Quixotica

I had an aunt until around 2005 or so, when her body succumbed to an overachieving cadre of cancerous cells. They grew with great greedy gasps and consumed life without stopping to savour life, and in this ravenous regard they and their host could not have been (to the best of my beleaguered memory) more different; my Aunt Robin and I never shared more than a faint familial fondness and the occasional pleasant talk of nothing in particular, but the words of my fathers (grand or otherwise) suggest a woman who appreciated her existence.

I know she was the only evidence of my grandfather's first marriage, and thus had a nine-year lead on my father, himself the eldest of my grandmother's seven sons and daughters. I know she traveled to France at some point, and since she eventually married a Frenchman I choose to romanticize the trip as an irreverent escape to the sun-drenched shores of Normandy, mere miles from the beaches of D-Day. I know she had two sons, one a family man and the other a small marketing millionaire who cashed in with the sale of Zooba.com. I know also my uncle George Bataillon very nearly married another woman, a decorated member of the French Resistance whom we called "Isabele" and instead became a lovely old widower with greedy children. She also lived by the water in a small, beautiful blue house that reminded children of a robin's egg left precariously close to the rising sea, and her separate life in that separate house only proves how amazing my aunt must have been. I know she was infamous as a child for stealing into a neighbor's tomato patch to steal sweet sustenance, and I know she was bold enough to bring the salt shaker along and squat roguishly amidst the foliage, carefully seasoning every stolen bite. I know she laughed long and loud, with a toothy smile that split her round cheeks (a family trademark) asunder. She said our round cheeks were Indian gifts of our Ukrainian ancestors, that we were all "half-moon faces" sporting foolish grins.

Forgive my indulgence. I know my aunt enjoyed her life quite a bit, and I know it led to no grand apotheosis; on the contrary, her predilection for cigarettes, wine and hearty fare likely hastened her demise. Now she's dead, I never truly knew her or communicated what she meant to my life and it doesn't trouble me. She's gone, soon I'll be gone and there's not a damn thing waiting for us afterwards; this little slice of life is all we get.

I guess what I'm getting at is perhaps you need a little pinch of something bitter to appreciate the sweetness all around you. So stop being such a goddamn dick. Who and what the fuck do you think you are, to be so mighty?

We have spent the better part of a quarter-century cultivating a culture of negativity, a culture in which honesty is an oddity. Speaking ill of others has become pop vernacular, and in my experience expressing earnest enthusiasm for anything is tantamount to treason unless you season every expression with a pinch of snide self-awareness.

Stop it. It's okay to enjoy watching Jersey Shore or Lady Gaga videos. It's cool to like flannel or Twitter or taking long walks at dusk to nowhere in particular, and it's okay to stop and look at yourself in a mirror or just say shit that makes no sense, ever. We fuck up always, and we're lucky to have lives that allow for even the possibility of such insignificance. We're living in the best era yet, in one of the most interesting and exciting cities in the world during what is (statistically speaking) the most intriguing time of our lives.

We don't deserve any of this, so stop your goddamn whining about how shitty life is and start grabbing as much as your greedy little hands will hold.