Late-week SOL: Girl G on the Street

Tonight I went to a writing workshop in Bryant Park.  I almost didn’t: I was dropping from general exhaustion, I left work late with my new shoes giving me a blister.  But I went.  Oh, and Rain (definitely with a capital “R”.)  Came up from the D train into a downpour that made sense of the flood watch we’ve been under all day.  I just smiled, put up my umbrella and sloshed over to 44th Street (rainy weather alternative to Bryant Park).

I wasn’t sure if this workshop was a good idea for me.  I’m a writer, after all.  I don’t really need anyone to teach me how to get started writing … except that I do.  I’ve been so busy, so unable to get much of anything on the page, so sucked dry.  I hoped that sitting in a room with a bunch of people who wanted to write would push me a little, set my pen to paper, free me to say whatever.

I’m so glad I went.  The young woman leading the workshops is wonderful.  She has a lovely generous energy, and seems to really want to see the world writing.  She has the fabulous ability to find something good and lovely in every piece, and she clearly enjoys her work.

Tonight was “creative non-fiction.”  I missed the first part of the night, when she talked about the genre.  I arrived as she led the group through readings and mini-discussions of three examples.  Then it was time for us to write.  Our assignment:  take a ten-minute walk outside, then come back and write.  Afterwards, volunteers read their pieces and she commented on the work.  There were awkward pieces and pieces that were strange and difficult in unappealing ways.  There were some pleasures, however.  One woman wrote an excellent piece about a beautiful, tattooed Polish woman she’d talked to on the street. 

That talking on the street had been our cue.  Before we’d gone outside, we were encouraged to be brave, to talk to strangers.  I had kind of laughed at that, felt as though I was cheating.  If you’ve spent much time reading here, you’ll know that I need no directives to go talk to strangers.  I am always and always talking to strangers.  But I love the ‘take a walk and come back and write’ exercise.  I used it often with my adult literacy classes, have used it with my teen GED students.  I haven’t done it in a while, however, and I was excited to get outside and see what I found, see what would find its way onto the pages of my little purple notebook.

Here it is:

Considering how many people look at me and shy off in fear, it always charms me how many others approach, smile, talk, trust.  I should not be fearsome to any.  Yes: tall, big, black, kinky-haired.  But look at me: open face, full smile, eyes looking right into yours, voice warm and kind.  Still.  This one clutches her bag a little tighter.  That one gives me an extra foot of passing space, cutting her eyes at me as she scurries by.

But it’s a beautiful 7:55 July night after a crashing bucket-dump of rain.  The air smells clean, feels gentle on my arms, the street glistens, the city ripples in puddles big enough to carry the Chrysler Building.  I can’t be bothered with the ones who fear me.

A family — older couple, younger couple — is posing for pictures on the corner.  I stop and ask if they’d like a shot with all of them together.

Not a moment’s hesitation, no quick eye-flinch of worry that I’ll take their gorgeous camera and run.  The dad shows me how to work the controls.  The mom explains that they’d made an impulsive decision to see New York for a day in the middle of a visit to see their daughter and son-in-law in Boston.

I take two photos.  We smile our goodbyes and part with a double gift: all of us walk away knowing that I am nice.

Next week’s memoir.  Guess who’ll be there, pen in hand?

Crowd Control

My Living Colour memoir got me thinking about all the concerts Fox and I have been to.  We went to all kinds of shows, even camped out all night in the cold to get tickets.  We weren’t exactly groupies (well, not all the time), but we were … dedicated.

The thing about me and Fox at concerts is this: we would always get right up front at the stage … and then at some point Fox would decide to leave, to move to the back of the room.  I wouldn’t want to surrender my excellent position, so I’d wave goodbye and meet up with her after the show.

The other thing about me and Fox at concerts is this: Fox was always right to leave when she did.  I would wave her off, and almost immediately after she left, I’d find myself suffering as the crowd went to the dark side.

Fox has crowd sense.  Better than any I’ve ever seen or heard of.  She knows just the moment before a crowd is going to turn, when the dancing fans are going to cross over into an angry feral mob, when the drugged and drunk rowdies at a party are just about ready to turn on the other guests.  She’s like some kind of dousing rod for violence.

In my last experience of not listening when Fox said it was time to move, we were at a Midnight Oil concert.  We weren’t right at the front of the stage, but we were pretty close.  She left, I stayed.  The crowd got rough instantly.  Someone started punching me in the kidneys, I guess with the idea that if I went down, I’d be out of their sight line to Peter Garrett?  I tried to move away from the puncher, but people had rushed in so close to the stage I couldn’t move much in any direction.  Then someone hit me a whole lot harder, and I fell.   And people started kicking me.

I was pretty sure I would die on that floor.  I couldn’t move myself in any way that would help me get to my knees, help me find a way to stand.  I tried pulling into a fetal position, tried to protect my face, worried about Fox finding my body after the show.

Then there was a voice in my ear:  “Come with me.”

And a man was down next to me on the floor, putting his arms around me and pulling me up.  He gave me a quick once over to make sure I was ok.  And, impossibly, I was.  He leaned in close again to shout in my ear:

“What do you want to do?  I can you here next to me, or I can get you out.”

“Out, please.”

Two simple words, but I had no idea how that would happen when the crowd wouldn’t let us move forward or back.  He wasn’t much concerned.  “I going to pick you up,” he said, “send you out over everyone’s heads.”

(It should but may not be immediately evident from my photo on the Hey page: I am what some like to call a Woman of Size.  Picking me up is hardly a casual endeavor.  Passing me over the heads of a crowd?  Um … unlikely.   I didn’t argue with him, however.  He sounded sure that he could get me out, and I wanted to go.)

He announced his plan to the people around us and then, somehow, lifted me and set me off on a kind of dead-man’s float version of crowd surfing: I didn’t have the energy to lift my feet to keep my Blundstones from slamming into people’s shoulders and heads.  I just lay there, letting all those strangers’ hands move me toward the barricade at the front of the crowd where the security guards grabbed me, put me back on my feet and walked me off to the sidelines.

You would have to do some kind of fancy mind control to convince me that was a real man in that crowd and not Divine-Intervention-made-flesh, swooping in to save my life and then disappearing.  You know, like all good guardian angels do.

After that show, I promised Fox I’d always move when she sensed the crowd’s mood shift.  At the Living Colour/stun gun concert, when Fox called time, we went up to the balcony.  As we reached the upper level, the crowd below started grabbing people and slamming them to the floor … right in the spot where we’d just been standing.

_____

is hosted by Stacey and Ruth at Two Writing Teachers.

Hits and Misses

The other night, just after I came up from the subway and crossed Pacific Street, there was a car accident on 4th Ave and Pacific.  Someone trying to make it through the intersection as the yellow was changing to red, someone else anticipating the change from red to green.  The sound was huge and scary.  The hit was so hard that the Pacific Street car was thrown across the intersection and up onto the sidewalk where I’d just been walking.

In a city with so many cars, a city famous for aggressive driving, it’s a wonder I don’t see more car accidents.  But I don’t.  And each one I do see is shocking and upsetting.  My heart was beating painfully fast after the crash.  So fast that it took me a minute to think to call 911.  But there were so many people on the street dialing, by the time I gave my information to the operator, they’d already logged the accident and sent out EMS and the police.

I didn’t stick around, but walked down to my bus to take my shaky self home, thankful that I’d crossed the street exactly when I had.  Ten seconds slower and that Pacific Street car would have careened right into me.  I was sorry for the people in the cars, of course, but grateful I’d been missed.

And then last night I learned of another hit and miss.  After a week of mourning the loss of my friend Kenrick … I find that there are, in fact, two men in town with the exact same first and last name … and the Kenrick who has died isn’t the Kenrick I know.  Really.  What are the chances of this being true?  I finally got through to someone I’d been trying to reach all week to offer condolences and find out more about what happened … only to be given the news that “my” Kenrick is alive and well.  I saw a picture online today of the man who has died and he looks like a lovely man.  I am sorry that his family and friends have lost him.  But I am still grateful that the other Kenrick is just fine.

Uncounting my chickens.

faint hope sunken in
folded under disappointment
confidence slinks off
doesn’t bad news come in threes
storm clouds still hang over me

Got home to a kindly-worded form email telling me I didn’t get the fellowship.  I don’t think I had a strong chance at getting it, but I wanted it more than I can articulate, and this rejection feels like a blow.

I know how unwise it is to pin all hopes on one possibility, especially such a paper-thin possibility.  Still. I’m sorry for my loss.  Not, at this moment, feeling very ‘pick myself up, dust myself off, start all over again.’

Magic Words

I met Kenrick on the beach.  I was sitting in front of the fisherman’s supply store at Calabash Bay.  I was about halfway through my early morning bike ride, sitting on the low wall in front of Mr. Graham’s shop, writing in my journal.

It would have been impossible not to notice him: a tall, beautiful man with sun-dark, caramel skin, short, dark blond locks and a smile that lit up his face when he saw me.  He smiled and nodded and continued on his way … then passed back a few more times after that, smiling and nodding each time.

On the last pass he spoke: “What works you performing?”

I’ll admit that I loved this question … and that I had not the first idea what it meant.  Turns out he was referring to my journal, to my writing.  What works was I performing?  I know I believe in the magic of writing, but his question made it exquisitely mysterious, made my pen and paper more like a wand and spellbook!

And that was all I needed.  That question, and I knew we’d get along, knew we’d be friends.

Still so hard to believe he’s gone, this big, pretty man with the full-bodied laugh.  He would greet me with a tough handshake and a loudly exclaimed, “Rastafari Bless!”  If I was too far away for him to call out his hello, he’d put both hands over his heart and bow.  Seeing him always made me smile.

_____

This poem is a favorite of mine.  I thought of it this morning when I remembered my reaction to Kenrick’s question that morning at Calabash Bay.

Magic Words
after Nalungiaq

In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen –
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That’s the way it was.

Translated from the Inuit by Edward Field