Category: place

Art last!

This walkabout has turned, for reasons unknown to me, largely into a search for local, homegrown art endeavours. I haven’t had much success so far — it takes a while to get into the loop, so it doesn’t happen easily when you’re travelling — but i did manage to get to a couple:

  • An open stage event at Finley’s Irish Pub. Billed to start at 9 p.m. (why i believed that is a wonder), i sat around in a virtually empty bar till 10, when people began trickling in with instruments. We eventually had the requisite first-timer who sang out of tune and forgot half his first song; the regular whose confidence overshadows his talent; and the woman-with-a-great-voice duo marred by bad sound and too many songs. I’m only being slightly glib here; they were all worthy efforts and i wouldn’t have done any better.
    I considered signing up to recite my poem The Battle a Abby’s Butte, which would have gone over well because Abby now lives in Nelson. But i had no local supporters and i didn’t know the protocol, so that wasn’t to be.
    I left about 11:30, overtired, as a 4-piece reggae band (lackluster but for the lead singer’s hat) started up.
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  • Abs and i were set to see a play, but she had a rerun of her summer cold so i went alone. Livingroom Theatre inhabits a converted garage off an alley, and seats maybe 30. The twin fish theatre show, well into a 3-week run, was sold out. Written by Bessie Wapp, one of the four performers, it was impressive, much better than i expected in a town like Nelson — rich, nicely crafted, well acted. Loco Phantasmo — go see if it comes near you.
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  • In my perambulations i happened upon Craft Connection, a most impressive co-op gallery owned and run by several Kootenay artists. Beautiful big space full of high quality work. I had a long chat with one of the staffers about the long, painful process of getting the facility up and running.
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  • I didn’t get to, but at least found out about, the Cottonwood Market Saturday drum circle, which has been running for over a decade. It takes place iin the Japanese garden adjoining Cottonwood Falls, during Saturday summer markets in the park. Sounded great, but the hostel was full up Friday and i had to leave town.

Echo Ukee, echo Toff

I met with Abby, ex of the Sacred Stone Spa in Ucluelet, now of the Stone Spa in Nelson, and we shared a nice cuppa tea.

I tried repeatedly to catch Shawn and Carla, ex of Words End Bookstore in Ukee, now of iLovenNelson.com and UndergroundArtsRailroad.com, but despite several visits and calls i never managed to catch them at the office.

I wandered into Enchanted Gifts, on Baker St. (the main drag), and started chatting with the owner, who turned out to be Francois, ex of the Enchanted in Tofino.

And at a street market i saw a newsletter put out by Eco Society with an article by Lee-Ann, ex of the Friends of Clayoquot Sound. I thought i’d look for her in town, and found her by pure coincidence on a street corner, waiting for the light to change.

These folks told me about others who have moved from the West Coast to Nelson and area (the Kootenays, or “the Koots” to those in the know). And the single, striking word they all used about their new situation was “happy.” Happier than they were on the coast. Francois elaborated: when he plays hockey, there’s a melange of freaks, cops, hippies, straights, young and old on the ice and they all get along; people don’t pigeonhole each other, don’t separate into cliques, don’t gossip behind each others’ backs and boycott each others’ businesses because of something someone said five years ago. Others echoed the sentiment. Damn — are we like this on the coast?

But there was one thing they all, every one, regretted: they pined for the ocean.

Ten difficult days

Or, Four Days in Hell, Two in Outer Space, and Back to Hell

“Prison” (the organizer’s joke word for the 10-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat, also mine) let out this morning, and about 50 happy people dispersed to all points of the compass. It would be difficult to describe the experience in detail, and futile because by design and intent the experience is highly individual.

As well, i managed to break almost every rule in the book during the ten days, so my experience is probably not a decent representation of the course.

One of those rules was “no reading or writing,” but by day 3 i was compulsively keeping illicit notes on what scraps of paper i could find (mostly paper towels) with a pen pilfered from the men’s washroom duty list.

If there’s a chance you may be doing a Vipassana course yourself in the next year or so, i strongly suggest you DO NOT read those notes — not because they contain anything startling or secret but because they may colour your own experience and that would be unfortunate.

That said, there are several things i wish i’d known before going into the course that would have eased my journey, so do read and heed these points:

  1. The course is canned; it’s not a living, evolving thing taught by live teachers. The whole of the instrucion is in he form of videos and taped of S.N. Goenka, the course’s Burmese founder, recorded in 1991. Don’t let that put you off; he’s a very good teacher, even on video. Just know what to expect. There are “assistant teachers” there to answer your questions.
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  2. Vipassana is the muscular, pain-is-good boot camp of spiritual traditions. I was expecting something like the feel-good experience of my only other retreat — a candy-ass Zen exercise two years ago — and i was rudely shocked by the rigor and demanding nature of this course. It took days to realign my head. Expect to work hard, and working hard at a meditation retreat means two things: sitting and meditating.
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  3. For the love of whatever god(s) you hold dear, put together some kind of meditation seat that you can perch on without moving a muscle for an hour. That’s sixty point zero minutes. Then get used to sitting in it for at least that long. At full stretch you will meditate up to 10 hours a day, and everyone on the course (even the repeat attendees) had trouble with butt, shoulder and back pain. So will you — it’s inevitable — but do what you can.
    One key thing, confirmed by the massage therapist/physical trainer i got a ride to Nelson with, is to maintain your lumbar arch: your lower back should arch forward slightly (a belly-out feeling). This stack your spine into vertical column and elps keep you from hunching forward — an invitation to back pain. Pelvic tilt is the key here: your seat should slope down to the front.
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  4. In the initial days of the course, you may descend a mineshaft of boredom so narrow and dark that you will despair of coming out of it sane. I certainly did. At this point you must place your faith in the teacher and the method, and assume there’s a point to the whole exercise. This i didn’t do, and paid the psychological price. Remember, it’s a well developed course that has been taken by probably hundreds of thousands of students. It really does go somewhere, in shipshape logical fashion. Persist. Don’t despair. Or try, at least.

For the curious, i will soon post a hidden page with the (rough, fragmentary log of my 10-day Vipassana retreat.

i’m goin’ in

I’ll be sequestered in a meditation retreat from June 11-22, during which time i’ll be out of touch. The centre is located 30 km outside of Merritt (contact info below). Check out this link to see what i’ll be doing with my days, and wish me, if not luck, then peace and fruitful hours.

Vipassana Meditation Centre of BC — Dhamma Surabhi
P.O. Box 699, Merritt, BC
V1K 1B8, Canada

Phone: 778-785-4080 (Vancouver), 250-412-5372 (Victoria),
250-469-7180 (Kelowna)
Fax: (toll free) [1] (866) 259-6088

The [gruelling] course timetable

The following timetable for the course has been designed to maintain the continuity of practice. For best results students are advised to follow it as closely as possible.
4:00 am Morning wake-up bell
4:30-6:30 am Meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30-8:00 am Breakfast break
8:00-9:00 am Group meditation in the hall
9:00-11:00 am Meditate in the hall or in your room
11:00-12:00 noon Lunch break
12noon-1:00 pm Rest and interviews with the teacher
1:00-2:30 pm Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30-3:30 pm Group meditation in the hall
3:30-5:00 pm Meditate in the hall or in your own room
5:00-6:00 pm Tea break
6:00-7:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
7:00-8:15 pm Teacher’s Discourse in the hall
8:15-9:00 pm Group meditation in the hall
9:00-9:30 pm Question time in the hall
9:30 pm Retire to your own room–Lights out

Decamp

Moved on to Victoria, via a steep Pacific Coach Lines fare ($40, city to city; next time i’ll use public transit at each end, for about $19 including ferry). The sky started clearing as i came off the ferry. I rode the top front seat of a double-decker bus on the milk run into town, sitting next to a garrulous native fellow going the shop in the city and in front of a young, Type A public health nurse and her laid-back partner, who were dissecting their lives and plans — job stress, crack addiction, best neighbourhoods to live, preferences in sport — in excruciating, unignorable detail.

The bus drew up on Hillside, next to Long & McQuade, and i disembarked spontaneously to check out their hand rhythm section, which i found freshly stocked with new toys. Then i found MEC, where i revamped part of my wardrobe, then the downtown hostel where i’m trying out my new membership tonight, in a dorm with about 40 other guys. It’s been a few years and i want to know what i’m up against, hostelling it across the country.

Everything seemed to slide along nicely once i got back on the Vancouver Island, and that gives me a good feeling about the place. So now i’m thinking, yeah … Victoria … i might be able to do that.

Now to get in touch with some people….