Time to Land - Part I
The Plot of the Blind Belivers
Today, on my way back from work, I was called by the sirens from inside a Chapters bookstore and I could not resist the temptation. Bookstores have always been for me a hideaway and a space to unravel. Sad or excited, enamoured or cranky, sick, energetic or exhaust, there is always a book that can match my mental ramblings.
I stopped for a few minutes, just to check if the had a copy of a couple of books that friends of mine had suggested: “Dark Age Ahead” by Jane Jacobs and Alastair Fowler's annotated edition of “Paradise Lost” by Milton. I also wanted take a peek at a copy of “Morpho Eugenia”. My mental ramblings can be quite disorganized.
I was geekly enjoying one of Chapters' state-of-the-art digital search stations when I saw a middle-aged Asian lady standing by my side. I looked at her and she politely asked if she could have some of my time. I immediately assumed she was going to ask me for money, and I was surprised that she had the courage to do it in a commercial environment. But then she said she wanted to give me a letter and, opening a messenger's bag hanging from her shoulder, she pointed at a pack of printed sheets.
She started talking very fast with a strong foreing accent. I have to confess I still have troubles understanding spoken English, particularly if it is seasoned with spices from a foreign land. It usually takes for me one or two sessions with an acquaintance to get used to their accent and understand all they are saying. I always pretend, proudly, that I am not missing a syllable, but my face usually cannot hide what is going on inside my mind. So, looking at my frowning expression, the lady made a pause on her speech and candidly asked if I could understand English.
After seeing me nod, she continued talking in the same urgent fashion. I tried to pay closer attention but I could only understand some disconnected phrases like: “to know were my child is”, “fascist government”, “human rights”, “forced me to work” and “pulled my teeth off”. Saying this last phrase she pointed at a gap in her mouth were the two lower fore-teeth were missing.
I assumed she was Chinese based on her accent, so I thought the lady had been a persecuted Christian or a practitioner of Falung Gong trying to expose the crimes she and her fellow believers had suffered. But as I was not really following her speech, I accepted the letter, said I was very sorry, wished her good luck and looked at the search station screen hinting I wanted to finish the conversation.
The lady did not get the hint and kept talking and showing me her gums, so I started to sense I was being too naive and the lady was just missing a few screws. Feeling very awkward and almost doing a reverence, making a show of taking the letter with me, I wished her luck once again, and moved to a different section of the store hiding behind a bookcase. A few minutes later I could hear the lady on the other side of the shelves talking to different person.
On my way to the restaurant, walking through the Eaton Centre, I perused over the letter and quickly confirmed my suspicions.
Her letter was a collection of ramblings more disorganized that the ones of my own mind, but one could see the lady was no joking when she wrote about them. Her need to write seemed to be so urgent that, even when she had already printed a cleanly typed letter, she added handwritten notes on the borders of the sheet. It reminded me of the classical Chinese tradition to compile comments on already printed books by writing on their borders, some of the writings so insightful and poetic that they were considered works of art on themselves.
The topic of the letter was horrifying. The “fascist government” she was trying to denounce was not the Chinese one, as I had assumed, but the Canadian government. Seemingly suffering from a set of bizarre mind delusions, she is convinced that the government of Canada is set to abuse her and destroy her life by performing a series of nightmarish sadistic actions such as damaging her personal possessions, prohibiting her to drive, forcing her to take jobs she does not want, preventing her from reaching her parents back on her homeland, brainwashing her son and planting on him the desire to leave home, hiding from her his current location, and controlling her husband's mind with paranormal powers forcing him to beat her. She even claims the government has physically humiliated her with horrendous things like pulling her fore-teeth out by using remote beams.
She thinks the government wants to turn her into a “blind believer”, term that she underlines, and of which she is probably very afraid.
The life of this lady was probably a very harsh one, some of the things she claimed on the letter being possibly true – the damaged possessions, the abusing husband, the uncaring son, the parents left behind. Sadness and despair had probably made her pay her sanity as a toll for surviving. By reading the letter one could see she was not an ignorant woman. Behind the disordered and hallucinated ideas, there seemed to be a logical and intelligent mind, even a poetic and delicate character, given that amongst her damaged possessions she mentions her piano and her violin.
Her mention of the violin made me think what could her life have been if she would have had a little bit more of balance. Instead of compulsively talking to strangers, full of pain and despair, she could have been right now at home calmly playing her violin.
If one does not look at the frightening fable and ignore the mind controlling phobias, her letter echoes the letter any immigrant could write, one of those in which the environment is always depicted as a harsh and cold one, and one has to resist not to forget one's own culture, not to be converted into something one is not.
The process of migrating is always a difficult one. Learning everything from scratch with the urgency to survive is not an easy task. For this lady it probably was a particularly rough task beyond the scope of her strength. But reading the frightening delusions depicted on her letter I could not help but seeing myself endlessly ranting, complaining to my friends and family about how hard sometimes things are.
On my complains I always place the culprit on the anonymous other: on the new society, on the new culture, on the new way doing things. On my complains I am often the victim of a cold hearted Kafkaesque society or, if I am feeling particularly vengeful, a viciously predatory one.
Maybe my points of view are also plagued by deluded visions. It is true I have no claimed the loss of any of my teeth but I do have complained about loosing many features my life and my environment had before. Have I really lost them? Did I really have them? Have I lost the ability to tell truth from angst?
Perhaps I should have sat with the Asian lady and, over a cup of tea, tell her about my own delusions. Probably she would have looked at me with incredulity and then have a loud wide open laugh, forgetting she had lost her two lower fore-teeth.
Today, on my way back from work, I was called by the sirens from inside a Chapters bookstore and I could not resist the temptation. Bookstores have always been for me a hideaway and a space to unravel. Sad or excited, enamoured or cranky, sick, energetic or exhaust, there is always a book that can match my mental ramblings.
I stopped for a few minutes, just to check if the had a copy of a couple of books that friends of mine had suggested: “Dark Age Ahead” by Jane Jacobs and Alastair Fowler's annotated edition of “Paradise Lost” by Milton. I also wanted take a peek at a copy of “Morpho Eugenia”. My mental ramblings can be quite disorganized.
I was geekly enjoying one of Chapters' state-of-the-art digital search stations when I saw a middle-aged Asian lady standing by my side. I looked at her and she politely asked if she could have some of my time. I immediately assumed she was going to ask me for money, and I was surprised that she had the courage to do it in a commercial environment. But then she said she wanted to give me a letter and, opening a messenger's bag hanging from her shoulder, she pointed at a pack of printed sheets.
She started talking very fast with a strong foreing accent. I have to confess I still have troubles understanding spoken English, particularly if it is seasoned with spices from a foreign land. It usually takes for me one or two sessions with an acquaintance to get used to their accent and understand all they are saying. I always pretend, proudly, that I am not missing a syllable, but my face usually cannot hide what is going on inside my mind. So, looking at my frowning expression, the lady made a pause on her speech and candidly asked if I could understand English.
After seeing me nod, she continued talking in the same urgent fashion. I tried to pay closer attention but I could only understand some disconnected phrases like: “to know were my child is”, “fascist government”, “human rights”, “forced me to work” and “pulled my teeth off”. Saying this last phrase she pointed at a gap in her mouth were the two lower fore-teeth were missing.
I assumed she was Chinese based on her accent, so I thought the lady had been a persecuted Christian or a practitioner of Falung Gong trying to expose the crimes she and her fellow believers had suffered. But as I was not really following her speech, I accepted the letter, said I was very sorry, wished her good luck and looked at the search station screen hinting I wanted to finish the conversation.
The lady did not get the hint and kept talking and showing me her gums, so I started to sense I was being too naive and the lady was just missing a few screws. Feeling very awkward and almost doing a reverence, making a show of taking the letter with me, I wished her luck once again, and moved to a different section of the store hiding behind a bookcase. A few minutes later I could hear the lady on the other side of the shelves talking to different person.
On my way to the restaurant, walking through the Eaton Centre, I perused over the letter and quickly confirmed my suspicions.
Her letter was a collection of ramblings more disorganized that the ones of my own mind, but one could see the lady was no joking when she wrote about them. Her need to write seemed to be so urgent that, even when she had already printed a cleanly typed letter, she added handwritten notes on the borders of the sheet. It reminded me of the classical Chinese tradition to compile comments on already printed books by writing on their borders, some of the writings so insightful and poetic that they were considered works of art on themselves.
The topic of the letter was horrifying. The “fascist government” she was trying to denounce was not the Chinese one, as I had assumed, but the Canadian government. Seemingly suffering from a set of bizarre mind delusions, she is convinced that the government of Canada is set to abuse her and destroy her life by performing a series of nightmarish sadistic actions such as damaging her personal possessions, prohibiting her to drive, forcing her to take jobs she does not want, preventing her from reaching her parents back on her homeland, brainwashing her son and planting on him the desire to leave home, hiding from her his current location, and controlling her husband's mind with paranormal powers forcing him to beat her. She even claims the government has physically humiliated her with horrendous things like pulling her fore-teeth out by using remote beams.
She thinks the government wants to turn her into a “blind believer”, term that she underlines, and of which she is probably very afraid.
The life of this lady was probably a very harsh one, some of the things she claimed on the letter being possibly true – the damaged possessions, the abusing husband, the uncaring son, the parents left behind. Sadness and despair had probably made her pay her sanity as a toll for surviving. By reading the letter one could see she was not an ignorant woman. Behind the disordered and hallucinated ideas, there seemed to be a logical and intelligent mind, even a poetic and delicate character, given that amongst her damaged possessions she mentions her piano and her violin.
Her mention of the violin made me think what could her life have been if she would have had a little bit more of balance. Instead of compulsively talking to strangers, full of pain and despair, she could have been right now at home calmly playing her violin.
If one does not look at the frightening fable and ignore the mind controlling phobias, her letter echoes the letter any immigrant could write, one of those in which the environment is always depicted as a harsh and cold one, and one has to resist not to forget one's own culture, not to be converted into something one is not.
The process of migrating is always a difficult one. Learning everything from scratch with the urgency to survive is not an easy task. For this lady it probably was a particularly rough task beyond the scope of her strength. But reading the frightening delusions depicted on her letter I could not help but seeing myself endlessly ranting, complaining to my friends and family about how hard sometimes things are.
On my complains I always place the culprit on the anonymous other: on the new society, on the new culture, on the new way doing things. On my complains I am often the victim of a cold hearted Kafkaesque society or, if I am feeling particularly vengeful, a viciously predatory one.
Maybe my points of view are also plagued by deluded visions. It is true I have no claimed the loss of any of my teeth but I do have complained about loosing many features my life and my environment had before. Have I really lost them? Did I really have them? Have I lost the ability to tell truth from angst?
Perhaps I should have sat with the Asian lady and, over a cup of tea, tell her about my own delusions. Probably she would have looked at me with incredulity and then have a loud wide open laugh, forgetting she had lost her two lower fore-teeth.
posted by wcloister at 2:55 AM
5 Comments:
Querido, lo dicho: eres todo un escritor. en serio. ojala yo tuviera ese arte y paciencia para hilvanar las ideas de la forma en que tu lo haces.
CHapeaux, mon ami!!!!
Estos dos ultimos parrafos me han matado...
Como Liset ha dicho, me gusta la forma en que entrelazas historias personales y circunstancias.
Saludos desde Londres.
Gracias Lisi : ) Bueno vale, tu te quitas el sombrero por mis verborreas, pero yo me quito las gafas por tus magnificas fotos.
Yo sabía que este tema te iba a enganchar. Cuando lo estaba escribiendo me acordé mucho de nuestros correos (alucinados?).
Gracias Londinense. Y es que eso somos, una maraña de recuerdos e impresiones. Quizá lo que escuchamos nunca sea la real circunstancia si no los ecos que nos despierta en la memoria.
(supongo que aquí valdría la proverbial patada a la piedra para convencerme de lo contrario)
Me alegra que disfrutaras mi blog. Yo por mi parte soy un asiduo lector del tuyo desde hace un par de años. Creo que algún comentario debo haber dejado por allá.
Si, tu lo sabes, tenemos una tendencia existencialista tu y yo. Pero por suerte no llegamos a ser lobos esteparios. beso
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