Dasani

When I was much younger I had a good friend who studied art, with hopes of making a career in it. When that didn't work out, she became a nurse. But, when she was studying art, she would tell me of an exercise they did at art school to foster creativity. They were to make a complete drawing or sketch without lifting their pencil from the paper. I watched her do it. It was not unlike, I thought, stream of consciousness writing. You planned nothing, just went with your gut, let it flow.

***

I am a woman born without a jewelry gene. I have no attraction to gold, silver or diamonds. Yet, this week I found myself at a jewelry party...  At this point my story could go a couple of ways. I'm going to choose one and follow it and you will see how my circuitous mind works, when I don't pick the pencil up from the paper. I found myself this week, at a jewelry party, sitting across from a fascinating woman discussing the art of playing contract bridge. We concurred that once you master the "language" of the bidding, the challenge lies in the play of the hand. If you have won the bid, you must instantly, in your head, figure out how to take each trick, how to get rid of your "losers" and how to navigate successfully to each suit between the dummy hand and your hand. One misstep and you'll find yourself unable to obtain tricks that, by all rights, should be yours. Here is a partial list of people I follow on Twitter, in the order they come to my mind: Bill Clinton, Pope Francis, Lewis Black, Stephen Colbert, Steve Martin, Steve Dahl, Dr. Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kathleen Madigan and a young man, who lives in Chicago  that I've never met. From his Twitter homepage I know that he is in a rock band and is a "social media guy for @TeachForAmerica." Someone I follow retweeted him, I liked what the young man had to say and added him to my list. To protect the innocent I will call this guy, that I do not know, "Shoe." The older I get the less I am able to tolerate any news to do with children suffering. I happened to read a Chicago Tribune article a few years back about an abuse case. That night I could not sleep for the sorrow that weighed on me, so that it was difficult to breath. I could not sleep for visions I could not banish from my head. So, I chose to protect myself by refusing to read such articles. A co-worker who hailed from New York had the New York Times delivered to her Chicago home. She'd occasionally bring her paper to the office. I'd devour it. When we retired and moved to the country, I decided to treat myself to a digital subscription to the New York Times. It costs me $20 per month. It is the best newspaper in the world. Period. If any newspaper wishes to survive the transition from actual wood pulp to digital, they should consider modeling themselves after the NYTimes.On occasion the NYTimes does a series, like their recent "Invisible Child - Girl in the Shadows: Dasani's Homeless Life." I took one look at the headline and said to myself, "No, don't do it! Do not read this story. You know how you get!" A couple of days later a tweet comes in from my unknown pal, Shoe. It says, "a stunning, heartbreaking 5-pt series about one of NYC's 22,000 homeless children." Like I said, I don't know Shoe from Adam, but from his tweets I've come to trust him.It's as if I can hear Shoe whispering all day, "Come on, if I can read it, you can read it." I pull up the initial article and begin the series. It is among the best writing one can find in a newspaper and it is what I've come to expect from the New York Times. I am immediately spellbound. It reads like literature. Here are the 1st couple of paragraphs:

She wakes to the sound of breathing. The smaller children lie tangled beside her, their chests rising and falling under winter coats and wool blankets. A few feet away, their mother and father sleep near the mop bucket they use as a toilet. Two other children share a mattress by the rotting wall where the mice live, opposite the baby, whose crib is warmed by a hair dryer perched on a milk crate.

Slipping out from her covers, the oldest girl sits at the window. On mornings like this, she can see all the way across Brooklyn to the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach 100 floors. Her gaze always stops at that iconic temple of stone, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise.

“It makes me feel like there’s something going on out there,” says the 11-year-old girl,...

Who writes like this? A genius, that's who. The reporter, Andrea Elliot, deserves a Pulitzer. It's strange because when I read "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, I thought, "Why can't this be true. I know it's fiction, but I so want it to be true!" When I read Elliot's story of Dasani, I wanted it to be fiction. Why? Why? Why does this have to be true? It's as though Andrea Elliot has taken my head in her hands and turned it toward New York, to Dasani in particular. She has forced me to look at the homeless situation and it’s impact on innocent children. “Look! Can you see? This is how it is. This is how it really is. Right now. Here. In the present. Look. Look at this child.” And with the haunting story, comes beautiful photographs and video clips. You see Dasani trying to recite "Phenomenal Women" and her brother, Papa, trying to explain his thoughts on life in a shelter, and all the while other kids jump in front of them, yelling, doing every in their power to distract the two. And you know that this is a synopsis of their lives. There is so much in their lives purposely distracting them as they try in vain to stay focused. Her reporting takes me through a range of feelings. I feel some pain, some joy, some sorrow, some anger, but always hope. Because of this child, Dasani, there is always a ray of hope. If you don't cheer for this kid, I'm sorry to say it, but you are, like Spock, emotionally compromised. I was born without a jewelry gene, but that's okay. I'd rather spend $240 a year for my New York Times subscription and allow them to bring a breathtaking panorama of the world, good or bad, like it or not, to adorn my life every single day.

***
Note: I was a registered online NYTimes reader for years before purchasing my digital subscription. Back then one was permitted 20 "free" articles per month. I used to burn through those in one week. I think, they now allow 10 "free" articles per month now. Read Dasani's story if you get a chance.