I just called to say I'm Nordic

Someone on Montrose street is very very late.

At least, that's one conclusion I could draw from the fact that their alarm clock has been ringing non-stop for a week and a half. When I walk to work in the morning I pass a charming red brick building with tan awnings and from the outside on a relatively quiet street it is quite easy to make out the screetching of a clock radio keening to its owner to please, please, please! get out of bed already. I can sort of feel for the poor alarm, it simply wants a rest already, if they clearly aren't going to get up for whatever it was they set the reminder for, at least let the messenger off the hook. Empathic response or no, the alarm made me take in the building, something I never really bothered before to do. I found that this house interestingly stands of time from the rest on the street around it. While other more new-agey residents have painted their homes purples and greens, stuck metal sculptures of jumping mystical dragons on the front, stuck "Lick Bush and Dick in 04" bumper stickers in the windows, and replaced the old school address placards with wooden ones in the shape of prowling blue cats, this home is obstinately old fashioned, and contains sculptures of the Virgin Mary in the patio cement "lawn."

My own house is placed in an interesting cultural cross-section of the city. To the east lies the historic Italian Market where I work, now no longer full of Italians but more Hispanic and Vietnamese immigrant families who have moved to the area within the past 10 years and have started to set up shop in the market. Many of the Italians have moved to the south of me, along with some more affluent families that have created a community of older, restored houses. To the north and west lies center city, nesting den of the affluent and trendy. My block proper and the area west of me is mainly Black families. Directly across the street they are building a section 8 housing complex that resembles those awful developments out in the suburbs where each house is a cookie cutter of the one before and after it. Don't get me wrong, in theory its nicer than the ramshackle run-down structures you also see in the area, but they ring a little Stepford Wives for me to wholly embrace them. And I hate to think of all the old buildings with interesting architecture and history being torn down to make way for so much plastic. Suffice to say living on the borders of all these different areas of the city is interesting.

As is often the case in an area with a specific cultural slant, I feel somewhat of an outsider. Coming from the vagaries of white middle-class America, I often feel strangely disembodied in places that have a "community" in a way I never experienced growing up. I like the idea and have as I've written before come to my own versions of connection with the places I live and work in Philadelphia. Moving, however, often reinvigorates this feeling. One that apparently those watching me seem to pick up on. Once when coming home from an evening out, my dinnermate and I paused outside the door to say goodbye. Apparently we must have looked confused because a passing woman, who I have now come to recognize as a neighbor, asked if we were lost. I explained that, no in fact I lived in the house I was standing in front of.

"Oh...? Ok." she said with a vague confusion.

This story may be explained in part by an observation made by an elderly African-American gentleman who lives next door when my roommate and I moved in. He saw us con moving boxes et furniture and exclaimed that he was excited for us to join the block. He liked younger folk coming in and bringing their energy and thought we would also go a long way towards, "diversifying the neighborhood." There's a statement that goes on the list of things I haven't heard too often.

My building itself is situated neatly amidst of three Baptist churches. There are also within close proximity a series of a vaguely 1984-inspired phenomenon I call "Happy Black People Murals." The quotient of said pieces of public artwork generally tend, in my anecdotal experience, to indicate an inverse proportion of actual happy black community members one is likely to find in a given area. In one mural nearby a smiling man, who may or may not be the late great Dr. King (I'm not really sure, but if it isn't, the resemblance is quite striking), holds his linen-swaddled baby in a pose of promise and hope. The second boldly proclaims Merck's famous slogan "Don't Wait! Vaccinate!" and posits we enter a strange parallel universe in which everyone gets flu shots from each other and have necks and arms far out of proportion to the rest of their body. The last mural I can claim to enjoy in terms of color scheme but content-wise cannot comment on as I am unable to make it out due to the extreme about over graffiti covering it.

There are in fact Italian version of the same thing farther down 11th. In that area of town, where Pat's and Geno's reign supreme Louis Prima, Sinatra, and Lou Monte still stand, frozen in remembrances of days when they sang with the best of them. There are other greats of Italian culture but to be honest, a lot of them are pretty poor portraits and I have never bothered to read the signs. The strange thing about this is of course that the makeup of the neighborhoods these murals reside in are mostly Asian at this point. No though one it seems wants to, or at least is compelled enough to bother shattering the image of the of birthplace of Rocky Balboa.

There are times, especially when thrust into a new place or situation, when I feel like these studies in contrast mirror my own existence. These are the days when I want as much as possible to start establishing myself as distinct from the pre-formed group I have been placed into. Other times, I feel left behind but don't have the energy to change what already exists, or don't want to. And there are certainly days when reaching out to and relating to these groups is an effort monumental. It's easy to feel more comfortable with what we know, easy to stay put or simply go where we already know we have been, following the path of least resistance. But most times I am so grateful to have allowed myself the chance to be thrown into places I might not have known personally if I stayed shut off to new experience. Because, for example, on same trip to work where I have come to repeatedly encounter the alarm clock, I pass regularly one of the churches I spoke about earlier. In the window of that church stands my now very favorite sign in the city:




Even God it would appear is in a hurry.