Very superstitious, writing's on the wall.

Very superstitious, ladder's 'bout to fall.

Thirteen-month-old baby broke the looking glass.

Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past.

When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer.

Superstition ain't the way.

Hey, hey, hey.

-Steview Wonder

There I was, all of 30-something years old, driving to work on a regular work day, when out of the blue a bird came and perched on the hood of my car. I was alarmed. The thing was completely black and looked remarkably like a crow. Do they have crows in New England? A quick google search told me that indeed they do. Me, with sixteen years of superstition blasting convent education behind me, ignored the honks from other irate drivers and craned my neck for a second crow. I was darned relieved to find one - "One for sorrow, two for joy". How do you explain this? My parents may as well have burnt their money in a bonfire for all the enlightenment my education accorded me!

Has anyone done a study on why it is that we lean towards the unbelievable and unproven, suspending our reasoning in the process? There are stories of scientists (Neils Bohr, for instance) who were superstitious, so it has nothing to do with IQ. It has to do with man's fear of the unknown. Or his fear of death. How else can you explain it?

Minority status

"Looking Out"

It must be odd

to be a minority

he was saying. I

looked around

and didn't see any.

So I said

Yeah

it must be.

- Mitsuye Yamada

I was doing my weekend should-I-work-shouldn't-I dilly-dallying and part of this ritual is reading that last piece of poetry before paying respects to Outlook 2007. Today, this act led me to an interesting poem by Mitsuye Yamada that took me back a few years in time. It was 2003 and I was travelling on a train between Sweden and Denmark. Across me sat a Malaysian girl who looked well put-together and like someone who had spent a considerable amount of time in Scandinavia. We got friendly during the ride and I found out that she was adopted, as an infant, by her Swedish parents. The landscape that passed us, as we chatted, was breathtaking and the girl pointed out to some sites occasionally and named them. "They must really feel lucky living here." I exulted after witnessing the most glorious sunset of my life. Something flashed in her eyes and she replied, a fraction too soon - "Yes, we do."

A similar statement is made here, by this poem. Yamada shakes her head at people who cannot look beyond her minority status. I cannot say I feel like I do not belong in the United States and this may be a function of where I live (liberal Massachusetts) or because I am not so assimilated into the mainstream as to notice the subtleties. Perhaps it is a bit of both. S may feel differently as he grows up in this country and goes to school here. He may consider himself an American first and may have his conception questioned, ever so often, like Yamada's was. If he does feel challenged thus, I'm glad I can point him to the considerable body of literature that exists on the topic of being neither here nor there.

I like espresso shots of poetry, I do.

Find more on Mitsuye Yamada here.