Over and out

I'm about to take a major hiatus from this diary, as I've mentioned before. I'm going to keep updating my website, but this section is done for now, and maybe for good. It's been three long years on stage and online, and I'm just tired of talking about myself so much and so transparently.

I realize that I've raised more issues than I've resolved, and that this can hardly be a satisfying conclusion for the reader, but it can't be helped and I hope you'll understand. In some quiet little way that I can't explain, this is the right thing for me to do. I'm happy about it.

I want to share something with you before I close this chapter of my life. It's the kind of incidental little success story that means the most to me, and it'll have to do as a "so long for now".

I spend a lot of time in my garden. When I started this diary three years ago yesterday, I didn't even have a garden to speak of... just a deck and the makings of a bicycle shed. Now I've got a full-blown Zen Canadiana environment, complete with a backyard shed that's practically a cabin, sculptures, benches and well-placed found objects, a stage, the makings of a kids' play structure, a whole whack of different plants, an irregular house concert series, and a wonderful heart-warming green glow.

I also spend a lot of time at Hugh's Room. It's a great venue to play or to hear a show, and it's the heart of the scene in this town as far as I'm concerned. It's about a half-hour subway ride from here, way across town, and I often attempt to meditate on the way. I rarely succeed in keeping my eyes closed for more than three stops. My mind is too busy, and a subway train is a noisy, clattering stainless steel serpent, after all.

But then again... a year ago now, I spent 12 days on the train, back and forth across Canada. I think it recalibrated the ticking of my heart. It was like a chiropractic procedure for my soul. And maybe these things take time to sink in.

Not long ago, I rode the subway all the way across Toronto to Hugh's Room for a show. From the moment I took my seat, centred my head, and closed my eyes, I entered a complete meditative trance, a feeling of total equanimity and repose. I had the extraordinary feeling for the entire way that I was sitting on the stage of the garden shed, gazing back on my house and yard, contemplating all the goodness and growth, and at home and at peace in the world.

That's about it. That's all I've got for now. I feel great. My heart is in the garden, my mind is on the train, my eye is on the horizon and my feet are on the ground. And I'm on my way... to somewhere new and different, is about all I know right now. I'll let you know when I get there.

Thanks for listening,

David.

Comfortable stranger

Yesterday I took a walk to the post office in the Business Depot off King Street. Crossing the Queen Street bridge westbound over the Don River, it occured to me that I was walking in the footsteps of my dad's dad, who never owned a car. He used to walk or bike or take the streetcar to his job as a shipper-receiver in a brown brick warehouse on Berkeley Street, smack dab in the middle of the old twentieth century.

When I came out of Business Depot, I was in the no-man's land between the information age and the industrial age. I could see the building my grandfather used to work in; at least, I was pretty sure that was it. I called my dad on the cell phone just to be sure, and yes, it was: a square, plain edifice at 2 Berkeley Street, now made over into lofts and called "Berkeley Castle," which made my dad laugh. There's really only the faintest echo there now of the gritty industrial life of old Hogtown, my grandfather's whole world.

I chatted a bit with my mom & dad on the cell as I headed back. But by the time I hung up, I wasn't just walking home. I wandered. I ambled. I strolled. I even meandered a little. At a certain point, I realized I was looking up at buildings - up above the storefronts and the signs to the actual mass of the buildings and the shapes of their sillhouettes.

Seeing the sky at that particular angle reminded me of walking around cities in Europe in my backpacking days. That's the way I always looked at places that were completely new to me. It's the walk of the comfortable stranger, one who is in the space but not of it. I was observing everything with completely fresh eyes, without expectation or prejudice.

It's a waking meditation. And meditating as you walk through the world makes the world completely new. Even the fading memories of my grandfather's dirty old town had the dust blown off them, when I walked through my neighbourhood the way I walked in Europe.