January 27, 2007
The Winter Evening. (The Sam's Blues)
The snow had fallen quietly for two days. I hadn't seen any of my neighbors since I returned to the States. To make my presence felt again, I went down to the basement apartment in the house beside mine and took the snow shovel that was leaning against the wall. I began shoveling. The snow was light and hadn't yet begun to melt. A thin layer of ice stuck to the bottom of the white blanket of snow like Velcro sticking to the sidewalks. I shoveled my neighbors sidewalk to thank her for allowing me to use her shovel that i never asked to use. Then I shoveled the sidewalk to the apartment above hers. I shoveled the stairs that rose to the street. Then I shoveled Maryland's front steps. Maryland is an older woman who religiously walks her shitzu that barks with failing vocal cords at 9:10 every morning. After her walk was cleared, I shoveled the sidewalk in front of my house and the front porch I share with my upstairs neighbors. And not leave anyone out, I then began shoveling back down the steps that led to the basement apartment in the house I live in.
It was just past 8:00 in the evening. The dark night was soft and quiet. Prada laid alone in the back yard in the fuzzy moonlight staring off into the darkness past the white pines in the neighbors yard. When I made my way back down the steps to the path to my basement neighbors, I continued to clear the snow towards their door. The shovel scraped the snow away from the concrete like Velcro being peeled from a long strap, revealing a dark stripe in the soft white yard. As I passed their stoop, I decided to continue down the walk into the back yard towards where we park our cars. As I passed their door, I heard heard their doorknob turn. I turned around to greet my neighbor with the type of smile that elemental humanity involuntarily creates when you present a gift of deed or object to another.
"Do you think that could wait until morning?" my neighbor's live-in girlfriend scowled. Her head leaning out of the door way towards me, with her nicotine patch pasted to her shoulder.
"I got kids in here trying to sleep."
Then the door shut and the lock bolt twisted shut like a flick of a middle finger on the end of a wrist.
"Sorry." I said to the closed door, and let the shovel full of snow fall back onto the walk.
The more I thought about what had happend at my neighbors door, the more upset I became. First at my neightbor for being so oblivious to me and what I was trying to do for her.
I took the shovel and walked across the block. Prada followed silently a few steps behind, gently walking within my foot prints. I walked to Christina's house and shoveled her back steps. She seldom uses them, but her neighbors walk up them to enter the laundry room in the back of the house.
The more I thought about what had happend at my neighbors door, the more upset I became, not my nighbor but at the human species. I wondered how people can be so off the mark. So self absorbed to not see what is happening around them. I wondered how people can not see something good or kind or even at least well intentioned when it is happening in at their front door.
I shoveled away the snow from around her neighbors car. When I was finished, I cleared her front porch and the sidewalk along her front yard.
I wondered how people can be so consumed and so narrow-sighted; so unaware of anything beyond their own perspective, so unaware of other's actions, even their own actions.
When I was finished, I set the shovel down and walked up to her porch. I opened Christina's front door and walked inside. I realized there are some people in this world that will never have a clue as to how to percieve any idea or even action but through their own two narrow eyes and one even narrower mind.
She looked up from her desk at me through the doorway to her front room.
"Todd!" she said with exasperation, before i could say a word.
"Take your shoes off, you are making a mess on the rug!"
I looked down. My boots were covered in snow and compressed plates of snow were sluffing off of the soles like shedding snake scales on her dark clean rug. I look behind me. My trail into her house looked like fine broken china shattered into boot-tread shaped fragments all the way back to the door. slowly melting into dark spots in the rug.
"Sorry." I said as is stopped and stood still.
People can be so off the mark; So self absorbed to not see what is happening around them.
"I just stopped by to say hi." I said as I gingerly walked backwards towards the door, and brushed the snow into her foyer.
Some people can be so consumed and so narrow-sighted; so unaware of anything beyond their own perspective, so unaware of other's actions, even their own actions.
Then I closed her door.
I picked up the shovel and waked quietly through the snow back towards home, with Prada following silently a few steps behind, gently walking within my foot prints.
January 09, 2007
What I learned from Egypt
I met a man on the flight to Cairo.
As a rule, I don't talk to fellow passengers until the pilot announces the decent to the destination. This prevents the possibility of poor conversation or any unwanted discussion from lasting very long.
We were an hour away from Cairo. I was excited to arrive and my anxiety and optimism led to me break my rule.
He told me about his life. At least the thiry-some years he had lived until then. He had left Egypt alone many years ago. He now lived in Michigan and worked for a pharmaceutical company.
I asked him many questions.
He answered them. He told me of his life, an arranged marriage that went bad before it started, the intellectual and economic ceiling kept over Egyptians by their government, and his reality he left in Alexandria, and his new life in in Michigan. He explained the culture he had left and the circumstances that led him to America.
"Are you Muslim?" Was one of my questions.
"Yeah, sure." he said with a mild shrug, barely visible through his white collared shirt.
I was satisfied with that answer. But just before that current breath expired in his chest, he plainly said something next I haven't forgotten. It seemed simple at that moment. Like a little snowball tossed from a mitten.
"We all were born into what we are." He said. "And I don't have time to read all the religions in the world and choose the best for me. I don't even have time to understand my own. This is the life I live inside. So.." he said as he nudged the rest of the thought off his shoulders with another quiet shrug.
His words fell on me and have been rolling down the mountain in my mind ever since.
It rolled with me past the bulls being slaughtered in the streets for the new year's feast. It rolled with me under the minarets blaring the Imam's prayers and the stray dogs and beggar's stares. It stuck with me and grew larger in late night conversations in living rooms, in shisha bars with Lebanese belly dancers dancing on T.V. and telling stories and drinking sweet tea, and in early morning runs alone along the shores of the Red Sea.
I began to see the edges of the life i live inside of.
I sat in the back behind the driver's seat. It was late in the night and we were driving south on the Corniche Al-Nil. I had been in Cairo for almost 3 weeks, and away from America for 4. No one in the car was talking. Christina was beside me, sleeping on her brother's shoulder. I put the window down and let the dusty air along the River move across me. It was empty and stale and smelled like warm concrete. The neon lights on the buildings burned in the dark. I couldn't read any of them, and I was no longer trying to. I looked down dark alleys between buildings. I stared into the gaping darkness above the Nile. I began to see the edges of the life i live inside of.
I sat in the back behind the driver's seat. Everyone in the car was quiet, sleeping, or lost on numbing thought coaxed forth by the Egyptian beer we were drinking earlier in the evening. But was wide awake. And I realized, even in that hour on that road, in the back seat of that car, I was still searching. Like a chain smoker fumbling with his yellow fingernails for another cigarette, it seemed there was nothing left to see but I was no longer able to close my eyes. I began to see the edges of the life i live inside of.
I had been heading to the edges for almost a month. I had been in countries whose languages I couldn't hear and whose words I couldn't read and whose ideas I didn't understand. I felt like I had been in the dark, and my pupils strained and split from being dilated so long, searching for meaning or to gain understanding. I had abandoned hope weeks ago that anyone would understand me. Instead, I was hoping the opposite; to find understanding in something else. My pupils were dilated. My head was empty. The window was down but nothing was blowing in. I began to see the edges of the life i live inside of.
I was a western man in eastern lands. An American Individualist in collectivist culture. A determinist, driven like a nail into a long and steady board in the fatalist's world. Finally, at the edges of my world that I was born into, I saw the residual results of my upbringing, from every act of logic and of emotion, to every dividing cell. I saw it all like an equation being drawn out slowly on a chalkboard: of the midwest protestant work ethic, of the seasons changing, the thin ice on Lost Creek, the springs inside the valves of a Yamaha motorcycle's carburetor, open tailgates and broken bones, every lesson learned. every fence row explored. and I saw my parents lives, of my grandparents lives, my great grandparents lives, of my government, my race, my politics and my economy, every factor and every variable and every catalyst in a long and laborious equation whose answer on the other side of the equal sign was what ran through the blood in my veins and in pulsed in the cortex of my brain.
We are all born into what we are.
Some spend their lives trying to leave it. Others spend theirs trying to live within it. While others, like myself, try to define it for themselves, and make it their own.
I don't have time to understand all the ways in the world and choose the best for me.
I can travel around the world to find and define my place within it. I will travel around my mind for the rest of my life, looking for it's edges; looking for a definiton to life.
And try to understand my own.
