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.

Why we don’t have a “Qidus ValenT’inos”

Valentine’s Day is one of those days that gives me the “ickys”. It’s not [just] because I do not see it as an Ethiopian holiday. Or because I am a cynic who hears “deceit” every time the word “love” is mentioned (yes, if you scratch me you’ll find a hopeless dreamer who had her head hanked out of the clouds by cruel men and God). Or because it feels more showy than seeing a “Qen’tegna” brother walking with a huge parcel on Christmas morning. But because it is done for the same reason engagement rings are being worn in Ethiopian nowadays, “lelaw yaderegew ayiQribegn” bemalet.

Surafel Wondimu, of “Seifu YeMastaweQiya Derejit”, is one of those people who wouldn’t suffer from the “icky” feeling come February 14. In response to his audience asking why he kept bothering them with a concept that isn’t “ager BeQel”, he explained how he isn’t calling the Holy Man’s name because the ferenjis are calling it. But because it’s his firm belief lovers deserve to have one day, out of 365, in which they can celebrate their good fortune. He tried to elaborate this by giving an example. “I have a friend” he said “who is preparing to ask his girlfriend ‘taGebignalesh?’ the day after tomorrow..”.

I cringed at this. [As I do every time a DJ-something disgraced us with his presence on one of the FMs. When I hear Birhanu Digaffe, of Degaffe Mastaweqiya Dirjit, read an English letter from his various Ethiopian fans on an Amharic program which supposedly attempts to help College-youth swap their experiences. And every time my late-to-the-coming-Rastafarian neighbour plays Bob Marley in a way that makes you wonder if “those crazy Baldheads” that need a chasing out of town live anywhere near].

An Ethiopian guy “popping the question” feels as detached from [Ethiopian] reality as the behaviors the above media people are trying to cultivate in the youth. Where I come from, when a girl and a guy are dating, it’s “understood” where they intend (or atleast are pretending) for it to go. Dating is not, and has a long way to go before being, what it is in the west: where you try people, like an outfit, until you make up your mind about which one fits best. It is a subtle agreement, with consequences. She is expecting to one day be wed. And brother-man is playing along.

These expectations are displayed in her attempts to take over and be incharge of his house: The hiring and firing of the maid servant.