My family is arriving in Cambridge tomorrow, after a whirlwind tour of New York City and a detour enroute to sweltering New England; they stopped at an outlet mall somewhere along the way on Tuesday night, they browsed in airconditioned comfort all of today and they’re fitting in more shopping tomorrow morning because the baby was fussy today and my sister didn’t get to each of the stores on her targeted strategic map. (Don’t be mad, O beauteous Sister-o-mine! I’m only teasing you because I love you and I hope you’re buying me presents!)

Anyway, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that…

… there’s room for the shopping bags in the boot. (”Boot” is one of the few linguistic leftovers I have, which for some reason hasn’t gotten transformed into “trunk. “Boot” and “lift” are almost it (I cannot say “elevator.” It makes me feel vaguely ill). On the other hand I do usually say “line” for “queue” these days and have almost forgotten that trash cans are called “rubbish bins” if they’re in the kitchen and “waste-paper baskets” if they’re under your desk. Aaaanyway.)

… they make it to Boston without Asher throwing up in the car.

… they don’t get lost! No! Getting! Lost!

… they like what we’ve done with our apartment.

… they like the apartment I sublet for them. I just remembered it doesn’t have sheets or towels! We should get those tomorrow.

… my parents look rosy, happy, and free from annoying health issues.

… my mom feels as beautiful as I know she looks. (She had surgery a bit ago — nothing serious — and feels a trifle self-conscious.)

… the baby doesn’t cry when he sees me.

… the baby doesn’t cry when I pick him up.

… the baby doesn’t cry.

… a bunch of other stuff involving the baby and bodily fluid. Just so we’re clear, I’m hoping for. no bodily fluid interaction.

… that it’s sunny and breezy and lovely like it can be here at its best, so they get a nice welcome.

Fingers. Crossed.

I just realized that I named yesterday’s entry and then changed my mind about the picture I was going to use with it. What a tease I am.

Here’s the one that goes with the title:

(Although, really, Ross and Jo and I _were_ a hot threesome, so I think it was right after all.)

Ok, first of all, people — I know where you work. You work in research labs. You work in hospitals. You work in film studios; some of you are artists and musicians. You have tools! They’re shiny and clinky and oily and rough, they’re whirry and radioactive and smooth. They’re really cool. Talk to me about them. What, you don’t like to talk about what you do? For shame! ;-)

Secondly, on Saturday — a sweltering 100 degree day — we decided that really, we weren’t quite hot enough, and needed to be around blazing columns of fire. The good people of Providence (bless their tourist-seducing hearts!) do this thing, see, every summer, where they light wonderful smoky woody torches all along their river, accompanied by things like living statues, live jazz stages, totally awesome capoeira performances, and a continuous soundtrack of opera-lite and new age music. And, of course, the requisite fried dough and hot dog stands. It’s really quite lovely; everyone is very chilled out, puppies and epsilons abound.

The funny thing is that according to their website, the concept (and name) of Waterfire Providence are proprietary. See that little trademark symbol? It says: You just try building another quaint little city full of charming architecture and tree-lined hills, calling it Providence, and recreating our idea! Hah! We’ll sue your asses! Of course, they did this so that they can sell merchandise and photographs of the event for lots of money, which I understand — it’s just that I think in order to trademark it, they had to declare the whole shebang was a “sculpture.” The torches, the music, the performances (what about the fried dough?) — they all add up to one great big sculpture. Kind of weird, eh?

The heat is making everything very slow and syrupy, including my synaptic activity, so I’m going to go watch another episode of Buffy (I knew Glory was a god!) while you all write epic poems about your test-tubes and oscilloscopes and film reels.

I’ve always liked the idea of having tools; a set of instruments that define the work you do, a collection of useful things that you can carry around in a bag or tuck in a drawer, that you can point to and say, “Look! Those are mine, I use them to make things, or fix things, or discover things. They’re wonderful, aren’t they? Here, let me show you how they work.”

I don’t exactly have a profession to speak of, and the one I’m engaged in at the moment has distanced itself from the days of inky presses and tumbling cubes embossed with letters, from ribbons and wheels. Basically, I’ve got a computer, some paper, and a lexicon of pretty words left over from those days. (For instance, when text is placed onto a designed page, we call it “pouring” — like molten metal being poured into carved molds.)

So if you’re reading, and your trade has tools, will you tell me about them?

Got some time to spend? Pull up a chair. Let me tell you a story.

Here’s how it starts: Yesterday a street poet made me cry.

I had met him twice before, each time paying him 50 cents or a dollar to recite one or two of his poems and then finding myself drawn into a long philosophical conversation with him. The first time we spoke was exactly four years ago yesterday, and I was so struck by the encounter that I emailed several people about it. Here’s what I said then.

The second time we met was last Monday, when I walked past him on my way to the Coop in Harvard Square, and decided it was about time to purchase another poem. That experience was very similar to the first one (he is still selling the same poems…), but this time we discussed only poetry. He recommended a few local poets. I kidded him that I’d need some new work if I was going to be a repeat customer.

And he told me his name, and let me tell him mine, when I explained that this was not our first conversation.

I left that meeting feeling much as I had four years ago, pleased and energized.

So how did he make me cry? Well. Yesterday after work I went to the library in Copley Square to take some photographs of an exhibit there, and as I was walking through the courtyard I noticed him sitting on a bench, reading…

*******

At first I can’t decide whether or not to say hello – but in the end I walk up and bend to him. “Hi, Pete.”

He looks up, considers me, and after a beat nods and closes his eyes, ah, like Ok, I get why you’re standing there, and returns his gaze to his book. I interpret this to mean that he has recognized me, and only wants to finish the sentence he is reading before greeting me. He doesn’t look up again, though, so again I say: “Hi, Pete. I was just –”

Without looking up from the page, he embarks on the following, delivered with gentle confidence: “When a person is suffering from great loneliness I generally recommend studying the Hebrew scriptures, or the Hebrew Bible. I find that there’s something very comforting about that kind of study.”

Since I’m not certain I understand his mental state I wait a moment to see if this train of thought will start to make sense in our current context; alternatively, I have an idea that he has decided to return in a roundabout way to the conversation we were having last time we met. But he continues to talk about the scriptures, and eventually I interrupt him: “I’m sorry. Do you remember me?”

He is surprised. He opens his eyes. Looks at me for a second. A long nod. “You’re… Myra?”

“Meera.”

“Yes, and… hmm, I’m not sure if I remember your last name… it’s…”

I tell him.

“Yes, yes. Here — ” He starts clearing a space next to him on the bench — “Sit down, sit down.”

We recap Friday’s talk a little bit, he asks me if I’ve managed to track down Amy Lowell, a poet whom he’d told me about, and as we’re sort of settling into things I say – as you do – “How are you?”

And believe it or not, this is the beginning of the turn of events that ends in me crying.

But back to the story. I’ve just asked how he is. In response he smiles dryly and tells me that he doesn’t think it’s wise to get too personal, because (here I’m distilling several minutes worth of speech)

a) It’s not really appropriate, and
b) Religion, and the attendant sense of community, are very important to him — and based on our conversation the other day, he doesn’t think it seems important to me.
c) Because religion is so important to him, when he meets someone who feels differently he wonders why it’s not important to them.
d) He doesn’t think there’s much point in becoming friendly or having a relationship with someone who doesn’t think religion is important.

Now, this is in no way a rant on his part. He’s speaking, and continues to speak, in a perfectly pleasant manner (although at some moments he does get a bit more insistent). If I choose, I can easily ignore these points he’s making and return to our conversation about poetry. But now I’m interested. I’m interested in what sort of interaction he thinks is worth having with someone who isn’t religious, and I’m interested in getting him to explain what exactly about religion is so fundamental that he couldn’t possibly share anything of a sense of community with someone who wasn’t religious.

I must be honest. I am interested in trying to get him to admit, if I can, that we are similar in our values and interests, and that to reduce things to the issue of religion is to miss the point.

You should also know that in no point in the conversation do I actually come out and say whether or not I am religious. I want to engage with him in an intellectual way, and in my mind I am having a conversation that is a bit philosophical – a bit playful.

(By the way, early in the conversation, when I am still feeling curious and sort of playful, I ask, “Do you always recommend the Hebrew scriptures when people say hello?”

He almost chuckles at this. Since there are many opportunities in the city for interacting with other people around specific activities, when a person starts talking to someone else “out of the blue,” it seems a bit strange. Although I had more of a reason to approach him, usually when someone comes up to him like that to start a conversation, the only reason he can think of to explain it is that they must be deeply lonely.

In retrospect I should have seen this as a sign that he tends to begin his interactions with people armed with a set of assumptions about them and their motives that can be skewed.)

Anyway, I’m setting out to “prove” that whether or not a person is religious doesn’t necessarily determine what they value, how they live their life, and the kinds of decisions they make, so I keep asking him, in different ways, to explain what qualities a religious person has that a nonbeliever can’t also possess.

It’s difficult work, because it’s so clear in his mind that he talks in circles. He keeps talking about community, and morality, and politics. He keeps talking about relationships and how a person lives. I keep pressing him, trying to make it clear that I don’t think any of those things are the domain of a religious person alone.

Eventually I tell him, “For instance, I consider myself a person who cares very much about politics, and ethics, and morality, and community, and relationships with other people. Those things are very important in my life. I’m not sure I understand why you think they’re somehow inseparable from religion.”

He smiles indulgently. “Well. You may consider that these things are important to you, but…”

Around here I begin to feel my pulse quickening, because even though I still sort of can’t believe anyone (anyone who loves poetry!) could really feel this way, I am starting to understand his meaning.

At one point he starts to talk about how impossible it would be for someone who believes in the laws of the United States to communicate with someone who believes in the laws of Nazi Germany. He brings up the conflict in Northern Ireland and suggests that it would be facile to claim that just because they’re both Christians, Irish Catholics and Protestants are the same, when all they want is to kill each other.

I am astounded, because his meaning is clear: We two are different from each other in this way. You are different from me in some way that creates a gulf between us as wide as the one between an American democrat and a Nazi. (And I’m going to guess he doesn’t think of himself as the Nazi part of the equation.)

Here comes my favorite part of the conversation. “It doesn’t mean I think of you as subhuman, or a pariah.” (Gee, thanks.) “But it does mean that I have a sort of… I consider our interaction sort of neutral, whereas there’s another kind of interaction which is positive, one that comes from a sense of community, and shared values, and working together for a common goal, and that’s very different. Two people may have a conversation, and treat each other decently as human beings, and… but…that can only happen in a very, sort of, superficial way, or they may communicate and relate to each other on a much deeper level, and it seems to me that you are a person who prefers this kind of… superficial interaction with others. (Because I asked you how you were? )

It’s not long after this that I find myself, my heart racing and crazily close to tears, realizing that I can’t continue to have this conversation without crying. I interrupt him to say, “I think it’s a bit presumptuous of you to tell me what is and isn’t important to me, and I think it’s incredibly presumptuous of you to tell me why I sat down here to talk to you.” And I reach for my bag.

As I pick it up and stumble to my feet, concentrating on not breaking into a sob, he calls after me.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. There’s a certain logic — ”

I think he’s about to say there’s a certain logic that I lack (earlier, he told me that the way I responded to something he said was “not logical, or reasonable”), but when I don’t turn around he falls silent. After a step I look back at him, my throat tight.

He’s gone back to his book. It’s as if I had never said hello.

*******

I can’t explain exactly why all this affected me so emotionally; why I was still kind of shaken and teary when I met Jo (and Jo) for drunken singing at An Tua Nua half an hour later, or why I feel the need to write about it in such detail. But I can tell you that, paradoxically, I feel better about the encounter I had with Pete yesterday than the one I had with him five years ago, when I wrote about him as if I had just had a dream: a misty, romanticized vision of a homeless man making a living by reading poetry on the streets; a grubby urban philosopher. I prefer our powerful disagreement, his surprising obstinacy, my hurt feelings, all of that, to the picture I had in my mind of him before. I prefer knowing that we had a passionate clash of beliefs, and that I saw something of who he really is. Even if I didn’t like it.

It makes me sad, though. Because for me it was an encounter that was difficult, fascinating, and enlightening; for him, one that only confirms what he already thinks he knows.

I’m pretty pooped today and we just borrowed the 5th season of Buffy from one of Ross’s colleagues, so I think I’m out for the count tonight.

All I have for you is this 31 year old photograph of my father and some friends in Glasgow, enjoying a drink at a (very friendly) pub.

P.S. He’s the handsomest one.

Earrings, coins, buttons, boys.
Innumerable
forks, spoons, and knives.
I am lucky to still possess all ten toes.

My accent.
(I pick it up sometimes on the phone
and play with it.)

A small glass bulb containing one red flower
a gift for my mother that I purchased
with my own money.

I cried and bought another.
This still sits behind glass doors
at my parents’ house.

An entire paper cone of M&M’s
at age 6!
after my first keyboard recital.
Now that was crushing.

On a Glasgow pavement, when I was a little older,
my father’s camera. We were standing
outside the apartment he and my mother shared
before they were married. He
angrier than I had ever seen him
said something to me I have never forgotten
but I hope he has.
That camera belongs to me now
but my hands are bigger
and I have never let it fall.

Today’s little bit of doggrel inspired by my deep admiration for the Nokia company, which made a phone that has (so far, baruch hashem) managed to survive all my droppage. This afternoon — while talking to Ross, fumbling with change, and trying to get on the bus at the same time — I somehow managed to fling it out of my own hand and onto the sidewalk, where its front cover and back cover detached, the clever little card inside it popped out, and the keypad came loose from its moorings. I made it onto the bus, reassembled it with a click or three, and called Ross right back. Say what you will about modern manufacturing, they know how to make a damn fine cellphone.

Bonus points if you can see what I find so danged funny about the photograph up there, before clicking on it to read the answer.