I've been trying to write this post all week and still failing

I grew up in Washington, DC, attending public schools. My elementary school was mostly white, but my secondary schools were more balanced. I estimated my high school was 40% black, 40% white, 10% hispanic, and 10% asian -- the only integrated one in the District, because if they'd bussed the white kids around, they'd've been a drop in each school.

My friends were a group that deliberately cut across cliques and races. I learned gutter Spanish¹ on the soccer field and Chinese chess² in the cafeteria. My best friend was black, others friends were Honduran and Guatemalan refugees, and another had been friends with Amy Carter. I knew someone who went back to Chile after graduation, and was killed. One long-time friend reconnected our senior year with the rest of his family, living in another state -- he and they both thought the others had been killed back in Cambodia. This sounds deliberate, but I mostly just fell into it -- I wasn't as adventuresome as I wanted to be, most of the time.³ I hung around with these guys while waiting for my chance to escape.

Yeah, privileged white kid.

I knew there were racial tensions in my school -- and if you poked certain people in every race, you'd find racism, in just about every direction. But I also knew we were better off that way than any of my acquaintances attending private schools. My breath was taken away one time, when the boy across the street looked at me and said, "You're not prejudiced, are you?" in the coded way that meant he was and didn't care. I said something like, "I try not to be."

Which was true as far as it goes. My friends and I, we tried to ignore the whole race thing. Avoided it. Presumed it wasn't an issue, amongst ourselves. We were black and white and brown and yellow, and if someone wanted to make an issue of it, well screw them. Class caused more tensions with us.

We did nothing to make our school a better place, aside from being ourselves.

I lost track of everyone after graduation, except for one who went the same university.⁴ I have no idea what happened to Jomoko, Grant, Eduardo, Melissa, Jennifer, Richard, Jim, Holmes, Elizabeth, and all. I left DC behind, when I went to college, and never looked back. The past few years, as I notice how homogenized my life has become, I've come to regret this. I suspect the boy that I was, for all he was an idjit (especially about the girl thing), could teach the man I am a few things.


1. At the end of Spanish IV, I could speak either fluently or cleanly -- on the field, while thinking of the next word, I'd toss in an obscenity; in class, I had to hesitate more.

2. Xiangqi, though I didn't know the name at the time -- they just told me to call it chess.

3. Though lest I forget, I was daring enough to take my English teacher's daughter to the Prom.

4. This would be the girl I asked to the Prom three times before asking my English teacher's daughter. The rumor about teenage boys not having a clue? Totally true.

---L.

I've been trying to write this post all week and still failing

I grew up in Washington, DC, attending public schools. My elementary school was mostly white, but my secondary schools were more balanced. I estimated my high school was 40% black, 40% white, 10% hispanic, and 10% asian -- the only integrated one in the District, because if they'd bussed the white kids around, they'd've been a drop in each school.

My friends were a group that deliberately cut across cliques and races. I learned gutter Spanish¹ on the soccer field and Chinese chess² in the cafeteria. My best friend was black, others friends were Honduran and Guatemalan refugees, and another had been friends with Amy Carter. I knew someone who went back to Chile after graduation, and was killed. One long-time friend reconnected our senior year with the rest of his family, living in another state -- he and they both thought the others had been killed back in Cambodia. This sounds deliberate, but I mostly just fell into it -- I wasn't as adventuresome as I wanted to be, most of the time.³ I hung around with these guys while waiting for my chance to escape.

Yeah, privileged white kid.

I knew there were racial tensions in my school -- and if you poked certain people in every race, you'd find racism, in just about every direction. But I also knew we were better off that way than any of my acquaintances attending private schools. My breath was taken away one time, when the boy across the street looked at me and said, "You're not prejudiced, are you?" in the coded way that meant he was and didn't care. I said something like, "I try not to be."

Which was true as far as it goes. My friends and I, we tried to ignore the whole race thing. Avoided it. Presumed it wasn't an issue, amongst ourselves. We were black and white and brown and yellow, and if someone wanted to make an issue of it, well screw them. Class caused more tensions with us.

We did nothing to make our school a better place, aside from being ourselves.

I lost track of everyone after graduation, except for one who went the same university.⁴ I have no idea what happened to Jomoko, Grant, Eduardo, Melissa, Jennifer, Richard, Jim, Holmes, Elizabeth, and all. I left DC behind, when I went to college, and never looked back. The past few years, as I notice how homogenized my life has become, I've come to regret this. I suspect the boy that I was, for all he was an idjit (especially about the girl thing), could teach the man I am a few things.


1. At the end of Spanish IV, I could speak either fluently or cleanly -- on the field, while thinking of the next word, I'd toss in an obscenity; in class, I had to hesitate more.

2. Xiangqi, though I didn't know the name at the time -- they just told me to call it chess.

3. Though lest I forget, I was daring enough to take my English teacher's daughter to the Prom.

4. This would be the girl I asked to the Prom three times before asking my English teacher's daughter. The rumor about teenage boys not having a clue? Totally true.

---L.

"Even in the Dark Fortress, people are born and get married and die."

I mentioned Dimmuborgir ("Dark Fortress") a couple times in my Iceland posts, but failed to describe it well -- a vast field of gnarly black volcanic pillars and ridges and shelves. The sort of rocks that look like trolls who didn't get home before sunrise. Nor did we take particularly good pictures.

Here are some better ones, from strangie23's vacation/wedding/honeymoon photo album. Yes, they got married in Dimmuborgir. In a lava tube cave. I'm jealous. That's even better than getting a marriage license at the bail window of the county jail.

(Link from iceland_pix.)

---L.