saudades
Its been six hours since I’ve been on this computer. Restless. Checking all my favorite news websites. Hearing what I want to hear. The Guardian, The Economist, the BBC. Blogs. Music. Art. Am I an orientalist for doing this? For reading the regurgitation of sound bites in the English language, mostly from Englishmen who are a part of the subject, the university knowledge, and never the object, the studied? Am I contributing to whatever violence is through my language, and my linguistic practices? There is a duality in my head bursting. Does it matter? Maybe the end of civilization as we know it is within arm’s reach. With social ruptures torching cars and smashing windows in the most civilized places, financial systems unable to be salvaged by human (in)genuity, the destabilization of despots relations with the West in the East, and invisible ecological catastrophe, it seems I am on the outskirts of a zero point, looking in through a kaleidoscope that is the global information village. Maybe the broken ankle that has me chair-bound, forty days of consistent drinking, meeting travelers and strangers who are a part of my world and so very much not a part of my world, and the overwhelming feeling of saudades as I wait stupidly, as always, by the phone are really getting to me.
Damn, I’m really stupid.
