My friend Lynette D'Amico has an amazing post up at Is Greater Than that considers the things we carry.
She takes us on a wild journey, from an eruv and Orthodox Judiasm to how we carry babies to what we carry in our bags and psyches, and then to West Rogers Park - her neighborhood in Chicago - the place that now carries her home.
Be sure to read the whole essay here, but below are a couple of excerpts:
"...The Hebrew word eruv means “mixture” or “joining together,” as in the joining together of public and private space. An eruv integrates private and public properties into one larger private domain. So the boundaries between private and public are enlarged and carrying is permitted. By some complicated process involving symbolism and thousands of years of Jewish law, an eruv is a wall that is a series of doorways...
...Boundaries construct our identities and clarify what we can carry, whether keys or babies, whether the key is a green card or a bank card, whether the baby is carried across the border on her mother’s back or rides in a Burley, whether we are on our way to pray, on our way to a new life, or just on our way to a decaf latte...
...We carry resentment and longings; our nephew flipping his hair, a fat old orange cat, homegrown tomatoes. We carry water bottles and cell phones, lipstick and sunscreen, notebooks and pens, umbrellas, chips and nuts and little candies, Xanax, Vicodin, and aspirin; condoms, the latest New Yorker, a Swiss Army knife, a pair of channel lock pliers, a flashlight..
...Within my borders—West Rogers Park, the 50th Ward—I pass through a series of gateways–the Georgian bakery on Devon, Warren Park where the dogs run, the empty Z Frank Chevrolet dealership on Western, the halal and kosher grocers. I am enclosed and enlarged by the walls around me. My hands are empty. Invisible wires guide me. I look up."So let me ask this: What are the things you carry? What carries you?
Beautiful piece of writing.
ReplyDelete