- since i and my wife left vancouver on sept 7 on a sightseeing trip to china, i have never made a single poetry submission (first time for so long during the past 10 years), though i did get 13 acceptances in sept and 11 in oct; also, as before, i was unable to write a single line during my entire stay in china. based on my most recent china experience, i did draft 5 short ones the day before yesterday. in other words, i have literarily been inactive for the past two months.
- on oct 22, i returned from my china trip to vancouver, and became e.functionable again, but with a terrible new health problem, which gives me an unbearable constant pain; such normal bodily posture as lying on my back or belly, sitting, standing, walking, bending, jumping or running is now a luxurious act which i cannot afford any more. that's to say, i am almost disabled, and i do not know how long i will have to suffer like this. the only thing i know is that canadian doctors are totally helpless in this case except perhaps that they could use scalpels to cause more future problems.
this is the detail: on oct 8, i mopped the floor for my old mom; the next morning i felt a bad back pain; around the noon time i and my younger brother went to visit my late father's tomb. unable to bend down to kowtow as every filial son was expected to do, i ignited a big roll of firecrackers and thus could not help jumping and turning away as they exploded. that's how i got the problem: a herniated disc between l5 and s1.
in the following few days, i stayed in a buddhist temple called 'grand compassion temple,' where i fasted strictly for 48 hours, and practised being a monk for 5 days. i had three purposes in mind: to do what my dad used to do there as a memorial gesture (he used to volunteer a month at least once a year in the temple and donated all his savings to it); to say my prayers for my two sons; and to gain first-hand experience as a chan/zen practitioner in a temple. to my disappointment, the abbot is not so well learned or approachable as i had expected; rather, he is perhaps a little too money-minded, while other residing monks and nuns are neither buddha-minded nor well-behaved as i had imagined.
unable to bear the back pain caused by the herniated disc, i returned to jingzhou and went to hospital directly as arranged by my Mom on oct 13. i was 60% recovered as a result of intensive physio therapy before boarding the plane to vancouver, but after the flight, the problem got much worse, and since then i have been suffering badly.
perhaps this is a good time/reason for me to take a literary break?
- my donation to u of saskatchewen has resulted in the establishment of 'the yuans award in canadian literature,' which was confirmed only 2 days ago after much delay.
- i posted Poetry Pacific (4.2) on nov 5, as scheduled, made pushcart nominations in addition to our nominations for 'best of the net anthology' (made in august). of course, i did all this while pain kept bugging me every minute.
