Scraps

Questions, via Ariana Jacob

If only I could scrape that non-Americanness off me, if only I could magic up a six-figure income, a mansion in one of those desirable foreign capital cities, a luxury gas guzzler and turn myself into a Christmas tree of a woman, clunking with expensive jewelry, glowing with spa treatments, crowned with the perfect hairdo that never flinches in gale force winds or winces in the Seattle rain, would she love me? 

If only my life was quantifiable in big fat dollar signs, palpable wealth that would advertise my desirability to the world and proudly announce that her son has done good, would she love me?

If only my vocation – and work – listed more letters after my name and went beyond words to include numbers crowding my bank account, would she love me?

Mother's Day came and went. As there was no one to pimp my heart out to, I went and lost myself in a museum to try and silence the incessant mumble of self-loathing threatening to take everything over while my partner went to do his duty, with kindness and grace.

I let art wash over me, installations loaded with urgent messages, each and every piece a cry for attention, heart and mind fodder offered up to public scrutiny in the hope that someone else might feel and think something, engage, connect...

A short film called Cardboard Commandments drew me in deep, deeper than is comfortable, deep enough to be reminded of the aching fragility of the self, debased, spelled out on scraps of cardboard, panhandling for dignity yet mostly invisible. 

Rootless but for another heart to call home, if we're lucky.