Heartbreak Warfare

On the eve of a huge exam and essay, all I can think about is you. Is it selfish of me to want to run into you? To place myself in situations so I can finally purge myself of every horrible and singularly lovely thought I've ever had about you? Have us stuck in a quiet piano room in Long & McQuade and hash it out until someone's crying or laughing or they shut the lights and tell us to lock up when the bloodshed is done?

That is Heartbreak Warfare.


I keep asking myself, why now. Why at this moment? Why mention it to me, why did she tell me that you had just broken up? I could have just as easily not known. I've tried again and again...many times, tried to think or go over events in my mind. Write you letters so I can finally be cleansed of any notion of you. So I can stop walking past the Globe and the Civic Centre without thinking of you. So that Militia Trail means nothing to me.
 
It's become a horrible game - a game of skirting around each other and making sure no one steps in, no one intrudes, reminds each other of their presence. They say maybe it was her - she changed you. Me, I don't think so. It wasn't all her; it was you too. How do I keep coherent thoughts on a steady flow when everything is convoluted? You are the one thing that was so multi-faceted, the one thing I just cannot seem to rationalize and work out - and that unnerves me. It has never happened to me before, that I am now unable to say your name outloud without a deep flush - a flush of anger and heat unexplained - rise up my face.
 
Where do I find the words from, how do I separate the emotions so that, even armed with the good word and its power, I can write it out? I want to yell at you and smack you really good and hard and at the same time, I just want to hug you - tired. I am tired of running about, running away. People are afraid of thunder and darkness, I'm afraid of stasis. But I'd like to stand still here with you.
 
The problem is that you're still on the defensive. Or maybe you're not. And I'm torn. Torn because I want so badly to just - fucking get rid of this horrid feeling of you, this memory; I want it to remain a memory, I want to step out of purgatory and either pass on or return back to life. It sounds dramatic but there is no more appropriate metaphor for someone who is so different now, it almost feels like He's dead.
 
What are you fighting for? Why are you fighting? What did I do? It was so abrupt...you gave me no explanation. And if I hadn't stood out in that hallway, outside of your apartment, tears in my eyes, asking why why why you would have said nothing. Is that really the kind of coward you are?
 
That is Heartbreak Warfare.
 
I catch myself thinking of you and then ruthlessly quash down any emotion that surges at the mere mention of your name. Move on. I tell myself, move on. I was never the girl who was attached, I was always the independent. But I can't stop myself from dreaming up ways to tell you about the pain - to hope for the chance to work this out or die trying. How far have we fallen? We're far away from where we first were...
 
I want to take hold of you and shake you back awake. I want to tell you to put your weapon down. I don't want to admit defeat - I want you to want to work this out. I want you to want this back. Make this landscape stand still, make everything go quiet. Suspend time and space. Put away emotions and memories. Just tell me how it is, how you feel, what you're like. Don't be passive, call out. This is no one's win, K. This is everyone's loss - this is my loss. There are casualties, there are. And no one wins.
 
That, too, is Heartbreak Warfare.
 
I'm afraid that someday life will take us so far - time and space will be more than temporal, they will be solid, physical. Even more so than today. And, at that point, it will be too late. I heard you loud and clear when I said goodbye, but don't you understand?! You can't just fucking bury the past and not look it in the face. You move on, yes, but not by stepping on remains. You always honour the dead. You never deface. Don't you know observation of those niceties aren't just niceties? Those are necessary.
 
And with this distance separating us, we'll never be able to work it out. We'll regret, always, not returning for last words, not coming back to hash it out. You might someday find the words to say what I know you feel and I might find a way to express my love and it will have been too late - life may separate us.
 
Why am I saying this? What good is this? Sometimes, there needn't be a purpose, just a trigger. Mine is rather funny: two summers ago was the last time I spoke to you over the phone. Do you remember what I was calling for? The John Mayer concert that we were supposed to go to together. And now, two years down the lane, everything is so fucking different. We aren't even speaking. You hate me and I hate you.
 
That is Heartbreak Warfare.
 
Battle Studies came out and setlists were made and two years down the lane, as I plan to attend another John Mayer concert, all I can think about is you. That's all that keeps pervading my thoughts, K. That last phone call, the potential. I never did go to the concert - how could I? How could I without you? It just didn't seem right. It didn't feel complete and it wasn't. What is the point of keeping up this pretense?
 
K: Please end this. Please mend it. Please let me end it. Let's end this Heartbreak Warfare.

Dear Alexander McQueen,

Please stop killing armadillos to make shoes. No, please don't pretend, as others going mental over your abominations are that this is in any way post-modern fashion. In fact, it's not really fashion at all. If you are trying to bring the back surrealist or dadist movement and undermine our sensibilities by presenting such - disgusting clunkers, may I suggest a nice healthy dose of Krazy Katz and Ignatz to wash away those Surrealist blues?

We can even tolerate those...strange stilters tiled with skulls and towering on unwieldy spindles of double platforms. Heck, if Chloe can pull off double platforms why can't you? But - erm, these are not shoes. Yes, of course, we agree with you: fashion is wearable art. These are not art. We're not sure what they are having never seen anything quite so ugly before. We will gladly pick up a pair of Uggs in exchange that each and every one of these...creatures be burned and stamped out.

Ohhh, you clever minx! People just love a trend! They love to be outrageous. Everything seems so accesible! We can have a piece of the fame by owning these shoes! And you know this don't you? Otherwise, what (besides a bad trip to the bathroom) could have prompted you to design these?

Are you trying to unleash an epidemic around the world, now you've heard we're overdue? Are you trying to wipe out any modicum of sanity we have left? May we point out that just because the crazies (gaga and cruella deville guinness) have decided to encase their feet in vases of the 6th century BC, we really don't take that kindly to someone trying to case us in goat's feet?

We hoped that your shoes possessed a shred of transcendental quality - that eventually they would grow on us like the 2008 product of the Madonna and Justin Timberlake collaboration. Rather, we suspect, things will start to grow out of it, soon, given its current toxicity. In any case, everytime we look at it, for some sign of redemption, it, if possible, becomes more and more hideous.

May we suggest, as an immediate tonic, that you return to the drawing board and give Manolo Blahnik a call? Heck, go crazy, make it a party and call Christian Louboutin. Being creative doesn't mean you have to be on crack. You don't have to be alone. Help them help you get through this. Return to us. Also, Lovers: wearing these does not make you a walking canvas - you'd have to be able to walk in them first. Oh and - where did we get with that burning idea...?

I am dissatisfied. I am disenfranchised. Jaded, politically cloudy. I am walking through a haze of pop-culture and the wisps of its thick smoke - thickest on the outside, not the expected centres - wrap around me, heady and beckoning. I stop and smile and walk on by.

No one wants anymore. Everyone is content. No one understands what Derrida was talking about when he uttered the word differance. Not only for linguistic purposes but as a catalyst, as an entire universe of pository change and action, of distinguish and the opposite of lingering, the opposite of stasis and homogeneity.

The problem is that no one wants to learn for the sake of learning anymore. No one wants to sit and wonder and then explore hidden meaning. Those that do, seek to be published, lust for recognition, of the kind that Emily Dickinson exchewed. There is no passion in their work, only a few dozen articles in a database to their name - and my, what a name they've established. Indeed, when they're gone this earth will remember their name, will whisper it on the wind, will bear a mark of their own arbitrary system of words and languages.

The futility of doing - well, anything, really strikes me hard. But that doesn't mean I don't want to do. Everyone looks at you all funny when you say things like - I lust for knowledge, I strive for truth, I need to learn, I want to project and effect and - most of all - i want to BE affected.

I'm tired of these fucking markham street car racers and people lusting for Benzs and lofts. Waiting for the start of life which equals economic independence - their new Promised Land. I'm tired of people earning degrees to try and be the next CEO under 30 who gets published like that is real self worth - the real startup, Canadian/American dream. They think that getting a boyfriend or a girlfriend is their milestone and it puzzles me. It puzzles me that it puzzles me.

Me myself, I am a bolter, a great big run-away-er so I'm not one to talk; my opinion is biased. I am scared of something that has no name, no face, no identity that I can concretely call out to. See a devil, call him by his name? I cannot. No interpellation. Running away is the only way I know how. Of course it's true, beginnings are the best. When everything is new, when change is still rife in the air, hanging on a low wing. But after that...routine sets in. Familiarity.

Sure, everyone wants a rock, a bastion, somewhere you can return, somewhere like home. But what happened to process? Why does no one value the process? Why can i kid myself and want to pull the wool over the eyes of others, make up excuses for the reasons that I'm doing these things, pursuing what I want to y pretending their goals to a bigger something? They're not! They are lives in and of themselves! They are valuable in and of themselves. I don't want this to be another Waterloo.

An example of this restlessness and a need for the organic, the inspiration, the process in my life: an essay assigned ot me. I will not write it if I feel even a bit of resistance. There doesn't have to be a spark of inspiration but if there is any resistance, if it doesn't flow - I will put it off 'til the process is organic, 'til it feels like its time, like its right. These are internal processes, inexplicable and complex.

It's not only that the fun of everything is gone. It's not only that I cannot enjoy what I'm learning or studying anymore. I would love to be a doctor but if I had to worry about getting into med school...I would shoot myself. Cutthroat, goal-oriented. End results. Investments with the dependent clause of profit. Why can't the dependent clause be independent experience? Why can't the process be cherished? Practicality shouldn't be made a part of casting yourself into the future; it should be a matter of dreams, of wants, not what is feasible and what you should do today to make tomorrow happen. Tomorrow is already happening; it's happening as a virtue of today. We are in residual time. No one understands that. No one values that - very few, at least.

Everyone just wants to know know know. Where where where. Where are you going? When when when. When will you be there. How how how. How will you get there. Where is there, I ask? What is this 'there'? Why must I know and, more foolishly, how can I know? Clearly, I am not going to be a psychic, nor am I a machine that can calibrate. How can you ask me to predict the outcome of Chaos Theory or how an infitesimal shift in action, in thinking, in movement can change in my path?

What is the point of these plans? But then again...how does one go through. For those of us floating in a sea of nothingness, negation, floundering, wishing we had some way - some outlet. Not merely only to show the world that we're progressing towards something but to feel alive, to justify to ourselves that we are proceeding to something. Some...goal. Some unforetold horizon.

I just want to run away. I want to run away and live in a chateau, reading books and drinking wine and living like a recluse, the oddity in the village like the author of Wide Sargasso Sea. I want to get lost in a marketplace in Morocco and resurface, a year later, at the base of the Himalayas. I want to make people smile, I want to educate. Enough of theory- I want to activate. I want to write stories and see them come alive on film. I want to listen - listen to others, listen to the Greats espouse their thoughts, study and observe nuances. Marvel. No one wants to marvel. I want to stay in while it rains for days on end and watch as the world goes by with Miles Davis in the background. I don't want to speak anymore.

Day <--> Night by Daphne Guiness

About a week ago I received a bill from my family doctor's clinic of all the services that I had used last year and I was assured that they were covered under OHIP.

"Dear Ms. MacKrekar" the letter read, "Please be informed that these services are covered under -"

Hang on just one bloody minute, I thought. I backed up, my eyes hardly believing that what I had just read could be true. Everyone always wishes for this when then get their credit card bills - hoping that all their extravagant purchases are sent to someone else while a batty old woman's can of tuna is the only thing listed on their own credit card bill - obviously the result of a bad mail switch.

For one wild second, this was me: it has finally happened, I thought. Canada Post finally messed up and sent me some old Scottish hag's bill. But upon closer inspection and second glance, I soon came to realize - this wasn't someone else's bill. This was MY bill. MY bill addressed to ME, Sarah Merekar. Or, MacKrekar, according to this doctor's office.

The lack of caring notwithstanding, I blinked and wondered at the level of incompetency and stupidity that must be rife in our society for someone to be able to mispell or enter incorrectly, someone's last name over and over and over again, especially if the creation of the bill was probably just a form to be filled in. All they had to do was enter the right bloody name. So shocked was I that I ran to fetch my health card and, of course, my health card informed me that my last name was firmly Indian, not some strange Scottish variant.

How hard, I wondered, how hard is it to spell a bloody name that isn't more than 10 letters long. It's 7 measly letters! Has anyone ever tried spelling OTHER brown names? They go on forever! Or let's take Russian or Polish names - those are just a long list of unfortunate consonants all rammed together, any sadist's dream. Or how many times can you say "polous" in one greek last name? My last name is not the hardest gawdamn last name in the world. In fact, all circumstances given, it is actually quite simple: two e's, two r's, a K, an A, and an M. And not in that order. It's so simple.

But no. No, they must mispell it. It's not such a big deal, really, people mess up names and last names all the time. Which is why Satish and Rajiv and Chandrashekar have to change their "ethnic" names to Saul and Ray and Charlie. And it was this, this very notion that annoyed the hell out of me. Once upon a time, I was indignant, yes, that anyone with an eastern name had to change it to something seen to be more "easier", more "integrateable" into Western culture. But now it struck me that besides all the tools of hegemony naming and renaming really introduce and apply, it was like a whole new identity. And here was a whole new identity being offered to me. A new form of imperialism? Maybe I'm too quick to judge, too quick to fly off the handle, to spout a theory. But I was affronted - affronted that they couldn't take the time to bother to check the spelling of my name when I, the ethnic "other" the eastern counterpart of Edward Said-like descriptions, would have to do so. And inexplicably puzzled that they had chosen, instead to give me a NEW name. For this is not a mere case of typos or letters being put in the wrong place.

Once - no, many times over - in grade school, I had a friend named Nadejda. The supply teachers would always pronounce it Nad-JYE-da. One day I got so annoyed at this blatant lack of care obvious idiocy that I blurted out loudly, "The E comes before the J!" I got detention for speaking outloud but I never forgot this moment. Thankfully, there are not many ways you can fuck up Sarah but a few had a hearty go at my last name - I got Marker, Meerkat, America, Mareep the Sheep (when Pokemon came out. dear god.).

But here is a psudeo-scot name being offered to me. Being fashioned and given, a new form of evangelical, Christian missionary. Here, it is not the Bible that is the Sign taken for Wonders. It is this identity, this new name, that, when donned, integrates me into the culture but also allows me to stand up, now in the skin of my conqueror and look back at him.

Madness, you may think. Post-colonial theory in a simple health letter? But intended or not, dormant or not, latent or clear, they are there. It is there. It is inherent. And whether the intention is there or not, whether the awareness is there or not, I am very aware. Very aware that it is NOT spelt MacKrekar or McKrakken or any of that. It's Merekar, thank you very much and I think I'll stick to that for now. Unless Gerard Butler seduces me and I succumb, of course.

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"You know Pimmi sometimes when I look at them...I feel love which I almost cannot bear....If only their lives are happy - and for that I'm willing to take on every trouble, every sorrow in the world."
- Lalit Verma, Monsoon Wedding