Good Friday! Goodnight!

Sitting on a toilet at 3 AM, pants on, with a laptop as a companion, can breed a variance of thoughts...

In the upper West side of New York City, the surroundings to me at first glance seem incommensurate with all the ideals of a community I most cherish: the intangible value of families sharing the same home-base and zeal for its health, a radical inclusivity shaped and molded by a conscientious shattering of all, power-based distinctions that create barriers between individuals and breed all sorts of stereotyping, and, well, doors with windows and formidable houses turned into homes by years of nurturing care. In her nursing years, Dorothy Day used to drink until the morning with Eugene O'Neill across town from here, listening to his retelling of the times he almost drowned himself in the darkness of the river at night. At the same time Bob Dylan and Harry Smith searched through Smith's collection of 7” for the perfect track to accompany a night of exploration into a realm created by drugs paid for by Smith's ever-growing collection of university grant money. My ever-curious, ever-unsatisfied mind wants to barrage my sister with all of the questions it can put forth related to this place, seeing as I better get all of the opinions I can get before I denigrate an entire city with my pathetic opinions. Becca is radiant; the wrinkles on her face when she smiles attest to the rapture she seems to be feeling now that her family has insurrected her apartment, her untraditionalism no longer slated into the minority of these apartment dwellers. My father's grunts, snorts, reverberant throat infestations, oftentimes abysmal to my sister and I growing up, are now innocuous at the least to all of us, and dare I say, cherishable. Seeing a woman forging through black garbage bags outside of this apartment complex, looking for fitting clothing, makes me realize the ever-existing incongruities between “the rich” and “the poor.” Is it disrespectful and shamelessly discourteous to offer this woman a sweater or a meal, just exaggerating these distinctions?
Reading on educational reform in Africa while sitting in a comfortable fold-out bed says to me again that I am too oftentimes unaware of the privelege that I have, and so far removed from anything African, other than a couple of books bought for what can bring hundreds of people clean water, that it is simply naïve, childish-thinking to want to go there. I remember reading an interview with a man who said, “Americans seem to take pity on Africans because we have so little, but I pity Americans. Americans expect to be taken care of, whereas with every thing we receive, we thank God for his provision.” I'm reminded of Joseph Farrel, a sixty year-old broom-toting, Gospel-laden street gyspy, whom I am priveledged to know as my friend, and co-conspirator. I pray I will never give into the provocative insulation that replaces groveling, grateful, thankfulness with lamentable expectation.