Various Observations by Location

After watching The Basketball Diaries with my classes this week, I notice even more differences between people based on their location. It makes me think:

When I went to college one of the only native New Yorkers in New York,
One roommate asked where my accent came from,
One asked if I knew the Wu Tang Clan,
One didn't speak to me because she was mad that 3 of 5 of us were white in such small quarters,
One was date-raped and fled back down south mid-semester.

If I had the chance to get college for free, or my worst worry was that I couldn't get financial aid because mommy and daddy made too much money,
Would I have waited so long to get my own voice heard?
Would I have kept quieter than I have about my own fucked up life?
Would I ever be able to be shocked by anything at all?
Would I have made it to the other side of the desk?

There are so many divisions among them and there really are only two paths:
Success.
and
Failure.

In the city of wooden bridges
they stare at each other like pieces of steak,
Rampant sexuality springing from football fields,
cheering squads,
and my first Honda.
Not lacking for anything at all,
not knowing what it is to go hungry or broke.
Not wondering how they would feel without a winter coat or
brand new UGGs.

In the city of broken bricks
they are lucky they landed in a classroom,
rather than under a freeway or on a corner.
Stumbling in late,
high,
strung,
exhausted from:
homelessness,
babies crying not satiated by WIC and Family First.

In the upper counties they drive cars that I never will,
despite being an MA or down the road
something else.
They have hair extensions and brand new UGGs under miniskirts.
Makeup addled faces imported and looking for a man,
who drives a better car than they do.
Guys hair gelled and spiked,
girls on the prowl for a husband to buy them an acre,
or a rock.

In the urbana down the hill,
they wait for the Go Bus or
they walk thirty minutes to get to class.
They face: homelessness, gangs, addictions,
families that abandon them.
They dorm because it's their only option,
treat their hep-C and emerge
28 year old college freshmen who truly learn something.
How not to die.

Not only are there variations in them but I see a lot of variations I need to make in me.
I can't just go unready for the sixty year old interruptor
and kids with speedy ADD questions
because their phones buzz to pick up that ounce
before they get back to the neighborhood.
Nor can I flip on the kid who calls me by my first name
because he never was taught respect,
for teachers or employers,
especially not for women,
especially not when they're white.

I can't expect them all to get that there is a reason we have a syllabus,
a plan,
some semblance of a schedule to follow.
Yeah the plan is changing daily and the calendar flies by too quick.
Yeah they vary place to place,
but so do I because it's necessary.
Nobody is forcing them to be there?
That is the biggest untruth.
The state pays,
parents pay,
loans don't count right now.
Anything is better than:
homelessness,
giving up custody,
living with a wife-beater,
living on a street corner,
never having chances,
having too many chances cloaked in green times two.
Whether smoking it or spedning it they lose themselves just a little everyday.
Just like I did.
Some recover,
some go home,
some have no home and make a new one.
Some find answers.
I never did.

I don't claim to have solutions,
but the knowledge I claim is harsh.
Burning knowledge that scars and leaves you wondering:
What the fuck just happened?
Did I really make it to where I sit now?
Am I really looking down on myself from a higher plane?
Or is it that I feel different because the truth ran away from me
for so long
and
now
again.

All I can do is plan one day in advance whether it be
jeans to the bricks,
skirt to the burbs,
occasional unnassuming donuts for the hungry,
an ear to the fed up and ready to quit;
or learning to feign surprise that
what was once my 40s and blunts
has become their meth and oxys.

Claiming ignorance gets you nowhere,
but trying to help can get you worse:
attached.

So we do the best we can.
We ask for things like courage and serenity,
because the otherside is too vast
and we are scared of what else lives there.
Rightly so,
but once you get there,
you may just want to return and not have a reset button to press.
You may just want to swim back
but your arms are weighed down
and your legs hurt
and your brain
is exhausted.

Fuck it.
To each his own.
See you on the other side.