I did not see much of Montreal or take any pictures. I stayed at the Bienvenue B&B in the Plateau Mont Royal neighborhood which feels a lot like Brooklyn, except there are bigger snowdrifts and French signs everywhere. The B&B was a 5-minute walk to the Zen Centre which is Leonard Cohen's former home. He lives in the property next door overlooking the park on Saint Dominique and is slowly reinhabiting the top floor of the Centre which was formerly the zendo. Later this spring, the Centre will relocate to a new space in the Plateau.
First night in, went to a bar reading pre-festival event. The MC had been drinking all day red wine with Red Pine. Caught the last two readers of the night, David O'Meara and Erin Moure, who translates from Galician.
Next day, overslept and missed zazen and arrived late to breakfast. In the afternoon, a lecture at McGill with translator David Hinton who talked about deep ecology in Chinese and Zen poetry. Read that night with Seido Ray Ronci, who apparently studied with Bill Corbett of Pressed Wafer, back when Bill was teaching at Emerson in Boston. Seido is an intense man, ultra-direct and his poetry had something of the death-drive in it (i.e. his poem "My Skull"), though tempered at times by humor. Very accessible poems and stories, with a toughness about them.
Missed zazen the next day and facilitated a renga workshop with 8 participants who wrote 20-verse renga together. I underestimated how long it would take to write individual stanza, but in retrospect, this was an indicator that things were going right. Big thank you to Caroline, Kaidey, Jonathan, Mary, Maria Jose, Rodrigo, Frieda, and Robin for their participation. Afternoon translation panel with Red Pine, Stephen Addiss, Dennis Maloney of White Pine Press, Peter Levitt, and David Hinton; and then an evening conversation and reading with Chase Twichell and Peter again. A few poems into Peter's reading, I found myself completely overcome by emotion - more on that in a future post, but I basically wept quietly through his entire reading and then ducked out.
Sunday I missed zazen again and the festival held a nice little brunch in the financial district of Montreal, near the port and old part of the city, at Soupesoupe. Stephen Addiss talked about haiga and I talked about the visual art influence in my work. Thinking through the lens of Zen was useful to see the work as an exploration of my desire for beauty, truth and the ineffable. Afterwards, walked around the port with Peter and talked about marriage and relationships and the nature of knowing. We ended up passing the Hotel D'Ville, which was under reconstruction - about 1/3 of it under a screenprinted tarp with the image of what the hotel should look like in its glory. We ended up in Chinatown eating congee and won ton soup. More food 2 hours later with the Abbess of the Zen Center and Victor Sogen Hori, Sojun (a Zen monk), Peter, and Red Pine at a Portuguese restaurant in the Plateau.
I would describe the weekend as ichi-go ichi-e. It left a deep impression on my heart and being surrounded by so many serious practitioners, I have a sharper sense of what I am looking for in a spiritual community of dharma friends and teachers, though Salt Spring, BC and Albuquerque, NM seem far today.
Thank you to Zenshin for the foto:
