“He had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant, invisible.” – Elie Wiesel, Night (1972, 1985)
“We are all made of nouns, live by verbs, enlarge and entertain ourselves with adjectives and adverbs.” – Anna Quindlen, Write For Your Life (2022)
I am an obscure writer… a writer of no consequence. I have been at it most of my adult life, forty years of unrewarded effort to be exact. This is no way to live and make a living. But I persevere because writing is in my blood. My grandfather and father were published writers. They wrote books that gave them an economic lifeline which made them financially secure. I didn’t want their fame to open the door for me, to be welcomed as an up and coming writer. I wanted to be recognized on my own merit.
So for years I honed my writing skill. There’s no need for a full-time job since my dad was willing to finance my passion without judgment. I lived with my dad with no prospect of moving out. My mom passed away when I turned twenty one. I did most of my writing during the night, slept through all morning and reserved the afternoon for research, reading and other things. I filled my notebooks with short stories, essays, poems, plays, and personal journals. But when I compared my writing style to that of my dad’s, I knew I had long way to go. I never asked my dad how he did it nor sought his advice. I needed to discover that I had it in me to be a writer. And my dad agreed for he freely allowed me to find it on my own. We never talked about how my writing was going on. Then he suddenly died of a heart attack. My life would never be the same again…
Money was not a big concern at first. My dad left me with a sizable inheritance without having to look for a job. But I also had a filthy habit of drinking and smoking a lot. When I suffered from a writer’s block, I spent my downtime in bars near my house. That way I could go home easily and would not endanger anybody from driving while intoxicated. I didn’t usually remember how I got home. But I always lost whatever money was left in my pocket. If there’s a good Samaritan helping me get home safely, he must have a dark side to lose momentarily his conscience. What a shame. Yet it’s all part of being human.
I submitted what I thought was my very best short story to a short story contest. It didn’t win any of the top three spots. I was disappointed but not totally devastated, though I took it so hard that my very best didn’t make the cut. Failures meant I must work harder. I switched my writing routine in the morning so I could have more time pounding the keys on my laptop for words and ideas that would eventually invite recognition. After another year passed, I participated once again in the short story contest. This time I made it as the third winner. With this small victory, I gained a bit of confidence and started submitting my articles and stories to some Canadian magazines such as Maclean’s, The Walrus, Toronto Life, Canadian Living, and literary magazines such as Literary Review of Canada, The New Quarterly, Queen’s Quarterly, and Humber Literary Review. All rejected my work. For weeks I suffered severe bouts of despondence. I resorted back to alcoholism just to ease my pain. I stopped writing and passed the time staring at the window when sober. I even neglected cleaning the house. Everything was a mess. It’s good no one visited me. Unpaid bills piled up. I received several notices from the collection agencies. I ignored them all.
I amassed a huge debt to lose my inheritance, including my father’s house. I became homeless. I had nowhere to go since I never bothered to connect with my relatives and friends. I stayed initially in homeless shelters like the Scott Mission. But it’s difficult to get a good night sleep, ever so watchful of my meagre possessions being snatched away by hard-luck strangers who relished victimizing their own kind. I moved to the Gardiner Expressway encampment at the Lake Shore Boulevard and Spadina Avenue. For years I called it home. Everybody just minded their own business, which was fine with me. But once in a while, our peace was disturbed by the sudden death of our neighbours due to opioid overdose which was usually unnoticed until the outreach workers checked on us. Our own miserable conditions immunized us from sympathy.
Somehow I managed to befriend Ben who happened to be assigned in our encampment. He’s so compassionate and dedicated to giving us a semblance of normalcy with our hopeless and chaotic life. He’s always present in moments of tragedy, ensuring our needs and comfort. We called him our guardian angel.
One day, Ben noticed my writing notes. He asked my permission to read one of them. He was quite impressed and encouraged me to write something about the struggles of homeless people. It should be an easy subject since I was one of them. Though a personal experience could drive a story, it’s through imagination and creativity that a story could be made profound and relatable. I went against my unsociable personality and started engaging with the people in the encampments in order to know and understand their stories. Still it was difficult to get them open up with me. I had to resort to bribery once in a while though money was limited. I ended up not having meals for a few days. And in those times, I did nothing but write. It helped me forget the pangs of hunger in my stomach.
I saw the pain and agony of starvation. I was walking around the encampment to clear my mind whenever I had the writer’s block. I heard suppressed crying behind a huge tree. Not to appear being a nosy intruder, I walked silently and moved farther away then shifted to my right to get a better view of the person. She was wearing a hijab. She looked familiar. I saw her many times hassling people coming out from the church or grocery for change. I moved closer to ask her what’s wrong. Instead I saw an emaciated small body on her lap. The child looked at me with his expressionless eyes, eerily calm and dry-eyed. Starving children couldn’t waste whatever energy they’re left with on tears. I called Ben right away. Days later Ben updated me that the mother and son were now comfortably cared and housed by the Muslim community in Brampton. They were lucky to be saved unlike the starving children in Yemen, South Sudan and Ethiopia. Famines in these parts of the world are back, not only because of non-stop internal conflicts, but further enhanced by the economic fallouts of the on-going global pandemic.
The impact of the coronavirus finally reached our community. City officials were now focused to clear encampments after spending $330 million to make the shelters safer from Covid-19. There was a hostile standoff between police and protesters over the fate of nearly two dozen homeless people in Trinity Bellwoods. I wanted to participate but was too weak even to pull myself up. Lately I had been coughing and feeling fatigued all the time. The day I had enough energy to move, I decided to organize my literary work. I secured them in Pendaflex legal size, expanded file folders and left instruction that they would be given to Ben for safekeeping in case something happened to me.
I was sweating and mumbling incoherent words. But I saw my grandfather and father clearly in my dream. They were both smiling and beckoning me to follow them. They showed me a big, widescreen filled with words. I felt their power and they flowed straight into my heart and mind. These symbols of expression defined who we were as a family. I couldn’t be more proud to belong, although I wasn’t as successful as these two heroes of my life. But they accepted me wholeheartedly without making feel like a total failure.
What’s a life? Obviously my way was not the right path to glory. Aside from that, spending endless hours searching for the right mixes of words to convey thoughts or emotions took its toll. Life stood still in the wasteland. Did I regret it? Of course, not. I made a choice. All choices have consequences, good or bad. Besides I loved the little moments of joy. Completing a short story or an essay made that possible. What else would I trade my time?
I was meant to be a writer, believe it or not. I was unsuccessful to monetize my literary work, but that was okay. Vincent van Gogh died without benefiting from his paintings which were being sold in millions after his death. I might one day be acclaimed posthumously as a great writer. Who knows?
This fever was giving me hallucination. I kept dreaming things that were beyond the grasp of reality. I remained invisible to the world. If my words could find meaning in others, perhaps that would be my legacy. But obscure writers were like news cycles. They were just good for a certain time of the day, relying on readers to give them a little bit of attention. I wish I could write some more to reach as many readers as I could. But there’s an end to everything. Damn Covid!
21 July 2022