Origin of Life The origin of life starts from the mythical zero and the death of the enigmatic God before the immenseness that I am an escape from the unheard-of authenticity I learn to grow old by stumbling, by searching for my life in the Beginning of Time light isn’t the exclusive property of the baby who vaguely remembers darkness and knows that greediness exists in the innocence of things in the whistling sound of water beyond the shadows over another land each being a goodbye that floats over the flattened time over the foggy skull of the old man tightly held by the net that signals to the water verses that once it tried to discover in the origin of kites.
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School Days The Colson district had a small schoolhouse situated in the corner of a farmer’s field, one and a half miles northwest of the Fielding farm. When it was built in 1920 the children of the district almost filled the thirty seats in the one-room learning establishment. According to the registers stored at the Department of Education in the capital city of Regina, Benjamin Fielding attended school there up to the end of the seventh grade. Had anyone investigated those old records, they may have noted that it was not uncommon for the formal education of a boy from the districts to terminate anywhere after grade seven. Seldom did a boy’s name appear beyond the ninth grade. The McNeill brothers were the exception. Their grandfather, Andrew McNeill, had a healthy respect for education, a characteristic he passed down to his son and thence to his grandsons. And although Dave, being the eldest, did not have the advantages of his younger brother, he did manage to complete the tenth grade with excellent marks, before his services were required full time on the farm. Alan, on the other hand, was one of the few country boys who went on to high school in Bradshaw, graduating in 1939, only months before the onset of the Second World War. Dave, like his father and grandfather before him, was committed to procuring the best possible education for any offspring he might produce. So, even before his son was born, Dave began to take an active interest in the Colson school district. Two years after arriving home from overseas he became a trustee on the school board which, since 1947, had been chaired by Arnold Johnson. Sarah had been inside Colson School only once, shortly before…
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4 Therefore I sit and contemplate: what man has that is truly his since my life assumes its importance when I narrate it to someone like daylight that is important to the blind who, at least, need to be seen thus I sleep in peace knowing that someone else risks on my behalf, the one they know, only that each morning, just not to betray myself, I have to gather the broken pieces of the nightmare and Uncle Elias, very old, powdered with talc, since he lived humbly, returned each Christmas and spent his evenings making birds, not real ones, just to make sure they wouldn’t lift up the house again; in fact, one night I retried, and I swore with such empathy that the few cloths I had placed in the room almost dried up, yet just that, and the bed, Judas the Iscariot, betrays me to them every morning I therefore preferred to walk aimlessly, a true delight to my kind of people, and then I truly found myself close to my life, like the very sick who love the next fellow and who stand absentmindedly under the trees or wear old pyjamas or die fast like honeymoons and Mr. Such and Such was very joyous when he made money though that didn’t stop him from slapping me two or three times a day so that my poor mother’s milk went bad and we had to exhume her so other seasons wouldn’t be in danger; Besides, how can I learn new tricks at my age? In fact I’d like to stop here for a moment as it happens in old transcribed glorious documents or like the drunkard who stands in front of the icons for a while before he goes to spend the funeral money on drinks and then the expulsions from parish to parish, short affairs with the handrails, mysterious way of wearing the same hat all the time and this woman at the end of the road, so forgotten that her steps are heard from inside all the fairy tales; then there is always a sorrow for ourselves in all our illusions like our true residence that lasts as long as a song.
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…“I’m going out. I’ll be back in two hours. I don’t want to find you here when I get back,” she said in a stern voice and left. He sank into his armchair in a world that had collapsed around him. His wife didn’t want to see him again. Where could he go? His life was a big question mark. His life was so arranged and well set up until this morning. His life of order and security has suddenly become chaos and disarray, a gigantic open mouth ready to swallow him. His orderly life has turned into a disorderly one. How could he live now? How could he face his co-workers on Monday? Could he talk to someone? Did he have anyone to talk to? A quick thought flashed through his mind, and he felt shivers travelling through his whole body. He walked upstairs to their bedroom. Everything seemed to be in place. Then why does his life feel upside down? He stepped into the closet. His clothes hung orderly in it. On the top shelf, he groped for the box. He took it down. Went to the bathroom. He placed the box on the counter. He opened the box: he looked at his service revolver. He hadn’t cleaned it in a while. Like a zombie, he loaded his pistol with ammunition. He stared at himself in the mirror. The code. Yes, he remembered the code they all followed, their protocol. That dark thought ran through his mind again, and this time it didn’t make him shiver at all. He felt peaceful. He felt better. The code was what he had followed all his life. A code, a protocol, the secure way of a CIA agent. It’s the same code he had to follow to the bitter end. When everything goes into disarray, and everything becomes nothing but chaos, the code must come into place. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he stared at his face and then faced the pistol in his hand. Suddenly, a euphoric sense of well-being overtook him as if someone was protecting him. He felt strong, good, and comfortable. Heroic. He smiled at himself. He winked at himself. What would she think when she found him? Would she cry? Would she laugh at him exiting this way? His eyes filled with tears, and somehow, he felt an inexplicable warmth, as if in a different state of mind, in that dimension that various books described. He put the barrel of the pistol in his mouth and, following the example of so many others before him, Bradley pulled the trigger.
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