Of Shapes & Shadows June 2005   Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story

Non-fiction

At Home In This World
By M. Marcus A. Lopés

 

Changeling

IN MY MOTHER'S living room, on the mantelpiece, sits a large reddish-brown picture frame, and inside the frame is an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of a young man.

His discernible physical traits are these: He's black. Round wide-apart eyes, long eyelashes, short black hair, a short decisive nose with prominent nostrils, full lips, a hint of a smile.

His indiscernible traits are as follows. His dark brown eyes, expressing trustful doubt, dance with sadness. His round caramel-brown face carries an air of humble confidence, possibility, often at variance with his mood.

The photograph, taken several years ago, captures the young man at twenty-four years of age.

In that photo he is in the last semester of his undergraduate degree when the black knight of misery and doom became manifest. Those were days when he hardly had the energy to get out of bed, and usually stayed in his apartment, stretched out on his futon, crying. He could not sleep and often roamed the city at two or three or four o'clock in the morning-a regular at Reflections, the local gay bar, and at the 24-hour supermarket just a block away from his apartment building. When he did immerse himself in the world he treated himself, and his friends, to lavish meals and gifts. The staff at Il Mercato knew him well-table twenty-eight was his table. His student loans bought him designer clothing by Henry Grethel and Wilke-Rodriguez. There came a time when he had to borrow three hundred dollars from a friend to pay bills and buy groceries. He was overwhelmed with this feeling of uselessness, that he could not do anything right, that his dreams  were impossible, unachievable, stupid.

So much emptiness, sadness, within him that he came to believe that life was not worth living. Oh the shackles, and how he cried, trembled, fell silent, cried, trembled... On a cold February night, he stood alone in his kitchen, poured himself a glass of water and held his newly refilled prescription of Prozac in his right hand. He was prepared then to seek deliverance from the
insufferable pain, torment, anguish-this hell he could conceive as being dreamed up by a cruel vindictive God. What saved his life that night was the sound of the deadbolt turning over as his roommate Karen arrived home. The stigma so great that he was, then, too ashamed to say that he lives with depression. To know his name is to understand the suffering of his soul, the blackness that sometimes overwhelmed (...overwhelms) him-a fierce, unrelenting ravaging that rendered (...renders) him almost dysfunctional. On the mantelpiece, inside the frame, that eight-by-ten photo is a photograph of me.

This photograph, still on display, taken so long ago, obscured the substance
of my being, incognito, truth so far removed.

 

Shadowboxing

IN THE BEGINNING, I existed without form. Being, here, imaged outside existence, within the phantasmagoria of a dream. And what of existence? of being? of form? It is, for me, to understand the mark of being within an existential continuum, to inscribe a value as it relates to the I of being and becoming-to extract my self, cultivate its core-re-veal a taxonomy of being [in our time]. The continuum: the revelation of, within what is proper to man and what is proper to man is being, who I am. In the course of being as I exist without form, the continuum-in search of an economic rule that goes uncontested-is now disposed, eclipsed, fractured, and thus speaks to the 'moral' crisis within which I find myself enmeshed, engulfed, displaced.

To begin, the taxonomy of being [in our time]. It is this taxonomy that is often sequestered, extracted from being, assailed by a corrupt Reason, taking ownership of it, and propelling man, as metaphor, away from his authenticity, the substance of his being. I am there, the metaphor [man], displaced along the existential continuum. Let me re-trace the trace left by the taxonomy of being [in our time] devoid of meaning, projecting me [us] within that 'moral' crisis.

What is this 'moral' crisis and how does one speak of it? It is an ontological unravelling that removes responsibility from being [in our time], and within this unravelling emerges an altérité rebelle au logos to displace the metaphor-usurp, contain, derail, man (me, you, us) in being-in-the-world. Here, within the derailment, I exist without form. And the form: living for others and not for the self. The metaphor, derailed, unravelling...

My adolescence was a time of reckless abandon. Tuesday afternoons, and later Thursday evenings, were spent in the home or studio of my piano teacher. As a talented young pianist who played by ear, and having been raised in a religious household, the expectation was that I would acquiesce in the predetermined role of becoming a church organist. Touted as a 'singer' (I've always been modest about my vocal ability, and it wasn't until my late teens that I sought out voice lessons for no other reason than to stroke my ego-and what a lesson that was!), my adolescence-a time when living under my parents' roof meant 'doing as they say'-became the precursor to what was supposed to be a successful, lifelong, church music career. You see, my parents were active in the church and were often approached with invitations for me to perform at various church functions, invitations they accepted on my behalf. To decline such a request was considered immoral, unchristian, because my musical ability, I was told, was a gift bestowed upon me by God, a gift I had to use for His will. And well into my twenties, having been conditioned thus, I roamed around Nova Scotia, going from church to church, singing and directing choirs with a growing internalized mépris and abhorrence. This was me as I existed without form-existence, as a concept related to being, in comprehensible to me. I did not understand my responsibility, my engagement, walking in this world blindfolded, unconscious, derailed.

The moral crisis, then, is one of conditioning, succumbing, giving one's self over, to that altérité rebelle au logos, living according to pre-defined societal confines that are, undoubtedly, not one's own. The causation of this conditioning is to remain, voluntarily or begrudgingly, trapped within this paradigm, accepting existence without form as the de facto mode of being, unable to reject it in favour of something more authentic.

And what is that more authentic 'something'? It is me-you, us, everyone-understanding my responsibility to ensure my becoming is not limited to my conditioning. To do otherwise is to be consumed by this moral crisis, to be at the I of the storm. And in the I of the storm I am no
longer free, I have voluntarily surrendered freedom to the imagination.

Perhaps it is not yet clear. To speak of existence without form is to speak of this conditioning, how, within our society, it has become acceptable for others-parents, siblings, employers, spouses-to dictate what we do (select and then ordain, on our behalf, that way of being). As a musically talented child who, for a time, dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, I was told,
repeatedly, that 'No child of mine will be a musician. They're all druggies and alcoholics'. The dream relinquished, I pursued journalism studies. In the course of those studies I found my voice: it lay not in journalism but in creative writing. When I announced that the campus radio station at
Dalhousie University was going to interview me about my writing, I was told, 'I hope you're not going to say anything stupid'. The dream relinquished, I then pursued studies in French Literature. Here I was, so far removed from the beginning-working to extract my self, cultivate its core-yet, and still, I existed without form. The metaphor displaced, struggling to re-veal my ontos, to re-trace the trace of possibility eclipsed-move beyond non-being and escape the ontico-phenomenological crisis that entrapped me.

Living, then, in this world demands knowledge of our being-who we are and what it is our lives represent. I, as metaphor-to steady the continuum, dispel a corrupt Reason, in search of a new Morality of personal responsibility-have come to the understanding that I cannot wait to be for I
already am, and now I must become.

Walking in this World

FOR MUCH OF the summer 2004, I woke up each morning enveloped in loss, more so than ever before feeling as though I had voluntarily surrendered myself, who I am, to that altérité rebelle au logos. I was extremely unhappy in my senior policy and program analyst position within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Sitting in my office and staring at the computer monitor day after day after day was like watching my dream recede. And the dream-the writing life-was always running ahead of me, never quite fully within view.

Summer gave way to fall, and with fall came the image of myself in that photograph, taken seven years ago. Am I unreal? I had to ask myself over and over again. I am real. My dreams are real. I came to understand that one must come into truth, and that being-in-truth demands, necessitates, requires, that I see myself within that truth. The dream relinquished re-claimed-the substance of my being contained within the writing life, no longer a question of form or of existence because of this act of faith in my self that has provided the cohesive within my existence, anchoring me, steadfastly and assuredly, in my dwelling in this world. It is because of
faith in my self that I am anchored in my possibility-engaged [possibilité-engagée]. The altérité rebelle au logos displaced, the truth of this existence re-vealed-the authentic unedited modality of my existence in play:

I am a writer. I write because each morning when I awake, and at night when I lay my head down to sleep, writing is what becomes me. It quells within me, gnaws at my heart, enlivens my soul. I write because of the stories within me that I long to tell. I write because of the beauty that is this world. I write because of the ugliness that is this world and perhaps, with my words, I can challenge it. I write because I have a vision of today that may spillover into tomorrow. I write because it is the passion that consumes me. I write because writing is all of me. Writing is who I am.

November 1, 2004 marked the start of a new journey. I resigned from my 'comfortable', secure, civil service job to pursue my dream, now clearly in view. This is both the beginning and the end, and, here, somewhere in-between, the metaphor, the moral crisis behind me, I exist with form, being in our time.