A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

We’ll say no one can be known by only what’s visible. We’ll say most of us hide what troubles and confuses us, displaying instead the facets we hope others will approve of, the parts we hope others will like.

Valerie so pregnant, so dark-skinned, such a contrast to her tall, blond husband. We won’t pretend that no one paid attention to this contrast. Of course we did. Mostly we felt it gave them an exotic appeal, a kind of celebrity status in a neighborhood that had come to think of itself as progressive yet was not doing much to demonstrate that character.

Dostoyevsky said, What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Unable, meaning being denied, being thwarted. Those of us who’ve had love denied—real love, not a passing lusty whim, not a false infatuation based on some imagined connection that in most cases is unrequited—we fellow travelers through hell know Dostoyevsky told it true.

Start here, please, in communion with one another despite our differences, recognizing that without start there is no end.