I'm feeling rather low energy tonight (fighting off a cold, actually), so I'm fishing around my journal entries for something good to share - since mustering creativity is more than I can manage at the moment.
Here's what I found dating back to July 2008:
Thank you, Anna Deveare Smith.
What we do for our kids! I was on the return leg of a bus trip from to Federal Way to drop my daughter off with my sister so she could spend some time with her cousin. My sister, a nurse with her own 3-bedroom house and an SUV, “couldn’t afford” the gas to come to north Seattle to pick up her niece; so I, an office temp trying to start her own business with no car and renting a one-bedroom apartment, get to ride the bus two hours each way for my daughter to have a day with her cousin. But I have my book. Borrowed from the library after listening to her speak on Democracy Now!, I’m reading Talk to Me by Anna Deveare Smith. As I board the same bus (“Didn’t I just see you?” asks the driver), I am consoled by the presence of this rich, consciously streaming narrative and am looking forward to diving in for the next couple hours. But the highway is too bumpy and I have to stop reading. Now I have two hours of looking out the window; not all together unpleasant, but not what I wanted (I’ve been down this road before).
In Sea-Tac (a city created and named after an airport), we are held up at each stop by tourists heading into Seattle who are unfamiliar with riding buses – I suspect not only in this city but in any city. One woman is noticeably gregarious and plops down in the one seat next to me, effectively separating herself from her party with the declaration, “I’m sitting right here – you never know who you’re going to meet.”
I didn’t exactly jump at the chance. She wore a lot of perfume, had the barrel shape of the uncomfortably privileged middle-aged, white middle class, and a southern accent. A whole bunch of prejudices leapt to my forebrain. In a matter of seconds, I had decided we had nothing in common. Still, somehow I unconsciously bypassed these prejudices – and before I was aware of what I was doing, I extended my hand to her and said on the tail of her declaration, “Hi, I’m EV.” She returned my handshake in a firm grasp and said, “How sweet! I’m Nancy and we’re just back from a cruise.” Ugh, more prejudices crowded for attention.
I ignored them. Something greater was at work here. As I was holding Talk to Me in my hands, I was sitting on a Seattle bus next to Nancy who wanted to meet people, to talk. Anna had written about her project to find American character between the well-rehearsed lines of everyday speech, she was looking for the treasure that appeared when language, syntax, grammar broke down. Now, plopped down almost in my lap, was a living American character who wanted to talk.
I discovered that Nancy knows and is related to a lot of people who are having babies. She takes special care in not just choosing gifts for these babies, but described in detail how she would wrap each present around a theme and how the use of the elements could be extended beyond the visual aesthetics of gift wrapping. She sees herself as “keeper” for her husband (who looked to be at least ten years older) and they had just completed their latest cruise to Alaska – a rather subdued affair due to the “elderly” passengers. She hails from Baton Rouge and her form of racism is rather more raw and overt than mine; I live in a city of mostly whites, she lives in a city with a robust black populace. She is polite and thoughtful enough to cosset her racism in firsthand accounts and CNN news reports. Her rendition of one of her husbands employees was caring, for all its assumed superiority. This employee is a young, black woman who relocated after losing her home in Hurricane Katrina. I felt my heart break open when Nancy told me this young woman’s name, Katrina, and how she now hates her name.
Nancy and I talked for about 45 minutes - she asking me some questions, me challenging her assumptions about political candidates (I just can’t help myself!), and each of us holding space for, in Parker Palmer’s terms, the “other.” Just as I was thinking, “Well, this has been a good exercise,” the treasure appeared.
In the midst of public transportation, gas prices, and personal values as expressed by vehicle choice, I mentioned that I felt it ironic that in a few hours I would be heading down this highway again to see a live performance of Rocky Horror Picture Show in Tacoma.
Even from behind our sunglasses I could see her eyes light up.
“You’re going to Rocky Horror?!” she almost squealed.
She started doing moves to "The Time Warp" sitting down! Her voice got higher and her sentences dropped in and out, got clipped in the middle, and came faster and faster as she talked about how much fun I would have. Her excitement overtook mine for the evening, but I soon got caught up and started feeling really excited about the show for the first time (I’ve seen RHPS many times and was going at the behest of a “virgin” friend).
We hopped off the bus at the same stop and I wished Nancy (white, Southern, Republican, married, nurse, grandmother, tourist, Rocky fan) safe travels and she told me (white, Northern, anarchist, mother, divorced, working a temp job while starting a business, new transplant, Rocky fan) to “Have fun tonight!”
Thanks to Anna, I opened up with someone who was very different from me and got to really listen. Thanks to Nancy, I spent the transfer to my next bus and subsequent ride planning my outfit and listening to how much I love being surprised by people who show up from behind their labels.
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