Title Untitled

I’m not quite sure what to make of any of it anymore.

Hillary and Obama’s faces are morphed on the cover of Time, a la Michael Jackson’s Black or White music video. Caitlin visited me and nearly got tear gassed on May Day. The day invokes fists in the air and si se puede and MELT (Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky – but I can’t take credit for the sassy acronym) and something profound about our right to a living wage, but since 30-odd people were killed in a demonstration in Taksim Square in the 70s, it has become the day when droves of protestors sporting pride and anger are met by droves of police sporting plastic shields and night sticks. And, apparently, tear gas. I am twenty pages into a novel, and I think I will always be twenty pages into a novel. Caitlin and I spent two days in Antalya on the Med coast, and now I’m not sure if I am a budget hotel sans hot water and a swampy green swimming pool growing pond scum girl or a five star resort with a private beach and choloates on the pillow lady. Suprise, suprise its the latter. My apartment is being fumagated for cockroaches. I am contemplating getting a motor scooter, specifically in hot pink or lipstick red. With taxes and parking I could take a taxi wherever I please for the same price, so the image of me speeding down the coast road with hair blowing in the wind will only be visible in the back of my mind. I’d probably end up in traction anyway. I can’t seem to find a decent kuafor (Turkish phonetic spelling) who I’d trust could conjure up a dramatic new look. Its confirmed – I can’t find a decent loaf of bread either. This week I’m cutting out sugar and alcohol. I’m still not sure where I misplaced Heart of Darkness, and for some reason I need it because I am surrounded by broken hearts.

A friend said something like this: the past gets closer the further away it gets. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps it has something to do with the buffer of experience that allows one thing (moment, event, person, image) to develop the magical nimbus of perspective. Perhaps only after the dust of a lifetime (and already there have been many) settles and he/she/it is still standing, we can fully acknolwedge the significance. Time is the proof that yes, it was important, and no, it will not fade. Its newly discoverd permanency extracts it from the past and plops in back in the present.
That’s why I hate to apply sweeping statments and grandiose conclusions to the stories of our lives. For example:
Question: How was it?
Answers: “A transformative experiece.” “An amazing adventure.” “The time of my life.”
Verdict: Wrong, incorrect, and wrong again.

We are all experts at applying headlines to the stories of our lives. That way, we can glance at the table of contents in another person’s eyes and go right to the part that interests us. I’m not even required to teach about subtext. No one bothers to read between the lines anymore. Nobody even bothers to read to the end, much less put the conclusion at the end. No wonder I am in a perpetual state of moral vertigo.

I know. Such summations, be it “it was great” or “it sucked” are necessary for the sake of conversation. Not every response can be a blog entry. But I worry. That if we unlearn how to respond, we unlearn how to empathize, we learn to no longer care, and we end up surrounded by our own broken heart.