from here to the rest of the world

We are almost done watching "the Wire." We've plowed through it with our accustomed tenacity, and we are one episode away from done. There's a lot about this series I really like. In particular, the fact that it takes place in Baltimore--the only other city where I spend any time in my youth--is special. Baltimore is a strange, simmering place. It is midnight in-between the south and east. This series captures some of that. And some things are missing. Like my sister and I smoking menthol cigarettes three blocks away from my grandmother's house after eating cheese steak sandwiches, and buying a box of Entertainment cookies and eating them on the side of a hill by the busy street. Me walking my grandmother's silent greyhound while wearing a pair of boots that went up to my thighs that I had found in her old clothes (?) past the old building whereabouts my great grandmother and her sister owned a dry cleaning business. Sno Cones with marshmallow topping and graveyards and trips to Ocean City. But they had steamed crab, scrapple, and the Domino Sugar sign in the show. I remember those things, too.

One of the kids in the show is struggling with his place on earth. He's not made for the streets but he is made from them, and this is a tough bind. He's smart but not brilliant. And not lucky. He's sweet. He wants to fit and protect himself. To figure out where he belongs, like any of us do, and survive in the most primal sense. So there's this scene where he's sitting outside the boxing gym of a reformed criminal, and they're just talking. This guy is telling the kid he's not meant to fight either, kind of breaking it to him. And he's not old enough to work. There are other things out there in other places that have yet to be explored. Life is his to be had. But not exactly, because this kid has to make his way to the place where he belongs, all on his own. And he asks the boxer something:

"How do you get from here to the rest of the world?"

The lump formed in my throat. And I went through my typical brain tricks ("It's just a show, this kid probably has steady acting work.") But these games don't really matter, because this line represents something that really is. Poverty. Racism. Hatred. City. Generations to overcome. And I cried, thinking about that kid sitting somewhere in Baltimore, somewhere.

The last time I felt this way, I tried to do something. I joined the fight, the cause, to try and deal with the inequalities that ebb in and out of the structures that keep us safe, employed, and in a home. My experience was not good. I was young, and my hopes were easily affected. There was one final thing that did it for me, where I had to watch someone try and stand up for themselves against a mountain. They were crushed, and I just couldn't do it anymore. I quit.

Life is really as hard for me as I make it, or perceive it to be. But it is not hard. I never doubted that I could step out of my front door and do anything I wanted. I have written about the chapters I have ended because of a more thorough understanding of myself. This is a gift, really. It's a good thing. I am fine-tuning my path, not paving it.

But I should be listening and looking for that way to help others reach the rest of the world. And not give up on it. To fork my road toward someone else. I don't think there is just one thing to do, and I think that was my first mistake those years ago. The thought that if I had this credential, this identity, it would make a difference because it was significant. But it is about choices made every day. There may be a "big thing to do." But it is only sustainable if the smaller things support its structure. So that when it shakes, it doesn't fall.

The boxer didn't have an answer for the kid. They sat in the darkness not knowing.