Death and taxes

Nothing is certain, nothing, not really. Death and taxes, and yet. In the mail sat the two overdue life insurance policies. If you pay now, they say, we can un-lapse your lapsus. Un-lapsing the lapse I say? Yes, indeed. So I sign my name in sparkling blue ink, courtesy of the ultimate beneficiary. If I die before I wake, if I die... if I die... what will be left but a few scraps of paper, a few tenacious ringlets trapped in the foam of my pillow. Fingernails, clipped and forgotten, scabs, ripped from my scraped knees? There will be a person, who says that no matter what I am, will always be with her. I will, I will be with her in the way that she cleans (or doesn't) her house, in the way that she cooks dinner, in the way that she listens to music and in the way that she loves. Of that I am certain. I will be in the way that she loves, she loves like I do, excessively, indiscriminately and with laborious affection. I already see that. Taxes. This year. How shall I do my taxes? The thing about organizing ones financial life is like a time machine, you see? It is not this year, but really last year. Time travel backwards into an abyss? A year of living dangerously? Of unravelling and pain? Of unexpected twists. It is all there in my financial history, in the months of no spending, and the months of large phone bills. It is a story that was told, but it tells itself in a different way. A way somehow foreign to me, while acting as a translation of myself into numbers. Backwards numbers, counting down, one less, one less, one less. If you have never seen the film Onde a terra acaba there is a moment when its object of study, a Brasilian filmmaker whose name escapes me, who made only one spectacularly brilliant silent film and never anything more, Límite, there is this incredibly insightful preoccupation with time, that when a clock ticks instead of saying one more, one more, one more, it is really saying, one less, one less, one less.

Each second is one less second we have to live, and one less second we have to love, and it doesn't really make any sense at all to me that western society should be so preoccupied with the idea of love, and if it really means anything at all anyway. And I decide that it is all a construct, except how to explain that tightening in one's chest? And I sit quietly in the dark with her, I refuse to buy into the marketing crap, and the social construction of meaning around specific, irrelevant dates, but she wins, and I never miss the opportunity to show her how special she is to me, so we brave the darkness and the droves of people and the lines, and we walk past them and seat ourselves in the darkness, with the sound of rotors in the background and I wonder what it would feel like to be bombarded, like in the Presidential Palace on September 11, 1973, and how the airplanes flying overhead would feel, and if there would be a moment of realization that everything was lost, or if it would just be the end. A dignified escape. Bowing out. How do you turn those things off? When is enough enough? When is the urgency that you feel indeed a reality and when is it merely a figment of your ailing imagination? And I hold her hand, and we sit silently. And she asks if it is a helicopter, and I shiver in the cold, and she sits on my lap and tells me that she loves me, and I know that it is true because I can feel her next to me, and I can hold her body next to mine. And I smile at her even though I am tired, and she asks me questions to which I have no answers, or to which I give bad answers, always, often bad answers, like when she asks if it is bad to lie and I say "well... not always, I mean, sometimes we need to tell people things that aren't true if telling them the truth would hurt them, and if it wouldn't change the outcome of the situation." And she looks at me quizically and I want to stomp on my own foot for being such an asshole, because how do you explain situational ethics to a 6 year old? When you don't even know if you believe in them yourself? And you make that face and she laughs and says "silly mommy, you aren't supposed to tell me it is ok to lie." And I agree with her, and she forgives me. She always forgives me, my bad moods in the morning when she won't get dressed fast enough and I rush her and she cries big fat crocodile tears and I feel bad, but not bad enough to stop myself from making "that" face, the one she hates, the mad one, and she says, "I wish I had never been born!" and I feel terrible, and she knows this, and uses it against me, because she's too damn smart for her own good, and I try to talk her out of her own circular logic, but I don't ultimately disagree with her reasoning. Maybe it would have been better never to have been born? No that can't be, but is seems that everything that there was to be hopeful about has been destroyed, and cheapened and sold out, and the vice-president of this country can accidentally shoot a friend and then suppress the release of that information because heck, if you can shoot friends, you can shoot just about anybody, which seems to be this government's motto, and there doesn't seem to be any way out of this black hole, no voting, no hope, and a six-year old child who will spew bits and pieces of pseudo-marxist rhetoric as gleaned from her mother's conversation, her mother who is too selfish and self-serving to really make any real sacrifices, not the kind that need to be made, her mother who has so little that it wouldn't really matter if she gave everything away either, and who is incapable of changing the world in even the most insignificant of ways, and who wonders what the point of certainty is after all, maybe it is uncertainty that makes the human animal function, breathes life into them? Day in day out, the same, the same, the same. I can't live that way either, I can't imagine a life of stagnation, but I know that in and of itself that reasoning is indulgent and bourgeouis, and I hate myself for that, but that is who I am and where I come from and no matter how much I would like to erase myself and rewrite myself between different borders, it is all as ultimately pointless. Every position is no position and no position is every position, and no matter where you stand there are still things that are Right and Just and things that are NOT and then there is the matter of love. And to that there is no answer, there is just sensation and giving and loss.

So the women at the next table sit with their daughters, one does not want to talk to her father, who has called from far away, and the heavy set mother says, "no chicken wings, they're too fattening," as she nods at her lithe preteen daughter, and the skinny ones says, "Oh come on, who cares about fattening, this is supposed to be special," and the heavy one agrees resignedly, and the daughters both ask for milk instead of soda and I try not to listen but one mother tells the daughters in a didactic manner that "you don't call your ex-wife on Valentine's day unless you miss them," and the other starts talking about the new wife as a tramp and the mother, the skinny one, admonishes her for the years of positive father imaging that she has tried to create, the sense of forgiveness and they look over at me, suddenly, and say, "you must be a single mom, too." And I wonder, is it that obvious? and the other asks, out of duty, or embarassment, "or is your husband working?" And I keep smiling calmly, "newly single," I reply, laughing inwardly at myself and wondering how true this particular statement actually is, and the blond one, not the skinny one, in pink and gray sweat suit comes over in a gesture of comforting (which I don't think I need) and says, "oh, honey, it gets, better... " and I don't know if I imagined this or if it really happens but she rests her hands on my shoulders, and I start to panic, because I realize that I have to make some sort of decision about how exactly I am going to file my taxes this year, and what that will mean? Married filing jointly? Married filing separately? Time travel, time travel... and I smile politely because I am quite certain that I have nothing in common with these ladies, who are well meaning and ask questions about my beautiful daughter. Yes, she is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, even if that word starts to lose its meaning. To me she is the most beautiful creature on the face of the earth, and she will always be my first child, my very first, but perhaps not my very last. Death. Life. Where does that cycle end, and where does it begin, every life must be tainted by death, stained, just a little, in its own decay, and every day children die of malnourishment, and I feel guilty because I can choose what my daughter gets to have for dinner, and she eats fish, and we discuss the nutritional benefits of omega-3 fatty acids and her brain is strong, and her will is strong and there are children who eat mandioca mush while my government and all those that emulate it, sell the patrimony of the poor to eachother at exorbitant prices for astronomical profits for what? for what? for what? Potable water and no protein deficit, is that such a dream? And I am amazed by how tenacious life truly is, how it clings to itself like tiny beads of water on the underbelly of a leaf, or the roots of a succulent in the middle of the desert, and how the flowers still spring forth in adversity and pain. And I want to believe that there are other things that are certain in life, not just death and taxes, that everyone will be granted dignity and happiness and the ability to feed their children, and fair wages for fair work and equality and social justice.... And I know it is just a dream, and I humbly walk back to my car, ashamed but consuming petrochemicals nonetheless, even though their use means the torture and humiliation of other human beings. And she smiles at me, with her toothy grin and I wonder if I were asked, would I choose to give her food to another person's child that needed it more? I would like to think that I would, like Yolanda, who is my one and only hero, who gave her children's medical vouchers to the men and women who walked 10 kilometers to her door because there was no one left to ask, or to listen. Yes, I want to believe that I would do the right thing, and the just thing, and the loving thing, but sometimes I know, yes, I know with certainty that I am just not that good.