Tonight for a brief moment of time I thought that I might have had a quote for my Facebook profile. While enjoying the feeling of satisfaction of being able to have something finally to put into that little box I began to realise that, that quote wasn't for me. I am not a fan of quotes or favourite quotes. This is because they offer no context. This lack of context also makes it difficult for me to select quotes, because if I need to select just a sentence I want to select the entire paragraph it belongs to. If I need to select a paragraph, the page, and so on. That said I have never felt the need or desire to quote an entire book. Plus I don't like things which are pithy, purely because they don't really exist.
That is the problem though, with a lot of things. People like things which are simple and concise. Preferably something in which they can shift the blame from themselves or people like them onto others. If this wasn't true The Protocols of the Elder's of Zion would never have been published. Most people don't want things where they have to think, to carefully consider and weight up the evidence. Gray is such an ugly colour.
What was my quote? It was from Breakfast of Champions: It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done.
My Grandmother, the nice one, is losing her memory. It is probably dementia, but I don't want to use that term. Not because I think if I do I will jinx her, or turn short term memory loss into something worse, but because the word is often used incorrectly and I don't want to contribute to it. What it is I can not articulate, I just hope you understand what I am getting at. The reason I believe she is losing her memory is because I see her every afternoon and every afternoon she asks me how I like the weather and what I think of the town. That and the fact that she is always surprised to see me and asks me what time I got into town and how long I will be staying for when she sees me in the car. Every afternoon I lie and tell her the same thing I really like it here, and I think the weather is wonderful.
I do not have the heart to tell her - not to mention I know it would not be understood and a violation of the rules that govern small talk - that I am apathetic towards the town and the weather. It just is. It is wonderful because I am free and not in pain or discomfort but other than that I don't think about it, I don't feel anything about it. I am not sure when I became apathetic about the weather. I used to whine something fierce about the summer heat. Maybe if I was to assign blame, I would assign it to Primo Levi. He is a Jew after all and besides it is not like it is the worst thing they have been blamed for.
My Grandmother, the mean one, once blamed a Jew for fathering my sister. She had no doubt that I was my fathers but my sister she had questions about. I find this strange and amusing, as my sister and I are twins.
