September 3, 2010

Time Travel (without a Machine)

Yesterday I kept my promise to myself to do a little time-traveling.

I started off with taking the Canada Line to Oakridge to check to see if they had any items I required. It turns out that the back to school rush is not the best time to shop as a lot of the merchandise had been removed from packaging and rummaged through.

I then took the line back to King Edward where I walked west to Ash and then cut north off the busy street and into the shady tree lined streets. It was another hot sunny day but I’d opted to go hat-less earlier and didn’t regret it as it was a marvelous late summer outing.

First I decided to visit the house formerly owned by dear friend Bruno Castellan and his family where I shared many a delightful meal and where Bruno often tucked a $20 bill into the shirt pocket of this penniless friend of his.

I couldn’t find the house however nor even see the school I remember was opposite them. So I continued west along 23rd for a few blocks until I reached the outskirts of Douglas Park. It climbs a ridge and from there I could see the bell tower of the school; I had not traveled far north enough. It was on 21st Avenue.

So I backtracked and in short few minutes saw the familiar outline of the high roof of Bruno’s old home towering above the others on the street .  Imagine my delight when I neared the house and saw that it had been refurbished by someone who knows the value of these old properties and obviously had the resources to do it justice.

It was newly painted and the staircase leading up to the front door was now paneled with buffed wooden planks on either side, so that whoever placed their hands there for balance would meet a sleek almost nouveau art natural surface.

From my vantage point on the sidewalk I could see the living room through the picture window and that it too had been updated with modern furnishings, plants and paint. I said a short prayer of thanks in memory of my dear friend and could almost feel his pleasure knowing his beloved home which he’d labored to renovate and imagine/invent new furniture designs for his family (and where he’d passed away after his battle with cancer) had been so lovingly preserved.

Next I headed back towards Douglas Park to see if the Rosicrucian Temple was still standing. I had been introduced there in the early 70’s after a chance meeting in the Jolly Alderman pub near City Hall with Bill and Deena Howard who were members and who lived just up the street from the temple. They were volunteer caretakers as well and invited me in on a tour.

It looks more like a community hall and as I approached I could see the large ark-like structure rising from its surrounding garden with the blue letters AMORC emblazoned over the door. In contrast to the house once owned by Bruno it looked far more deserted.

I went to the side door where I had entered in the past only to find a huge spider’s web blocking the sidewalk and an enormous garden spider with its exotic hieroglyphic markings hanging dead centre. It would have been a startling wake up to any pedestrian who happened to blunder through.

From there I took a walk back around the park and under the enormous and ancient weeping willows where I used to meditate in the days of working up the street at the old veteran’s hospital which is now part of Children’s Hospital. In those early 70’s days I could often be seen walking to work with one of Madame Blavatsky’s enormous weighty tomes under arm, which I would read on my lunch break. In my imagination I was only days away from discovering the true and hidden message of The Secret Doctrine.

I paused at the Douglas Park Community Centre to walk up the steep set of concrete steps to the office and to use the public washroom there. It was a challenging climb and on way out I opted for the wheelchair ramp and its more user-friendly grade.

Then I went back up to 23rd and took one more look at the Rosicrucian Temple which brought back the memories of the huge Egyptian frescoes inside and finally spotted what appeared to be the old home of Bill and Deena.

There was a man on a stepladder on the upper floor level working around the windows which were covered in plastic accidentally smudged with new paint. The house had been newly repainted a deep burgundy and looked quite elegant. It was in that house at a dinner one night that I spoke with the old Rosicrucian elder who told his friend (they were discussing me as if I was absent) that I had a connection with India. Of course I didn’t believe him.

After this I traveled a little further west up 23rd to find the house of my dear friend Roger Apperley who I first met in California in the late 60’s. He was working as a bartender at The Cats Restaurant in Los Gatos where I played music every night. Although he was 10 years my senior we soon became good friends.

After I moved to Vancouver in 1970 with Veronica steered in this direction by Roger who was then working at the Banff Springs Hotel as a barman, he rented the house on 23rd with some friends and there we spent many a lovely evening sharing memories and food (Roger was a great cook; his rack of lamb with mint jelly was a favorite) and talking and drinking into the wee hours.

Veronica and I lived a few blocks away in a rooming house on W13th just behind the Vancouver General Hospital and it was an easy walk to Roger’s place from there through Douglas Park. We both fathered our first children there who were born within days of each other in the VGH’s Willow Pavilion and so our families had a lot more in common.

I had more difficulty spotting the house he used to live in as I couldn’t remember the number but it was a choice between 2 of them in the 500 block north side, both with similar layout but in vastly different states of repair. One was neatly renovated and up kept and the other run-down and badly in need of work. I am still not sure which one was his, although I suspect it was the run-down rental property which in the early 70’s looked much more presentable.

From there I walked up Oak to the Shaughnessy Crescent where the towering old mansions of the early railway barons still reign supreme over the surrounding neighborhoods. There I cut through the circular park and exited on Angus which took me further up Granville than I had anticipated. I should’ve found McRae which would have taken me past the elegant University Women’s Club and down to the corner of 16th & Granville.

I walked past the Falun Gong tribute site on Granville where 2 pensioners were seated in meditation on the grassy boulevard in front of the stone wall and reading religious texts. The city has successfully torn down the little structure they maintained but the group has maintained its spot and presence without it. The old man looked up at me suspiciously as I passed and smiled but the old lady smiled back and gave a generous and child-like wave.

That was the route we used to take on our way to breakfast or lunch at Szasz’s on Granville, the Hungarian restaurant and deli we were so fond of. Roger liked it so much he named his son Szasz. The restaurant is now gone but in its place is a new restaurant with much the same design. I was tempted to stop in for a snack on my way past but that would have been stretching my time trip into the immaterial realm and in an irrelevant direction.

I was satisfied that my day’s mission had been accomplished and continued on my walk towards Granville Island and from there across the Burrard Street Bridge home.

August 8, 2010

To Ky on his 23rd Birthday

Can you be 23 already?

It seems like only yesterday
I held you in my arms
Your tiny blue hat perched
Atop the innocent face
A baby’s face but already
Oh so wise.

You were born at home
On a mattress in the living room
Without any respirators,
Incubators or the trappings
Of a hospital maternity ward.

There was only me,
Lillian our midwife,
Your mom and a friend with a camera
Who was so amazed and worried
She forgot to take pictures.

You refused to be born at first
Your shoulder wedged on a bone
In your mothers pelvis
Dystocia” they call it,
As if the weight of the world
Was something you had not yet
Decided you wanted to carry.

When Lillian reached inside and
Moved your shoulder, out you came
But refused to breathe.
It was only when you heard
Your mother crying “Talk to him
Karen, talk to him

That you took your first breath
Very like a deep breath taken
Before a dive.

You were diving into being.

And once you decided to make
That dive, you did so with
Incredible grace. I did not know then
What an amazing swimmer
You would become.

August 4, 2010

Note from baba

Hi All,

Two years ago I made the commitment to publish my book Eagalic Music on line without any conditions attached. I wanted to leave a legacy for my children, family and friends so that they would be able to track my journey.

With the help of my good friend Danny Dang, we lauched eagalicmusic.com and I began to publish the chapters of my book already written. I had completed the book as written up until Karen and I returned from India in 1986. The final chapter is my intitiation into the Sufi lineage in India.

I have kept detailed journals over all the years since but I am, as I “Tweeted” recently, standing at a crossroad waiting for the wind to blow.

I have not yet decided whether to continue this post, as most of my respondents have been friends, family and old band members. And so I am taking a brief hiatus, while I weigh the situation to date.

I am going to put out a question to my readers so far…

“Do you want to hear more?”

I am waiting to hear from you. Please respond via the “Contact” link in my post or via comments with any suggestions, and I will weigh them carefully before continuing on.

In the meantime, thanks for sharing my journey with me.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Love, baba

July 2, 2010

The Smell of My Father’s Coat

9 a.m. and we are gratefully back in Delhi’s Marina Hotel. The last twenty-four hours seems like a dream. We had arrived in Gaya yesterday after a tearful farewell with the Lodge staff who had all lined up, including the manager’s mother, to have their picture taken with us.

Gaya seemed even more filthy than it had before and the heat was so intense that we consumed 10 orange soda pops in the space of a half hour. We couldn’t bear to spend a night in what felt to us like a den of thieves after our last experience and so using plenty of baksheesh to grease the wheels we obtained tickets for a 3 a.m. train to Delhi. This meant a 12 hour wait in Gaya and we used it to explore and do a little shopping.

We hired a bicycle rickshaw to ferry us through the streets, all four of us piled on the torn plush of the seat and navigated through this area of intense poverty. We purchased some scarves to wrap our newly shaved heads and protect our scalps from the sun and we felt quite rakish in them, looking perhaps like extras in “Lawrence of Arabia” I thought or real life characters from “Journey to the East”.

The hours dragged by and we spent the last of them waiting for the train, trying to sleep on benches in the station waiting areas with many other travelers who were also attempting a restless, uncomfortable sleep while awaiting the arrival of the midnight train.

more…

June 2, 2010

An Inside View

Karen is amazing. I return to the lodge to find that once again she has the whole staff in an uproar but this time they are moving furniture and cleaning.  First it was our room, where everything was shifted, swept, washed, disinfected and put back and now she has them in the kitchen doing the same thing. 

In the center of the courtyard is a huge pile of refuse that has been cleaned out of the kitchen and they are still at it.  Karen is in there herself, with a hose, washing down the walls.  They are literally overhauling the kitchen. 

Karen comes outside for a moment to tell me, “There was a rat in there!  They are willing to clean but they don’t know how to do it and so I’m showing them.”  If what they suffer is a lack of motivation, then Karen is supplying the lion’s share.  She is determined to clean the filth from the kitchen so that no one else will suffer the same fate as she did.

more…