I enjoy trying to enjoy life. The party isn’t always the point.
I go to the least-loved room of a museum, and there I become porous. I stare hard at a lonely figure no one stops to admire. You’d think it’s my tenderness, pity or some kind of civic sympathy. I admire how highly you think of me, dear reader.
It’s almost funny, given how firmly we’re frozen before this monument of mediocrity. Nothing is wrong on this middle ground, but nothing feels right either. You think I’m smiling at you, but really, I’m gritting my teeth. It’s easier to endure the moment rather than admit I’ve stopped enjoying it. I like to test this using my own taste and loyalty.
Will my taste today be pliant and obedient, or will it be a matter of self-actualization and careful work? Sometimes I betray myself, yet I can’t help but laugh at my Instagram feed’s pathetic attempt at keeping pace — tossing me bones I’ve long buried. It’s desperate to prove it still knows me.
I hold out for small, hollow pockets of hypocrisy. It keeps me human. It’s the protective skin I wear on my second face. Internet algorithms lurk as I write this.
And, every now and then, I quite like to clear away the crumbs and clutter just as the moment settles. Sure, the server probably would’ve swept it away anyway, but I like to get there first. You’d think it’s maybe another one of my gestures of courtesy. I admire your thought again, but I’m afraid I have to sabotage it with overexplanation.
I can easily find meaning in the moment. Meaning today can come in the texture of crumbs and crappy art. It doesn’t matter — it’s all consoling to me, and my hypocrisy is hungry.
Not in the way you’re thinking, though. My hypocrisy doesn’t lie; it chews on irony’s crumbs to stay alive. Regression and progression can coexist. Even fire consumes itself to stay burning. Really, it’s all selfish — yet I return with no profit to report, no sparks left to ignite.
I come back only to feed hypocrisy with what’s left — the crumbs, the blurry pictures of bad paintings, the scraps of meaning. I enjoy doing so. It says nothing and notices everything.
This oblique corner of my world is concentrated with a fog thick with resignation and irony. Reality isn’t a given. Here, hypocrisy isn’t my fault. My home is the periphery between languages, names and villages I couldn’t have claimed and now can’t ever claim me. The past presses closer when the present’s hands are too shaky to hold me. I cope by bending under my ancestors’ weight so I don’t break.
They can no longer feel the wind whipping their cheeks as it comes off the Mediterranean, so I’ll hedge my bets with the bite off Lake Michigan. They can’t read, write or speak anymore — so I’ll start by relearning Arabic. Art is the medium through which the soul is excavated, so for them, I’ll start digging.
I’m living for the dead. The irony does not escape me — it has nowhere else to go, anyway.
In this corner that crumbles with me, I often trip over a delicate thing called “belonging.” What I devote my attention to is all I really have. I don’t need to clean up the crumbs — they are profoundly unimportant — the server will swing by anyway. But in that moment’s vacuum — the museum, the restaurant, the lake — the crumbs are all I have, and I feel free.
Irony is how I irritably process the world after witnessing it too soon. I’ve officially arrived at adulthood.
As of this last midterm season, life isn’t as thoroughly buttered as I want it to be. I’m mourning the books I promised to finish before now. I’m craving a good movie with a delicious script. I want to do everything, and thus, I want to be everything.
I want to be everything, so I have to do everything properly. When I have to do everything properly, I am paralyzed. Eventually, I get bored.
Boredom is part of the human experience — it’s the overwhelming presence of time and self, uncut. To starve it or to numb it would be barbaric. I know it’s tempting. The algorithms know this, too, as they wait, tail wagging. You can only walk past boredom so many times before you’re complicit in its existence, much like crumbs.
Get off my lawn. I can see perfectly fine that it’s littered — I’m just busy cleaning the crumbs off this table first.
Despite it all, I weep. The life I want to eat by the mouthful slowly dissolves into a papier-mâché pulp of texture and taste. The land is littered, and my lawnmower sputters.
There’s no escaping irony here in this corner, but I feed it crumbs anyway.
Rawya Hazin is a Medill freshman and author of “Dear Reader, Love Rawya.” She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
Email: [email protected]
X : @rawyahazin
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