one down, upward bound

Dear Jean,

Whenever you engage in this sort of third-person self-talk, it’s usually when you’ve messed up big time, or done something really embarrassing. Like that time you were too self-conscious to bike past a group of students on the Diag so you cycled around a tree six times while trying to think of an alternative route. But this time, you’ve far from messed up, in fact, things are turning out better than you’ve expected. Another reason why you’ve stopped being so self-conscious is because you’re in a place that jolts you into having the ultimate P-word, (no, not pizza, that was Chicago), it’s perspective.

Detroit drew you in because it reminded you of Kuala Lumpur, good ol’ KL back in the capital of Malaysia. You thought you could take the streets you knew from before and match them to the avenues now. You assumed braving the back alleys back home prepared you for the little dead-ended roads branching off these foreign streets. You believed falsely that you could lift the footprints from there, and map out the same path here. You heard of the water shortages and remembered the numerous occasions you’ve lived through those.

And Detroit laughed. Detroit said nope. Detroit said you don’t know me the way you think you did. Detroit said you know my name, not my story.

And how humbled you have been in these past few days. Before you came here, you thought you’d have to struggle to accept the city and its ways. But the people on the streets, the pride in the air, the posters full of promise made you realize that now, you’re hoping that the city would accept you instead.

Jillian, your extremely lovely and understanding site supervisor has been nothing but encouraging. (Except maybe when she saw you in the office this morning and went “What are you doing here go home” because she thought you still didn’t have your work visa and she was potentially harbouring a law-breaker.) Ayat, Jillian, and yourself have been brainstorming ideas for various projects, and you can’t wait to go on site visits to finally meet the little hoomins these projects seek to serve. Amongst all the motivations listed for the Arts for Learning’s Sake project, the one that stuck out the most was “we need art”, because we do. The ideal final product would be either a toolkit catering to the educators and parents of Detroit on how best to incorporate art into teaching, or maybe just a huge smile on the face of a kid who’s just created his or her own piece of art. That sounds almost better, actually.

Signing out, Jean.

p.s. someday Jillian will forget that she ever walked in on you taking a selfie with the Kuerig coffee machine at the office so stop thinking about that.