After 16 years of walking essentially the same route each day, you'd think I'd know the neighborhood pretty well. I certainly thought so. But I was reminded recently that habit does not equate knowledge.
I've walked past one corner house at least a thousand times, and, each time I look at it, I'm always left thinking the same thing. "No one lives there."
The other day, I asked our mailman Trey about the house, certain he'd confirm my hunch. But he said he delivers mail there every day.
How is that possible, I thought to myself. I've never seen anyone in the yard. Never seen a car in the drive. Never seen evidence of a newly planted garden or even a newspaper on its stoop. And yet, Trey knew otherwise.
Yesterday, when I passed the house--a house I now knew had at least one human shuffling around inside--I realized that, in all these years I've walked this route, I've only spent maybe 15 seconds a day in front of it. And, almost always, that passage has taken place in an amazingly predictable time span--usually between 6 and 7 a.m.
My God. What if this person is normal, and sleeps past the crack of dawn?!
I'd written a story that didn't take the mundane and probable into account. Instead, I'd constructed a story of abandonment, of loss of some kind, based upon a series of tiny 15-second exposures, typically occurring at the same time of day. Not a good reportage technique, yet still I was flabbergasted to know how wrong I'd been.
And, while I now know that the house is occupied, I still know nothing about its occupants.
In the past month, I've come to realize that my understanding of African-American lives in the United States is as flimsy as the story I'd written about that house. For 58 years, I've kept to my reliably predictable route, one with brief interactions, simple stories, quick observations and predictably limited results.
Finally, it seems, I've arrived at "BLM o'clock." Yes, that clock has been ticking a long time. Yes, I should have noticed these things much earlier. Those facts won't change. But what has changed is this path that now takes me forward. It's a new route, one filled with different faces, important histories, personal reckonings and lots and lots of paying attention.
