"People say, `Stalin's daughter, Stalin's daughter,' meaning I'm supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans. Or they say, `No, she came here. She is an American citizen.' That means I'm with a bomb against the others. No, I'm neither one. I'm somewhere in between. That `somewhere in between' they can't understand."
Peters' defection came at a high personal cost. She left two children behind in Russia – Josef and Yekaterina – from previous marriages. Both were upset by her departure, and she was never close to either again...(about Lana peters' passing)
As I read this, I wondered about human nature, some so extreme, that we tend to measure the progeny colored by their parents. What really make each of us who , nay how we are? What in our environment decide how we weave our lives?
I read this and wondered some , about the randomness of events that really shape further events that in the end is summed up as life... about the children lost into the system, children that do without parents, due to no fault of theirs, of the children that labor away in different parts of the globe, to support things they never chose. Yeah all kinds of thoughts and images crowd into my mind...eg. Nestle's cocoa bean collecting children, garment factory children, and children who wait for their farm worker parents ,awaiting earnings stained by peppers and cucumbers...
We go about from one day to the next with hardly a sidelong glance ,yet when we look to that side, life seem not so simple, but rather a very complex event , yet devoid of any glow .
The intricate patterns that become us, those interwoven events that foreshadow our future, and yet interlaced in there lies some things and events of which we can never control- as to how or where we are born...yet in any given moment we think and imagine all sorts of controls, to our lives ...
In the imagined free land of America, all these freedoms come with tassels, bells and weights. We supposedly prided ourselves that we are as non-polar as we imagined at a not so far away time , yet were secretly extremely polarized. We were supposedly close to 'all being equal' in an idealistic way, yet weren't we just 'denying all inequality equally' in an effort to portray some optimal value facades . There is an ongoing obesity epidemic, but we blindly pander to the masses by never mentioning the O word, so as to not offend any. Forget that, even the medical profession side step the issue and never give direct nutritional advice or activity advise, lest they perchance offend some ones 'sense of self'. Our drug culture is superior, and in our effort to fix all that ails those depths, we continue to cushion the issues by giving them new package labels... including reasons for their dependent behaviors, "oh you are self medicating your depression', or 'you are drinking because of your anxiety"...Of course even if it is vodka that you are drowning in, you are bound to feel anxiety, I am sure. Life itself comes with anxieties, variable moods , even in the best of living beings, just by the nature of being a living being.
Hence here we are not addressing the various problems . all that which is rotting our very core , just changing facades and labels do not stop the rot that is so deep seated .
We forget the in-between people, those who come from other lands, who really do their share in holding up the economy, holding it dear , held up at both ends, ignore their in-between feelings, just because it's just convenient.
Besides, cultural integration is supposed to happen , say within three weeks to two month time right...just like grieving. All clear by the assigned time...or else...
The less exact nature of things that appear random are lost , may be, and with that may be a little bit of humanness too. So, the 'in-between people ' , they shed things in bits, of who they are , a little of themselves leach away, and with it the richness of humanity slowly looses bits of itself...
Lets hope this is not so , for hope then would foreshadow chaos, slide into an inhuman non-compassionate world of entitled, self absorbed chaos.
( as seem more evident now)
