Prairie Brooklyn of the North

Life often leads in directions that can never, ever be foreseen. And so this finds me, unexpectedly and to stay, in Regina, Saskatchewan. Regina wasn’t just low on my list of potential cities to move to…it didn’t make the list at all. This small cold city is a tough sell, even to a self-proclaimed prairie girl like myself who doesn’t need to have the beauty of flat and rolling places explained.

Most would argue that Regina’s romance flies completely under the radar because it simply doesn’t exist. And yet, when I recently found myself facing the daunting prospect of choosing a new place to live, Regina came a-knockin’. What started as a CV sent on a whim was followed by an interview with a small social justice magazine based in the Saskatchewan capital. My childhood memories of Regina were of family visits to sprawling, colourless suburbs, and I haughtily assumed that a visit to the city would confirm my disinterest: obviously once I arrived in Regina it would be completely apparent that I could never live there.

Expecting nothing more, I was confused when I arrived in a tree-filled downtown core of walkable residential communities with charming heritage homes. Twenty-four hours later, I left Regina stunned to realize that I was considering the possibility of moving there whether I landed the job or not. An Albertan by birth and upbringing but not by nature, it occurred to me that maybe I’d accidentally been born in the wrong prairie province; that moving a little to the right on the map (and a lot to the left on the political spectrum) might ultimately take me home. Barely three weeks later and still in shock, I arrived with my cat at the miniature airport, my belongings following close behind on the Greyhound from Montreal.

One week into my new life the seduction is still a bit of a mystery. It certainly has to do in part with place: that sense of belonging that speaks to heart and bones and blood. The prairies simply feel like home, and my heart opens in this wide-open space. My big city identification has always limited me from envisioning myself returning to a small prairie city, but when I arrived I immediately felt the beauty of this place. Reminiscent of the stunted trees that sprinkle this part of the world (human-planted and struggling to survive), Regina is similarly stunted, struggling to survive the cold, cold winters and the province’s dwindling population. There are a million good reasons to leave, and many people do (for example eight of my mother’s nine siblings). But those that stay see something special in this place.

The potential of this rough little city has caught my attention and won’t let go. But there’s also a practical element to the courtship. As a creative person, I will likely always be relatively poor. So why not go to a city where I can afford to do creative work and still scrape together enough savings to eventually become a property owner with a little extra in the bank?

It’s not a new idea. Artists have always migrated to where they can afford to live, using the unformed potential of a place to build culture and community and creativity. It was in this potential that I started to see Regina’s sex appeal: in its slightly dilapidated inner-city communities and up-and-coming warehouse district. Something about it made me imagine how Brooklyn must have felt when the artists became too poor to stay in the gentrified districts of Manhattan and began to cross the bridge.

Creative people go to where it’s affordable to live because they are generally poor, and the romance of the places they choose is not always evident at first. This is because it’s all about potential, not reality. It’s about a vision for something beyond what currently exists. And that is what art and music and cultural production are really about: taking the potential of an idea or a place and manifesting it. Art sees the potential of humanity and fulfills it, and in so doing stretches that potential further by moving on to the next idea, manifestation, neighbourhood, city…

It might sound insane to compare this tiny flat cold prairie city to the Williamsburgs and Mile Ends before they were cool. But perhaps that is the lot of the creative person: first they sound insane, then people start to pay attention to what they’re talking about, and ultimately the whole thing gets appropriated by the masses. Then the creative person must move on to cheaper pastures.

Am I actually suggesting that Regina is the next Williamsburg? Not really. I guess all I’m suggesting is that Regina might turn out to be my Williamsburg…the place where I get to discover the ways that my creative potential might be wrapped up in the creative potential of place and community.

Having said this much I am wary of saying too much more, because I don’t want Regina to catch on too quickly. I want to enjoy at least a couple years here before the boom spreads. I even hope to be able to afford a small house before the Alberta money spreads and affluenza-afflicted Calgarians start itching to invest their oily cash in Southern Saskatchewan real estate. Advertising the potential of this place will only contribute to letting the secret out. But maybe that’s another cross the creative person has to bear: drawing attention to themselves through self-expression and cultural production. If only I could keep my mouth shut, I’d be able to protect this secret. But that’s not what artists do. They open their big mouths and say crazy things and make big paintings and write ludicrous stories, and make a big show of the whole damn thing.

On that note, here are some facts and romantic things to know about in my new city:

• Cathedral District (my neighbourhood, with a sweet little commercial walking street and annual arts festival)

• 13th Avenue Coffee House (a three-minute walk from my house with delectable rice bowls, including the Sushi Bowl with nori, marinated tofu, edamame, cukes and ginger. Hmmmm.)

• 300,000 trees, all planted to make an “oasis” on the prairie. Reginans take their trees pretty seriously.

• Wascana Park. Ok, so I was totally wrong about it being the biggest urban park in the world, but at 2300 acres it is the second biggest municipal park in Canada. (And yes, it’s tons bigger than Central Park, which clocks in at a puny 843 acres!)

• Regina Public Library Repertory Film Theatre and the Saskatchewan Filmpool

• Briarpatch Magazine: obviously I have to plug my new gig.

And if none of that wins you over, then there’s the fact that according to the Daily Show everyone in Regina is gay:

xox n

Quiet enough to feel the mountain disappear

(Written March 2006)

Yesterday I completed 10 silent days of anapanasati (mindfulness with breathing) meditation at Suan Mokh monastery in southern Thailand. And though there was probably little expectation that I would disappear into the jungle permanently to embrace a life of seclusion and contemplation, I’m writing to confirm that I have in fact returned to Bangkok, and am currently making application for a Laos visa.

Not having said, written or read anything for 10 days, it’s hard to know how to articulate the experience of the retreat – it seems like every word has more (and paradoxically less) meaning! Maybe the basics will speak for themselves. For the past 10 days my life looked like this:

4:00 am: Awoken by the patient, persistent ringing of a large bell. Though the sound was not unpleasant, it came to haunt much of my life. I seemed, by the end, to be hearing it in my mind constantly.

4:30: Morning reading and sitting meditation

5:15: Yoga

7:00: Morning talk from the abbot. It took me three days to discover that the harder I tried to understand his English, the less I got. It was only when I gave up and started to meditate when he started to talk that I started to understand!

7:15: Sitting meditation

8:00: Breakfast: rice gruel.

8:30: Mopping the dining hall. Around 1/4 of the total meditators did not complete the retreat, including half the moppers. By Day 9 only half remained.

9:00: Hot springs. An odd moment of luxury punctuating our otherwise ascetic routine.

10:00: Dhamma talk. For the first three days these were given by the oldest, tiniest, sharpest, most hilarious nun (Nun Pairoh), whose favourite subjects were teasing us mercilessly about relinquishing our desire to eat anything other than rice gruel, and the Dukkha (suffering) of George W. Bush.

11:00: Walking meditation. Highlights included: 1) struggling to release the extreme ill-will (one of the Five Hindrances) that arose towards anyone who unwittingly crossed my meditation path with theirs; 2) fixating on myriad fascinating images continually forming in the concrete ahead (puppies, dwarf princesses and various scary monsters are much more interesting to the wandering mind than the process of taking a step).

11:45: Sitting meditation

12:30 pm: Lunch. The last meal (and probably the most anticipated moment) of the day. Deliciousness combined with panic over the prospect of nighttime starvation resulted in compulsive overeating for the first few days, and a stark and honest look at food as a distraction and Dukkha with a capital D!

1:30: Napping, a result of heat and digestion.

2:30: Meditation instruction. Intense philosophy, without sugar coating of any sort for the sensitive Western mind, delivered by a strange, dark, brilliant British monk (Tan Dhammavidu). Dependent Origination, No Self, Five Aggregates, 16 Steps of Anapanasati…By turns unacceptable, depressing, mind blowing, inspiring…

3:30: Walking meditation

4:15: Sitting meditation

5:00: Chanting and Loving Kindness meditation.

6:00: Tea (aka Hot Soy Chocolate/Supper/Nectar of the gods)

6:30: Hot springs. I’d try to go as late as possible to avoid the humans and catch the rising moon and swooping bats.

7:30: Sitting meditation

8:00: Group walking meditation. Consisted of trying my hardest to focus on anything other than the desire to throw whichever manically fidgeting woman was ahead of me into the pond.

8:30: Sitting meditation

9:00: Bed. I tried my best to find a comfortable position on my concrete bed (with mattress of plywood and straw mat) and wooden pillow (apparently what the Buddha slept on), but all I got out of the deal were sleepness nights and a numb right hip.

The days continued like this, until Day 9, when everything except meditation practice was suspended (including lunch!). Alternating sitting and walking at our rhythm, I made the mistake of congratulating myself on making it through the worst of it (a 3.5 hour session), only to be completely destroyed by the subsequent 1.5 and 2.5 hour ones.

What I thought would be difficult – the silence – turned out to be a huge relief, followed by new huge waves of relief each time we got a gentle reminder that even unncessary interaction such as eye contact would detract from the inward-looking process and was best avoided. All social pressures were lifted, and I was extremely and unexpectedly grateful for the experience. At the same time, we were a group going through similar circumstances in the same environment, and there was huge support in this. And though we weren’t interacting, we were encouraged to smile and to put each other into Loving Kindness meditations for support and good morale, which by all accounts seemed to work wonderfully!

On a physical level, I must admit that I’m not sure I’ve never really known how to breathe before this! I discovered parts of my nose and throat that I didn’t know existed, let alone were closed. Towards the end my nostrils felt nearly raw from so much air passing through, and I’d lie awake at night wishing I could turn it off so that I could get some sleep. But rawness was well worth it, since there was an accompanying release of a tightness in my chest that I can’t remember not being there.

But I guess it was the moments of insight that felt most significant. A couple of days before the retreat I dreamt that I was standing on a mountain that began to dissolve into sand under my feet. The symbol stuck in my mind – how could something as strong as a mountain turn into something as insecure as sand? I managed to reason out that even mountains evolve over time (erosion, avalanches, etc.), but when I got to the retreat the image kept coming back to me, until one day Tan Dhammavidu was talking about impermanence and brought up a Zen saying:

First there was a moutain
Then there was no mountain
Then there was a mountain

It stuck with me again: how could there be a mountain and then no mountain? But in my walking meditation after I seemed to get it in that way that comes experientially more easily that theoretically: “mountain” as a thing is a concept that fixes what is actually a perpetually changing process – not a thing so much as a mental convention. Like any other concept (including the step I was about to take or the Self I was having the conversation with), what I perceive as a fixed entity is actually a process made up of infinite changing factors that create each moment. The mountain seemed to dissolve beneath my feet, and the impermanence, the no self, the oneness and the whole kit and kaboodle seemed to fall into place (until, of course, the dwarf princess appeared in the concrete to distract my attention away from my profound insight!).

To sum up: most definitely one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences I’ve had.

Words of wisdom:

1) Boredom is not possible when mindfulness exists!

2) Gentleness with ourselves is probably the best tool we have in our practice! (This came early on and miraculously stuck with me. Bring on the baby metaphors (which were plentiful)! When a baby is learning to walk, do we say, “Bad baby!” every time it falls down? Of course not. And for the baby’s part, she just keeps getting up and falling down again and again until she finally stands. I love it!

xox n