On the border

My borders are so open these days. So many needs, so much emotion, the fences and high walls can’t hold it all back. The guards work overtime but it still climbs over, pours through, wanders the barrenness, or gets caught and corralled and sent back home, only to run again tomorrow. There is no control, just the knowledge that the border should be policed. Should be, normally would be, but now there is only an attempt at basic maintenance of a daily routine.

Sometimes though, on random days, less desperation slips through. I don’t know why. Maybe the guards are more fully staffed, the equipment all cleaned and in working order. Or maybe the anxiety that presses against the fence is less than usual, calmed, resting, on holiday. Could it really be because of the increased border patrol, at the ready? Or is the need actually lessened, better managed in its native land?

Can we look through the fence to see what is there, to identify the cause of the anxious refugee tide? Could there be fewer guards by lessening the need for the migration? By addressing the poverty and desperation at its source? By understanding the problem, and by dealing with it?

No wave crashing at the checkpoints, climbing the wall, becoming entangled on the barbed wire and caught on the shards of glass that crown the barriers. No fortified perimeter, no guards, no fear, no terror. Just a border that functions as the abstract boundary that it is, between here and there, in and out, a line in the desert.

My borders are so open these days.

Great expectations

I can blame it on my maternal grandmother. After drinking whiskey she would get into fights, all 5 feet and 100 lbs of her, pummeling drunk men at the bar. Really, what else would make such a tiny woman use her fists on men twice her size? The connection is in my DNA, whiskey and anger, intertwined, in between near-sightedness and high blood pressure. What else, other than the whiskey, would have made me such a bitch today?

It couldn’t have been my crush (my crutch?). So nice to him with no response other than workplace flirting. No true interest, just light, casual interactions. Nice but it’s going nowhere. And wow do I need more.

Great expectations. More like fantasy. The complete confusion of relating to other individual humans. We put out the effort, work hard, do all the right things. In our work we are rewarded, good grades, promotions, pay. But in our relationships we think, we analyze, we try to do well. Instead of success, really connecting with people, we are left empty. No reward, no prize, no A+. No grade at all, just a big old question mark taking the place of the fantasy that was supposed to take on flesh.

So do we learn from the experience? Pick ourselves up, dust off the sparkly shoes, move along? Or just sit dumbfounded, staring at the damn question mark and saying “what the fuck?”

My grandmother was never silenced, never hesitant, never confused. Maybe that’s the generational difference. Rather than saying “what the fuck?,” she fought back, she pounded her fists, she screamed back at life: “fuck you!”