There Will Be Candy!

And roses. And chocolates. And all kinds of sappy romantic crap with no relevance to either the non-American world, nor love – for that matter. Like that song by Neil Young, for example:

Because I’m still in love with you
I wanna see you dance again
Because I’m still in love with you
On this harvest moon.

Why [would there be roses.. and chocolates.. and all kinds of sappy romantic stuff with no relevance to either the non-American world, nor love – for that matter]?! Because it’s Valentine’s Day! I day to honor lovers and love! And Americans are cheerleaders for love!!

Only the other day a colleague of mine, Frankie – Gay, was telling another colleague of mine, Kendra-Lesbian; how he was feeling the blues lately because of an old flame who broke his heart. They were in an open-relationship, he said, but have agreed to let the other one know if/when things start getting serious with somebody else. Apparently, these are the sorts of relationships that involve sex even after the contracting parties have parted ways. So although Frankie and his boyfriend drifted apart, they still managed to have the occasional sex when they can. THEN, suddenly, said Frankie, in a choked up voice; every time he called his old-boyfriend, now a booty-call, his calls started getting dropped. When he finally managed to locate him and pressed for an explanation, the ex came out and said he was in a serious monogamous relationship now. That he has been seeing this guy, “military-type”, while he was dating Frankie; then they have fallen in love at the end of 2011. “Yes”, Frankie added, sounding sad and brave at the same time, “now they are going to get married. And live happily ever after”.

It isn’t the lack of a hint of sarcasm in his self-pitying voice that shocked me, but how he was trying to “sound” happy for an ex-boyfriend who not just cheated on him repeatedly but was treating him like a piece of ass while building a solid [hopefully lasting] life with another guy. He then continued being “happy” for them, sounding rather like Stanford when declaring he doesn’t have anybody to go to the LGBT-prom with despite being on the decorations committee.

While I was pondering over this fact, over the irony of Americans still manageing to keep-up their love-optimism despite adversity [the problem with monogamy, the high divorce rate, the deterioration of family values] and how accepting gay-men seem to be when it comes to being screwed over, the story of Bainbridge Island’s Filipino Indians [otherwise known as “Indipinos”] came on Kuow. These are men and women who made the North West their home and “can trace their roots back to the strawberry farms that once carpeted Bainbridge Island”. One of the women, whose heritage as a Nooksack Tribe member is being questioned now, started talking about how her mother [of Native American origin] and dad [a Filipino farmer] met. “He was driving a 1925 flatbed truck, and saw my mom walking on the side of the street”, she said “and he said to her “Hey.. kid! Where are your parents? Would you like to come pick berries on Bainbridge Island?”. The girl must have run home and told her parents. The grandparents took up the offer, along with other Native families. In time, the story continues, romances sprang up between Filipino men and Native women. And.. “They fell in love with each other working in the fields”.

Now .. hold on a minute! one would protest. “What happened to just getting coupled-with because it was the sensible thing to do? Because it was the expected thing to do? Or because there wasn’t anybody else to hook with?” Why would a couple not declaring to have gone through the process of “falling in love” feel they need to explain more or made feel their relationship was less valid and wholesome than those who can pin-point the moment they realized they were “falling” for this person?

Ofcourse, there is nothing particularly bad about this idea of falling or having to fall in love. Until -that is- it starts creating a dissatisfaction when the butterflies are no longer beating their wings in the stomach. Or make people feel robbed of the ideal when relationships fall short of the myth of what “being in love” feels like [how many movies have we watched, dear reader, where a disappointed heroine cries over pieces of her heart.. life.. dreams.. using the words “but you said you loved me” in accusation?!]. More importantly, until “love” starts being used as an excuse, nay the very reason, for people to mistreat their fellow human beings. Many were the days in which I sat through a “Maury Show” episode where a guy caught cheating on his wife/girlfriend/fiancée is being confronted by the said wife/girlfriend/fiancée on national television. She cries. He denies. The audience boos. He swears he has been wronged. Claims innocence and vows to take the lie-detector test, if he must, to regain her trust. When the results roll in, we learn that he not only fucked the girl’s cousin but 6-9 of her bosom buddies. He has been sending roses to one. Buying rings for the other. Or has built a whole life with a 3rd two cities away. The one thing he has been telling the truth about, a somber-faced – almost reverent – Maury would tell us, to the “Awwww”s of the thus-far-antagonistic audience, was when he claimed to “love” her”.

He loves her.

Oh he does.

Thank God almighty he does.

So she goes back to crying and hoping he would change. He goes back to screwing with her -and a hand-ful others. And the audience goes home and tuck their pillows underneath their necks with a sigh of relief – hoping that surely, if he loves her, it can’t be that bad!

The error, I think, is in the reading. The machine checks the heart-rate, the contraction of the muscles, the breathing pattern. It tells the expert what the guy “believes” to be true. It does not tell him whether that belief or perception of truth has any relevance to the reality [or not]. Kind of like a guy denying fathering a child because he has been hit on the head and lost his memory. Does that make his tells a lie or his fatherhood any less binding? In short, these guys were probably not lying when they say they love the woman they are being accused of treating un-lovingly. The love they have for her is simply not the kind of love they promised her. Or one she is willing to accept.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not the abesheet I was a year ago when it comes to the subject of “love”. I have been with a guy towards whom I have “pleasurable feeling stemming from an emotional attraction” for 10 months now. Neither did I felt anything less than lucky to be his that first day I met him, actually shed a tear when he told me it’s too bad I smoke because he has a rule about dating women who smoke. And he seems to like being around me, if actions do indeed speak louder than words! [Not that he doesn’t tell me he loves me as often as the next [American] man does a woman he harbors “pleasurable feeling stemming from an emotional attraction” for].

Alas.. I am no cheerleader for love. Hell no, I ain’t. My eyes won’t glaze over and I won’t start day-dreaming at the mention of “Titanic”, “The Notebook”, or [sorry kids] “Sleepless in Seattle”. I won’t let romance over-ride reason or believe love is the one noble Idol worth bowing down to and going ooh-ahh about.  Neway Debebe’s “Egnaw EnitareQ”, was, after all, the song my dad sang along and wept to when my mother left him for 3 months; tired of the beating and the verbal abuses [to both herself and the kids]. Alas… I do believe C.S. Lewis when he said:

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is taken to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,’ then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from ‘being in love’ — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. it is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”

Stay warm, my friends.

“ሳቤላ” ( Sabela ) በሚስዝ ሔንሪ ውድ

“ሳቤላ”

Haile Selassie Mehari/Mahri ወደ Amharic endeአልteregomew.

መታሰቢያነቱ ለSeble: For how much you disliked Barbara Hare; and how much I loved her.

Photo Courtesy of Blen Tilahun.

Chapter 1: The Lady Isabel
Chapter 2: The Broken cross
Chapter 3: Barbara Hare
Chapter 4: The Moonlight Interview
Chapter 5: Mr. Carlyle’s Office
Chapter 6: Richard Hare, the Younger

Continue listening to the audio-book or read the Unabridged version of Mrs. Henry Wood’s, East Lynne online. Or watch an older free version of the movie hereunder and try not to be too upset with how “plain Jane” the character who plays Barbara is.

Grandma movie quotes & other observations

My grandma used to say….

Nothing! She died when I was four. But even before that, she wasn’t so much a sayer, from what I could gather, as a looker – which explains the jealous rage my grandpa unleashed on all the kids that “didn’t look like him” when he came home drunk – resulting in some pretty fucked uncles and cousins with self-esteem problems. This knowledge that I missed out on an “Aya’at” becomes keen when I especially watch those movies in which the hero’s Nana is one of those universal grandmothers who [apparently] goes around cracking wisdom like a whip. Somebody like Jose’s grandmother from Bella (2006), for example, who used to say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” Or Lt. Col. Mitchell from Stargate SG-1 who learned from his “gran” how “God is like a prairie windstorm. If you look too hard, you get dust in your eyes, but there’s still plenty of ways to know it’s there.” Or even a grandmother from a less than self-expressive country like Iran (in the movie Persepolis), who goes around saying stuff like:

Listen. I don’t like to preach, but here’s some advice. You’ll meet a lot of jerks in life. If they hurt you, remember it’s because they’re stupid. Don’t react to their cruelty. There’s nothing worse than bitterness and revenge. Keep your dignity and be true to yourself.

It, ofcourse, doesn’t mean I believe these grandmothers actually existed. Even when real life people go about saying “My grandma used to say..” on NPR, I take the grandma part with a grain of salt. That’s because I have learned these grandma-sayings, especially when the sayer is from a 3rd world country, make Americans view him and themselves in a certain light. Aren’t, after all, all [good] African grandfathers elders of or leaders to some tribe? And .. African women .. a walking breathing stand-ins for mother earth herself: dark, resilient, and fertile?!

In a country where how the mass sees you determines what sort of resources would be made available to you, giving them what they want would, ofcourse, be the rule of the day. And so we tell stories of difficult childhoods; brutal 3rd world governments who prosecute angelic social workers and/or journalists; and matriarchs who hand-down life lessons around crackling wood fire. And they take us into their bosom and hope to heal our wounds.

No harm, no foul.. you might say. You are sure there is somebody somewhere going through it. And I might have agreed with you if it wasn’t for the ultimate picture this “naive” [American] look at who we are, where we came from and who we surrounded ourselves with while growing up draws. How often have I.. have you, dear reader.. been asked, when confessing we were from Africa, how different it must be here for you. “I mean”, a Union Member activist once said to me, after giving me a pat on the shoulder like I was a brave little woman who need commendation for surviving, “after coming to this country and all you have been through.. these jerks here ..” [were refusing to give us our 3 year’s worth of Retro Pay?!].

I am no proud Ethiopian. No sir I ain’t! You won’t see me crossing my self before eating among bewildered strangers. Nor sneering at the odd-looking meat on the table before having a chance to taste it. But I didn’t let that one go. “No, actually” I replied “I am not one of those Africans who were persecuted or end up being refugees from political turmoil. I love my country and liked how it was being run back then. I was going to school. I had a much better job there than I do here. If I weren’t married to an American, I doubt I would have thought of coming. As far as I know, none of my Ethiopian friends and colleagues came over because they feared for their lives. Fact is.. I doubt a quarter of the people who come to America and say they suffered persecution are telling the truth. If your parents could pay your way to come to America when you were 11, whatever country your parents are from, they probably were better off than the rest of their countrymen; if not part of the ruling class causing all the hardship for the common poor. You Americans are addicted to playing the role of the Hero.. the Savior.. the Liberator.. so they tell you what you wanna hear”. Etecetra.

Anywho..

Going back to the subject of my doubt half the individuals quoting their grandmas ever met their grandmothers.. Look here.. my parents were a little older than teenagers when I was born. And that wasn’t common in Ethiopia. However, like I said, the last grandparent me and my 27 cousins had was the aforementioned “looker” when most of us were barely out of diapers [or “yenetela Qidaj”s made transparent from excessive washing]. Sure.. we are in one of the poorest countries in the world and the life expectancy may not be so high there. But so must it not be in India and/or other third world countries. Yet you hear these so-called “grandkids” spouting all kinds of wisdoms in their grand mother’s names on American tvs and radios! Maybe Wise-cracking-grandmothers have become what unicorns, tooth-faries and Easter bunnies are: Mythical creatures whose stories we learn from without having to dig deep into their existences.

While we are on the subject of coming to America..

Although there wasn’t a more likely candidate than me for it [loved movies, spoke English fabulously and spent half my life being active on the internet when most Ethiopians haven’t heard of land-lines], I never really thought I would cross over to this neck of the wood. The only family members we had were distant relatives of my father’s who told him his kids [who refused to go and “ejj mensat” the way the kids of their other “chista” kins did] were too “kuru” for their own good. So I went the opposite way: refused to fill DV-Lottery and even told my ex-husband to move to Ethiopia if he wanted a life with me – instead of the other way around. But when I did, I kind of became what I think most of us become after crossing over: “A career American”. Not career people! Or Americans! But men and women who have made living in America his/her career choice; and would do whatever it takes to stay there. Like a “career wife” who sticks to her husband, through good times and bad; through cheating, abuse or neglect because she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Doesn’t know another life. Has given it her best years!!

Speaking of the costs of living in America..

From my first and, hopefully last, visit to the doctor’s [where I was told my heart has been murmuring all these years without my knowing it – God knows what it’s trying to communicate], this is what I learned: The older u get, the longer you live, the less boxes there would be to check “N/A” (Not applicable). Do you or did you suffer from depression? Yes. Do you or did you have an anxiety problem? Yes. Do u smoke? Hell ya. Are u sexually active? Kinda. Why? What have you been hearing? And that thing about never visiting the doctors, even if your insurance covers it, until you have to has something going for it.

And finally…

I am a 12th Man today!

For those of you not aware of the expression, it means I’m not only a football fan, an American football fan, but consider myself a 12th number of the [actual] team. I am wearing the shirt! I have pinned the round 12thMan button on that shirt and I’m saying “Go Seahawks!” everytime a fellow employee passes by. Business or personal, you’d ask. I would have to say…. [dramatic pause] both! Business.. because my work place is an important landmark in Seattle and we have been waving the Seahawks flag for about two weeks now and even had a 12thMan hot wings eating contest – in which yours truly came second place [leaving a hoard of red-faced, panting, sweating, weeping white boys behind]. Plus the shirt is free. The buttons are free. And the feeling of camaraderie is a good boost to the morale [for somebody to whom making friends doesn’t come easy and only sees one other person on the days she isn’t working].

Personal.. because I have a “vested interest”, as they say, to see Seahawks beat Broncos by a small margin. In a word, “beanies”. In four words “beanies sold on ebay”. These are beanies I got for half off from my employer before Christmas; an employer who didn’t foresee The Seattle Seahawks would beat the 49ers and make it to the Super Bowl. The same NFL licensed beanies Seahawks’ players wear while on the bench. Beanies that are Out of Stock everywhere else in the State of Washington.

I’ve sold 19 of these knit-caps, earning a net profit of around 200 dollars in less than two days. So the fear is, those ebayers who haven’t left me a feedback yet – and there are 5- despite the second day delivery and the neat packaging – may be tempted to return the beanies and ask for a refund if the Seahawks lost this coming Sunday. And since I have no desire to give the refund, it would either be a negative feedback for moi or a long “eset ageba” with ebay’s Customer Service.

So.. yes.. Go Hawks!!!