Daily obsessions

I have been interested in politics since I was a child because my parents read all the papers and always talked about politicians. They would stand on line for ten hours to vote for dog catcher. I do take a break here and there from politics in my mind, but to others, i never really take a break. it is difficult not to politicize everything, seeing how one thing affects another and how we are all swimming in a sea of political effluvia.

However, for your sake and mine, I will write off the top of my head about things already mentioned in an oblique or head-on kind of way. I have my obsessions and one of them is to hear people say a kind word to one another here and there - - to end the moronic competitions into which we inadvertently enter and say how we admire, appreciate or love one another.
Eulogize the living instead of the dead at a wake where half the people will not understand what you're talking about or know the person you knew.

And the writer moves to the topic of love.
I went to an artist weekend in the woods at a painter's house where everyone brought food and prepared it. People slept on mattresses in different rooms, played their instruments in the living room and took showers outside under the moonlight. Some people brought tents and slept on the lawn. For me, the pleasantness wore off quickly because there were a lot of people in the space and I am not a fan of being around a lot of people for a long period of time. Everyone was curious about me and some people actually followed me from room to room and one woman entered the bathroom, which had a broken lock, while I was showering because she wanted to see me naked. The attention was a little too aggressive for me.
As I put vegetables on the table to make beans, I noticed a woman, sitting at the table, riveted. I assumed she had never cooked before and wanted to learn. As a girl growing up in a very traditional Puerto Rican family, I learned to cook, sew, and crochet as if my life depended on it, but in the United States, I saw that girls did not receive the same instruction.
The girls in the U.S. learned how to order take out.
I finally looked up at the woman and smiled because it felt awkward to cut vegetables in silence for an audience. The woman smiled and said, "I'm sorry for staring; it's just that you're so beautiful."
I thanked her for the compliment and then, a French photographer with a fancy camera starting taking pictures of me. He told me the way I greeted people was 'lovely.'
My boyfriend's friend said, "Don't tell her those things. It's not good to pay too many compliments."
His idea was that the way you hold on to a woman was to never show or say how you feel, to let her believe that the relationship continued, not because she was in any way great or unique , but out of habit.
I, on the other hand, believe in public and private displays of affection and admiration; without a caress or a kind word, I will assume the other person doesn't care.
If there are games to be played, let them go on without me. I will say you're beautiful and dashing and I love you without hesitation and upon not hearing my thoughts reciprocated, I will walk away without hesitation, assuming that with me, you were just passing the time, shooting the breeze, standing on the porch to watch cars whizz by.

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