Expectations

Why don’t they just call them what they are.
False hopes.

I hate to sound negative,
really,
I do.
But there has to be a point when
you’re not too scared shitless to face the facts, right?

What do I need expectations for?
Like fairy tales or mythological tales
All stories with three necessary components
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

That’s definitely not the kind of life I want for myself.

You don’t need expectations.
But you do need standards.

Standards are your way of saying,
This is what I am,
and am not,
willing to live with.

These are the things we need to set,
in order to know whether we can survive.

Sometimes getting to a different place,
a different space,
a different frame,
of mind,
or body
isn’t about expectations.
It has nothing to do with what you only could hope to achieve.

It’s about raising your own bar.
What happens if you just can’t settle for less.
Isn’t that infinitely more decisive
than expecting stuff to just
I don’t know,
happen?

Forgive me if my “aha” moment
coincides with your
“duh” moment

But I think I’m on the cusp here
of uncovering something pretty great.

Like, Why would Dickens even name a book after it?
Why would he entitle a novel “Great Expectations”
And then fill it with a story,
that just falls miserably to pieces?
No one really ends up with what they want or who they want.
In the end they had to roll with the punches.
Despite their expectations.

Even Dickens knew,
maybe he was even the pioneer,
of this movement against “expectations”.

Expectations are often the benchmark
to all of life’s major disappointments.

I know,
spoken like a true fucking cynic.

But if you think I’m being cynical,
you’re not getting it.

Expectations is the first cousin of
Entitlement.
I deserve, therefore I expect.

But standards have value.
They have chutzpah.
Their own momentum.
Good or bad,
up or down,
they have their own force.

You want a better life,
raise your standards.
Standards can be concrete.
Expectations are based on lofty goals and imaginings that may or may not be based in real fact.

I think I’ve daydreamed all my expectations.
But back here on earth,
I only have my standards.

The Albatross

Yeah I know, I know what you thought of me.
No, it’s not really a surprise,
you’ve said it before,
and to my face,
so …
I kinda got what you were getting at.

The gist is this:
- I could have been more selfless
- I could have given more
- I could’ve been a better listener than I was

And you’re right.
But, that applies to just about everyone,
Don’t you think?

I mean-
here’s the thing-
what I’m trying to say is-
yes.
Yes.
You’re absolutely right.

But,
(it’s a pretty big “but”)
Did you ever think that sometimes I just knew how to do enough
to survive.
And if you haven’t figured that out yet then,
I’m sorry.
I really am sorry.
But all I can do is
pray for you.

I can only think about it late in the evening.
I can’t let it affect me.
I just don’t have the capacity
even to impart my wisdom,
Or divulge my findings.

Hindsight is 20/20.

You’ve asked yourself, I know,:
- Why couldn’t you look after me?
- Why couldn’t you speak up against things?
- Why couldn’t you defend me?

Well, it’s eat or be eaten here,
and I’m just trying so hard not to get bit.
Sometimes you have to realize,
As much as I look like I’ve figured this all out,
I’m terrified on the inside.
I act purely on instinct.
And you just can’t give advice about instincts.

Half the time, I was trailing sludge like you.
Except I hid it better.
It didn’t make me better.
It’s just how it came out.
Everything seemed fine,
but I knew exactly what you were going through.

I made it my mission not to go through the same thing.
At least not in the same way.

I didn’t stand with you,
but I never stood against you.

I didn’t talk to you, much,
but I didn’t talk about you.

Where was I?
What was I doing?

I was surviving.

There.
I said it.

I was trying to keep my head above water.
You thought all along that I was walking on it.

I did wonder about you.
How it must have felt to be you.
To be the one who didn’t mind wearing her discontent on her sleeve.
It must have been liberating.
It must have been lonely.

People just didn’t know how to accept.
And I accepted that.

I found my own workarounds.

So here’s the thing,
Of all my instincts,
I never once thought to be altruistic.
Not if it hurt me in the long run.
Not if it threatened survival.

Call me selfish.
I’ve been called worse.

You may not see it like this,
but I actually spared you.
I shut you out.
I knew we were the same,
in all their eyes,
But between us,
we were different.

I spared you because I didn’t let you in,
I let you fend for yourself.
I let you learn on your own what you’re willing,
What you’re capable of doing.
Of figuring out on your own what the terms
of your own survival are.

I spared you because I always knew,
I was the last person who was in any position
to save anybody.

The last thing anyone wants to be tied to
is a sinking ship.

Then again,

Hindsight is 20/20.

The Perfect Excuse

“She’s just a novelty. You’re my keepsake.”

Is whoopee a novelty in relationships?

The Airport Chronicles: The Private Room

Her latex-gloved thumb pulled at my tights as she swept the perimeter of my underwear line. Her name was Meena. I knew this because I was intently staring at her i.d. tag as she padded those latexed hands up and down my body. It wasn’t because she had the courtesy of introducing herself to me, “Hello, my name is Meena, and although we’ve never met before and I don’t know anything about you, I’m going to feel free to put on these gloves and touch you anyways”.

She didn’t even buy me dinner first.

Meena continued to hold up the front of my dress and inspect me, like a mechanic searching under the hood of a broken-down car.

“Whatcha looking for there Meena?” I kept wanting to ask. But somehow I was under the impression that she wasn’t looking for small talk.

I knew what Meena was looking for, some questionable and incriminating items that would prove harmful to others later on. A bomb, a gun, a knife, a pair of tweezers.

Now we’re playing “grab-ass”. Meena has both hands firmly on my bum.

Maybe I should be the one buying her dinner.

For the record, she didn’t find anything there either.

She then moved her hands up and down my inner-thighs.

The crowd watched on, some with pity on their faces, others with slight smirks.

I remember being confused because I never heard the beep.

That familiar sound of alarm as you go through the security portal. The one that tells you that you are now under suspicion and at the complete mercy of airport security. You did beep after all. Everyone knows what that means.

I never heard the beep because there never was one.

So why was I here, standing with my dress half way up, in front of God and everyone, and being poked and prodded by this rubber-gloved woman?

My deductive skills worked like this:
Reasons I would be searched-
(1) I beeped (Nope)
(2) I’m carrying more than the permissible amount of liquids in my handbag (Nope)
(3) My last name has a hyphen in it, and I was born in Kuwait… (Yup)

There it was, a simple deductive equation and I could figure out why I was being placed in that precarious position with a woman I didn’t know and have never seen before.

Here’s another thing I deduced from the situation. Something that, had I known what was to come, would have at least spared me a modicum of dignity.

If you’re ever pulled aside to be “randomly” searched at any airport, and the security guard asks you if you would like a private room…the answer is always, always, “Yes”.

On Seeking Advice from Others

“If it’s a matter of personal integrity, do what is personally integral for you.”

Dog and Pony

My style- it’s called composure
But often mislabeled conservative.
I do not feel the need to provide full disclosure
To every ooh and ahh of past experience,

That’s for me to know, sir, and for you to find out.

That is, if you’re lucky
That is, If you love me

I have been deemed a wallflower
but that’s a false conclusion
I simply don’t engage in the art of illusions-

Those idiotic idioms
they need not apply,
The hem of my skirt need not end at my thigh
I am not pomp nor circumstance
Nor a dog and pony show
For your viewing pleasure
Sir.

I am, however, equal parts vim
and vigor.

The bottom line is
I make no apologies for not subscribing to your antiquated reveries
Or as you call it
“Evolution”.

In the immortal words of Slim Shady,
I am who I say I am,
I dress how I dress,
This, sir, is how I choose to impress.

So don’t be off-put
This isn’t my arm’s length
You certainly can have what you see,

but only if you’re lucky-
and only if you love me.

Getting Rejected Should be a One Way Street

“Now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. “- Drew Barrymore; He’s Just Not That Into You

Adverse Advertising

Richard was unsure how to respond when Mr. Bresnick called him into his corner office and told him he’d be representing the company at the annual, International Telecom Conference. The only semi-intriguing part was that this year the conference was being held in India. Richard had never been to India, in fact he had never been on a trip abroad in his entire life.

Richard wasn’t a narrow minded person. He enjoyed eating foods from around the world, Italian being his favourite. He was born and raised in Canada and was certainly appreciative of its world-wide reputation as the “cultural mosaic”. He had many colleagues of varied races and ethnicities and he always enjoyed conversing with them about their childhoods and trips “home” to visit family and friends.

In his young life, Richard merely focused on immediate tasks and ambitions. He attended university immediately after high school, and applied for his Masters in Business and Communications shortly thereafter. Not even six months after he had received his MA he was recommended to an impressive position managing key accounts for Agorafone, a billion dollar cell phone company. At the age of 26, Richard was the youngest person to be granted such a high position in the company. All in All, Richard was a good kid, he made his parents proud. He was happy with his choices in life and simply didn’t have the luxury of time to become a globe-trotter.

So when Mr. Bresnick handed him the itinerary for his 5 day trip to India, Richard accepted, albeit with trepidation.

Being the responsible young man that he was, Richard read up about the history and culture that he would expect to see while there. He made arrangements to visit sites like the Taj Mahal in his spare time, he even researched health and travel advisories.

What Richard wasn’t prepared for as he stepped off the plane was the oppressive, almost bewildering heat. He had never experienced anything like it. Having grown up in a small town in B.C. he was used to mild summers, the heat reaching a maximum of 29 degrees Celsius. He still remembered that one summer when the heat managed to make it as high as 34 degrees and he didn’t have to go to work that day on account of the air conditioning being broken. This was a different type of heat altogether, it was moist and stifling. The air felt still. He instantly regretted having worn a long-sleeved shirt. All he could think about was getting into a taxi and heading off to his hotel for some much needed rest.

He was a little stunned at the view from his taxi cab. Cows wandering the streets alongside the traffic. Women crossing the street in a rainbow of red, yellow, pink and green saris. A far departure from his life of khaki pants and pastel coloured shirts. There seemed to be no mute buttons in this city, the jingle jangle of a million bells competed for attention against the blaring horns of any and all types of vehicles. Richard found himself to be fascinated and slightly overwhelmed.

As the taxi sped through the city, the smiley taxi driver turned to Richard and explained that he will take a short-cut to the hotel. Richard appreciated this very much, and planned to hand the driver a proportionately large tip for his efforts. The taxi driver veered off the main city street and headed straight down a dusty road.

Within minutes, the scenery had changed dramatically. Richard had read about this in a guidebook or two, the areas they deemed “slums”, but no amount of reading could have prepared him for the moment where he was face to face with absolute, abject poverty. He saw children rifling through mountains of garbage, even competing with stray dogs and goats for bits of food. Some families were huddled around fires they had built in the open streets.

There were countless numbers of ramshackle shanties all in a row; one lopsided wall holding up the wall of its neighbouring shack. A precarious domino-like community. The shacks were constructed of a variety of scrap materials, the walls made out of mismatched pieces of wood, the roofs were often simply tarps or banners, once cast aside, now providing rough shelter for various families.

As the taxi putted along down the road, Richard continued to stare in wonder, his mouth still half-open in shock. However, nothing could have prepared his young, innocent eyes for what he was about to see- row upon row of Agorafone banner ads serving as the rooftops of several shacks. Richard began to feel sick to his stomach and soon enough a wave of nausea overcame him, as he asked the taxi driver to pull over. He just managed to get the car door open before hurling the contents of his stomach on the road.

The driver still had a smile on his face.

Oh Mister, you not even in this country 24 hours and you sick. Wait until you try the food!

Richard feigned a smile at the well meaning driver and got back in the car. He had no idea what to think.

Upon reaching the hotel, Richard handed the driver double the money for the cost of the cab ride. The driver attempted to return a portion of it, telling Richard that he must have miscalculated. Richard begged him to keep it, thinking this was the very least he could possibly do.

The next morning, Richard was due at the conference at 9 am but he couldn’t bring himself to go. He could not face all those people, talking about profit and expansion and new schemes to get people to spend more money on their phones. His heart just wasn’t in it. Instead, Richard spent the morning in his room with his laptop in front of him, drafting his resignation letter.

Of Gerbils and Humans

I know a gerbil named Poubelle. “Poubelle” happens to be the french word for “Garbage”. I did not understand the irony and appropriateness of this name, until I studied Poubelle avidly for over an hour.

Initially, I suspected that Poubelle’s favourite pastime would be burrowing. It made sense, the creature had dug holes through the fuzzy blue yarn in his terrarium and would happily curl up and sleep there for some time.

This was until my good friend, and adopted mother of the miscreant, put it in a pink bubble so that it could run around “freely” in the apartment. I had multiple fears about this which I will itemize for convenience and enhanced readability:

Fear #1: Adopted mum has a cat which, if a childhood’s worth of Tom and Jerry episodes prove correct, would mean said cat would only be too delighted to smack around the gerbil trapped in a plastic bubble gum bubble.

Fear #2: I hope gerbils are colour-blind because I could only imagine what it would be like to run around inside a giant pink bubble that likely has poor stabilizing capabilities. If I were rolling unstoppably in a world of pink, I would think that the result would involve a gastronomic upheaval of remarkable proportions. So if this gerbil isn’t colour-blind, he’s going to be one nauseous rodent trapped in a giant ball of his own sick.

Little did I know that gerbils have very few social stigmas about bodily secretions. Furthermore, they have even fewer qualms about showing you this.

As Poubelle ran delightedly around the apartment, his front paws moving at mach speed, his tiny pink nose turned up in the air, his whiskers taught and high like the moustache of a lanky frenchman, he did something so unimaginably disgusting to me, a human, and so accepted and rudimentary for him, a gerbil.

Poubelle shit in his bubble.

What’s more?

Poubelle played with his own shit while in his bubble.

We went through several stages before we came to terms with what we were seeing. This too shall be itemized for convenience and enhanced readability:

Stage #1: “The Squint”- Am I really seeing what I’m seeing?
Stage #2: “Awkward Silence”- I think I am seeing what I am seeing, but is she seeing what I am seeing?
Stage #3: “Gaping Mouth Covered by Hand”- A pause to take in what is actually occurring.
Stage #4: “Slow- motion- turn- around- and- look- each- other- in- the- eye”- self explanatory.
Stage #5: “Recognition”- Silent admission that we are looking at the same thing.
Stage #6: “The Guffaw”- Hilariously laughing together at the sight of Poubelle now fully enjoying playing with his dried-up, crusted piece of shit like a child opening presents on Christmas morning.

As we stared in disbelief, a second, almost equally stunning realization hit me. There wasn’t just one piece of shit rolling around in there with Poubelle. There were at least three. And he was equally delighted to play mirthfully with them all. I guess that’s a plus for Poubelle, he’s not a discriminating gerbil.

Then another thought hit me. How much can one tiny body possibly excrete? Incredulous, I know, to be thinking of such a thing after the shock and amazement of watching the gerbil play with his poo. But in reality, after shock and amazement what other reactions are there to graduate to? It seems only natural that after shock and amazement would come a major digression in thought.

Back to the gerbil. The excretions were multiplying, officially transforming this creature into a creature worthy of its own feature spot in the acclaimed documentary series “Planet Earth”. Poubelle is that fascinating. Perhaps this awesome feat can be attributed to the fact that Poubelle’s body is so small. Surely there isn’t much travel time between the north end and the south end of the body. Whereas, in comparison to us humans, we metabolize at such different rates, for some this event may only occur every other day. There must be a more in-depth, scientific answer to just how this metabolic process occurs, but the phenomenon itself is one to marvel at, or at least interesting enough to Google.

Here’s another thing I learned about Poubelle. Give him the dregs of a toilet paper roll and from it he will fashion a mighty bed fit for gerbil royalty. That’s right, apparently adoptive gerbil parents are encouraged to give empty toilet paper rolls to their gerbils in order to:

Reason #1: Allow gerbils to file their ever-growing teeth and prevent their teeth from curling back into their mouths if left to grow for too long.

Reason #2: To chomp the cardboard into bits adding to the cushion of their bed.

While this certainly intrigued me, I also wondered, well…who the hell figured that out? Who was living in such desperate conditions that, in lieu of a garbage can, they decided to throw the empty toilet paper roll into the gerbil’s place of residence? And was this act a negligent one…or a prophetic one? Who intuited that this animal would learn to reuse this object to their benefit?

Poubelle earned my greatest respect that night, and the reasons for this would probably best be displayed with, you’ve probably already guess this, another itemized list. This is what Poubelle, the gerbil, has taught me, the human, about life:

Lesson #1: Animals, unlike humans, are not subject to social stigmas and cultural faux-pas (i.e. playing/flinging their own poop). Theirs is a culture of survival only.

Lesson #2: Never trust first impressions. Poubelle went from the most disgusting, garbage-feasting creature on earth, to an absolute model of resourcefulness.

Lesson #3: Humans could learn from Animals. Particularly gerbils like Poubelle.

Lesson #4: Based on the events of the evening it is clear that when the apocalypse is nigh, only animals like Poubelle will survive to inherit the earth. And maybe they’re the only ones who will know what to do with it.

The Airport Chronicles: Border Crossings

Every time I get here, I think, this could be the day. This could very well be the day I get deported.

I’ve never met an airport I haven’t liked. I’ve been in and out of them more times than I can count. I have a sick love of airplane travel, and not just the plane part, the whole airport part too. Airports are a modern day tower of Babel. A mass of international citizens coming in and out- learning languages, figuring out new ways to communicate, finding gates, finding bags, finding family members. It used to be a people watcher’s heaven, and I loved it all. Or at least, I used to love it.

I even enjoyed that anticipation of getting on the flight. The mixed feelings of dread and excitement as your plane taxis off the run way. Always a rough start, but there’s some kind of peaceful zen that overcomes you when the lights go off and you’re silently mobilizing through the airways. It’s freeing.

I used to think that the only thing I had to worry about on a plane was the possibility of crashing. No one likes to think of that, but I always like to remind myself that this could be my last flight ever, god forbid, and I should be enjoying it just in case. It’s morbid, but somehow that thought gets me through.

Take advantage of the free meal, the choices of movies. Die having been fed and entertained. It’s not a terrible state of mind to be in before you meet your maker.

Nowadays, the state of the world being as it is, my anxieties about flying are no longer fun or freeing. They are no longer associated with a sort of nervous excitement about the trip. My anxieties now begin before I even enter the airport itself. Before entering the tower of Babel and feeling like mine is the only language that is not accepted. Mine is the only culture whose currency cannot be exchanged.

Now, I am not only fearful of dying suddenly mid-flight, I am fearful that I will never make it on to that flight. Or worse, if I do make it on to a plane, I can’t guarantee that it will be going in the same direction I want to be. Forwards, rather than backwards.

Every border crossing is a day of reckoning. Every border crossing, I meet my maker.