We were at the Nuit Blanche event in Toronto City on Saturday the 2/10/2010. It was a free all night event downtown with 3 separate zones. I chose to take the family to Dundas as I was familiar with that area having met Barbara in town last Thursday.
Dundas Square is a bit like Times Square in NYC, with the neon billboards going up the sides of tall buildings, though there were no skyscrapers in Toronto. There were several street performers as well as the art exhibits that were officially on the billing. Arghhh, the words are not flowing as well as I would like them to.....
After having a little look and then dinner at the Hard Rock cafe where we sat with some John Lennon and Tina Turner memorabilia, we set off towards City Hall for exhibit no.1-Later that night at the drive-in by Daniel Lanos, a sound and sight exhibition with large concert type screens depicting images of a band playing live, interspersed with ethereal sounding music... very modern but the kids thought the music was scary and wanted to move on. We wandered towards University Avenue and the S African war memorial and Campbell Historic House Museum. We saw a lot of people in the garden and decided to check it out. The exhibit there was Pine cone colony which was an independent project. Gigantic pine cones made of metal, and one that was a brazier.
We carried on walking and just before walking towards Spadina, we saw a some performers balancing objects, the man was balancing different rocks and stones and blocks of concrete and there was a lady balancing eggs. Raw eggs, she also said she was doing some egg cleansing, some healing. It's a mid-american practice and eggs with their porous qualities would absorb negativity within a person being healed in order to allow that empty space to be filled with positive energy. I know, I know, I am sceptical too, but we don't know too much about these things and they are areas where good research would be difficult to be carried out for a variety of reasons.
It's like Nash my yoga teacher saying, crystals have been around a loooong time and they have energy in them.... now, how do we measure this energy? He also talked about positive energy, about how monks meditating around some water that some scientists had placed some cells in. What kind of cells I don't know. They had looked at these cells under the microscope after all the chanting and meditation and these cells were apparently shining like stars and twinkling, moving actively in the water.
Conversely, some water with the same kind of cells was placed in a drinking water bottle at work where people gathered, moaned and whined about work. Once again the cells were examined, and this time, the cells had all burst and were passive in the said water. I don't know where this research is published, but how does one control this kind of research? I am not saying it's not valid, I just think there are too many variables to control. I may be wrong, of course.
Back to the eggs. I didn't realise eggs could be balanced on their ends. To see several balanced on a concrete block was amazing. The lady who was with the eggs came to talk to us and told me about the egg cleansing thing and I asked if the kids could try to balance an egg. She took a fresh egg and said, "See how I do it, you will then believe it can be done and you will be able to do it too."
Prior to this, there was some argy bargy going on with the hot dog stand owner who was getting irate with spectators blocking her stand and she had words with the artists. She wanted the spectators to move from her stand, the artist were calm and said no one was really in the way of her business, but the hot dog woman was a bit hot under the collar. The egg lady who was trying to balance the egg took a while and said, she had been affected by the unpleasantness, that she has been buying hot dogs from the woman for 12 years ,were friends and could not understand why she was so upset. The crowd had retaliated to, shouting at the hot dog woman, saying, "What have you got against art, " and ," It's Nuit Blanche!" All these fell on deaf hot ears LOL.
Anyway, she eventually balanced the egg, Mitch then had a go, managed almost straight away and then Jasmine who took a bit longer, but they both managed to balance an egg. There was a gust of wind and one of the eggs balanced earlier, fell off it's perch and cracked...." Oh!", We exclaimed, the egg was raw. Egg lady said never mind, I said,"Well, it has shown us they are raw!" She turned to me, smiling widely and said, "I think you're the cup is half full kinda person". I have come a loong way....
I had not balanced an egg that night, as we got home about 11.30pm. We had not stayed out all night as the kids were tired, so really only caught a glimpse of Nuit Blanche but it was a good intro, we will definitely do more next year. So, I was determined to try the next morning, and I did it! So did Jas and Mitch again, out on the balcony.
So there we have it, eggs can be balanced on their ends..... anything can balance if you find their point of balance. I could adopt this for my life too, people talk a lot about the work-life balance, about a balanced diet...... Finding this balance may be difficult, but important, as like the egg, finding that balance will make me more grounded, almost like making the impossible possible, if only we have the courage to try... why is that important? It would allow me to forget, ignore the unimportant, forget the fools of this world, try not to let them affect me. See the bigger picture, make love not war. Experience life to the full as we only have one life, grab chances as they come, they may not be repeated and this is why I am in Toronto today. I have always wanted to travel and see the world and thought I would do so through my nursing, but meeting Dave, settling down, having Mitch and Jasmine put that thought on hold..... till that fateful offer of going to Trinidad.... which has lead to greater and better things.......
No comments:
Post a Comment