Category Archives: Montreal

November 30, 2016 · 11:35 am

Stumbling Through Blessing: Part Fifteen – The Eyes Have It (even when they’re off the clock)

(The last in this series of fifteen posts about the Birkot HaShachar, the Jewish morning blessings, and the role they might play in helping us – Jews and non-Jews; believers, agnostics, and atheists – live with more gratitude, presence, and even compassion. Part spiritual reportage, part suggested practice.)

From an alleyway in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood

This is the one about the two adolescent boys trailing two teenage girls. And the toddler on one of the girl’s shoulders.

They came out of nowhere, boisterously merging into my sidewalk stroll. Preferring quiet at the moment, I’m not looking forward to the mindless frivolity which awaits, but that’s life.

Then I catch one of the boys talking to the other about the toddler. “There was one time she bit me, and it hurt so much,” he says with wonder. “Their teeth are so spiky at that age.”

Amused in Montreal

That’s one for an adolescent boy’s paternal affection for his little sister, and none for my assumptions about the company I’m keeping.

And so, I recite the brucha to celebrate my defeat…

Baruch atah adonay, eloheynu melech ha’olam, hama’avir shenah me’eynay utnumah me’afapay

Blessed are You, source of all, who removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids

Then there’s the one about my leaving work and striding to the subway. Until I think of the brucha, and remember I’m allowed to slow down and pay attention.

Moon over Colorado

Rounding the corner at Yonge and Dundas, rumoured to be the busiest intersection in Canada, I notice that I keep making contact with fellow pedestrians, their shoulders and arms nudging mine. I start counting. In just two minutes, nine people bump against me. Nine souls. Nine annoyances. Pleasant. Unpleasant. Maybe later I’ll draw out metaphors about connection. For now, it’s enough to be aware of something I must have experienced countless times, but managed, with remarkable consistency, not to notice.

So…

Baruch atah adonay, eloheynu melech ha’olam, hama’avir shenah me’eynay utnumah me’afapay

Blessed are You, source of all, who removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids

In the station, someone discovers she’s not allowed to board the subway with her bike at rush hour, and does a one-eighty, whacking me on the shin with her back wheel. Make that ten souls. Ten annoyances. I look forward to more.

There’s also the one about the somnambulant Sunday on the subway, when I really (maybe) get the brucha.

I’m tired and close my eyes, my other senses tuning in to the thinly peopled train: the way it swings a little from side-to-side or gently lists at an angle, the persistent squeak suggesting ball bearings in need of oil, the gentle thud as we pass over bumps on the rails, making the floor that separates my feet from subterranean muck feel thinner, less stable.

Decarie Expressway, Montreal

I like all this noticing, but it takes focus and it’s the weekend. I’m about to relax away from it, when I think of the brucha, which has often struck me as redundant – removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids?

But now it’s striking me as a teaching: pay attention, and when you’re done, pay more attention. So I tune in again, becoming aware of the intermittent breeze wafting from a fan on the ceiling. And of a high-pitched electronic sound – consistent, not especially appealing, and more discernable when the train slows down. The doors open and the weighty drone of the mechanical apparatus affixed to the exterior of the new trains eviscerates all other sounds. When the door closes again, it starts with a thud, and concludes with a click, just to make sure. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Sleep from my eyes. Slumber from my eyelids. Alive.

Edward Hopper meets Decarie?

There’s this, too: I lift my eyes from my computer as I write this blog post, and see a sun-shiny opening in the monochromatic overcast. I enjoy it a moment, recite a brucha*, and start to return my attention to the computer. Then I remember what I’m preaching, and take in more sky.

* To be specific, I recite a brucha I use to sanctify any variety of beautiful visions offered in nature – Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloheynu Melech Ha’olam, she’kacha lo ba’olamo / Blessed Are You, Source of all that is, who has such beauty in the universe

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Let’s Get Mindful

If you’ve given yourself the gift of paying attention to your surroundings but, having reached your saturation point, find yourself getting back to reliving the past or planning the future, consider the possibility that you might be rewarded by staying with here and now. If it helps, recite a blessing of your own devising for staying attuned, or use the traditional brucha:

Baruch atah adonay, eloheynu melech ha’olam, hama’avir shenah me’eynay utnumah me’afapay

Blessed are You, source of all, who removes sleep from my eyes and slumber from my eyelids

Is there someone who has helped you develop an aptitude for paying attention to your surroundings? Perhaps recite the brucha with that person in mind.

Is there someone you know who might be rewarded by being pointed to surroundings they’ve lost sight of? Without hitting them over the head on the matter, see if you can point them back to where they were. And if you think it would be the wisest course of action, go ahead and hit them over the head.

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July 10, 2016 · 2:04 pm

Stumbling Through Blessing: Part Thirteen – The Royal We

(The thirteenth of fifteen posts about the Birkot HaShachar, the Jewish morning blessings, and the role they might play in helping us – Jews and non-Jews; believers, agnostics, and atheists – live with more gratitude, presence, and even compassion. Part spiritual reportage, part suggested practice.)

I don’t know if all is vanity, as Kohelet would have it, but the last couple of hours have been replete with reminders that much is temporary.

I am in Scotland, sitting on a bench beside a green expanse – just beyond it, the sunlit dot of a full moon ascending through the sky above Melrose Abbey. Or to be more precise, the remains of Melrose Abbey – built in the twelfth century, battered in the fourteenth, restored and re-ruined again, until its neighbours carted away much of its valuable building materials. A house built to serve the Eternal that, like all such houses, has proven a blip in eternity.

In its shadow, a cemetery where a tombstone marks the burial place of Archibald Hall and Elizabeth Hardie, husband and wife, and two of their daughters. The dates tell us that one of the girls proceeded her parents to the grave, but nothing on the stone explains how they endured the loss. On many of the surrounding stones, the inscriptions have eroded, even bare bones information like names and dates lost to mystery.

In the green expanse beside me, a ditch marks the boundaries of the cloisters where the abbey’s monks once dwelt. But the ditch doesn’t and can’t say anything about their fears and delights, deeds and misdeeds, dissipated into memory dust carried by the winds into the surrounding hillsides. Beginning tomorrow, I’ll be walking those hills, and will perhaps touch something of who they were. Or perhaps this is psycho-spiritual-babble-prattle.

One of the other visitors to the abbey walks across the expanse singing a marching song with what seems a mocking tone. His adult son glances my way, embarrassed.

I whisper the brucha

Baruch atah Adonay, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, Oter Yisrael B’tifarah

Blessed are You, Source of all, who crowns Israel with splendour

and consider what it might have to say about the fragility to which I am trying to bear witness.

This one’s clearly not about me. Or, at least, not just me. It’s about all the Jewish people, and were it conceived in a less particularistic era, it might be about all humanity. You and I and everyone we encounter are royalty, the resplendent and the weary amongst us all deserving of care, and responsible for offering it.

Here in the British countryside, on a break from the day-to-day, it’s easy to be calm and reflective, imagining myself as a vessel of patience and compassion. But who will I be when back in the world?

This much I know. I am almost always happier when ambling than scrambling. And more irritable when stressed.

That’s it! I’ve figured it out! I should be happy instead of stressed. Why didn’t I think of that sooner? Okay, okay. No magic bullet here. I get that.

But what if I were to run interference on fifty-plus years of bad habits and try to get a decent night’s sleep? What if I break a growing pattern of running late? Yes, there’s always another e-mail to compose, another blogpost to write, another way of proving I matter. But I matter when I’m in the world, too.

So once back home, I do my best to fend off habits that make me weary and keep me up too late, and more often get myself out the door so that I am unrushed. And this happens…

I spot a guy sitting on the sidewalk, his oily hair swept back from his forehead, a cup in front of him. I refrain from speculating and judging as I lean down and drop money in his cup, slow enough to make eye contact, fast enough not to make a show of it.

I delight in the sparks flying from between the legs of a construction worker soldering a metal beam, the adolescent in me thinking how cool it is that he’s farting sparks.

Because of how good this makes me feel, it changes how I am when, crossing the street, I’m forced to stop midway when a cyclist runs a stop sign. Looking at the anxiety in his eyes, I find myself feeling compassion instead of umbrage.

A driver is laying on the horn, angry at the slowness of the driver ahead. Feeling calm and irritated rather than wrathful, I lean down to look at him, and motion towards my ears so he can appreciate how unpleasant a blare he’s creating. The passenger beside him flips me a bouquet of birds. But the driver backs off the horn.

An older woman with a hunched back and a walker is crossing an intersection. Her hot pink blouse may give her all the visibility she needs, but the traffic light goes yellow when she’s only halfway across. I slow down to keep pace with her, two of us now visible to the drivers.

And when a pedestrian in walk-texting-browsing mode approaches, assuming I’ll get out of his way if he notices me at all, I note my impulse to let him collide into me but, in the interest of my own happiness as well as his, I shift lanes and recite the brucha:

Baruch atah Adonay, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, Oter Yisrael B’tifarah

Blessed are You, Source of all, who crowns Israel with splendour

And there’s another form of good I can do that does not require me to be in the friendly mood I’m endeavouring to cultivate, or to be mindful of the mortality of anxious cyclists and spark-farting construction workers. I go online to make a monthly charitable donation. Not royal patronage so much as an effort at human kindness.

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Let’s Get Mindful

Are there those to whom you’ve been less attentive, less kind, because of an ongoing gripe, or even because they’re nominally of a lower station in life? Is there a way you can release this, and offer something more? Perhaps you could get an assist from a blessing of your own creation, or the traditional one

Baruch atah Adonay, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, Oter Yisrael B’tifarah

Blessed are You, Source of all, who crowns Israel with splendour

Keep site of the royal you. Are there ways in which you are mindful of the kindness to which others are entitled, but forget to ensure that you too are treated as part of the royal family? What might you do about that?

Have you been meaning to donate something, somewhere? Your own act of royal patronage or simple human kindness? Might this be a good time to take action?

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May 21, 2015 · 9:19 pm

Stumbling Through Blessing: Part 1 – Project Birdbrain

(The latest in this series about the Birkot HaShachar, the Jewish morning blessings, and the role they might play in helping us – Jews and non-Jews; believers, agnostics, and atheists – live with more gratitude, presence, and even compassion. Part spiritual reportage, part suggested practice.)

Though barely begun, the day has already stopped going according to plan. Fortunately, there’s a beefy guy in a powder blue t-shirt dancing through the subway station, helping me believe in equanimity.

Birdness in the form of duckness (Toronto’s High Park)

It had been my intention to ease myself into Monday morning with the blessing:

Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloyheynu Melech Ha’Olam, ha’noten l’sechvi vinah l’havchin beyn yom u’veyn laylah

Blessed are You, Source of All That Is, who gives the rooster the ability to distinguish between day and night

I would give myself a leisurely stroll to the subway on a quiet street, attentive to morning birdsong, and then as best possible, other qualities of nature.

Not exactly what I would have seen on the street, but you get the idea (High Park again)

But that’s before, as I prepare to leave home, I discover my glasses have gone into hiding. In no time, blessing is replaced by curses. My curses. “Where the &**&^%!@ are my glasses!?” I keep repeating, as I check and double-check bookshelves, tables and, desperately, between pillows. “Where the &**&^%!@ are my glasses!?” Sometimes, to switch things up, I elaborate, “Where the &**&^%!@ are my &**&^%!@-ing glasses?!!?”

By the time my glasses reveal themselves on the bathroom windowsill, I’m tight for time. I’ll have to take the bus to the subway. Charging along the sidewalk, I try to remember that hurrying, while making mindfulness more challenging, doesn’t have to preclude it. I tune in to my breath, and listen for birdsong. The most audible bird has a nattering, taunting sound.

Nearing the stop, I focus on a different dimension of the brucha. Though commonly rendered as “rooster,” the original meaning of the Hebrew sechvi is uncertain, sometimes translated as “mind.”

Blessed are You, Source of All That Is, who gives the mind the ability to distinguish between day and night

Just as the rooster responds to the morning light with a spontaneous, instinctive crow, so the human mind responds to the world, our birdbrains instinctively guiding actions we never notice.

The bus is full, but the driver opens the backdoor for some of us to squeeze in. Perched on the edge of a step, my body simply knows how to keep upright, shifting weight to compensate for the lurching from side to side, or the sudden break at a crosswalk. A guy below me has contorted himself, his arm raised and bent backwards to grip the pole behind him. He might have needed to think it through when he first took the pose, but now his conscious mind has moved on to other things.

Sometimes it’s the “blandness” that delivers the light and colour (High Park subway)

At the subway station, everything we are doing is routine. And extraordinary.

Dozens of us pouring in, dozens more flowing out, instinctively establishing laneways, not slowing down and never colliding. It’s then that I see the beefy guy in the powder blue t-shirt sprinting up the stairs, spinning and sidling through the onrushing crowd with nimble grace, till he reaches the transfer dispenser, hits the button, collects the transfer he’d forgotten earlier, and merges back into the crowd charging down the stairs. Someone ought to tell him how magnificent he is.

On the subway, using mindful attention as my alibi, I spy on the human tableau – the Asian woman with the Mao haircut, her lips pursed, eyes slightly crossed, listening animatedly to her travelling companion; the Latino guy with the Blue Jays cap, fury in his face, fingers pressed hard into the book he’s reading about a serial killer; the young woman I think of as Nubian, in turquoise dress and jean jacket, her headscarf purple and her music player hot pink; the dark woman in the khaki shirt, her eyes wistful and filmy, as if staring at something that will never come back.

The subway sounds its chimes, snapping me out of reverie, and I think about my birdbrain. How, without my attention, it has been filtering information from other chimes at other stops, quietly monitoring where I am, looking out for my station. Because noticing begets noticing, I follow my sustaining breath for a while, the rise and fall of my chest which most of the time I take for granted.

At St. George station, most passengers disembark. Those who remain put on a synchronized subway performance, bodies swaying in unison, compensating for the subtle rocking of the train.

It all happens so effortlessly, one might wonder whether it’s worthy of a brucha at all. But invisible to us and out of our minds are those who couldn’t have managed the subway stairs, or the elderly who avoid rush hour for fear of crowds, and later in the day will have to apply mindful effort to occupy a seat, and again to rise from it.

At Yonge and Bloor, as I change trains, a transit workers calls out, “Today is Monday, May the fourth. May the fourth be with you.”

“That’s awful,” I say, hoping my tone is conveying that I think she’s terrific.

Finding nature where it lives (in this case, Montreal).

Near my office building, I’m faced with a large sign outside a construction zone for a condo: This city moves fast. And these will too. An effort to panic that part of my birdbrain worried about safety and shelter.

A sparrow flies past, inches from my eyes, and lands in a parking lot. And because noticing begets noticing, my ears attune to the birdsong in the air. Looking up, I am unable to find the source of the melody, but catch sight of a seagull soaring above the rooftops, its flapping wings wide and shiny below grey clouds.

I recite the brucha again – Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloyheynu Melech Ha’Olam, ha’noten l’sechvi vinah l’havchin beyn yom u’veyn laylah– and step into work.

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Let’s Get Mindful

In the nicest of ways, periodically stop and ask yourself, “What have I just done?” Not as a criticism, though. Anything but. Rather, as an opportunity to consider the ways in which you navigate your way through life with ease, even when you don’t notice. And because speech can be powerful, taking us from fleeting appreciation to heartfelt gratitude, you might want to say the brucha aloud:

Baruch Atah Adonay, Eloyheynu Melech Ha’Olam, ha’noten l’sechvi vinah l’havchin beyn yom u’veyn laylah

Blessed are You, Source of All That Is, who gives the rooster the ability to distinguish between day and night

If you like the intention, but aren’t doing the practice, make an appointment. Tell yourself that for the next ten or thirty minutes, that as best possible, you will tune in to the things you wouldn’t normally notice that come to you so naturally. If your mind drifts away, that’s simply because you’re human, so when you realize you’ve drifted elsewhere, gently bring your attention back and keep going.
Our days are filled with plans – and circumstance that get in their way. If that happens for you today, in spite of any quashed hopes, consider ways in which blessing remains before you. You might even want to recite a blessing of your own creation to sanctify the moment. It’s okay. Say it quietly enough, and no one will think you’re a religious nut.
Keep in mind those who might have greater difficulty than you navigating through the day, perhaps because they’re physically or even socially disabled. Offer them compassion, a smile, acts of kindness subtle or large.

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November 4, 2014 · 6:27 pm

Low Contrast and Rumours of High-Mindedness

If I were higher-minded, this would be about gratitude to the Source of all for, as Jewish liturgy puts it, mashiv ha’ruach umorid hagashem – causing the wind to blow and rain to fall.

And while I suppose the sustenance of this planet deserves some attention, this is really about how an overcast sky can get rid of the high contrast which complicates picture-taking in alleyways and narrow streets, and also bring out some colour.

And now that show-and-tell is over, let’s try some high-mindedness:

Baruch atah adonay, mechayey kol chai

Blessed are you, Source of all, who gives and renews life

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October 23, 2014 · 7:00 pm

Rivière-des-Prairies or Bust: Part Seven – The Power of Here

August 26, 2014

The posts in this “Rivière-des-Prairies or Bust” series are self-contained, but by way of background…these are “field notes” of my efforts to walk in a mindful way westward from my Mile End, Montreal apartment until I reach Rivière-des-Prairies.

The final leg of my trek from Mile End to Rivière-des-Prairies took me through the Bois-de-Liesse Nature Park. When I arrived at the riverbank, there was a damp and earthy pungency in the air that made me want to burrow into the muck and settle there for years.

There were also mosquitoes that made me want to slap myself silly and take them down. Instead, though, I blew them off my arms and flicked them from my neck as gently as I could, reminding myself that pissing me off is not their only sacred role in the universe. I recited the blessing with which I celebrate the intricacy of nature:

Baruch atah adonay, eloheynu melech ha’olam, hanoten lasechvi vinah lehavchin beyn yom uveyn laylah

Blessed are You, The Provident, who gives the bird of dawn discernment to tell day from night

It didn’t reorient my relationship to the mosquitoes as much as I would have liked, but at least I tried. Just as I tried to and sometimes found aesthetic appeal in the concrete crossings through which the park took me.

Looking back, these seven walks were a source of constant astonishment to me. While most Montrealers would regard rambling from Mile End to the Rivière-des-Prairies to be a major expedition, the truth is it was only about sixteen kilometres (ten miles). I needed several stages because I’m a slow walker, spent a lot of time sitting and reflecting, and went two or three hours at a time, but most of us could do it in a single day with modest effort.

Still, these Montrealers are onto something, because in that single day, one would travel through many worlds – a neighbourhood of walk-ups, two upper-middle-class communities, nondescript commercial streets, a soothing cemetery, a magnificently artistic subway station, concrete and asphalt deserts, over and below highways, unexpected woods beside an unexpected library, and an equally surprising and genteel community of trailer homes in the shadow of an airport. One would encounter Hasidic Jews and hipsters, suffering homeless and kind police officers. Just as I went from ebullience to tedium, despair to relief, amusement to envy, music to silence.

Which brings me to the power of here. Intellectually, there was nothing astonishing in these walks (except perhaps the subway steps – see Part Four in this series). Everybody knows there are noisy highways beside quiet neighbourhoods, and that mind states go back and forth between pleasant and unpleasant. But while my mind may have known there was a river out there, until I came within whiffing distance of the muck, my body was convinced when amidst the concrete that it lived in a world of concrete, and was astonished to discover anything else. Just as I am prone, when in unhappy states of mind, to disbelieve I will feel any other way. Which is one of the reasons I meditate. More on that later, perhaps.

In the meantime, I highly recommend pointing your compass in one direction or another, and seeing where it takes you.

Next up: a post about one of the best chance encounters (or was it?) I’ve had in a long time.

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October 16, 2014 · 7:01 pm

Rivière-des-Prairies or Bust: Part Six – Journey into a Desert Sentinel

August 25, 2014

If you did a search on the 4,652 most interesting walks in Montreal, today’s industrial meanderings probably wouldn’t make the cut. I’ve resorted to consulting maps to assure myself that there really will be a river on the other side of all this.

Then I recall a teacher’s suggestion that we regard street signs we encounter during the course of the day as wisdom offerings. So when a delivery truck passes, bearing the slogan, “everywhere you want to be,” I insert an ellipsis (“everywhere….you want to be”) and find myself agreeing with the truck. No matter where I go, I do want to be present.

With that intention in mind, when an eighteen-wheeler passes on Poirier Boulevard, I notice that my knees and ears have, if only subtly, prepared for the ground to shake and for the truck to rattle, and that they are disoriented when this doesn’t happen. I feel a rush of excitement when airplanes – mammoth, with blazing velocity – screech into descent at nearby Trudeau Airport. I’d rather not be excited, given my concerns about air travel and the environment, but it is probably good and useful to know when something that concerns me also thrills me.

I pass by ostensibly non-distinctive roadside scrub

and looking closer, become aware of what it reveals about the direction of the prevailing winds.

Even in this industrial desert – or maybe especially in this industrial desert – what nature has to offer is a blessing. When I take refuge in the shade of a tree, I recite a blessing which literally speaks of roosters, but which might fairly be applied to all gifts of nature

Baruch atah adonay, eloheynu melech ha’olam, hanoten lasechvi vinah lehavchin beyn yom uveyn laylah

Blessed are You, The Provident, who gives the bird of dawn discernment to tell day from night

The more I walk among the power line towers

the more they seem to have the deportment of monster movie sentinels.

Though I have passed tens of thousands in my lifetime, it’s never occurred to me to crawl into one. Until now.

And somewhere along the way, I remember to recite the Asher Yatzar, the expression of gratitude for the intricate workings of the body.*

And, oh yes, now and again I also remember to look at the sky.

*For those unfamiliar with the Asher Yatzar blessing, and who might like to see it in Hebrew or with transliteration, you should be able to search for it easily enough online. Since translations might be harder to find, here’s an adaptation of one from Kol Haneshamah, the Jewish Reconstructionist movement’s siddur (prayer book),

Blessed are You, The Architect, who shaped the human being with wisdom, making for us all the openings and vessels of the body. It is revealed and known before Your Glory that if one of these passage-ways be open when it should be closed, or blocked when it should be free, one could not stay alive or stand before You. Blessed are You, The Miraculous, the wondrous healer of all flesh.

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October 9, 2014 · 9:10 pm

Rivière-des-Prairies or Bust: Part Five – Midday at the Oasis

August 20, 2014

The trouble started when I began to sniff an oasis.

Although I am enjoying the fact of this walk, still entertained by the idea of proceeding west to Rivière-des-Prairies and endeavouring to be present with whatever arises, today’s details aren’t doing much for me.

There have been moments, of course. For instance, the pleasure of witnessing a couple of teenage girls sitting on a high school bench, one of them – the one with the curly hair – laughing with such abandon that her feet leave the ground as she almost tumbles backwards. And I get to play peek-a-boo with a suspicious resident spying on me through her living room window, her head peering around the curtain. I wave and smile. Caught in the act, she tepidly waves back. Amidst a neighbourhood where the homes tend towards uniformity, and the prevailing noise is that of a lawn mower and the drone of traffic from Cote Vertu, I occasionally encounter declarations of individuality:

But mostly, the dominant features of today’s walk have been concrete and asphalt, accelerating the intensity of the hot and humid weather (this happened in August, remember), and all I really want to do is fulfill my commitment of walking for three hours and be on my way. Then I come across this:

The Bibliothèque du Boisé is what a library should be; quiet and airy, its patrons brown and black, Caucasian and Asian. A father is reading a newspaper, his daughters on either side of him, writing in copybooks. A teenage girl leans over Electronics for Dummies. There are teak ceilings and tall windows facing, surprisingly, woods!

I’ve earned this oasis, I tell myself.

Almost as soon as I start out through the woods, the path I’m on leads to a construction site, beside which teenage boys are kicking around a ball and bouncing Frisbees off the side of a building. I turn back to the woods, and construction noise follows. This is too urban. Or maybe it’s not urban enough. That’s it. That’s the problem with this place. It’s too in-between. And even worse, it’s too hot. Then, almost in spite of myself, I recall a passage from Bhante Gunaratana’s Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness:

“We are continually confronted by people and conditions we wish did not exist…Even something we cannot control, like the weather, makes us dissatisfied. At the Bhavana Society in West Virginia where I teach, people complain when it is hot and sticky. But they also complain when it is rainy and cool. When it is dry, they complain that their skin or their sinuses are affected. When it is cold, they complain because they fear they will slip on the ice. And when the weather is perfect, they complain that they do not have enough time to enjoy it!”

With Gunaratana’s admonition in mind, and aided and abetted by the camera in my hands, I remember to take time off from my displeasure to notice things:

To conclude the day’s sojourn, I sit down with the intention of mindfully eating a couple of mandarin oranges. I deposit a piece in my mouth, my tongue watering with anticipation. I take a bite and my face goes sour. The mandarins are mostly dry on the surface, and more watery than flavourful inside, and I want to toss them. Instead, I force myself to say a blessing:

Baruch atah adonay, eloheynu mel’ech ha’olam, sh’asah li kol tzarki

Blessed are you, The Generous, our God, life of all the worlds, who acts for all my needs

And it becomes easier for me to remember that this food for which I have such disdain would be manna for most people on this planet.

I sit, and breathe, and try to live happily with hot and humid.

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September 30, 2014 · 7:15 pm

Rivière-des-Prairies or Bust: Part Four & a half – Who Give Strength to the Weary

August 19, 2014

When I eventually leave the du College subway (see the previous post for what kept me so entranced there), I notice a man sitting on a bench, his purple shirt soiled and tattered, long beard in no better shape, knee wrapped in a thick plastic brace. I offer a smile, but he is staring worriedly into the middle distance.

A police cruiser stops in front of him. The officer riding shotgun, a blonde policewoman with an uncreased forehead and a green plastic wristband, leans out the window. “I like your sandals,” she says. She and the man fall into familiar conversation, a relaxed smile spreading across his face, as he is transformed from a lonely hermit to a man who has friends.

Before I know it, I am whispering one of the Jewish morning blessings.

Baruch atah adonay, eloheynu melech ha’olam, hanoten laya’ef ko’ach

Blessed are you, Renewing One, who gives strength to the weary

Public piano (and grocery cart) at Parc Beaudet in St. Laurent, just outside the du College station

Public piano (and accompanying grocery cart) at Parc Beaudet in St. Laurent, just outside the du College station

At the end of today’s walk, at Côte-Vertu Boulevard, I get to watch a woman with thick arms trying to inch her pick-up out of a side street. Realizing she won’t be able to get onto the busy road for a while, she backs up to make things easier for pedestrians. The person who benefits most from being spared an unwanted detour onto the street doesn’t thank or even seem to notice her. He’s an elderly man, unsteady, and leaning desperately on his cane; it’s all he can do to stay on his feet as he labours along, pain tightening his face. The driver, being screened by taller, hardier pedestrians, doesn’t appear to know how much good she’s done him. But you and I do.

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September 22, 2014 · 8:22 pm

Rivière-des-Prairies or Bust: Part Three – The Life That Didn’t Get Away

August 18, 2014

The posts in this “Rivière-des-Prairies or Bust” series are self-contained, but by way of background…they are “field notes” of my efforts to walk in a mindful way westward from my Mile End, Montreal apartment until reaching Rivière-des-Prairies.

This is the one about how I end up crying on a park bench – with friends, family and drugstore cashiers benefitting as a result.

Yesterday’s walk concluded with my arriving in the Town of Mount Royal, the upper-middle-class neighbourhood in which I grew up. I hadn’t set foot here in twenty-five years, and was quickly dizzy with disorientation – old streets, new condos, memories crashing into the unrecognizable, mediated by the semi-familiar.

“How could I have needed a street sign to tell me this is Graham Boulevard? I must have walked this stretch hundreds of times. That’s the train station? When did it become a gourmet pizza place? When did they put up safety fences to keep jumpers from going off the bridge?”

I met an Iranian man, an immigrant living on the West Island, who had just given himself a tour. “So beautiful,” he said, his face serene. For billions around the world, this would be paradise. Quiet, leafy streets, big houses, wide green lawns, even unobstructed views of the sky thanks to power lines having been sunk below ground.

But I didn’t want to come here yesterday, nor do I want to be here now.

Perhaps my instincts said to walk west, because I might otherwise have avoided this. No other place subjects me to such a potent mix of nostalgia and wistfulness. Even as a teen, I was wistful here, and the closer I’ve come the last couple of days, the harder I’ve had to work to subdue a voice saying “This is the life that got away. The life you let get away.”

So when the guy in the vintage convertible pulls up alongside, seeming to want me to look at him with envy, I am unable to accommodate him, because my mind is focused on a high school classmate who has gone on to enjoy a successful public life, and who I am now wishing private ennui. Just as, a few minutes earlier, seeing a man not much older than me, his back hunched, his face worn and puffy, I told myself this was the price he was paying for choosing to acquire the means to live here. I am not proud of myself, but this pettiness, this envy and judgement, are my most ready responses to the voice, however ineffectual.

I try detachment. With my notebook in hand, I think of myself as an anthropologist studying suburban wonderlands.

I seek out points of ease. A black kid glides by on a scooter, clearly at home. When I was growing up here, he would have been a spectacle. I smile, glad his father settled down here instead of me. I feel warmth towards the old woman getting around with a walker, and wave a friendly thank you to the driver of a loud Porsche who’s been patiently waiting for me to realize he’s giving me right of way.

All the while, my stomach is in knots.

I had committed to sitting for thirty minutes when I got to the hour-and-a-half mark of the walk. When that time comes, it’s at a small park where I am stung with the memory of a beautiful girl who became a beautiful woman, and I wonder what might just have been had I not backed away from the opening she gave me in our post-high school years. Feeling the way this strengthens the voice, I try to remind myself of the independence in which I often delight, the ways in which I’ve lived on my own terms, while still giving ease to others. But the voice won’t have it, and it starts pummelling. “You let this get away. You could have been married. You could have had children. You took too many wrong turns, ran yourself into too many dead ends. You’ve squandered your talents and wasted precious time chasing something you can’t even name.”

I sit on a bench, and do the only thing possible. I go to pieces, crying with stomach heaving, streams of tears, full-bodied, decidedly unmanly. It feels like it could go on for hours.

It lasts five minutes. Maybe eight. And then the tears are done.

I feel my brow soften, my teeth unclench. I feel my breath. The breath that’s always there, no matter what. I do a blessing practice, silently wishing peace, joy, loving kindness and compassion to passersby – the pony-tailed teenage girls jogging around the park; the driver cruising by, lazily hanging his arm out the window; the cyclist with the lime green shorts, a hoodie over his helmet. And myself. I offer these blessings to myself because, right now, I can use them too.* The world grows bigger as I tune into the sounds of trucks on the nearby highway and the engines of descending planes. I sit at ease with the not knowing. Who can say? Maybe I would have been happier with a family, greater achievement, a house (though not in this neighbourhood, where I would surely feel like an imposter). Maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t know. The only thing about which I can be certain is that, at this moment, I’m not nearly as interested in the life that didn’t happen as I am in the one before me.

And there’s something else I know. I have subdued the voice – not by restraining it, but rather, by letting it spend its energy. It hasn’t lost its power entirely, but it’s so depleted, I almost feel sorry for it. I needn’t, I suppose. It’s pretty resilient, and we’re bound to have another bout – or at least an animated conversation or two – in the future. But in the meantime, its hold over me is that much more diminished, and I am that much more liberated from unnecessary resentments and judgements, of myself and others, and that much better able to bring attentiveness, patience and good-heartedness to the people in my life. And to begin exchanges with drugstore cashiers by taking a moment to look at them, and ask “How are you?”

As for that thing I can’t quite name, it seems I’m getting closer all the time.

An office building at the periphery of Town of Mount Royal

*For those unfamiliar with blessing or Buddhist metta (loving friendliness) practices, they are likely to seem absurd. What could be the point of extending good wishes to complete strangers? This is the kind of scepticism I brought to the practice when I started it about two years ago. It’s hard to remain sceptical, though, when it turns out to have been transformative. I don’t say such things lightly, but the practice makes me that much more open-hearted, patient with myself, and patient with others. As one of my teachers put it, “You may not be changing others, but you’re changing yourself.” Which, in turn, makes for happier others.

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