sifting life , etc.

ambedo n. a kind of melacholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life.

(via joshymoony)

A Strange Marriage

One day I was visiting another city and decided to go talk with an old friend of mine, Chris. I wanted to ask him about marriage and his experience with it since he was older and had been married to his wife for quite some time now. I was in a new relationship myself and I figured he had some pretty good advice to give.

I met him at a little cafe in the middle of the city as per his request and we exchanged formalities as I sat down across from him. He smiled and asked me if I wanted to drink anything. I said I was alright, but he told the shop owner to get me a glass of water anyways.

“So, what brings you here today?” He asked enthusiastically.

I paused a bit for dramatic effect, and then said, “Well, nothing much really, just thinking about relationships and such… Specifically, I wanted to pick your brain about marriage actually.”

“Ah, marriage. Ye olde institution,” he chuckled to himself. “What would you like to ask me. Don’t be afraid to be specific.”

I thought for a moment, digging up the curiosity in my brain. As I was thinking, the shop owner brought out the water and I took a sip before I started my question, “What was it like… you know… giving yourself fully to your wife for the first time? Was it fulfilling knowing that you could be so free with one another finally?”

I sat on the edge of my seat eager to hear the how the beauty of marriage would play out.

Chris sighed and looked out the window, “Actually, to tell you the truth… we never consummated our marriage.”

That was not the answer I was looking for. “Wait, what?”

He turned and looked directly at me, “We did not have sex after we got married.”

I sat stunned for a moment and after a second of shocked silence I sputtered out, “Well, you’ve got to be joking… I mean, I know marriage isn’t all about sex, but isn’t sex one of the greatest joys to be shared with your spouse?”

He sighed again, “Yes it is. Sex is a beautiful thing. But my wife… she didn’t feel like having sex that night after we got married.” He let out a sad half laugh and said, “She went out to party with her girlfriends instead.”

I stared at him incredulously. “Are you kidding me. This is not true.”

He put on a smile full of sorrow and said, “I’m not kidding, and it is true. I stayed in our honeymoon suite alone that night.”

Something needed to be cleared up. “Okay, seriously, so what exactly is your relationship with your wife? Does she even like you?” I was beginning to think that coming to him for advice was not the best idea. That maybe he got set up in an arranged marriage that went awry or something other.

But his eyes twinkled, and he lit up a bit as he answered my question. “It’s a bit complicated, but I suppose you deserve to hear it now that you heard this much. I’ve always loved my wife. Always have, and always will. I wooed her daily with presents and gifts, and wrote letters to her every week. I would take her on adventures, to see the world and its sights. I would talk about everything that she wanted to talk about, ask her questions about her life, and whenever she was hurt I was always there to listen. I cared for her so much and I spent all of my time and energy pursuing her with all my heart. If she had a need, I was there to fill it. She’s the love of my life, there’s no denying that. No denying at all. But… the same can’t be said about me from her end. I guess even by meager standards, she was always only half interested in me. She never really bought me gifts, and she would rarely respond to my letters. When she did say that she loved me, it was always more of an obligation to keep a relationship going than out of a genuine desire of loving me. Even the adventures I took her on became a burden to her, and eventually she would just give excuses like she was too busy, or she was out with friends, or that adventures were too expensive, etc. It didn’t get better after our marriage either. I was always asking to spend time with her, trying not to be too pushy, but she was always busy out with her other friends and sometimes other guys as well. I saw her less and less every day, every week, every month… I don’t know if you know this but I haven’t seen my wife for years. She left one day saying she was meeting some friends and then she never came back. I still text her daily asking her to come back and that I love her, and thank goodness she still texts back once in a blue moon to say hello. She texted me once and told me that she missed me. That was probably the most genuine response I’ve gotten from her yet. I ask her in every text to meet me here at this coffee shop, so this is where I sit everyday waiting for her to come back. So that’s actually why I asked you to come to this coffee shop. Who knows, she very well might show up, so I don’t want to miss it. But anyways, that’s a small glimpse into our relationship.”

Relationship? This barely clears the bar for “acquaintance,” I thought to myself. I looked at Chris looking into his half drunken coffee cup, like he was looking into a better future. I couldn’t help but feel a deep feeling of sadness come over me. Here was this man pouring his heart out for another woman. He was the perfect guy too: handsome, tall, talented, caring, loving. And this woman had basically zero regard for him. I would probably consider her ignorance as borderline sadistic, and his persistence as borderline masochistic. But they were both lunatics I concluded. Chris for staying committed and the wife for never coming back. It was like a badly written soap opera with no ending.

I found myself staring at my water at the end of my thought process and when I looked up I was a bit startled to find him looking coldly at me. “You’re probably thinking that she won’t come back, correct?”

I was taken aback by the abruptness of the question. I stammered, “W-Well, I mean it just seems like, well, y’know-“

“She’ll come back.”

The certainty of his voice silenced me. He looked out the window again and a warmth and a twinkle returned to his eyes, and his lips curled into that familiarly sorrowful smile. It was a tragedy, and I felt sad for him, but at the same time there was a beauty amidst all of this. I have to admit, I’ve never encountered a love as persistent as his in circumstances as dire as his. It was a beauty made pure by the harsh conditions it was cultivated in.

As he brought the coffee up to his mouth I sensed it was time for me to go. We exchanged formalities again, and I thanked him for sharing and told him I would drop by next time I was in the city. I left him at his table and before I stepped out of the little cafe into the busy streets, I took one last glance at him sitting calmly and waiting. And I prayed with all my heart that the one he was waiting for would come back soon.

I used to be very ignorant to politics

But political decisions trickle down and eventually affects our lives. Sometimes in deeply personal ways.

I was remembering my short term missions trip just next door in Downtown San Diego, and how I was part of a police ride along. While driving around with the officer, we responded to a call about a disturbance and found a drunk hispanic woman. So we booked her and started to take her to the women’s correctional facility.

While driving there, I asker her a few questions and found out:

1. She was younger than me.

2. She was homeless since she was a child.

3. She was homeless because her parents were deported while she was at elementary school one day.

It was a sad realization, and certainly and eye-opening one. If we wanted to (hypothetically) trace how this woman ended up in the same squad car as me, one version could look like this.

She was arrested because she was drunk because she was homeless and lost without meaning because her parents were deported when she was young because her parents were illegal immigrants because the father lost his farming job in the corn fields of Mexico because corn imported from America was cheaper than corn grown in Mexico because of the passing of NAFTA which eradicated tariffs and duties between the North American countries and because the US government paid farmers to grow corn to meet the growing demand.

To put it in layman terms, the government basically helped make corn really really really cheap… so cheap that even when they were shipped to Mexico, it was cheaper than Mexico grown corn! That’s how much money the US government pumped into corn production. Many farming towns in Mexico lost a lot of income and many of the former workers turned to one of the only alternatives they could, crossing the border to find work in America.

Can you imagine that? Because people wanted cheap corn for more profits, in some way shape or form it may have very well landed this poor woman in a dead-end life that she didn’t choose.

I wish I had my own super-pac to influence political decisions.

Foster care and child sex trafficking

Reading about secret child sex trafficking rings tied to the foster care system and those with money and power is not helping my jet lag.

But it is a startling domestic injustice I never thought to think about. 400,000+ children in a system that unknown predators and traffickers can take advantage of so easily. One more thing on the list of things that makes my blood boil.

To top it off, it’s possible that high ranking officials and politicians and wealthy businessmen are in on this too. Protected by CIA and intelligence agencies. Depends how far your conspiracy theorist mind can go.

Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1cm0t3/original_research_the_mountain_of_evidence_for_a/c9hrii2