I once lived at the end of Scott Street in Westboro Village in Ottawa.  Over time I found my favorite grocery store, my favorite shopping center, my favorite parking spaces, my favorite routes, my favorite bank.  Time passed and i moved away from that place.

I had occasion to return to the area.  I drove over streets that were familiar again, through a place i had known as home for over a year.  I stopped at my favorite bank location and went in to the cash machine.  When i walked up to the bank machine i pushed my card in and looked at the screen.  It was Chinese script.  i stood back.  The two other people in the lobby were Chinese.  i peered in through the window.  The tellers and most of the people in the bank were Chinese.  i felt my moment of in-congruency.  a warm rush, sub panic, just uneasiness.  General uneasiness.  The feeling was growing.

I am uni-lingual.  Handicapped so to speak.  I grew up in a white English neighborhood.  I didn't know how to hold my face.  I had read about multicultralism and multinationalism in the newspapers, but here it was at my favorite bank location.  That was hitting home where the feelings live.  I looked at the screen again.  i noticed the little button at the bottom right said English.  I pressed the button.  Eureka.  My familiar English screen came up.  I felt certain gratitude.  Everything was going to be alright.  It was going to be OK.

I have always remembered that moment.  Every computer and every system has multiple languages in the operating system.  I live in a country where the two official languages are French and English.  Everything is set up to provide service and information in either language.  .  I always go back to that moment.  I always remember a day I spent as a poll clerk at the polling booth.  The voting instructions were available in every language, including several native languages and Inuktitut.  The services are available at the press of a button.  It was the TD bank, and i have always been satisfied with their service.  I have always appreciated the extra little step they had taken to service their customers in the desired mother tongue. 

I have always thought that I would only support business or systems that provided this kind of service. 

I have always thought that it would be a simple and worth courtesy if that same moment was made available for all or any traveler.  To BE multicultural, instead of just reading about it or seeing it advertised in government brochures..

Another incident that sticks in my mind was when I lived in my hometown near a busy intersection.  One night, about two thirty to three in the morning there was a loud hammering and knocking at my door.  I jumped out of a warm bed and ran naked to the door… stood there a second, then the hammering continued.  I lifted a slat in the blinds to see out.  An enormous head with shaggy hair and two eyes looking off into separate dimensions was peering in to see if anyone was awake.  I dropped the blind.  Stood shivering there in the cold air on the cold floor in barefeet for a few seconds, then when the hammering started gain I scurried back into the bedroom and tugged on my jeans.  I ran out to the door again.  The shaggy head was still there.  It started knoicking once more.  They had seen movement.  Why had I lifted the blind…  I ran back to the bedroom.  I was going to need a t-shirt and running shoes for this job.  By the time I arrived at the door ready to face the situation… the knocking has stopped.  The porch was bare.  The problem was gone.  I went back to the bedroom and had just nicely tucked into the warmth under the blanket when I heard the pounding at the next door.  I layed there for another few seconds… it was no better the girls next door being robbed and raped and beaten than it was for me to be robbed and raped and beaten…  I didn’t want to live in that kind of neighborhood where someone did nothing… so dressed once more I ran outside to confront the beast.

Someone had vomited in the hall, and the slivery streaks of spittle drooling from his beard made him my primary suspect.  It was fresh… still, I had seen nothing… 

 

I gave him a sound thump on the shoulder, slapped his arm, and shook him.  Time to get up… and go away. 

He was sitting on the stairs, his knees between his legs, he appeared to have fallen asleep.  He had been drinking beer.  You can just tell.

 

I shook him again and yelled that he had to go home.  He awakened and started to stand up, then he just kept getting up, and up and up until he more or less towered over me, those eyes opened and they were the same eyes, looking in two or three directions again.  I felt the new panic.  This was a bigger job than I had anticipated…  I suddenly felt myself switch into survival mode.

 

“Someone called the cops!” I blurted, “we got to get out of here!!!”

 

The stupid hall door opened inward, we had a little kerfuffle for a few seconds negotiating that and then poured out onto the street together.  I can’t say I was helping him…  I was more trying to become detached and we stumbled out to the sidewalk and managed to grope our way to the corner.   He started to turn left and headed up the street… a siren in the distance sounded and he picked up his pace.  Good enough for me.  I wanted my warm covers.  Things had turned out ok.  The hallway was still contaminated with his waste but I was glad to be rid of him.   I wanted to find those warm blankets again.  I looked into the hall to see the damage and noiced a black belly pouch on the floor.  I picked it up.  There was about 7-800 dollars in there, his ID, and other papers.  I went back to the corner with the bag and he was a ways up the street.  I went back inside and put the bag on the chair.  The incident had found a satisfactory completion in my mind.  I went back to sleep.

 

The next morning my wife shook me awake and reported a bag full of money in the front hall.  I remembered the wee hour intrusion.  His driver’s licence was there.  I can’t say we didn’t talk about keeping the money, alternative solution thinking requires one to look at all possible solutions, to weight the positive and negative aspects, to review possible consequences, and to make a decision.  

 

It was an easy decision, of course to make.  I drove the bag and the contents to the police station and reported the incident.  I stated that I just wanted to be done with it all and didn’t want my name mentioned.  They knew me and they knew who I was.  I was glad I handed in the money.  I walked away feeling good.  I do not want to live in a place where we rob drunks in the night.  I want more out of myself and my community.  The story of the sacred drunk came to mind.  I hoped he had made it home safely.

 

Two other incidents sprang to my mind.  I used to drive taxi in Kingston and I was working Christmas Eve and a call came in about 2-3 in the morning.  I took the call and they wanted me to go inside at the address and help them.  I was ready to load bags or presents or to load a wheelchair in the trunk or whatever so knocked on the door, it opened instantly, and I went in to find an elderly man and his wife, then were quite shaken… they were very upset… they wanted me to follow them into the living room.  The man was explaining that they were sound asleep and heard a terrible racket coming from downstairs, and when they came down to look they were confronted with the vision.  “ a bloody big buck nigger was laying right there under the Christmas tree” ( that’s a quote, not me talking, uh…)

And there he was, right where they were pointing, a guy I knew from the local bars, his name was Freddy.  He truly was a fearsome sight to behold especially when he is in life of the party tipsy mode… on this particular night he was shining his best and truest form.

“Well, what do you want me to do” I asked.  “why didn’t you call the cops…”

Christmas eve… the guy went on…  he didn’t do anything… he’s obviously intoxicated…  he lives up the street…  we want him out of here…  he scared the hell out of us…  we heard a crashing and a thump in the middle of the night…  look at him…  he can’t stay here…   we don’t want to get him in trouble…  what if he wakes up…  so we called a taxi… we’ll pay you for the call…

It was easier after I got him rolled over and off the carpet, he slid a lot better on the linoleum, it was boot heel tracks in the snow all the way to the sidewalk until I was able to arouse him enough to get him stumbling towards his place, the elderly man and woman came out together to the sidewalk with us… I didn’t want him in the car…  what if he woke up in there!!!... 

 

It still makes me snicker to myself when I remember that night…  a nice old couple, did everything together, even came out to the sidewalk and watched me as I had to practically carry the guy up the street.. a couple of doors turned into the next housing tract…  I remember looking back at them as they stood frail and together in their pyjamas housecoats and slippers…  waving me farther up the street…  then frantically pointing at the door to leave him at and then frantically waving for me to return safely to the taxi so they could pay me before anyone found out what happened and what we did.  A call at the time was a dollar base rate, and so much crossing into other zones… so when I refused the dollar they started talking about god sending his angels to help people and they were saying I had saved them all...  I was no angel I was telling them. I was just doing the grunt work, I was looking at the angel people…  I think the largest percent of the population would have called the police and reported an intruder.  In a funny way these people defined their own community that night.  but that was the night the sacred drunk part of the story embedded in my mind.

On another occasion my wallet had fallen out of my pocket when I was riding my motorcycle.  It’s such a crisis to have to report lost cards, apply for everything from birth certicicates  to health cards and drivers licence… SI cards… geeze… days went by.  There was construction going on in the street where I lived, the sewers were connecting with deep gouges in the roads, construction blocked off the entire two blocks, you had to park 3 blocks away, everything was barricades and plastic storm fence and mountains of mud to walk through...  It was a time where things keep going on and on and overlapping and …

On 3 separate occasions, three different people, over the next three days delivered portions of my wallet.  The plastic folder part with the cards came one day when I got back home.  The outer shell (minus the cash) arrived the next afternoon, and the next day the bundle of addresses and contacts was sitting there when I returned.  By chance I had my address someway left or inserted in each pocket as they detached themselves and spilled out onto traffic and got run over. 

I felt certain gratitude then too.  I never forgot that.  I wrote an editorial in the local paper to say thank you to those people, I never heard or saw from anyone.

All of these were the defining moments in how I think a community should work and how a community comes to define itself. 

The entire matter became more and more forgotten as the day wore on and new life filled the awareness.  We just got home from garage sailing lat in the afternoon and we were putting things away and the pounding at the door started again.  A quick peek through the slats revealed the same head, the eyes were better adjusted, and I saw him see me peeking through the slats.  A deep breath to compose myself and I opened the door.

 

Turns out he was the girl next doors brother.  I didn’t know she even had a brother.  She had never mentioned him.  He had been the ticket holder for the lotto 649 and he had won the ticket as part of the group at his work.  He had spent some of the winnings in the bar and had lost the bag on the way home.  He woke up this morning and realized the bag was gone.  He didn’t remember anything.  Who was going to believe he lost the winnings.  Then the police showed up at his door.  They hadn’t told him my name but his sister had told him about me.  He had found me to say thank you. 

I have just returned from a trip to China.  I am still experiencing the reverse jet lag.  I was up last night at 00.30 checking my computer to see what exact day and time it was.  I had to work at 05.00, just as I suspected.  Now it’s almost 02.30 again… the next day… and here I am ready to press the send button.  This was my seventh time in China.  I have traveled Mexico, the Caribbean, circled the entirety of Turtle Island  several times and a small portion of Europe that left me wanting more.  Looking back, in all of my travels, I have experience only one single negative incident.  This last trip really struck home with me.  I have had an amazing experience in my travels to the orient, I was safe and systems operated efficiently, I was the sacred tourist that I imagined for my story.  This is where the idea of the sacred tourist kept me awake for the last several nights.  I have done considerable wandering, and I have been safe the entire time.  It is a humble gratitude I am feeling now.  I have followed the latest news on Aljazeera, the BBC, , Yahoo news, and the Toronto Star.  America is striking with drones in Pakistan.  My own country sent it’s military to join the rebels to bomb a tyrant out of a country, and no one noticed.  People are dying.  Riots are causing social change, the newest actions against ‘terrorsts’ in Afghanistan, and Syria and Somalia and Libya…  unbelievable prisoner releases today…  demonstrations against corporate greed and corruption everywhere… 

And I am left feeling very small and very insignificant.  I wanted to begin to talk about the sacred tourist as a topic.  I want to be safe.  I want everyone to be safe.  I had a dream about being in a long valley, there were fighters on either hill firing across at each other, and there were people walking along the valley.  They were travelers.  In the dream, as strange as dreams go, I was somehow talking to a bunch of different people on either side and I was following the travelers, as these tourists wound their way along the path the opposite side would stop shooting, I would be talking to the guys in a gun position on one hill and then suddenly be talking to the guys hiding behind rocks on the other hill, everyone let the walkers go past, then start shooting again.  Everyone understood what we were doing.  It made sense to everyone, and in the dream it was very complicated but everyone was cooperating.



My plan is:  if I can type all this down and post it tonight, I may be able to get some sleep instead of thrashing it over and over and sideways in my brain. The world is a circle and we are all a part of it.  The circle IS large enough!



I guess the final goal would be to stimulate conversation and hope that others would see a train of thought or memory that could relate, and they could share stories.  Thoughts.  Visions of their own.  Maybe a theme would reveal itself or develop. 

The traveler as a holy position or office… a state of grace, a sacred moment to be revered and recognized.  Society can be engineered.  Mothers against drunk driving have changed the world.    I somehow want to say more than just tick my mark on a ballot…  I want to do more than stand patiently in line at the airport waiting to go through security.  It is our sons and daughters and relatives and loved ones that do the touristing…  and we ourselves.  A mere 5% of us could change the gestalt of the entire world.  My story is one of gratitude, and a desire to be part of a celebration instead of a protest.   It’s not that great a story, no one got hurt, everyone triumphed in the end, the plot had lots of twists and turns but the climax is somewhere in the future still.  But if my story could start a dialogue, and a sharing… 

OK.  That's it for now.  To sleep.  Perhaps to dream.  Wheres that send button...