Book impressions

 

Realizing that what I write after a book is not so much a review as an impression of its lingering shadows, the way its footprints have contoured my consciousness. That these new dips and curves, corners of toes will remain in the way my mind interfaces with the world around me. 

And having said that, this book is a bestseller recommended by dear friends years ago. It failed to hold my attention, though I've tried several times to pick it up over the last five-ish years. This fall, something clicked. And it's been oddly comforting to read of a blind girl and white-haired boy traversing the insane uncertainty of a world war. Part of that comfort stems from the writer's voice. When you read, does the book sound a certain way in your head? Some books have no sound, others are just my own voice. Some sound like the writer. This one--I don't know what the writer sounds like--but this one is old and young, history and fantasy, and certainly not mine. 

This is a voice of wonder and innocence, sustained and uplifted through every page. Childlike in how pure its emotions are. Fear, all-encompassing. This moment amongst the snails, absolute. This hunger, complete. Each line, each paragraph sucks you in until there is nothing beyond it, nothing before or after.  Meditative and inexorable in its intensity. And each moment in the story spirals upward, from sea to sky to the nature of love and light. Light cleared by wind, the voice says, and I smell a washed sky.  

(The book: All the light we cannot see, by Anthony Doerr)

On being brown

I don't know where I stand. Not black, not white. This is what brown looks like: I have been followed around as I tried on clothing. Harassed by cab drivers, multiple times. Told my backpack wasn't allowed in the grocery store. Told to go home.

Today, in a virtual room with some of the white people I feel safest with, one person asked: Where do they get the message that they aren't welcome? The question was addressed to another immigrant, who mentioned that some other immigrants she knows feel unwelcome/ uncomfortable with the emotions in the air right now. My immigrant friend in the room can pass as white. I spoke up, only because these are the people I know they are. They are far more than just allies.

As is my child's white nanny, who told me earlier this week how sad she felt that all white people were being labeled racist. I stumbled over words to explain how it felt to be on a 6-hour boat ride with a man wearing a certain red hat and a giant, shiny hunting knife on his belt.

I don't remember what I said to the group today. Except that the world changed in November 2016. My grocery store, the one in liberal California, was a place I questioned. I don't exactly paint all white people the bad guys. But I will not let down my guard until they prove they're good.  Those stickers in store windows that proclaim everyone is welcome? They make me feel a tiny bit safer. Perhaps they're like anti-red hats. It took a massive amount of courage to say these things. I am still shaking and teary from it.

And now remember: I am not black. I have only seen a fraction of the injustices a black person in this country has, and faced them only as an adult. I am privileged, with my money and "model immigrant" status at banks and jobs and elsewhere. And remember: I, a not-black person, said this to five white people who I know beyond all doubt are allies.

Dear white ally, if you are still reading, know this: This is a sliver of what your black friends are feeling. Stand with them, but ask them how you make them feel. Ask what you--yes, you, dear white person at the protest--can do differently every day. Be prepared to hear they have nothing to say to you. To hear your friend was putting on a performance to fit in. To hear you're the bad guy until proven otherwise. If you find it difficult to sit with those things, think hard before you stand up to protest. Because when you stand a white shield protecting a black body, you need to know that your shield was forged in the same privilege that wields the guns and hate.

I don't know where I stand. I can protect myself, if not from casual racism, at least from the more egregious social injustices of being denied loans or employment or safe housing.

I don't need a shield. My skin makes a poor one. Would I have spoken up in that room today if I were black? Perhaps being brown and privileged is this. Having a voice in a safe space. If not a shield, perhaps what I can offer is a little light.

In this together

The thing I miss most is being able to go. Go to the store, to the airport, to a meeting, just away.
That lost time where I hold coffee and boarding pass in one hand while I reach for the wallet in my handbag to pay for the cereal bars I always stock at home and forget to pack. Will I remember the moves to this shuffle when I fly alone next? I miss browsing paperbacks with no intent to buy. The ability to touch new spines, new words, new spaces in the minutes before we lift weightless into blue sky.

This is what I miss, the time I stayed up all night answering emails and doing laundry before getting on a flight to see my parents. That time we took vacations on a whim. This going to the airport, dropping the rental car off, the hiss of the shuttle bus as the doors close and we go. Go toward home, anywhere. Go wash dishes, leave them to drip-dry on the black granite of my mother's counters. Go away from here.

And in lieu of that we are here. Here in this strange place of indeterminate time where people drop like flies. Where I worry that my parents must wash their own dishes and worry if the neighbors go in to help. Fear if you touch the wrong potato at the grocery store. Hope that me staying home, you staying put, this whole planet of us halted in a collective freeze dance to the tune of love will keep them safe, these places and people and hearts so far beyond where any flight will take us now.

This universal exercise in holding still. Learning to make like a tree, rooted where we are planted, we grow things. One friend's sourdough smells like old socks but will make beautiful bread, she says. Another sows cilantro for the first time. We notice sparrow song and where the cobblestones in the backyard dip to make a puddle where my daughter's rainboots fit. She hops and hops and lifts against the air until she is breathless.

We dig deep, into ourselves and earth and pantry and couch and all these places we hope will be safe. Strongholds where we can burrow, grow, emerge stronger collectively. Stay, we say. Stay home. Stay safe. Stay still. Stay strong. Stay well. Perhaps if we dig deep enough these illusions of home and wellness and strength will flourish within our planted, stationary selves. Perhaps this is how notions of home evolve from visions of cheery warmth into the jagged, frayed, sticky truth of family that never leaves no matter how far you go. Perhaps this is how love branches across the distant world, the way leaf tip never touches root and yet is always connected. Perhaps this is how we learn how we are all together, always. Even when I go, I stay. Even when I am here, I am there.

(Five months into the 2020 pandemic)

Pipe dreams

My breath catches on the smoke-filled air of Delhi today, a city I haven't returned to in nearly twenty years. In 2014, I remember what one person's victory felt like: the smell of burning tires. The cold metal bars on the locked gates of our apartment complex. A tall, dark barrier that kept me safe. The bars were easy to grasp, a support I could lean on as I looked out beyond. But they didn't block out the night air, or the sound of broken glass, or the stories of friends who slept with home-made bombs by their pillows.

We all agree this needs to end. But no one will stop until they're proved right. Here, two thoughts from more lucid minds:

1. "When there is a battle between right and right, a value higher than right must prevail. And that value is life itself." (Israeli novelist Amos Oz).

2. "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." (David Mitchell, in Cloud Atlas).

Otto Frank and countless other survivors forgave their captors after the Holocaust. They lived horrors and moved beyond them. Here, we kill and maim in the name of blood spilled so long ago it's the dust beneath our feet. In the fight of right and right there is no end to vengeance. But there is another way, if only we're willing to listen to other possibilities.

So yes, I dream of forgiveness and kindness and stuff my pipe with words of peace. I speak for kindness. I think of impossible things each day: that blood remain encased in skin. that no houses burn.  With each breath I stand for equality. I pray that these  wisps of air traverse the impossible distance between here and there.