What it takes to quit

With so many lottery systems around, hearing how someone can win millions over night, nobody can deny that for at least once, the thought of winning a lottery has crossed the mind. It is so simple, you spend very little on a ticket and you win millions.
When I grew up, I remember watching a movie called "The million dollar cheque" with Cary Grant I believe. At that time, 1M was something enormous, really life changing and moved you to the "Millionaire Club" right away. Looking on how much the money has depreciated, 1M now is not as meaningful as then. If someone that has a decent job and life wins 1 M, they will not have enough reasons to quit working. It will for sure help sort out some financial bottle neck situations, but the salary is still necessary to come every month. But, what does it really take nowadays to go the next day at work and say "I QUIT" and never look back again?
So I started thinking and considering everything around me. The win must be big enough. It has to cover for the new bigger house (that off course will require a maid to take care), different cars and probably more than one per each of us, better (read: more expensive) school for the kid, a higher life standard (read: more expensive clothes and accessories) and more vacations/trips around the World. On the other side, we must help our immediate family and friends with at least 1M. Some of the money need to be invested in order to cover for the yearly income, let's say about 100K per year. A cottage and/or beach house would be requested as well and with that a boat. At the end, I came to the conclusion, that only if I win 22M, I would go to my manager and say "I quit right here, right now" and not regret the decision. Come to think of it, wining only 1M, is more of a curse than luck because it will make you think that you can have a higher life standard when in reality you might end up with new debts because of that, which will kick you out of the "Millionaire club". Not sure if there are still "Millionaire clubs" out there, and if they really are all divorced, single or just "on the side" looking for companions on special matchmaking website services, just for their rank. I hear that there are some areas on big cities, where even if you have the money to buy a house with a certain zip code, you are not accepted if you won the money from lottery. You must have earned that money or it must have been inherited to you. At the beginning, I was a bit confused with that, but I guess I understand. They want to keep high not just the quality of their area but even their life in general, from every aspect of it. Which means, that even if I win 22M, I am still unable to change my zip code to some fancy one. Only to a decent one. But I think I can live with that. I think I can live with everything I planned to do if I win 22M. I will not stay home all day twiddling my thumbs. I will volunteer, I will follow up on things that I want to do but never found time or came to high priority. I can imagine myself doing that life and I do not mind it.
There are religions that do not bless the money won by lottery tickets or gambling because they are not won by work. There are beliefs that money changes people for bad, and sometimes I have to admit it when I see on TV rich people being cou-cou. There are so many emotional situations that make you say "All I want is good health" and then money comes in second place, and I do understand that.
But knowing it all, accepting and understand it all, I would still like to win 22M. Maybe I will be the person that will tell others "I was happier before" but I want to see it and feel it, at least once.
This is the Chinese year of Rabbit. Out of pure habit, I went and checked the predictions for my sign for this year. There was an option that based on the birthday and birth hour, you could get more specific about your sign and elements around it. I checked that and I found that, from 1 till 31 years old, I would NOT have the Luck on my side. Well, that explains a lot!. And then, from 32 to 91 years old I will NOT have the Luck and Wealth on my side. BUT, after 92 years old, the Luck was on my side. The only thing that came in my mind was the song of Morrisette:

"Isn't it ironic

don't you think

It's like rain

on your wedding day

it's a free ride

when you already paid"

And the story ends: keep working and saving, but wouldn't hurt to dream once in a while that I can be a millionaire, is just that I have to live to 92 years old. By then, someone would have killed me for living too long and bothering people around.

A young poet I like

When I grew up, some of the songs I used to listen from the local bands, where from a band that was considered "the Beatles of our country". Almost all their songs were writen by one poet, my age and very talented. At that time I didn't follow much the author's path but more the band's path. Maybe muzik is easier to follow than poetry. Maybe you listen muzik on the radio but rarely you might hear someone reading poetry. Or maybe becasue my Let teacher was never a good poetry reader, she was not one of those teachers that can stop the flies flying when they recite a poem, and I never felt able to connect with poetry in the same way I connect with story writing.
One evening, I found myself missing the songs of that band and, just as you might guess, I went on youtube and found them. Still lovely, still sweet. But this time, I stoped at the author. Darn!!! How could I have been so shallow all this time and not follow his work, what he have been writing, what is he thinking of the current life? Another thing that makes him a bit "mystiruous" is the fact that he did some academic studies in Istambul and came back a believer of Islam. In my search to find more about his latest work, I ended up finding a website where he has posted his work from 90's and later, but not very recent.
For everyone that knows my country, the famous writer that comes in mind is Ismail Kadare. There are a lot of other writers out there, published everywhere in the World, but none of them has his fame. Well, this new author, when he was 17-18, was considered and had so much promises to be the next Kadare. While Kadare has not taken a religious stand on his personal life, this guy did. And he picked the religion that in the old Europe and new America is seen as the religion with troublemaker believers.Wondering how this choice affected his fame as a promissing writer? I notice that lately he is not as discussed and pormoted as before. I believe he has open a library somewhere in the city and enjoyes living between books. If you search to find any picture of him, you will see a guy with a long bird that makes you think "How does he really look if he shaves?". When you read his early works, you set some expectations for the author. But I do not find anywhere a picture of him from that time. On the other side I can't find any of his recent works. So all I have to match, is his early writings and his current look (per say). And they do not match. I am strugling to give him more on the intellectual side or less as a romantic author. I am strugling to get more out of him .. not from the past but from now. I do not know the guy but I want to know him, have a coffee with him and maybe get a bit more of what is in his mind now, decrypt some un-writen poetry in his mind that maybe can inspire that old band to get together again and write a new song. I feel like my country is losing the next hope for Nobel price in Literature. I feel that someone needs to give that guy a push and make him write again.. about the things he used to write then, about the everyday life, love, our childhood, parts of the city.. anything, anything that can make my generation skip a heartbeat again. It is a long time I haven't skipped a heartbeat from reading something... or listening a new song.

By the way, his name is Ervin Hatibi and here is one of his poetries that I could find already translated in English. And here you can find more from his work, following the links on the left.

Untitled
Don’t waste my blood,
Someone
Was screaming at the moon while
Dying at somebody’s hands who
Went on killing him- in a blood bath; and the full
Moon was not veiled by
Clouds over the desolate path
O God, heavy is the solitude with a killer, and the moon up there,
Two, three, fifteen moons like buttons
Over his blood like living tiles

(years later) same moon
(a moon pervading women chambers)
-why that laugh says the wife to her man
(him leaned back on his bed)
-why this brooding laughing?
The man gave up, couldn’t hold it
-as a matter of fact (deep breath)
he almost sucks the moon into his throat cave
-you know how? I tell you now:
it was me who killed that guy
years ago, at night
I did him; don’t ask me how, or why. I killed him
And he was screaming: don’t waste my blood,
To the moon, as I hit him
You get it? to the moon he addressed don’t waste my blood
(wife listening is white)

the word is the wife
had a talk of it around,
and (the following is essential): news traveled,
her man was ambushed then done

grandfather told me this story
adding always (and making me blush):
-show women only what you got from waist down
never the other way up,
and so he defined the waistband of manhood,
the one to keep up breeches
and the gun
but still
grandpa somehow ignored
the part of the moon, her gravity in the story
and in all our stories of kills and women
(of eros and athanasios as they say)
‘cause there is a moon above us, above walking humans, a
torturing moon
like the truth test machine
like a lamp hanging on a morgue
under it laying dead is
you
under, and you pretending to be flesh
ghost-moon of a breast wrongly popped out of outfits
to a female child who is now a grown up
and sucks cigarettes but no human milk-
it is you
and the moon, that bothering fact that every mother
has her milk inside, such a blackmail this…
but yet you can’t just deny
grandfather’s theory:
if you tell your wife what you got from waist up
it is the same breasts:
and soon the incest has unbuttoned itself
she throws you away in disgust
runs quick to find someone
able to keep longer and hidden
darkly
his half-moons of the other side
under a checkered vest

2002 Trans : Idlir Azizi
"6", Marin Barleti, 1995