spire for a car ride

''The inconstruable We-problem''

Assessing existence again because perpetually,
for the mind is a gang of grasping monkeys.

Thinking of Osho's words I read yesterday: ''A contentment that comes and goes again is not contentment, it is simply a gap between two miseries.''

Perhaps then, joy is made of those most authentic moments of sharing with a friend about underlying fears and anxieties.  Perhaps it's spending this time together, dancing in and with the unknown.  We wonder ''what to do with our lives'', but we already know, we are teachers and healers and leaders.

I just took my roommates A. and K. on a joy ride around the city.  I have a car these days, so I've been enjoying the irony and laziness of burning fuel to get around town.  It usually takes more time to go somewhere by car than by bicycle, because of street lights and one-ways and traffic and parking.  Oh well! I'm embracing the situation, naming the guilt, and taking full advantage of the engine while I have access...

Comment dit-on ''altar'' en français?
Je ne sais pas.

Concordia's bike co-op

K. asked if I would drive downtown with him to get a giant dry eraser board for the house.  I asked A., and we figured we could make a little adventure of it.
So we three hippies got inside the vehicle and drove through the city.  We listened to loud electronica music and watched out at the landscape... building features, monuments, parks. etc.
We got another perspective, noticed places we hadn't seen before, and went much further...

We went south-east in hopes of reaching the water and find a park there.  The weather was overcast but the temperature quite moderate.  We'd find a park and I'd perhaps guide a little Butoh exercise.

My roots are thirsty for context.  I want to learn this land and see its history.  So I open myself up to it...

This is not the Pacific Coast (how I miss the Ocean!)  This is a trading post, an industrial forest rising up at the heart of another particular geological landscape...

About 125 million years ago, magma rose through the Earth's crust in the Montreal region, crystallizing slowly at depth along many conduits. In this way, the Monteregian Hills were formed and with them, a number of rare minerals. Of all these features, Mount Saint-Hilaire is the best known as a source of rare specimens. In some cases, magma erupted at the surface, feeding volcanoes that have now completely disappeared. Since that time, erosion has removed several kilometres of rock. The hills that arevisible today represent the magma chambers and part of the conduits through which the molten rock rose toward the surface.

My new friends are a bunch of ''geographers''.  So I have been learning amazing facts about the natural world.  A few days ago, I learned that we live on the meeting point of two tectonically plates...

Mont-Royal is a dried up bubble from the center of the earth.  The sedimentary formation of both shores, and that of the island, are each of a different composition.  Isn't that amazing?  
The land is alive.  Its people are alive.  Geological conditions predate cultural epicenters.  And that's certainly the reason why people come here: the land and its people are deeply alive and intrinsically subject to transformation.  It's a matter of time-perspective.


What do we want for this island, a hundred years from now?

We didn't get to the River, but we found an industrial playground