Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-11-04 - 7:39 p.m.

Division

I didn't much want to cook tonight, so I drove down to a local taqueria to pick up some dinner. I haven't felt like doing a whole lot in the last two days - part of it is ANOTHER freakin' head cold, courtesy the elementary-school incubator, and part of it is the pervasive confusion and sadness I feel following the election.

I ordered our food, and took my little ticket stub with the last two digits circled, and got some containers of pico de gallo, and sat down at a table to wait. There were two tables of people eating, no one else; the place was clean and empty, not even any newspaper sections on the tables with which to while away my time.

After I ordered, another middle-aged woman came in to order. She was tall, and elegant in a harried sort of a way; long skirt with boots, and a beautiful black leather jacket with the belt carelessly knotted behind her, and a matching soft bag. She had the kind of haircut that looked effortlessly stylish, and she looked tired, but tired in a professional way - with lipstick. She looked like someone I might like to know, or more accurately, someone I might like to BE, except that I always have toilet paper stuck to my shoe. She took her ticket and sat down, dividing the distance between me and the full tables near the doorway. And we sat.

Another woman came in then, a younger one, quite overweight, in a pair of amazingly tight velour pants and a hoodie sweatshirt. She had with her a boy of about four, who was jumping around, hooting and tapping his hand over his mouth to make the sound interesting, dancing a little, making the occasional yelp or shout. She was trying to order and shush the boy, while the people eating and the elegant lady shot her ugly looks for the noise her boy was making. I imagined her as tired too, because I was, and I smiled at her kid. He smiled back. A taqueria is not The Four Seasons, people. She sat across the room, using the geometry of isolation - how far can you get from the people who already occupy the other tables? And we sat.

Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning, I realized that I do not know people. I do not know my neighbors. I felt a pervading sense of the divide, in my deep confusion, as though things had been true all along and I had simply never known about them. I see that people who journal online, whose journals I have read and loved, support a diferent way of life. And I see that when I do not know people, maybe when any of us do not know people, we paint in the parts we don't know with our own brush. We assume similarities that may not exist.

I want to ask these people, why? Why did you vote the way you did? Not in a way that would make them angry, not as an accusation, but because I want to understand. And it tires me, because I HAVE asked and I have listened, and I still am not able to reconcile, and it makes the divide seem deeper. I retreat into my own ignorance. And I choose my seat carefully, as far away from the occupied tables as I can.

There is nothing easy that allows us to begin a conversation, not even when we have the plainest of things in common: tiredness, or children, or jobs, or not wanting to cook dinner. We chose our distant seats and we look at each other. Maybe we even go home and write about each other. But if we can't break that silence, if we can't say, "May I sit here with you and wait?" then how can we share a dialog when we already know we are fundamentally divided?

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