There’s something very fundamentally cathartic about scooping 4 litres of semi-liquid fecal matter with a dustpan into a quadrupled-reinforced non-airtight medley of plastic shopping bags while wearing galoshes, undies, a wife-beater, yellow dish-washer gloves and a dust mask.

Truth be told, I had been getting a little high for my britches, and I needed to be taken down a notch or two. 2007 was a great year, not good but great. My extended family got bigger, my career was back in fighting shape, my first year of matrimony was beautiful and my BMI was back to a respectable number. The sky was clear and the sun was shining, then I found a cesspool slowly congregating around my feet, literally.

In the theatre of life, it would have play out like such:

Karma (played by a scene-stealing Gérard Depardiau) : Hellos-there, please enjoy as I place my knee in your scrotal region in a violent manner. Do not question the act, for this is your day of reckoning…Some time in the past, you have the-screwed, and now my soft-in-the-midsection friend…are the-screwed.

Me (on the ground, fighting for breath): Grunting….wheezing…

Karma (while having knee lodged into subject): This is but a moment. A moment that has previously escaped you. Embrace this moment as if it was a blood relative. Hold it to your soul, and place your nose in its bosom.

This was life’s way of clipping me at the knees as I dashed towards the end zone. In between gags, and swallowing my own vomit I had to smile. Who was this fancy pants-wearing dandy I had turned into? I’ll tell you, someone who thought he was too good to be bagging liqui-poop. Some people read tea leaves, some consult 24 hour telephone psychics. Me? I looked for answers in the partially digested nougats found encrusted in shit. Was our POW sized basement bathroom a metaphor for my psyche? What fetid waters may be coursing through the pipes of my ego? What ugliness hides under the glossy exterior? Sure, the post 55 minute shower still left me feeling dirty, and the air and food still has a hint of shit. I needed this exercise. I needed to feel sick to my stomach, yet finish the job until the last speckle of turd was collected and disposed. It was I who deserved the brunt of the bitterness. I did this to myself, so naturally this was a gift I needed to give myself.

A new tradition has been created, and it will be now known as the Hours of Merde, a time where one purges the remnants, the debris logged deep inside our souls. The crap, that long fits of coughing can not dislodge or loosen up. The loogie that hides/resides deep within the bowels of my heart and soul. Because you haven’t known truth until you have forage for food, ate it, digested it, excreted it and then subsequently scooped it up with your hands and disposed of it, again.

END SCENE.