June 2021’s opening days are opening life on College Hill. Masks off--we see each other again. We can be together. These sweet simple gifts evoke the Shaker lyric:
‘Tis a gift to be simple;
‘Tis a gift to free;
‘Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be;
To turn, turn, will be our delight;
Til by turning, turning, we come round right.
Sitting outside at Blue State on Thayer, my advisee and I turn gladly to talk as friends stop to visit. This turning, such an ordinary Brown moment, evoked much for each of us. Our simple meeting an exquisite, almost excruciating, extravagant gift.
For months, mere conversations, in-person, were unsafe. Dear and distant voices got reduced to flat moving images. Matters, erudite and mundane, arrived together, an uneven admixture, thoroughly entangled. This content, our lifeline, was simultaneously awaited, ignored, remembered, engaged, required, imposed, delighted, annoyed, amused--our choices; our obligations.
For example, on the ubiquitous “Nextdoor” site--a mostly neighborhood bulletin board, someone reported a neighbor for peppering their “hellstrip”--the grass between the sidewalk and the street--with cayenne. A flood of responses ensued--speculative, critical, empathic, comical, even an entrepreneurial lawyer’s speculation that the cayenne strewer could incur liability for a car wreck, manslaughter, or both.
Respondents agreed that the cayenne was meant to discourage dogs’ use of the hellstrip. Some saw unusual cruelty--others saw cayenne as organic and warranted given the unruliness of canines and their careless owners. Comments spun wildly and devolved into interchanges, including: who did/did not support animal cruelty; who did/did not enjoy sufficient privilege to have their own backyard; who did/did not clean up dog poop; who did/did not grasp the damage dog pee causes; who did/did not properly train their dog; and more. The lawyer’s quickly drawn case study, evoked other legal-sounding replies, and rousing, if not always civil, debate. The range was dazzling, extravagant, troubling, delightful and time consuming.
Each writer’s perspective exposed character and identity traits, or so I speculated--a favorite pastime. Flights, ferries, meetings, worship, coffee shops, and online exchanges add characters for my still-to-be written novel. My mode of curation requires limited knowledge. If the figures become elaborated, I am thwarted in my work to fill-in these outline-only people, with imagined content, motives and passions. So collecting them quickly and always partially is requisite--even as I am also collected.
My reply on Nextdoor would have asserted that grocery store quality cayenne pepper costs nearly $7 for just 2 ounces--not even a handful. How much cayenne is required to properly season your “hellstrip”? I would have urged including the cost of latex gloves, since handling hot peppers burns your skin? What, dear reader, might these comments reveal about me, if I had shared these concerns? But, I remained quiet--watching, listening on-screen, with no one able to see or hear me. But if this conversation had unfolded at Blue State, my face might well tell the whole story.
After fourteen months, our enforced separation ends. We hear the clear invitation to step back into a complex conversation of real human characters. Like the 17-year Cicadas whose emergence we await, we may awkwardly blink at the light awaiting the return of our wings of expression.
Our loss in isolation and our gratitude at release can fuel our returning to the world with compassion and beyond fear. If we were spared the worst in this seige, we know that others were not. Shedding our carapace of cameras, mikes, and volume controls, the bracing nuance, fragrance and emotional demand of returning is a bit overwhelming. Switching ourselves off is not an option. Dumped back into human complexity, and glad for it--at least at the beginning, we may struggle. Remembering how much we missed each other as well as how difficult it can be to live together, asks of us humor and patience. Generosity of soul will strengthen us to welcome all the human messiness we are gladly regaining. Real coffee, real tables, real people, unplanned, unfinished encounters will again be normal. Neighbors strewing cayenne need not be mysteries. We can ask directly--though we might not. Surely enigmatic, inscrutable people and ideas will remain human norms.
The pandemic exacted a high price and continues. We are not now the same people who fled one another in fear more than a year ago. While loss and separation increased our wisdom, kindness, humor, even gratitude, the fear we practiced also left its marks. Like Cicadas, we are magical and buzzingly frightening, a bit Kafka-like. We did truly miss one another. But when slumping shoulders now contextualize “I’m fine, what about you,” the moment requires a choice to inquire or ignore? These choices matter.
Can activism and compassion coexist? Will we continue to insist on equitable access to health care even as we celebrate vaccinations? Can humor prevail in the face of our neighbor’s solutions? Is there kindness for the grief that swamped so many? Can characters in narratives be fully rendered without threatening our autonomy? If “yes”, then perhaps we can partially honor how we weathered the siege at our personal “hellstrip”--the one that spans from the reaches of eternity’s threshold to canine misconduct.
Cayenne? Really?
