Justin Bond: This place has really taken off in the last few years since all these young people started flocking to the city.
Sofia: Well, why would they come to New York? It’s so expensive to live here.
Justin Bond: 9/11. It’s the only thing real that’s ever happened to them.
— Short Bus, 2006
In a lot of ways that is how I feel right now. It seems as if life is in stasis unless we are in conflict. Not real life- not the life where I wake up curled around my husband, go shopping at the bazaar for tomatoes that cost 75 kurush a kilo, and read Calvino in the park. That life always seems real enough. But the political life. Expression. It seems almost as if creating is not valid, or else there has ceased to be a venue for creation and all that people can hope for is a bit of expression, and of course, being part of something. And the something involves bloody pictures, and little kids walking among the tear gas that still hovers in the square.
For the past four days Nikola and I have pretty much stayed entwined in our real life. Breakfast, kisses, holding hands, cuddling, a movie… but we open the window and hear the people shouting, banging on things, silent only during the prayers. We turn on the computer and watch the feeds on our facebook grow with little snippets of resistance and videos of the protests. That life is swelling around us. The “real” political life. But is it real? I have to question if there can’t be something more, something else, something instead of throwing fire bombs at the police, only to be blanketed with pepper spray. “Real” life needs to exist beyond conflict, tragedy, and critical moments.
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