May Day

Despite my protests, May Day is not a public holiday is Canada, so I went to work yesterday. And after work it was time for my Sanskrit class, and I was going to catch 20 from Broadway - only there was no traffic and a May Day Parade just about to start in the middle of Broadway and Commercial crossing (for non-Vancouverites, this is a very busy intersection). And the parade was going to go down to Commercial, exactly where my bus route goes.

Oh well, it's only 10-15 blocks down to Grant, and walking in the warm spring air wasn't exactly a problem. But I was all prepared for meditation and spirituality - and the seething anger that came out of those people left me a bit stunned. Maybe I'm being overly nostalgic about the past, but I always thought May Day parade was supposed to be more about celebration of workers than spouting mindless hate and propaganda.

So I walked to my class (which was actually probably faster than having to wait for a bus for 15 minutes anyway), and we sat down to begin the class with meditation... and then the parade caught up with us and the air was filled with music and chanting while we were trying to concentrate on breathing. Great exercise, of course - and the way Padma handles these kind of things is just lovely, she used the opportunity to talk about how the meditative state is really about a pure watching state where one observes everything that comes, and in this case it was pretty much impossible to avoid observing the parade. Then we got down to business and went through the Sanskrit alphabet and as a Finn, who has trouble with some of the English sounds, Sanskrit is pure nightmare with it's 30+ consonants: guttural, palatal, dental and labial, plus the nasal, aspirated and non-aspirated variations... But at least Finnish is luckily a very good basis for the 10+ vowels that contain short, long and diphthong vowels that are more difficult for English speakers.

And during the ending meditation, Vancouver made a goal. These things challenge us...