Reflective Essays and Poetic Musings by Condemiang + Stories About the World

There are so many places to go in this vast world, and so much still to do while I'm young—and yet, at times, a deep sense of having no place for my heart creeps in, and I find myself looking back again and again at the path I’ve come. Unresolved questions still linger in a corner of my mind. Every so often, they resurface—bringing with them a fleeting, sweet taste of something detached from reality. Times I’ve passed through unrestrained. At times heavy and desperate, at others lighter than dust—I must have staggered and swayed, carried along by whatever drew me, whichever way the wind blew. I want to be drenched in a downpour—like the rush of ecstasy in the rain shown in The Shawshank Redemption. I want to run endlessly across the plains of western Canada. Like Forrest Gump, like Jack Kerouac, in search of a conclusion where I might encounter my ideal—wherever that may be. Life, you see...is a sheet of thin ice that might not end in a happy resolution, like a drama or...

Sergey-Pesterev-tJnqdD5sO_M-unsplash It feels like just yesterday I was spending Christmas vacation, digging out the joys of the year’s end buried in winter’s snow—and yet here we are, already in May. Though I’ve been counting the days, fully aware that spring was on its way, I didn’t realize the time had already carried me to May. What cycle, what chain of associations is holding my thoughts hostage? The campus in May would often be alive with festivals blending premature daytime heat and the chill that settled in overnight. Protests—once casually referred to as “demos”—were a natural part of the lives of young university students who lived in that same time. They were weary, burdened youth who carried within them countless questions about life itself. The powder of tear gas buried in the leaves and corners of the campus would dissolve and run whenever it rained, bringing on unseasonal tears. We accepted it all as if it were the most natural thing,...