Cheap Questions

I used to believe in the power of the spark that would be ignited once we learned to love all the things in the world. Society and I would learn together that the way we love our children, our siblings, our kin, is the same way we need to love our dogs, pigs and chickens, all the way to loving cheetahs, polar bears, forests, and existence itself. And that love would translate into action, the righteous path would be taken as we would create windows into how our lives impact the lives of the rest of the world and therein the destructive ways of the world would cease to be because I was sure that it was just a lack of understanding, a miscommunication between the natural world and the way humans would like to live. I lived in off-the-grid cabins, hiked into mountainous agricultural areas, my heart reaching for the lonely moon full of hope. As I hitchhiked across continents and took up jobs and volunteer placements all over the world, I conversed with as disparate perspectives as I could find and tried to learn that this was a global truth. I was serious.

I can trace my evolution of thinking, the hope slowly fading in tandem with the failure on my own part to make meaningful change. I conversed and asked questions and read articles and books but nothing really feels like it's happening. Between spats of dissatisfaction and harmony, of disappointments and break-ups and seasonal affective moods and compromises, I sank into pumping my truck with gas, working to pay a mortgage, going out and spending money on entertainment and restaurants, worrying about the world burning but taking pleasure in little things like yesterday on a beautiful spring day with my beloved dog and nephew and niece and my nephew we took a walk to the park and little Kai asks in that way that makes kids so precious "What is extinction?" out of the blue out of nowhere. His big eyes looking to me for an answer to his innocent question drove a direct line to that lonely heart reaching for the moon that didn't struggle to hope and all I could say was "What do you think extinction is?" while the tears welled up in me, a soup of sadness and inevitability and contradictions, the beauty being destroyed like a punch to the stomach, of how I am no different than the hordes of tourists romping through jungles searching for wild and authentic experiences that I look down upon. What feels worse than the climate change and extinction tragedy is knowing you're complicit.

Kai says he's going to destroy everything bad, all the pollution and people who do bad things. I ask Noa what she thinks about it. She says it makes her sad. We have no answers, 10 years old or 33.  Sadness about our planet is a now baked in part of growing up and so is finding happiness therein. As we walk home, the spring melt and the nose of the dog reveals all sorts of dead pigeons and squirrels buried under leaves and it feels apocalyptic and okay at the same time because the weather is beautiful and the birds are chirping and I'm holding Kai's hand and Lua on the leash. This isn't a novel feeling I don't imagine, that a society has felt menaced on an existential level despite feeling like life is good. It sure feels intractable and important and rational defensive logic is strong in us all. You can't tell me my life isn't good and you can't blame me for living it. I will not be judged alone, but as part of the general societal standard and don't you try to tell anyone they need to do more until you have reached carbon footprint nirvana through vegan naked hermit meditation.

Amidst the hundreds of thousands of species going or gone extinct, will resilience of squirrels and pigeons and dogs be enough to prevent us from full-on revolt? Will that become the new normal? Will the question be taken out of our hands? Questions come cheap.

Internet Salvation

Well it has been a while since I have been here and of all the places in Indonesia that have gotten me to sit down and blog, it is here in Medan where I make time and find the mindset to do it. It seems ironic that through the beautiful bumpy paradise roads that snake through Sumatra (the northernmost province of Indonesia), after seeing orangutangs in the jungle and roaming coffee plantations thriving in volcanic soil and stepped and terraced rice paddies in river valleys, surrounded by all natural beauty that the mind can hold it is here in dusty, crowded noisy, polluted Medan that I write from. I'm stuck here for a week renewing my tourist visa and I can hardly imagine being stuck here for life. I shudder at the thought and I wonder how many of the two million residents here can't wait to get out. I can't wait to not have to wipe the black, sweat and soot grime off my face every time I step into the street, or not feel the polluted heat loom and invade everywhere.

The couchsurfing.com (an internet site that connects travellers with hosts who are looking for cultural exchange) community is extremely welcoming though and I find a great Indonesian host, Eva, to take me in at her family's home for a few days. I meet her couchsurfing friends and we have a few meals and conversations and there is a general resignation that Medan is uninspiring as far as cities go. Still, they have traveled around Asia or at least Sumatra and I feel like everyone hopes to eventually get out of Medan. Saturday morning we play some Indonesian inspired version of baseball for about 20 minutes until it gets too hot, then Eva and I spend a lethargic afternoon at the uninspired, cardboard poster filled Museum of North Sumatra. After cooking some dinner, it truly feels like I have exhausted my options. Not a library or nice coffee shop in sight to read at, no nice parks with big trees for some shade from the hot sun, no basketball courts or soccer pitches anywhere, just dusty street side restaurants and shops.

Yet where there are people there is life. Night street food vendors are starting to open up shop on the big streets and small alleys. Across the street there's a male and female teenage beauty pageant going on at the main town square that emits wafts of plastic and heavy bass techno beats, a frightful scene but someone else's idea of a good time I suppose. And the internet cafe is always open and often full and so I find myself in here, choosing like many others to engage cyberspace rather than  the dusty motorbike filled street out there. In here it's mostly kids from eight to twenty-ish year olds on Facebook, playing games or doing google searches of dresses and Hello Kitty and handbags. A couple of them are doing what looks like computer homework assignments. It might seem misguided but I find a bit of hope and enthusiasm for kids and teenagers in front of computer screens because there's a whole other world on the screen. Like the couchsurfers who via the internet have found international cultural exchange despite being stuck in Medan, I do sincerely hope that these kids growing up on the internet will eventually find what they will be looking for too. Bless them and good luck.

It Starts With Deep Breaths

Noa asked me on the evening before I left Montreal if I was going to forget her, in it that sweet and earnest way that children do. Hearing her ask it was so unexpected, as if it would be possible for me to forget her that my heart broke as we descended the stairs from my new apartment and made me want to take a drink of cold water and squeeze her tight and take a deep breath of the crisp autumn air that is finally filling this area, wanting to not leave and also leave at the same time, feeling the love of all my surroundings, wanting to come back to this good life before I had even left. I wanted to pause the summer-autumn season and these millenial times in this energetic age, surrounded by a community of family and friends and fellows and laughs and trees and projects and girls, scared that it will be gone or different when I come back but of course it will be different.

Now the sun sets on this bus passing fields of maturing and brown fields of corn then soy beans then corn and corn again then soy and occasionally a field of hay or green winter rye coming up in straight rows oriented North-South. GO trains and busses and planes are aligned heading west towards the setting sun in all it's purple and orange warmth morphing colours and shapes. I don't take my eyes off the horizon for fear that I'll miss the action, wishing for an impossible-bottle that would finally capture the expansiveness of a sunset and the way it swallows everything and reminds you how big the sky is, knowing that the passing of time is and has always been moments beginning and ending with no beginning or end. The late evening now morphs slowly, highlighted clouds drifting over and under each other, the pitch-by-pitch darkening of tree shadows, birch, spruce and pine lining the highway, lights on cars white and red racing towards and away from Montreal into the rest of the night and tomorrow.

It is an absolute privilege to travel, to be loved, to have had the upbringing I've had and to be where I am and able to do the things I do. I want to recognise and honour my good fortune, pour this gratitude into the actions of my hands and feet and eyes and mouth and ears.

A New Normal

Since I have only a few days left in Montreal before I head out to Ontario then California then Hong Kong, I've been running around saying my farewells to all the good people.  I went to say goodbye to Anne, a friend and mother of a friend, while she was coordinating an anti-ageism group. I couldn't stay long but the hour I did get to spend listening was inspiring.

One woman talked about how aging has made her feel like she's losing power and authority. That now when she talks to people, she sees they have more reasons to disregard what she says, due to their conception of her age and associated memory loss and people pay less attention to her. Then Anne talked about how elderly people see themselves as young always, that for example even after needing knee surgery and needing to ask if people remember where you put your cane and oh it's a bother but you don't see yourself as that person with the cane, and that ageism like any sexism, racism, is part internal and about how you view yourself. And then another elderly lady talked about how she gets looks from people when she says she goes to the bar for a drink and she says to them well yeah of course, I been doing that my whole life, I ain't gonna stop now and she takes the bus at 1am to go home and people say hey you can't be doing that and she says well yes I can, why not? and if you want to be treated like you're independent then you have to show you're independent and there's a whole new demographic today of people over 80, it's a new world. There has never been this in the past, hell her mother had the biggest party on her 50th birthday because that was so rare back then, I mean she's coming from the era of the horse and buggy and so today, the older generation is blazing a path for the younger generation, of how to age and how our society is going to view and treat people and see what they are capable of.

Kids and Gardening

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Way to Love

Spring is taking on a different meaning for me now that I've been farming. When the grass starts to show through and you can smell the soil soak up the snowmelt and the birds start making a rowdy caucophony in the still bare trees, I start getting restless and excited. Having spent another dormant winter in quiet snowy spots and doing part-time cafe work and lots of time in front of books and computer, I step outside and listen to spring arrive. Even in this insulated spot, I can hear the warmth, water and wetness soaking into the city. Dripping off banisters, splashing in the street, a moist warmth in the air that gives everything and air of liveliness. Trees and grass are respiring in the wind, emitting a hum that you can hear if you listen.


There's other things to hear when you listen. Like the tension rise and fall in someone's voice when they start to talk about something that affects them emotionally, that strikes close to heart. If you listen, it can help you understand what they're saying, to hear the measured and pained patience and deep breath required to try to explain something so personal to someone outside of their body, their words might not even have anything to do with the message. Sometimes you can just enjoy listening to the click or motoring lilt of their speech, accentuated with Anglo or Franco or Afro or Sino or Euro or Austro or Ontario tendencies.

And then there's things that you have to really really listen hard to hear. Like hearing what the cat is meowing about beyond just being a big fat annoying whiny cat. Or like listening to a person who is saying things that you really disagree with for the 10th time, to try to hear it and understand it and not just subtitle and supplant the image of their talking head with what you imagine they are saying so you can disregard it as soon as you find a way to poke a hole through it since it must be an argument that's going on when two people talk, right?? God forbid it be a conversation. Am I Right??Maybe??Because, well blah blah blah blah blah blah and he didn't even listen to me and I would never talk like that to anyone and they don't know what it's like to be me, never mind me trying to listen to an ignorant thing like that who obviously just doesn't get it because he just won't listen to me...

(Scenes from Occupy Wall Street in New York City)
In 2011, I visited and participated in discussions held at the Occupy movements in Fredericton, Halifax, Montreal and New York City and it really made me understand how hard it is to listen sometimes, even with people who you agree with. Listening is difficult even for those who accuse corporations and governments of not listening. Listening takes practice.

I also attended Sappyfest in 2011, an outdoor music festival in the small and vibrant town of Sackville, New Brunswick, bordering Nova Scotia. It was special because the vibe of the festival is so open, friendly and laidback that you can really call it a vibe. Everyone I met was up for a conversation. On the last day, there was an Improvisation and Listening workshop put on by Jerry Granelli, a 70 year old jazz drummer and a sinewy wise old man (Listen! Here or http://www.cbc.ca/video/watch/Radio/ID=2088250971 ) . It started with a room of us, many of the bands who had performed throughout the weekend, sitting in a big semi circle. Jerry has us do a starter exercise where we just spend 120 seconds, listening and not judging noise but just listening, to the timbre and resonance of the noises we hear, up above us off the ceiling or muffled in the corner or just beyond the wall down the stairs and not judge the noises as too loud or too soft or in harmony or in bad taste or being caused by this or that but just hearing them. You can feel something in the crown of your head being activated.

Then, he continues, if you're into listening or playing music listen for a rhythm in it. But don't be so quick to count out 1, 2, 1, 2 or 4/4 time. Instead, feel out the bigger cycles that are there in the sound, e.g. hear not just three cars passing on the street outside on the wet asphalt, their tires and the motor and the air movement as connected one thing to another but also with the braking noise and other cars going the opposite direction and the squeak of laundry machine downstairs and the steady hum of the laptop and not on counts of 4 or 8 or 16 but rather bigger and bigger time signatures where everything is incorporated into that cycle because ultimately, everything is one big cycle. It's hard to explain the concept with rationality and logic but the idea I offer you is:

(and this is not backed up by scientific research but I doubt I'm the first to make this connection) A place in your head gets activated when you actually listen. Whatever that brain structure is called, I'll call it the Listening Bulb, either inside that or synaptically wired to it must be where you find love.

One Way to Love

I love the different outdoor rinks across Montreal that you can go to. Against the backdrop of downtown skyscrapers and the cross on Mount Royal or a majestic old church and tobacco factory or nestled among inner city apartment blocks, I can just practice if I want; learn to drive to the net and protect the puck, pivot better, use the outside edges better, work on my wrist shot listening for the crisp loud ring of the puck off the iron of the crossbar. PING! I love that sound. Work a little harder each time and I improve, my body remembers and I feel rewarded. Sweating freely at -13C, I'll stop for a moment to watch my breathe steam in the cold winter air and look up at the jet black sky that seems even more infinite by the contrast of the outdoor lights beaming down illuminating all that is snow and ice. Then I join the game, chase the puck with everyone else like a pack of rowdy dogs, shout and call for the puck in some bilingual hockey pidgin, watch all the skating styles from makeshift shuffles to efficient and crisp strides mix it up, swarm the ice like a flock of birds, up and down the rink. I love outdoor hockey, the fact that it doesn't require a huge refrigerated building to make the ice, that it's natural and rugged and free and outdoors and brings people together. I love it and whether or not it loves me back is beside the point.