Wonder all around
I realize that my experience is quite a unique one.
I just love that I am continually reminded of this.
This week I went to a local mall - okay, maybe "mall" is an understatement. Let me explain.
The Grove at the Los Angeles Farmers Market is - I believe - what would happen to Main Street USA on anabolic steroids and diet coke. A shopping and entertainment experience like none other. Wrapped in overt "what I/we wish LA was like" and "What I/we wish my/our everyday life was like" to the power of 10.
There is a huge computerized musical fountain that lets water splash and fly to strains of Sinatra and the like, as well as a full size double decker trolley car that runs down from the Farmers Market, past Banana Republic, Barnes and Noble, Lalique and Coffee Bean & tea Leaf to Abercrombie and Fitch (I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried).
Red cobbles edge the delightfully clean street, which we are able to amble down without a care. Iron worked benches - strategically placed - make the ideal place from where to do the thing I love the most...Observe.
An Arab woman - possibly Saudi - modestly dressed, in black, trousers, with a covered head (but face visible) walking the street, inspecting the carts outside the movie theatre (my reason for being there), hocking their sunglasses and scarves, toys and trinkets. With her another woman - Filipina by first glance - with her, also inspecting the masses of stuff available to buy. I wondered to myself what each of them saw, what each of them thought, and how different their experience was from mine.
For me, it was just killing time for 20 minutes while I waited for Dean to arrive to catch a movie I'd been wanting to see (Wallace and Gromit). For them, was this their first taste of the great Satan, America? Was this as unreal or as real as I saw it, to them?
A nanny, Latina, maybe 30, with 4 kids in tow. The boy, maybe 8, was having a bit of a tantrum - the kind where you get sent into time-out for - in public. The ultimate embarrassment. He huffed and he puffed, throwing his body around as he walked. His arms as if they were made of rag-stuffed cloth, his head loose on his spindly white spoilt-brat neck. He took himself to the side of a green lamp post that stood near the grassed area where his sisters were behaving perfectly. Putting himself in time-out. I made sure that I avoided eye contact with his as he scowled at the crowd. Who - all but me - ignored him. Oblivious to his shame.
Two students approached me. Handsome boys, clipboard and camcorder in hand. They wanted to interview me on gay marriage, for a high school project. I refused them, unsure if I had the time to really give my opinion in a sensicle way, without getting emotional and pissy about it all. They said that they were getting a lot of people saying that, and that it was okay I said no.
I wish I had let them in, I wish I had allowed these two young, impressionable men see the face of gay marriage face-to-face. To maybe let them even see me cry over the injustice, and the wonder of man's inhumanities.
One day, maybe.
I just love that I am continually reminded of this.
This week I went to a local mall - okay, maybe "mall" is an understatement. Let me explain.
The Grove at the Los Angeles Farmers Market is - I believe - what would happen to Main Street USA on anabolic steroids and diet coke. A shopping and entertainment experience like none other. Wrapped in overt "what I/we wish LA was like" and "What I/we wish my/our everyday life was like" to the power of 10.
There is a huge computerized musical fountain that lets water splash and fly to strains of Sinatra and the like, as well as a full size double decker trolley car that runs down from the Farmers Market, past Banana Republic, Barnes and Noble, Lalique and Coffee Bean & tea Leaf to Abercrombie and Fitch (I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried).
Red cobbles edge the delightfully clean street, which we are able to amble down without a care. Iron worked benches - strategically placed - make the ideal place from where to do the thing I love the most...Observe.
An Arab woman - possibly Saudi - modestly dressed, in black, trousers, with a covered head (but face visible) walking the street, inspecting the carts outside the movie theatre (my reason for being there), hocking their sunglasses and scarves, toys and trinkets. With her another woman - Filipina by first glance - with her, also inspecting the masses of stuff available to buy. I wondered to myself what each of them saw, what each of them thought, and how different their experience was from mine.
For me, it was just killing time for 20 minutes while I waited for Dean to arrive to catch a movie I'd been wanting to see (Wallace and Gromit). For them, was this their first taste of the great Satan, America? Was this as unreal or as real as I saw it, to them?
A nanny, Latina, maybe 30, with 4 kids in tow. The boy, maybe 8, was having a bit of a tantrum - the kind where you get sent into time-out for - in public. The ultimate embarrassment. He huffed and he puffed, throwing his body around as he walked. His arms as if they were made of rag-stuffed cloth, his head loose on his spindly white spoilt-brat neck. He took himself to the side of a green lamp post that stood near the grassed area where his sisters were behaving perfectly. Putting himself in time-out. I made sure that I avoided eye contact with his as he scowled at the crowd. Who - all but me - ignored him. Oblivious to his shame.
Two students approached me. Handsome boys, clipboard and camcorder in hand. They wanted to interview me on gay marriage, for a high school project. I refused them, unsure if I had the time to really give my opinion in a sensicle way, without getting emotional and pissy about it all. They said that they were getting a lot of people saying that, and that it was okay I said no.
I wish I had let them in, I wish I had allowed these two young, impressionable men see the face of gay marriage face-to-face. To maybe let them even see me cry over the injustice, and the wonder of man's inhumanities.
One day, maybe.
posted by simpletruths at 21:18
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