Tuesday, July 13, 2010

i saw the light

walking upon the land... birds chirping, mosquitoes buzzing, water slapping against the shore and a bee flies by and i run, like the they're killer bees. it's just a bumble bee, harmless insect.

then...

the world got dark, darker than black, if there is such a thing. so dark i cannot see my hands, cannot see my breath and for a moment, my hearing goes away. the silence is deafening and starts to hurt my ears. i never knew that silence can hurt, but it does.

and from nowhere, i am on the road, right in middle of it and its paved. paved so clean that i can almost slide on it and i have to be careful not to slip. but slip i do. it hurts my ass and the pains reaches all the way up my spine and for a moment i am paralyzed.

then...

the light, a bright light dawns upon me. for a moment i think "this is the stairway to heaven". but nope, it a big rig truck coming towards me.

and i wake up, near sweating, nine in the morning, with the sun shining on my face.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

NS conference

this should be easy to write about...

i took Nunavut Sivuniksavut back in the year 2002-2003, back when the world was flat and we had never heard of the internet or even email. i even think tyrannosaurus rex were running around in south america back then, and Dr. Dre was producing big much music hits. way back then...

the 25th year of nunavut sivuniksavut was celebrated last month on the eighteenth of june and went on for the weekend up until the 20th. i am guessing about 70 people registered but disappointedly not many of them attended the actual discussions. the conference consisted of the usual teachers, meaning morley and murray and they provided many of the steps.

many of the alumni that went there had successful jobs and were starting successful lives, owning many things and having many possessions. i am glad that they are successful. and of course i have objections and i will explain.

if you went to NS, do you remember the passion and disgust that we developed regarding nunavut? disgust because we were appalled that we never learned what we did at the school? disgust because we thought nunavut had lots of maneuvering flexibility and to find out it might not be so. passion because we had a promising start to start contributing to the idea of nunavut and what the land claim could have been. passion because we were ready to make a difference.

and having attended the conference, i am unhappy to say that there really was none of that great excitement and passion that is generated from being at NS. why so was that?

my explanation is that many of us have really good jobs and honestly it was easy for most of us to get jobs. have you thought that it was too easy for you? for myself, it has been too easy for me to get a job and i know that it has been pretty easy for you as well. you have great connections and good networking colleagues. what is missing though is the passion to make nunavut into your own, make it into your own place and actually feel like its yours. where did that go? where is the disgust and passion?

obviously, it is not the same for all of us. i don't have the same passion as well.

so what can we do to remedy that?

Thursday, July 1, 2010

what makes it hard?

writing... umm, whats makes people write?

writing was usual as breathing for a while, as long as i was in Ottawa.

the reason i say that is because, i have been in nunavut for about 5 months and i have only posted one blog. and what might be the reason?

i have thought about this question since i realized i haven't written in more than a week since i got to nunavut. that was way back in march or april, i can't even remember. but here i am again, writing and trying to write at the most, which is being really hard, but the words do come, but questioning my mind has been best since arriving in nunavut.

writing to me was not prohibited. writing was not so questionable and was free thought until nunavut came along and why is that?

iqaluit and nunavut in the whole, has been eye opening and has made me realize what i had left and coming back to it has made me conscious of myself and what i might be saying. maybe it's not the best but i have a lot of respect for it and i had to give it some time. so maybe the time is now.

it is canada day and writing is flowing, not that it's canada day, but because writing just feels good right now. it just feels good to be putting thoughts on a page.

maybe writing is free more than freedom and has to be better than freedom so maybe i haven't been free enough to see writing as liberating! this is liberating - even if i don't make sense, it feels good.

nunavut has become personal and ottawa wasn't, that has become the most prominent factor in what i want to write about. in ottawa i don't know anyone and iqaluit, i know many more people. knowing people in a small communities scares me, maybe because i have been in un-personal worlds and i am now.

so to end it, beer is calling