The concept of opportunity and love

Approximately five minutes away from my house stands a gate of corroded metal which encases metal shacks where presumably people live. I know this because I pass by it everyday , and it stands out like a sore thumb a stark reminder of the poverty that lies beneath the surface.

But ultimately, I chose to walk by. You grow used to do this here. You would go crazy if you don’t. You grow used to seeing but not seeing, of keeping your eyes straight ahead when you walk, in swallowing your fear because if you do if you stop you might be in danger. You might fall back and see something you might not like.  Poverty is evident here, like a large scar but you go through life trying to not see it. It’s a leftover from my preppy school upbringing.  It’s probably what others do when they go on the trains in europe and ignore the romanian woman placing requests for donations . You just can’t humanize it. That’s what people tell themselves… and I guess it’s a coping mechanism because if we really let ourselves feel for them how could we go back ?

At least that’s what you tell yourself. But on Saturday morning, I went into that metal gate, inside a slum that I would have otherwise ignored. I didn’t know the way in so a boy offered to walk with me to go inside.  Inside the shacks were stacked one across the other, nothing I hadn’t seen before but never in such close proximity. The dusty floor, the tiny boxed surfaces of housing which would only be one room otherwise.

And there I stood in quiet contemplation wondering how all of this could exist right beside me, how this life was so different from my own.  They had been there since the war and probably longer, refugees given asylum but essentially were left to a fate of getting used to a land that at any point could be taken from them. Most of the 150 people there did not work, and they were at the moment trying to get them to move away to an apartment complex and convince them to pay forty dollars a month for rent. 

I wonder about this. And one told me how he had once went to the United States, of walking for days and going by bus from mexico and crossing a river to get to the united states. Of living in constant fear of being discovered of the exorbitant costs of rent. And ultimately his deportation back to this area. But he is hopeful, and proud and wants to change the community he cares about. He works with the group who wants to offer an education and give junior youth and children class . 

And I hope these kids are offered a choice, and ability to educate and empower this community. Because a lot of times, people get caught up in making the american dream that they forget on the people they leave behind.

My housekeeper left to Texas after nine years doing paperwork. She is the first of her family going on plane. She hasn’t seen her husband for nine years. Will it be the same? How is she coping when she doesn’t know how to use a microwave ? I wonder about her, and the two boys she is forced to leave behind.

So many broken families separated for years, so many people never looking back and only returning with strong american accents and pinched noses eager to leave just as soon as they can.  And I, the girl who has no real blood ties and two shiny passports in her pocket feel a lingering guilt and sadness over it.

I can’t know that life. Just as others in the united states won’t know what it’s like to live without water for days on end or not have electricity.  I never lived somewhere with dirt floors on my feet, and I never didn’t have a choice. Yet, somehow I am in a situation where my life could be far better. The writing projects I have been getting are erratic, my friends and social life are sparse in between. Yet,it struck me on saturday what a luxury that I have that choice. That I don’t have to worry about water sources, That my future was never limited purely based on money.  These kids, they just came up to me and hugged me. They didn’t know me . They just wanted to be noticed and loved. 

And that is probably something we have to remember. Love is wealth. It really is. We go out of our way to pursue material things, and measure happiness in what we have and be miserable with what we don’t …. yet if we love  and we give love is it not a sign that we are wealthy?

Sometimes we have to lose a lot to know of the opportunities that are still out there. Hope filters through ashes, and sometimes it’s hard to find.  Here’s to better things…

Embracing Pain and Wearing your Battle Scars

 

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers ”  The Fault in our Stars

I came across an old poem of mine about my scars / pain that I was going through at the time and realized how stupendously self absorbed I was. Ah… the beauty of youth when you think you have it all figured it out. But it got me think of the subject of tests…

A friend of mine once told me that some tests are ones that we choose for it to happen, and there are those that happen because we need to grow. I wonder how he feells about this now, when he has such tests that he is in a wheelchair and half paralyzed with AIDS even though he is still relatively young.

Some sadness never leaves us. Some scars we will never truly recover from, and lay a heavy burden on our hearts.   There are cuts too deep to ever fully heal from. At times, like tonight they feel anew, and at others you feel saddened from a distance like watching a scene unfold that you wish went differently.

” Pain is like fabric. The stronger it is. The more it’s worth”. The Fault in our Stars

But sometimes we can get so caught up in our own version of sadness that we do not realize that out there, millions of people are suffering similar things.  We are not unique in our scars. Everybody hurts, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Instead, we put on a brave face to the world,  put on our masks to be accepted into society. We say, we’re o.k. and no one bothers to find out if it’s true because they too are wrapped up in their own pain.

And that pain, because a thing in of itself  a festering cancer which eats us up for awhile.  Or it can simply be buried so deep that you will only let it out on random occasions and it cuts so deep that people get scared by the ferocity of it’s pain.

No, we choose not to learn from the test. We become bitter, entrenched in our own case of sadness. We lock in ourselves and mistrust anything that comes along. We choose to believe in darkness . We can see darkness, we can taste it. But light? That require faith. That requires a will to get up and be brave.

It requires looking beyond yourself, and trying to serve others. Because if we did, if we got of our own head space we realized we weren’t that alone and we weren’t that different. And then we would channel that pain into learning, we would try to make and create an experience. If we are brave, we could realize that those scars , those scars are swords to make us who we are today. If we took it on ourselves to shine bright, to dream big to find beauty.  We wouldn’t let it win. Because our worst enemies? It isn’t those around us, it’s ourselves. 

 

i can see her clearly now
her voice echoed in cobwebs
A distant figure
blurred within time

a silhouette in a moon tinted beach
she comes to me in dreams
her eyes swallowed by goblins
There is something skitterish in her eyes

as her mouth overflows with snakes

Her chestnut brown hair ensared
Like children caught in cobwebs
her smile is pasted on carefully
Pieces that don't seem to fit quite right

She echoes softly to the moonlight
Making sure the rivers don't see her tears
Her eyes caress
Moon tinted beaches

She does not live in this world
But lives in glass and crystal

she echoes softly to the moonlight

so the rivers dont see her tears

her vest is open exposing her white lacy bra

but she is unaware of any sexuality

i see her eyes

carresss blue tinted skies

she does not live in this world
but one of glass and crystal
walking midnight gardens of jasmine

while black silhouettes wait for the darkness to 
descend quietly on circles i her eyes
her venus body creeping those horizons she is beautiful  lips

and bright smiles
but she doesn’t see it
her voice overflowing with rainbow



her arms cover from the storms of insults

ugly fat stupid clumsy...

she hovers in corners
and doesnt see the swords poking her back pocket
or the steel breast stitched to her side

 Blinded to  the light pouring out at her fingertips
she has no concept of evil
she lets the bruises descend on her once untouched ski

as they become scars

 she lets the words swallow her beauty
she lets them take away her rainbow words
and stow away her magic in ugly tinted jars
as she decides to die in gray twilight

 dear child
didnt u believe in the pumpkin?
she looks at me now

trying for me to forgive
the ghost i see before me
the rolls of fat that spill out
vanished beauty
but i am stronger now
i wouldnt want to take her back
there is a strange beauty
in imperfection

( poem written at age 18.... not sure if I have the same perspective now   
I love this quote from Abdul Baha about suffering :

 ”The mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly life until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness. Man is, so to speak, unripe: the heat of the fire of suffering will mature him. Look back to the times past and you will find that the greatest men have suffered most.”