the same & different

I have a Japanese flag and an Israeli flag that I both love, those being the two countries (other than this one that i'm living in at the moment, whose relationship to me is always changing its clothes constantly (what a weird thing to write)) that i have the closest and most spiritual relationship to. the first day i was here i wanted to put them up in my dorm room, you know, because that's what you do with things you like, you put them on the wall.

I used this orange sticky stuff that i think was manufactured sometime in the Gerald Ford administration to put them up. It was a really humid day and it made the stuff really wet and it looked like a cross between play-doh and hummus. the flags didn't stay up and the orange mystery substance got all over the flags and the wall. the flags stayed up for 13 or so minutes and then slowly slid down the wall and onto the bed. i tried many variations on this action but they all ended in the flags on the bed, their corners plastered with wet orange goo. Much of it is still there as cleaning supplies did not top my list of most important items to bring to college, which was filled with such useful items like my pair of dress shoes and 5 pencils, four of which came east unsharpened (I didn't bring a sharpener.).

Naturally, I searched for answers.

I asked the R.A. what worked for sticking things up on the walls. He said tape. I said: "Tape?". He said: "yeah. tape." I looked around for the admissions department holding their large green stickers that say "admission revoked for lack of common sense" that they would no doubt stick on my face, blinding me and forcing me on the street with nothing but 5 pencils (4 still unsharpened) in my hands, and my uncomfortably formal black dress shoes on my feet.

But instead i went to the campus store and got tape, among other small necessities. I came back and layered about 5 small strips of scotch tape on the corners of the flags. Success! they stayed up for more than the 13-minute test period which failed innumerable times on the first day. Only problem was that remnants of the orange goo was still on the wall, completely noticable behind the white fabric of the flags (white being the dominant color in both flags). However, I dealt. They were up. My dorm room was, albeit scantily, dressed.

Until today. Somehow (divinity?), the top left corner of the Israeli flag and the top right corner of the Japanese flag both came off the wall, leaving them both looking like an older brother holding his younger brother, upside-down, by one foot. While it's really very simple for me to just step onto my bed and fix it, i have abstained. I dont know why, honestly. I just dont have the willpower to do it, and every time i look a them I have no desire to tape them back up.

Is it because i'm afriad that they'll just fall off again? so i should just leave them as they are because they will one day return to that state anyway? Is it because I somehow blame myself for their falling, that subconsciously my taping has something to do with my social, sexual, intellectual, comical, benevolent standing in the world? Or is it just plain laziness?


It's probably a combination of these, or none at all, i'm not sure. Maybe it's nothing.

But even if it is nothing, when I am trying to sleep tonight, I will most likely see my face in the perfect red circle gracing the middle of the simple Japanese flag, or the regal star of david that represents thousands of years of history, conflict, pain, and celebration.

Could that be me, a symbol of something far away from this place, slowly sliding down the wall, trying to hold on with substances and ideas long past and obsolete? Am I here, being held by one leg by some invisible force I thought would hold me up? And who will go find the things that will help me get up again?

No matter. I suppose the most I can hope for is that if things go for the worst, both flags will fall from the wall above me and onto my body, keeping me warm until sunrise.