The Existence of the Space

N.B. This was originally posted in my Facebook page as a reflection on a project I'm currently involved with. The theme of such a project centers on the immigrant narrative where one leaves a place of origin, settles in a new one, adjusts accordingly, and finally undertakes the arduous process of trying to come back home and relive the sense of belonging and community that was once left behind. ====== The teleological (horizontal time) element of citizenship can be found intriguing, baffling, or even both. Does one start life as a “stateless” entity upon one’s conception in the womb, only granted political affinity based on jus soli or jus sanguinis upon birth? If citizenship and political belonging can be obtained either by birth or by naturalization, how does one pinpoint a definitive end to such a process? Does naturalization rightfully justify such an end in that it dictates the immigrant’s arrival at the peak of evolution towards nurturing political belonging? For a mig

N.B. This was originally posted in my Facebook page. If you've read previous blog posts, many of them are raw and sober thoughts occurring to me during my long-distance bus rides just like this one. ====== I already had my fill of traveling through freeways connecting cities and towns just within the past two weeks. Last week was that 45-minute distance between Ruston and Monroe in Louisiana. This week got me hooked into the 6-hour distance between Toronto and Montr é al (for the nth time!). Oh, I haven't counted inbound and outbound trips to airports in Monroe, Atlanta and Toronto as well. There are other people out there who traveled a great deal more than I did, but this is nothing new for me regardless. So there's that tendency to ignore the landscapes occupying those spaces between points of origin and destination. People usually sleep or mind their own business or work throughout the whole journey. The thought reminds me of the railway switcher guy telling (A

I don't know why this virtual space of a blog always comes to mind when I travel. Begging the question, yes I'm on the road back to Montréal! My trip to Toronto was very short and not really that spectacular, although I did reconnect with a friend for one whole afternoon+evening. I knew then that I made the right decision to visit even just because of that. And given the frequency of the posts, yes one can say that I have been stuck in one place for quite a long while. Being stuck: the very thing I hate. But I have to take that statement back though because it isn't really accurate at all. A friend gave me one of his old road bikes, and I've been biking like crazy. Coming from Montréal, I've biked all the way to places like Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, or Chambly, or Mont-Saint-Bruno. But the reason I'm back in this space is that I'm doing something radical (for me) starting today. I decided to open the space up and finally make this blog official. Writing a

Toronto downtown, seen from Ryerson University (SLC). Eaton Centre is just a block away. Whenever I hear the words "looking back," I can't help but remember Lot's wife who looked back as God brought destruction to Sodom by sulfur and fire. The cost of her disobedience from the instruction to not look back was so great: she perished and became a pillar of salt. There's this never-ending cycle that continues to bug me at this time. This city named Toronto had been all too familiar already: the fast-paced life especially in downtown, the people who walk through its streets, the never-ending maintenance work in the TTC subway, the beauty of (not-so-clean) Lake Ontario. Even the mundane routines throughout the week have been too ingrained in my everyday life here: waking up at the earliest 11:00am, starting the day with an hour of biking (if it's bike workout day) and spending the rest of the day writing my thesis either at the Toronto Reference Library or t

...situated somewhere ...in the depths ...of the jungle ...waiting in time ...to be unleashed

Oh wow, I haven't written here for a while now! Life is just so jam-packed, dealing with overdue final term papers from last semester, 3 upcoming projects premieres for the next 7 months, a timeline that seems like next to impossible, and immigration papers to Canadian permanent residence that seem to lead nowhere...yet. And here I am, sitting inside a bus while making my way back to Montréal. I spent the weekend in Toronto to deal with my US tourist visa application (and I got approved!!), check on mom and friends too, and deal with Canadian immigration concerns. Being with people you consider family is simply a gift. It doesn't come cheap: it costs a lot just to be able to enjoy this (especially in my case, travelling hundreds of kilometres just to be there). It doesn't matter though, as I believe that God "puts the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6)," and I believe that also includes people like me who really long for significance in relationships with peopl