The Write Thing

Once again, my dear non-reader, you find me revisiting the idea of fate, karma and life psychology in general. I wrote yesterday (yes, two days in a row by now seem almost like I could really keep a blog) about life in sunny and crime-ridden Houston, and the almost technical aspects involved in getting a door glass replaced and a decent internet connection activated in the fourth largest city in the US.

Of course I have not expanded on the Kafkaesque developments that today brought me almost to the brink of despair (exasperation by now is a given for me in this country), and I will not unless you have serious insomnia issues, in which case you can send me an email and I will gladly walk you through the process of not finding things here even when everybody tells you they have them – oh, well, there I go again trying to explain…I apologize.

The fact that I have not expanded on my tribulations does not mean they are not potentially clear to you, or at least imaginable, by now. So let me focus on the feelings instead, the depth of the impotence, the rage, the worn-out patience, the repetition and, eventually, oblivion…I know in the not-so-faraway future I will remember the gist of everything that is going on around me now, but I will forget the reason. Just because that is what life is all about, and sooner or later we all forget.

Prometheus

THERE ARE four legends concerning Prometheus:

According to the first he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.

According to the second Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

According to the third his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.

According to the fourth everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

There remained the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.

It is only a little after 9 pm in a rather cold spring Houston evening, and I find myself willing to return to the pages of this blog, even though my internet connection in the land of digital progress is probably among the worst anyone can have.

I landed my ship in not so foreign land almost a month ago, and I feel like I haven’t even started to move towards a life here. If you look at my house, you’ll see there is virtually no furniture, not even a much-needed closet. I sleep on an air mattress and my desk consists in a small table with four folding chairs. I have equipped my kitchen with the basics to cook myself pasta, mix a salad, bake a pizza and grill meat. The rest may probably come later, but I am content with things as they are. I was forced to buy a TV by the need to adhere to the “bundle” provision of internet and cable services in this world. I got the cheapest one, and I am not sure if I will be able to even see any images on it. But I don’t really care much about that.

I’ve had a good dose of the dark too in these past few weeks. I was burgled (although there was not much to take) and last Saturday someone smashed the side door of my car to take an old GPS that I have always relied on due to my deprivation of bearings in any form. I am still waiting to find a glass that will replace the busted one, and it seems my first lucky day in many, many weeks will be tomorrow, when the mobile glass installation service comes along.

The odds are, methinks, against me. I guess I could put all the negatives and uncertainties in my life in one big bag now and move it to the back yard…well, I might have to drag it the way it weighs now. Or I can choose to put things behind me, learn from the hidden messages of life that I can’t decypher and move on, because that is what people in this society do, and I should try to become one of them.

Maybe all these unfortunate events I am describing are a form of initiation, a form of animal test of endurance to make me or break me. I guess worse things have happened to me in life — and worse will still happen — to be wise enough to know these are just a milder form of discomfort. I am perhaps the new animal in the herd, the one that has to be gauged by the leaders to make sure it fits. And then it might all come down to where you actually pee, where your territory lies, and how good you are to claim your own little plot in there.

I may have to start following my dog’s attitude when we go for a walk to the nearest park in the neighborhood. There are only a few plants he spares, but there’s always a favorite spot, the one someone else already trod, where there is still room for him to test his courage.

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In an alcoholic anonymous website, somebody once wrote: I don’t know if the glass is half-empty or half-full, I can’t find the glass! Upon reading this clever line, I realized that in fact there is a third option to pessimism and optimism…absence. Maybe there is a glass, or maybe there isn’t. Whether it is empty or full, that again is a matter of perspective.

I have spent most of my weekend classifying books and deciding what to keep and what not to keep. Like an obsessed librarian, I was forced to open my own catalog of reading, my chronology of life through books. Moving out is certainly a time-consuming process, but it is also enriching. It forces us to pause when we cannot, because we are fighting our own lack of time, to look at what we are leaving behind. Some people are fortunate (or unfortunate?) enough to take themselves with them in their journeys. This time I am not. I have made a decision to take only the necessary part of me. Some of these books will make it to Houston initially, but others will have to wait for me to either take them, leave them or retrieve them if life sews a more permanent path to good ol’ Texas.

Yes, I decided to travel light. I want to live with less instead of more. I want to find the glass. I have been wanting to do that for quite a while, but something stopped me…it must be the reluctance of all human beings to change, or the fear that if we let go of things, of people, we will feel the emptiness. As I look back on the half-empty bookcase, I would say that it all depends on how you leave. It is not so much about the act of departure but about the way in which we go. Most of the time we escape — and believe me, I have been there — but sometimes, if we do the homework that life sprinkles here and there between the pages of our own mysterious book, there is a fair chance that leaving will be an action of growth instead than a side door to more of the old self.

The two bookshelves that remain to be cleared before they find a new home at my mother’s contain the effort of growth that stemmed out of the need of fleeing far away, where no old ghosts of bad family love could find me. Something good came out of escaping, but it only did when I had the courage to come back and face the demons I thought I had left behind.