I want to kick the big C in the nads!
Some might say I've reached that time of life. You know, when your friends talk more about their health problems than their projects. I say screw that!
I've lost a spouse to cancer. I have a friend fighting it tooth and nail right now. I have another friend dealing with mysterious blinding headaches (of the 'get that woman into the MRI' kind). And, you know what? I'm pissed.
I want to kick the big C square in the nads right now. Hard enough to send it to its knees. Then I want to knock it over and jump up and down on the body a few times. The whole time I'd be shouting obscenities and insults, running through every language I can swear in. ("Su madre es puta you schistkopffen! Matter choad!")
But I can't. I can't do a thing except be there for them. (And, here in San Francisco, I can't even do that.) As much as the very depths of my scottish soul wants to kick ass on the thing that hurts the people I love there just isn't a damn thing else I can do.
If this was a story I could make it into a thing I could hurt and visit payback upon. If this was a myth I could track down the essence of it and meet it in its lair. If this was a fable I could somehow come to terms with it.
But this is the real world. And I feel helpless.
Edited to add: So, I got maudlin (partly because of the beer I drank at the parties I went to tonight) and I took a glass of single malt and a cigar down to the parking garage to get stinkin'.
There I spent an instructive hour talking to the parking attendants. One was from Turkministan and the other from Turkey. Both were here on student visas getting their master's degrees in subjects they couldn't pursue at home. Both came here after privileged lives at home to work menial jobs our own natives wouldn't take in order to put themselves through college. Both could see the warts of this country far better than a native (even one as travelled as myself) and both wished they could stay here after completing their studies. (And both knew that there was little chance they would ever get a work visa.)
So, maybe there is something good in this world after all. Something worth celebrating. I'm not sure I know what it is right now, but I do know that I respect those two young guys and hope that they take back with them the good things they have learned here. Even if they go to places which fail to reward hard work and intelligence even as little as we do.
If they could see something here of value, something they wished they could have, why shouldn't I?
I've lost a spouse to cancer. I have a friend fighting it tooth and nail right now. I have another friend dealing with mysterious blinding headaches (of the 'get that woman into the MRI' kind). And, you know what? I'm pissed.
I want to kick the big C square in the nads right now. Hard enough to send it to its knees. Then I want to knock it over and jump up and down on the body a few times. The whole time I'd be shouting obscenities and insults, running through every language I can swear in. ("Su madre es puta you schistkopffen! Matter choad!")
But I can't. I can't do a thing except be there for them. (And, here in San Francisco, I can't even do that.) As much as the very depths of my scottish soul wants to kick ass on the thing that hurts the people I love there just isn't a damn thing else I can do.
If this was a story I could make it into a thing I could hurt and visit payback upon. If this was a myth I could track down the essence of it and meet it in its lair. If this was a fable I could somehow come to terms with it.
But this is the real world. And I feel helpless.
Edited to add: So, I got maudlin (partly because of the beer I drank at the parties I went to tonight) and I took a glass of single malt and a cigar down to the parking garage to get stinkin'.
There I spent an instructive hour talking to the parking attendants. One was from Turkministan and the other from Turkey. Both were here on student visas getting their master's degrees in subjects they couldn't pursue at home. Both came here after privileged lives at home to work menial jobs our own natives wouldn't take in order to put themselves through college. Both could see the warts of this country far better than a native (even one as travelled as myself) and both wished they could stay here after completing their studies. (And both knew that there was little chance they would ever get a work visa.)
So, maybe there is something good in this world after all. Something worth celebrating. I'm not sure I know what it is right now, but I do know that I respect those two young guys and hope that they take back with them the good things they have learned here. Even if they go to places which fail to reward hard work and intelligence even as little as we do.
If they could see something here of value, something they wished they could have, why shouldn't I?