The Writers Club/Le Club des Écrivains

The Writers Club Le club des écrivains

The Writers Club. Creative writing workshop and support group Le club des écrivains. Atélier litéraire créatif et group de soutien Centre Wellington, Montréal 2015-2016 Organizers: Bruno Debruille Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez Writers: Bertrand Poupart Tony L. Matthew Peters Mathieu Bouchard Daniel Scott Michael Menezes Karl Fontaine † Nathalie Séguin First edition (CC) Kodama Cartonera, 2016 Montréal, Québec Blog: kodamacartonniere.tumblr.com Facebook: /kodama.cartonera Twitter: @Kodama_Quebec Design: Aurelio Meza Kodama logo: Careli Rojo, after a character from Mononoke Hime (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, 1997).

In Japanese mythology, kodamas are forest spirits. Their name can mean ‘echo,’ ‘tree ghost,’ ‘small ball,’ or ‘little spirit.’ In Miyazaki’s film, kodamas would only reveal themselves when the forest is pure. When polluted by men, they die and fall from the trees like ghostly leaves.

This work is under a Creative Commons license Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International.

All rights reversed.

Made in Québec / Fabriqué au Québec là !

The Writers Club

Creative writing workshop and support group

Le club des écrivains Atélier litéraire créatif et group de soutien

Centre Wellington, Montréal 2015-2016

IV The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

Who Are We? In July, 2015, thanks to the initiative of Dr. Bruno Debruille, we got together as a group of people interested in literature and creative expression as a catharsis from everyday’s issues. At first, it seemed as if we did not have too much in common: All of our lives had been touched by mental illness and we were all interested in writing, reading and debating ideas. We were just strangers with some common interests.

From July 2015 to September 2016, we gathered monthly around a table at The Wellington Center. In each of our sessions, we brought pieces of our writing to share and discuss with the group. Each text was a small window to its writer’s inner world. Interesting discussions and personal confessions would follow. By sharing the ideas and emotions elicited by others’ texts, we built a powerful empathy machine: in each meeting, we have found relief and inspiration in our words and the words of others.

Since we started to meet, our lives have kept transforming, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. I would like to believe that, despite the adversities and changes we might have gone through, being part of The Writers Club has been a common guiding thread in the lives of its members.

Our first medium term goal was to work during one year and accumulate enough material to assembly a small literary anthology. We have arrived to this point: It has been more than one year of sharing stories, ideas, joys and pains and this collection is a simple of what we have lived during our meetings this last year.

Finally, I would like to dedícate this common effort to Karl Fontaine, a close friend, poet, painter and member of The Writers Club who left us for good two months ago. I am sure that those who met him will always remember his brilliant discourse full of metaphors as explosive as his laughter.

Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez • Who Are We?/Qui sommes nous ? V

Qui sommes nous ?

En juillet 2015, grâce à l’initiative du Dr Bruno Debruille, nous nous sommes rassemblés comme un groupe de personnes intéressées par la littérature et l’expression créative comme catharsis. Au début, il semblait que nous n’avions pas trop en commun: Toutes nos vies avaient été touchés par la maladie mentale et nous étions tous intéressés par l’écriture, la lecture et la discussion d’idées. Nous n’étions que des inconnus avec des intérêts communs.

De juillet 2015 à septembre 2016, nous nous sommes réunis mensuellement autour d’une table au Centre Wellington. À chaque session, nous avons apportés des textes pour les partager et discuter avec le groupe. Chaque pièce d’écriture était une petite fenêtre au monde intérieur de son auteur. Des discussions intéressantes et des confessions personnelles suivaient à la lecture. À travers des idées et des émotions suscitées par les textes des autres, nous avons construit une puissante machine d’empathie: à chaque réunion, nous avons trouvé du soulagement et de l’inspiration dans nos mots et les mots des autres.

Depuis que nous avons commencé ce club, nos vies ont changé parfois pour le meilleur et parfois pour le pire. Je veux croire que, malgré les adversités et les changements que nous avons vécu, faire partie du Club des écrivains a été un fil conducteur commun dans nos vies.

Notre premier objectif était de travailler pendant un an et accumuler suffisamment de matériel pour assembler une petite anthologie. Nous sommes arrivés à ce point: Après une année de partager des histoires, des idées, des joies et des douleurs, on imprime ce recueil comme échantillon de ce que nous avons vécu pendant nous réunions.

Pour en finir, je voudrais dédier cet effort commun à la mémoire de Karl Fontaine, ami proche, poète, artiste-peintre et membre du Club des Écrivains qui nous a quittés il y a deux mois. Je suis sûr que ceux qui l’ont rencontré se souviendront toujours de son brillant discours plein de métaphores aussi explosives que son rire.

VI The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

Karl once gave me this piece of advice: “Never drop your pen.

Write, just write. Do not care for now who is going to read you: Take a typewriter and turn that blue vertigo of the world into magic”. Karl’s words still resonate in my mind. I hope that, through this small book, his wise counsel will also echo in the minds of all its writers and readers.

Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez Member and Organizer of TWC September, 2016

Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez • Who Are We?/Qui sommes nous ? VII

Avant de partir, Karl m’a donné ce conseil: « Ne laissez jamais tomber ton stylo. Il faut écrire ! Ne te préoccupes pas pour l’instant de qui va te lire. Prends ta machine à écrire et utilise-la pour tourner ce vertige bleu du monde en magie ». Ses paroles résonnent encore dans mon esprit. J’espère que, grâce à ce petit livre, ses sages conseils feront également écho dans l’esprit de ses écrivains et ses lecteurs.

Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez Membre et organisateur de TWC Septembre 2016

0

The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

Zero

by Dan Scott

During crusades thousands of people were massacred to acquire literature. That happened to contain this information at its pinnacle. Some people feel that the Holy Grail is this information and not a literal cup.

It’s ridiculous, however plausible, that people would kill for an object although it would have made more sense that they killed for useful/ powerful information. It’s true that Jesus was a real guy although I’m guessing he drank from many different cups. The Holy Grail itself, the most important information discovered during the crusades is the knowledge that ordinary reality is an illusion. Using math and logic to demonstrate how powerful and versatile nothing is, I want to explore this mathematically. Because we can count them, we can say numbers are things on the island that is ordinary reality. Even if on the surface it looks like numbers come from other numbers [matter makes matter], the truth is that all numbers essentially come from and return to nothing. We can scrutinize numbers and scratch the surface of the ordinary by dividing them, like when I was a kid and first divided 1/3 and I reckoned something unusual had happened. I thought it was strange after learning to count up from zero to be able to end up with separate infinities unless everything was made of infinity and basically nothing at the same time. I wondered how three infinities come from one number unless infinity worked backwards in time [to talk in a linear sense] and kind of hiding behind every number, no matter whether you counted up or down. I had a funny and inquisitive feeling that something paradoxical had to be happening under the surface of the mundane and if it was taking place it was all of the time. I had many questions I kept to myself, like assuming that nothing’s everything then what and who are we, what if we’re all nothing and ourselves at the same time and what if no number is really greater than any other number so all of us could have limitless power. What if nothing matters. It would be inextricably related to us at all times.

Dan Scott • Zero

1

If we understand that the sole property of nothing is that it amplifies then we can say that zero is multiplication and that this is how we can multiply zero by infinity and get infinity with any number [it becomes zero or infinite]. It’s the Master of all the numbers because it’s the sum total of every number and no number at the same time.

It can make, it can unmake it can turn any number into itself or turn itself into any number. Examining numbers like this we can see how good the unknown is at covering itself up with the ordinary. Most people weren’t aware that zero is infinity and most mathematicians would also disagree with this. The same way I can give infinity names so I can talk about nothing [although it’s utterly nameless], mathematicians described zero as a number in order to define negative numbers [incorrectly]. I heard people talking about some stupid debate that actually took place in the 90s as to whether 0 was actually a number. I laughed because scientists and most of us try to explain the metaphysical away as something ordinary on a regular basis.

A professional mathematician would state that infinity is 1/0 —that zero wouldn’t be the same as infinity. They would also talk about negative numbers being less than zero when they’re clearly more than zero because there’s an amount left and any amount is always greater than zero. They would have to take zero into account as infinity to stop making that error. There’s no such thing as less than zero because zero is nothing and nothing is infinity [it’s final]. Scratching through the surface in this way we can see how every number has zero at its foundation, indicating that we live in a paradox and that the ordinary world’s an illusion. We can become nothing by becoming everything and we can become everything by becoming nothing. There’s never truly a beginning or end and infinity just imagines all the numbers into existence to tell a story if every path leads nowhere and no path leads everywhere. It’s easy for somebody who understands this to see why scientists have been talking about harnessing zero point energy [limitless power from any location in ordinary reality].

Getting more in depth, it’s said that the sum of all real numbers is undefined but logicians and mathematicians made a mistake in formulating the rules concerning zero. The hypothesis that all numbers might sum to zero was tested using a mathematical system where the value of zero is pre-set to be nothing. In ordinary math, all values are

2 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains relative to zero as nothing, so of course we would discover that all real numbers do not sum to zero. If it were not so, the logical consistency of mathematics would be destroyed. Because we develop math to count and zero represents nothing, it makes sense that we don’t commonly switch into a system where zero is the sum of all numbers, although it can be done—it just can’t be done half way. As the saying goes, it’s all or nothing. Either we can see zero as every number or we can see zero as nothing.

It’s only logical that a test of the value of zero has to be a genuine consideration of the value of zero. If we test zero as the sum of all numbers we must allow its usual value of “nothing” to change to a value equal to the sum of all numbers. This means that we would accept zero to have a value greater than all other numbers—most of us can understand how this is a bit radical. If we sum all numbers instead of cancel all numbers, we alter the entire value system, and suddenly we have what appears at first to be nonsensical. If zero is the greatest value; i.e., the sum of all numbers, what then is the value of the number one, or two? Which is greater, one or two—if zero is greater than both? The simplest most straightforward way of summing all numbers is to sum the equal but opposite numbers. So for a moment we will imagine that the correct sum of all numbers does sum up to and equal zero, except this means that we need to change the value of zero away from being “no” things. We need to treat zero as the largest value in the mathematical system and this includes the two already vast infinities of positive and negative numbers. Suddenly zero has become an infinite whole that contains all other numbers. Every positive and every negative number on the real number plane is summing or combining together to form an ultimate number of absolute value. Obviously this is not math as we know it. This is math without false limitations, without process, math of principle and truly infinite values.

Tony L. • Stigma

Stigma

3

By Tony L.

Je suis prisonnier, tant de la psychiatrie comme de mon rêve.

Karl Fontaine

Growing up I heard the word used a few times: Stigma against race, stigma against homosexuals, stigma against the handicapped. When hearing these, I just laughed them off... calling them a bunch of weak complainers.

Little did I know that years later it would completely backfire on me. I applied for a job, the interview went perfect, but they didn’t accept me because they wanted to ensure they had someone stable. I remember walking on the street and throwing my jacket on the floor out of anger, almost screaming in the air at the injustice. Then I once dated a girl, we had 3 dates and they were absolutely perfect, not even Hollywood could have scripted them better. But on the third date, feeling we were really close at that point, I decided to tell her about my past mental health history. Afterwards she didn’t answer my calls for 3 days and I had no idea why. Then finally she texted me, saying she was scared and frightened that what happened to me would happen again, and she wanted to build a future with someone more stable. It broke my heart, I was so sad and found it such a shame, a perfect relationship destroyed by someone who is scared and doesn’t understand.

Then finally, in a facebook group chat of about 40 people, an online bully said I must have made a certain statement because I hear voices in my head. Not only did he publicly make fun of me, but he claimed I hear voices in my head which isn’t even true. I was never angrier in my life, I saw only red, I wanted to kill him... but I kept my composure, stated that I do not hear voices in my head, and left the chat permanently.

I now know the meaning of the word Stigma, I have experienced it in the most personal way possible. And all this anger inside of me is not forgotten... I vow to fight this stigma for the rest of my life.

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Fifty or a hundred years from now, perhaps this Stigma against mental illness won’t exist anymore. But it has to start somewhere. And it’s us, the peers and community friends, who will have to fight for this cause, because no one will do it for us, and this Stigma has to end once and for all.

Mathieu Bouchard • Disturbed

5

Disturbed or Disturbing?

By Mathieu Bouchard

Tonight, I am asking a question: Is psychiatry addressing the problem of being disturbed, or is it rather addressing the problem of being disturbing? In other words, is the nature of mainstream biomedical psychiatric practice closer to that of other medical specialities, or is it closer to that or correctional agents and jailers? I think to anyone who has been psychiatrized at any point in their lives, the question eventually comes up. So I argue that this is a legitimate question to ask around this table tonight.

Despite the medical rhetoric surrounding the core of psychiatric practices of diagnosis, medication, and internment, there is limited evidence to support the medical benefits of those practices. “After a small group of psychiatric survivors held a hunger strike in the summer of 2003, demanding that various groups, including the [American Psychiatric Association], ‘produce scientifically valid evidence’ for the biological basis of mental illness, the APA eventually released a statement that admitted ‘brain science has not advanced to the point where scientists or clinicians can point to readily discernible pathologic lesions or genetic abnormalities that in and of themselves serve as reliable or predictive bio-markers of a given mental disorder or mental disorders as a group’” (Coleman 2008: 343). So basically, what the APA acknowledged is that there is no scientific basis to explain emotional distress as brain chemical imbalance.

Many who, like me, have been interned in psychiatric facilities, are wondering how such a traumatizing experience as being deprived of liberty, denied citizenship rights, and forced to ingest often wildly excessive amounts of various drugs, is in any way medically beneficial.

In the perspective of a patient, the discrepancy in power, authority, and legitimacy that is construed in the relation between a psychiatrist and his patient through the professional act of diagnosing is truly scary.

Psychiatric diagnosis is legitimated through an unsubstantiated medical metaphor. Diagnosis results in the social delegitimation of patients.

6 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains Social delegitimation leads to stigmatization, marginalization, and exclusion. Again, hardly medical benefits.

The prevalent “evidence-based practice” movement within medicine and psychiatry is highly illustrative of this extreme power imbalance between psychiatrist and patient. The evidence-based practice paradigm promotes a hierarchy in the validity of knowledge. It is claimed that “best psychiatric practices” should be informed by the most valid forms of evidence. In this hierarchy, systemic reviews including randomized controlled trials are presented as the most valid form of evidence, while the opinions of service users and careers are considered the least valid form of evidence.

The key takeaway of evidence-based practice is simple: the patient doesn’t know what is good for himself since he is mentally ill.

Therefore, the only person who can legitimately determine the appropriate treatment is the psychiatrist who has his file, because he is the one who knows about systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials.

Once you accept those assumptions, you basically give the keys of your life to someone else.

Again, how is this radical form of disempowerment medically beneficial?

References

Coleman, G. (2008). The Politics of Rationality: Psychiatric

Survivor’s Challenge to Psychiatry. In Kavita P., de Costa,

B. (Eds.), Tactical Biopolitics. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Glasby, J., Beresford, P. (2006). Who knows best? Evidence-based

practice and the service user contribution. Critical Social Policy,

26(1): 268-284.

Matthew Peters • Migraine

Migraine; or Strife

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by Matthew Peters

This poor weak matter consumes every thought, wish, and desire rampantly, devours with cavalier haste recognition raging against wayward doubt.

Words flounder and arms jive—glistening in orange light—smoke rises in the night, dispelled by eyes glancing and smiles flickering. Swaying passions exhaust and staccato rhythms give way to contemplative notes sounded once, twice, thrice, and the moment of the present carries the obvious—the very novel thing.

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Sans titre Hibou perché du haut d’un coupe cheveux en même temps coupant le temps d’un pic-à-bois qui s’éveille à la lisière d’une frénésie dans laquelle se trouve toute mélodie qui quelque fois retombe et parmi ses cendres les couleurs S’entament dans la valise du temps et si combien o tant « éperdue » je visite tout de même le sage qui me conseille de boire une gorgée toute liquorifiante de cette pleine gaieté.

par Karl Fontaine

Bertrand Poupart • Sortir ce soir

Sortir ce soir

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par Bertrand Poupart

C’est drôle, sortir ce soir, ne me dit pas J’ai comme trouvé la calme à la maison chez moi Je devrais sortir, dépenser l’argent mais je n’en ai tellement pas énormément ça ne me tente pas de jouer, jouer je préfère écrire ma sagesse divulguée Mes amours sont déjà connues alors pourquoi entretenir l’inconnu Je sortirai encore déçu de me voir sortir déchut Sans pourquoi je suis maintenant Mon itinéraire sans pour autant ne réfléchir que les espoirs grandissant me laissent les choix s’offrant Mais rien n’arrive encore c’est comme le tison qui se veut mort J’existe que dans ma tête Et je n’ai plus peur des fêtes Sortir ce soir Avec toi on fera la foire.

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The Flower Sellers

by Michael Menezes

I guess I didn’t know what to tell him at that point. What do you even say in a situation like that? Do you tell him it’s over? That it’s done?

Tell him to go out and gather some nice framed photographs and start preparing for the closed casket funeral? Because at this point—and the red-faced, breathless gentleman before me knew as well as I—that boy was long gone and lost to the world, stowed away under a trap door in one of three to four hundred gypsy boat houses anchored along the southern port. Somewhere in that floating city, the boy, his son, was alive sure, but lost… lost so far beyond finding....

But he wouldn’t have it. It was the flower sellers! he thundered for the hundredth time. The flower sellers, he repeated quietly after a long, stuttering breath. They’d—just listen to me, he insisted, he and his son had stopped by the portside market to pick up flowers for his wife’s birthday. This was a grimy grey harbour town, you see, perched on an island. It was a centre for trade and nothing else. So grains, fruits, produce or livestock of any kind—well that was all shipped in from fields and farms on the mainland. But herbs and teas, charms and trinkets, and flowers—were peddled exclusively by the boat dwellers. They came in from the east—or no one really knew where they came from, except that they were here, here en masse, and here to stay. He was tired that day he said. Sleepy. And the girl who was manning the shop, she was… she was very pretty, he added slowly. He’d turned his back for an instant to purchase a charming, golden bouquet at the only stand for miles stocking sunflowers in this fall—almost winter—season and in that brief instant, the boy was gone. It was the flower sellers.

I hadn’t the heart to tell him, I guess. You put on airs. You tell yourself, you tell the world that life as a private investigator in a dark and dingy, back alley city hardens you, but all it takes is a single missing child, a single desperate, quivering, tearstained face, and you’re making decisions that—well they’re questionable at best. You see, they scared me—the boat dwellers. There were thousands of them, and there was

Michael Menezes • Flowers Sellers 11

only one of me, and I got the feeling that they knew us—they knew the city. They saw us with our blinkers on, living our narrow little lives down our narrow little streets. But we knew nothing about them. They were an unknown. I hadn’t the heart the heart to tell him that, so there I was, wandering down the portside searching for sunflowers in late October.

It was remarkably easy to find, actually; it stood out among the thirty odd flower shops beside it like... a flower in a field. It felt somehow brighter, more vivid than its surroundings, as if the edge of every petal of every perfectly arranged bouquet was individually singing into the dull, flickering lamplight. So I walked towards it. She was, she was lovely. She had flowers in her hair and a smile that played upon her lips like a… musical instrument… like a harp or a… and I… I mean it’d been a while since I’d last slept now that I thought about it, and maybe that was it. Maybe that was what was blurring everything, melding it all into a wave of bright and hazy colour and music. But I saw through it all, I realized even then that something was… that something was strange about this. My senses may have been swimming but my mind was still as keen... as a tack… and I asked her about the boy… and I followed her into the boats, through the thick, pearly curtain of saltstained sails and into the floating city.

They were singing and dancing and feasting, makeshift stoves at every other deck and great big cauldrons of aromatic soups and stews wafting perfumed poetry into the evening air. In every whirling head of hair, a flower. Around every wrist a charm, a golden bangle, a coloured handkerchief. She had a seashell bracelet around her own; I saw it as she led me through the labyrinth by the arm, through a winding maze of sails and sunburnt, smiling faces, with the lamplight dancing off her dark, twisting auburn braids like a will o’ wisp in a mindless fog, for she was the brightest thing of all here. She led me to him—the boy: brown hair, green eyes, grey waistcoat and slacks. I clasped my hands around his wrist. He was seated at a stove. There were flowers in his hair. There was a charm around his wrist. The shadow and the firelight crept about his features, swaying to the dull and heavy drum beats calling out from two boats away. I asked if he was William, and he said he didn’t know. I told him that his father was searching for him.

He said he didn’t want to stay, but also, he paused, that he didn’t want to leave. I didn’t understand.

12 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

She asked me if I’d like to dance with her and I… but I asked her about the flowers in her hair…that they were so, so golden. I asked her about the firelight, and the perfume, and the crimson seashell bracelet down her wrist. I asked if she was from the city, why her hair was brown and her skin was fair. She frowned and kissed me on the cheek, and lead me back to the harbour. The city was so, so grey; I felt as though I couldn’t see at all. I woke up in my office with a bottle of whisky spilled across my desk. Jesus Christ, I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell him. Do I go back? Can I go back? Where am I now? I don’t feel alive. I don’t know what to do.

Natalie Séguin • Chanson 13

Chanson sous le thème « Travailler, c’est trop dur », de Zacchary Richard

par Nathalie Séguin

Savoir aimer c’est se forcer C’est faire des sacrifices Moi je dis que la vie Vaut la peine quand on s’aime.

Sans amour aux alentours La tristesse est notre seule vitesse Pis chialé comme un veau Ce n’est pas ça qu’y a de plus beau Dans le vide, on se noie Pis y’a plus rien qui vaut de quoi C’est comme ça que je raisonne Quand y’a plus personne Quand ça sonne dans personne.

14 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

La Patience aux jeux

par Betrand Poupart

Depuis 2 ans, à chaque semaine, plusieurs fois par jour, je joue au Scrabble, un jeu de société pour tous âges.

Facile d’accès, je me dois de dire les instructions et de vous décrire le gout de jouer maintenant.

Il faut ramasser les lettres; sept à huit, par hasard, que je choisis sans regarder.

Dans le sac noir et qui se referme à l’aide d’une ficelle.

J’essaie de faire des mots avec les voyelles et les consonnes.

Et je peux changer des lettres pour une meilleure loterie tout en passant mon tour, si voulu.

Il faut jouer le mot sur la carte de point de mire en calculant les points que les lettres nous donnent sur le plan déjà indiqué.

Le partage des lettres, en se touchant, forme un genre de domino qui se conforme et s’attache ensemble. Le jeu s’ouvre et communique le tout avec des mots qui se juxtaposent.

Les limites que la chance nous donne nous laissent à réfléchir, ce n’est pas toujours évident que certains mots ne se jouent pas et parfois, ou souvent, un sept-lettres parfait, que l’on appelle (Scrabble), ne se place pas, et il faut donc sacrifier des plus courts mots pour se débrouiller avec des lettres difficiles à manquer.

Avec jusqu’à quatre partenaires va une partie de une à deux heures et de mise.

Bonne chance au jeu.

Matthew Peters • My Season’s...

My Season’s Harvest

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by Matthew Peters

To be on the far seas at liberty in a well worked craft journey’s long accent having crested arcing back towards home the known and the comfort of familiar faces and places all among a constellation gathered from the wonders and the new my season’s harvest

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Les rêves du promeneur solitaire (fragments) par Nathalie Séguin Rousseau Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire sont des bribes d’existence dont l’intensité sera fixée par l’écriture.

C’est ce travail de recomposition du passé que Rousseau appelle « Rêverie ». *** La rêverie me délasse et m’amuse, la réflexion me fatigue et m’attriste penser fut toujours pour moi une occupation pénible et sans charme Quelques fois mes rêveries finissent par la méditation mais plus souvent mes méditations finissent par la rêverie. *** Vous est-il déjà arrivé de vous assoupir dans un fauteuil bien confortablement et de vous laisser envahir par la détente et le sommeil ? Si votre réponse est positive ; il est probable que la rêverie soit agréable et bienfaisante.

Dans le cas de Rousseau, ces méditations qui l’amènent à rêvasser sont si nombreuses et dénivelés qu’il en perd le sens du réel. C’est un jeu très dangereux quand il n’y a pas de contrôle et qu’il en perd des

Natalie Séguin • Les rêves...

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notions de conscience.

Ce n’est pas amusant vraiment, ni gratifiant. La distance avec le réél que cause les pertes de contrôle et de sens dérive en une maladie et la folie à la longue.

La rêverie chez Rousseau qui régit ce vagabondage de l’esprit est l’absence de liens psychiques et affectifs. (Il ne se dit plus soumis à l’impératif moral de l’examen de conscience).

Ne plus se sentir soumis à la morale, ni à l’examen de conscience dans son cas, pour vérifier et juger si les pensées sont tangibles avec le réel dans l’endroit où il se trouve et si elles sont positives et efficaces comme outil de progression et d’atteintes de nos objectifs de vie ; c’est tomber dans un panneau d’arrêt de pensées, de déséquilibre et la perte de lucidité assurée.

Lorsque l’esprit est dans cet état d’apesanteur, la folie guette.

Ainsi, Jean-Jacques retrouve un contact pur et innocent tel qu’à son jeune âge. C’est dépassé les limites que de regresser constamment et d’un ridicule abhérant.

À terme, la rêverie exprime la dégustation d’un bonheur bien (mérité) ?!

Et la pureté que les autres ne pourront l’atteindre, ni le défaire qu’importe la manière prise.

Ce n’est plus une question de « carapace » quand on est dans un tel état, ce sont des traits de caractère et de personnalité difficile et c’est maladif.

Rousseau va donc mêler les époques dans un présent qu’il veut éternel.

Quel high !

Il adopte une attitude et un comportement différents des normes individuelles et sociales, surtout.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau n’est pas ce qu’on pourrait appeler un être fonctionnel pour lui-même comme pour la société et il a du narcissisme à revendre. Tout ceci du à un manque total d’ingérence émotionnelle. Ses besoins ne sont jamais assouvis et ses passages sont très intenses.

C’est un être isolé et renfermé dans sa bulle. Il ne devait pas avoir d’ami(s) pour dialoguer. Quel état mélancolique, il doit vivre à l’extrême, par moments.

Cette quête intimiste du bonheur n’a-t-elle pas de fin ?

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Sa vie est très routinière mais pour lui remplie par l’extase. Estce seulement la botanique qui l’aide et le supporte sur ce point ?

C’est son choix.

(La fuite dans l’imaginaire).

Et la rêverie centrée sur l’étude et la jouissance du moi. C’est un être extrêmement introverti et distant par le fait même des autres humains présents dans son environnement. Il est éloigné des sentiments réels au temps présent avec ceux qui le côtoient sur le trottoir, dans les parcs, dans ses environnements physiques.

Il est trop infantile et immature avec ses contemporains. C’est une dimension égotiste. Jean-Jacques a trop de pensées intimistes, pas assez soutenues et partagées. Ses réflexions débordent du cadre normatif.

Rousseau est très émotif et hypersensible au moindre petit détail. Il en sort déséquilibré à la longue et s’endurcit malgré son amour pour les autres. Rousseau devient insensible,froid et distant. Etc.

Le rêveur ne renonce pas à décrire ses « fantaisies », mais il subsiste à la création littéraire, une activité psychologique qui le tiendra debout ; en vie.

C’est étroitement lié au « pays de la folie », du vide intérieur très intense et del’incompréhension quasi totale.

Le fantasme avatar moderne. La quête du moi intérieur.

S’il place son livre sous le signe de l’introspection : (Que suis-je moi-même ?

Voilà ce qui me reste à chercher).

Loin du polémique seule demeure celle de converser avec son âme.

Le « que suis-je ? » introduit au changement d’objectif par rapport à la question :

« qui suis-je ».

C’est le besoin de soins qu’il aurait du recevoir à cette époque.

Car Rousseau a le cœur éclaté et la tête en mille morceaux. Si un individu rêve de devenir aussi imprégné par les songes durant le jour, son imagination débordera du réel et il pourrait devenir très malade et très dangereux pour lui ou la société, si il n’est pas soigné et appuyé dans son recouvrement. Se croire tout seul au monde et plus fin que les autres comportent des risques. Et si le contrôle des pensées et des

Natalie Séguin • Les rêves...

19

émotions ne sont pas coordonnées, surveillez vous, car les débordements affectifs et l’insouciance de l’hypocrésie d’une maladie peut très bien vous surprendre et vous accabler.

Quelle jouissance pouvait-il avoir Jean-Jacques ? Sinon que s’admirer dans la glace.

Cet idéal n’est pas enviable.

L’amour propre est un sentiment naturel quand il est bien dosé pour chacun de nous, mais il peut devenir un handicap car il devient un principe d’égocentrisme, d’hypocrésie et de toute forme de méchanceté. Il se nourrit de l’estime de soi des autres, ne l’oubliez pas et prenez garde. Il est à la base de toute inégalité individuelle et sociale et de préjugés. Il mène à une attitude et un comportement différents.

Ce jeu dans le miroir est très dangereux.

20 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

The Horizon

by Michael Menezes

Until then, at least from my quarters at the stern of our vessel, the RLS Horizon Catcher, and from really every which way, from every angle on deck and in the crow’s nest and in every cabin porthole, the sea: it stretched on endlessly, smothering the eye for as far as could be fathomed. We’d been at sea two months now. Three if you include the first few weeks collecting supplies from ports along the West African Coast.

Two months then, since myself or any other living soul aboard the Big Dipper, for that was what the men had taken to calling it in their song and in their reverie below the decks; the joke was that any coming day now, the Horizon Catcher would up and do just that: we’d catch the horizon. We’d dip, bow down, stern up, down a long, endless waterfall, down over the edge of the world. Believe me, if we’d encountered any sign of it, any whirlpool, any maelstrom or great thundering gale, any sirens on the rocks, leviathans, krakens or winged, looming monsters of death, you’d have before yourselves a long and very detailed account of it.

No, all we’d seen for two months now on every side of us was miles and miles, leagues and leagues of calm, unending sea. I hadn’t come to crave the land so much as I- craved anything, anything at all.

Two months or so, two months and eleven days it was, we encountered the mist. Dense. Impenetrable. Like a thick white curtain in a high society parlour. Spotless. We passed two nights and three days unable to see any further than a single ship’s length ahead in any direction. On the sixth hour of the third night, it was I and the first mate, William Wright, up on the bow of the Dipper taking watch as had become our custom. You see, no man could stay on deck any longer than a few, fleeting hours now before he’d slowly descend into madness, snow blind from the fog, and it was especially so during the nights.

William was a strange lad indeed; he’d taken up the seafaring profession in the hope of financing a life of scholarship in natural philosophy- a far cry from the drunken, whoring rabble under his com-

Michael Menezes • The Horizon

21

mand. We’d fallen into taking the darkest hours of the night under our watch, during which time he would regale me with stories of Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion or Mesmer’s Animal Magnetism, for which the maddening, hovering mists were more an eerie backdrop than any agent of our undoing.

Yes, it was during that sixth hour, as we spoke of St Augustine’s Journey of the Soul that the mists, they thinned at last, and not a half a league ahead of us- it was a mountain, it was a great craggy yawning monolith that rose up from the ocean surface like the rocky maw of God. We stood in silence for many minutes, each wordlessly daring the other to speak, to acknowledge it, to fall to their knees and cry into the air in praise.

It was I who finally spoke. I asked him if he indeed saw what I saw, and what he made of it, and would he run down into the cabins and alert the men and set a course, and unfurl the damn sails himself if he had to and- Sir, he said. Perhaps, sir, if I would calm myself for a moment, the rock, the monolith, he said, its plateau was at least two hundred or more feet from the ocean surface below, and we had not nearly enough rope nor provisions to make such a climb. Perhaps, he said, the rock might prove to be just that: a singular, though awesome protrusion on all four sides without a shore for us to make a landing.

Perhaps the men, if they were to wake, would not hear reason as I did- they would mutiny, tear down at the rigging in a frenzy, in a mass hysteria to climb… to reach… Perhaps the plateau of the monolith might seem to them the surface of the sea, and ourselves, our vessel, two hundred feet below, and drowning.

I steadied myself. He made a good point, William Wright. Perhaps, natural philosophy aside, His Majesty’s Service could make a captain of him yet. I sent him down into the cabins to retrieve four of our most seasoned sailors of whose state of mind and sanity he could be sure. The six of us on deck, we plotted a course toward the monolith and around it.

And as we drew closer to rock, again it was William who saw it first. Around the base of the monolith… what we thought had been a reef… it was rope. It was miles and miles and miles of tangled, knotted rope, floating smiling and serenely in the gently, swaying ocean currents. And drawing into view around the corner, around the hidden eastern edge of the rock, we saw the graveyard. Scores, hundreds of

22 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains vessels moored against the face of its cliff, each in pristine condition, unscathed, having floated in the breathless waters for eternities. Old crafts, with dragon figureheads, and unmanned oars protruding from their hulls and sides, and some, strange sail-less and unnatural behemoths, clad in iron and in stone yet floating still, unmoving, empty.

Again I was the first to speak. William, I said, plot a course… south. Away, get us away, man! Turn the wheel! I ran, I…I stumbled down, across the Dipper’s godless deck and over to the stern. The wheel! South! Away!

That night we swore that to no man but the King should we ever breathe a word about that lone, accursed rock in the heart of the Pacific. Many brave vessels, many captains, many crews have set out since to find the rock, to find the monolith of which we spoke unto His Majesty’s pale regal lips, and to his courtiers’ condescending glowers.

To my knowledge, two of these vessels have returned, reporting not to have encountered any such expanse of mist, or looming monolith. The other seven… Perhaps at the horizon, at the edge of the world, it is not the waters of the sea that fall, that dip down into the void. Perhaps it is the sanity of men that slows… that moors itself by the cliffs and floats in still, in tranquil waters by the monolith for all of time…

Mathieu Bouchard • Toxicomanie

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24 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

Goodbye Addictions

By Tony L.

Games, you were always good at killing time: days, weeks, and months would pass by and I wouldn’t notice.

Poker, you would give me an artificial high when winning temporarily before inevitably losing everything.

Binge eating, you would give me emotional relief: giving me a sugar rush that would make me forget my problems for a little while before I came back with a poisoned body and mind.

Sleep, you could make me forget and take away hours of my painful days. After a month of sleeping, I was asking myself what I had done with my life.

Addictions: I never learned how to live without you but now I have no choice. If I enable you it will eventually lead to another psychosis and I can’t let that happen to myself or my loved ones. I have always escaped the present and present-oriented activities. It’s now time to choose health, to choose the present, and to build a real future. I don’t know how I am going to do it, but I’m choosing reality over manic excitement, and it has to work.

I’m not giving it a choice.

Karl Fontaine • Being Sober

On Being Sober

25

by Karl Fontaine

Becoming sober like finally putting my two feet in a long lost soul house with a new guest, feeling of a new horizon and for once grasping reality, embracing it instead of the old runaway train.

Now going somewhere, finally my wheels on solid tracks, my soul newly washed and rinsed; my heart devoted and crisp for the colors of my production.

Drawing with a new child’s wisdom, like business colors appearing real and simple, although deep in the roots of my still youthful eyes.

Amusing myself in new ways to think and not stabbing my reality as if everything was due to me but more like an attentive gardener to the plants and trees to be loved so they can flourish and grow their radius of vibrant life.

26 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

Sabotage

par Mathieu Bouchard

Politique de la terre brûlée.

J’ai construit une maison, qui était belle au goût des autres, dans le but de m’y loger et d’y vivre une vie respectable, une vie conforme; une vie soumise, une vie rangée. Faire plaisir aux autres pour se sentir accepté, valorisé, approuvé, normal. Renoncer à ses passions, réprimer ses instincts, mourir de l’intérieur, s’éteindre à petit feu. 9 à 6 au bureau, payer l’hypothèque et les comptes, aller au gym régulièrement. Obligations de toutes sortes pour satisfaire aux attentes; pour être quelqu’un de bien, comme ils disent.

La tyrannie du quotidien.

Mélancolie du soir, parce demain matin une nouvelle journée commence, sans doute aussi morne, grise et froide que les précédentes.

Vertige du dimanche soir, parce que demain matin une nouvelle semaine commence, faite de cinq jours sans doute aussi mornes, gris et froids que les précédents. Un scotch, puis un deuxième. Ma guitare devant moi, qui ramasse la poussière, parce que je n’ai plus l’envie d’y jouer.

Puis un jour, je déploie mes ailes, pour voler vers le ciel. Je monte, toujours plus haut, jusqu’au soleil, pour m’y brûler les ailes.

La tempête souffle, se rapproche dangereusement. Je pilote au radar à travers les nuages noirs, magnétiques, lourds et effrayants. Insomnie, panique, désespoir. Les inquiétudes tourbillonnent dans ma tête, toujours plus vite, toujours plus fort. Je vole vers le ciel. Je monte, toujours plus haut, jusqu’au soleil, pour m’y brûler les ailes. Je traverse les nuages noirs, j’approche enfin le soleil. Puis arrive le moment tant souhaité : je touche le soleil et je m’y brûle les ailes. Chute vertigineuse; boucle piquée; démolition annoncée.

L’impact au sol est brutal.

Définitif.

Je me relève, démoli et soulagé. Enfin, j’ai tout saboté. Je suis maintenant libre. Enfin libre. Radicalement libre. Je me suis évadé de la prison dans laquelle je m’étais enfermée. Libre. Libre de me réinventer.

Matthew Peters • The Hour...

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Les nuages noirs sont partis et ont fait place au soleil; que je regarde en biais afin de l’apprécier sans m’y aveugler. Douce brise du matin.

Tranquillement, s’installe en moi une confiance sereine en un avenir dont je ne sais rien. Je ne sens plus le besoin de voler vers le soleil, de m’y bruler les ailes. Désormais, sentir la douce caresse du soleil sur ma joue me satisfait.

Libéré de la tyrannie du quotidien.

Maintenant, changer le monde, un jour à la fois.

The Hour as it Fades

by Matthew Peters

The faded book covers stand by the old magazines near where the dogs sleep, the decks stretch around three sides and with nine is where we eat, sit, and talk; the talk is short, in bursts, largely what is needed, some that’s appreciated, but with the ocean just below we listen to it lapping and watch the sun’s trajectory, over and between the trees, which tells us all we need to know of the hour as it fades.

28 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

The stranger’s eye

by Tony L.

Life is absurd, but amazing at the same time. Life is ultimately meaningless. but is also the most precious thing in the universe. Stop living in the confusing cobwebs of the gray area and realize that it’s both white and black at the same time, while taking advantage of the fact that humans are designed to be happy, and just let it happen.

Once, I was sitting on the balcony of my ex-girlfriend’s place in the McGill ghetto, waiting for my friend to come over. He was and is a very close friend of mine, the type of friend you don’t even need to look in the eye when you talk to him.

Anyway, while I was on the balcony I spotted him driving around, looking for parking. I couldn’t say hi to him because he was far away in his car. So I just continued watching him as he went up the street, frustrated to not find parking, then turned left to the next street and continued searching.

At that moment I had a strange feeling that to this day I cannot describe. It was in the way that I was seeing him. It almost felt as if I was intruding. I saw a side of him that I have a never seen before, because he never showed that frustrated face with me. Also, it was weird because this was the first time I ever saw him without him knowing I was looking at him.

I effectively changed my identity towards him from a friend to a stranger. It was a weird feeling like I was invading his privacy by seeing a side of him that he would normally never show to me. Yet he was in public and thousands of people can see him this way for free and as long as they want to.

It also shows that we have two types of behavior towards others. One is an adopted behavior and expression when in the presence of people you know, and the other is an automatic, lifeless expression when you are in public and surrounded by strangers. When you’re in

Tony L. • Stranger’s Eye

29

public, the people surrounding you cannot see the other side of you when you’re with your friends. It is thus a secret, a mystery. And when you’re with your friends, you can’t see the way they are with strangers.

This is why, when I saw my friend’s frustrated driving, I had that strange feeling, finally explained 15 years later.

30 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains

Alimentation

par Bertrand Poupart

Super marché, l’ensemble visuel de la nourriture…

L’emballage et ce qui n’est pas emballé.

Première approche en vitrine ou sur les allées.

Développer le gout de femme enceinte, bien photographier la marchandise pour un meilleur résultat dans sa cuisine bien lire les dates d’expiration.

En choix qui s’unissent : fruits et légumes, boulangerie, fromagerie, produits laitiers, viandes, volailles, produits des commis à la viande, vins et spiritueux, huiles, sucre, sel, mélanges à desserts repas déshydratés, café, chocolats, céréales, conserves en boîte de tous genres, en vrac….

Papier de toutes formes Liqueurs et boissons Sauces de toutes envergures Produits naturels emballés et produits bio, produits asiatiques De mers et produits surgelés de toutes consistances Pâtes et pâtés de maison Accessoires de cuisines Donc fréquence des visites à l’épicerie générale du quartier, une à deux fois par semaine selon les recettes à suivre et des circulaires si inspirants Le tout est agréable à mijoter dans une belle cuisine équipée Vos amis adoreront et vous remercieront de votre débrouillardise en service culinaire.

Avec 3 repas par jour, les personnes à table avec vous trouveront ce qui est bon et solvable à votre fort intérieur.

Karl Fontaine • Bric-à-brac

Bric-à-brac Bric-à-brac, barraque

qui fout le trac, me renverse églantine et vers de soie qui me pique et me lisse, me peigne les cheveux et jeton de ce parchésy qui se croise au mouchoir d’une hirondelle, et li de ces lilas, tournoie et fragonne, le gouli goula d’une limonade et par son zest ailé picotte les narines du monstre que j’ai vu là-bas, qui s’endort comme un enfant pour voir gazouiller les oiseaux au soleil matin ; picotte les doigts de la truite mouchetée.

Attrappe, guêle et tournoie dans l’onde du sable, jonc qui s’élance et touche l’azur, rayonne ta mini-jupe qui danse l’été où le soleil te souffle la perruque.

31

par Karl Fontaine

32 The Writers Club / Le club des écrivains Perrochet et bon vinier mêlé sur les eaux où le marin prépare ta fête et si encore se rejoint l’allée d’une danse sur le sillon d’un rosier, que son pétale boucle le costume du clown qui verse une larme de tendresse pour un vers sur une feuille qui devient papillon.

Rebours de ta manche où le bouton déroule l’arc circonflexe d’un basse de latex pour un appartement des citadins couchant dans le jardin et couvrant les murailles de la ville Des vieilles bouteilles de vin.

Fric, froc et pas un sous par un air de jardin.

Trouvant le billet du train oh fortune, qui mène au cirque même des confins.

Bidule et pendule Vric, Vroc! le Pantoche, une gazelle bondit sur le nuage zebré du temps, pouls cardiaque d’une grenouille tandis que la fourmi cri : « Tout le monde Au bain ! ».

Mathieu Bouchard • Farewell, Karl 33

Farewell, Karl

par Mathieu Bouchard

Karl a été une étoile filante dans le ciel du Club des écrivains et dans celui de ma vie.

Karl était un chacal un ornithorynque et un hibou, ce qui n’est pas donné à tous. Karl était un lion, un alligator et un albatros. Karl était un urubu à tête rouge qui vole en cercle au-dessus du centre-ville.

Il était aussi un épervier.

Karl était Diogène, le philosophe itinérant.

La peinture était pour Karl un mode de vie. Ou était-ce la poésie ?

En fin de compte, nul ne saura jamais si Karl était peintre ou poète.

De toute façon, je ne crois pas qu’il faisait la distinction. Les mots étaient pour Karl des couleurs. Et les couleurs des mots.

Les mots étaient pour Karl un médium visuel à l’égal du charbon, du pastel ou de l’huile.

Dans son carnet bleu, Karl a écrit le point final.

Karl Fontaine, une étoile filante en route vers l’éternité.

Table of Contents Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez, Who Are We?/Qui sommes nous ? • IV Dan Scott, Zero • 0 Tony L., Stigma • 3 Mathieu Bouchard, Disturbed or Disturbing? • 5 Matthew Peters, Migraine; or Strife • 7 Karl Fontaine, Sans titre • 8 Betrand Poupart, Sortir ce soir • 9 Michael Menezes, The Flowers Sellers • 10 Nathalie Séguin, Chansons sous le theme... • 13 Betrand Poupart, La patience aux jeux • 14 Matthew Peters, My season’s harvest • 15 Nathalie Séguin, Les rêves du promeneur solitaire • 16 Michael Menezes, The Horizon • 20 Mathieu Bouchard, Toxicomanie • 23 Tony L., Goodbye Addictions • 24 Karl Fontaine, On Being Sober • 25 Mathieu Bouchard, Sabotage • 26 Matthew Peters, The Hour as it Fades • 27 Tony L., The Stranger’s Eye • 28 Betrand Poupart, Alimentation • 30 Karl Fontaine, Bric-à-brac • 31 Mathieu Bouchard, Farewell, Karl • 33

This book was finished on September 20, 2016 in MontrĂŠal, QuĂŠbec. Kodamas will account for it.