FOR THE OFFICIAL HISTORICAL RECORD

I have been a prolific artist in my life. It's a wonder, though, that I was able to do any work at all. I can finish a painting in 3 minutes if I want, but it could take me 25 years before I can get the picture right in my mind's eye. Otherwise, I might spend 5 years painting it. I took my time, I resisted painting the image for as long as I could, and then it happened. The image came out all in one piece, finished in under 3 minutes.

Heed These Words: I do not recommend that anyone take up the art of painting. At least if you want to paint, go ahead, be my guest, but please for basic Goodness' sake, do not try to become a professional painter. I succeeded in becoming one and it has been worse than hell itself. It has been hell on earth for me.

I have constantly had my work interrupted. As I said, it's a wonder I even did any painting at all. Yet I made thousands of paintings and countless many more images if you counted everything I put to paper, cardboard, or canvas in my short time on earth, you couldn't live long enough to go through it all.

But as I said, I sometimes went almost 3 years without painting a single thing. After a while, I rarely did more than 15 minutes per week of anything. The rest of the time, I was recuperating or else trying to restore things after others had malicious done everything in their power to torture me, or worse. They were perhaps trying to do much worse, but they failed to do anything at all.

Instead, they cost themselves some wonderful opportunities, opportunities to share one's self with another, to share the content of one's thoughts, the content on one's chest. I seem to attract monsters. I used to be too naive to see I was being caused grave indignities, and believe me on this one, loss of one's dignity hurts less when you are aware that it was lost. When you only find out 20 years later, it is akin to a death-sentence.

No one seems to want to speak of these things. Well. It is the Great Canadian Winter presently and my ancestors that came here on the first voyages - from Europe, across the Atlantic - almost all died the first winter. I understand that it is not something anyone likes to think about, but the Winters in the North are like mass graves. When one walks out in the tundra, one is lucky to be alive at every step of the way. It is not something I can afford to forget, ever.

I remember when I was a young boy, one of our common friends, a boy of my age, died buried in the snow in his yard. He had made a snow-fortress, but hadn't made it properly. I was sure that we had all learned how to make a quinzhee, but apparently we had not. It cost a young boy his life, and much grief followed. A quinzhee, when made according to tradition, will never collapse on you unless a tree or large branch or something of that Nature were to land on it. Besides, it still wouldn't do much harm, because when you carved it out, you thinned the ceilings to the requisite width, which doesn't have to be very thick, at least not where we were positioned, in that small town by the Great Mountain.

Therefore, for the official historical record, if I sing sorrowful tunes in the winter, it is not to offend your ears. It is the sound the outside makes, the empty space with winds shaking through the glistening frozen air. It sounds like a field of noise with this crystalline sound at times, depending on the temperature. One is fearful of that sound, one cannot help but be very afraid.

And then one remembers the day that Great Peace came and the wonderment that ensued. And then one remembers these terrible Winters of the Soul. So long as I have a musical instrument near-by, in the winter, especially just before Carnival Season, which is just before the Lenten season, you can be certain that I will be singing many songs, Songs both Sorrowful and Gleeful.

I mention this because this is the time of year that I have always done my finest painting. There is a time in the Fall, but it culminates in January of the New Year, more or less. It culminates because I know that the odds are stacked against me. Every winter I pray and I pray that I make it through okay, because so many others were not as fortunate as I.

So God bless you and yours, and tread lightly, ice and snow and freezing rain can be very dangerous, not to mention the gelid temperatures.
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