I know this girl who lived in a village in Grenada and she told me about the glass that would wash up on the shores of the island, broken glass from bottles and other things that had been smoothed down by the salt of the sea. In Oakland I find more glass in the street. In Berkeley, the glass stays in the windows, between the yuppies in the bistros and the Asians in the noodle houses. Homeless folks can feed off the warmth of the windows and in liberal Berkeley they’re not chased off the sidewalk, but there’s still no glass that stands between them and February cold.
In Oakland, I feel like most industrial towns, those windows are shattered. What are we hiding? Who are we fooling? My imperfect heart longs to hear “We don’t like you for this” and “There’s no place for you here.” Because in all this acceptance, in all these hyphenated words, I worry for honesty- just like salt worries down the shards in Grenada. Just say that you’ve learned to hate, just tell me I’m not who you want me to be. Speak to the darkness, because if you don’t, it can sneak up on us from behind.
Don’t say equality like it’s a temple, speak to it like it’s a child- not a destination but a fleeting concept we must devote ourselves to chasing. It will lead us to places we’d rather not go; our past, our future, downtown, out-of-town, past our parents, through our children, down rivers of tainted water and into cities left to fall. If we ignore equality, we lose it, if we fence it in, we pervert it. A child locked inside will never know life and equality kept in a block or two will wilt in its isolation.
On a cold day on the West Coast, I dream of walking along an island with a friend at hand: I run my fingers over a smoothed piece of glass that tells me time is endless and mankind is no more powerful than the salt in the sea. Does my salt perfect or merely pacify? Shards of glass can refract light into the darkest sewers- once glazed over they can get lost out among the sand.
