Public Life

So many layers of life, so many lives touching, touching in passing, or passing and not touching. In this photograph, in the distance at right, that massive volcanic cone covered in snow, a sentinel against the sky. Through the center, lines of cars. Beneath those cars, at right angles, buses, cars, bicycles, lit windows and dark. All that life.

Tuesday I volunteered at Bella’s school and fell in love with all twenty-four of her classmates. Immigrant children or children of immigrant parents, over eighty percent speak Spanish in their homes. I read them an interactive story in English. They were attentive, eager, responsive. As I was leaving, one said to me shyly, so softly that I could barely hear, “My name is Aaron with two A’s. I want see you more, I want you remember me.” Oh yes. Yes, Aaron with two A’s. I will remember you. I want see you more too.

Today I attended a meeting of a Faith-Labor Committee, white-haired old activists, mostly radical Catholics and Lutherans who support organized labor with prayer vigils and the like during strikes and pickets. The committee head said warmly, “We need more diversity of faiths on this committee. I’m glad you’ve come.” I hedged, “I’m over-extended at present and hope to find someone else from my organization who can commit to this committee.”

Some invitations sing to me. Some don’t. 

Tonight an artist friend in France phoned to say she just returned from a massive photography show in Paris and feels she can’t go on pushing herself and her work forward. It never ends. She wants to retire from public life. “But how do you do that?” she wonders. I laughed. It’s a process.