Humankind - Tumblr Posts
People tell me a lot that I'm an intelligent person. I don't feel intelligent at all. So if I really am intelligent compared to others... then humankind is screwed.
Me, to my Economics teacher, after getting an 82 on the test
“After learning my flight was detained 4 hours, I heard the announcement: if anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately. Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she did this. I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly. Shu dow-a, shu-biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick, sho bit se-wee? The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—she stopped crying. She thought our flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late. Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him. We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother until we got on the plane and would ride next to her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out, of course, they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California, the lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—non-alcoholic—and the two little girls from our flight, one African American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice and lemonade, and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing with green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—has seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”
— Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.”
“humanity is inherently selfish and bad” bbbrrrghuhjfkg. humanity is seeing a stranger’s grocery bag break open on the sidewalk and harvesting fruits and veggies from the branch-like cracks of the asphalt for them, just because you can. humanity is helping a lost child find their mother on a crowded beach, looking for the ladybug-patterned parasol with their hummingbird-small hand in yours. it’s an elder’s fingers wrapped around your arm as you help them up the stairs because the elevator is broken, and feeling like you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, like this is what you would’ve been doing had you been alive centuries or even millennia ago. there will always be a heavily pregnant woman who will smile at your when you give up your seat, a nice blind man in the fruit aisle who will ask you to please pick the riper plantain for him, a tired cashier whose face will light up when you compliment their tattoo sleeve. humanity is connection
i know people are good because of this: the universe often assigns me side quests. in a circular strangeness; despite my inability to locate my-own-anything, i am almost-always finding someone else's lost things. dogs, coats, phones, cash, laptops. it happens so often it's almost tiring; suddenly being looped into a tiny amount of detective work.
but when i'm with other people who are not used to this: the response is almost invariably delight. yes, maybe they are simply thrilled by the mystery. it's just... they light up so much. i think maybe more... i think they like the opportunity to do something kind.
a few weeks ago, i was at a bar and i found a wallet as soon as we stepped outside. i felt nervous to ask for help, worried i would be holding up the night. i picked it up and said go on without me, i should help this get back to its home.
instead, three people pulled out their phones - to find him on facebook, to help cancel his credit cards. two people went back into the bar to tell the bartender, two others went calling down the street. group texts, facebook posts, instagram stories. people, without even seeing what happened, start offering help to me. fifteen minutes and: someone knows someone who knows the guy. the cheer that went up - just for finding him, just for this small thing. someone gets him on the phone. strangers dance around me, hopping on their feet - are you the girl that found that wallet? good for you, that's a good thing you're doing/same thing happened to me and somebody did what you're doing and i thank god everyday for people like you/i can't believe you found him so fast this is so exciting
i gave it back to him in a parking lot. i watched his shoulders sag with relief. there was cash in it still - he checked the pocket, and then sheepishly held the money out to me. i didn't take it. i held up my hands. "it's no problem, man. i know you'd do the same for me."
i don't know him, to be honest. i don't know if he is the same kind of person i am. but he nodded at me.
and i know people are good. i know people are good, because the way this story ends isn't surprising. we wave goodbye awkwardly. my friend loops their arm around me.
"i can't believe we got it back to him," they said. "i'm going to be riding that high for weeks."
The legacies people leave behind in you.
My handwriting is the same style as the teacher’s who I had when I was nine. I’m now twenty one and he’s been dead eight years but my i’s still curve the same way as his.
I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We haven’t spoken in four years.
I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.
I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.
I learned to love books because my father loved them first.
How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I don’t know it. How beautiful.
Also people act like autistic people would have been, like, left in the woods to die or something as kids for most of history, but as i said i'm researching islamic saints and in both islam and christianity there's an awful lot of just, like, "Yeah that guy decided to go live in a cave by himself and wore one (1) article of clothing and sometimes he would walk around and scream randomly, it meant he was closer to god than everybody else"
Something no one tells you when you’re going through a tough time, is that even the smallest people will remember you. They’ll wonder why you haven’t bought food for your dog, where the pictures of your boyfriend went, or why their favourite cashier hasn’t been there for awhile. People notice you. People love you. Even if it’s for your jokes, even if it’s for your patience, even if it’s just seeing you around. People miss you. People love you. People care.
I’m grateful for everyone who is still here today, no matter how hard it is.
“Range Life” by Jordan Bolton
Part of Scenes from Imagined Films Issue #1, available on Etsy
the thing is, somebody cares. i know your best friend seems really busy all the time and is shit at texting but she still loves you and she talks to you more than she talks to anyone else and you’re the only breath of calm she has on this planet. the boy in your science class loves seeing what music you’re listening to on your headphones - he has the same taste and wishes he had the nerve to ask you about it. your english teacher loves the insight you have on your papers. somebody cares. the person who lives down the street from you notices when you are sick because they don’t see you stomping your way to the schoolbus - it’s how they know it’s time to get their breakfast ready. somebody is looking for you at the party, even if they don’t know they’re really looking for you - but when you don’t show up, some part of them is disappointed. somebody is looking for you in the library, in the spot where you eat lunch, in front of that one step you always seem to trip on. i know your parents are a complicated mess and there’s drama between your friends and your love life is sort of shaped like a constant question and everybody seems all caught up in their own lives and their own happiness and nobody really notices: but somebody always does. every face in your dreams is someone you have met, and that means that you are in a million’s stranger’s heads. they see you when they go to bed. and somebody cares. somebody still thinks about you even though you were just a person with a nice outfit or good eyeliner or a great smile or because you were having one of those moments that are so charmingly human in nature or because they regret not asking if you needed help when you fell or because they wonder what you were thinking about or drawing or writing or just because you’re alive, and that makes you fascinating. somebody cares. when you were on break from work and saw a dog hanging his head out of the car and suddenly broke into a smile: there was a girl in the back of that car, and I was her, and I still think about you, and i hope you get more chances to smile like that. and there is you, sitting here reading this, and by some small extension, meeting me, and i am telling you, I care. somebody always does. i promise. i promise. you are loved.
I am a demon.
Yet I understand a human.
It's all about pain and gain—the ultimate game played by ego and power.
Oh, wait! My kind will take them down once and for all, because hell is running out of fuel.
(Laughs hysterically)
- bitchfacesblog