Perplexed

At my job I continue to feel displaced. My position and its duties are still hazy. Mainly I have been getting to know the other people in the program (most of whom fit my profile: young, female, twenty-something, eventual graduate school plans--although most of my co-workers plan on going to medical school or something else public health-related). Our first few weeks were full of team building activities, brimming with the usual orientation agenda: meditation, scavenger hunts, and tear shedding.

We also did a community service project, working in a soup kitchen. Passing out bread in a church, I was told plenty of jokes I didn't quite get. I had to wait for facial cues to communicate that the punch line had been delivered so I could force a chuckle. One man made his jokes at the expense of the horrible piano player in the church—“He doesn’t know more than three chords! I can’t take any more of this!” Others, very seriously, asked us for certain flavors of bagels and outright dismissed some of the morsels we offered (which made us smile, jokes made to ourselves). I saw no children and few women. Plenty of men in all sizes and colors: some bearded, some in suits, some a little bloodied, some young and cavalier (in a hipster or punk rock transient version of gallant).

In the Bronx, I impressed a gaggle of children with my ability to blow giant soap bubbles, successfully distracting them from bothering their parents who were being lectured on preventing these same kids’ asthma-related emergency room visits. Attention-starved erratics talked to me about nothing because they didn’t want me to stop listening.

Medical meetings. An early morning of elevated vocabulary and pink and purple slides that reminded me of fruit stripe gum (the zebra gum I loved as a kid). A pathologist was showing the residents and doctors the effects of asthma on a small child, the microscopic story. I munched on a free bagel (any kind is fine with me) and sipped on some cold coffee while squinting my eyes, hard (as if that would make the slides more intelligible to me).

Disgruntled social workers. Well, a disgruntled social worker berated a man showing a slide of his son tied up to a respirator--as if this man was truly an insouciant corporate head who was defending the NYC transportation department by posing as an activist for cleaner air solutions. The disgruntled have a question for everything: if the breakfast is free, does that mean don’t count on eggs and bacon? If you are researching a Dominican population, is your survey in Spanish? If I clap my hands to punctuate my diatribe, will you better understand how meticulous and passionate my insights?

At a different meeting, conducted by a group of faith-based community organizers, I extemporized a presentation on a program I studied on the cab ride to the site. Preachers trying to out-preach each other. It was a long meeting. One man in a red hat, brown blazer, and pink pants and shoes interrupted the scheduled presentations to openly reflect on religious tolerance—a nearly obsolete point in a room comprised of Jewish, Muslim, and multi-denominational Christians. Perhaps because I am inundated with radical forms of various religions in the media I was impressed with how engaged these people were in their communities with no hidden agenda of proselytizing (or so it seems). Subsequently, I was disappointed in myself for being so cynical.

Particularly reassuring was the support this group—mostly men—gave to a woman, a survivor of a violent relationship, who was abandoned by her preacher during her struggle. Despite abandonment by her religious leader, she still maintained her faith. This community stressed the importance of ending violence against women and called out the fallacies of forcing women to stay in monogamous situations if the union is dangerous for the woman and her children.

Last note: I hate Sarah Palin. The entire campaign horrifies me. My job denies me from being publicly political, but, anonymously, I must express my anxiety over this upcoming election and future of this country. Unfortunately, the absurdity of everything that is happening right now leaves me flummoxed. Nonplussed. . . . only capable of finding different words for “baffled.”