Coda and ministry

The spell is cast, as the other would have said. The final manuscript is in the hands of VLB, sent Friday morning by email. I looked for the right sentences, the right tone to describe what I had done, reassured the editor that I had not rushed the text, but only passed the emery... explain to her that this process had been undertaken with the help of Périg before I received their agreement, that from now on, I would only intervene on the text at their sole request, etc.

I sent.

I hoped for an acknowledgment of receipt that didn’t arrive. For a little bit, I’d start worrying again. This shows the harm that the Internet has done to time, which has become quantitatively abstract.

The editor may simply not have been there yesterday, was overwhelmed, had meetings, I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. I repeat that the text will not be published for another year, that there are so many things that could happen, starting with the most terrible or the most innocuous. Where will I be in a year’s time, what will my thoughts be?

Anyway, I was happy to review Les Mailles sanguines again. I think the text will please. He tells a story that is no longer a story at the end, will have touched the universal, talked a lot about love and anger. This novel resembles the Casimir Effect on several points, but differs from it in terms of character exploration, resembles it, for example, on betrayals of love, passions, sexuality, stands out because, in Les Mes Mailles sanguines, the scenes are more direct. Several voices in the text while in Casimir Effect there was only Martha’s.

A few "cameos", however, that make the link with the two previous novels. The notary is still the handsome Victor of Les Années-rebours, his sidekick always this lover who caused the separation from Rémi. Martha is appointed once. Heloise was one of his patients. Rose is a little Lucian, but less of a buffoon, more human, I would say, a character inspired by one of my aunts.

But above all, the universe is a little bit the same. The city of Montreal flanked by northern Quebec, where the river is wider, where Montreal should have been to be truly rooted in Quebec.

In fact, I was told at VLB that this novel was well rooted in the Quebec context. That’s where the resemblance ends. Serj, the main character has gone into exile in Vancouver (which is not named), and the other children live in imaginary cities.

Everything is, in the end, imagined. It is my way of wanting to reach, to aspire to, to the great themes. And I’m now looking for another story. I could talk about my love life since love seems to be the theme of my writing. But how can we talk about it without having to name it, without being seen as a thief of existence, without hurting, without adulating?

I have a lot of material in my hands. My choir and its many men whose lives I know so little about, my singing class and my teacher, my friends on the ground floor, the hundreds of guys I approached on the Internet, those who came to be photographed at home, those I met around a coffee or a kiss, and then the thousands of looks I saw in the street, in the subway. Everywhere.

I don’t want to be a civil servant in everyday life, I don’t want to lock myself into hourly, spiritual and sociological rituals. I want to continue to be inspired. I want to sing this ministry that is my life.

Especially since nothing stops.