NaDruWriNi Post 2 of 2: the Writing Part
Nov. 8th, 2026 12:06 amThis is something I considered writing about the day after it happened but I got pulled in other directions. I'm rather glad for that now or I think I'd be fighting for something to write about at all since I'm finally all caught up on my life-y posts! This is life-y related as it happened at this year's Nuit Blanche, which goes on the Life-y list for sure.
(I originally wrote 'Doors Open Toronto' and then immediately thought 'no, not that...' it was at ???? and for a solid minute the only thing my brain would suggest instead of the write [typo I will leave due to the rules] answer was 'NaDruWriNi' -- clearly 'cause they both start with 'N' -- which really goes to show the 3rd glass of fortified wine taking effect ;P ).
For the first time for a Nuit Blanche rather than sticking to the downtown and periphery I headed with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
evening_tsar (would love to make the joke they were foregoing Doors Open Hamilton... but since we've covered that already I cannot ;P ) up to the Aga Khan Museum (and also to the nearby Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre whose existence I did not know of the existence of until that night). Mostly we did this 'cause I felt bad evening_tsar didn't get to go with me the previous month when they had an exhibit on board games wrapping up 'cause of a family emergency. Due to the wrap of that exhibit they were between major exhibitions but access to their permanent collections was still free and takes about an hour to check out if not being exacting about reading every sign (I'm usually exacting but since I'd just been the previous month, no worries there).
We'd been considering also checking out one of their 'outdoors' exhibits, which was two guys performing in a bubble dome for 45 mins but when it became clear we were committing to 45 mins in a bubble dome containing saxophones (we both loathe saxophones) after a 20 min wait in line for the previous bubble dome group to exit we opted to skip. Before we made that decision official we killed some bubble dome waiting time at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre who were exhibiting on the WWII internment camps. I was already quite aware of the wretchedness of these due to a documentary on Raymond Moriyama (doc from TVO, possibly not available outside Canada or, heck, Ontario since 'TVO stands for 'TV Ontario') but two additional 'fun facts' I learned were 1) unlike the US, Canada seized all assets of anyone interned to pay for the internment; 2) afterward anyone interned was not allowed to return to BC, which I clearly should have already apprehended by the fact that Raymond Moriyama wound up in Ontario but I actually don't recall it being a forced resettlement from that doc, but it's been a while). One small bright spot story was of one of the women who was about to be interned stashing her sewing machine with a neighbour and said neighbour getting it back to her from BC in her new forced home in Ontario after the fact so it could help be the foundation of her new life.
On the way over to the Cultural Center we noticed a line by the Ismaili Centre, which is one part of the Aga Khan complex I've never checked out before. By the time we'd headed back it was mysteriously gone but after deciding about the bubble dome decided to wander over in any case. This turned out to be fairly fortuitous as it turns out folks had been in line for a midnight ritual of dervishes, which it turns out is a bit of a tradition for Nuit Blanche (with the exception, he underscored, of last year when all the dervishes were all attending a dervish conference a couple of continents away!). I really love the existence of dervishes as it just goes with my general sense that all faiths, no matter how austere they seem on the surface, just eventually produce their mystical sides. Before the ritual / ceremony began the announcer underscored that this is indeed a religious ritual, not an entertainment, and that he hoped all of us witness and attend closely in that frame of reflection.
As I am sure you can all imagine very far from all of the audience took that injunction to heart.
Over the course of the next hour and half or so, particularly in the latecomer corner we were sat in, there was a women who yelled approximately every 10 minutes that some other latecomer was blocking her view, there were folks doing banking on their phones, there was regular inane chit chat, there were many more latecomers and many more folks who decided 'OK, I've seen enough' and walked out in the midst of things... including some of said latecomers (to be fair, at least they had not been given the memo that this is a religious ritual rather than 'entertainment'). On the one hand, this was deeply aggravating, on the other I quite immediately came to feel that when the announcer asked us to attend closely he was actually also asking us to attend to this behaviour... to understand that in the midst of some striving for heaven -- particularly in a way we may not personally understand -- others are continuously declaring "I'm bored".
With that in mind, every inane noise from the audience over the beautiful music and striking feat of multiple individuals spinning together in a small space for over an hour became part of the message. The message I received was: as human beings we struggle to attain the greatest ideal we can strive for because even when asked to attend to others trying for this -- not even to try directly ourselves -- we thwart the attempt with boredom, incomprehension, self-centredness, and ignorance. It was an engaging message to receive, at least, and helped dull the frustration for me, personally.
There was additional surprise frustration on the way home... the TTC had made the rather baffling decision to not put an 'end of service' notice on the Eglinton Crosstown light rail line so there were a bunch of folks waiting to go west who only found out they were too late when the driver of the last vehicle going east called out to them that there were no more westbound trains (sign was endlessly showing another train due in 1 minute). He only called out to them as he was leaving... so not even giving them a chance to go east with him and get to the subway, which was scheduled to run all night, which was pretty dang lousy too! We did not make it to that subway ourselves as we foolishly opted to get a bus south that wasn't due for another 5 minutes that turns out to have had already left 5 minutes before that arrival time. So we too had to figure out if there were to be any more eastbound trains (there was not... the sign eventually did the same eternal one minute thing as the poor westbound folks had instead of saying a simple 'end of service').
Soooo it was an extra hour of travel home that didn't have to be and that, probably, is part of what thwarted my desire to write the next day, which at least in the Grand Glorious Scheme of the Universe gave me this to write about tonight [as I work through my 4th and final glass of ginger wine].
(I originally wrote 'Doors Open Toronto' and then immediately thought 'no, not that...' it was at ???? and for a solid minute the only thing my brain would suggest instead of the write [typo I will leave due to the rules] answer was 'NaDruWriNi' -- clearly 'cause they both start with 'N' -- which really goes to show the 3rd glass of fortified wine taking effect ;P ).
For the first time for a Nuit Blanche rather than sticking to the downtown and periphery I headed with
evening_tsar (would love to make the joke they were foregoing Doors Open Hamilton... but since we've covered that already I cannot ;P ) up to the Aga Khan Museum (and also to the nearby Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre whose existence I did not know of the existence of until that night). Mostly we did this 'cause I felt bad evening_tsar didn't get to go with me the previous month when they had an exhibit on board games wrapping up 'cause of a family emergency. Due to the wrap of that exhibit they were between major exhibitions but access to their permanent collections was still free and takes about an hour to check out if not being exacting about reading every sign (I'm usually exacting but since I'd just been the previous month, no worries there).We'd been considering also checking out one of their 'outdoors' exhibits, which was two guys performing in a bubble dome for 45 mins but when it became clear we were committing to 45 mins in a bubble dome containing saxophones (we both loathe saxophones) after a 20 min wait in line for the previous bubble dome group to exit we opted to skip. Before we made that decision official we killed some bubble dome waiting time at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre who were exhibiting on the WWII internment camps. I was already quite aware of the wretchedness of these due to a documentary on Raymond Moriyama (doc from TVO, possibly not available outside Canada or, heck, Ontario since 'TVO stands for 'TV Ontario') but two additional 'fun facts' I learned were 1) unlike the US, Canada seized all assets of anyone interned to pay for the internment; 2) afterward anyone interned was not allowed to return to BC, which I clearly should have already apprehended by the fact that Raymond Moriyama wound up in Ontario but I actually don't recall it being a forced resettlement from that doc, but it's been a while). One small bright spot story was of one of the women who was about to be interned stashing her sewing machine with a neighbour and said neighbour getting it back to her from BC in her new forced home in Ontario after the fact so it could help be the foundation of her new life.
On the way over to the Cultural Center we noticed a line by the Ismaili Centre, which is one part of the Aga Khan complex I've never checked out before. By the time we'd headed back it was mysteriously gone but after deciding about the bubble dome decided to wander over in any case. This turned out to be fairly fortuitous as it turns out folks had been in line for a midnight ritual of dervishes, which it turns out is a bit of a tradition for Nuit Blanche (with the exception, he underscored, of last year when all the dervishes were all attending a dervish conference a couple of continents away!). I really love the existence of dervishes as it just goes with my general sense that all faiths, no matter how austere they seem on the surface, just eventually produce their mystical sides. Before the ritual / ceremony began the announcer underscored that this is indeed a religious ritual, not an entertainment, and that he hoped all of us witness and attend closely in that frame of reflection.
As I am sure you can all imagine very far from all of the audience took that injunction to heart.
Over the course of the next hour and half or so, particularly in the latecomer corner we were sat in, there was a women who yelled approximately every 10 minutes that some other latecomer was blocking her view, there were folks doing banking on their phones, there was regular inane chit chat, there were many more latecomers and many more folks who decided 'OK, I've seen enough' and walked out in the midst of things... including some of said latecomers (to be fair, at least they had not been given the memo that this is a religious ritual rather than 'entertainment'). On the one hand, this was deeply aggravating, on the other I quite immediately came to feel that when the announcer asked us to attend closely he was actually also asking us to attend to this behaviour... to understand that in the midst of some striving for heaven -- particularly in a way we may not personally understand -- others are continuously declaring "I'm bored".
With that in mind, every inane noise from the audience over the beautiful music and striking feat of multiple individuals spinning together in a small space for over an hour became part of the message. The message I received was: as human beings we struggle to attain the greatest ideal we can strive for because even when asked to attend to others trying for this -- not even to try directly ourselves -- we thwart the attempt with boredom, incomprehension, self-centredness, and ignorance. It was an engaging message to receive, at least, and helped dull the frustration for me, personally.
There was additional surprise frustration on the way home... the TTC had made the rather baffling decision to not put an 'end of service' notice on the Eglinton Crosstown light rail line so there were a bunch of folks waiting to go west who only found out they were too late when the driver of the last vehicle going east called out to them that there were no more westbound trains (sign was endlessly showing another train due in 1 minute). He only called out to them as he was leaving... so not even giving them a chance to go east with him and get to the subway, which was scheduled to run all night, which was pretty dang lousy too! We did not make it to that subway ourselves as we foolishly opted to get a bus south that wasn't due for another 5 minutes that turns out to have had already left 5 minutes before that arrival time. So we too had to figure out if there were to be any more eastbound trains (there was not... the sign eventually did the same eternal one minute thing as the poor westbound folks had instead of saying a simple 'end of service').
Soooo it was an extra hour of travel home that didn't have to be and that, probably, is part of what thwarted my desire to write the next day, which at least in the Grand Glorious Scheme of the Universe gave me this to write about tonight [as I work through my 4th and final glass of ginger wine].
