Repeatedly


Dear Eugene,

It is easy to speak about happiness and success.  When we speak about our weakness and failure, we speak for ourselves and would rather to ourselves--which means we often don't speak about them at all.

So you meet some strangers at a dinner party and what are you going to say to them?  Things you would post on social media: happy thoughts, memorable vacations, pleasant foods, good purchases, health tips, recipes.  If you are lucky you will learn soon enough about enemies common with your new friends and sing together a harmonious tune of discordance, cut-price camaraderie pays off pronto, as expected.  A dash of self-deprecating humor here and there you could summon.  Mild embarrassment of your past you might generously offer.  Curable headaches.  Colorful pills everyone should try.  Mirroring life experiences as an engaging prism to speak for and to all sides.

Shake hands first and shake hands last.  Then you go home.

Back to the truth that you could really do without that dinner.  Or last week's dinner.  And the one before that.  All these strangers who didn't know you and will never care to, all the bullshits exchanged that could have kept you warmer if they were to stay inside and fuel your self-loathing.  You promise yourself to never do it again, like you've just visited a brothel and skimped on tips.  The aftertaste of abject loneliness tells you you've sinned.

One of the worst memories of my youth has to be dinner after church--I mean after dinner after church.  So much joy, so much fun, big laughs and high talks, everything I've taken in I would need to throw up and then some.  One time after what's supposed to be a birthday dinner for me I went home feeling sorry about wasting others' time, money, and good attention.  Somehow I knew then most at the table would not remain my friend for long.  I suppose I don't need to tell you now if I was right or not.

I have a head full of Cantonese pop songs and these two lines spoke to me then and torment me still:

熱鬧過後突然獨自感受冰冷溫度
問候過後就如繁華席散終要分手

After the thrills the rapt sensations suddenly alone I feel the cold
After the good wishes the fine dining to separate ways we go

Fair-weather friends, we didn't know how to speak to each other about our own weakness and longing.  The time I felt sorry I was just as grateful.  My friends gave me a CD and I am still playing it now, songs about friendship and love, dreams and ideals.  I wrote a long email to them right after I went home from the dinner at Granville Island, to thank them, to hold on to them, knowing they would soon find no strong reason to remember the night.  Gratitude as exorcism.  Suddenly alone I feel the cold.

An inept tongue is not something that we would naturally grow out of.  Our grammar of hope is what George Monbiot called "our future lives as repeated instances of the present."  There is no need for new vocabulary when our narrative thread is rubbed thinner by the day.  This year is just like last year--only better!  Every meeting is a shareholders' meeting.

Christmas month.  Dinners lining up.  Time to repeat ourselves.

Yours, Alex

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