Bitter

Being surrounded with kids at work makes me recall all my nursery rhymes and other songs I memorized as a child (has anyone heard of Petrushka??). 

My work desk on a typical day.

There is only one children's song I hate: When You Wish Upon a Star. When you're a kid, you're only good at singing along. But then you grow up, get hurt, and experience pain worse than scraped knees and elbows. I used to stand at our balcony at night and stare at the star-sudded sky. The lyrics of that horrible song would creep into my mind, and my desperate heart would cling on to the promises of that song:

When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are

Anything your heart desire

Will come to you...

But of course, that never happens. All that wanting can only get you so far. You can wish on all the stars in the cosmos and not get that single thing your heart desire. Why? Because it does not want you back. They should have inserted that in the song, even as a footnote. It could have saved me a lot of mosquito-infested nights standing on that goddamn balcony and dreaming.

If your heart is in your dream

No request is too extreme

When you wish upon a star

As dreamers do.

That is a lot of bull. Some wishes are too extreme, and some dreams never come true. And this is why this song is a nasty thing to teach kids, because it teaches them hope. And when you hope, you leave yourself exposed. You're fair game. Hope can be the most cruel thing.

Someone close to me recently had her heart broken. One day, I saw her lighting purple candles, spreading salt in a certain pattern, performing rituals and reciting love spells, all intent on bringing back the lost love. I suppose extreme requests require extreme measures. But she never got him back. And it was a good thing, because I could have told her that bringing back a lost love is like resurrecting the dead: you may be able to bring them back (really?), but they won't be the same person anymore. The zombie movies? They don't lie. They come back cold, uncommunicative, and parasitic. As Haruki Murakami puts it: "What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back.” Ergo, no wishing on a supernova could bring it back.

So when you find yourself alone on a balcony, on a starry, starry night, don't go singing When You Wish Upon A Star. I would instead recommend Wicked's I'm Not That Girl.  

Don't dream too far

Don't lose sight of who you are

Don't remember that rush of joy...

Don't wish, don't start

Wishing only wounds the heart.

Don't.

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"When you wish upon a star, it continues converting hydrogen into helium and ignores you."
-Warren Holstein