Here’s a look into my moderately sane internal dialogue as I walked the snow-torn streets of Philadelphia:
Why do people, including myself, secretly rejoice in not being able to get to work and delight in watching the snow fall, only to get all stressed that we can’t get to work?
Why is it only okay for kids to enjoy the snow days?
This is actually kind of cool. Mama nature’s nudge of us to be still, rest for a time. What else can you do?
But I don’t think that I would eat the snow out here like when I was a kid.
Okay, maybe just the off-white piles.
Why are there only two types of snow drivers – the snails that you can walk faster than, and the belligerent SUVs who believe they control the universe?
Well whatever, Al Gore and Global Warming will make those bastards pay...
Are you seriously planning to maneuver out of that snow bank while on your cell phone?
Zack Morris called and he wants his cell phone back. I need a new, smarter cell phone.
Are you really considering walking over that icy patch with 4-inch heels and …on your cell phone?
Is that stupid or should I give you props?
There are two kinds of people – those who lend you their snow shovel and those who will hit you with one.
We sure are lucky to have a place to sleep in this frigid weather. I wish that guy did too.
Where will we put all this snow? If all of the inhabitants of the city just started eating it, we would not have a problem. Then again, we might all be dead.
The city says they are losing money in doing all of this plowing. Well wouldn’t they lose more money in lawsuits, etc if they didn’t? Especially since silly ass people are jogging and biking over the snow mounds and through ice puddles.
Dress codes at work should be casual until all the snow melts.
Any town that gets a decent amount of snow must find us hysterically pathetic.
I must look quite amusing roaming the streets in my red rubber boots, fuzzy green hat, and white (now beige) earmuffs.
And frankly, I don’t care because warmth is priceless….
I have a bizarre habit of not being interested in anything at the same time that most people are interested. My seriously delayed embrace of Harry Potter and Weeds are just two shining examples of my quirky ways.
So it was both shocking and completely predictable that I was handed a copy of Open, and was truly engrossed. It was certainly entertaining but more than that, it was raw, and painfully honest. Even if it turns out to be a fake, it was REAL. And for that, Agassi has earned my appreciation and respect.
Let me explain.
For those of you who are familiar with the contents of the book, or who could see it in Agassi’s eyes and demeanor throughout his tennis career, he writes about his tortured relationship with tennis.
Much like Michael Jackson, his wife Steffi Graf, and what seem to be many other greats, he had an obsessive father who was ruthless about discipline, training, and pressure to achieve. The cruel irony being that this preparation enabled their greatness. They were conflicted with the fame associated with their abilities and yet they could not imagine a world without engaging those talents. Nor could the world for that matter.
As we relive Agassi’s life to date, he tells us about how Jimmy Connors was basically a huge prick (surprise surprise), how he (Agassi) wore a hairpiece for the better part of his career, and that he had a long and adorable crush on Steffi Graf. Familiar maxims also pass by: Money can’t buy you love. Or happiness. “Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”. Blah Blah. We have heard it many times. But still, the grass is greener on the other side. Easy for someone to say who can hang with the cast of Friends, eat at the best restaurants, and rub elbows with Nelson Mandela!
But if you are to wade past all of that, I see in Agassi’s narrative, a common human struggle (or at least for me). Misunderstood by others, and ourselves, we seek and yearn for something we cannot articulate, something elusive but that we know is there. We succeed and fail, are joyous and then miserable. We experience the repetitive, relentless cycle and feel a dull pain for something more.
A normal person might read what I wrote, and think on my interpretation of Agassi’s book and think: damn that is depressing.
Luckily, since we have established that I am quirky, I actually see something different.
Yes, life is a constant, and often lonely struggle. But we ALL share in common, the struggle and the journey.
My grandfather in a small village in India used to say,
natural disasters happen when Mother Earth’s load is too heavy to bear,
from time to time, she is forced to lighten the load.
But why must she so often shake off they,
who have so little to begin with?
Who hardly possess her at all?
Not those who would have her in chains?
A tsunami in Asia,
the hurricane called Katrina,
And now, an earthquake with no name,
wickedly, deliberately, unearthing,
what was already broken in Haiti.
Centuries of freedom suppressed,
in pleading voices,
in wary eyes of hopeful children,
it’s “okay” to help them now.
Our Avatars shall save them now.
Our journalists ask them:
“Are you devastated?”
“How will you provide for your family?”
As they are lifting themselves up from the dirt.
Thinking on my grandfather’s words,
I was angry with Mother Earth,
for shedding her children so coldly.
I was bitter.
Yet, if there are even a few in Haiti, New Orleans, Asia declaring,
they have been protected and spared by God’s will,
who are smiling and singing as they are removed from wreckage,
who are happy just to be living,
how can I be so mad?
Whose reality is it?
***
Thanks for reading this reflection that came forth after a long silence, a loss of words for the situation in Haiti. On a more concrete note:
The holidays are over….right? Actually, no.
The most wonderful time of the year is not officially over until the most unpleasant dessert of the year is gone – fruitcake.
In theory (fruit = yummy, cake = yummy, fruit + cake = yummier?), you would think that fruitcake tastes good. But no, I can’t even use full sentences when describing it: gross, sugar, candied fruit that shouldn’t be candied, hard cake, gag. As you can tell, I’m not a fan. I really enjoy desserts but not fruitcake. I think there should be a global ban against it.
For years I have held back my feelings in fear of being impolite to those who offered it. But I think the time for formalities is over. It’s not personal. Most of the people I know and have spoken with on this subject (you would be surprised) echo my dislike for fruitcake. In fact, there are many more like us and much to my delight, they have banded together to create antifruitcake.com
My sentiments exactly.
But the larger question here is, if everyone hates them, why is fruitcake still made? And why during a holiday time loved by so many?
I don’t have a legitimate answer, but my research on the origins of fruitcake confirm my thesis that – everything can somehow be blamed on the British.
Existing data is substandard at best because no researcher of sane mind really wants to explore this dark side of culinary innovation.
One source dates the fruitcake back to the Romans. But in the same section, credits (read: blames) the English for introducing it in the 1400s.
A second source confirms my blatant bias by writing:
“Modern fruitcake was born with an influx of cheap sugar that arrived in Europe from the Colonies in the 1500s, says Robert Sietsema, writing in the Village Voice.
‘Some goon discovered that fruit could be preserved by soaking it in successively greater concentrations of sugar,’ he wrote, not in the most appreciative tone. ‘Not only could native plums and cherries be conserved, but heretofore unavailable fruits were soon being imported in candied form from other parts of the world. Having so much sugar-laced fruit engendered the need to dispose of it in some way -- thus the fruitcake.’
Suddenly they were everywhere. Their ubiquitous nature spawned an 18th-century law in England restricting the consumption of fruitcake -- or plum cake, as it was called -- to Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings and funerals. Eventually the other occasions fell by the wayside, leaving Christmas as the lone holiday with a link to the fruity cake".
If this doesn’t convince you of the perpetrators of this insanity, I don’t know what will. And there is already precedence for a ban!
In fairness, a few people have told me, “The ‘Indian’ fruitcake is good,” or “X version of the fruitcake is good.” To that I say: remnants of colonization. Or as a general rule, if it tastes good, then its not fruitcake.
So as we enter this new decade, and you desperately attempt to avoid the slice of fruitcake in your fridge, office, or in the tin canister with the bow that you “forgot” to open, think about a future ban on fruitcake.
For the sake of our children. It’s time.
And if I haven’t convinced you yet, I leave you with a few startling truths (I use this term loosely) from my new favorite website
• Orange dye used in candied fruit pieces comes from an enzyme extracted from mechanically deboned kittens
• Cherries used in fruitcakes are grown on clear-cut land formerly inhabited by koala bears, which are the biggest threat to cherry crops and are culled using clubs
• One 3-lb Cake produces the equivalent annual greenhouse gas emissions of a 1972 NYC Checker cab
“…But if the offer is shun, you might as well be walking on the sun.”
Some of you might remember these lyrics from Smashmouth’s song, “Walkin on the Sun.”
Although the song is about something different, I am reminded of the chorus of this popular tune when thinking about the Global Climate Summit happening in Copenhagen.
I love the earth and nature. I planted two trees recently. I recycle. But I am by no means an expert on climate change or the environment. However recently for work, I was asked to monitor Copenhagen (that’s what folks refer to it as). And I got to tell you – WE ARE IN TROUBLE.
“We, the developing countries... when we think in money, we should not think that someone is paying us a favour…We should not think that someone is giving something that we are begging for, because the money that would be put on the table is the payment for greenhouse emissions released over two centuries by those countries that industrialised themselves first."
- Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from BBC article
= WE, AS INHABITANTS OF THE PLANET, ARE IN BIG DOO-DOO
Now as I said, I’m not an expert so I could have gotten it all wrong.
More power to the developing world for tag-teaming it and standing up for their rights. Indeed, they are not responsible for the bulk of the damage that has already been done unto the earth.
But that does not diminish the reality of a warming climate. India, oh motherland of mine, you can stick it to the man, but without taking serious measures, you are going to be sticking it to your people (poor ppl first of course) and your over-populated but incredibly diverse and beautiful land!
In order to survive as a planet, we really need to start evolving from politics as usual. Is 2012 that far-fetched? I mean, people are already matter-of-factly speaking about different places going underwater soon.
I guess I should not arrive at a judgment before the summit actually ends. The media at Christmas time suggests that miracles do happen.
Yet I can’t help but feel the urge to start spending more time with nature, visiting beautiful ecosystems around the world in the next several years, while our “leaders” sort out how WE are going to save them...
I’m all for online dating, matchmaking sites. I have seen and heard of a lot of great people, including good friends of mine, find a wonderful partner and/or significant other via the web.
This build-up of course, is leading to a……..BUT
Enter Shady.com, officially known as Shaadi.com. Now envision a fifty-something Indian uncle sitting in a basement sipping a glass of Old Monk Rum or five, and creating the world’s largest (self-proclaimed) matrimonial online service for the Indian community.
First, let me clarify a few culture-specific usages for those unfamiliar:
I love and respect those I know who have found their future brides and grooms on shaadi.com. And here’s another….BUT, I was helping a friend get set-up on this site, and it rocked my world, in an, “are you joking?!!” kind of way. The front page looks all innocent and promising and then POW!
WHY IS CASTE A REQUIRED FIELD FOR REGISTRATION? No blank option. The only non-specific answers in the drop down menu are: I DON’T KNOW that could make you look like a moron or out of touch, and OTHER which has its own negative implications to some.
WHY IS THE DEFAULT FOR MOTHER’S OCCUPATION – HOMEMAKER? Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think the father has that same default.
WHY DO PEOPLE STILL HAVE TO PUT DOWN COMPLEXION (lighter skin still translates to prettier even if you are unattractive) AND WHAT THE HELL DOES WHEATISH COMPLEXION MEAN?
All of this leads me to believe in a wise friend’s thought: that this site was actually created by an uncle drinking in his basement. An old school, traditional, conservative uncle. And when I say drinking, I don’t mean water. And when I say basement, I mean one of those bomb shelters that he must have been in for at least twenty years before we began to evolve some more.
Because clearly, from the incredible diversity of relationships across caste, class, race, religion, gender, etc, we know that you don’t have to be cut from the same cloth to be compatible. We also know that all the measures, requirements and criteria in the world do not guarantee a perfect match. Don't we?
And yet uncle, you still think its okay to make caste a required category to register to meet someone? Aren’t you just forcing a whole new generation to continue a practice that well, we aren’t shouting from the rooftops about?
Okay so one alcoholic uncle in a basement is probably not the mastermind behind this website.
BUT it’s less troubling than thinking about shady.com as the brain child of a group of uncles, with wheatish complexions drinking in the basement…
