Time to let her go

Sometimes things are built to last, but sometimes, they are meant to be momentary.

 

As much as one wants to make then stay, they must pass on, so they are left on memory ready to be retrieved when the time’s right. Else they’ll degrade and fade, and the useful lesson would be diluted with the common day to day.

 

That’s what happened to our friendship between Karen and I.  Although at times, I think I should have moved further and made her my companion for life, I now know that we weren’t meant for each other, stuck on our own life and times and only meeting on those pleasant moments when we really needed the companionship.

 

Today I find out she’s marrying her sweetheart on May June of next year. Although it saddens me, I know deep inside it’s the best for both of us and time will tell if we’ll ever meet again. With that said, we’ll always be friends, but those friends that live on memory retrieved only when the time’s right.

 

G/d knows when that time will be, but in the mean time, better cherish the last moments we’re together than regret what could have been and wasn’t.

 

Best Wishes my sweet Karen.

Crossroads

Why is it than when life gives you something it always comes with a trade off?

Am sure that if had met Karen when I was a twentysomething, I would have enjoyed countless parties all night long. I would have been by her side, day in, day out. But at 40, life somehow changes and party gives way to rest, and with that, there’s a trade off. How can we really connect, if the moments she holds dearest, are those that I want to avoid?

So much time been waiting for a relationship like this and it comes at a moment that I can’t savior it at is fullest. But would that fullness had spoiled the reward? Would it had made it less appetizing?

Such are these crossroads, when must pick and choose only the moments that matter most to both (or me?) and risk passing on those that might matter most to her.

Is that why the call it, a mid-life crisis, ’cause you’re split in half trying to cope with the life you had and with the life you can bare?

Not sure, but interestingly I’m sure am going to find out (in due time?

This picture ain’t complete

Does a photo needs to tell a story or just be a part of it?

But if that story is about incompleteness and the fear of not being able to fulfill that dream. The fear of getting a taste of something, but not knowing how to grab the full piece. Would that picture have to look incomplete, in order to convey that. But how do you render pieces, if they themselves are wholes? How do you render a work half-done if the painter has no idea of the outcome? In short, how do you render a piece of your life through a picture if the whole is yet to be unraveled?

No attempts have been done to answer the above, so this picture is just that, a piece of a whole which hasn’t happened yet, but in time, it will auto fill those gaps memory has and magically remind us of the whole. Ain’t Life Strange, afterall?

My brother’s ill…

…but the pain is felt throughout my family.

It’s crushing to see a love one, in that way. You blame yourself you weren’t always nice to him. You meditate if he’ll ever be the same again.

When someone's sick, this is the only image you remember...

At first we thought it was a minor problem. But today’s medicine has a strange curve. Most of the time, when you’re admitted, you’re just in a stretcher with no apparent sign of damage. Once you’re inside the hospital, the image tends to blur. As more medicine is applied, more signs appear. It’s as if, being in the hospital made you sick. And doctor’s intervention made you worse and worse. If all goes well, after the ordeal, you swoop the curve and come out.

Sometimes you come out as you were before. Sometimes, it’s a completely different you, devoid from what you are and full of what you will. Sometimes this new you isn’t liked by your relatives and friends. The “miss” the old you. But you can’t go there again. It seems that what got you in the hospital in the first place… it’s what people say. So there’s no turning back.

So although we wish my bro’s will get out and be back the same, deep inside we know it won’t. But that doesn’t mean it’s for the bad.

But this metamorphosis is painful in itself. That curve, not only swells the patient but us, the inpatients–the other ill.

In the end, both are change. But it remains on both side to it be for the best. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it don’t.

But it’s up to us… no one else…except G-d.

Sometimes, being on the wrong place…

…is worse than being at the wrong time.

Tuesday a smart cheerful twenty-something girl got killed by a drive-by shootout on a crowded plaza in Monterrey, Mexico.

Message for Medina

Veladoras

She was 21 and was speaking on cellphone with her boyfriend when a group of children about her age, descended from a truck, and fired against a prison guard off duty. Several bullets hit the sides, several hit on glass walls, but unfortunately one hit her head. She died instantly.

I can’t imagine the feelings of her boyfriend after hearing the shot. But it’s better no to imagine. It’s better to feel few. As life becomes bearable only through a focus attention.

We can’t always worry about death or worry about being always on the right place at the right time. Or even less, being on the wrong place, but at another time.

‘Cause, sometimes, you can’t choose where you are at any particular time. Work, family, friends drive you to places and sometimes those places are neither the correct ones, nor the safe ones. But one feels safe by whatever surrounds us. Other ‘safe havens’ are indeed not, as they are lacking our friends, our families, our ties….

But ties are not forever, nor family nor friends. Some people run hundreds of miles to stay off wars and famine.

My grandpa went from Turkey to Marseilles, France to New York (apparently) down to Mexico running from the Armenian genocide, even if he wasn’t Armenian.

Some walk just a couple miles to get out of poverty, which is also dangerous in itself. My dad went from a ranch near the American border to here, just 120 miles or so, driven by their desire for a better life.

Me, I’m still waiting. Waiting at what used to be the right place, which now seems the wrong one.

But only time will tell if it was only the wrong time, for me and for the rest of us.

Two hours and a half can take many places…

If you have patience…

It can take from Dallas to Los Angeles, if you go by plane.  It can take you from Washington, D.C. to New York if you travel by high speed train.

But sometimes it can take you just a couple feet away.

Division Plate at Reynosa-Hidalgo International Bridge

That’s what daily people live, when commuting from Reynosa, Mexico to Hidalgo, Texas. Endless morning hours spent to travel a distance no greater than 250 feet. If you want to do the math, that would be just a couple steps per minute.

But the change they witness, it’s like landing in another planet. Not because Hidalgo is a world class city (it isn’t, it’s just a dusty south Texas border town), but because Reynosa is a testimonial of two converging problems that shouldn’t have converged in the first place.

First, it’s a place for people who wait; not only those in line to cross the border, but also thousands of people for all over the place (Guatemala, Honduras, south Mexico, etc.) who are there waiting for a chance to cross the border over to the–once existing–American Dream.

Secondly, it’s the place where drug traffic and arms dealing converge in an absurd way. Arms go south, drugs go north. Money flows both ways.

If it weren’t from it’s border, Reynosa would be another place. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it would be better.

But at this moment in time, this is not good, as war has erupted and few people are really willing to being there, if given the chance. But since most people there wait, leaving is not an option, as that would left others their place in line. ‘Cause that’s the reason for waiting. If it weren’t possible at all, no one would even take the time to wait.

So people are used to wait, even if waiting is for a better life. Or waiting for this war to stop. Either way, when you don’t know how far’s the wait, waiting seems for ever. Even if on the surface, the voyage is just a few feet away…