Change (Be)coming Our Way
By: Yudi Liu
When I began this post, evening had turned the corner and it was Friday. Since the whole ‘corona-thing’, days started to blend in ways they hadn’t before and the only thing reminding me of Friday being the day was an all too familiar ping from Outlook for happy hour, where half of us changed our Zoom backgrounds to the beach while playing trivia.
I was sitting by my window, and what I heard at 6:58PM EST crescendoed into a citywide percussion. Though short and amusingly uncoordinated, the cacophony of human appreciation was just that - human and appreciative. Cars honked, strollers joined in with their hollers, and children smacked spatulas against pots out their windows. I couldn’t help but open mine and lean out to participate, first with my hands, then with one hoot and another. The energy, a mixture of optimism and gravity, was palpable and free, as if I could grab a hold of it and seal it’s light in a jar.
There are roughly six thousand five hundred languages in the world and in that instance, I felt as if I had discovered the six thousand five hundred and first.
When the chorus stopped and the streets died down to its new softness, I resumed writing. Nothing had changed spatially. The chair may have moved two inches back from my getting up. Google Docs was still pulled up and paused midthought. Nothing, except for the synaptic connections in my brain and the bodily connections I experienced with the world.
It is a human thing to want to be noticed. We express ourselves through words and gestures, but more primitively through sound. The ones that were happening outside my apartment had rarely found themselves in the same space until that night, until now. Part of it was simple contrivance. A more creative way to dry that pan you sauteed onions on for the fourth time that week and the fifth time this year. The other and greater part was a telltale to seismic change that is (be)coming our way. Change that is no less certain than frightening.
The noises that echoed through the city’s parse avenues were tinged with angst, hope, and confusion, incited by this virus-caused-crisis to which we are at the mercy of. Even as we arrive here at a place where so much is ending, we must encourage ourselves to rethink. Maybe not right this instance, but tomorrow, or next week. Alongside grieving for a past that seems almost saccharine, we must find ourselves rebuilding outside the normal and against expectations of 2019 and those of every year prior.
The noises we make today are in recognition of individuals who we have never met. To the recent graduate tending ICU patients, the mother who takes the security night shift, and the uncle restocking shelves at Fairway. It is the rebirth of a common language we had forgotten, distracted by corporate time and unchecked ambition. A common language with others rather than for ourselves alone.
The past few weeks I have seen more humility and gratitude practiced, with strangers and family alike that I cannot help but wonder when this all ends, what will we take away? What will we learn? That our healthcare system is not bulletproof and in fact far from its jingoist reputation. That an hour homeschooling your children equals an uncorked bottle of wine later. How the difference between furlough and layoff is a matter of temporality. Or that besides Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and HBO, there is also Vudu and Disney+.
Whitman once said, “It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also.” 150 years later these words could not be truer. There is no denying 2020. We are in it together.
They say April showers bring May flowers, and I have no doubt the next few weeks and months will be trialing. But on the other side I believe is a better us, where seeds of this common language have sown and sprouted. Where we tell of a history made whole through its generous parts and people. Before looking too far out, however, we must see and sit with the present. We must take its jabs, its insults. Its advice, its graces. All of it.
It was Saturday when I finished this post. And tomorrow is Sunday. Below is a section from Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” which has lent me companionship these past few days and was the inspiration to this post’s content. While I would urge you to read the poem in its entirety, the following lines stand out and speak loudly to our shared existence in the months that lie ahead.
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
