School started yesterday not only for Damian but also for me. And it was anything but boring. The student lounge was a beehive of activity. One student said it felt like a “free lunch” day: crowded, noisy, busy. I had been quite nervous beforehand, not sure about the course I am teaching, Aqueous Media. I’m an oil painter. Sometimes I do use water media, but basically, oils are my true love. Nevertheless, the first day was good. A very full class and I encouraged them to try new approaches to using ink. At one point, I went around and spritzed their ink with water, just to see what would happen. It was effective!
One student told me he was new to Halifax, a transplant after five years in Vancouver, with a home base in Edmonton. So he has experienced cold winters and wet winters, and now he will have cold and wet winters. But he likes the pace of life here. That’s what everyone says first about the Maritimes—the pace of life. People are nice here and that counts for a lot. Driving home in rush hour (which was just a concept when I first moved here 20+ years ago) there is frequent stopping by one car or another to let other cars into the stream of traffic. Now that feels good, especially when you are in the car that needs to come into the flow.
But there is something left out when I hear people talk about the “laid back” energy here. It sounds like we are pleasant, easy going, not competitive or ambitious. Quite the contrary. People are usually pleasant here (if you ask where the band-aids are, for example, in a drug store, the salesperson will invariably get down from the ladder and take you to the section), yet that doesn’t exclude the ambition, creativity, intelligence that has room to blossom here. Some of the best, most interesting people I know choose to live here. Instead of the tensions coming from the outside pressures of a large metropolis and aggressive people packed too close together, it comes from within, an inner drive that can be just as intense but more intimate. An okay place for me right now.