Photographer: Claude Brazeau.
In 1974 – I was an athletic teenager then, with dreams to match – I became paralyzed due to a diving accident. Everything that had given meaning to my life was now impossible, a thing of the past confined to memories. Depression took hold of me and did not release its grip for many years until I grew so disgusted with this constraint and put up such a struggle that I broke free from it. Before that turning point, I had written some gloomy poems that fed on this depression and relieved it somewhat, not enough. I needed a reason for living that was not limited to the satisfaction I could derive from writing well about suffering and death, the latter regarded as the ultimate escape, away from this suffering. I needed wisdom, an outlook on life that would be favorable to happiness. And this need turned my vocation as a poet into a vocation as a philosopher with a positive message to convey, one that could enlighten and cheer readers, rather than oppress them with gloom.