This journey ...

(Piece of a ripped flyer on a lamp post in Kensington Market)

*

(Canada Chronicles continued ...)

It's hard to explain or put into words what I have been feeling since being here. It's like trying to paint a picture without knowing what the subject is ... yet the image on the canvas already exists and is waiting for the conscious connection to be made so that the form can become visible.

The reason I was 'supposed' to be here turns out to be not the reason I am here. This does not surprise me. I was enrolled in a reflexology course. Everything fell so easily into place for it to happen. Yet, prior to coming to Canada, I kept being reminded of my journey to England to do my Masters in Criminology. Even though I got my degree at the end of it, my being there ended up not being 'about' the Criminology at all. (I never even became 'a criminologist'). It turned out to be about the experience of life, living, being, new discoveries, making great friends (that I have until this day), the freedom of experiencing and being 'me' in ways that living in Trinidad does not facilitate.

On Monday I got an e-mail saying that the reflexology course had been cancelled due to low enrollment. Somehow, I was not surprised or disappointed. Rather, it was like a confirmation or 'allowance' of something that is yet unseen. It made me feel this.

I immediately made contact acknowledging the cancellation, arranging refund, etc. and told the teacher what I felt: that everything happens for a reason and signing up for the course in the first place is what has brought me here, now, for whatever that reason is. She agreed with me, wished me a 'magical' reason and was grateful that I could have seen it in the way that I did ... rather than be disappointed, angry or inconvenienced, I suppose. But none of those feelings entered me.

Yesterday when I woke up, there was a line from a song playing in my head ... a remnant from whatever I had been dreaming. As I became more awake, the melody got clearer. It was a line of that song "Unwritten" by Natasha Beddingfield ... "staring at the blank page before you ..." playing over and over in my head like a stuck record. Strange, as I had not heard the song recently, do not really know the words and had not been thinking of it. The line was persistent and would not leave, so I looked it up during breakfast to see what the full words were. Clearly a message for now and always:

Unwritten
------Natasha Bedingfield

I am unwritten,
Can't read my mind
I'm undefined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in you
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten ,yeah

Oh, oh

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines, oh yeah
We've been conditioned
To not make mistakes
But I can't live that way oh, oh

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in you
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips x2 (twice)
drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in you
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in you
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
drench yourself in words unspoken
Live you life with arms wide open
Today is where you book begins
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten
(YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!)