Today began with a strange realization. Having worked full time for just a mere two years, savings add to more than most people in the homeland can accumulate in a decade. The privilege of that position is suffocating. The injustice is infuriating. Most of it dumb luck, some of it effort, a little bit of it skill, none of it deserved. So says the mind that struggles daily to comprehend levels of systematic inequality and the heart that hears cries beyond the music. The child never imagined 34 would come. The clock is ticking louder and with more urgency than usual.
Has enough been done if the hour glass runs out without warning? Has the past been accorded its due?
It was never a single instance. Driving back from those centers, life inside, whatever it’s essence, slowly seeped out, like a broken faucet. Parallel to life is the heart, which broke slowly and all at once into a million pieces. The ground was littered as spirits eulogized the one who tried.
There was never a moment to spare without pain. Breathing became labored because to breathe meant to live and living meant to know the sorrow and knowing meant to feel the pain. Feeling pain was dying.
The last remnant of a once somewhat complete heart bore the rough etchings of the final message: nothing could have been done. The war was lost before the battle began. The ashes spread on the ground paid homage to souls that had hoped only to have life cruelly mock those dreams. A million reasons to dream ended with millions of heart pieces. Then life changed. The homeland made room begrudgingly for the heart pieces. Privilege then took the place of pain and suffocated the soul. Equally crushing it turns out.
Two weeks ago another school year came to a close. The second as a full time teacher. The first that was almost completely online. The midday quiet set in that afternoon on the second last day of school. The sun shone brightly, traffic moved sporadically, travel restrictions continued.
Somewhere a bread tuk went by blaring the instrumental for “It’s a Small World,” the unofficial anthem of seemingly all bread tuks in the country. The midday lull and accompanying thoughts were interrupted. During the past few weeks (or, maybe months… who can remember when the last day of leaving the house had become a hazy memory?) the tune had been played more often than usual and at all times of the day. Even at night.
The familiar morning tune that had woken the bustling city and used to remind the privileged of Disneyland now sounded ominous and foreboding to those listening beyond the music. How hungry was its rider? When had he last slept through the night? How desperate was his family these days when survival and death were separated by a line in the sand of a polluted beach? Were they safe or had officials come to take them away to an unknown location because scientists tell us separation will help us survive? The tune faded into the lull. The quiet returned. The uneasiness remained. Thoughts digressed.
Two weeks into summer and the thoughts and the tunes haven’t ceased. It’s almost like one impacts the other but the line of causation remains blurry. Is it a small world? How will the survivors live with the guilt? When will the reckoning come? Has enough been done if the world comes to an end? What if the spirits come first?