« Home | surreptitious post » | after the deluge » | today at the met » | frustration is... » | scenes of gentrification » | hhhhooootttt » | job poems » | kiddie pool » | throwbacks » | wordplay, wordfight, wordwork: my dictionary »

7 years in tibet

i worked very late last night (got home at around midnight...my cat was quite irritated at the lateness of her dinner).

so i was in the car, coming home from work, and i was talking to the driver, a very nice man from tibet. i'd asked him where he was from, and he said guess, so i guessed almost every country in asia until he finally, laughingly said he was from tibet. he said that he was a mountain man, and you could tell a tibetan by his ponytail. he did, in fact, have a very nice, longish ponytail. he'd been in new york nine years, and he drove very much like an nyc car driver. so i learned a few facts - tibet is roughly 12,000 feet above sea level. and that brad pitt movie seven years in tibet was actually filmed in argentina.

so, i know there isn't really much to this story, but then i thought, you never really know what all the person next to you has seen in the world, what he or she really knows about the world. and i'd never met anyone from tibet before, and i may never ever go to tibet, but even the things that seem most insignificant to my daily life...

(read: a continuing sovereignty conflict in a small mountain country may or may not have been the/a reason why a man left his home country and moved to another, became a driver, and picked me up and brought me home on a late night at work - yes, that conflict may or may not have put that man in charge of my safe conveyance home, that is, in charge of my life and limb)

...are really not all that insignificant. and what's funny is that sometimes if the news doesn't lead with a story that's happening in brooklyn, i don't even care to watch it.

Labels: ,

About me

  • I'm call me aja
  • From nyc
  • 20something, black, woman, reader, writer, about to be a student again. i think i'd like to be heard (or read). child/grandchild of immigrant folk. yearning to travel. desirous of wisdom. a little bit ordinary, but working at being less so.
My profile