Riding the train late at night when I am tired I notice things that I might not normally. I set by a man today who couldn't read. He was sitting there with a magazine and he was staring at each page but his eyes didn't move across like reading. He stared at the center of the page. He stared at the page on the right and then at the page on the left and then turned to the previous page. He did this a few times. The expression on his face was so lost. And I really really wanted to sit down next to him and ask him what he was reading about and whether he found it interesting and then got through with a pen and circle all of the words that he recognized and have him sound out the ones that he didn't. Pick a sentence and go through it together slowly.
But I didn't because maybe I'm wrong. If I was wrong that would be insulting. And if I was right confronting him like that would be really really embarrassing. And really the truth of every person's story is beyond anything that I could imagine for them.
In this case I would really like to be wrong. I could go on about literacy. I will save that for a later date - in the near future, promise.
Seeing that man holding the magazine hurt my heart. I shut my book and hugged it close to me, closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep. If I didn't, I would have been staring at him which wouldn't help either.
LJL has declared that 2007 is a year of completion. There are things that I have left unfinished. And now that I have laid stakes to New York soil, maybe it's time that I turn my attention to them.
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