My Experiences on the Vancouver Street Retreat 2007

Vancouver Street Retreat
August 2-5, 2007


Dedication
To the Face of Death and the Sound of Children’s Laughter

My thanks for support and editing goes to my beautiful wife, Mitra Remy Jordan

Summary

In August 2007, I participated in the Vancouver Street Retreat. For four days I lived and slept on the streets of Vancouver in the Downtown East Side (DTES) with a group of twelve other people. This is an extension of my Zen practice and was organized by a Buddhist group in Vancouver. I did this retreat because I was sexually abused as a child and I wanted to bear witness to the activities of the street. Not to change things, but just to be there. It was a powerful experience, and difficult to summarize. I found it very intense and moving.

What did I learn on the street? I learned how little I know. Some examples:

1) I thought I would have to panhandle for money to buy food. Luckily that wasn’t the case or I would have probably starved! In the 1.5 hours I spent panhandling, I was only given one used pop can.
2) I thought panhandling was the way most people on the street earned money. I found there are many ways to earn money on the street, of which panhandling is only one, and panhandlers only represent some of the people on the street. I learned panhandling was hard and demeaning work. I can’t imagine doing it unless you desperately need the money. I now feel different when I see someone panhandling.
3) I didn’t think there would be very much food and I expected to go to bed hungry. However, I found a lot of free food in Vancouver. I am not sure about Victoria or any other place, but in Vancouver I was given more food than I ever thought possible. The serving sizes were large enough that I started only eating two meals a day, otherwise I was too full.
4) I thought the DTES would be more like other parts of Vancouver. I found it so different that it is hard to believe it is part of the same city. Within the DTES there is almost a small town feel. After only a few days of visiting the soup kitchens, I started recognizing some people. I felt if I kept going, I would soon recognize a lot of people.
5) I never thought cardboard was particularly useful. Now I have learned that cardboard is great. It is easy to find and wonderfully comfortable to sit on, and to sleep on (in comparison to other options), because it does a remarkable job of insulating you from the cold ground. I have even heard that it makes a good blanket. I am now a big fan of cardboard.

What follows is an account of my experiences on the street retreat. I have changed the names of people we met on the street and I have avoided describing the experiences of other retreat participants as I can only speak to my own. I do know that, for each of, us, living on the streets was profound.

Introduction

The Vancouver Street Retreat was held over four days (three nights) on the streets of the downtown eastside of Vancouver (DTES). It was organized by Lisa Hill of the Vancouver Shambhala Centre. She brought in Grover Genro Gauntt from New York to lead the retreat. Genro is with the Zen Peacemakers Order. This group first pioneered the idea of the Zen Street Retreat (see Bearing Witness by Bernie Glassman). Genro is one of only three Zen Peacemakers in North America that leads these retreats at this time. Details on the Zen Peacemakers Order are at: http://www.zenpeacemakers.org/about/index.htm


Experiences Prior to the Retreat

You had to donate $350 to participate in the retreat.. However, you could not pay this donation yourself. You had to ask friends and family to donate so that you could attend. All additional amounts that I raised were also donated. The donation goes to street organizations to repay for your use of their services during your time on the street. I was surprised how many people were willing to donate and how much interest there was about the retreat. Many people who donated made specific statements about how they thought “this is important. I am not in a place where I would do this. I am happy to donate and support you doing this.”

About a week before the retreat, we were asked to stop washing our hair. I had read about this before and not thought much about it. It didn’t seem like a big thing. However, by the third day of not washing my hair, I felt dirty. I was surprise by how much this little thing impacted me. It was around this time that I started to think this whole retreat idea was crazy. I also began to realize that the act of collecting my donation (from about 50 people) was a good way to ensure I actually went on the street retreat. As the date for the retreat got closer, I got more nervous and scared about what I was undertaking. I wondered if I was insane to consider going.

Two nights before the retreat, I made a necklace of beads (Zen prayer beads known as a mala). On each bead I wrote the name of a person/couple/family/organization who donated to support my participation on the street retreat. I thought that this would be a nice thing to do, but didn’t realize how tangible it would make everyone’s support. Seeing all of these beads in an ever increasing pile struck me. It became a physical reminder of how may people were supporting me. I felt blessed. I read the name on every one of the beads at least once a day while I was on the street. Having this mala was very sustaining for me. I have attached a photo of my mala.

The night before the retreat, I packed my stuff. Then I packed my stuff again. Then I looked at my stuff for the retreat and packed it yet again. On the third time, I could see how little there was (see attached photo). I had a small backpack, a change of socks, a small plastic sheet, my driver’s license, my mala, a sweater, a bright yellow rain poncho, $2.50 in change (bus fare home) and the clothes I was wearing. This wasn’t much stuff. In fact, I actually packed more stuff for after the retreat than I packed for the retreat (see attached photo). Weird, eh?

My nervousness reached its peak on the PCL bus from Victoria to Vancouver the day of the retreat. I thought to myself, “I don’t have to go on the retreat. I could just not do this.” Of course, as soon as I thought about all of the people supporting me, I decided I would rather do the street retreat than tell these supporters that I hadn’t done it. I had sent an email out a few days before the retreat and had received many encouraging responses. On the PCL bus I read all of these responses again. In particular, one that summarized many of them read, “All will be well. Take care of yourself and others. Spread your compassion to others that need it.” I thought of these words often on the retreat.


The Retreat Participants

Thirteen people participated in the retreat, including Genro, the leader, and Lisa, the organizer. On average, most participants were very experienced meditators.. Two of them were in their final stages of being ordained. One of them was leaving shortly for a 6 month retreat in Myanmar (Burma). Many of the participants had previously been on meditation retreats. Of the twelve participants (not including the leader), there were five men and seven women. I had thought (incorrectly) that there might be more men than women, but this was clearly not the case. My expectation about the ages of the participants was also incorrect. I was surprised to see people from their twenties to their fifties.


The Retreat – Day 1 (Thursday)

We all met at 3pm at Strathcona Park (Hawks Ave. and Prior St.) in East Vancouver on the first day of the retreat. Once everyone was gathered, the first thing we did was to sit in a circle in the grass and meditate for about 30 minutes. This helped to settle the group. We all introduced ourselves and Genro discussed some specifics of the retreat. In particular, he explained about security. As we were spending almost all of our time in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), we needed to be careful. For those of you not too familiar with the Downtown Eastside (DTES), here is a little introduction from Wikipedia:

“Once the core shopping district in the city, many of the retail shops that flourished through the early 1980s are now long gone. Buildings that are not boarded up have bars on the windows. Overhead doors cover many storefronts at night to protect them from theft and vandalism. Used syringes and condoms on neighborhood sidewalks are not uncommon, however United We Can, a charity organization, offers local people jobs cleaning up the streets each morning. Graffiti is prevalent throughout, and most DTES alleys are regularly used as makeshift toilet facilities. The area is noted for high incidences of poverty, drug addiction, violent crime, and prostitution, as well as an ongoing tradition of community activism.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside

Genro explained that we needed to always be aware of what was going on around us (in terms of people, but also in terms of used needles). This was an interesting take on the Buddhist practice of staying in the present moment. It was the first time I thought of that practice as not a spiritual practice, but a pragmatic self-defense practice. Next, we were to always be with someone else, not alone. We walked together in a group and occasionally would break into smaller groups. The exception was when we would eat a meal at one of the free food services in the DTES. Then we would spread out (both in line before the meal, during the service that almost always preceded the meal and then during the meal.

After meditation, introductions and the retreat basics, we walked to the heart of the DTES. As a side note, we did a lot of walking. Everywhere we went, we walked. I was glad to have comfortable shoes. We first walked by the Carnegie Community Centre (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Community_Centre). If we ever got split up, then we were to re-group at the Carnegie. From there, we walked to find a place for dinner. We tried a few places and ended up in line outside the Union Gospel Mission (see: http://www.ugm.ca/). We spread out and waited in twos and threes through the line. From where I was sitting, I could see a prostitute about 1.5 blocks away working on the corner. I sat there, watching her and looking at the other people in line. I didn’t know what to do or think. We were there for about 30 minutes (hard to tell as Genro was the only one on the retreat with a watch) and then we all filed in. There were two people at the door, greeting us and counting us. This set-up was pretty common at the places we went. Someone usually greeted/checked you as you went in and someone usually counted you.

We went into a small hall and all sat down. I ended up sitting away from other members of the street retreat. I felt really out of place. I felt nervous about how I looked and thought I really stood out. I didn’t talk to anyone around me. The service on the first evening was run by some young women from South America. They sung songs (some of which were in English). After the songs, one of the women (late 20s, I would guess) got up and talked about bringing Jesus into her life. She talked briefly about her life before, which had involved abuse followed by committing acts of adultery and murder. I had trouble connecting the things that this woman was talking about with the image of who she was now.

Following the sermon, we went into the next room to get dinner. I am a vegetarian and I wondered how this was going to work on the street. I had visions of waiting in line, getting food at places like a cafeteria. As it turned out, none of the places served food like in a cafeteria. The food was always plated ahead of time and handed to you. Everyone would get basically the same thing. There was no choice in what you got.

So, we walked into the next room the Union Gospel Mission and there were filled plates at every seat. We all took the seat we were told to take. My plate was filled with a large piece of liver. There were a few other things on the plate, but mostly it was just liver. I could have given the liver away, but I felt too out of place and didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I was feeling so uncomfortable. But I thought, “Beggars can’t be choosers”, so I will eat the meat. I took my first bite of meat in many years and surprisingly it reminded me of my mother’s home cooking. When I was little, she used to make liver just like the liver I was now eating. She stopped making it as we got older, so it is a taste that I associate only with being young. So here I was, feeling uncomfortable and out of place, eating the first meat I had eaten in years, worried it would make me feel sick, when the taste surprised me by bringing back wonderful and comforting feelings from my childhood. This was the first time on the retreat I thought I was doing the right thing. I felt a little more at home.

After the meal, we all re-grouped outside and walked around the DTES. In particular, we spent some time after dark across the street from the Carnegie chatting with people and watching the world. There was a vivid street life. It had a chaotic feeling that reminded me of the larger cities I visited in South East Asia. Several folks from our group joined a very long line for free fruit and candy. I was still not chatting with anyone outside of our group yet. I was leaning against a wall, trying to take everything in. There was an older guy in front of me. He seemed really out of it and his clothes were a real mess. Then for some reason, he picked up a broom and started sweeping up the garbage on the street. It was surreal.

After that, we walked off to find a place to spend our first night. We walked through a couple of places and finally settled on an area behind the Strathcona Community Centre (which is next to the Strathcona Elementary School). Details at: http://vancouver.ca/parks/cc/strathcona/index.htm. We broke into small groups and found areas on the ground. On the first night, I arranged my bed very much like I would arrange a bed at home. I put my plastic sheet on the ground, used my pack as a pillow and my rain poncho as a blanket. It was quite cold. On other nights, instead of trying to make a bed like I had back home, I was more practical. I focused on arranging my clothes to keep me warm. It was hard to sleep on the first night. I was tired, but anxious. Thoughts raced through my mind: What am I doing here? This is stupid. This was a dumb idea. This is not like living on the street at all. I feel like a tourist behind some glass wall!

The moon was quite bright and I read the name of everyone on my mala in the moonlight. This settled me a bit. A little later I heard someone’s voice say, “There is a bench over there. We can do it there.” I was then stepped on by some guy. I moved and he jumped back several steps exclaiming, “Whoa! There is someone sleeping here!” A woman responded, “That’s okay. We can go over here.” They left my immediate area and I lay there thinking about what happened. That was a prostitute and her john. I had been stepped on by a john and at this very moment, only a few feet away, they are doing their business. At that point, the street retreat didn’t seem behind glass anymore!

At other times that first night, a police car came by. It stopped. Someone got out. I could hear the car radio, but nothing happened. After a time it drove off. Later, other people came to sleep and sit in the same area. One person kept asking, “Is this private? Is this private?”


The Retreat – Day 2 (Friday)

The next morning, we were all up early. I was so pleased to see the sun finally come up and the night to be over. As it turned out, only one person had slept well (ironically, it was not the leader of the retreat). Everyone else had hardly slept at all. Most of us had been cold and anxious. We walked to a spot we thought we could get breakfast. There was no one there, so we walked to the Salvation Army (which was a bit of a walk). We had a nice breakfast there. I was feeling a little more grounded. I saw a man about my age with a boy about the same age as my eldest son. I wondered what it would be like to take my children to eat here. I tried to start a conversation with the woman next to me. Not much luck. One of the people from the Salvation Army came and sat at our table. We had an interesting conversation. He asked what we were doing and his reaction was typical – a street retreat is odd, but generally good. Everyone I talked with seemed to think the idea of a street retreat was weird. However, most thought it was weird, but good. After some general discussion with the fellow from the Salvation Army, he mentioned that he was interested in starting a business where he could employ the people that they work with at the Salvation Army. Finally a conversation where I felt comfortable! We had a good conversation talking about the initial decision making process you would want to go through with such a business. I suggested a book for him to read and left him my email address for follow-up.

After breakfast, we were all pretty tired. So we went to a nearby park to use the public bathroom and rest. It was a nice break. I could hear kids laughing and had started to feel much more at home. I slept. I was a little away from the main group (on a park bench). I didn’t hear the police come by and check on the group. Apparently, someone had called the police thinking that there may have been a mass suicide in the park. One of our group talked to the police and explained what we were doing. The police were happy that we were not dead (!) and left us alone. After our nap, we formed a circle, meditated and then talked in the park. As several of us had been cold the night before, we went to the Salvation Army where we had breakfast and asked for some blankets. They were able to give us 10 blankets for our group and some bread. It was wonderful!

We then walked to a place by Oppenheimer Park where they were handing out free lunches. There was so much food in the lunch! Mine contained two sandwiches, soup, several small yogurts and a 6” round of sponge cake. I ate the soup and figured I would save the rest for later (but I actually ended up giving it away to someone who asked us for food). After lunch we broke into groups of three people each. We could do what we wanted for about an hour and a half. My group decided to walk into town to try panhandling. I have never panhandled before. Luckily, one of our group had done it before and gave us some tips. I ended up on the pedestrian overpass by Waterfront station. I was there for about 30 minutes asking people for spare change. It was really hard. I have never had so many people ignore me. People would see me sitting there and then look off in the other direction as if they had just found something very interesting. Each person did it as if it was unique, but to me it happened over and over again. I would say that only 5% of the people walking by even acknowledged my existence. It was about 4:30pm on Friday and a lot of the passers-by were the kinds of people I would know – office workers, programmers, lawyers, accountants and tourists. Here were people that I would normally have connected with, and they were ignoring me.

One guy walked by me and exclaimed loudly, “Just what we need, panhandlers!” He kept walking slowly past me. I just watched him go, unsure what to do. When he was some distance from me, he turned and saw that I was still looking at him. He then raised his hand, smiled at me and gave me the peace sign. What was that? First he criticizes me and then he gives me the peace sign? How does that make sense?

Another guy walked over to me and said, “Here is an empty pop can” and proceeded to give me the only thing that I was successful in getting – one empty pop can. It was embarrassing and humiliating.

We re-grouped at Oppenheimer Park and headed off for dinner. The first place we tried was closed, so we ended up back at the Union Gospel Mission again. As we walked there, we passed a young girl (who could barely walk) going into a van with a man in his 50s. Next, there was a group of people just up the street from the Gospel Mission shooting up. I could see one of them tying his arm and arranging the needle. We waited in line for some time. I ended up chatting with the person next to me for some time. He was an aboriginal who was about my age. He said he had three kids, but was unclear about their location or age. He was unclear about a lot of things, but he was very clear about the best places to get a free meal, free shower and where to sleep outside. He talked at length about free food and where to get it. As it turned out, he had already eaten dinner and was in line to get his second dinner. His advice about breakfast proved to be quite good as we ended up eating breakfast the next morning at the place he suggested (Mission Possible).

When the line finally moved, we all went into the initial hall. On this night, I sat apart from our group again, surrounded by folks. There was a person next to me who looked like he slept outside all of the time. He was quiet and kept to himself. The only thing he said the entire time was one word. He quietly, but forcefully said, “Liar!” about a comment the priest made while giving his sermon. The sermon on the second night was from a preacher whose life had been quite difficult when he had grown up. They had lived in poverty. He recalled having enough money to wrap their small house in black roofing paper and finally being warm. His father had hit him a lot. He had started drinking as an early teenager and became a very heavy drinker. He had been very angry until he had taken Jesus into his life. However, he felt that his life was not nearly as hard as the lives that most of the people in the audience had lived. He asked everyone in the audience who had lost a family member or friend to drugs or alcohol to raise their hand. I would say 75% of the people in the room raised their hand. He explained that many of us had grown up in hell and that he was proud we had made it this far. He was proud that we had survived.

After the sermon, we went into the dining room. I was still full from lunch, so I skipped dinner and went outside to wait for our group. I ate a free banana that Gospel Mission gave me and started to realize that there was more food available to people on the street in Vancouver than I had imagined. The free meals were larger than most of the meals I would normally eat at home. I decided that I would be better off only eating two of these large-sized meals a day, instead of three.

I noticed that there was some nice clean cardboard by the Gospel Mission. I picked some up (which turned out to be a great idea). Once the group reformed we walked back to Oppenheimer Park to meditate. It was quite the scene there. Some crews had been in during the day setting up for a Japanese Festival, know as the Powell Street Festival (see: http://powellstreetfestival.com/index.html). There were tents set-up, but there were no vendors. There were security guards walking around. There were people drinking and doing drugs under the tents. Cars came by with loud music. People were walking and stumbling by. From where I was sitting in our circle, I could see a couple of people lying down, not moving (sleeping? passed out?). One of them was directly in the middle of a path in the middle of the park. We meditated for about 30 minutes again. I sat on the cardboard I had brought from the Gospel Mission (this made a big difference in terms of warmth and comfort) and felt quite grounded. It made sense at the time, but as I write this, it sounds pretty odd.

We then headed out to the Carnegie Community Centre. We had heard that there was a dance, which we wanted to check out. The dance had been canceled due to the strike, but the Carnegie was still open. We used the washrooms, cleaned up, refilled our water and then walked back to Strathcona Park (where we first started the retreat). Strathcona Park has a wonderful community garden. We walk through the garden in the dark, and looked for a place where we could all sleep. There were a fair amount of people sleeping in the park that night, but we did manage to find a place. This time I did not try to make a bed like I had at home. I put my cardboard down (have I mentioned how wonderful cardboard is?). I put on my rain poncho and my extra socks. I tucked my pants into my socks. I wrapped my legs with the blanket that we had gotten at the Salvation Army earlier in the day and then wrapped my plastic sheet around the blanket. This did a great job of keeping in the warmth (as long as I didn’t move too much when I was sleeping and pull it all apart). I then tucked in the poncho around me and folded my backpack in half as a pillow. I was so happy to be warm and comfortable. I was also very tired. However, sleep still took a little while to come. It seemed like there was part of me that just didn’t want to admit that I was here, in a public park in downtown Vancouver trying to sleep. It took a little while for me to get this part of myself to finally let go. Once that tension let go, I fell asleep.


The Retreat – Day 3 (Saturday)

For the most part, everyone woke up much better rested on day three. I decided I liked cardboard so much that I would keep some with me at all times. I ripped a small piece and kept it folded between my back and my backpack.

I was up early. I went out into the park to try and figure out what time it was. I had to be careful where I walked, because there were a many people sleeping around here. I saw an older woman walking along a path. It seemed odd to me that someone on their way to work would walk so close to so many people sleeping outside. It was Saturday morning and I had trouble figuring out the time by the number of cars on the road, so I decided to ask her the time. I went up to her, hoping to not look too strange. I asked her the time and only then did I realize that she had slept outside too. When I was close to her, I could see the dirt on her skirt and top. She spoke with a strong British accent. It was very odd. I hadn’t expected her to have slept outside or to have a British accent. Once again my expectations were wrong.

We walked to a place called Mission Possible for breakfast. We had a good conversation with a fellow in line with us. He explained that when the weather was nice he preferred sleeping on the street to sleeping in a shelter. Someone came by trying to trade a bus ticket for a lighter. At first people listened until someone told him that he was a crackhead and he should leave. People in line then started to complain that if he had enough money to buy a rock, he should have enough to buy a lighter too. Then the conversation turned to how much each person thought they could get for $10.

“I could get a pipe and a rock for $10.”

“Yeah, I could get a pipe, a rock AND a lighter for $10.”

It was an odd game of one-upmanship to watch.

Some other folks in line told some jokes and sang songs. Two folks stood in front of our group. In a mock tone, one of them asked the other, “Do you know where they could get some weed, which is also known as grass or marijuana?” The other explained that, “Surprise surprise, I happened to have some weed right here at a very good price.” Back and forth the two of them went explaining the virtues of their particular drugs, the volume discounts and how anyone would be silly to not buy something from them right then and there. This was obviously done for our benefit and reminded me somewhat of a TV infomercial. Unfortunately for them, even if our group used drugs (in their lives at home), the rules of the retreat forbade drug use

After some time, our line went in for breakfast. This place was very respectful to everyone. There was a short sermon before breakfast about sharing your abundance. It was my favorite of the sermons I heard on the retreat. After the sermon, everyone was served their breakfast. The servers were very careful to always call people at our table “sir”. The mood at our table was very reverent. Utensils were placed in exact positions very carefully. Everyone was very quiet. People watched other people at the table and would pass condiments before you needed them. It reminded me of a formal Zen meal service. Having not had dinner the night before, I really enjoyed my breakfast.

We next walked to Crab Park to meditate and share our experiences with one another. This was quite pleasant. It was ironic sitting on the grass meditating with the Helijet flying overhead (given the number of times I have taken the Helijet to Vancouver). After this we walked by the United We Can Bottle Depot. There is a small park just down the street and they were setting up for a concert and free BBQ. The event was to raise awareness about the safe injection site and to petition for an extension to the permit under which it currently operates (which expires in Dec/08). The area in front of the United We Can Bottle Depot was really crazy. There were people selling all sorts of things (including drugs). It was loud chaos. People were everywhere. Shopping carts were everywhere and everything was overpowered by music from the park. It felt only on the verge of control. After we walked past it, one of the people on the retreat compared it to an apocalyptic scene from a movie. That comparison held for me.

The park was filled with people of all types in all kinds of spaces. There was so much anger and rage. There was also happiness about having a place to express these socially unacceptable feelings. I only felt really threatened once. We stood in small groups in the park a listened to the music (DJ followed by warm-up band). The music was all very heavy, such as Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica. It reminded me a lot of the anger I felt before I understood more about my childhood experience of sexual abuse.

We left the park and walked downtown to the Vancouver Art Gallery. We all broke into groups of two and went off panhandling. This time, I had a plan. My partner and I took cardboard and went into Staples. We explained what we were doing and asked to borrow a pen to write a sign. I had thought about this and wrote two signs. One said “Zen Street Retreat” and the other said “Please Help”. My partner and I then spread out a little on Burrard. This is an area of Vancouver that I know well. Three of the five investors in PureEdge are located in these two blocks. I had successfully raised $35 million in this area and I felt positive about my success panhandling.

So, I put my hat down. I put in my return bus fair, along with a few pennies that I had found on the street, as my “seed money”. I then put out my first sign and started asking. That didn’t work. I then tried taking off my glasses. That didn’t work either. I then switched signs (with my glasses still off). That didn’t work either.

I give a fair amount of change away to people on the street. But I always have a filter that I check people against – are they worthy of me giving them money? I am not entirely conscious of what makes someone “worthy”, but I make judgments about people. If I am honest with myself, I wouldn’t have given me money either. I looked too well feed. I looked too clean (even after a few days on the street). I looked like I should be able to get a job. I didn’t look desperate. So as person after person ignored me, it felt like I was walking by and ignoring myself over and over again. It was painful. I kept seeing myself and all of the people I had ignored on the street. Ouch.

After 30 minutes in that location, my partner and I tried further up the street. He had no luck either. Instead of asking for money, we each tried asking people to buy certain things. I went to the front of a Subway and asked people to contribute to buying a sub. He asked for people to buy him a coffee. Once again, we had no luck.

After some time, we decided to get silly. We decided that instead of asking for money, we would to try to give some money away. We didn’t have much, but we did have an extra quarter. So my partner (who is quite charismatic) tried to give the quarter away. He tried with seven people. He engaged each of them and walked with them on the street trying to give the quarter away. No luck. People looked at him like he had some disease. It was very interesting. By this time, we had met up with a few other people on the retreat. One of them then tried to give away the quarter. She was successful. The person to whom she gave the quarter was suspicious and then thought it was the oddest thing. We could hear him retelling the story again down the block.

Walking back to the DTES, I noticed that there is a real dividing line between the DTES and the rest of Vancouver. I was walking in Vancouver and then walking through a one-block transition and suddenly it was as if I was in a different city. So much seemed to change in the DTES: the ethnic mix is different (more Aboriginals and less Asians), the economies change (instead of buying packs of cigarettes, people buy “singles”), the stores change (I saw my first dollar store that was a grocery store in the DTES) and the look of everything changes (much dirtier). It is quite astonishing seeing so much change in such a short space – only one block.

That evening we walked to the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen. It was the usual drill – stand in line, go in while being checked and counted, wait in a hall and then go into a dining room to have the same dinner as everyone else. One difference was that there was no sermon. Another difference was that I and another retreat participant got into a very interesting conversation with one of the people there. Jim was an aboriginal who had grown up in the residential school system. He had a very difficult time and said that he had been a very angry drunk (his words). It was hard to believe, as he seemed so nice, gentle and soft-spoken. I tried to picture this same person as a drunk, constantly getting into fights. He said that he had almost died and that was when he made the decision to live, instead of die. From that choice, he had started to slowly put his life together.

We chatted while waiting for dinner, then over dinner and finally after dinner at the Carnegie. I mentioned that I had tried panhandling. Jim laughed and said that he would never have tried panhandling. I was surprised. I realized I had always assumed that if you were on the street, you would panhandle. I was wrong. It was possible to be an angry alcoholic living on the streets and not panhandle. The panhandlers that I had seen were not all of the people on the street, but a subset. Jim was planning to watch a movie after dinner. He mentioned that he had just got a DVD player, but that he didn’t like it very much. He found it too hard to use. I didn’t understand what he meant. How hard is a DVD player to use? You just put the movie in and select “play”.

After dinner, while chatting with Jim, one of the other people on the retreat tried suggesting a book that he might be interested in reading. Jim leaned forward and quietly explained he was illiterate. I was stunned. It had never crossed my mind. That explained why he found a DVD player harder to use. You had to navigate the menus by reading. Running into someone who was so well spoken, but was illiterate in Vancouver was really surprising.

On the way out of the soup kitchen, there was a lot of free bread. I mean a lot of bread – piles of bread. There were several kinds of bread. I figured that I would take some for breakfast tomorrow. I took a loaf of nice French bread. It was surprising to see some nice French bread. However, I didn’t see many people taking the French bread. The people around me took the white loafs of bread (looking to me like Wonder Bread). I don’t know, but perhaps they were taking the bread that they were familiar with and I was taking the bread that I was familiar with. I don’t know, but the French bread did make a nice bit of padding in my backpack/pillow that night.

That evening we found a small park (more of a grassy area by some co-op housing) to meditate. We sat and meditated. After our meditation, a police car turned on his siren. The car in front of him then did an illogical thing. Instead of stopping, like I had expected, the car sped up, like in a movie. All of a sudden, we were witnessing a high speed chase. It looked crazy. The car sped off and almost hit two different people on bikes in the first few seconds. Soon both cars were out of our sight and we were all hoping that no one got hurt.

That evening our group divided into two. One group went to watch the fireworks. The other group went back to the public gardens at Strathcona Park to sleep. I was tired and went to sleep. The firework group joined us later in the evening. I slept okay on the third night, but not as well as on the second night.


The Retreat – Day 4 (Sunday)

I woke up early on the last day of the retreat. I felt quite good and at home in my surroundings. Another participant and I went off to collect blackberries for the group. When we came back a few people were up and we assembled our food for an impromptu breakfast. We were soon joined by a woman with a very long name (that I have since forgotten). She was dressed for a night out and came over to join us. She didn’t eat too much, but did seem to enjoy her vodka. She offered to share, but none of us took up her offer. Once again, retreat rules specify no drinking or drugs. Of course it wasn’t even 8am yet, so that might have had something to do with our lack of interest in the vodka. She sat next to me and kept putting her hand on my leg. This didn’t bother me. As I write this, I realize how much I had changed during those few days to have not been uncomfortable. What did bother me was how her hand kept trying to move its way up my leg. I just gently held her hand and moved it back to my knee each time this happened.

After everyone was awake and our guest had moved on her way, we gathered our cardboard and meditated in Strathcona Park before heading off for breakfast. We wandered a bit, hoping to find breakfast, but we didn’t see much. We walked by the United We Can Bottle Depot. It was Sunday morning (perhaps 10am or so). It was much quieter than it had been on Saturday afternoon. However, the scene was still going. For a photo of the United We Can Bottle Depot see: http://www.nowpublic.com/bottle_and_can_depot

The night before, the group that had gone to watch the fireworks collected two big bags of empty bottles. Returning the bottles would give us a little money. Two of us walked down the line-up in front of the bottle depot to see what it was like. The rest of the group stayed back. I was quite uncomfortable walking along the line-up. We came back and reported that it would take some time to return the bottles. The decision was made to wait. Suddenly, I found myself volunteering to wait in the line, while the rest of the group waited. What was I thinking? Walking back to the line, I could see people on the side of the street injecting themselves with needles.

Three of us went to the line and found that there were actually two lines. There was a short line that we were told to stand in and next to us was a longer line. The longer line was really long. Our line had maybe 10 people in front of us. Most had shopping carts filled with used bottles. The long line was composed of shopping cart after shopping cart to the end of the block. Each shopping cart was filled with bags of bottles. There were a lot of empty bottles!

I asked this big guy next to me why there were two lines. He explained that the long line was “one lot” of bottles. He said that, “a crazy man with a plan” had organized the collection of all of these bottles. I asked how many people it had taken and he wasn’t sure. He said that he wasn’t the man with the plan. Who was he? He was a “bottleman”, kind of like a doorman at a bar, except for bottles. Get it? He was security in case someone thought to take some of the bottles. I looked back at this line of shopping carts filled with bottles and noticed that there were several people spread out guarding the bottles. One lot of bottles, with their own security…?

A little later a comment that I had heard earlier came back into my mind. It was mentioned to one of the people on the retreat that you did not have to turn your bottles into cash and then buy drugs. You could just exchange your used bottles directly for drugs. The man with the plan wasn’t so crazy after all. The man who organized this was a drug dealer who had sold drugs directly for bottles and now was exchanging the bottles. This was the kind of person who would put security along their bottles. What had appeared random to me, I now recognized as part of a larger system.

A lot happened in the 30 minutes or so that we waited in line. In addition to my conversation with the “bottleman”, I saw two drug dealers selling their products. One dealer was within an arm’s distance on my left. The other was a little beyond my reach on my right. A little old lady got into a fight about the quality of the rock with the dealer on my left. I could see what he was showing her and she thought it looked too yellow. It looked pretty yellow to me as well, but I don’t know enough to know if that is good or bad. The little old lady then wandered off and then back to buy some drugs from the dealer on my right. This dealer was a young woman. She couldn’t have been very old as she still had the baby-fat of youth. Maybe she was 16-20 years old. She looked in okay condition. The little old lady liked the color of her rocks (clear, from what I could see) and bought some. The dealer tucked the money into her shirt next to her breasts. In between sales, the dealer would kneel down and smoke her drugs.

A woman that I would guess would be in her 30s came and bought some drugs from the female dealer on my right. This customer had clearly been a very beautiful woman at one point. But now, she was drawn and her face was covered in scabs. She looked rough. As the young dealer sold to this customer, I kept thinking to myself, “Can’t you see that if you keep on this path, you will end up like her and then you will die?”

This woman was so close to me, so young and headed on such a short trip. She was so close to me, but so far away. I did not know how to reach out to her. She reminded me of someone in my past that had been close to me, but so far away. When their life fell apart, I couldn’t reach them and they died.

Two people joined the line behind us. They looked at the line, figured it was about a 20 minute wait and thought the best way to kill the time was “to get a rock”. That didn’t take long and soon they were smoking. In acknowledgement that they were doing something illegal in broad daylight, they turned away from the street while they smoked.

After a few minutes, a police car pulled up. A police officer got out of the car and called a woman in line by name. He clearly knew her. She came up to the car and he put handcuffs on her. It was so random. He could have pointed to pretty much anyone there and arrested them for some illegal activity that they were doing at that moment (let alone in the past 24 hours). It seemed so random that the officer would arrest this one woman out of everyone there. He talked to her for a bit. He put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. She then yelled at someone in line and the cigarette fell out. He picked it up and put it back in her mouth. After they were done, I expected him to put her in the car and drive away. I was surprised when the car drove away and he started to escort her up the street. I then recalled that the police station was only about two blocks away. All of this was happening only a few blocks away from the police station. It was hard to believe.

After a while, we were finally able to go into the bottle depot. We counted out the bottles, which was pretty disgusting. We had 151 bottles in total. We got paid the refund and then returned to the group. After the experience of waiting in line, I was kind of in shock. We went to a spot to buy coffee. I really wanted to wash my hand and went into the bathroom. It was only lit with a black light, which somehow seemed fitting to my mood. I washed my hands several times. Some folks then bought food for our lunch. We walked to Crab Park for our final mediation and talk.


Returning Home

After the retreat was over, I went to a friend’s place to get cleaned up. I had stored my stuff there, so I had a clean change of clothes, my contact lenses, toothbrush, toothpaste and the new Harry Potter book. I washed my hair four times. The first two times, the soap didn’t bubble up like it normally would. It was so nice to be clean again and in new clothes. I originally planned to take the PCL bus back home. But I wanted to get home sooner, to see my family and hear the life in my children’s laughter. Instead of the 3.5 hour trip on the PCL, I decided to spend 35 minutes flying back on the float plan. By 4:45 pm, I was waiting at the float plane terminal, not far from Crab Park. It was so strange to now be accepted in this world that only a few hours ago seemed to reject me. By 5:35pm, I was back in Victoria, meeting Mitra at the plane terminal. It was wonderful to be home. It seemed like I had entered some magical world where everything was clean and sparkled. I felt so fortunate. I still feel fortunate and have trouble connecting the world that I live in day-to-day and the world I experienced briefly living on the street.

After I was home for a few hours, I felt a tension in me release. I hadn’t even realized that I was carrying this tension, but something had been tight for the entire trip and now released. I slept really well that night.