I have laughed when I shouldn’t; I just did it because a friend of mine by the name of Dylgjer, told it. He makes you laugh even when he talks about “death”, until you come to your senses. He told me about the summer holidays. “I left an area of the beach where there was a bunch of crazy… Don’t laugh”, he said, “they were really from the school of the insane… Somewhere else in the beach, I saw a Polish tourist who had had a lot to drink and was laying there. He was dying. We called an ambulance… The ambulance came. But the paramedics told us that police had to be there, otherwise they wouldn’t take the patient… When police came, the ambulance was not there. The Polish man died before our very eyes… There have been many foreigners who have died like this during the summer, especially in the beach of Vlora”, Dylgjeri was saying…
… This summer, we only heard two types of news: “Weather” and “death”. Once in three days, the media, especially online media, used to say: “For all of you who have decided to go to the beach, we have bad news”. The following day, they had “good” news. And then, neither “good”, nor “bad”, but news on the weather… meanwhile, it was clear that the media was waiting “on the line” for death. The woman, who was recently murdered by her husband, has, unfortunately, turned into a story of “show-biz” now. It’s been three days that the media is only talking about her death, about her and her friends… But, they don’t say anything. Nothing new, apart from the tragic event. It seems that this will continue until a new murder takes place.
This is how the summer went by…
I’m sure that many people have stopped and asked themselves: “What the hell is going on? Are these the only things that take place in this country? Is there so much absurdity among us?
When there’s no vanity, then we look for it. I don’t think that people’s life has been so frivolous, but frivolity is “sweet”. Have you seen how people rush toward untrue events which have nothing to do with them?! Who cares to know if a show-woman has come out without her bathing suit during the sunny days at the beach?! Everyone wants to click on the media publishing “naked” photos. The following day, the same media is forced to deny its article about the discovery of the unknown child of an artist: “No, it was not like we said.”
Even when they deny stories without any interest, the media is clicked by many people who have nothing to do with these kinds of stories. It doesn’t matter whether the story is true or made up, nobody cares about it… In this case, both media and the “people” are in search of vanity. Because vanity is sweet. In western art, vanity used to be painted like a peacock; the odd bird which is complacent night and day. During the Renaissance period, art has symbolized vanity like a woman who spends endless hours in front of the mirror, with a comb in her hand.
In reality, a human, even in a lazy society, cannot live in the void. The truth and imposing the truth are totally different things. The question is: Do people ask the media for such Vanity Fair or does the media look for vanity wherever it can be found?
What did vanity conceal during this season?
1.
It concealed what will explode in six days. On 9 September, Parliament will convene in its first session for this legislative period. The new government will be formed. We will discover the secret alliances and the falsity of accusations. We will discover the frivolity of many of the people who have been elected in Parliament. They have not fallen from the sky. From the day when Parliament was elected, at the end of June, not a thing has been said for that giant creature that had a cost for people’s pockets. The day the real thing would start, “news” and the word would end. But the truth is there, it’s real.
2.
Frivolity was not promoted only by the media, but by politicians too. Politics are the same as the Polar Bear; whenever he falls asleep, he sleeps over everything. Politics in weak societies imposes a state of hibernation, when politics needs it. If we look for frivolity here, then we are mistaken; under the difficult life’s thick snow lies politics that imposes frivolity. It’s been three decades that we say that we “have the freedom of speech”, but in fact, we don’t know how to speak. In this imposed frivolity, everyone is entitled to speak, but only on frivolous things.
3.
Had this state of frivolous hyperbaton affected us too?
World peace is being threatened by North Korea. Within the days of the season of “frivolity”, the “secret” communist state carried out six nuclear tests. In Kosovo, which is very close to us, there were signs yesterday that the new government may be formed. It had started to be formed three months ago and it spent the whole summer “working”. Here, in Scanderbeg square, some individuals covered the monument of our National Hero, because they said that Gjergj Kastrioti Scanderbeg is a mercenary.
There’s life here and there’s life around us. But we searched vanity like the woman of Renaissance searched her comb in front of the mirror that was held by Devil.
