an anchor point metropolis.

The Blacks here were so beauteously dark-complected that I would hazard to guess that not even Nubians closely approximate their purity of melanin intensity.

Just because they were gangsters does not imply that they were African-Americans which they certainly didn’t feel or look like.  These were very strong, proud Black people who had never been enslaved nor were they dredging through life oppressed beneath the weight of that most hideous form of low psychic terror, racism – the racial predator’s birthright.

Soon, their leader stepped forward and there was no mistaking him.  He turned out to have been the Rap star, Tupac Shakur.  Beyond his open black leather vest, I could make out that the pock marks of his bullet wounds had been filled in with solid gold.

Seemingly, this was the fashion statement du jour, here on the astral plane, for gangsta arrivés.  Throwing caution to the wind, I felt like bolting rather than having to face such hostility; I did not care whether or not I would be shot in the process.

Of course, I would not have survived.  After all, this was a dream so it was not as though I would ultimately have died.  I just didn’t care to be caught up in a jam like this… no how.

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A large sprawling apartment at night time, proved the focus of the fifth dream, plus a man with whom I had just become involved was getting moved in.  Trying to figure out how they worked, we were playing around with the curtain rods.

Each was four to six inches thick with vary-sized grooves for different pins.  Just then, Moses Znaimer walked in at which point, I went over and introduced him to my young beauteous friend.

I then asked Moses Znaimer if he knew how the bloody curtain rods worked.  Not remembering his name, I introduced Moses Znaimer as Mr. Hoffmann by which, of course, I implied to my friend that he was Jewish.

Clearly, Moses Znaimer took offense but I could not have cared less anyway.  I had no desire, in the first place, to go sucking up to him.

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Photo: Toronto February 2015, Queen Street East, looking north towards Yonge & Bloor Streets.

Bubble Nebula.

Sting.

Tupac Shakur.

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