just we three (my echo, my shadow and me)

Things you do not want to see on the News when you know your sister was travelling back home by road: Night of tears and anguish as 22 die in accident. That was the headline some time last week. For like 10 seconds after I saw that headline and it registered I was freaking out! and then I remembered my sis saying the mum had insisted she travel during the day. Whew! Thank God for over-cautious mothers. But still, the rate at which people are dying in accidents seems to be rising again. And it might be getting to be that time when we might have to really consider if a trip is absolutely necessary before taking it, coz 22 at once is not a small number, and there have been like 10 such accidents in the last 3 months alone. Just last week a colleague of ours was on his way to Naivasha and got hit by a truck in a Vitz - died instantly. But the news came to us piece-meal: "Guy has been involved in accident." two minutes later, "Guy is dead." It's getting really scary. And the worst part is all these accidents, they're PSV's. Almost 90% of the country doesnt own a car, how're we supposed to move around when we can't trust our transport system to get us there in one piece? Literally!

Anyway, that's not why I'm broody, sad, even. I feel like it's the end of an era. It's like a dream has died tonight. There's been this girl, in the back of my mind. She's kind, has loads of common sense, practical, fiesty, catholic, hot-headed, tall, (I wanna say funny coz it seems to fit the general picture, but no, lemme say... dissable), single and beautiful. We like most of the same songs (by now you've noticed that music is almost everything I'm about), and we're at the same place as far as family goes (hers and mine both), she loved Transformers, and we used to be able to talk on end about nothing in particular, I just wasn't looking for anything at the time. But now I'm getting the sense that the spark's fizzled out. Hers, actually, not mine. I've been trynna ask her out for a while and all I keep getting is this cold shoulder. It's never really no, the answer, but then again it's never really yes, either. It's probably just that I'm proud, but I don't think I should have this many questions about where her head's at this early. Or it's yes then just before something else comes up, you know, she gets a stomach ache, or the boss calls, or she has to meet these 1500 other people, or she has to be home by 4... It just, it seems like for her it's a little too easy to put me on the back burner.

All this time my friends tell me I'm selfish and self-absorbed (btw I think they might have a point - I run a whole blog about nothing but myself! OMG!), I realise I am, and not just with my time, with other people's as well. I wanna feel like I'm the most important thing in the world. I can't be the guy you meet when everything else is good and done. I don't think it's too much to ask that if I'm willing to drop everything at a moment's notice when she calls (coz believe me, I have) then she be willing to do the same for me. I've actually been thinking about this for a while, and I've decided it's probably not gonna happen, and I'm writing it here so I believe it. So maybe I can start to move on. There's a mirror in the Harry Potter movies (the Mirror of Araset) that instead of just a reflection shows the person when they're at their happiest, when they've attained their heart's deepest desires. I think if I'd looked in that mirror, I'd have seen myself holding her hand, her head on my shoulder. But like Professor Dumbledore said, it doesn't do to dwell on dreams. This choice is probably gonna kill me later, but I suppose that's how I can tell it's the right one - those are the ones that are never easy.

If you watch enough television, or movies, (and Lord knows I do), you find yourself expecting these neat resolutions. Will the boy get the girl in the end? Will it turn out the way we want it to? Will the good guys win? Will the villain die? We have become addicted to happy endings. To closure. But turns out life, life's all about the ambiguities. The deviations. The little unexpected turns of events that throw you off balance. Sometimes you get the things you want, sometimes you even get more than you asked for, but at other times, not so much. It's actually been said that the only thing certain in life is that you never know what's gonna happen. I don't know about that, me, I'm really just a guy hoping for a happy ending. And, what do you know, Kim Richey is playing: "...I don't have a point to prove/Or a stand to make/I'm just trying to find my way/And a face to wear/And a place to be/In the absence of your company..."

END

holding out for a hero

So I got The West Wing DVD's, finally. Just 4 seasons, but still, I've been looking for it all my life so I'll take those and run. As I was watching it, it struck me just why I loved the show so much: I know it's just a TV show and that it's not as close to Real Life(TM) as I'd like it to be, but there's leadership that's leadership on that show. The kind of president who cares when and ex-marine pilot who was flying in to see him dies in a plane crash; who's bothered when Indian Troops move in on Pakistan making less-than-friendly overtures; who calls his Navy SEALs when there's a hurricane heading their way that they possibly might not be able to escape just to check in on them; who, before filling a supreme court justice position, vets the prospective candidate, and actually gives up a slum dunk nomination that would have helped his cause politically just because it's come up that the guy doesn't believe in an inherent right to privacy; a president with a Nobel prize in Economics who when he stands to speak, you can tell.

A white house chief of staff who won't let any of his minions publicly defend him when a scandal's about to come out about him so that if he doesn't survive, he doesn't take anyone else down with him, and the kind of minions who'd wanna take the fall for their chief of staff because they believe enough in him to know that if it was them on the line, he'd spare no expense to defend and clear them. A communications director who, when he randomly discovers that a war veteran died and was not treated like the hero he was, went against the code and used to president's name to arrange a guard of honor for the dead guy, a guy he didn't know, never even met, but did that just because he recognized what (crucial) part that person played in the larger American picture; someone who knows what books Oscar and Hammersmith (or was that Hammerstein) wrote. A press secretary who won't go to the press briefing and lie to those reporters point blank just because that's what she was told to do.

When you think about it, isn't that the kind of leaders we want? An administration that believes in what they're doing, and that deep down really wanna make people's lives better. And not just people they know directly, the entire electorate. People who believe in the system and don't wanna override it for personal gain, people who, asides from an urge to change the lives of their electorate, actually have the psychological wherewithal to do it. Our president has a Masters degree in Economics, from the London School of Economics no less, but I swear, you would not be thought outlandish if you assumed after observing him for 2 days that he probably didn't go all the way through high school. It's not just that he can't see past his nose (or maybe he can, just not where everyone else is concerned), it's how out of touch he is with the ground realities, the kinds of decisions he makes, the things he says when he's reading out of a prepared speech. It's the way all of them relate with each other, always bickering in the news about small non-consequential things like who wasn't consulted before a big decision was made and who between the VP and PM reports to the other etc. We listen and we laugh, but then later on, I sit and I think about it and want nothing to do with my own country. People are supposed to inherently have a soft spot for the land of their heritage. "Vergess nicht dein Herkunft," goes that German saying (do not forget where you came from, loosely translated). But I can't say I share in that sentiment. Not with the kind of leaders (I'm gonna say I use that word loosely) we have and are going to continue having for the foreseeable future. I suppose our day is coming, when we shall have a president who's a president. But that's probably one of those things I'll believe when I see.

In one of the scenes at the end of the first season, the president got shot. He recovered, but that news wasn't made immediately available to the public. That very night, outside the hospital where he was being treated, a vigil began - thousands of people gathered out there, saying a prayer for their dearly beloved, showing support, hoping their hero makes it through. Honestly, I don't see myself doing that for my president, but maybe that's just me (lemme not speak as though I'm speaking for the country). There's a bit I once read in Sun Tzu's The Art of War, about how to treat people who work under you (like everything else in the book this assumes the setup of an army commander and his soldiers): Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valley. Look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.

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the anatomy of melancholy

Solitude is the feeling and knowledge that one is alone, alienated from the world and oneself. All men, at some moment in their lives, feel themselves to be alone, and they are. To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.

Octavio Paz said that, a hundred years ago in 1950. That it's that knowledge, that we're all alone, that makes us different from, say monkeys. I don't think I've ever felt that way as strongly as I've been feeling these past few days. The no-work-to-keep-me-occupied might contribute, but I don't think that's it. Sometimes you look at your life and you start to ask yourself other than your family who do you really have? Then it gets more and more apparent that friendships are more a function of convenience than a lasting bond, and then you get invited to a wedding by people you used to know, who used to be like you once, but who now seem to have found the ultimate loves of their lives and are moving forward, and you're still at the exact same spot you were at back in those days. And you feel all of a sudden alone. In the midst of a crowd, all these people around you, but alone. I've never really known why it's this way, but I find that people treasure others more when they're there by choice, so we tend to take our families for granted coz we know they're always gonna be there and they can't just suddenly choose to stop being related to us.

I have a history of holding back and letting go. Hiding behind societal labels and my brains and books and movies and rock music. I find meaning in all of these things that I can do by myself so that I don't have to seek out companionship, or so that I can explain my state to anyone who might want to know (although no one ever does so...). I've been looking for a house to live in and despite the obvious upsides (not the least of which is there are no one-person houses being built any more) I won't even consider cohabiting with a housemate. I joined this church thing they call a life group which is supposed to be like an accountability circle with people you come from the same area with and in that way sort of bring the whole church experience closer to home (literally), but I still don't feel at home as I think I should be, or as everyone else seems to, like four months down the line. An old best friend got engaged, ENGAGED, and didn't even think to share - had to find out through the grapevine. There's this girl that makes my heart stop but I sometimes don't feel as though I'd be willing to do anything to get her. When I do that Tim LaHaye test, it comes out phlegmatic, every time. I've been described as eclectic before, which now that I think about it may actually have been code for weird.

But that's not the only reason I'm sad. I feel as though my dream life is further away than I used to think it was, and it's gonna take longer than I'd anticipated. And it's not just the Beamer (TM), it's the whole visibility aspect, standing out from the crowd, the power potential that being a man of means brings with it. I seem to just be following the well-worn path to success that everyone else follows, and so most recently I've even started building "savings for a rainy day." The thing about this well-worn path is that you're not the only one on it. There's no uniqueness, no room for innovation, no opportunity for being extraordinary. I can't even sneeze at 11.30 unless our manual says it's OK! Ya, I know, people always say if you believe it you can become it, but I don't think it's quite that simple. I think we get an unbalanced picture of success stories because we never hear about all the hoops the person had to jump through to get where they are. It's made to seem like Bill Gates just dreamed of a world with desktops running software and out popped Windows. No mention is made of the 12 years he and Paul worked out of his garage, or the fact that Trump actually got in so deep over his head that he had to file for bankruptcy once, or the year Steve Jobs spent sleeping on friends' floors in college surviving on the 5ct deposit you get back when you return Coke bottles. Noooo. We just look at the iPod and Trump Plaza and the Xbox and say "That's all it takes - a dream." Try as I might I can't seem to be able to figure out how to get from here to there, or even where "there" is. I just know how I want my life to be like when I've arrived.

When everything has left you, you're alone; but when you have left everything behind, there is solitude. It's said that in solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself. Only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to deal with our eternal aloneness. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "In the solitude to which man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him." If this feeling I get lately is the real thing, and not just plain old loneliness, I hope I get all these life lessons about my inner being from it. If not, well, at least I hope that when it's broken, it'll be coz it's been replaced by something that'll last.

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