Asakiyume mita

There's a scene early on in Miyazaki's Spirited Away when day suddenly turns to night--a sweep of nightfall crossing the scene, and with the darkness come the spirits, disembarking to visit the tea house. Chihiro's reality changes around her in an instant.

This happened to me yesterday evening when I was waiting at international arrivals in Logan Airport for Wakanomori's plane to touch town. It wasn't crowded--a few people sitting on chairs in the waiting area, a few random people like me, airport staff. I decided to walk the length of the arrivals floor. Down one way, then back to the center, where a big door with "Customs and Immigration: Do Not Enter" disgorges new arrivals, and then down the other direction, past where people were sitting on chairs and on the floor.

Oh but wait. This was a lot of people. And an awful lot of small kids. It was families. And each family had a bright-colored fleece blanket on the floor, sometimes two. Some children were sleeping. There were big plastic bags here and there.

( another world )

If only all the world's trauma could all be addressed with a kit.

A kid came up to me in the early evening of my first full day in Leticia as I was going into an eatery. She was skinny, with hair going every which-way and dark patches on her face that might have been bruising or dirt or a birth mark. She said something to me that I didn't quite understand--but I suspected that she was asking for money, so I opened my purse to get out some money.

"No, no," she said. And then something else ending in "sopa" (soup).

"You want me to buy you a soup?" I asked.

She nodded.

So we sat down at a table, and when one of kitchen staff came over, I ordered fish for me and a soup for her--and with my eyes I tried to ask silently for indulgence/forgiveness/understanding because I know that one person's idea of a good deed can cause trouble for other people, but the woman just nodded, like she did understand and wasn't troubled.

I asked the kid how old she was, and she said eighteen. I highly, highly doubt this, not just from her size, but from the way she acted. But maybe she truly was: not getting enough to eat can stunt your growth. Or maybe she had reasons for claiming to be not-a-minor. I asked her what her name was, and she said "Jennifer," pronouncing it like an American. I asked her if she had any brothers or sisters, and she said she had older brothers.

The woman brought out a soup.

"And can I have a soda?" Jennifer asked. So I got her a soda.

"Boy they sure are slow here bringing you your fish!" Jennifer said in a loud voice. The women at the next table, who were wearing uniforms for the Claro mobile phone company, looked over, frowning.

"It's fine. The fish takes time to cook," I said.

"I think they're just SLOW" she said. And then, brightly, "Hey, when it comes, you'll share your rice, won't you?"

"Sure, okay," I said. And I asked the woman from the kitchen if we could have two plates.

Eventually the fish came, and I put half the rice on the second plate.

"And can I have some of the fish, too?" Jennifer asked.

"Okay," I said, and gave her half the fish. This was fine: I couldn't have finished the whole thing anyway.

She ate with food-flying gusto, sometimes shooting rude remarks to the kitchen staff, who replied that she'd better behave herself or they'd call the police, whereupon she offered her thoughts on snitches who call the police.

At other moments she seemed about to fall asleep into the plate, her eyelids half closing. I suspected narcotics rather than exhaustion, and the fact that she put a teeny-tiny twisted plastic bag of something on the table strengthened my suspicion. But she always roused herself.

After she finished eating, her remarks to the staff got more provocative, and they repeated their threats. I felt anxious and sorry--anxious that we were well past wearing out our welcome, sorry for the employees, sorry for the other customers, and extremely sorry for Jennifer and her situation.

"Jennifer, you've had something to eat. Maybe now would be a good time to leave?" --I said this knowing full well that she likely had no place to go to.

"Okay," she said equably, and sauntered out. One of the Claro employees offered her a half-empty bottle of soda, and Jennifer took it.

After she left, I apologized to the Claro women and the kitchen staff, and everyone said no, no, it wasn't a problem at all. I asked the kitchen staff what Jennifer's story was, and they said that her parents were likely drug addicts and that she lived on the streets.

I didn't ask about social services. I know there are some around--I looked, later on. But there are always reasons why, and times when, what's available doesn't help, as I know only too well from how things work here in the United States.

I can imagine Jennifer's story any way I want. I can imagine that she finds her way to people who help her out. That she's able to escape the road that seems mapped out for her. But my imaginings are only that: imaginings. In the end all I actually did for Jennifer was provide one meal.

I broke my toe! Falling down in my own house! How dumb is that? And when the doctor looked at the X-ray, he said he wanted to talk to a foot surgeon because of the nature of the break... and now they want to do surgery. I am NOT EAGER for that, not one bit. I thought they could just put it in a boot and it would get better. So I will talk to the surgeon tomorrow and try to get a better sense of things.

This was not in my game plan, but I guess breaking random bones, big or small, rarely is in anyone's game plan.

I was saying to malorys_camera that a switch has flipped in my brain and now I'm tired of thinking about COVID 19. The other day I went several tens of minutes without thinking about it at all, and that was great! (Don't mistake me; I'm not saying that it's not serious--not saying that at all--I'm just saying that having my thoughts chained to it feels like being Alex in Clockwork Orange when he's got his eyes stuck open and is being force-fed Beethoven's Ninth. You could be exhausted by something as lovely as Beethoven's Ninth if the circumstances were right, and let's be real: COVID 19 is not that lovely.)

So for a change of scene, let me show you the Hardware of the Street which I discovered. I mean! Programming for a whole street! Admittedly a street in a housing development in western Massachusetts, so like, not the most crucial of streets. But just imagine what directives and protocols it might hold. What if roads communicated up to the things that pass along them?



And speaking of, you'll enjoy a year's worth of animals passing over this natural bridge (condensed into five minutes--try watching just one! You'll be hooked), if you haven't already encountered it on your social media feeds. You'll be surprised at the variety of animals using it--fun to see the river in different states, as well.

In her latest Patreon post, sovay talks about two frustrating films and one id-tastic one. The first of the frustrating ones, which, she reports, in large part "feels like someone drew a line through the set labeled "GOOD TASTE" and everyone kept getting CAD injuries trying not to cross it," reminded me of something hilarious and awful that happened at my church's All Saints Day mass.

For All Saint's Day, the religious ed program always has a few teens pick a saint, dress up as them, and then tell the congregation about them in the first person: "Hi, I'm Saint Peter, and Jesus and I go way back." There are actually interesting female saints out there, but aside from the frequent Mother Teresa (now officially St. Teresa of Calcutta), the girls mainly pick the most revolting examples of simpering victimhood, and this time that meant St. Maria Goretti, who was canonized for fighting off a rapist, getting stabbed, forgiving her attacker, and dying. At age eleven. She's now the patron saint of rape victims, which ... let's not even talk about how emotionally unhealthy that is.

But what made this teen's portrayal of this saint extra ludicrous and sad was that someone--her family? The religious ed instructor? She herself?--had decided that rather than ever say "rape," she'd refer to that act as "taking my virtue." Just so you know, even Catholic websites use the word "rape." Nihil obstat! But instead we got this:

"I was a poor girl growing up in near Rome in the 1890s, and when I was only eleven, the neighbor's son wanted to take my virtue, but I didn't want to let him take my virtue, so he stabbed me. But on my deathbed I forgave him. Now I'm the patron saint of people who've had their virtue taken."

It was that final passive construction that really took the cake. The whole thing made me wonder what year I was in. And it made me want to prescribe a feminist reading course. I know, I know.

Anyway! Go clear your palate by reading Sovay's reviews. They'll cheer you up.

Lucio Perez came to the United States from Guatemala in the 1990s, undocumented. He's worked here peacefully ever since and never been in any trouble, but he came to the attention of ICE in 2009 when he and his wife stepped into a Dunkin Donuts, leaving their kids in the car. Charges against him were dropped but--well, you can guess how the story goes. He ended up scheduled for deportation in October 2017. Instead, he took sanctuary in an Amherst church and has been there ever since.

Photo of Lucio and his daughter Lucy, taken by Sarah Crosby for the Hampshire Gazette



The community has rallied around him and his family, but life has been very tough for them--emotionally, because the family only can visit three times a week, but also financially, since he obviously isn't able to work at his previous job.

As one way to earn some money, he's been offering group and private Spanish conversation lessons. Although it's not something I could afford to make a regular habit, I took one of the private ones--it's money toward a good cause and beneficial for me, too.

( more about the lesson )

I'm making a T-shirt. On the front it will say, "I was a stranger" and on the back it will say "And you welcomed me." I haven't finished it yet, however, so I just carried a sign that said "Welcome Refugees."

I took a bunch of pictures, but this is my favorite:



This woman's message, at Alewife Station (on the way into Boston), was very moving:



"I am: Arab Irani American"



This looked like the rugs you can see in the prayer room of a mosque. They're set out by a statue of Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal clergyman.



"All Muslims are terrorized by this presidency"



A game of hat-steal going on



There are some more here.

Same old stuff I've been dealing with for the past few months, but it's been taking it out of me recently. I'll have some fun book news tomorrow, but that's *business*. I find it hard to just talk, though. I carry around this invisible backpack stuffed with anxiety, hurt, sorrow, and anger, and it makes me tired. And it leaves me tongue tied.

There are still beautiful things! But it's hard for me to write about them. But like this morning, there were these two oak leaves chasing each other just like sparrows. I had to look twice to see that they weren't, in fact, sparrows. But I find it harder, these days, to find a reason to post something like that ... Maybe this is a separate problem, unrelated to paragraph 1. But the mood established by paragraph 1 affects my judgment, so it plays in.

barry_king has a scorching assessment of what racism is in here. This is at the heart:

Racism is when you let impunity create a system where
[a group] is denied justice
permanently. Institutionally. Because
"that's the stuff we did/do/will do.
We do this. Because we can,
because nobody will punish us for doing so."

He links to a 2011 Daily Kos article by Hamden Rice, "Most of You Have No Idea What Martin Luther King Did." He says it wasn't about speeches or marches, but about standing up to white people--who, as he points out, were liable to engage in "random, terroristic, berserk behavior" with impunity.

And that brings us Ferguson and last night's protests and what they're all about--not letting random, terroristic, berserk behavior happen with impunity. The behavior still happens. You know this either because you've experienced it yourself, or because your friends have, or because you've been told. Part of the struggle to end it is to make sure, when it does happen, it doesn't happen with impunity.

This will be probably the most sobering of my entries on Timor-Leste.

( First, a tiny bit of history )

The fighting was intense in Ainaro--Wikipedia notes that 95 percent of the buildings were burned by the departing Indonesian forces. One of the young men whom I talked to remembers his house being burned and fleeing to the mountains when he was ten years old. Another lost a father, an uncle, and seven half-brothers in the conflict. Many of the buildings remain in ruins:



A short walk from where I was staying is a place where the land falls away in sheer cliffs on both sides of the road. This place is known as Jakarta 2. It's where the Indonesian forces conducted executions--pushing people off the cliff. There's a concrete crucifix there now:



another memorial



The guy who took me here told me that when cars drive by here, they will slow down, out of respect, and people on motorbikes or foot will often stop for a moment to say a prayer.

We looked over the edge. I didn't take a picture. Too many ghosts.

All of which makes the children at the school across the street from where I was staying, singing Timor-Leste's national anthem while raising the flag of their eleven-year-old country, extra moving. (Voices you can hear are the voices of my two hosts.)




(If the embedding doesn't work for you, go here.)