Friday, August 30, 2002

I sit at the open

I sit at the open window.  The September sun beats unblinkingly of the buildings across the street.  My black t-shirt amplifies the radiance.  Shadows seem to sizzle.

Across the street, at the bottom of the hill, stands an old woman with her groceries.  She begins to walk, stopping often to rest.  Her face is withered and pale.  She is bent almost double by the weight of her shopping bags, and the few vegetables and cans she carries in them.  The sidewalk glares at the sun’s white heat back up at her; the broad white faces of the buildings lining the ascent shimmer; she, small and black, like a beetle, trudges past them, with the grim resolution of a solar eclipse.

She is fighting for her life, for her self-respect, without which, I can clearly see, she could not live.  Her perseverance and self-sufficiency will not bend to the attrition time has worked upon her.  She will stop bringing her own groceries up this hill when she stops breathing. 

This woman lives meaningfully.  She is an affirmation of all the things that I repeat to myself in crises of doubt, things I can hardly believe when I’m optimistic – and there she is, unstoppable, in the incandescent heat, giving herself one more day of autonomy and righteousness, preserving herself as herself, even if only for herself. 

And furthermore, she makes her stand, scraping the last shreds of vitality out of her tired body, here in my city, here on my block.  This personal odyssey, going to the core of human aspirations and my own, is being played out up this very hill, in this neighborhood so homey and familiar to me, where I too wage that battle every day, in unrecognizable permutations.  She lives because this city enlivens her, and in return she enlivens it.  The city itself glows and pulses with the same vibrant energy she exudes as she staggers painfully up the hill, the bags in her hands drooping ever closer to the sidewalk.  Yet she continues, pausing for breath in the occasional shade of an olive tree. 

In this city, I see that energy everywhere, even here from my own kitchen window.  I am honored and privileged to have a place here, in a city where autonomy and self-respect are civic virtues.  There is a place that turns people into themselves, and now I call it my home, and I can learn its lessons here from my apartment by watching some old lady walk up the block. 

“Hey, old lady!  I love you!  I love this town!”

She stops, puts down her bags, turns to find me in the block of buildings where I live, and, finding me and fixing me with her dimming gaze, she calls back to me:

“Fuck you!  You son of a bitch!  I’ll bite your dick off and spit it back in your face!  You asshole!  I’m not taking that shit from you!  Come down here you chickenshit!  Fucking dickless wonder!”

“Hey, fuck you, old lady!  Fuck you!  I hate this town!”

Stupid fucking town.  Too damn hot.  This shirt itches.