Kindness through distortion

My attempt to cross the Bosphorus is far from being the first time I’ve been subject to that peculiar gratitude toward the agents of frustration. My journal contains several such accounts that reflect the absurdity of the kind act being to watch without helping, of kindness through subversion, kindness as distortion.

Among them:

Tuesday, 13th August, Κεντρική Μακεδονία, Greece
He watches while I climb precariously over a barbed wire topped fence. I’ve already dropped my bag over — the only certain method for getting over a tough fence. It’s a slow process, taking care not to get tangled up in the barbs. One of my shoe laces gets hooked, still on the wrong side of the fence. I reach back over with my right hand and work to wrestle it free, my left forearm burns and the fence vibrates under the strain. I free my foot, but tear a new hole in my trousers. All the while he just watches, and I’m grateful to him.

Because to act as written would be to arrest me. For trespassing, for interfering with privately owned infrastructure¹, for walking along a road.

Landing heavily next to my bag, I want to sit and rest but he has to see that I’m heading away, so I heave the pack onto ever-so-slightly dejected shoulders and keep wandering.

All just a part of the adventure,

this is what an adventure is, just overcoming obstacles. We had a problem […] and we solved it.
— Ether in Jason Pargin, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, 2024, St. Martin’s Press, Ch. Day 2, p. 144