I will be sharing defining moments of my journey along with a piece of art I have created for each moment. They are available for sale to help fund the publishing of my book. This piece is 5" x 7" and is $30.
My gut churns with knots, an uneasiness consumes me, my mind is wandering in search of an explanation for my physical response to the benign question he has posed.
“Picture yourself in the year 2000, what will you be doing? What kind of job will you have? Visualize what your life will look like?”
Mr. Candido, my grade four teacher, stands at the head of the class, his rotund voice contrasting his slight, Filipino stature. His poofy black hair glimmers blue in the sunlight, bouncing with each swift movement of his right hand as he scratches the chalk across the board, creating a cloud of dustlight. He pauses momentarily to push his coke bottle lens glasses back up his wide, freckled nose with his dust free hand.
Slouched over my desk, which is part of a group of six that have been clustered together, I’m only half paying attention, preoccupied with his request about the year 2000. Staring down at my young, soft hands as they pick at my denim jeans, trying to think of my answer, I non-chalantly glance around, wondering what the other kids are thinking, as if their thoughts will somehow enter through osmosis, giving me something to write about. Procrastination comes easy, writing assignments are my least favourite thing to do at school. The struggle is real. Clusters of chit chat fills the small classroom, making it hard to focus, random words decipherable in the otherwise harsh assault on my ears, “hovering cars, mansions, being rich;'' typical dreams of school age children. That’s not what I envision, in fact, I can’t really conjure up much at the moment. An inexplicable gut feeling that my life is going to have something dramatic and dark happen in the year 2000 is unmistakable and distracting. Don’t ask me what exactly it is, I don’t know. It’s like a whisper, tickling the subconscious areas of my mind, letting me know it is there, but not ready to reveal itself, for that, I will have to wait sixteen years. Unable to shake this eerie sense of impending doom in my future, my page remains blank.