Month: January 2023

Yesterday, I stood for forty-five minutes on the corner of 9th and Nicollet, waiting for the number nine bus to arrive and take me home. It was cold and uncomfortable standing all that time, sometimes leaning against the stone building. It was, in looking back, a bit of immersion in reality. A chance opportunity to be real.

The elderly white woman next to me repeatedly stepped forward into the middle of the sidewalk. She looked down the street to see if the bus was approaching. When I tried to tell her it was still over 15 minutes away, she shook her head and pointed to her ears. I smiled and nodded.

There was a flurry of activity off to my left and a couple of young black men quickly hurried around the corner up Nicollet. Suddenly there was a chorus of angry voices. I couldn’t understand a word, but the loud shouting continued for a long time. I resisted the urge to walk to the corner and see what was happening. I was afraid.

A white woman huddled against the building to my right, clutching a pair of Yaktrax in one hand. Her stocking cap was pulled over her forehead down to her glasses. She had on a mask up to her glasses. I would not recognize her if I ever saw her again. She was hunched up quietly.

Trucks came and went, taxis dropped off people, individuals shouted across the street to someone.

A middle-aged black man and I joined in joking about the long wait for the bus. He kept dancing around on the sidewalk between the building and the curb. He had to pee he said, and was resisting going a little way up the sidewalk to get relief. He joked about not wanting to wet himself and we both laughed. He pulled a brown bag out of his satchel and took a drink. We kept up our exchange until the bus arrived.

My bus finally showed up and I gingerly stepped onto the ice in the gutter, not wanting to slip as I got on the bus. I scanned my card and found a seat, surrounded by a cluster of people I did not recognize and would likely not see again.

This has been my real world on a Tuesday morning.

It is frustrating for me that discussing sexuality is so absent or off-base in our culture.   Talking about sexuality and “private” body parts is routinely shrouded in shame-based avoidance or denigrated by exploitive humor.   

Something so natural and pleasant as sexuality is typically avoided or danced around in our culture.    It is something of a paradox since our bodies are so emblematic of who we are and how we see ourselves.   Yet we are so reluctant to genuinely share what would otherwise be expressive of what is and who we are.   

Speech mirrors cultural behavior. It is interesting to me how men and women play peekaboo with breasts.   We play a mutual game of going to great lengths to display and observe the shape of women’s breasts or reveal an abundance of skin.   We only stop at the ambivalence of how much nipple to display.   

The poverty of our sexual language in the culture reflects this ambivalence about bodies.   I am happy that some friends and I choose to embrace and even redeem sexual language.   This freedom of speech has begun to flow into my casual conversation with friends and we sometimes bravely talk about issues related to our sexuality. Speech need not be hamstrung by culture.

Soon after I was born, I learned to live in the world as I interpret it.  That activity is largely the work of my imagination.   How much I actually come close to seeing things as they are depends on my skills of observation, sometimes called mindfulness. 

It is easier to live in a world as imagined because it corresponds to my wants and fears.  It allows me to reach what I want and avoid what might harm me. I routinely grasp and avoid based on what I imagine, not on what I might observe if I ignored my wants and fears.  

No one is unique in choosing to live in a world as imagined.  It is a common practice. I think it takes becoming vulnerable to see the world as it is.  It takes letting go of our wants and fears to experience the world as seen and not as imagined.  

For me to surrender to the full force of a hug, I have to let go of my fear. If we each surrender, we both became vulnerable as we step out of our imagination.