Today was a strange day.
I don't know why, but nothing catastrophic happened, I was in relatively good spirits all day long and nothing really went fuck-o to alter that. So it felt weird to have an uneventful day. I killed myself at the gym today, we did a nightmarish work out of deadlifts and then a crazy fast, go as hard as you can cardio workout set. I thought I was going to fall over when I was done.
Somewhere along the way today though I had a very interesting conversation with someone I had never met. He was a guy that was waiting for the same bus as me. I have seen him around town, he is developmental disabled maybe, or it could be that he is just crazy, tough to say. Anyway he is Dominican, has been in the US for 5 years and through his broken english this is what I caught:
He came to the US because his family was here, everywhere really, Boston, NY, Florida, but he has been homeless for a year now because his family--and I gathered that this is extended family--kicked him out. He said that being in the US changed them, because they never would have acted like that in the Dominican Republic, so he was going home because that is where his mother lived and he wanted to see her again.
What struck me was the way that he talked about the deterioration of his family unit. Over the summer I read a lot of books that were written by South Americans and I was struck by the Romantic (and I am using the term to describe the Romantic Countries; namely France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Romania and their colonial offshoots which seem to inherit a lot of their social mores) sense of family and mourning. My impression from the literature of Neruda, Garcia Marquez, Cortazar, Saramago, Paz and Eco is that there is a way that all of those people's families act in a situation. Death for example is grieved in a very formal way, you wear black, you don't take vacations, you do things in a very particular fashion, then when the mourning is over, you go back to the way things were. I think I like that.
But I think it is sad to hear, from someone on the street, that the beautiful essence of that community can be stripped out by living the US for too long.
The other thing that really struck me about this interchange was the way the guy just seemed like he wanted someone to talk to, he didn't ask for anything, he wasn't offensive or abrasive he just wanted to talk and tell me how long he had been here, how he learned English and how his family had been mistreating him.
It made me sad to be from the United States; that this is our legacy somehow. I know it isn't, but it is to that man.
I don't know why, but nothing catastrophic happened, I was in relatively good spirits all day long and nothing really went fuck-o to alter that. So it felt weird to have an uneventful day. I killed myself at the gym today, we did a nightmarish work out of deadlifts and then a crazy fast, go as hard as you can cardio workout set. I thought I was going to fall over when I was done.
Somewhere along the way today though I had a very interesting conversation with someone I had never met. He was a guy that was waiting for the same bus as me. I have seen him around town, he is developmental disabled maybe, or it could be that he is just crazy, tough to say. Anyway he is Dominican, has been in the US for 5 years and through his broken english this is what I caught:
He came to the US because his family was here, everywhere really, Boston, NY, Florida, but he has been homeless for a year now because his family--and I gathered that this is extended family--kicked him out. He said that being in the US changed them, because they never would have acted like that in the Dominican Republic, so he was going home because that is where his mother lived and he wanted to see her again.
What struck me was the way that he talked about the deterioration of his family unit. Over the summer I read a lot of books that were written by South Americans and I was struck by the Romantic (and I am using the term to describe the Romantic Countries; namely France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Romania and their colonial offshoots which seem to inherit a lot of their social mores) sense of family and mourning. My impression from the literature of Neruda, Garcia Marquez, Cortazar, Saramago, Paz and Eco is that there is a way that all of those people's families act in a situation. Death for example is grieved in a very formal way, you wear black, you don't take vacations, you do things in a very particular fashion, then when the mourning is over, you go back to the way things were. I think I like that.
But I think it is sad to hear, from someone on the street, that the beautiful essence of that community can be stripped out by living the US for too long.
The other thing that really struck me about this interchange was the way the guy just seemed like he wanted someone to talk to, he didn't ask for anything, he wasn't offensive or abrasive he just wanted to talk and tell me how long he had been here, how he learned English and how his family had been mistreating him.
It made me sad to be from the United States; that this is our legacy somehow. I know it isn't, but it is to that man.
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I was just going to drop you a line to recommend the poem "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai. Check it out if you havent. It took my breath away.
That poem shows up in a collection of his titled "The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai". It is worth a look, seriously. My favorite professor let me have his copy for Christmas break. After reading a little of it, I ordered a copy of it for myself. He is an Israeli writer.
Thanks for the compliment