My Day of Stress...

 Early on that day an old friend from high school, Tren, came by and we went out for an early lunch...It's all of 9:30 in the morning and I hear myself muttering I need my burrito, I need my fix of international cuisine...a Korean burrito, yes, yes, a burrito with cabbage and rice and that substitute pork they have dipped in their special hot sauce  - Dude, you don't look right is something wrong? We spoke of music and the cost of rent...I believe in food trucks...I like the stability they offer us...And so it went...back and forth like that for the next hour? How is your aunt back in Hong Kong? What about Drake and Mya?...Have you seen them?  And yes my dude and no my dude...until we arrived at the food truck at the edge of the park where privileged, chic, impoverished, well-dressed bohemians pretended to be without permanent residence- and even then I felt a pang of guilt over the name Korean burrito - Would Kim Chi wrap have been the more proper wording...Was I fetishizing my choice of early lunches? The previous night i had finished a lengthy exam covering post-colonial literary theory which required each of us to outline, itemize and comment upon the various "hierarchies of power" latent within a thick Latin-American text of some 500 pages - and my head was filled with meandering thoughts...I could not help obsessing over my participation in the housing shortage, the gun debate, the water crisis, the electrical grid, feminist critiques of modern childcare and numerous other concerns...And later on, Malik arrived out of nowhere to take me to the hair salon...Hello my good friend and what are we looking for today? Something radical and new - I joked - I meant with regard to my hair, of course....And in the barber's chair - or so it seemed, he sat next to be regaling me with jokes or listening attentively, even patting my hand for support. Go on...go on... We commenced a long discussion about America's role in the world during which I found myself repeating the same I'm sorry, I'm sorry...sorry mantra - until he laughed uproariously and patted me on the shoulder...I'm not blaming you my good friend...Ah my good friend....Yes my good friend - those sobriquets that I clung to when addressing him were like a much-needed balm for me...And thereupon I spilled out my heart on the topic of a long and drawn-out forlorn and failed American policy in Afghanistan ...Back at work Malea was reminding me of something that I had forgotten to do yet again...My dear friend Malea, My boss, Malea...She had a compassionate - if demanding,  no-nonsense smile - a look of slight impatience and frustration...this dear friend and confidant around whom I always felt slightly off-kilter - not entirely at ease - sensing a long chasm dividing our life experiences - and thus incriminating me with my sheltered points of view..She looked at me as if to say - I won't hold it against you that you are thusly so impaired and therefore ignorant and ungainly in your movements and comments....As if I had some condition - is that what you meant, Malea? And yet - I have tried to educate myself have I not? Will I not get some credit for that??  I felt remorse and regret arising yet again - for disparate social ills...for a failing health care system, for crumbling infrastructure, for climate change and drought, for inherent bias, and lookism, for body shaming and gun violence, for food deserts and systemic inequities...for white majoritarian self-pity, for the whiteness of congress and Hollywood...But as I blathered another feeling arose - that of wanting to be rid of all this baggage, this ball and chain around my neck...To feel bad for wanting to feel good - to hang up all this politicizing and self-imposed hand-wringing...And immediately I felt the guilt rising from me that i should hold it against a dear friend  and supervisor. Perhaps I only imagined it - or perhaps we discussed the issue - but accidentally,  it so happened that I was babbling again, what about this, what about that, what about the persecution of Uyghurs in China, the rivalry between India and Pakistan, what about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, what about Idi Amin, what about the Mau-Mau rebellion, what about the conquest of Korea and Manchuria, what about the Mongol invasion of central Asia...what about the revolutionary Ayatollahs of Iran, the Taliban  - what do we do with this information - these forms, arguably of colonial or imperial or coercive tyrannical or even supremacist thinking on the part of humans not involving whiteness... Oh why look for exceptions, here? I knew what a troublesome, verboten search for balance would entail ... I decided to take a long walk around the block during my coffee break and thereupon I chanced to encounter a young woman sitting on a bench reading - and as part of some weird spontaneous confessional I rambled on about apologies for the entrenched legacies of oppression toward women...and apologized on behalf of my flawed DNA...She looked at me funny and said Do I know you?.. I'm starting to feel uncomfortable....And I immediately began chastising myself - Holistic ButterSquash!...I've made a damn fool of myself yet again! I tried reassuring her - I'm am the one who condemns such people - stalkers and abusers - Please don't mistake me for one of them...I even see how the prison system fails to rehabilitate its overbrimming male population...I have pondered this one very issue entire nights throughout the long month of March - but my attempts at justifying my present level of awareness - did little to convince her that I wasn't a trifle unbalanced...She could feel an underlying stress beginning to ooze out of me - that I seemed unaware of myself...I was rescued from this only by the presence of a large husky dog who looked at me quizzically - as if to say: you are indeed a fool, but dogs are sent to help fools such as you - and I went over and proved my affection for the canine species with utterance of dog-speak - which seemed to allay her and convince of my essential harmlessness.......The dream that will not end is that of the ongoing apology with only debilitating farcical results on the part of the indicted...and disappointment for those who claim the category of "having been wronged by history!"  But one thing is certain: we cannot keep living like this...we cannot keep living like this...we cannot keep living like...