:: I wish I could ::

It's easy to be exhausted these days, because my time runs on a linear road to nowhere. Hours and days and weeks collide and crash, surging against demands of inevitable necessities. I turn in essays, prepare proposals, crunch numbers, answer emails, 'do lunches', pack for trips - I squeeze in coffees, dinners, drinks, phone calls - I flit around friends, the family, colleagues, acquaintences - I'm strickened, I realized, with the urban disease of trying to do too much with too little.

I need to make a to-do list for the soul.
I miss my grandfather, and my mother's eyes are beginning to haunt me again, with their tepid sadness and unshed tears.

***

I couldn't reach her, not over the phone; I couldn't counsel, I couldn't soothe, I couldn't find the glue for her broken emotions. I ache for our helplessness; that compassion sometimes is valient but void; that we can never protect and be protected against being hurt.

***

India on Saturday. Cem had written about the Taj Mahal before, and I remember one sentence: Its marbled glory is a song filled with romantic melodies, but its chorus is dead with a history of sordid proverty, the bankruptcy of souls, and the one beggar dying on its jeweled steps.

But because I'm young, and youth is a disease, I still wish to see.

***

As long as we see the same side of the moon, it should be enough.