Placement: a note on subversion

I sat down near him on the cold tile floor, but not too near. Placement is an important thing. Placement around strangers communicates more than silence or a cluster bomb of words. Placing one’s self around strangers is a communication art of the most delicate—and powerful—kind. Most people forget and don’t utilize the opportunities to communicate to the world with intentional placement.

The old man wearing all black—black coat, black pants, black hat, black skin—had established himself there on the third step of Chicago’s Union Station west side concourse. It was too bitter cold to be outside. He had his small black duffle zipped open on his right side and his feet spread wide down on the first step. Every once in a while I could hear him rustling in plastic bags holding some kind of food. His frizzy black beard with white hairs weaving sporadically through it was at least 10 inches long and if he stood up I’m sure his tall frame would intimidate most strong men.

So there I sat about 15 feet away wearing Finnish boots, keeping warm under a green Italian coat gifted to me by a Danish friend, my outfit decorated by a Palestinian kofia, writing in a homemade journal with an Irish pen, snacking on M&Ms with a well traveled Taiwanese backpack beside me. I looked like a hodge-podge of nations, if anything coherent.

I didn’t know this gentle-faced homeless man, but all I wanted for him to know was that I trust him. I am in his line of vision and when I sit there I say “I know you see me. I want you to see me. It doesn’t matter to me that you’re homeless. You are a man worthy of honor and I am asking for your protection.” This sort of communication is unexpected. Hopefully it is also encouraging.

I didn’t want to sit directly next to him because, well, that would require a great amount of effort on both of our parts. Conversation, awkward and probably halting, would ensue after forced introductions... And I wasn’t invited. When I walked by the first time he did not look up to make either friendly or hostile eye contact. Maybe he noticed me anyways and wondered about my life. He might have thought up a story or made all kinds of assumptions. Or maybe he was entirely disinterested. Either way, by sitting on his side of the foyer I am asking to commune with him. I was communicating: “Hello. I see you.”

Noticing the humanness and existence of others can and will subvert power structures. The black man next to me had an unkempt beard, as do many (or even most) homeless men. Think: how frustrating would it be to try and shave regularly as a homeless person? Is there humiliation involved in walking into a public restroom to shave? And most homeless women have scraggly hair and dirty hands with hangnails and dry, cracking skin in the winter. To notice and to to acknowledge—if even just by sitting my world-traveled white rear in close proximity—is a powerful thing.

As George Orwell keenly noted and “as dictators seem to agree, such a bypassing of abstractions, such an insistence on the concrete, is a politically subversive act.” Sitting down next to a stranger when there are plenty of other options says, “I see you. Do you see me?” Though small and vastly insignificant, this momentary encounter with another human on the cold floor of a train station on a cold cold Chicago day made tandem our humanity. We shared a space and I chose to set my young, white, privileged presence near this older, darker, poorer presence. And we were both human.

And I got to thinking, We are America, this old man and I. For what is a nation but blood running through veins and songs spurring from lips? It is this, ultimately. Any nation that forgets this and thinks it is independent of its people is operating under false pretense. What is the United States but the immigrant, the mother, the soldier, the lead in the school play, the old kitschy couple, and the souls of our feet? We are the United States.

When this country ceases to be our own place it becomes a farce. Upon further thought I realized that, for my black comrade, this nation may have already become a farce. I have traveled and seen many places. All human. All nations. I am not owned by the United States, a product to be bought and sold. I make this nation alongside the homeless man sharing a seat with me.

Human placement can and does evoke revolutions: Tahrir Square, Cairo 2011. Strangers refused to go home—even in the face of violent opposition—and they ended a 3-decade-long presidency. Subversion is most powerful in its most human forms. You see, because structures normally set themselves above individuals. And governments forget that they only exist because of the people they serve. But Egypt is reminding her government she will not be harassed any longer.

Ultimately, choosing to be in an essential human state with others, sharing space and persevering in placement, disrupts systems because it forces the system to acknowledge its dependence on human existence. That is why people sit in. That is why people march. That’s why people protest in streets and refuse to go home. A nation stops without its citizens and does not exist apart from their imagination and participation.

So there we sat for about 50 minutes. He ate his food out of a crinkly bag and I scribbled words in my journal. On my way out I passed so near him that I could have touched the skin pulled tightly on his dry old hands. I tried to see his eyes, to let him see mine, but, stubbornly, he did not look up. So I walked on and out into the cold and the wind.