Stranger Things Have Happened
Recently, I thought that I had had a revelation about Bedouin Tent, which is a fantastic restaurant a block away from our apartment that is my "go to" takeout spot. I felt confident that it was that I preferred the merguez platter to the chicken platter. So, imagine my resulting dismay and bemusement(!) as, when I shoveled the merguez platter down my gullet about three weeks ago, I didn't feel a sense of joy.
In fact, I figured out tonight that it wasn't the merguez platter that I liked. It was the merguez sandwich!!!
There is something so wonderful about eating a pre-assembled sandwich, wrapped up with love and dripping with merguez juices, that can never be duplicated at home, even with the platter components and pita at hand. Thus, I felt wonderful, not only for having eaten a delicious sandwich but, for being right about the world being a little more perfectable than I had previously thought. Truly, truly, a sandwich is more than the sum of its parts. And, sometimes to get something done right, you have to stand back and let the experts do their work. Facile expression of two important life philosophies.
Today, I bought my one-way ticket to sunny/rainy Singapore, Singapore! Tomorrow, I'll take part in an organized communications outreach to people I've been working with for the past two years. Life seems to be wrapping up right on time. And yet I seem to be making the same mistakes. Again and again, word for word. Although, if the only mistake is "being myself", I don't know whether I can reproach myself out of it.
For example, my preciousness and sentimentality. Something I simultaneously value and despise. And something that I can't shake. I think it always stems from guilt - or rather, a wish to feel guiltier than I do.
About polar bears treading water in the middle of the ocean. Or swearing. When I walked away from someone on Saturday night, I don't know why I felt such immense regret. My selfishness? My cowardice? Or a simple inability to make nice?
Why, after such a long time at striving towards flatness, do I feel like I'm crumbling into a complexity I never sought?
In fact, I figured out tonight that it wasn't the merguez platter that I liked. It was the merguez sandwich!!!
There is something so wonderful about eating a pre-assembled sandwich, wrapped up with love and dripping with merguez juices, that can never be duplicated at home, even with the platter components and pita at hand. Thus, I felt wonderful, not only for having eaten a delicious sandwich but, for being right about the world being a little more perfectable than I had previously thought. Truly, truly, a sandwich is more than the sum of its parts. And, sometimes to get something done right, you have to stand back and let the experts do their work. Facile expression of two important life philosophies.
Today, I bought my one-way ticket to sunny/rainy Singapore, Singapore! Tomorrow, I'll take part in an organized communications outreach to people I've been working with for the past two years. Life seems to be wrapping up right on time. And yet I seem to be making the same mistakes. Again and again, word for word. Although, if the only mistake is "being myself", I don't know whether I can reproach myself out of it.
For example, my preciousness and sentimentality. Something I simultaneously value and despise. And something that I can't shake. I think it always stems from guilt - or rather, a wish to feel guiltier than I do.
About polar bears treading water in the middle of the ocean. Or swearing. When I walked away from someone on Saturday night, I don't know why I felt such immense regret. My selfishness? My cowardice? Or a simple inability to make nice?
Why, after such a long time at striving towards flatness, do I feel like I'm crumbling into a complexity I never sought?
Surprisingly for a book I didn't much like, certain passages of Immortality have stuck with me for a long time:
"...even her handouts to beggars were based on negation: she gave them money not because beggars, too belonged to mankind but because they did not belong to it, because they were excluded from it and probably, like her, felt no solidarity with mankind.
No solidarity with mankind: that was her attitude. Only one thing could wrench her out of it: concrete love toward a concrete person. If she truly loved someone, she could not be indifferent to the fate of other people, because her beloved would be dependent on that fate, he would be part of it, and she could no longer feel that mankind's torments, its wars and holidays, were none of her concern."
Milan Kundera