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Jun. 26th, 2017 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThis weekend, I walked through a EID celebration, and heard the Shabbat siren which sounds a bit like the tornado warnings that I used to hear as a child in Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb on the outskirts of Kansas City. Also heard them as an adult in a rural university town in Lawrence, Kansas.
The siren would ring, and we'd all rush to the basement and wait it out. Listening to the radio broadcast the latest sighting, and tell us the all clear. In Lawrence, we sat in the hallways of our apartment building. And in Liberty, Missouri, my grandmother who couldn't get to the basement, would go into the shower or tub.
But here, it was simply telling the inhabitants when the Shabbat began, it rang for before sundown and ten minutes after. The neighborhood in which I currently live is inhabited by Russian Jewish Immigrants and Bengali/Pakistani Muslim Immigrants, along with Hispanic Catholics, and various others. We all live peacefully and quietly together...in ironic contrast to the world's view. But people being people stick to their own. My father used to say, New York is so parochial, segregated into little neighborhoods, here and there that border each other. But, I think sometimes people are parochial...seeing only that which exists within their own backyard and resistant to that which exists outside of it. Is this a human thing? Evolved over time? Do we just stick to what we know, those who look like us, talk like us, think like us?
One of the throw-away lines from Sense8 that I liked was, Naomi asks why her cluster, those whose minds she is somehow inexplicably linked, are so diverse, and so different from her? Why aren't they more like her? And her lover responded, maybe because they complement you by their diversity and challenge how you perceive the world -- pushing you past your own tribe, etc.
I've always sought out people who are different. I think that's why I was so unhappy in Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, it was just white heterosexual people, mainly conservative, and not very diverse. Oh there were a few here and there, and I did manage to find them at times, but it was very segregated. One woman from India in the entire school, Anu, and one gal who was Japanese, who'd been adopted. I was friends with both of them at different points. Everyone else was either poor or rich and white, we did have some different religions but they were either Christian or Jewish.
Not a lot of Catholics, though.
New York was...like walking into OZ. You know that old movie, Wizard of Oz? Kansas shown in shades of black and white, while OZ is displayed in broad shades of technocolor, and populated by a diverse range of people? Except, unlike Dorothy, OZ felt more like home. Kansas, I was the alien. Or alienated. Here, it was okay if you didn't drive or hated driving and wanted to avoid it. Here it was okay if you loved books and read them like crazy. Or into theater. Or just a little left of center, off the beaten track.
Here, my prejudices are challenged daily. I wander through different cultures some only see if they actually travel across the deep dark sea. Fly across the world. But I can visit Bangladash just by walking down the street, or Russia by leaving my front door. The culture in all it's colors whirls about me, challenging me, driving me crazy, and yet at the same time filling me with a sense of wonder. For people are just people no matter what language they speak, what color of skin, where they live, how short, how tall, how thin, how large...just people. Opinionated, grouchy, cranky, funny, crazy, rude, pretty, kind..and unpredictable.
On the ride home from work today, I'm standing on the Long Island Rail road passenger train, waiting for the doors to slide open, across from me is a Hispanic man, tired from a long work day, we are surrounded by young California Business tourists discussing a cool business deal, where their project awarded them a vacation surfing with their high profile client. Me and the man, who comes up to my hip, exchange a brief eye-roll and inhale, waiting for the doors to free us from their chatter.
Every day is different, commute wise. The city shifts and flows, and many of its residents have lived here far longer than I. Some their whole lives. I have friends and neighbors who were born here. My sister-in-law was and spent most of her life in NYC until they moved up to Beacon. Her father and her mother lived here. Many of my friends, their entire families live in the city, and some in a brownstone all stacked together. In my old neighborhood, the parents lived on the first floor and their grown-up children and grandchildren in the apartments above. And my former boss, had lived in the same apartment that she was born in. No one I knew in Prairie Village could say this, indeed few in Lawrence could. Yet, on each block in Brooklyn, I find people who have lived in this city their whole lives, many have never really been that far outside of it.
That's not to say there aren't nomads like myself and my family members floating about. Who draw our roots from each other, not a place or a building or the land on which we reside. We look to the sky, and to the sea. Wandering spirits. Restless in a way, for what lies across a distant shore. I've lived here twenty years, so perhaps not so restless. But occasionally I crave a change of scenery.
My parents always seemed to, although they've lived in some places a very long time. And my mother has lived in at least seven. My father possibly more. Of my family, I've lived in the least number, I think. My mother when she was a girl collected travel brochures -- of all the destinations in the world in which she wished to travel. And when she met my father, he worked part time as a travel guide, taking tourists on tours of Hollywood, California, Hawaii, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park. When they married, we took a trip a year, each time to a different place or destination. And my parents liked to see the culture of a place, to read about it, to understand it. Older now and not in the best of health, they can no longer jump about the globe then home again. They are in a way stuck on the island, with their friends, and their aching bones, happy and alive but nostalgic and wishing for yesterday.
I'm not sure those who have lived forever in the same place, such as my former boss, who travels on cruise boats with her friends, and has always lived in an apartment in Queens, can quite understand those of us who haven't. We think we choose our lives or others choose theirs. But I think sometimes our lives choose us. A mixture of DNA and happenstance.
It's not like I didn't want to stay in Kansas City, surrounded by family, going to family functions, my entire life. I did. I do. But life in all it's craziness did not work that way. It was not the family I was born into. It's not in the twist of my DNA. And my family did not cooperate. Life is what it is.
I think sometimes we judge things that cannot be changed or controlled, thinking they can. I've discussed this with friends and family over the years, and while I do not believe in fate or predestination exactly, I do believe in choice, I think choice is often limited by circumstances beyond our control. There are so many things that are dictated by those we cannot control and cannot see or know. It's what I think makes life feel so random, when it really isn't -- because we can only see the section of the tapestry that we've been weaving, we cannot see all the others and how they interconnect and change our own. I do not know who I will met tomorrow, I cannot predict it -- because there's so many people who have needs outside my own who can with a flick change mine forever. It's scary but exciting at the same time, to know this.
To know that life is never completely within my control...and always fluid not static. Moving at it's own pace along the rainbow of time and space...taking us where it will, and all we can do is choose which twists and turns to take, and whether to go left, right, or sideways.
Eh. I think I'll watch the Great British Baking Show.
The siren would ring, and we'd all rush to the basement and wait it out. Listening to the radio broadcast the latest sighting, and tell us the all clear. In Lawrence, we sat in the hallways of our apartment building. And in Liberty, Missouri, my grandmother who couldn't get to the basement, would go into the shower or tub.
But here, it was simply telling the inhabitants when the Shabbat began, it rang for before sundown and ten minutes after. The neighborhood in which I currently live is inhabited by Russian Jewish Immigrants and Bengali/Pakistani Muslim Immigrants, along with Hispanic Catholics, and various others. We all live peacefully and quietly together...in ironic contrast to the world's view. But people being people stick to their own. My father used to say, New York is so parochial, segregated into little neighborhoods, here and there that border each other. But, I think sometimes people are parochial...seeing only that which exists within their own backyard and resistant to that which exists outside of it. Is this a human thing? Evolved over time? Do we just stick to what we know, those who look like us, talk like us, think like us?
One of the throw-away lines from Sense8 that I liked was, Naomi asks why her cluster, those whose minds she is somehow inexplicably linked, are so diverse, and so different from her? Why aren't they more like her? And her lover responded, maybe because they complement you by their diversity and challenge how you perceive the world -- pushing you past your own tribe, etc.
I've always sought out people who are different. I think that's why I was so unhappy in Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, it was just white heterosexual people, mainly conservative, and not very diverse. Oh there were a few here and there, and I did manage to find them at times, but it was very segregated. One woman from India in the entire school, Anu, and one gal who was Japanese, who'd been adopted. I was friends with both of them at different points. Everyone else was either poor or rich and white, we did have some different religions but they were either Christian or Jewish.
Not a lot of Catholics, though.
New York was...like walking into OZ. You know that old movie, Wizard of Oz? Kansas shown in shades of black and white, while OZ is displayed in broad shades of technocolor, and populated by a diverse range of people? Except, unlike Dorothy, OZ felt more like home. Kansas, I was the alien. Or alienated. Here, it was okay if you didn't drive or hated driving and wanted to avoid it. Here it was okay if you loved books and read them like crazy. Or into theater. Or just a little left of center, off the beaten track.
Here, my prejudices are challenged daily. I wander through different cultures some only see if they actually travel across the deep dark sea. Fly across the world. But I can visit Bangladash just by walking down the street, or Russia by leaving my front door. The culture in all it's colors whirls about me, challenging me, driving me crazy, and yet at the same time filling me with a sense of wonder. For people are just people no matter what language they speak, what color of skin, where they live, how short, how tall, how thin, how large...just people. Opinionated, grouchy, cranky, funny, crazy, rude, pretty, kind..and unpredictable.
On the ride home from work today, I'm standing on the Long Island Rail road passenger train, waiting for the doors to slide open, across from me is a Hispanic man, tired from a long work day, we are surrounded by young California Business tourists discussing a cool business deal, where their project awarded them a vacation surfing with their high profile client. Me and the man, who comes up to my hip, exchange a brief eye-roll and inhale, waiting for the doors to free us from their chatter.
Every day is different, commute wise. The city shifts and flows, and many of its residents have lived here far longer than I. Some their whole lives. I have friends and neighbors who were born here. My sister-in-law was and spent most of her life in NYC until they moved up to Beacon. Her father and her mother lived here. Many of my friends, their entire families live in the city, and some in a brownstone all stacked together. In my old neighborhood, the parents lived on the first floor and their grown-up children and grandchildren in the apartments above. And my former boss, had lived in the same apartment that she was born in. No one I knew in Prairie Village could say this, indeed few in Lawrence could. Yet, on each block in Brooklyn, I find people who have lived in this city their whole lives, many have never really been that far outside of it.
That's not to say there aren't nomads like myself and my family members floating about. Who draw our roots from each other, not a place or a building or the land on which we reside. We look to the sky, and to the sea. Wandering spirits. Restless in a way, for what lies across a distant shore. I've lived here twenty years, so perhaps not so restless. But occasionally I crave a change of scenery.
My parents always seemed to, although they've lived in some places a very long time. And my mother has lived in at least seven. My father possibly more. Of my family, I've lived in the least number, I think. My mother when she was a girl collected travel brochures -- of all the destinations in the world in which she wished to travel. And when she met my father, he worked part time as a travel guide, taking tourists on tours of Hollywood, California, Hawaii, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park. When they married, we took a trip a year, each time to a different place or destination. And my parents liked to see the culture of a place, to read about it, to understand it. Older now and not in the best of health, they can no longer jump about the globe then home again. They are in a way stuck on the island, with their friends, and their aching bones, happy and alive but nostalgic and wishing for yesterday.
I'm not sure those who have lived forever in the same place, such as my former boss, who travels on cruise boats with her friends, and has always lived in an apartment in Queens, can quite understand those of us who haven't. We think we choose our lives or others choose theirs. But I think sometimes our lives choose us. A mixture of DNA and happenstance.
It's not like I didn't want to stay in Kansas City, surrounded by family, going to family functions, my entire life. I did. I do. But life in all it's craziness did not work that way. It was not the family I was born into. It's not in the twist of my DNA. And my family did not cooperate. Life is what it is.
I think sometimes we judge things that cannot be changed or controlled, thinking they can. I've discussed this with friends and family over the years, and while I do not believe in fate or predestination exactly, I do believe in choice, I think choice is often limited by circumstances beyond our control. There are so many things that are dictated by those we cannot control and cannot see or know. It's what I think makes life feel so random, when it really isn't -- because we can only see the section of the tapestry that we've been weaving, we cannot see all the others and how they interconnect and change our own. I do not know who I will met tomorrow, I cannot predict it -- because there's so many people who have needs outside my own who can with a flick change mine forever. It's scary but exciting at the same time, to know this.
To know that life is never completely within my control...and always fluid not static. Moving at it's own pace along the rainbow of time and space...taking us where it will, and all we can do is choose which twists and turns to take, and whether to go left, right, or sideways.
Eh. I think I'll watch the Great British Baking Show.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-27 07:17 am (UTC)I believe that human society evolved to need both sorts of people, the rooted and the restless. Because we do not work as lone individuals but only as social groups. And sometimes the group needs to stay put, to know how that patch of land works in intimate detail so it can be exploited to the full and provide a period of security. And sometimes the group needs to move on and find new and better places. So we need both people who say 'here is good, let us stay' and those who say 'I wonder what is over the horizon'. But in a small tribe everyone would always be aware that both mindsets existed, and would have found ways to make each decision for the group as a whole.
I think that balance has somehow got out of kilter. Society has fragmented and it is too easy for too many people to only know people like themselves in mindset. I am pleased and optimistic because the internet allows us to reach out to one another and learn the other POV again.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-27 01:42 pm (UTC)Thank you. I think part of the difficulty is we want to neatly break it into two categories or any category. Human minds like to label and categorize in order to understand things. But, human beings can't be neatly categorized.
My parents have lived on their island for well over 20 years now. And I have lived in NYC for well over 20 years. That's hardly rootless or nomadic. And my grandfather who was a farmer and a cattleman, traveled across the country and loved to travel. My brother who gardens and spends time with plants, has traveled more in his lifetime than I have.
There's a woman on my reading list who has a small basement apartment in NYC, she travels to her mother's place in the country to plant on weekends.
Another woman, an academic who just got her Ph.D in English Lit at the age of 60, lives on a farm, and works as a programmer. And is traveling around to conferences.
A professional writer, Cat Valente, lives on a farm in Maine, spends most of her life traveling around the world selling her books, and going to conferences, when she isn't jamming and tending plants.
While I take maybe on trip a year, and prefer to stay in one place as long as possible.
The temptation is to make it neat. Put people in boxes. But experience has taught me, that if you dig deeper, you find there are no boxes that fit.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-27 03:05 pm (UTC)I was hearing the other day about a man who discovered he had the brain scan typical of a psychopathic killer. He delved into his genetic background and found he had several murderers in his family tree. Yet he himself is a scientist who studies empathy - an avoidance of his fate which he puts down to having been raised by a loving and empathetic family. So yes, the one thing you can always predict about humans is that we are not simple.