june 21, 2000.

Welcome solstice! Again the benevolent mother goddess returns to bear her...

Oh, whatever. You'd think I'd be over this Marion Zimmer Bradley crap by now, but I just started the Fionavar Tapestries & it's affecting my sense of perspective.

Today I saw something very strange, very beautiful, very sad. The Boy & I were getting on the southbound subway when the chimes began to sound. Right at the doors but still on the platform were an elderly lady with a walker and a young mother pushing a baby stroller. I saw two men move to block the doors, just as if it was an elevator. The two women hesitate, then slowly enter the car. An angry shout from the operator has no effect. Then, a bunch of normal commuting passengers enter the still-open doors, awkwardly crowding in.

It's at this point that everything happens very fast.

Two men in security uniforms arrive, take control, lead the man away in cuffs. The doors close and the whole subway murmurs uncomfortably but no one says anything too loud. Private reveries and muttered conversation last until the Boy & I depart. At this point I'm thinking of Cervantes. There's a part in Don Quixote when the errant knight comes across a chain gang: a set of prisoners bound for some facet of punishment. Seeing them as unjustly bound by a tyrant knight, he attacks and the prisoners, freed, scatter.

My professor paused at this point. This isn't just another comical facet of his madness, like the times he mistakes whores for great ladies and windmills for giants. He behaves himself as befits a force of pure gallantry, no matter what the context. Look at how chaos is loosed in the world and remember that some of our greatest stories mark the way that the pure good upsets the comfortable order of things. Jesus in the Temple. Quixote and the prisoners. This anonymous man in the subway, hauled off in cuffs for aiding an elderly disabled lady and a young mother, because that meant holding the train up a full minute.

Think about it. If you were there, would you have spoken up?

I've been feeling very raw of late, especially when I walk through the city. I've always felt guilty passing panhandlers with change safely in my pocket, because with most of them, their need is too apparent not to awaken some tenuous connection. But lately when I walk on by, I think about The Screwtape Letters: if you can keep generosity firmly entrenched in the outer circle of his acquaintance among people he will never meet and banish charity from his manner among the people he sees every day, then your battle will be half won.

I mean, what's the point of believing in charity & equality, what's the point of educating myself as to the unfairness of life if I then do nothing directly about it? You must do your best to separate his notion of Christianity from any idea like that of social justice.

I only know of one way to feel better, and that is to give when I am able and when I am asked. It's at least worth a try; I couldn't feel much worse.