Old Glass in Everyday Ramblings

This is some detail of the castle house from our walk on Thursday. I like to imagine being the kind of person that would live here. Confident and quirky, well off and creative, young and terribly romantic with a hint of melancholy and like my real life former boyfriend Mr. Moon speaking seven languages. Although in my ideal house dweller I believe we might add Russian so she can read those poets in the original. :)

Speaking of making things up, as you know I made up a whole backstory about the skinny scary man digging a hole in the vacant lot next door. Buried drugs or cash from the 60’s in the back of the ramshackle house that was there during the Love-Ins and free soup and the bands that played all night.

S. my friend, we talked about it again last weekend, insisted that the most appropriate thing to have done would have been to ask in a relaxed friendly manner what they were doing, what he was doing. She was sticking to her point on this.

Yesterday afternoon I took advantage of a 10% off birthday coupon at the yoga studio spa in my old neighborhood I used to go to and had a deep tissue massage. It was intense but wonderful and interesting and I was relaxed and cheerful afterwards walking home from the bus.

As I was walking along the sidewalk next to the vacant lot which is now covered in high dry summer grass and weeds I kid you not I saw a shovelful of dirt come flying out of a hole that was at least six feet deep.

I stopped and looked over and the older woman in the battered red SUV was sitting on the passenger side at the curb with the window open and I blurted out in a relaxed friendly way, with a touch of exasperation, “What are you guys doing???”

The thin old guy, an amazing character with barely any teeth looked up at me from the hole he had dug himself into and said, “Old glass, I am looking for old glass from the thirties, bottles, this used to be a dump.”

The woman said, “He’s been doing this since he was young.”

We had a lively exchange about the history of the neighborhood, the topography, how he was actually going to get out of the hole and the effort they would make to fill it in.

I told them about a bunch of old bottles I had seen at a construction site a few blocks away and their eyes lit up.

I have to laugh at myself. The sinister path my mind took with this activity so outside anything I myself would contemplate doing.

There is a line in the funny, oh so funny audio book by Rory McGrath I am enjoying called The Bearded Tit. Where Rory admonishes his college roommate to look on the bright side and his dour roommate replies, “You find a bright side, I’ll look on it.”

The man remembers the house that was on that lot. Where I am is over more fill as this is just the steep side of the gulley here. Some day I will find pictures or at least a written description of this block.

I have found out that this was a very horsey area. There was the drayage barn, the stables and a blacksmith’s shop up a few blocks where those bottles were dug out.

My church is turning 150 this year. It may not seem like long to you all in other parts of the world but here that is a long time. I just brought home a brand new history prepared for the occasion by a historian in our congregation.

Church was very emotional this morning as I imagine it was all over the country. We donated our whole offering to the church in Charleston and then took pictures of us all raising our hands in blessing and solidarity to share with them. Our senior minister is a man of color (as the woman of color who implored him to provide solace and understanding about the racially motivated events of this week halfway through the service) to an almost all white congregation.

My own feelings about the shooting are much on the surface and troubled. I believe that the roots of this tragedy, this act of incredible despicable violence is embedded in our biology, our tribalism, the basis of practically any civil conflict. (Of course it goes without saying that isolated troubled young men should not be allowed to buy an automatic weapon with their 21st birthday money.)

I feel like the solution is evolution. As a diverse people we need to overcome our native biological tendency to identify with our tribe, our culture, our beliefs. This cannot be imposed from the outside. (That is why I believe it is the people of South Carolina that need to take down the Confederate flag, not us from the outside telling them to mandate it.)

His intent was to start a race war. I was listening to a podcast this week that included a description of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France in 1572 where a few targeted killings instigated by the royal regent spiraled out of control to neighbors killing neighbors because of their religion.

My plea to whatever animates us is that we find that we have evolved enough to draw together and in an open and relaxed way engage in conversation and dialogue with those outside our comfort zone and as the pastor said this last Wednesday night to the hate filled young man who came to the prayer meeting, “Here, sit here beside me and we will begin.”

I imagine this taking place in a beautiful quiet room full of light and colorful old glass.

Last updated June 21, 2015