Morning Meditation and Two Margarets

I took the usual hot lemon and water into my lady this morning and she started to get out of bed. "I'm getting dressed," she said.
"What?" "But you haven't had breakfast!"
"Get my clothes. I'm going to meditation," she says.

I make the horrible mistake of asking, Are you sure? She refrains from saying anything like yes I'm sure you idiot. What do you think I am senile?

She told me she wanted me to take her to meditation at 8 on Tuesdays but for some reason I assumed 8pm, not 8am. And, I was a little confused because I thought, she can barely stay awake until 9pm, how's she going to go to meditation at 8pm by the time I pick her up I'll have to carry her like when parents go out for the evening and their toddlers fall asleep and have to be carried to the car. She's not very big but I'm not that strong.

I grab her clothes off the chair. Socks. shoes. Tie the laces.She pulls on her baggy sweats haphazardly. Undershirt. Cotton turtle neck. Sweater vest. You would think I'd actually had children given how good I am at taking on and off her clothes in record time. I impress myself even. You did that pretty good she says. What do you mean pretty good I wonder. How about damn good! You would think I'd had a lot of practice taking off other people's clothes alot. Not true. I hate taking other people's clothes off which is just fine because it's a skill that isn't high up on the necessary requirements in my daily life list and even, in the past, when it was, I preferred it if they took their own clothes off.

She grabs her cane and with ease I grab her other arm and we get to the passenger side of her Toyota. This is easy I think. I didn't know it would be this easy. Hell, we're not sittin'around here everynight when she's this portable. Let's see what entertainment can we take in this week that ends by 9pm. Leon Bibb is coming to Art Spring. I wonder if she'd be into that? Swing classes? (kidding) The sky's the limit.
Maybe she can take up an instrument and come with me to band practice. We could use another alto sax.

I jump in the Toyota and drive the 10 minutes to St. Mark's Church on what has to be the most dangerous corner on Salt Spring. A cop is following me all the way. My lady reminds me to slow to 30 mph in the school zone. We drive up the bumpy, dirt lane that leads to the church, past a grave stone surrounded by a fence that looks like it has been there before Christ arrived on earth.

I get her out of the car, and walk into the dark church which is the cutest thing I've ever seen inside. It's as if the late Canadian writer Margaret Laurence might be sitting in on this meditation group as well. Have we teleported to Manawaka?

A group of people are sitting talking quietly and my lady is greeted by one of them with such joy and friendliness that I'm happy that she has insisted on coming.

I bid her farewell and drive back home. Park the car. Drink my coffee. Eat my raisin bran. And depart downstairs into my cozy basement paradise to watch the deer in the field and prepare for another day before heading to work.

PS: The photo above is not a photo of St. Marks. It's a church in Chemainus, BC.

Swing Shift, Samba Lessons and Japanese Exchange Students

Saturday night I asked Karin if she wanted to go to hear the big bands that were playing at Fulford Hall. The guest band was from Courtenay. And, Salt Spring's Swingshift was playing as well. Tables were layed out cabaret-style and just about the only thing missing was Lawrence Welk and the bubble machine. Well, okay. Eligible men weren't there either.
These two bands, if you like 40s big band music, were great.

We`ve gone to so many events lately - Karin and I - that island lesbians are looking at us thinking we're just like "them." "How did I get so lucky to have such a hot babe like you as my girlfriend?" I ask jokingly.

Friday night was the art opening that kicks off a week of celebrating 150 years since the first black settlers arrived on Salt Spring. Karin had a piece in the show. She'sblack. Her mother's white. Her father's black. But, as she herself pointed out, skin colour just doesn't seem like the defining reason to be part of something at this point in history.

"Do you ever wonder why we've come together,"I asked her earlier in the evening, a thought I'd had that afternoon. But, she's not the least bit metaphysical. She most certainly does not believe that "there are no coincidences." "Because we have good conversations," she says. "We have the same humour. Because we live here."

We both know that if this were the city not only would we never have met or become friends but we most certainly wouldn't be hanging out on Saturday evenings. She is 11 years younger than me. And, she doesn't look like she belongs here. I once saw her pulling her suitcase through Ganges and she looked as if she was a model going off to her next shoot. I just observed her and smiled to myself.

We get out of her car outside Fulford Hall after parking along the road. The parking lot is packed. We can hear the music wafting outside, disappearing into the darkness of the night. I laugh at our "big night on the town". We`re walking down the middle of the road and not worried about a single vehicle in either direction.

We walk in and purchase our tickets for $16 and the band is already playing. There are a lot of people there. We find some seats. I introduce myself to the man seated to my left. He looks Persian. When I ask him where he's from he says Scotland. His wife is playing keyboards in the band. His name is Fred. They`ve lived in Courtenay for 3 years or so.

When Swingshift takes over, his wife joins him and they get up to dance. They are amazing dancers. When they take a break, they give Karin and I Samba lessons in the back corner. It was fun.

The cool thing is that the band is full of people that you're used to seeing in other capacities. The guy who sells fish at the market is playing trumpet. The tiny, spunky Japanese woman who owns my favorite restaurant is playing trumpet. My band teacher is doing a sax solo. The conductor is the fish- selling trumpet player's daughter.

There's wine. There's beer. There are delicious homemade cookies and old-fashioned squares.

I notice five Japanese exchange students follow their Canadian 'mother' like ducklings. They're wearing black jeans and they don`t look too thrilled to be there, thank you very much.

One can only imagine the warped impression they will have of Canada if they only live on Salt Spring for their entire 'exchange' year.  They'd go back home claiming that Canadians only eat raw food. They never get married. They have kids with at least two or three different people. They barter for everything. They're crazy in love with organic everything no matter the cost. They never tire of potlucks and they are fashion disasters. Thank God the sushi place here is relatively decent.

Poor things. Fun night.

PS: I just couldn't find a photo of mine that made sense so sorry, no photo.

Seeing Nature Through Native Eyes

I woke up to pouring rain and headed off to a course I'd signed up for called Seeing Nature through Native Eyes offered through Salt Spring Community Education. The instructor, Jean-Claude Catry, is thin, a raw food eater, long gray braids tied into one at the back. His brown eyes were bird-like in their intensity. He greeted us at the back of a place near Ruckle Park surrounded by forest.

The first thing I noticed about him was that in spite of the pouring rain and muck, he was walking around in leather flip flops. The sand and dirt from the ground was sticking to his toes as if they were barnacles. Around the house which was a run-down, two-storey wooden structure, there was stuff everywhere; a child's old wooden rocking horse, boxes of fruit, broken equipment and another place beside the main structure. I noticed that place had a makeshift bed outside on a second floor deck. All that covered the bed was a plexi-glass roof. I was trying to get my head around sleeping there, especially, in February.

He had a very strong French accent and I imagine that he may have spent a lot of time in school because in spite of the challenge of understanding his accent, his choice of English words was impeccable.

Three other women were there. That surprised me. I expected the participants to be more and younger. We followed Jean-Claude in the pouring rain through a couple of gates to prevent the chickens from escaping and he led us toward a big structure covered with found bits from the forest.

I found it ironic that whereas we were dressed in various bits of Goretex, Jean-Claude was wearing layers of wool sweaters, some thin, cotton khaki pants, sandals, and carried a mangled green umbrella over his head and a cloth Thrifty's bag in the other with his lunch and some books on plants and birds.

The structure was made teepee style and on top was straw, hay, branches, leaves. A 5 by 5 foot piece of fur was stretched on a hand-made, crooked wooden frame. We find out later it's sea lion. Above the entrance were four deer hooves attached to the bottom of the deer legs. Road kill he said, when I enquired.

Jean-Claude grabbed some straw, told us to take some and throw it on the ground for our seats. We sat around a circle and he began the day speaking about gratitude. The raindrop are like a percussion section above us on the tarp covering the hut making it hard to hear his soft-spoken voice.

Our first exercise requires us to go to a sit spot. Find a spot in the forest that we are drawn to and sit there for 10 minutes return and describe what we noticed.

When was the last time you just sat down in nature and were quiet and just looked? Stayed in one spot for 20 minutes and just paid attention. What did it smell like? What were the birds doing? Did you even hear the birds? Did you know what any of the plants were around you or is the natural world just a pleasing but confusing sea of earth tones? Could you make a fire from scratch, not matches, if you had to? Would you know what berries and mushrooms are edible?

He spoke a lot about two men: Jon Young and Tom Brown Jr. Tom Brown Jr. was befriended by a native elder, Stalking Wolf, who had been wandering the Americas following a vision quest. When he came upon Tom Brown Jr. at a stream, he knew that this young boy (7 years olds) was who he was supposed to coyote mentor and spend the last yeras of his life with passing on his wilderness skills and hundreds of years of Apache culture. Tom Brown Jr. has since written 16 books, his first called The Tracker, published in 1978. Jon Young who learned from Tom Brown has opened a Wilderness Awareness School in Washington State.

Other exercises included looking at 6 leaves from the forest for 20 seconds and then having to go find them and place them in the exact order that you saw. Grab a partner. Blindfolded, they lead you into the forest to a tree and return you. You then must find "your" tree. Take your shoes off, that's right, take them off, and walk properly, toes, side of foot and heel in the dirt so as not to make a sound. Listen to the birds. The birds, he tells us, can tell us so much about ourselves.
When you go to a place in the forest, it will take about 20 minutes for the birds to return to "normal" after your arrival. Listen to them. Are they agitated? They are reflecting your energy he says. Listen to the pattern of the rhythm they make. Don't worry about naming them.

He wants us to go back to our sit spot daily. At first it will be a chore. but then, you will want to go. It will be your form of meditation. It should be no further than 10 minutes from your house.

He also offers wilderness teaching to kids on Fridays, and a survival course begins next weekend where people will come together with only a blanket and a knife and must feed themselves from the forest and build a fire without matches over a weekend. I'm not going. In the summer I'd be interested. Not right now.