PASSING FOR NORMAL

Moving back ...

It is so difficult to face the blank sometimes, to break the insolence of a pale page, to conquer the blankness of life …
Where do I start? Which cliché do I leave behind? Is that the cycle of things?
In between worlds, when all is gutted, meaningless, so far behind like a lifetime away like a pain subsiding like a memory like your face that faded. When all that meant so deeply so intensely does not now. When the person you have grown into does not apply. When a clash is more than a clash and a step is like a leap in time. So many emotions so much fear and so much confusion … I need to write to hear my thoughts, to understand how I feel. For the first time in a while I truly am not sure of anything and have no reference to fall back on. For the first time in years I truly miss you and I truly need you.

People here talk about money in terms of achievement, about the least amount of work possible describing a good job, about their families and their kids and the heat and their cell phones and their car payments and their sibling who got a greencard and about politics and the next war ... People there go to work, pay the bills, eat dinner, sleep while thinking of the weekends and pay in advance for the next vacation. People here look for work, fix things up, get things going, talk about people, eat out, don’t sleep and live a vacation. People there give themselves small treats to do the work, a coffee break, a cigarette break, people here do the work because they have to, all the while hating the system and cursing the boss.

People in a richer more stable country have the luxury to talk. To really talk. They talk about feelings but only theirs. People here do not talk. Do you ever crave a conversation? A real heart to heart. It takes some humility, some security some real sense of self to open up and be honest. We still have the same taboos. We are afraid to show our weaknesses, afraid to learn and most of all to admit to a mistake. All we talk is small talk is empty talk is endless chatter about nothing. I felt that we would never get anywhere politically listening to two people with the same opinions conversing about politics only to go round and round with no aim of the conversation. Life here is a hypothesis with no intent to proving it. The pattern repeats with everything here. Hence the aimless jobs with no aspirations to make changes, hence raising our kids with the same lazy inherited values, hence the passive lazy dreams. Who is to be blamed with the ‘situation’ we are in but, really? Did we not historically end up in this situation every time because of our passive attitude? Maybe? Or not … People would be the same everywhere possibly given the chance. If their jobs were secured by their connections, they would give up on creativity and initiative, they would freeze up and all follows … It’s a country post-existentialist struggles living with no rules but their own, tortured by their own, and with the sole restriction of money.

It is almost another culture shock. I find myself lost and confused half of the time and then amazed and impressed by the will to live and to go on … By the conviction with what one has and the ability to settle and be content with the denial of one’s rights and the loss of the basic need to feel involved and secure and meaningful. Amazed but observant and nearly understanding of the process of denial of the past and forced shortsightedness of the future. I analyze to find the difference much slimmer than what I originally expected and felt. Global shortsightedness is what we witness. Differing causes but same result. The feeling of lack of control over the mood of the world, over what nature hides, over what tomorrow brings, we live life by installments. Little installments of love, of fun, of happiness and short term goals and dreams. Little dreams. Little goals along the way that keep us going. We are emotionally lazy.
lazy attitude, our lazy loyalty to one figure who will protect our lazy inherited social and tribal identity? It is frustrating. The sense of helplessness that does not start with one self and will not end with one self. The feeling of collective helplessness and surrender.

In the meantime, some things remain strong. We still pray and still believe in a sub-sect vastly opposing and fundamentally clashing with the sect in the neighboring block. This will drive us into endless discussions and will instigate our will to fight and to struggle. We hold on to dying ideas and traditions and superstitions. We still have separate graveyards, we still are ashamed to wear glasses, we have a maid a Mercedes and the business card of a plastic surgeon in every middle class home, we overspend and under-produce, we are morally bankrupt but where do we start?

Talking smack about my people, seems I’m fitting in after all …