“Life only begins when you don’t know what you’re going to have.”
Béla Hamvas
That’s what Justin Baldoni’ s work is all about.
When the deadline for filing a court response in the fall came, he stomped on my neck in his heavy boots and pushed my soul to the floor… well, it was like there were two of me.
One of me is a tormented, desperate, hopeless ghost, toiling with all the discipline of consciousness on the reply form 17 hours a day for six weeks, amidst howls of pain almost to the density of a heartbeat, living on rice puffs and coffee, dwindling and aging into a shadow of himself.
But the other half of me even laughed sometimes. No, these were not moments of madness. Although, according to Béla Hamvas.
“One has to go mad to be normal and lose one’s mind to wake up and get to the point where one knows that one is alive, to finally stop being a dreamy, phantasmagoric, normal human being.”
Béla Hamvas
I never for one minute felt anything wrong with this serenity. Not even guilt. Rather, perhaps, a subconscious hope that somehow, in some way I hadn’t yet known, it would be good. That in fact everything is good. Of course it sounded crazy to myself at the time.
I saw the figure of Al Pacino in the courtroom, pointing out the total absurdity of the case against me with his wry, sarcastic humour. It was as if he were the defendant, but he had the strength to react without regard for convention. And I was writing, just writing the script…
And the situation itself was absurd. As the world tried to make me believe that there is legal protection, there is no justice. And there was no chocolate.
That this is the catch-22. I just have to ask to be declared insane and then I can get out. But if I ask, then obviously I’m not crazy, so I have to keep going.
To the outside observer, it might have been difficult not to go mad. But from the inside, I couldn’t help but feel that there was a sustaining force with me all the time.
“Is it not a man’s duty, if he does not know who he is, to seek himself?”
Béla Hamvas
Then, as I progressed through the six weeks of itemized answers to the claim, and there was no hopeless situation that was not resolved, a mission was conceived in my womb.
That I want to serve. To give back to people, to communities, to society, all the good that has sustained me throughout my life.
To show what I have been through, what my experiences and understandings have been. I started writing. To write again and again. My writer friend Lóránt Varga warned me not to! I am not over the trauma yet. I should let it settle. First I must find my peace.
I didn’t push it. But it kept overflowing…
So I have shared a few of the highlights with others. Just a few lines had a profound effect on them. I felt more blessed and grateful than ever when I wrote before. It only strengthened the calling within me.
“…I don’t think I’ll ever finish. Writing for me is like taking a breath or eating poppy seed pancakes: it’s unstoppable. I think it’s something worth living for: to do something, anything, that you regret finishing and are glad to start again. I’m grateful to have found literature, and I’m grateful to all readers who read (no matter who the writer).”
Lóránt Varga
Meanwhile, my panic-stricken soul was banging on the iron door of my head, wondering what would become of us and how we would survive. How I must support us. How will I provide for our livelihood? What will happen to the children if we lose everything?
But that damn CV somehow again didn’t reflect what I wanted to do. My soul felt the call, my head dictated the numerous qualifications, practical experience and references to my fingers, so that I could produce responsible applications at the keyboard, in accordance with conventions.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that, once again, I’m doing all this in a country with huge unemployment, whose language I don’t speak, to get myself a better paying job in a better paying prison.
And I no longer had the money for a gold cage of my own making to serve the rich.
There is no prosthesis for the soul, as Al Pacino says in the film “A Woman’s Smell”. And for me, my soul is broken. Of course, I now know that this happened in the past when I was born…
There is nothing left but the way of the soul. Healing to heal and teaching to learn. I can’t not do it anymore. That’s why, now I want to.
“All my riches, sounds and words, a few thoughts spoken by them. I have told you one thing, if you believe it to be true, tell everyone!”
Pyramid – Gift
