Problems & Proverbs in the Canadian Prairies
July 25, 2024
By my reckoning, there are two Asian grocery stores in Saskatoon. One is named Great Asian Market, and the other is named Market of Asia. The two stores stand on opposite sides of Grosvenor Avenue, just off 8th Street, confronting each other so precisely that pulling out of one and into the other makes one feel like a Formula One driver navigating a tight chicane.
The Market of Asia has the more elegant branding; above it’s doors are the letters MOA, the words Market of Asia in cursive italics, and the characters 天勤超市, all in a nice sage green typeface. The Great Asian Market’s logo feels slightly more dated, a Pepsi-style circle with a green leaf on the bottom and what looks like some sort of landmass depicted in white on the top, with the letters GAM in large white font in the middle. 冠亜超市 is written next to the logo in a calligraphic style, above ‘Great Asian Market’ written in an extremely basic English font, although I will give them credit for the fact that the dot of the ‘i’ in ‘Asian’ is a maple leaf.
Neither of these stores carry my favourite brand of canned coffee (not available in Canada as far as I can tell), Georgia ‘The Premium’ Iced Coffee, nor do they sell my go-to Canada-alternative Sangaria 炭焼珈琲, which, when you’re about 8000km from the nearest can of Georgia, tastes almost the same. So, for our present purposes, we can say that GAM and MOA are functionally identical and equally unsatisfactory. There are many things to like about Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but boy do I miss my cans of coffee.
I find myself right now drinking the OG UCC Coffee “with milk” “Since 1969” — I’ll be honest: I think it’s a little too milky, and a little too sweet. I don’t need it “as sweet as it can be,” nor “as mild as it can be” — I like a bit of sweetness and a bit of mildness, but ideally there remains at least some hint that I am still, in fact, drinking coffee, even if it is in a can. The UCC can also contains 337mL of coffee, almost twice as much as the other two, and frankly, a lot more coffee than I want to drink out of a can.
However, as a man whose philosophy of life has been “I’ll take what I can get” ever since I moved into half of half a basement in the year 2017, I must once again say:
“Hey, I’ll take what I can get.”
Regarding the wonders of Saskatchewan, I need not take the trouble of finding my own words. I will instead quote from Essays in Idleness:
A certain recluse monk once remarked, ‘I have relinquished all that ties me to the world, but one thing that still haunts me is the beauty of the sky.’ I can quite see why he would feel this.
It’s hard to follow any sort of Way when you’re having trouble with your car. Car Trouble is a universal variety of trouble that can strike any of us equally. Even those without a car often run into a certain type of car trouble: that is, the trouble of not having a car. (For example, you might want to go to IKEA.) Back in Vancouver, I comfortably lived for over three years without a car, even when I had to walk thirty minutes to the nearest grocery store. I knew that as soon as I got a car, I would find myself having to pay someone vast quantities of money at random intervals, on top of the monthly insurance payments and buying gas.
Eventually, we found ourselves in an employment situation where the bus just wasn’t gonna cut it. We got a car. For the first year or so, I probably drove it less than ten times. It was the car my wife took to work, and it had nothing to do with me. But gradually, the car worked its way into my life. My wife quit that job, and started taking the train to work again. The car sat there, all day, just daring me to drive it somewhere. So I started driving it places. Driving in Vancouver was no fun, so I only drove if I really had to.
The world turned on its axis; suddenly, I had a job where I had to drive the car, a lot. I had to drive down the worst roads in the city. I developed a bad habit. I started committing “road rage.” I became upset. I lost spiritual balance. The doctor said, "too much yang."
Soon after I started driving the car, I noticed there was a problem with the brakes. The problem was that they didn’t seem to stop the car very well. The car did stop, but it took a bit longer than one might expect. A few weeks later, I took the car to the service shop. They looked at the car while I played on my Nintendo Switch in the lobby. The room was too bright, and I could barely see the screen. I had recently bought a new video game, and it was slowly occurring to me that I didn’t like it. The man called my name. I sat down at the desk. He told me that the brakes on my car were faulty. He told me that the parts that connect to the brakes were also faulty. He told me that the part that connects to the parts that connect to the brakes was also faulty. He told me that, while I had successfully driven the car to the service shop, he “wouldn’t recommend driving it anywhere else.”
This is what happens when you start driving a car. You start getting Car Trouble. I now have a different car, but no matter what car you get, it brings along Car Trouble. Car Trouble, no matter how minor, is always expensive.
Thankfully, this current iteration of Car Trouble is on its way out. We have crested the hill, and are rolling back down the other side. As we roll downhill, hundreds of dollars are falling out of our pockets.
But enough about that. We can cast this all from our memory:
Better for the old to say indifferently, ‘I no longer remember any of that.’
This is because, in this transient phenomenal world with its constant change, what appears to exist in fact does not.
While we’re quoting from Essays in Idleness, here’s another small story:
At Shinjōin Temple there once lived a wonderfully learned high-ranking priest named Jōshin, who loved to eat taro roots. He ate them in vast amounts. Even when delivering a sermon, he would always have a dish piled high with taro by his knee, and eat while he read. Whenever he was ill, he would retire to his room for a week or a fortnight ‘for treatment’, and gorge himself to his heart’s content on personally chosen taro of the finest quality. This is how he cured every illness. He never gave any to anyone else to eat. He ate them all himself.
Jōshin was extremely poor, but his teacher on his deathbed bequeathed to him the sum of two hundred kan plus monks’ living quarters. He sold the building for one hundred kan, and dedicated the combined sum of 30,000 hiki to the purchase of taro. He gave this money to an acquaintance in the city for safekeeping, and drew out ten kan at a time to keep himself well supplied with taro. This was all he used the money for, and eventually it was all gone.
Similarly:
There was once a certain constable of some sort in Tsukushi who believed that white radish [daikon] was a wonderful remedy for all ills. Every morning for many years, he would roast two and eat them. One day, his enemies seized a moment when the house was for once unguarded and empty to raid the place. They surrounded the house and attacked, whereupon two warriors emerged from the building and fought them back with no thought for their own lives, sending them all fleeing. The constable was mystified. ‘Why should men who have no apparent connection to the place such as yourselves fight for it in this manner?’ he asked. ‘Who are you?’
‘We are the two white radishes that you put such faith in and eat every morning,’ they replied, and then they vanished. Clearly, his deep faith had produced this fine reward.
It just goes to show you.
The grocery store down the street doesn’t sell taro root, and it doesn’t sell daikon radish. They don’t even have bok choy. What’s a man supposed to do? I can’t be expected to drive down to GAM every time I want to eat an Asian vegetable, can I? Is this my punishment for abandoning the coast, and that mighty Ocean over which these most precious goods are shipped?
What is to be the wonderful remedy for all my ills?
I take to heart the proverb, “Physician, heal thyself,” and thus have appointed myself as my own family doctor. A few days ago, after years of medical malpractice, I made my first successful diagnosis. The problem that caused me to visit my clinic was the fact that I had mysteriously lost eight pounds over an indeterminate amount of time. I quickly dropped my research into how I had gained those eight pounds in the first place, and devoted my studies to this new conundrum. After consulting the ancient texts and determining that one’s weight sometimes roughly corresponds to how much food one eats, I knew I was on the right track. Then it struck me:
About a week after moving to Saskatoon, all food started to taste like dishwasher detergent. So, I cleaned my dishwasher. Then, I cleaned my dishwasher again. I cleaned my dishwasher every day for a week. I cleaned my pots and pans by hand. I bought a water filter. I only realized that the problem had nothing to do with our house when I ate a granola bar immediately upon returning from the grocery store, and found that it too tasted like dishwasher.
My wife didn’t think anything tasted weird at all, but whenever I cooked onions in a pan, they smelled rancid. I couldn’t eat noodles and gyozas, or pasta. Everything tasted like garbage mixed with dishwasher detergent.
I was still eating meals, but as each meal wore on, the food became less and less appetizing. I wasn’t finishing meals, and I certainly wasn’t eating seconds. I no longer ate snacks. Eventually, I determined there must be something wrong with my mouth, or my nose. I wasn’t sure if it would ever go away.
Eventually, my pants started to feel loose, and this is when I checked my weight. After an initial period of astonishment, the connection became obvious. I was struck with the thought: is it possible that this has happened to other people on Earth, and isn’t a bespoke curse from a Demon that has been directed exclusively toward me?
For the very first time in my medical history, the answer to that question was yes. This is, in fact, a relatively common post-COVID symptom that affects many people to varying degrees. My case is actually a relatively mild one, all told. If I just avoid certain foods, I can continue on my wonderful way.
With all these conundrums and difficulties out of the way, what is left to do but resume my zazen practice, and empty my mind? Or rather, finally begin to inhabit my own mind? For:
The emptiness of space allows it to contain things. The fact that thoughts can come crowding into our mind at will must mean that ‘mind’ is actually an empty space too. If someone were really in residence there, it would surely not be invaded by all these thoughts.