I know I’ve already blathered about public transit, but bear with me: here I go again. And be patient; I will get back to this point eventually.
We were watching the France 24 (English) TV Station (France vingt-quatre – say it the way they do and it’s waaaay cooler!) over breakfast this morning as usual, and on Saturdays they have a thing they call Reporter, an in-depth show on a particular subject. This week they were talking about a big national debate over “French identity” which everyone realizes is about being a Muslim in France. They went to Marseille, which has a really high percentage of Muslims, and there was much intelligent, reasonable talk, a chat with a young woman who wants to teach French in the public schools but also wants to wear hijab (the head-scarf) banned by public schools here (what is with that??).
But my favorite interview took me back to my old days at Berkeley High, and especially at the Berkeley High Concert Chorale. If you’ve heard this story before, just plug your ears and hum, because here goes: At Berkeley High, what with white flight to private schools, every ethnic group was a minority. That is to say, there were just as many (or as few) whites as Asians as Blacks. If you couldn’t tell which flavor of Asian a person was (Filipino or Chinese or Japanese…now it would be S. Asian or Fijian, too) you were so uncool. Yes, there were occasional tensions, certain bathrooms you didn’t use (pretty much only the bathrooms in the gym were okay to use, and they didn’t have doors, but since you were in the Girl’s Gym and you were a girl and nobody looked anyway, that was kind of okay, too) but that would be true of any big high school. It was in the School of the Arts branch of Berkeley High that things got utopian, especially in the Concert Chorale.
Drama tended to be full of white kids (though I did like the production of “Fiddler on the Roof” with one black daughter), as did Chamber Choir, but Chorale – maybe because of our Filipino-American director, Vince Gomez – was utterly integrated. We also sang everything from Gospel to Palestrina, and we did them all so well and in such racial as well as musical harmony that we were invited to sing at a Choral Music Teachers’ confererence in Anaheim (can you say “with a performance at the Main Street Pavilion at Disneyland with free, behind-the-scenes access to the Magic Kingdom?”) to show that it could be done. We found it hilarious that people thought it couldn’tbe done, but in visiting all the hosting high school choirs on the way there and back, we began to understand that there are schools with big problems…
In the same way, there are three tall high-rise apartment buildings in Marseille that could be a disaster, but in which – an they are large, airy, inexpensive and nicely-maintained apartments – young French families with all sorts of ethnic backgrounds live in peace. The maintenance manager of one building – a former soldier in the French Foreign Legion and native of French Comoros – said he never had any trouble with his tenants not getting along, and they all got along with him fine. A very white-French professional-looking young dad talked excitedly about living there and what nonsense it was that people were talking about Frenchness, since everyone experiences “their own brand of Frenchness.” That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
The trick seems to be living shoulder to shoulder and just sharing everyday life experiences having nothing to do with race or religion, but simple, human experiences like babies, school, paychecks, groceries – well, groceries might point up differences, but could make interesting discussion – life, death, parents, love… One of my other favorite quotations from the show was from a vegetable vendor in the so-called “Arab Market” of Marseille (which, as the reporter pointed out, may be shunned by racist people, but it is festive and colorful and has “good, inexpensive produce”) who said “mixing” is fine, and “mixed children are more beautiful.” Japanese women, they say here, like to marry French men because they are good husbands (the same is said of American men, incidentally), and on the TGV on the way back from Montpellier was such a couple with an adorable girl; I also recall folk on the bus in Berkeley with golden skin and golden eyes… got to agree with the vegetable man on that!
Living together as much as possible, not off in our own enclaves: that is the ideal. Which brings me at last to public transportation. As all of you know who have ever ridden a crowded bus or subway or suburban line train, it is perfectly possible, when a desired stop is reached, for the person in a seat on the far side of a jam-packed car to get to and out of the door of that car in time. How? you may ask (if you’ve never tried it). Here’s how: 1) just after the doors close of the previous stop, you begin to signal that you must get off at the next stop by, say, gathering up your bags, or simply by getting to your feet, which triggers 2) all the people between you and the door (or most of them, there are always a few with earbuds in or who are deep in thought, or deaf, or socially inept) whose peripheral vision is ever alert for the slightest tremors in the Force begin to glance about on the floor for places to put their feet and on the bars for places to move their hands, ways to tuck in their shoulder bags, and so forth, then 3) the stop is announced, or the doors open, and we begin our move – always good to announce our impending arrival with an audible Pardon! Pardon! (in Italy, it would be Permesso! Permesso!), and 4) everyone miraculously effaces themselves, and you get out.
Self-effacing is one of the great miracles of public transit: we discover that, by holding our breath and making ourselves somehow flat, we can take up very little space at all. People without this skill, or people who crash into your shoulder with their backpack or cannot seem to dodge you on the sidewalks (and I have to say that the French are much more random, wandering, illogical sidewalk-walkers than Italians, stopping to talk, or kiss, or whatever just anywhere and zig-zagging wildly; honestly, these people must just be a hair too northern-European or something; they probably can’t dance, either, or shoot a hoop; they sure can’t cook spaghetti al dente), are just boorish and unwelcome on the subway. The whole dance, on the RER suburban line with its pairs of facing seats, as to sitting next or sitting opposite your best buddy (opposite is the correct choice, incidentally, being really more intimate), and then the question of whether you should take that empty seat in a crowded subway or train care (you should is the correct answer, unless you are absolutely getting off at the next stop; if you are bashful and don’t take it, you are just adding to the surplus standing population and taking up space some poor slob standoing on the other side of the car could use) is somewhat more advanced, but well worth learning.
well done, Kate!
ReplyDeleteShelly