This is the port of the city I live in, Tacoma. I’ve lived in “mill towns” before (Cornwall, ON), although I spent the first 20-odd years of my life in a quiet bedroom suburb of Toronto. I’ve also lived in stunningly beautiful places, including Vancouver, Palo Alto, and southeastern China, which nonetheless are rife with their own issues and problems. There’s something I like about Tacoma and its un-pretentiousness. As much as I prefer the dramatic landscape of Vancouver or the storied grandiosity of Hong Kong, my smaller existence in Tacoma leaves me with quieter space. Not that this quiet is always peaceful – in fact I’ve been struggling greatly here, just as I struggled in Cornwall. Both times (Cornwall was 10 years ago), I was in transition, and filled with anxiety. And both in these kind of depressed industrial areas set amidst pretty landscapes. Looking back at my time in Cornwall, where I was a young, government employee fresh out of undergrad, I relish what it had to teach me, and the growth I experienced. So I look to my time in Tacoma to do the same. Most of all, I am trying to witness and participate in the unfolding of the universe, as Michael Singer (my new favourite author), advises.

So here, amidst an industrial cityscape, we can still experience great things. I take the bus back and forth every second weekend between Tacoma and Vancouver (it’s more like 3 different buses), and as Bus 574 winds down the I-5, and the Port of Tacoma comes into view, I see these smokestacks. On one particularly difficult morning after a night of little sleep, while on the bus with airport employees who also looked like they had gotten little sleep, I was listening to Aadays Tisai Aadays (“Again I bow, Again”), the morning chant of the Sikhs, sung by Snatam Kaur. Her rendition of this piece is melodious and a little melancholy, yet also full or reverence, and it gave this scene a kind of peace and majesty. I wrote this poem in deference of this experience:

We can always experience Something More in our lives, regardless of where we are. No need for spiritual mountaintops or ashrams. The commitment to peace happens every day of our lives.