Wiling #11
By: Julian Diego Lopez-Leyva
Tags: Boston, Not Me Us, The Stylistics, Bernie Sanders, Journal

February 29, 2020 // Not Me…Us:

Although I am in tremendous, if numbed, physical and psychological pain; today it is a noble pain, a belabored pain… as opposed to the typical self-afflicted type. Before today, Friday Thursday Wednesday and Tuesday I worked nonstop at Andala. Almost the inverse to how vacant my schedule was the week prior, when Azul came to town. Each day I dug deeper into the workweek, I could feel myself slowing down. Sometimes mid-shift I would excuse myself for a few minutes and crash down that stairway into the cafe restroom to slink down with my back to the door and wonder how exactly I would find the strength to continue on. Even with end of the workweek rolling around, past a badly-needed nap, I still feel the weakness in my eyes and could just as easily knock again.

Each afternoon I roll awake, stumble downstairs and in silence, shower. I make a rehearsed egg over easy, which I lay onto toast and barely have time to eat before biking maniacally towards Central Square to work the routine closing shift. Now I love that place, don’t get me wrong; love the people I work with, even the people I serve. But I tell you I loathe the work I do. It’s not a grind, I don’t even break a sweat, I just can’t take the terrible worthlessness of all of it. I know that should I refuse to step back into Andala tomorrow, they will get along just as well without me, and someone else would take my place, and the world will be no less a mess. Suppose it’s my fault. I mean it’s been years now and I keep idealizing, making excuses for myself to try again and again these menial jobs. In Andala, I’ve staked out the sink. From afternoon to night time I wash the spit off dishes and tea leaves out tea-strainers. Occasionally I’m asked to scan the diner rooms and take orders and drop food off at their respective tables. I sit here in bed still so sore, but I know I must work further, grit my teeth and endure it all again tomorrow, and past that too. I just try and keep my eyes on the good thing I got. On Azul, and getting back to her, and what I know I must do. I’ve got a bus trip down to DC booked for the 12th of next month…and then Richmond…and then, well, god knows. I need to stay strong; make as much money as I can right now. It will soon be time to go south.

But as I look out the wide triplet windows of my room, I know it well: I love Boston. It causes me great pain sometimes, its elements can be agonizing to a southwestern soul like me. I am tired of its stinging winter winds; don’t think I can take another spring of spontaneous storms and the rain squishing in my soles. The morose faces on the pedestrians I smile at when I pass them on the street (mostly white folks) upset me. The blatant and palpable economic disparities between the communities here make me want to scream and graffiti and smash it all up. But when I look out onto the cross and dome of Blessed Sacrament, and out to the holy light of the falling sun flushing the buildings downtown, and down on Centre somebody booming reggaeton; well I realize it is an exceptional city. A place caught in a moment in time: tragic, romantic, apocalyptic 2020.

A rose in Harlem starts to bloom

We were here in this same bed last weekend, me probably playing with her hair when I asked her if she wanted to get high.

“It’s ok. You can smoke if you want to. To be honest I feel like I’m already high being out here.”

“‘¿Cómo? What do you mean?” I responded.

“Hmmm…I don’t know. Maybe just because it’s so new to me.” She paused, put her phone down. “But it’s also like…Boston is a psychedelic city. Something about the people here, they’re all quirky and dress in a lot of color. You really don’t see people like this out in Richmond…definitely not in DC.”

“For real? Yeah I mean shit guess you’re not the only out-of-towner who’s said that about the people here. They’re pretty closed-off, but I mean, they got a different thing to them.”

“It’s like…taking psychedelics out here feels like it would be redundant.” She concluded. “I don’t know.”

And late that night with her sleeping besides me I smoked out my window and sat on her observation. A ‘psychedelic city’; I’ve felt that of Boston for a number of years now, but only now do I recognize it as obviously true. Every scene here is so full of color, from the crowds downtown to jumbled JP streets. The trees have seen generations of men live and die; you can caress their bark with your fingertips and somehow you can feel their mightiness, their permanence. Here, a million impeccable photographs live and die with every second. Of course, this is no Manhattan, no New York, no sunny southwest or abundant northwest. There are points, even dragging points, when life seems simply not there. Not a soul out walking a dog, not a peep rumbling through the blocks, hardly even a bird in the sky. But if you seek life out — you will find it.

Chetty’s Lullaby plays now on my speaker. The wind out these open windows is whooshing; on the hunt. All the while, the sinking sun darkens the room around me in the tiniest fractions of shade. And then it’s suddenly dim. Recent memories of Bernie Sanders, blue signs, and a crowd of thousands — they dim alongside it. And still I sit here chewing on that notion in my head; the mantra if not the entire purpose of his campaign, whether it prevails or fails. The notion of “Not me…us”. I look at the world and its great dragging death. I think of slithering disease and what will become of everyone, everything. Some of us pretend it isn’t happening. others are kicking and screaming and throwing a fit against it. One way or the other it doesn’t much matter; it drags us all right along. And I think of Bernie today, of our embarasstocracy these last few years, and as much as I try I can’t help but dismiss his mantra, and knight him in my mind — our impossible savior.

Earlier today at the rally in the Common, Lenny and I and that other Arizona guy were standing so close to him we could see the lines on his face. He’s getting up there. And already past a heart attack, the global burden he’s up against just seems like far too much. He certainly knows this. And so that holy old man oh he has realized that his mission is not only to inspire hope, but through the incantation of his words — ignite new manufacturers of hope. That’s us; the young folk. The ones who almost certainly face disappointment in the impending election but not like that’s it, fini, and the credits roll. Politics is a long game, no doubt about it. Revolution however, has no beginning, has no end; only snowballing fury and inspiration until it’s reached some popular unstoppable mass. Bernie is one lone man, but he is more than that. He is a product of eternal revolutionary thought. He is FDR, Eugene Debs, Woody Guthrie and Larry David all rolled into one. Sequentially, he was placed here as our savior today. A figure extending from a great vine of American folk heroes, visionaries and leaders. Every time has its own. Others are soon to arrive.