2003-06-13 - 2:26 p.m.

I'm proud of myself for writing this. I was about to head outside to play some darts in the garage, but I thought of my diary and realized that I should write in it right away, since we'll be at the campground overnight and most of tomorrow. I really don't want to treat this diary like it doesn't matter if I write in it every day just because I haven't been for so long. I want to keep the feeling that it is important to me, because that will make me feel better about myself in the long run, and more than any medicine, that is what will heal me.

So anyhow, it's unusual for me to actual abruptly change my selfish plans and instead of doing the #1 thing on my priority list of hedonistic activities, to do something that, although quite enjoyable once I'm doing it, has the slightest tinge of 'work'. That is what I'm proud of :o)

I had thought of some things to write. Those things have wisped away, lost to me and you. It's too bad.. I would really need a permanent recorder implanted in my skin somewhere that would have enough memory for say a month's dictation, and that could be offloaded and cleared into my diary any time I was around a terminal. I'm trying to remember even a glimmer of what it was that I had thought, but the blanket of time lies too close and dark around it.

So, on to newer things. Today and tomorrow (and maybe the next day, I'm not sure) is the Lefrancois family reunion. A lot of people I haven't seen in at least a decade will be there, including a cousin I used to play with when we were 4 and who now has 2 kids. It's so strange and wonderful for me to be around family, since I have so little of it. I'm sure I've mentioned my sparse family in here at some point, but as it's unlikely anyone will read all the hundreds of thousands of words I've typed, I'll mention again that I don't know my father or his side of the family, and my grandfather is not my mother's biological father. Strange, I don't even think to say "my grandfather on my mother's side", I've only ever thought of one grandmother and one grandfather. I have some in-laws, of course, and they definitely count as family, but there is a different depth to people that have been around you since you were born. There is a certain earthy sense of home that clings like dirt to roots when you pull up a plant... even the street that my great-grandparents used to live on (my grandmother's parents, mind, the only set of 8 great grandparents that are actually related to me by blood) gave me that warm feeling of home, that feeling of a fire at your back on Christmas eve, a house packed with a hundred kinfolk all loud and braying, dozens of conversations flying across the room, intersecting and combining, branching and rejoining, the laughter and the love thick and permeating like the smell of fresh baked bread.

No wonder I like being here in Quebec so much. I think it's because I miss the simplicity of childhood. Although at the moment it's shattered and swept away, I still have the memory of that wonderful illusion that the world seemed to be when I was 3. I know I wrote in here about the day of the bathtub races.. that must be one of the things I wanted to write about. Yesterday my grandfather and I went around the lake up in Rouyn-Noranda, he on his bike and I on my rollerblades. It was just as we got back to the starting point that I got the shock of recognition.. I'm not 100% positive but I'm fairly certain that I was there, at the spot, the boardwalk, where as a child I gazed across the lake onto the houses nestled in the trees at the opposite shore and marvelled at the breadth and depth of warm and intertwined humanity that I was growing up to become a part of.

Of coure the lake seemed a lot smaller, and the boardwalk was empty, uncluttered by festival trimmings and throngs of happy summer celebrants. Instead small knots of kids clustered on the lawns and a few people stood by the big fountain and gazed out on the lake. The scene was so different, but I didn't see it, I was back then, just for a moment. Oh... even now as I type it the feeling rises in my throat and my eyes burn. The beauty I saw. Such a pity that the power of my desire couldn't make the world the place it deserves to be.

I'll do what I can. I promise. I know there's so much to do, but that I, only me out of so many thousands and thousands of thousands, can see what kinds of things would really help out. I don't know why I feel alone. I know there must be many others in my group, tiny as it may be. Even a fraction of a percent is a lot out of 5 billion. We are the ones with the intelligence, the vision, the honesty, and the desire to actually change the world deeply and permanently for the better simply with the expenditure of our lives.

I sound weird even to myself. But this is me.

previous - next