University

1.

This Saturday morning was the first day of my week long holiday from work. It was also 4 days after I heard from my father that my grandmother, who had been sick, was now palliative and had only a month to live.

I woke up feeling very tired - tired from work, from expectations, from having to smile, from pain and sadness, from having stayed up too late the night before talking. It was hard to get going and I went out much later than usual.

Outside, the wind was soft and fresh, cool, and the sky was autumn blue. I took Union all the way to the golf course, slowly, because my heart was weighted. My heart was heavy, but my body was light and strong, hollow, with a steady current of electricity animating it, like the sunlight in autumn, golden, cool, subtle and powerful. It had come to me on leaving the house that even though I felt so tired that the idea of travelling outside of my zone should be impossible, I wanted to go up to University and Fischer Hallman and then down University, on the road through the trees. An empty place full of colour. It should have felt impossible, but it didn't. I wanted to do it so I did it.

The steep hill up Glasgow, past the luxurious but too new houses didn't break me to walking as it has in the past. I went right up it, slowly but directly. It is always bright at the top of Glasgow and Fischer Hallman, bright white like the high altitude of a moutain peak, dizzying from the effort of ascent, the sudden light in your eyes, the amazement of being there, the viewing of all directions before the victorious journey back down.

As I turned north and coasted down University, though the wildness that borders the road, hiding houses, making me feel, as it always does, that I've somehow escaped the bounds of agoraphobia and reality and at last found my moving place in the wilderness I dream about, I let my mind empty into the day, into being away, into the air. A passing jogger smiled at me and I thought about how animals don't feel the need to smile at each other, acknowledge each other, when passing - they just go about their business of food gathering and shelter building, and how this felt like a world I would feel so relieved to in - no expectations, no busyness of the mind, no symbols and rituals. On further thought, I realized that of course animals must have some way of acknowledging each other, although perhaps very different than human ways. Maybe what makes their world less mentally taxing is that they don't cringe in anxious anticipation before every encounter - not knowing, as we do, that an encounter is coming. It is anticipaton that makes ritual possible.

At the end of the natural part of University, where it collides abruptedly with Erb St, I enjoyed a strong moment of victory in the sunshine and then enjoyed a leisurely roll back up University, but this time, on the other side of the stream that runs down the west side of the road, on a path in a tangle of trees. For many minutes I bumped over roots and up little hills, through the sparkling dapple of morning sun on leaves, feeling free and unburdened. I came up to one of the exits of the path in a cul de sac, turned east again, and took a concrete path into a park behind the senior's home.

I sat down on a bench in the still damp shade next to the play structure, where it smelled slightly of animal urine, moss, sun and wood, and began to read The Remembrance of Things Past.

After a time, I put down my book. I looked at small leaves turning red on the tree nearby, and a man and woman walking a dog down the path. Now came an orange cat from the green lawn beyond me; he came up to my knees and rubbed, and then climbed onto the bench and put his damp paws on my thigh and kisssed. He crawled up my shoulder and leapt off the bench into the trees. He swam under the bench and noticed things on the ground. I clicked and he came back and rubbed on my legs, leaving white and orange hairs on my black tights. Around and around he wove in this delighting dance, while I took pictures with my phone. It is very hard to take the perfect posed picture of a cat.



Some children who had been playing nearby came into view and the cat ran towards them. They squealed with excitement - four boys and a little girl - and began to crouch down and approach the cat. The cat ran into the woods and they followed him, standing in a little row, crouching, peering, seeing the cat in the obscurity. They looked like a little group of English schoolchildren in an etching. I found myself surprised at their gentleness. Still, I worried for the cat. To not appear to be staring at children from a damp park bench in a deserted park, I took out my cell phone and check my email.

A new email had arrived and it read that my cousin had told my mother that my Grandma now only had 2 weeks to live. I watched the children chasing the cat through the woods now, worried and wondered how the cat was feeling, my stomach heavy with the possible cruelties of life. And yet the park was quiet and the cat was winning, avoiding the children. Who knows what would happen?

I stood for a while, my mind thinking. It was cold under the golden autumn light, a little, and the air felt tighter. I watched the children rustle in the bushes. I wondered if my cousin was exaggerating. She must be. I called my mother and no answer. I sent her a text. The children were moving in and out of the bushes, and no sign of the cat. My heart clenched, my brow wrinkled. I put my phone away and took it back out again.

Suddently the cat burst from the bushes, an orange streak running full speed across the lawn. The children ran after it, and they all crashed into the bushes beyond. I wondered if the cat knew the children, belonged to them. I considered that the cat came here often and was aware of the ways of children, that this was just another morning for an outdoor cat.

I have to trust that the cat knows what it is doing. I put my phone in my pocket and picked up my bicycle to leave the park. I took my phone out and checked to see if my mother had texted and no, she hadn't. My heart was already nostalgic for the time of the bench, the rub, the climb, the jump, the swim, my book, Combray, M LeGrandin. I felt I was leaving a trail behind me as I left the park, wanting to stay and continue the stillness of holidays.

Now I was on the road again. My cellphone fell out of my pocket and crashed on the pavement, the perfect glass screen chipping a little. I picked it up, sighed. My body felt energy returning, light in my muscles, time to ride it out. I took Erb up almost to Fischer Hallman but stopped short of it and coasted down a side road, to find a little path behind some houses near Churchill St. I followed this path to a woods familiar from my university days, with little paths going up and down hills between Keats Way and Churchill and the new subdivision I'd come through.

I sat on a log and checked my phone. No call. I called again. I sat some more, my thoughts bubbling, jutting, bumping. I heard a man singing, so I started moving again. He came up the path after me, a student, dressed in black, with headphones, no longer singing. I found a glade of logs and ferns and sunlight, so faerie and perfect, that it seemed almost shamefully beautiful compared with my morbid thoughts. I sat on a log and realized that it was time now for neither the stillness of holiday, the beauty of meditation, nor the rumble of planning, but for the sitting with pain.

I rested my mind deep in my stomach and let the feelings rise and fall in the quiet wood, with the cars in the distance. Rise and fall, ferns and light, sighing. Writing this now, I don't remember what the feelings were, although I still feel the trouble in my heart. There, now I do. Dropping, heavy, falling, darkness, tightness, pushing ... sit, sit. Feeling shoulders release, the mind become a prairie, the tongue soften. I sat until I felt the lightness come up again, my body holding less weight and the air seeming fresh and warm again, instead of brusque and cold, my hair settling on my head instead of flying about in the wind. Less urgency now, more summer.

My feet sunk into the deep loamy dirt of the path out of the woods as I made my way care-fully back to Keats Way. There is really no where to go. How relieving! I just want to be, and I am, here. Where else?


2.

Now I don't want to write or describe, I want to sit here, very still, and exist. To write feels like to move, to move the mind as the body moves when travelling. To grasp at the next turn, the next landmark, to thrill at an expression or a landscape. To feel the wheel of the heart revolving and revolving, generating, building, spinning into the future. To describe feels like capturing energy in a jar, the perfect stillness of the glass animated deliciously by the spark of a firefly. Now I don't want any animation - I want the jar empty, I want the emptiness in the jar. Impossible to write that, when any word is a step towards fullness. If only there was a way to write backwards, then that might begin to soothe my heart space, release my limbs. If there was a way to write that took away the reader's admiration for my skill, undid the snap of appreciation and recognition, made nothing of me.

3.

I have aired out my tent, in the backyard, read, done some dishes, eaten a sandwich, and read some more, and now I am ready to write again.

4.

After leaving the park, I went, filled with bright sun and good pain, up Amos St to where it turns at the Beechwood Club, and then took a path I discovered last summer over the hill, through the gaudy suburbs, and down through Resurrection College to the University. It was a good and optimistic feeling to be on top of the hill, to be not quite certain that this path did in fact take me down to where I wanted to go, and to feel willing to continue on and find out.

My reason for going to the University was to see a pow wow at St Paul's College. I came to the bottom of the hill where the pow wow was happening and sat under a wide willow tree, watching the dancers prepaare through a curtain of willow limbs in the wind. When the opening ceremonies began, I stood under the tree and watched the dancers come in, of all ages, and form a circle around the main tent, where the singers were chanting and the drummers were beating the drums. I listened to a high wail and responding wails, as the dances and protocols went on. The leader had a gentle, slightly accented voice, the rhythmic rural cadence of the Native English speaker. I felt the rhythm of the chanting come in and flow out of me, from the sunlight, into the sunlight.

After an hour, when the opening ceremonies ended, I came home to rest and feel the stillness of the afternoon come to rest gently on my quietly electric body.

Bearinger Road, September 17, 2011

Saturday morning was cool, clear and sunny. I had spent the night before biking around in the cold darkness, settling into the weekend, reading The Remembrance of Things Past in the streetlight at the edge of a deep dark park, making up new constellations in the clear dark sky, admiring the outlines of trees and the bright flashes of flowers in the night. I didn't speak at all between leaving work at 4:30 on Friday until after the ride I am now going to describe. So, although the past week had been very busy and full of talking and moving, and was so tiring that I fell asleep reading the Tale of Genji on the couch after work on Friday, I woke up on this fine clear late summer day, the dark autumn night and the tired electricity of the week behind me, ready for adventure. It is not every day that my body feels as fine as this, the light coursing through it unbroken, glowing clear and strong.

Before heading for bed the night before,in the darkness of the park, I pulled out my map into the streetlight because, inspired by my success on the River Road, I had an idea that I could try to do the Bearinger Road loop. Older or perhaps birthed in the same dawn as the River Road loop (that one August day two years ago where I left work at the end of the day, during a light rain, heartbroken and empty, and biked north, stopping at Columbia Lake on the dock to shout into the water and sky "This is the beginning!", that day when I began to re-learn my geography and re-write my history), the Bearinger loop has daunted me time and again. A brilliant success it was that first day in August to make it round the corner from Westmount to University - burst of sun through clouds, golden rods exploding in sunshine by the road side, big blue cloudy sky - freedom! - a thrill it was to arrive at Fischer Hallman and University, feeling myself on the cold hard edge of the world - a delicious thrill to pedal a short ways down Bearinger, savouring every revolution, loving the open fields, feeling wild under the big sky, - knowing I'd have to turn around shortly. I could not go any further. Bearinger stretched away vastly in an eastern curve of green and fields, looking endless and inviting and terrifying. I longed to return to that once familiar path along the lake, that country road in the middle of the city, where I had spent many a golden evening in the my first year of university. But, not on this or many other days.

This morning I came from the East, up the Iron Horse Trail through the University and into North Campus. Summer morning, quiet. I am comfortable in the North Campus: it's empty post-apocalyptic fields still feel as wild and thrilling as they did 2 years go when they were my first discovery after re-discovering Columbia Lake. Pushing through, steadily, with confidence, ready to meet my goal, I felt myself steady, calm, focused, like an athlete before a race. Up the hill to Bearinger, then down Bearinger, watching the north west end of Waterloo open before me, fields, trees, powerlines, distant developments, fresh winds from the North, imaginings of the country beyond. Picking up speed, I began to repeat to myself, without words, with ideas, that I could do this. I come to the lights at the intersection of Bearinger and Hagey Blvd: the farthest reaches of my present universe. I was not turning down Hagey on this day, although even that takes courage. I sped through the lights and found myself heading without hesitation down the country road.

There was a man walking down the road, on the left side, heading in the same direction as myself. I told myself two times that if a man was walking all the way down the road (because where would he go if not to the end of it?) than surely this is a safe and ordinary place, a place where people take walks and the walking is the most ordinary thing in the world. The road was very busy, frighteningly busy, with narrow shoulders and overhanging trees. I was mildly anxious for the man's safety, and my own. I stopped at the shoulder to remove my hat and gloves, and my sweaters fell off the back of my bike and I had to reorganize myself and still I was not afraid. Because, moments before, this had happened:

I realized very suddenly, only a hundred yards past the interaction, that I could SEE the end of the road. I look carefully, many times, as I traveled along, to see if it was a trick of the angle, but no, the road was amazingly short and I was traveling through it in what I can only describe as an strangely disappointingly short amount of time. The trees alongside the road lost their luster and the day became a little dull and flat, although still so objectively beautiful. I smiled with the joy of success, and the success felt a little hollow. I simply felt that I had missed some part of the challenge, that a piece was missing, some vital energy, of anxiety, of fear, or even just of effort. It felt so effortless. I tried to appreciate the beauty of the day and felt very little but ordinary, which was not an unpleasant feeling, just unexpected. This feeling continued up around the corner, and then I got distracted looking at the new Library and YMCA building. By the time I came out in the hard and shining end of the universe of Fischer Hallman and University, I felt mildly glorious again, with the feeling of accomplishment and freedom and the enjoyment of the sun on this cool morning - and yet tinged with a certain dullness and disappointment or maybe just surprise, of the kind you get when you slay a dragon and then wonder if you'll ever again feel the sublime thrill of it's mystery and terror. It makes you wonder if the beauty was in the fear, or rather, the fear came from the beauty. When the world feels so beautiful that all you can do is shake and shiver, and you can only look on it for a few moments. And this felt like the opposite of that, where the world is so ordinary that you wonder what all the fuss of getting there was about. I remembered suddenly that near by to here was the trail I'd written one of my first blog posts about.

Although the dullness was there, I was still pretty pleased to have made it this far and to feel the confidence to go further. I was not unaware that although at this moment I felt a little let down, the success of this ride was opening doors in my mind to further adventures and many possible freedoms. I went further down University, but found the loud and fast-moving traffic to make it an unenjoyable ride, not worth the physical and emotional effort. So I stopped in a wild suburban park and admired the colours of goldenrod, purple aster and a small white flower against the tangled and abundant dark green of later summer foliage.


My phone rang and I didn't answer it, not recognizing the number, and then I became anxious, feeling at the end of the invisible energy thread I'd spun out this far. I felt this was completely reasonable given the success of the day, so I returned to University and took Fischer Hallman down to Clair Lake Park. There, I sat and enjoyed the conversation of ducks, the weight and lightness of willows, and the memory of reading Dharma Bums in this very spot one year ago. Later on I went to the Medieval Faire, where a palm reader told me I had a strong heart line, and thus a strong feeling, but that my emotions were in balance, and that I knew my own mind.

Belmont and the Iron Horse Trail Rail Road Tracks, September 13, 2011

Tonight I went running. I ran through the graveyard and some Kitchener neighborhoods, and finished my run on the Iron Horse trail where it passes under the rail road tracks. I climbed up the slippery rocky path to the tracks. Up on top of the tracks, I can look west and east as the tracks fade into blue. I like to imagine London - I've never been in that direction. I like to imagine the day when I take the train west. I imagine that on that day I'll get the train going west and stay on it for a long time, keep traveling into an open future.

Tonight I walked east down the tracks for a while, alone in a quiet urban wilderness, goldenrod and long grasses bobbing between the tracks and the factory and the small industrial shacks. I imagined myself walking all the way to Toronto, quiet, steady, ordinary. Then I turned around and went west for a while, crossed Belmont as the sun started to go down.

I walked for long time after that in the quiet side streets, as the trees and the sky darkened, as the still late summer night came slowly down.

Breithaupt Park, September 12, 2011

There were flashes of lightning throughout the early evening, and some very long rumbles of thunder. I planned to take a walk to the library, and then in the rain. A few blocks from my house, I realized that the sky was clear in parts and that there was no reason to be walking around, carrying an umbrella, going to busy Uptown when my day had already been filled with people, when I could be going back home, getting my bicycle and going to Breithaupt Park.

I circled the block and returned to the apartment. A few minutes later I left again, this time heading east. I cycled through the park on the road, and stopped on the north east side of the ball diamond. Several short pine trees were grouped on a bed of grass, and I lay down under them facing towards the diamond and the woods. I read my book and occasionally glanced up to let the purple grey sky and the growing wind seep into me. The sky turned a grey blue and the trees became black, and I lay my book down on the pine needles, shifted over to the base of a tree, and entered into the half lotus position. While I meditated, it became darker, and occasionally lightening flashed. A few drops of rain fell. The air became cooler.

I felt a perverse sense that it would be acceptable to die by lightning strike. Not that I would want to, but that if I had to, I could accept it, more than say, dying by being shot or poisoned. I imagined the lightening as a concentration of life's energy coming out of the sky, entering my body and joining me to the earth in an electric moment. An innocent death, a death without meaning, a death by life. Death by nature, like being eaten by an animal or crushed by a tree. Life merging with life.

I then imagined what it would feel like to survive lightning strike. Would I have brain damage? Would I experience more or less anxiety than I do now? Would I have a streak of a scar?

With two minutes left in my practice, there was an intense flash of lightning to the west and I began to wonder if I was tempting fate out here in this field. I chanted my closing mantras:

Om Mane Padme Hung

Ta ya ta
Om
Bekanze bekanze maha bekanze
Radza sumud gate soha

wishing healing for three beloved women in my life, my mother, my grandmother and my dear friend Jean. During this chant to the Medicine Buddha, I visualize myself as the gentle and loving blue deity, and feel his healing energy pouring out of me and into me, into my loved ones. I feel my heart expand with joy.

And then a final

Amen

and hands in namaste, and I leapt up and walked my bike across the dark field, into and through the woods, and back home, where I called my mother and talked excitedly with her, sitting on my balcony, while watching little clouds pass over the full moon.

Riverbend Drive, September 11, 2011

Cold and damp morning, pale sunlight. I woke up in the tent in the yard to the sound of chickens and the damp coming through my mattress. It felt already like a lovely morning - a morning of cedar and pine and blue sky. I quickly took care of the necessities of starting a good day - eat, feed and pet cat, put on socks and shoes.

Even before I started to consciously plan my trip, I became aware of the possibility of completing the Riverbend Drive loop on this day. Riverbend Drive and it's emotional impenetrability have been a source of tension and an obstruction to my travels for 2 years. Completing the Riverbend Drive loop had become a sort of benchmark of my progress. This road was like a wall which I beat against every so often in my slow yet persistent quest to travel all roads leading into, out of and through this city.

Two years ago, once damp morning in August, when the sun was still pale and the wind still fresh before a day of heat to come, I bravely pushed my way up the Guelph St hill just past the underpass, re-breaking new ground that had once been a familiar starting point to adventures in the world beyond - Bloomingdale, Mary Hill, East Kitchener, Breslau, Guelph proper. Alas, no more - this was all emotionally foreign territory again, a significant loss of freedom now forgotten by the terrific sense of accomplishment I experienced as I crested the enormous hill, pushing with all my might, satisfied and tired. Dogs in the runs at the Humane Society, which is located where Guelph St meets River Rd, barked their celebration of my victory, my quest to re-discover the Old World.

Standing with the posture of an explorer who'd just planted a flag in the earth (or the moon) I smiled at the wildflowers bobbing their encouragement in the windy ditch. I had traveled many little roads that summer two years ago and penetrated persistently into many new little worlds. Now, standing at the top of this one, seeing River Road stretch out northwards before me, a long gentle slope into a sea of trees, office buildings and industrial centre peeking out like little islands, and a wide sky over me, hearing the dogs barking in the morning air, it seemed as though the most natural thing to do would be to sweep down that hill, feeling the blast of wind in my face and in my heart, the growing excitement of the road taken.

And - I found I couldn't. I couldn't let go of the brakes and set sail down this hill. I spent quite a while at the top of it, alternately bolstering my confidence by remembering how satisfied I was to be where I was to begin with, and shaken by the feeling that I couldn't go any further. The wildflowers were so beautiful and the wind so fresh and fragrant. Life really wasn't so bad, despite it's difficulties. I had been progressing well. A life of small things, of moving in small circles, of slow progress, could be and was a blessed life. I was happy.

And a little heart-broken. Eventually I went home.

For two years, I occasionally returned to this corner, stood at the top of the hill, gazed down Riverbend Drive, and could not make myself let go of the brakes. One time I biked up from the Lancaster direction for some ways, and then turned around anxiously. Eventually, I began to avoid coming in this direction at all. I favoured other directions, northwest of the city, where I could break through and find new roads. I knew I could travel a little ways south east on River Road, but that held no joy, for I felt I could only go so far in this direction and then turn back. Travelling the neighborhoods leading up to Riverbend Drive began to feel futile and repetitive, like walking in circles in a wall garden. I began to realize how much of the mystery and charm one finds in a place is due to what lies beyond it.

I remained undecided, as I left the house this morning, two years later, whether I should attempt this often demoralizing test again. Since I started this writing last year, I have developed a new perspective on the conquering of roads. I now believe the only reason to explore is curiousity and joy, rather than the belief that if I fear something, I must do it to prove that I can, or to conquer the fear. I refuse to travel any road just because I feel like I can't. If I feel like I can't, then I don't. If I want to try, I try. I do what I want, and this summer has been a summer of light and sunshine and cool forest breezes and quiet gentle roads.

Since I felt curious to try again, I thought, I will, but I'll make sure that wherever I am if I fail is a beautiful place I can explore with a feeling of relaxation and pleasure. I would not like to stand again on top of that hill with only the wildflowers in the ditch and the wind and the wall as my destination. When I aimed this morning, I aimed for something delightful. I decided to go from the other direction, from Lancaster, because then if I failed I could at best work on getting further along the Grand River towards Bloomingdale, and at least enjoy the path along the river behind the office buildings.

As I came down Lancaster and it turned into River, I'd almost decided I wouldn't do it at all. There were whisperings in me saying,"You have not been able to do this, and so you must! If you do not do this, then you are a failure!" I thought, I haven't woken up on this delightful morning in late summer, free for a few hours to roam and delight in sun and wind and shade, to do anything other than for pleasure. I will just turn left into the wooded path and then see what I feel like doing.

And yet - my feet kept pedaling, my body falling naturally into the arc of the road, the arrow of my movement pulling me further along the Road, further and further, enjoying the trees on either side, enjoying the sky, landmarking myself, figuring out where I was, in the sunlight, until I was past the mid-point, that point in every road where you are about to be farther in than out, and you must commit, commit to the road and to your breath, commit to holding the fear if it overtakes you, commit to yourself that you will travel this road no matter what happens. A group of joggers suddenly coming off the trail to the east ahead comforted me. They were people doing things here and I was a person doing things here and this was a place people could just simply do things and nothing more, no stories or dangers or hidden meanings. As the road opened up I saw the trail head park and remembered, suddenly, it's existence and it's beauty and my memories, completely forgotten, of being there, of this being a place to play and be and explore. I smiled with shining delight at finding this forgotten place, of this forgotten part of myself.

I was in deep now, and I felt gentle rush of energy. It was now an uphill road. My legs pumped along with my heart, pushing up the road. I was again Columbus at the head of the ship, heart and mind and limbs totally focused on the new world ahead, body strained and tense, so much pressure on the body to push to survive in this forward motion, but the strength is here, the mind is here, the clarity and stillness is here. Everything I need is here.

I could see the Humane Society up ahead. The road became steeper. I got off and walked, and that was fine. After all, my challenge was time, not energy. Walking might have been a cop-out on muscle strength, but, adding as it did to my time in the uncertain, it was actually an indication of deeper capacity. Many steps, patience, steady focus. I crested the hill and there were the wildflowers and the wind and my corner which was now a lovely home-coming. The trees on the corner whispered, "We always knew you would come here and meet us like this!"

Tom's House, September 10, 2011

I visited my friend Tom at 9:00 in the morning. He usually goes to bed at 4:00 or 5:00 am on Friday nights and sleeps in on Saturday, but today, I sent him a text at 8:00 and woke him up. He was happy to see me. We sat on his porch, he opened the birthday present that I had brought him, and then we talked. The rhythm of my voice went up and down, quiet and loud. I talked loudly when I became excited about something and then I quieted myself as I remembered how early it was and how I kept interrupting him, and how lovely it was to sit back and listen to his voice again after so long. His voice, like his hair, golden and deep and slowly flowing, like the essence of honey in bees rumbling through sunlight on cool green leaves.

Later on we went into his backyard where he showed me his pile of industrial scraps from his renovations and his pile of apple scraps from his cider-making. He pulled a white plastic chair into the sun and I lay down on the grass in the shade. We talked about things.

Tom doesn't often see the light at this angle, the light at this time of the day. He found that it had a completely different quality from the light of mid-day or evening. Later on, as the day went by, he felt that the light was staying the same, and that maybe in this season of autumn, when the embers of the year glow before dying into darkness, the golden light of early morning suffuses the entire day.

We have seen three autumns together, and this was the first time that we became aware of this quality of the light.