The question of choice in love

I was on Facebook yesterday when I got pinged in the chat window. It was Mehnaz, a young girl I met earlier in the year on my India travel. Traveling by myself in the South of India I decided to partake in an all day backwater tour on a boat. I was picked up in a small bus and taken to the river where the rest of the group was waiting for me to board the boat. Turns out the rest of the group consisted of one whole family, a Indian family, mom, dad, auntie, baby, daughter, cousin, grannny, etc. Amongst them two teenage girls. There was much laughter amongst them and although I didn't understand their language I could tell that they were on vacation, having a great time with each other, loving one another. I couldn't help but feeling a touch sad and lonely as I had learned to feel it traveling by myself on one or the other occasion. And so I focused on the surroundings, enjoying the beauty of the boat ride and the joy of being able to watch them all. The curiosity of the teenage girls grew over the day and not long they both came up to me wanting to talk English, asking me questions about music, movies, America, cell phones, Internet, etc. etc. But one of the more pressing questions they had for me was, why am I traveling by myself? It was a question I had been asked often in India and I had learned to understand that the concept of a woman traveling alone was so very foreign to them. Not in the sense of the ability or possibility to do so, but in the sense of why would you ever want to do that? What possible fun could it be to not travel with your family or at least your husband, but all alone? I couldn't explain as I realized quickly that to understand you would have to be raised and grown up in a Western culture and from these girls perspective I had to agree that it made absolutely no sense at all. And in addition of course there was the big question to why I wasn't married or with a partner in life? And then I felt it. Looking at them I felt my longing and loneliness for what they had and they looking at me with curiosity of two young people about to embark into a young woman's life. I spent the rest of the day as their adopted family member and enjoyed every minute of it while also remember very well what restrictions come along with a large family and that I had one of them at home waiting for me. That was how I met Mehnaz and her family back in India. Yesterday when Mehnaz pinged me on chat she had great news for me. She got engaged. And knowing what I knew about that day in India and about her family I couldn't be anything but happy for her. It was instant that I knew it must have been an arranged marriage, but in that moment, feeling her happiness and clarity about her belonging to someone from now on, it didn't matter. Who am I to say that an arranged marriage has not the same chance of happiness as any other two people getting together with a commitment to trying a relationship. After all these years of my Western style free choice in love, I am concluding that with a hundred reasons for a way out and a hundred pre-requisite to fill for the perfect partner and a hundred choices for self fulfillment I myself have never made it thous far. Here I am now 37 years old with all my choices and all my relationship tries behind me, leaving me single and with the same dream - to marry and to have a family. And in this moment I envied Mehnaz only for that one specific reason.

Las Vegas my friend - or where you ever that?

My friend Las Vegas, what happened to you? I know its been a while since my last visit and we have never really been very close from the start (too many differences, I sup pose), but now that I have seen you again I am in awe over how much you have changed. I remember your shine and glamor most of all, your ever too busy live to stand still to talk to me, your VIP status in the rest of the world, your dirty underbelly of which you always have been proud of and I could not otherwise but give you my respect for. My eyes were sore this last weekend seeing what is happening to you and I had no idea how much you were hurting. Where have all your beautiful friends gone? Where has your glitter and glamor gone? What have you done to your staff, your true supporters who now only looked at me stale and lifeless at the bar entrance or on the hotel floor. The smiles are gone the twirls are gone. I even had a thought of doubt over the real human kind in them altogether and that you may have replaced them with automatic robotic dolls instead, wearing faded color costumes. Who knows what you are capable of, when you are the master magician over all things unreal and illusion-airy. I came to enjoy your company and to dip into your magic of endless creation with no boundaries and what I found in the end is that you failed and that you are falling. The hungry villains have now moved in and taken you over. I came and found myself witnessing a feast of all obesity in this country concentrated in one place with drooling mouths at the never ending all you can eat buffet (I never did like the buffet). I came and found myself observing that what we used to call dance has been replaced by endless grinds of body parts in creation of floods of sweat, dripping freely into the grounds, feeding your new thirst for pennies during your economic fast. I am sure you miss the smell of dollars and the taste of gold coins. I know I did in the last three days. And all there was is now no more, leaving you high and dry, lifeless and dusty, stale and cheap, abandoned and poor. I feel for you and yet I feel it is your own destiny to be where you are now, so low, so stale. It is a good bye for me for good or a good bye for a long time at least, until you have recovered. Maybe, just maybe then I can return and hug you again and find some satisfaction for my needs as well. But that would require for you to have learned something new.