It’s a city… so its hard to see the stars. Maybe that why nobody looks at her. Her name is Estrella, what’s your name? She wants to know…
Where Buenos Aires flirts with the flagrant consumerism of Fifth Avenue, she walks around with no shoes. She holds a two year old whose filthy face is made ghostly by eyes staring into space. Her plea is simple: give me money for milk for the baby. She got the desperate look perfected. I stare back, overcome with saddness… ‘no mi hija, lo siento’ (no my child, I’m sorry)…
Why am I sorry? I am sorry that she is barefoot and begging. I am sorry there are two woman twenty feet away who are probably exploiting her by the way they are watching to see if she gets any money out of me. I am so sorry that she already done this eighty five times today and seven hundred times this week and I ‘m sorry that she is thinking that I’m only sorry because I can’t give her a 25 cent coin when I’m really sorry that I can’t give her access to a shower, a good meal, some shoes and a family to care for her or because she might have those things but still be trapped in this perverse vocation. And I’m so terribly sorry that millions and millions of children are also being denied their basic human right now. And I’m sorry that Laura and I are the only ones in this Argentinian 5th Ave. mourning her childhood. I am sorry. While she just wants to know if I’m going to put my hand in my pocket and take out a coin to get rid of her. That whats she’s banking on. For a second, I wonder that too. A penny for my thoughts… to disappear. That’s not gonna work today.
And in these moments, the havoc of my humanness is incited. I succumb to sorrow that ignites anger. I’m mad. Furious that the same human beings who would throw themselves in front of a bullet to save their child, could walk by somebody else’s while she dies slowly. Can I have faith in the callous majority right now? None. We are too miseducated, too engrained in our rationalizations of our injusice. I look at this little girl and ask her name.
We talk. She laughs. My inspiration to work hard cannot come from the anger at our frequent expressions of inhumanity… What makes me a better man has and will come from the people who are living and dying in pain and danger. From their loving touch under the shadow of hunger, their steadfast steps toward dignity and survival and their ability to still laugh with the guy who won’t even give them a quarter for food because he hates their exploitation. In this moment I can’t find a hint of hope in the masses that walk past us in a hurry. But if I could make a wish for a future without wars of bombs and blindness it would be on her… Estrella…. The first star I saw today. And on the millions behind her in the darkness...
…. P.S. As I finish writing this, I read the words painted on the wall next to me:
“Es importante que cad uno haga lo que pueda desde su lugar.” = “its important that each person do what they can from where they’re at.”
… yah. That’s basically what I’m saying.
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