It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
-from Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Another encounter with a stranger in a parking lot last week raised my spirits and reminded me that none of us need be strangers if we open ourselves to conversation and connection. The sound and fury all around us—social media, cable news, unending talk shows—is deafening, and we must shut it down to hear our own voices, those of others in our orbit and, even more importantly, out of our orbit. How do we feel? What are we thinking? What are our particular challenges right now? And what about all the innocent earthlings caught in the orbit of those who are disgraced?
The woman in the parking lot—her name was Estelle—had a dark blue Honda, younger than mine by ten years or so, but the paint is chipping, she complained. It was a cool autumn day and I was willing to linger for conversation. My mantra at the end of a close-knit, trusting talk these days is always, "Are you registered to vote?" But within minutes, Estelle and I established that we were both registered to vote, could not wait to vote, were both Democrats, and had migrated from the city to upstate New York, she from Harlem and I from Washington Heights. And we have even more in common: We both have a grown daughter, and we both are educators. I was relieved. I could relax into the conversation and, by the end, had handed her my card. "Let's meet for a coffee some time," I said, whereupon she blessed me. The cadence of her New York accent soothed me, the blessing more so. My readers will know that I never refuse a blessing, or deflect it. "Thank you," I said. "I could use a blessing today."
"People may disappoint us," she said, "but He never does."
I told her that I have no faith in a "higher power," but I would cherish her blessing nonetheless. I would put it in my jar of blessings and pull it out whenever I am disappointed by the hatred I sometimes receive on email in response to something I've written, for example.
Then I headed home, the radio tuned to one of several syndicated evangelical stations I can pick up in Ulster County. I land on them by accident because the music—country, folk, or pop—lures me. The music is followed by a bible reading or a sermon, suffused with sturm und drang, fear, sin and exhortation; it keeps me glued. One sermon this week was about abortion, how doctors are executing babies, one of the newest vicious tropes. It was upsetting to hear it spew out of the mouth of a young woman lay preacher who hopefully has never needed an abortion. She ended the screed with a call to the ballot box.
How many of my neighbors are listening to these stations, I wonder? I have no idea. I only know that most of America is lost to me here in the mountains, among like-minded acquaintances, colleagues and friends. Beyond my day-to-day forays into my neighborhood, my digitalized, atomized world is secluded and circumscribed. I struggle not to turn away from troubling ideas, events and people into the comfort of my own certainties. That zone of safety is an illusion.