Things can and do go wrong, often
I’m often accused of being a pollyanna – and okay, yes, I do tend to look at the bright side most of the time – not all of the time. The last couple of days I haven’t been able to get to my computer because a friend was on it trying to do damage control. He’s got a project in La Biennale and the group has fomented anarchy.
The problem with being a bystander is the ability to telegraph back to events in your own life that make you say, “yikes” this could go very wrong for my friend. Because in the end things don’t always work out or end up fair.
I’ve been pulling my analogies from personal experience out of the ether here to share with him that in some ways he just needs to get out of the way of the freight train because it’s not carrying his baggage but someone else’s – which again I am here to say doesn’t mean that person’s shit won’t soon become his shit – because it might or already has.
I recalled for him my teenage trip to Israel when one of the boys on the group spread the word that I was coming onto him when exactly the opposite had happened (and blech, the guy was a real twerp), flash forward to my present life when my own nephew in law accused me of the same nonsense and in both cases – the boy’s word against mine was what stuck. In both cases, a lot of damage was done by their delusion.
Or how about at work, someone I managed who to this day hates me so much they seethe when they think of me – and all because this person was going through their own personal hell and decided it was ALL my fault. Or another who did something wrong that came to my attention and yet, I was the one who had to sit with that person’s fall from grace.
Oh yes, there have been many times where I was a victim of someone’s drive by garbage dumping and you know what – it ain’t pretty. So I sympathized a lot with my friend and the pickle he finds himself in.
Which brings me to the trash – the Cadiz garbage collectors are still striking – except I think this morning they actually picked up the trash because the street looked slightly cleaner for the first time in four days (240 tons of garbage lined the streets of Cadiz after four days of the strike). But it is coming to an end, not without drama – apparently in asking for a raise in the middle of an economic crisis that has more Spanish people out of work than at any other time in modern history – this union, these trash collectors have won the heart of no supporter and the head representative was actually stabbed leaving his house. Who said violence doesn’t happen here?
He’s okay – it was a minor stabbing if that is even a way to describe something like this – but now the police are escorting the little bit of garbage collecting that is occurring. The city is in the midst of the Tall Ship Regatta and it stinks – literally – stinks with piles of trash that make this look like a third world country.
And yes, the Regata will be over, and the trash collecting will begin again, but in the meanwhile, these trash collectors have used this occasion to hold the city hostage for more money and that sucks – and it can’t now be rectified because the people who came to Cadiz to see the Regatta (a real big deal here, bigger than it was when it launched the 4-year event in New Orleans earlier this summer), have gotten instead a big stinky city that looks awful.
Much like these incidents when someone dumps their shit on you and leaves you there stinking to high heaven and having to either mount your own defense or live with the consequences of what other people now choose to believe – the Regatta will be remembered more for the trash than for the tall ships.
So for my friend whose Biennale project had been so sweet a victory that has now soured – I say unto him, darling, this too shall pass.