Tag: life

Mann, Pandemonium and Tadzio

Mann, Pandemonium and Tadzio

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski

Reading again the masterwork of Thomas Mann titled “Death in Venice”[i] took me to the edges of my agony of Love and Desire impossible. Of dreams and fears realized intellectually, but holding you emotionally as a powerless prisoner nonetheless.

Where is the line, the edge beyond which we are too weak to venture – and yet, we are crossing the borders all the time, becoming the papier-mâché dolls, whose strings are pulled by the demons and angels alike? Love and desire are narcotics, and we are the addicts. It is an ageless addiction, timeless struggle.

Mann’s writing is his Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, his Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. But don’t be fooled by it as the only cornerstones of the emotional battles for they are also rooted in “Tristan and Isolde” of Wagnerian genes (through the musically insane “The Ring of Nibelung”). What is interesting is the fact that Wagner, due to his own romantic upheavals and problems, had to escape to … Venice to finish composing ‘Tristan and Isolde’. If Wagnerian music is added to the old Germanic mix (certainly known to Mann), than we can’t escape the influences of Valhalla! You imagination easily conjures the terrifying images of heavy hooves of heavy horses crossing the Alps, steam and foam escaping their nostrils, as they are marching to plunder and murder Greco-Italian vestiges of elegance and order.  They are not galloping to discuss the politics and laws on Capitol nor the philosophical counterpoints on Agora in Athens. They are galloping to wash Rome and Athens with Roman and Grecian blood! The horses of Apocalypse at the end of times[ii].

                Let us go back to temporary time. Here and now, to Moodswing Café in New Westminster[iii]. Pandemonium in my café, where I go on almost daily routine to write and to have my coffee. Always the same coffee – almost boring – but also a small sign of some order in my chaotic life, some ordinary habit. I came for that coffee and to finish reading Mann’s short story from Venice.

And I encountered pandemonium in that regularly quiet café: hardly a standing spot anywhere. Throngs of bodies, all sitting places taken. Gathering of folks from Rainbow Coalition.

By my table just a solitary fellow. I push few standing gatherers aside and sat by that table next to him. I placed my coffee there, ordered a snifter of wonderful Hennessy, took out my notebook, a pen and put it all on that little table. There was certainly very little place left for this fellow and his drink. He looked perplexed and asked me (without a hint of malice or any anger) very simple question: are you going to write in all that noise and crowd? I gave him a perplexed look and answered without any malice neither: Why wouldn’t I? I am w writer and writing is what I do, I’m not a mingler or joiner of crowds. I write here, by exactly this table. He seemed almost amused by my answer and continued slightly ironically: I didn’t realize it was your table (with the accent on the word ‘your’), should I move somewhere else? I completely disregarded the ironic tone of his question and turned my eyes to his face answering in matter-of-fact tone:  Why? That is very kind and very understanding of you. Thank you very much. For a second or two he was speechless and shocked by my candor, than stood up, looked down at me and asked tersely: are you satisfied now? To which I promptly and honestly replied: But of course! And once again – thanks for your understanding. And I returned to scribbling my notes, as he walked away with a shrug of his arms. You can’t blame me for being honest.

Mann conjures all the mastery of Spanish painters in a Goya’sque[iv] style of the turn of XVII and XIX century: the elongated faces, the eyes full of mysticism or terror as in his famous painting ‘Saturn devouring his son’. He sees and feels Albrecht Dürer[v] depictions of Hell few hundred years prior to Goya.The writer is an opposite – one would assume – of terror or chaos. He is from elegant and very bourgeois Munich – just stone throw away to majestic and also stately Austrian Alps. Yet … yes, there is always an ‘alas’!

Suddenly the elegant world of Herr Aschenbah[vi] collapses. From the stately Bavarian city, the elegant slopes of Austrian Alps, from the elegant hotel in Venice, he takes us to the rocks of Tartarus[vii]. Ang[viii], an ungodly proto-Germanic god dons the mask of hoofed Pan[ix] leading a dancing caravan to the edge of desire, of want unfettered by ethics constructed over millennia to constrain lust and primordial instincts. Greed to posses the ‘other’ – his or her body. Almost like today in my café: noisy, talkative, music pulsating, vibrating, desires shielded from being recognized, yet existing, breathing, sweating.

Mann-writer dons the coat of suitor-painter. Hoofed Pan leads Bests and human folk to dance macabre, bodies twisted by primordial instincts of need and warm mist.

Gustav von Aschenbach watches with fascination, yet with terror, as the body count in diseased Venice climbs. Bu so does the throngs of strange animalistic crowd descending from the slopes of the mountains.

I am myself getting tired of Venice, of the sound of hoofs, strange creatures and I leave my café and go to my apartment shielded from all the pandemonium. Leave Tadzio, leave Venice and Valhalla, leave Thomas Mann and his desires. Adieu to all, I am off to bed.

                Next day. I left and slept. But gods, the hoofs, the desires beautifully-innocent and the animalistic – they stayed up, waiting for me to finish their story.

Went again to Moodswing Café. All the creatures and characters from the book waited for me. Why should I write your stories? Because the reader?! What more does the reader need to know? An orgy in Elysian Fields[x]? Eurydice turning her back to Orpheus? The River of Forgetting?

No! I have much darker future to foretell you. On my own will, not forced by powers untold.

                I wish upon you a march, a cavalcade if you will through the boring meadows of mundane, fields of ordinary days and nights without dreams. Maybe even worse – memories of youth vanishing bit by tiny bit until the Etruscan vases from red clay will dry up. You will no longer remember Alexander and his lover, whom he made himself a living god; you will not recognize young Tadzio sitting on Lido in Venice.  But you will survive. You will not die there. You will live a long life somewhere in boring Bavaria forever regretting your cowardice and asking why did you not taste the sweetness of Tadzio’s lips? Never.

Trust me – that torment is hundredfold more terrifying than sudden death in Venice. Thus spoke Zarathustra[xi]. And who would dare to challenge god? 

   

[i] T. Mann, “Death in Venice”, trans. by J. Neugroschel; pub. by VIKING in 1998

[ii] from Biblical ‘Book of Revelation’.

[iii] Moodswing Coffee + Bar

[iv] Francisco Goya | Biography, Art, Paintings, Etchings, & Facts | Britannica

[v] Albrecht Durer | Biography, Prints, Paintings, Woodcuts, Adam and Eve, & Facts | Britannica

[vi] Mann’s – no doubt – self portrait in ‘Death in Venice’

[vii] Tartarus: The Greek Prison at the Bottom of Universe | History Cooperative

[viii] ANGST Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

[ix] Pan • Facts and Information on the God Pan

[x] ELYSIUM Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

[xi] Thus Spake Zarathustra – Wikisource, the free online library

My Three Loves

My Three Loves

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham

My Three Loves never left me. I have never left them, nor have I forgotten them. Through all my early years as a teenager, in an old country on the old continent, country that was greyer than the buildings sorrowing people, who lived there.

Mnemosyne

(by Dante Rossetti)

But my first love that had sprouted in my heart made it flowering, singing above the roofs of these grey buildings. The city of grey buildings, that rose from the ashes of the worst war that fell upon humankind. Yet – my first love gave it a warm embrace that belongs to the titanic Mnemosyne, mother of all the muses, daughter of Uranus and Gaia[i]. She was not the most sympathetic and meek of Titans with a slightly twisted taste in romantic escapades, after all she also bedded Zeus himself, who was logically speaking … her brother. But who’s blaming anyone? Not the Greek gods (or any gods, god forbid!) for their erotic (diss)behavior. I am merely a human, nothing more. For me then, in the grey city of my grey youth, Mnemosyne was the mother of Muses. That cleared her of any other crimes or indiscretions. Who would anyway, any other way? Surely, not when you are fifteen, seventeen or twenty! Love disregards all and any boundaries. And I was in love! Purely platonic, but fearless and furious; intellectually and emotionally on equal basis. And that love, otherwise called ‘friendship’, stayed with me my entire long life. I have never left her, she stayed with me in my traveling luggage all these decades.

My two other loves happened years after the first one. The next one happened almost unknowingly to my senses. It happened in that old country, still very much grey and poor, but on a threshold of new-found freedom, with dreams and appetites for brighter and greener fields ahead. A boy was borne of familial spring, just like the nymphs chasing after the image of Hyacinthus immortalized by songs of his Olympian lover – the God of Love Itself.  But beware of love offered by gods, my dear boy! They never end well for lesser lovers. I’ll tell you a story here, later on, in the last chapter, of the price I paid for asking for, and being granted the Love Immortal. The grief is as deadly, as the disk of Apollion that killed his lover – Hyacinthus. But wait, I take back these warnings and the words of sorrow and grief. For Love Eternal outlasts grief and sorrow. Each time and every time. Lament is temporary and is a sign of temporarily losing your perspective. If you grief losing a lover – the lover’s love will come back to you in time, for love can’t be solitary. It will seek and enter the other lover’s soul, because Love needs a nest.  

Alas, we went too far in this true fable, the allegoric story of my ordinary life and my Loves Immortal.

Boy was born in the Old Country, as I said. We all rejoiced. Remember walking with my parents, his older sister (a child herself), and the little boy in a walking stroller, a long walk through the countryside near Warsaw, through fields and meadows, to an old palace of some aristocratic imminence and a beautiful stream running through the meadows. Of course, we all loved the new boy. But I had no idea how important, how encompassing, and not always easy at all, that love would be. Didn’t have to wait very long, though, just few more years, few more of my returns to that old familial country and I knew. It was unspoken, unexplained, but very clear. She sprung not suddenly and unexpectedly, didn’t come from ‘the bolt in the sky’ (as it did happen in my last Love Eternal).

It was warmly growing inside me, flowering with tenderness. He was still a child, whom I could carry on my shoulders, as we walked through the streets of that old city that used to be so grey in my youth. But now the city was truly beautiful, transformed by modernity and embracing Western Europe. With that, it embraced the traditions of old Greece, of Zeus and Plato, and Plato’s talks with the boy Phaidros. The sweet youth, who desired his teacher, the old Socrato, and a thought that there must be something wrong with him, since his beloved teacher would not accept the gift of his pupil’s young body. But Socrates was wiser than simple desire. He knew that the boy deserves better than a tired body of not very attractive nor a rich old teacher. That in itself, without any further arguments, proves that Socrat was perhaps in love with that youth and choose of his own will a chanced possibility of better future for Phaidros. A sacrifice, if you will.

Not unlike relationship between Herr Aschenbach and sweet adolescent Tadzio, in “Death in Venice”[ii]. Sweet, tender and innocent – until one afternoon Aschenbach runs away from Tadzio to a park, exhausted and ashamed of himself collapses on a bench and hears himself saying aloud the dreaded proclamation: I love you. But once you say it aloud there is no escape, no turning time back. Ha! That ‘thing’: your desire, your dream could be the abyss of torment. Bliss and condemnation eternal.

What happened in that novella, if it happened and why, is totally irrelevant to our discourse on Love Immortal.  If you want to – buy or borrow that booklet from a library. It is not very long, but definitely it is master class of literature.

Hence – back to our story, my Second Love eternal to that boy from an old capital in Central Europe. Years (not that many in my calendar, but must have felt like an eternity in a teenager’s life of that boy) have passed and that boy, in a pivotal time of transformation into adulthood, comes to me in the New World, across the vast ocean and entire continent in search of his destiny(?), his ways through life. In short: in search of himself. At that time I was already well established, secured and totally committed and enthralled with my lifetime Love Eternal, one that consumed me happily, engulfed, and enthralled me without any hesitation. The one that was romantic and erotic. That boy from the Old Country came here exactly for these reasons, too. Firstly, he knew that I love him dearly and sincerely and I would not offer him anything that would be false, or based on pretense or judgment; would protect him, in as much as I could, from any harm that a sudden freedom can bring too.

That was the time, when my Love for that boy transformed to my Love Eternal: when he stopped being a boy from an Old Country, a nephew, for whom you care enormously – he became my Prodigal Son. Without any too strict connotation to the biblical story (of course, if needed, mistakes and transgressions would be forgiven – what proper father would not?). With another number of years the boy become a mature, well established, and educated man. For any parent, biological or emotional, it sounds like a solid reason to be proud. I am.

My Third Love

How should I name you, how should I call you, by what name? Who you are, who you were, where are you?

I can call you by my name for you are me. I can call you by your name for I am you. I can call you Love for you are My Love. Encompassing all my days and nights. Quivering like a blade of grass on summery meadow. Quivering and fluttering like my heart, when I call your name. I won’t be scared whispering to you: I love you – I will be brimming with pride, when I say it. You, who crossed the continent with me, to be with me. When I asked you, where we should settle for our sunset years, you answered: anywhere where you are going to be, because you are my Home.

When we met at the foothills of majestic Cordillera, bellow the amazing peak of Assiniboine Mountain, on the meadows flowing from the enormous Mount Temple, when we walked in the shadow of Mount Robson I wanted to hold your hand in mine. Wanted to show you how beautiful you look in the glory of these peaks surrounding you. Wanted to ask the angels floating around these peaks to come down and embrace you in their warm, godly wings. Just as I would, if I was a god. Maybe we were the gods? Didn’t we possess the most important attribute of deity: Love Eternal? Love that is everlasting. The Black Angel of Mercy in Hyde Park on Manhattan told us so, when we went on sunny October day to visit him.

When we walked the beaches of Northern Pacific in Tofino telling the anemones the story of our love – they danced in waves of happiness; when we walked the white beaches of Eastern Shore on Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia – the eagles danced above our heads and parasailors smiled seeing us traversing the beach.

You – my Third Love were the epitome of love, the Mount Everest of being alive. If I ever would lose the sense of smell – I would still remember the smell of your skin. If I ever lose my sight – I would still clearly see your eyes. If I ever lose my memory – I would want to not know who I am at all, because I would be nothing without the memory of Our Love.

[i] parents of Zeus

[ii] a novella by Thomas Mann

A day the life changed

A day the life changed

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham

You did talk to me last night, first time in a while. Yes, it was a strange night, followed by strange day. Or was it the other way around?  When you are alone, without a set schedule or watch, things do get mixed up easily. Dates especially: Mondays become Fridays, Fridays Tuesdays. So what happened to Wednesday, you ask? Who cares what happened to Wedneday, perhaps I left it on a beach, or on a bench in some park? Maybe it is still in the shower when I saw it last time I was taking a shower? What? Do I not take a shower every day? Maybe not, maybe sometime I take a bath, who cares? You really are asking way too many questions and it is my story anyway. Be quite, just listen.

No, not you, Babycake – I’m talking to my alter ego. You wouldn’t ask such stupid, mundane questions.

But the day or the night when I was still in bed, when I was sleeping, I dreamt of you, I talked to you. Have not done it in a while. I thought that you just let it go, these talks of ours across the boundaries of life and death. Thought maybe there is some allotted time that you can do that and maybe you have used it up? I don’t know. Remember? I am the one still left alive, never been consciously to the other side.

None of it is important really, anyway. I have dreamt of you in my sleep. It woke me up and there you were, next to me. No, I couldn’t see you, but you were there talking to me, you were saying something important.  You said that I have to understand that I am alone. That adjective ‘alone’ stood up as a mountain, a wall impregnable, forest too dense to walk out of it. I was getting used to be ‘alone’ in an adverb form.

Since I came back to our home, our former life here, in this city, this province, I have become very busy in many aspects: walks, friends, beaches, concerts, plans. It was just hard to go back to our home, our street. So I did it very seldom, hoping that it will allow me to function as normal as possible. And it did. Had evenings in bars, laughter, maybe a flirt or two. It seemed normal, I was spared any regrets. It was almost as I would finally get across that invisible line of Doctor Time, who heals old wounds; whose grief becomes first bearable, then transforms itself into a memory. Memory that is sad, but also happy that we did have our time, we found each other among the millions of people. As I was told many times, that it will get easier.

You think that was an expectation too easy, perhaps? I am not, after all, just a single guy ready for the picking and ready for harvesting. Is there anything wrong with it, isn’t it logical, practical?

I have reached to my writings of the early days after you were gone, to the first winter after you were gone and my constant visits to the gravesite in Pictou. Yes, that old ancestral town, where we were going to build our home, and spent the rest of our lives in that home.  We did not.

(notes from my writings after John’s passing by the end of November 2022)

Pictou

                One year. It is hard as hell. Came to Pictou to spent time on the cemetery where we put your ashes. It’s windy, very cold. Desolate place. There was no one else there, on the cemetery. I know – it is only a stone with your name on it. Yours, your parents, and your baby brother you never had a chance to know. And now, there is also your oldest brother Fraser, who was laid there just few months ago.

Cleaned around a bit, threw away old winter flowers, and fixed things. Fixed things? How to ‘fix things’? Nothing can be fixed, when everything is broken.

Yes, I know that you are not there, not under the ground. You are with me. Forever. I have engraved on that stone myself that you are forever in my memory. I looked at the letters and smiled. In my memory, really? That’s what it all came to? Our Love, our life: to be remembered? How silly words could be, when they try to describe emotions, feelings. But still hoped that many years from now, when all of us, who knew you and me, would be gone – a stranger would wander to that gravesite and he would think, that the guy who is buried there was indeed ‘non omnis moriar’, that part of him lived in that other guy’s heart. Nice thought.

You and that Love of ours are engraved not on the stone, but in my soul.

Me? I don’t remember who I was before I met you. I was just waiting. Waiting and searching for you – and I have found you.

                Now, now it is almost three years later. I am here, back to our good life on the shores of the other ocean.  Were we had home, a nest, were we had dozens of friends, people we cherished and who cherished us. Some were ours; others were exclusively yours or mine.  The two halves of Us were surprisingly very independent and strong, if only by the constant knowledge that the other half is there to make it whole.

I don’t have that knowledge anymore. The other half is gone, it is just me left. Those many people I have known, and who sought my presence are still here. Not all of them, granted. Some have left either this life (as you), or this city. But some are still here. None seem to really need me. I am not sure I need them. Of course there is some curiosity, some friendly waving of a hand: how nice to see you again, you are looking good … and so on. I thought that I would need to search for them myself, that I would want it very much. But if I’m always finding excuses and ‘important things’ that prevent me from doing it – am I really?

I have one important friend and, strangely enough, one with the shortest amount of time we spent in this city before we left for Nova Scotia.  Less than a year, I think. After my dearest nephew had to go back to Poland, but still this young and very mature nephew was my angel in the first month after John was gone. Then my niece with her husband and son came to stay with me. But he, that younger friend of mine from Vancouver, somehow helped me in the dark months after I was left alone in Halifax. The rest seemed like eternity. Eternity of being in hell, or waiting for the hell’s gates to be opened, to swallow my world. At these dark times that younger friend kept me connected to the world and people by phone. Our long conversations were instrumental of me getting the skeleton of myself back into me.

That is how I did return. To the place of Our home, our happiness. These places somehow were the strongest magnet for me. I submerged myself in going alone, for days on end, on long walks through parks, streets,  squares, building  were we lived, were my mom lived, were I was with my sisters, my nephew and niece. Places that were calling me. Yes, places, much more than people.

I think that we all have these special places, sometime in many countries, on different continents. Special places that act as an anchor on a ship of life. Where we can drop that anchor and stay safely in some magical Bay of Memories.

It is also a time to untie that line across the sides of our two separate boats: mine and the one belonging to my younger dear friend. He has journeys to make across the sea himself, his journey, not ours. That is also a part of me being alone. My boat is rusted a bit, engines are old. It will still make it though, the last long sailing, perhaps passing the Cape of Hope (not the Cape of Horn), back to original shipyard of its maiden voyage. Then I will rest.

After that rest, I will go alone on many walks to many places (some might not exist materially anymore, but will in my world) that will call me. Solitary walks. It will be like existing in two different dimensions.

One day (no, not in my sleep) perhaps suddenly, out of the blue, I will see you taking the same trail or road and walking toward me, and I will stop being alone. I do hope so. Even in a faint split second before the big Nothingness.

It is what it is. Could be silent, but even than it is not nameless.

Yet, we will not call that name today. We know what it is. Sad but proud; weeping but not hysterical. Sad but understanding; resigned but not broken.

Thinking – strangely enough – about two old movies, that made an enormous effect on me as a very young boy. One with Lamberto Maggiorani in “Bicycle Thief” [i] and incomparable Gulietta Masina in “La Strada”[ii]. Dreams and loves. Devotion and standing by your loves no matter what. Beyond the beyond.

Words. Many words.

The soft and the tense.

Words that can pierce,

be sharp but still true.

They are an umbrella

on a rainy day:

it does not bring sunshine,

does not clear the sky,

but it saves you from being wet.

Perhaps there is even a chance

that such an umbrella

will take a flight with you

to the clouds, to the skies.

It is better to be silent

than to use the thread of words

for making a garment

of lies and half-truths.

Walk silently through

the park filled with good words

where leafs whisper

the promise of a kiss and

touch of fingertips and eyelashes.

Words should never be

like grains of sand in a desert

or they will lose their meaning.

It is good to thread them

on strands of necklaces,

make earrings of them –

it makes them easily accessible,

without the need to always

use a coin for new ones.

Words, you see, are like

years and days: they are

 on very limited number.

The story lives

in your heart and soul,

not in thesauruses.

Words are the keys

to books unwritten, yet.  

(Polish vrsion – both were written simultaneously, not a translation)

Słowa. Dużo słów.

Te łagodne i te nastroszone.

Słowa, które mogą kłuć,

być ostre, ale prawdziwe.

Które leczą a nie jątrzą.

Są jak parasol w słotny dzień:

nie przynosi słońca,

nie przepędza chmur,

ale chroni przed zmoknięciem.

Jest nawet szansa, że jak

w starym filmie porwą cię

w podróż w chmury,

na spacer po niebie.

Lepiej milczeć niż szyć

z nici słów opowieść

kłamstw i fałszu.

Milczący – przechadzaj się w ciszy

parku pełnego dobrych słów.

Jak liście pod nogami szeleszczące

obietnicą pocałunku,

dotyku palców i rzęs.

Słowa nie powinny być rozrzutne,

by nie tracić swej wartości.

Warto je nizać na nitkę

naszyjników i zausznic –

masz je wtedy zawsze pod ręką,

nie musisz trwonić monety

czasu na stale inne, nowe.

Bo słów, jak lat i dni

jest ograniczona ilość.

Opowieść mieszka w sercu i duszy –

nie w tezaurusie.

Słowa to klucze do ksiąg,

jeszcze nie napisanych.

[i]Bicycle Thieves (1948) – Film Review. Italian neo-realist classic.

[ii]La Strada (1954) – IMDb

Thanksgiving in solitude – an intimate letter

Thanksgiving in solitude – an intimate letter

Bogumil Pacak-Gamalski

Thanksgiving came with crisp, yet sunny day.

What do I have to be thankful for? The anger that still exist wants to scream: the hell with you and your thankfulness: Go away, you – rober of my Love, my life.

But anger is not truly my companion, my alter ego. Even, when at times, we exchange expletives. These moments are rare and short-lived, for what I have left of my life is not worth to be wasted on anger and easy expiative words. I still hold people and places dear to my heart. Mews, parks, rivers, mountains. I know I won’t see some of them anymore, some are non-existent anymore outside of my memory. But … what is truly more real: material world or world contained within ourselves? They used to co-exist within me in equal parts. It seems now, there is less of the outer and more of the inner.

I am almost afraid to go back to my old country, to my cherished and loved family, for I know that I will cheat them a bit – instead of becoming part of them, I will exist in a different space paralleled to their reality. Not outside their world, just paralleled. Like shadows that exist only in certain light, certain angle of your eyesight.

There is more now of what wasn’t as visible before THAT happened: my attachment to poetic verse, to good literature, to musical note. Something that consumes you, troubles you, moves you. Otherwise it is just noise of sounds or noise of words. Yes, there is a lot of just noise in so called art – let’s be honest – even great writers and composers produce a lot of noisy garbage.

Why then, there might be invisible wall between me and my loved ones? Because now it is much more pronounced, much more important to me, and I’m much less willing to hide it from visibility. It became me stronger than before. It filled that empty space left by THAT.

There is always a chance – let me be a clairvoyant about my future – that things will change, that someone will claim that space. Yet, I doubt it very much (and the accent is pronounced strongly on the ‘very much’); first, it is true without any doubt , that is is simply much harder at certain age to offer oneself to someone; second – if I am willing to get involved in a flirt, I am almost shut off from willingness to romantic attachment.

Odysseus

Love was always a mythical and mystical idea living in my soul since very early youth. Not just romance – a love overwhelming, all-powerfull. Many people did dream of it, many are and many will. Few will be successful. Such love is not easy, to a point that, at times, it could be overwhelming, too encompassing and like powerful boa-constrictor. You constantly travel between Elysium and Hades. You are on a boat on Aegean Sea, the starry skies at nighttime are pure joy and awe, but that sea could and will become stormy beyond your endurance and you are pleading with gods to let you return to land and never sail again. Odysseus will be my witness to the truth of this story. (image to the left from Wikimedia Commons under a licence: By Aison – Marie-Lan Nguyen (User:Jastrow), 2008-05-02, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4019222

Where were we? Ach, Thanksgiving on sunny and crisp day in Vancouver in 2025. Couldn’t just sit at home and didn’t want to impose on someone’s genuine thanksgiving atmosphere.

Took my camera, my notebook and went to OUR city, city of OUR love. A long walk through streets and places we used to walk together. Reminiscing how it was before THAT. Getting ready to say again ‘goodbye to that city, this time my own, singular goodbye? Perhaps. And perhaps it will be the final goodbye. One more love locked forever in my memory, my soul. Another album in a chest full of other pictures albums… .

Here is the story of that day as seen through the camera lens. My, our streets, parks, cafes, beaches.

Of course, I did have my little dinner at my Melriches Cafe on Davie Street. It was a Thanksgiving Day, after all. And I took out my notebook from the backpack and I scribbled these words. Looked at the other chair at my table. It was empty.

Alone – state of being

Alone – state of being

Bogumil Pacak-Gamalski

You did talk to me last night, first time in a while. Yes, it was a strange night, followed by strange day. Or was it the other way around?  When you are alone, without a set schedule or watch, things do get mixed up easily. Dates especially: Mondays become Fridays, Fridays Tuesdays. So what happened to Wednesday, you ask? Who cares what happened to Wedneday, perhaps I left it on a beach, or on a bench in some park? Maybe it is still in the shower when I saw it last time I was taking a shower? What? Do I not take a shower every day? Maybe not, maybe sometime I take a bath, who cares? You really are asking way too many questions and it is my story anyway. Be quite, just listen.

No, not you, Babycake – I’m talking to my alter ego. You wouldn’t ask such stupid, mundane questions.

But the day or the night when I was still in bed, when I was sleeping, I dreamt of you, I talked to you. Have not done it in a while. I thought that you just let it go, these talks of ours across the boundaries of life and death. Thought maybe there is some allotted time that you can do that and maybe you have used it up. I don’t know. Remember? I am the one still left alive, never been consciously to the other side.

None of it is important really, anyway. I have dreamt of you in my sleep. It woke me up and there you were, next to me. No, I couldn’t see you, but you were there talking to me, you were saying something important.  You said that I have to understand that I am alone. That adjective ‘alone’ stood up as a mountain, a wall impregnable, forest too dense to walk out of it. I was getting used to be ‘alone’ in an adverb form.

Since I came back to our home, our former life here, in this city, this province, I have become very busy in many aspects: walks, friends, beaches, concerts, plans. It was just hard to go back to our home, our street. So I did it very seldom, hoping that it will allow me to function as normal as possible. And it did. Had evenings in bars, laughter, maybe a flirt or two. It seemed normal, I was spared any regrets. It was almost as I would finally get across that invisible line of Doctor Time, who heals old wounds; whose grief becomes first bearable, then transforms itself into a memory. Memory that is sad, but also happy that we did have our time, we found each other among the millions of people. As I was told many times, that it will get easier.

You think that was an expectation too easy, perhaps? I am not, after all, just a single guy ready for the picking and ready for harvesting. Is there anything wrong with it, isn’t it logical, practical?

I have reached to my writings of the early days after you were gone, to the first winter after you were gone and my constant visits to the gravesite in Pictou. Yes, that old ancestral town, where we were going to build our home, and spent the rest of our lives in that home.  We did not.

(notes from my writings after John’s passing by the end of November 2022)

               One year. It is hard as hell. Came to Pictou to spent time on the cemetery where we put your ashes. It’s windy, very cold. Desolate place. There was no one else there, on the cemetery. I know – it is only a stone with your name on it. Yours, your parents, and your baby brother you never had a chance to know. And now, there is also your oldest brother Fraser, who was laid there just few months ago.

Cleaned around a bit, threw away old winter flowers, and fixed things. Fixed things? How to ‘fix things’? Nothing can be fixed, when everything is broken.

Yes, I know that you are not there, not under the ground. You are with me. Forever. I have engraved on that stone myself that you are forever in my memory. I looked at the letters and smiled. In my memory, really? That’s what it all came to? Our Love, our life: to be remembered? How silly words could be, when they try to describe emotions, feelings. But still hoped that many years from now, when all of us, who knew you and me, would be gone – a stranger would wonder to that gravesite and he would think, that the guy who is buried there was indeed ‘non omnis moriar’, that part of him lived in that other guy’s heart. Nice thought.

You and that Love of ours are engraved not on the stone, but in my soul.

Me? I don’t remember who I was before I met you. I was just waiting. Waiting and searching for you – and I have found you.

               Now, now it is almost three years later. I am here, back to our good life on the shores of the other ocean.  Were we had home, a nest, were we had dozens of friends, people we cherished and who cherished us. Some were common, ours; others were exclusively yours or mine.  The two halves of Us were surprisingly very independent and strong, if only by the constant knowledge that the other half is there to make it whole.

I don’t have that knowledge anymore. The other half is gone, it is just me left. The many people I have known, and who sought my presence are still here. Not all of them, granted. Some have left either this life (as you), or this city. But some are still here. None seem to really need me. I am not sure I need them. Of course there is some curiosity, some friendly waving of a hand: how nice to see you again, you are looking good … and so on. I thought that I would need to search for them myself, that I would want it very much. But if I’m always finding excuses and ‘important things’ that prevent me from doing it – am I really?

I have one important friend and strangely enough one with the shortest amount of time we spent in this city before we left for Nova Scotia.  Less than a year, I think. After my dearest nephew had to go back to Poland, but still this young and very mature nephew was my angel in the first month after John was gone. Then my niece with her husband and son came to stay with me. But he, that younger friend of mine from Vancouver somehow helped me in the dark months after I was left alone in Halifax. The rest seemed like eternity. An eternity of being in hell, or waiting for the hell’s gates to be open to swallow my world. At these dark times that younger friend kept me connected to the world and people by phone. Our long conversations were instrumental of me getting the skeleton of myself back into me.

So I did return. To the place of Our home, our happiness. The places somehow were the strongest magnet for me. I submerged myself in going alone, for days on end, on long walks through parks, streets,  squares, building  were we lived, were my mom lived, were I was with my sisters, my nephew and niece. Places were calling me. Yes, places, much more than people.

I think that we all have these special places, sometime in many countries, on different continents. Special places that act as an anchor of ship of life. Where we can drop that anchor and stay safely in some magical Bay of Memories.

It is also a time to untie that line across the sides of our two separate boats: mine and the one belonging to my younger dear friend. He has journeys to make across the sea himself. His journey, not ours. That is also a part of me being alone. My boat is rusted a bit, engines are old. It will still make it though, the last long sailing, perhaps passing the Cape of Hope (not the Cape of Horn), back to original shipyard of its maiden voyage. Then I will rest.

After that rest, I will go alone on many walks to many places (some might not exist materially anymore, but will in my world) that will call me. Solitary walks. It will be like existing in two different dimensions.

One day, No, not in my sleep, perhaps suddenly, out of the blue I will see you taking the same trail or road and walking toward me, and I will stop being alone. I do hope so. Even in a faint split second before the big Nothingness.   

Letter to you

Letter to you

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham

How do I say it? Where do I sent it, to what address? You didn’t leave any forwarding mail note in all these little messages for my on your old Iphone.  Yes, you did tell me that you love me – but that I knew already, as you did that I do love you. More than life. Much more than that. I guess we both did know IT for many decades.  Of course, as any lovers we also had the natural urge to say it over and over to the other. Silly, isn’t it? Yet, sweet nonetheless.

But I still don’t know where do I sent this letter, these words I scribble now to you. Just in case.

You know that I’m going in a day or two to complete the last leg of our last journey. I’m going to our Home. Back to our home. Back to the amazing city that saw us, blanketed us with its beauty and it’s almost unnatural  shower of protection, and gave our feelings a nest. No, it didn’t protect us from little silly misgivings, trespasses (even if they felt at that time as a apocalyptic catastrophe) – why would it? The city knew that they are of no consequence. It took care and protected that, which was most important and most cherished. That made life worthwhile – our mutual love. The rest was just a noise. Little things to do to fill time. It is when I laid in bed at night and listened to your breathing as you were falling asleep – that was when it mattered. That was all that mattered. Even more than – dare I say it?! – nights of passion that was heavenly.

Have to take that journey back. Back where we should had have came back much earlier together.  

It doesn’t matter anymore, really. You are coming with me anyway. Maybe not in body, but in memory. With passing years memories is often what we have left.

You know that highway I’m taking. During summertime it offers glorious vistas. This time of the years, at times it is very treacherous. A strange feeling came over me. A feeling that I might not make it. Not take us back home through the very last, short leg of the journey. Funny, but a bit disturbing. Foretelling?  Just in case,  a little note to you.  Want you to know that I almost did it. One could say that I did, regardless of some little detail at the very end. It would be like, let’s say falling off you skies at the very bottom of the hill, after a long slalom from the top. Who cares? You still skied from the very top. Just a mere few meters doesn’t really count.  No, I’m not wishing or hoping that it would end up like that. I do actually believe that in a day or two I will be unpacking in our new place back in our city. This is just a few words to you, in case of some tiny misshape on the last mile. Otherwise – see you at home, Babycake.

yours always –

Chalice

Bogumił Pacak-Gamalski-Graham

I have missed you still

I have missed you by

empty night and by

colorless daytime

I have missed you

yesterday on my walk

I have missed you today

when I got up from bed

I have missed you last year

and I’m missing you

this year the same

I have missed you

three years ago

the day you were

gone

I do get up in the morning; get dressed, have breakfast; clean the dishes afterwards and watch some news. I don’t go to concerts anymore or much less than I did in Halifax. It was terrible there, where every street, every park, every store reminded me of us being there together.  It is terrible here, where everywhere I go, I remember when younger us walked together. You are everywhere, and yet I know that you are nowhere. You are gone. Forever.

It was going to be easier they said, and I thought it would. It is not, or it is by the virtue that you can get used to even chronic pain. But the pain is not lesser and it is tiring all the same. After a while you are just tired of that chronic pain. You have had enough and you want to be gone, too. What is the point of maintaining that, which will never ease, never go away?

Oh, I know that mine is not special or rare and distinct. But suffering of others does not ease your pain. That would be a sick perversion. I know that you are no longer have any worries, unhappy days or sadness. You can’t ‘cause you are gone, nonexistent anymore. But it is the memory of you that pains me so much. I am the only holder, only chalice where you exist. For as long as I live, I will be that chalice containing you, and the pain.

Right now I am in the process or refurbishing my life again. Moving to place where we used have our happiest days, decades actually. No, not some sort idyllic frolicking in flowery meadow. A life with its bad days, but live full of love, nonetheless. It did exited me, when I got that idea, and I got struck with realization that I will be walking these trails, street, places as alone, as every day I did since you were gone. Yet, I’m looking forward to it. Strange. Somehow, can’t explain logically how it works, that chalice full of pain will not be as heavy? Or I will understand perhaps better why it is so heavy. Understanding a process might make it easier to go through it.

Yes, there is also that element of egoistic pleasure of ‘coming back home’. Sort of making it the full circle. Of course big part of that circle would be reconnecting with my old friends. Very dear people: older, younger, my age. Somehow our life and love did not preclude both of us from pursuing our own interests and social circles.  Much more on my part perhaps, not by design though or special privileges. I just did.

It will not make me happy in a conventional meaning of the world. It will however (or not?) allow me to live again, smile at times. Smile honestly, not politely.  

I will miss you

tomorrow again

I will miss you

as I did yesterday

I will miss you

till there is no longer

either night or day

in places we have lived

and places we have

never together been

until the chalice will

be broken and the wine

of life will be spilled