Heydays

It's been a while since I last blogged. I mean really write something and reflect on what has been going on in my life. Between travels, and being part of a moot team, I rarely have time to myself nowadays.

In a way, it's good. I seem to be so much happier to be busy, to wake up everyday and work towards something... even if this something requires me to spend almost every moment of my waking moments in the last two weeks to be almost constantly thinking about space, law and militarisation. I enjoy the experience, but have really been going to bed late and eating not so healthily, despite my promise to myself to really take care of myself after coming back from Taiwan at the beginning of February.

Other than that, I've been getting to know msyself a little more. At least, through friends. One particular person stands out, someone I met and really connected with back in December, and we've been spending a lot of time together of late. Perhaps too much time? Especially as he is already with someone.... I'm not sure how I feel about this all... Knowing that at times I'm in the library till late, he even brings me dinner. It's so touching, so very romantic. But what does it all mean? I just don't know, and it's in a way intimi--dating... But it does feel so wonderful every time I see him, and I smile when I see him.

Really, really smile...

King Mariano

He was either insane, or unbelievably wise. There is but a thin line separating the two.

I see him almost daily, just as I come up of the escalator at Peel. Often I have the urge to approach him, offer him something I have in abundance, yet most days I just walk on by on my way to school, ushered forward by time and obligations.

This morning I did the same thing. The sun was bright, the streets empty. But the image of the man lingered, and lingered even longer, making me turn back again. I approached him, and he greeted me. I offered him a banana, and that was how the philosophical (or perhaps completely nutty) conversation began.

We must have talked for over a quarter of an hour. More a monologue, with me asking questions to clarify what he was saying at brief intervals, what he was really saying, and trying to make connections with what he was saying and what I knew about the state of the world. Who is the real monarch of England? King Arthur. And of France? King Louis the Sixteenth. I didn’t quiet catch the connection. Canadians… all descendants of superior royals who left Europe and established themselves throughout the Americas.

I eyed his clothes and belongings as he rambled on… it looked like he put on everything he had to shelter himself from the bitter cold, and probably had two, three scarves around his neck. His dark hair was covered with two woolly hats, his pants torn and frizzled at the ends. He had a suitcase, a pretty nice and solid one at that, but one of the wheels is missing. To improvise, he ingeniously tied the suitcase on a skateboard with strings. Two big bags bulged with stuff, and another little plastic one contained a bag of chips, sweet cookies, and, yes, the yellow banana he just acquired from a complete stranger.

King Mariano, he called himself. A descendant of King Arthur of England, just like some of the Founding Fathers of America. Though, he added, he was originally born in Venezuela, the flag of which bears the colours of the royal families of the ancienne regime of Europe in the Middle Ages. I nodded, and let him continue, occasionally noticing the rusher-bys who sped past us without looking up. Those who did not see…

“Most people don’t really see, don’t really understand,” he went on, “Most people are educated to think this way, but are blind to understand what is really happening in the world. We’re all descendants of royalty”. For a moment, I thought about my own name, which roughly translated means “Great Crown”. Perhaps…

His teeth were crooked, and few, perhaps rotten from the cheap foodstuff he bought and ate regularly to get by. “How many elements are there in the periodic table?” I admitted it’s been a long time since high school Chemistry… “120 in total. At least, that’s what most people believe because it’s what they can see. But in reality there are over 700,000! We don’t acknowledge them, because human beings can’t ‘see’ them. Ignorant…”

I nodded quietly. Indeed, there is so much about the universe we don’t know, and yet we think human beings are so much more superior.

“Law, you study?” And for the next few moments came another episode of wisdom (or utter non-sense) that, to be honest, was somewhat, and sometimes, difficult to follow. When you injure someone, in whatever way, you create a little injury in the universe, was what he seemed to be saying. Say I refuse to let you sit on this public bench because you’re Asian. You may not feel ‘injury’, but at the molecular level there is injury. “Over time that accumulates, and generations from now the effects can be seen and felt”. Most people don’t see it, can’t see it. But the effects are there. I could perhaps understand what he was saying. The laws of Karma are irresistible and invisible, but they creates consequences and effects that bind us all to(gether in) our mutual circumstances, existences and interconnectedness.

At best he may be labelled a conspiracy artist, at worst a mad man who’s spent too much time brooding over the world’s wrongs and faults. All this in exchange for a banana on a Saturday morning. It was fair enough to me.

“Listen to Bach”, he said as his final words, “He’s a medical genius.”

The heavy doors of the metro station swung open. And I exited into the world.