er(RACE)

Blog Post 4

race

            Whenever I signed the acceptance letter, there was a running horse on the letterhead. It claimed to be a wild horse, the American Southwest, but when I think back I suspect that it might be a track horse.

It seems like the people who survive best here are the ones who win a on a horse. The fact that any given resident is on a hot streak is evident by the way they drive. I cannot afford to test my luck, so I come to a full stop. Slowing, but not stopping, they sneer. Everyone is blonde. The cars are blonde, the horses are blonde, the sky is blonde from the lights, which are always on, rainbow-roll into a muddy lilac.

With my hands deep in my caramel coat, I walk though the vaguely upper-class neighborhood across the major intersection and from mine think about the yard that won “yard of the month” back in September. It is full of wispy yellow grass clumps and ornamental wheat along the perimeter of a bright lawn with a crew cut. I fantasize as I walk (the car would not start) to the grocery store for soup, just like Andy Warhol.

I pretend to be the judge of the yard contest, saying to my fellow judges, “Boy, you know, I don’t know what it is, but I shore do like those plants that look like a blonde woman’s hair. We shore have made the right call this month!”

The thought about blonde hair being beautiful depresses me, and besides, I am afraid of making eye contact with any of the people walking large or small fluffy dogs with glossy fur, so I look down and focus on the clip of my march, and pull my coat tighter. My relationship with The Coat verges on romantic as I learn to trust it not to discolor in the rain, and to protect my body from the wind effectively, somewhat miraculously, as it has no lining.

I think was actually made to be worn, for long walks to cold subway stops, between design studios and bars, in winter weather, and still look clean and confident. I feel vaguely proud to present it to the woman at the coat check of the museum, although I cannot afford to park in the appointed lot, instead choosing to park for three dollars at a parking meter 4 blocks away.

When I do this, I am pretending that we both know about what it is like to be in a more diverse city, where talented people work hard and honestly into deserving positions. During this interaction, I am suspending my disbelief that the sacred art space of the museum does not also operate on luck.

I am making every effort to allow myself, and maybe the coat check attendant, a chance to acknowledge that there is another culture, with different values, that appreciates different things, and relates to those things with a different mindset. Part of what is shared by us, in a museum full of white people looking at the refuse of another cultures is not really our shared race, but our access to a sub-culture and a insight that is only available to those who inhabit a colonized body, who despite best efforts, are not ever quite part of the ruling socio-economic clat.

I tell a friend of mine (a sort of dealer, whose family bred racing horses and racing dogs. A house full of  Kentucky Derby glasses with the great grandchildren of their own horses printed on them) “500 words on race,” and he laughs. Who can say anything decisive about Race in 500 words? “Put down 50 for me” “What’s the name of your dog?” “Whichever one looks hungriest.”