Corners

Life seems to me more of a maze than a line. There are long, unremarkable stretches of time, and then suddenly, you're in a corner - a pocket, if you will, of memory so vivid you can close your eyes and be there. Be ten again, at the fifth grade Christmas party, frosting cookies the frazzled PTO moms made (read: picked up at Target). Be three, at a little shop in Boston with erasers the shape of cakes. Twelve, doing the dishes to Bon Iver; two, "reading" The Cat in the Hat; sixteen, eating brussel sprouts in the choir room. I have pockets of memory I haven't experienced yet, and pockets that won't be filled.

This is how to know people: stand by for their stretches, be there to see their pockets. I enjoy observing people. This is how I act. Acting is interesting, because so many people do it for so many reasons - some for escapism, some to better understand the world around them. I act to learn about other people. I act to disappear into another lived experience. To better empathize with these lived experiences, I must observe them, but only in the portions an individual is willing to dish out. It is not beneficial to dig. People are, by nature, enigmatic, and I believe they should remain so to some extent. So I pick up the pieces I can.

I collect them at the airport, from the hijabi mother and her three children, their Thomas the Train backpacks ants bobbing in a crowd; from the people I think I know, but have only just begun to see; from pencil shavings and ink stains and tattoos and scars. I lap them up at every opportunity.

The pocket of memory we are living now should be interesting, because we will all have a similar outline of quarantine and masks and hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Seven billion similar boxes with different contents. My box-pocket has been relatively tame, for which I am incredibly grateful. Others are filled with hurt. Emotional, cultural, and economic trauma. Loss. When I read Chadwick Boseman had passed, I thought it was a sick joke; this goes to say that my own relatively tame box has suffered its own wave of desensitization.

During the black plague, Europeans began to denounce the church, Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise. A kind deity would not do this. A benevolent creator would hear their prayers, rescue them, take pity. I'm curious how faith is holding up now. Is it suffering or strengthening? Sometimes, I think it must be nice to subscribe to a religion; there would be a sort of safety there. A sort of security.

2020 is the year of coping mechanisms, and we all have our own. I think that's sort of beautiful. That we are going on, despite pandemics and fires and hurricanes and pollution and murders and social unrest and devastation. Going on, in itself, is a hopeful way of being. I have hope, if not faith, for tomorrow. That the sun will rise. That the people will rise. I have hope for love and for light. I think all of our corners are tinged with hope at the moment, because we are here and we are doing and we are being. 

Today, I pick up pieces through the news stream and through album covers. I pick up pieces in text messages and phone calls, wax-sealed letters, masked laughter and masked tears. The latter just so happens to be the symbol for theatre. Emotions, masked. This is what acting is. This is what you will find, when unveiling a corner. Here is our collective lived experience, enigmatic and grey and strangely hopeful.

Personally, I think that is a remarkable thing. 

Photo by Dimitri Bong on Unsplash