It is Friday. But it does not make much of a difference in my life. I know, many – in thousands – here in Edmonton get enthusiastically, excited when it is Friday, looking forward to rest, or a change in their priorities, during the weekend. But for me it has been a continous stay at home since Chandra, a woman whom I have known for forty years, left me on St Patrick’s day (March 16, 2010). But, after all that initial chaotic pain, I have tried to retain a positive, a healthy attitude, towards life, not craving to be driven around in a “Mercedez”, only collecting “Manna”, for that magical living in the margin with all my health concerns since my open-heart surgery on October 16, 2009, or authentically praying the Lord’s Prayer, “give us this day our daily bread”!
Of course, I have done plenty of cursing and whining during this time. I needed to do that to retain my sanity while watching a thirty-five year life style crumbling down, a forty year of hard work, as a poet, a priest and professor, being swept away, very swiftly, and myself, a man with lots of self-confidence and a sense of independent thinking and judgment being walked to the gallows, with face covered, by an ugly, arrogant lawyer and a handsome, cunning realtor, with many dirty hyenas around to clean up the remains!
On the flip side, I feel some advantage in being “unemployed”. May be it is this that has given birth to praise the Providence – an art I have indulged much during the past almost seven months – manifested in and through many, hundreds, of feeble human beings: Gitanjali, Jay, Justin, Iris, Todd, Brian (and, perhaps, Molly), Ajay, Prakash (and, perhaps, her old mother in law), Danny, Yasmin (and, perhaps, her Fijian mother in law), Wenzhe (with Jingbi, and their Church in Kamloops), Carrie, George, Yatta, Azeb, Joyce, Madusu, Vijendran, Ashley, Rob, Jenna, Aster, Thaddeus, Melina, Salem, Beatrice, and now Benedict, a total stranger – an Iranian Canadian, a Christian convert from the Islamic faith. The list is, no doubt, an incomplete one.
My writing – specifically journalling – is my reframing my experience and attitude to sow a seed of inner peace when I am upset, and confusion and delay are the order of the day, my daily bread! As I faithfully waste this time, I re-center myself in that hand that moves my days and nights, building up also an element of courage in my heart, with six bypasses and a scarred artery, an outcome or the cause that caused a heart-attack after the St Patrick’s day event.
This, the chiseling of my vocabulary, with a little filling in of grammar, but in an alien tongue, then, gives me my releif, my release, and my rest – my true Sabbath, my authentic weekend for another week of scarcity-filled, monotonous life, an unpoetic onomatopoeia!
My scribbling, the tapping on my key-board, then, is also my way of readying to put on that washed and pressed garment of unforgiveness. Hence, at the end, I modify my “Lord’s Prayer”. This time I look up to heavens, or turn towards my own Mecca, that innermost inward part, and say, “forgive me for my unforgiving spirit”.
Of course, I have done plenty of cursing and whining during this time. I needed to do that to retain my sanity while watching a thirty-five year life style crumbling down, a forty year of hard work, as a poet, a priest and professor, being swept away, very swiftly, and myself, a man with lots of self-confidence and a sense of independent thinking and judgment being walked to the gallows, with face covered, by an ugly, arrogant lawyer and a handsome, cunning realtor, with many dirty hyenas around to clean up the remains!
On the flip side, I feel some advantage in being “unemployed”. May be it is this that has given birth to praise the Providence – an art I have indulged much during the past almost seven months – manifested in and through many, hundreds, of feeble human beings: Gitanjali, Jay, Justin, Iris, Todd, Brian (and, perhaps, Molly), Ajay, Prakash (and, perhaps, her old mother in law), Danny, Yasmin (and, perhaps, her Fijian mother in law), Wenzhe (with Jingbi, and their Church in Kamloops), Carrie, George, Yatta, Azeb, Joyce, Madusu, Vijendran, Ashley, Rob, Jenna, Aster, Thaddeus, Melina, Salem, Beatrice, and now Benedict, a total stranger – an Iranian Canadian, a Christian convert from the Islamic faith. The list is, no doubt, an incomplete one.
My writing – specifically journalling – is my reframing my experience and attitude to sow a seed of inner peace when I am upset, and confusion and delay are the order of the day, my daily bread! As I faithfully waste this time, I re-center myself in that hand that moves my days and nights, building up also an element of courage in my heart, with six bypasses and a scarred artery, an outcome or the cause that caused a heart-attack after the St Patrick’s day event.
This, the chiseling of my vocabulary, with a little filling in of grammar, but in an alien tongue, then, gives me my releif, my release, and my rest – my true Sabbath, my authentic weekend for another week of scarcity-filled, monotonous life, an unpoetic onomatopoeia!
My scribbling, the tapping on my key-board, then, is also my way of readying to put on that washed and pressed garment of unforgiveness. Hence, at the end, I modify my “Lord’s Prayer”. This time I look up to heavens, or turn towards my own Mecca, that innermost inward part, and say, “forgive me for my unforgiving spirit”.
1 comment:
Hi Victor, besides the confessional tone and the candid revelations I see this text as a closure, a bereavement statement while giving birth to a more mature and serene self that you already have. The events that you went through are a great passage, one that is, as always, an opportunity to achieve an understanding and grow in serenity, through pain and moments of visions of the immense life that we are such a minuscule traveler. It is, in great part, my journey too and this one page you said a lot, undressed your soul, and said something deeply human in all its nakedness. It is an act of acceptance, the only way to reconcile with the flow and move, forget in order to remember what is gone.
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