The story starts with my intimate moments with the breeze, as I stepped outside onto my apartment’s porch this morning. The cool fall air reminded me that the shorts and oversized t-shirt I slept in are no longer quite enough to keep me warm.
I had a freshly-brewed cup of coffee in one hand in a perfectly-shaped EMU mug that my roommate happened upon at the thrift store—and in the other, a bagel with peanut butter, which was all the better, because the bagel was a gift from the dumpster’s bounty.
I took a few undistracted breaths like I hadn’t managed to do in several days and saw how the sun cut through the fog as it rose above the mountains.
Today, I am here.
And I am, it’s the truth, but maybe where I started my story is not so true.
Maybe the story starts at the same time with the same breeze, but thousands of miles west, where someone didn’t step out on their porch because, in the midst of ravaging wildfires, the air quality was too poor to take those refreshing breaths.
Maybe the story starts in a different apartment building in town, where a single mother desperately needed coffee but didn’t have time to make it as she hurried off to one of her two jobs that barely make ends meet, reminding her school-age children to “please go to their Google Meet at 9 a.m. so she wouldn’t get another call from their teacher,” and “could they just stop fighting with each other for long enough to hear her say, ‘Mommy loves you?’”
Maybe the story starts a few nights prior, with the eyes of the bagels that stared back at me from the dumpster, the holes in their centers like the eyes of those who couldn’t go out at night, like I could right then, reminding me that just because the color of my skin is lighter than theirs, I don’t have to carry around the heavy weight of constantly fearing for my life.
Or perhaps the story starts with the humans that laboured with their bodies and the earth that grew the plants that grew the beans so that the warm aroma of brewed coffee could reach my nose this morning.
How the story begins—a mere sentence or paragraph—carries with it great power, and must be treated with equal care. Pádraig Ó Tuama, a poet whose words were simultaneously a healing balm and a challenging force to our EMU community this past week, expressed this to us in last Wednesday’s convocation. Thank you, Pádraig, for your visit.
What is behind the story—another story, most likely—can reveal causes and relationships, selfish motives and painful histories. Siempre ver lo que está detrás was the key takeaway of one of my classes this week.
Always see what’s behind.
As I peel back the layers upon layers of stories behind my story, the layers of collective existence, the layers of human labour I benefit from, the layers of history and violent conflict, the layers of privilege and racism, I see that all of these are starting points.
They are the beginnings of a different narrative, or distinct perspectives on a narrative that needs to be re-told.
Maybe—I’m quite sure in fact—the story doesn’t start with me.
