Fuck it. There are occasionally days, of which today is one, where I would like to know, for certain, that everything I have experienced is the result of a mis-translation.
As in:
In my mid teens I saw the execution of a Viet soldier at the hands of an American general, filmed up close on a portable camera in the seventies and relayed to our television in Brisbane - and I translated that into "I need heroin".
I asked the girl, the very first girl, that I was 'sweet on' (that phrase falls so short of the required meaning that I had to encapsulate it in quotes) out to a movie and she responded, tersely, "No". And I translated that as "I need heroin"
I walked out of an exam at Uni, the latest exam in fifteen years of exams and quizzes, each one of which had me wound up and nervous a little more than the last, and it seemed to my young mind that life was just to be a series of exams and quizzes with assessment ongoing and harsh. And I translated this as meaning "I need heroin"
Friends dropped with regular consistency, some from heroin, some from their own hand, and it seemed I was to go to a funeral every fortnight. I translated that into "I need heroin", aware of the irony of taking that which took away my friends.
So there is nothing more that I would love than to be able to write off all the loss, the poverty, the wrong moves, as being the result of a mis-translation.
I have, everagain, just spent my last dollar less than 24 hours after being paid. Dealers demanding old tick be repaid took my safety margin away, my twenty dollars held back for food. I scrounged up change and have bought a meagre bag of fatty meat that I hope I can string into maybe five or six meals, after that it's freestyling. At least with Easter pay arrives a day earlier this week.
If I could put it all down to an error of textual interpretation, that would leave me to have hope for the future. Hope that a paycheque could one day be more than a small integer representing the number of bags of gear it buys.
(Saw a 4ZZZ gig poster this week advertising a band called the "Fifty dollar bags').
That the rarely purchased gift to self, such as last week's $40 purchase of Halo 2 for PC, would not be something I would need to return the next day.
Self-debasement has its place in any society where ego and vanity are rewarded, I do believe that. But constant grinding degradation through poverty has served its purpose in my life. Continuance will do little more than erode my self-respect.
I would like to find an alternate translation for the passages I experience that lead me back to that same empty mansion day after day. It's just dark rooms dusty windows and the same dreary view again and again.
Oh, and happy birthday sis. I rang your home and had a cross-lingual conversation that got us nowhere. I understand you are in Rarotonga. Good for you.