LIFE Poem: Why I Never Went to Nanaimo, by Miodrag Kojadinović

by & © 2019 Miodrag Kojadinović

I never went to Nanaimo during my four-ish
years long exile to the Lower Mainland that
had sprouted around New Westminster in
200 years ― a local California of sorts ―
because seeing it might have meant getting
to actually like Canada’s Pacific coast, and
that was a major no-no! for me at the time.

I never went to Nanaimo in the nineties of
the last century (we should have here some
witty observation on the passing of time or
on bimillennialism) because unlike Saša, an
acquaintance from before the exile, I had no
distant relatives’ in-laws there. My mom’s
first cousin and his mother who was also my
godmother were in Montréal, the breadth of
the country = continent away. We talked on
the phone thrice during my 43 months in BC.

I never went to Nanaimo, though I did get
to Victoria once, to see its colonial waterfront
reminiscent of ghats in India built at about
the same time when most of the world was
ruled by the UK of my great-grandfather,
a generation too far to allow for settling in
England, getting an EU passport, moving
to Portugal, Flanders, or even Norway, and
being happy. I had to endure horrendous
years of Serbia, Canada, and China instead.

So I never went to Nanaimo, because that
was one of the very few things I had the
option of deciding upon, instead of being
blown across continents by winds of unwished
for perpetual changes, like a tumbleweed.