Life in Lewiston, Maine
Following are some thoughts about Lewiston, Maine, where I lived for a few months. I just copyedited my own initial writing (oh, so many awful initial writing errors, it was painfully embarrassing to read what I'd written, when I was finally far enough away from what I'd written, I could actually see the writing errors...):
I'd long ago heard that Lewiston, Maine was the "armpit" of Maine, resounding of all the odd stinks one could smell. Nowadays, to be sure, Lewiston does NOT stink. The river is actually so incredibly beautiful, and I'd do a lot to live by its momentaries.
I didn't grow up in Lewiston, but rather in the most highly taxed area of Maine (at that time, Falmouth, Maine), along the waterfront, though my parents struggled to stay there, since my father earned a USM professor's wage, which just got our initial family of 4 kids through. My father sometimes did things to help us get through I know he's not proud of.
Falmouth was street-wise proud, meaning I didn't grow up surrounded by garbage littering my daily vision of life. I remember and profoundly hang on to memories of a childhood of being able to run through woods, along the ocean, along clean streets... memories that nature at least was safe, even if at times my home life wasn't. Nature pulled me through so many hard times, I can't count.
I have lived in many places... various town and communities in California, in Madison, Wisconsin, and in various neighborhoods of both New York City and Boston, and also all along the Cumberland County coast of Maine, and also in Farmington, Maine. The worst place I've ever lived, the most ugly, the least interesting has certainly been Lewiston, Maine.
Lewiston could be a nice place to live. Money is not required. I've had a low-income most of my life, but so far having a low income has not meant living with trash every foot or so, or with people staggering down the street at night yelling out obscenities.
In Lewiston, I lived in a neighborhood that was frequently inundated with people who yelled out loud--swearing and screaming. One night I ran out and confronted a group of such people... men and women... swearing at the top of their lungs. I said to them, "There are kids living here. Stop swearing... I won't put up with this. Not in my neighborhood." They yelled back... "This is Lewiston!" As if Lewiston were, by its very genetic make-up, loud, vulgar, and ugly and I was entirely off the mark in making my demand from some peace and quiet.
Well, apparently I was off the mark, since I got nowhere. Whatever it is I believe isn't something a lot of people in Lewiston either do believe, or perhaps can afford to believe. I am not sure. I don't believe, however, that by virtue of living in Lewiston, one necessarily has to swear and yell at ten o'clock at night. I have met many very kind and considerate people in Lewiston, people who care about their daily quality of living.
Assuredly, cleaning up in front of your house, or even choosing to pick up trash on your block won't pay your doctor's bills, or get your kids to college. However, a sense of personal dignity does help every child. Every child is a question, and the best kind of questions are always, "what if?" What if my child felt okay about herself or himself? What if my child didn't have to worry about how I, as a parent, am doing? What if my child felt that his/her home was some good memory? What if my child had a good foundation?
I believe that home life, a neighborhood life, and a sense of place are critically important. Race, sexual orientation, religious orientation--these are not critical. Good manners and interpersonal care are.
On a different but related topic, I believe that "art" is about beauty. There is enough ugliness in our lives. Art that we continue to value is somehow unerringly, if inexplicably so, beautiful. Jenny Holtzer may have pronounced "truths", but her work is not visually, nor even verbally beautiful. It is just educated propoganda. It may be words we should consider, but the work itself is not art. :Paul Klee, Pieter Saanredam, Islamic architecture (and if there are specific architects whose names I should know, please forgive me for not being able to name them here), well, these are just a small few of the artists or styles I personally find very beautiful. Others love Renoir, or African masks, or... the list goes on. Some love beetles, or the wonderful magnificent order of chemistry and the models we've created for chemical interactions/bonds.
What is consistent, however, is that the search for meaning for each of us individually is an individual search for what for each of us is beautiful. We are not trying to live in ugliness, trash, chaos, and therefore we are not trying to live in despair. We work very very hard to keep ourselves from chaos, ugliness, and trash.
This is work--day in and day out.
If we want more beauty in our lives, we are asked by our innermost selves to create it. To create beauty, as the best defense against despair.
I came from a ravaged home, but I do have many many good memories of the place where I grew up, and those memories are sustaining. They have been critical to my sense of some kind of "self." A self is a place to go... a place one wants to go. I have spent years pondering what this so-called "sense of self" was, as I have spent years wondering what exactly was the "spiritual" self. Lots of words, without good definitions.
A sense of self is a sense of what one wants to be--in relationship to other people, to nature, and to the very concept of life on Earth. It is mostly a sense of being okay with with the biggest concerns of life, as Paul Tillich has said--the fundamental issues. If one is ethically and morally okay, and also concerned with all life on Earth, that is a sense of self one can be in, whatever else one is--professionally, etc.
It is akin to a spiritual self--a self one feels one could go to the grave with--that one has owned up to one's sins, tried to repair, tried to improve, tried to mature and also worked to nourish.
A spiritual self is not some communing with stars, or palm reading. It is a moral and ethical self. A consciousness about one's own limitations and a struggle with those limitations, combined with one's particular paths of endeavor in life.
There is absolutely no reason that the low income people can't have beauty. All that is required is to get off our butts and clean up and make beautiful our surroundings. We cannot expect others to clean up after our own garbage. We create our garbage. We should clean it up. It is not the responsibility of the City of Lewiston to do more than what we pay taxes for--to pick up the garbage as we have agreed to the city ordinances. We have agreed our garbage should go in receptacles, and we have agreed to separate out our recyclable goods from our non-recyclable goods. We agreed on this. Our taxes pay for our own agreements, as a community. Not our private problems.
What is really beautiful, and what the rich pay for, more often than not, are those moments when we can contemplate our surroundings, know peace, and learn more about what is different and fascinating: bugs, grass, wind, other people, microbes, etc. In short, we envy the rich their moments of peace and beauty. Sure, we might also envy them for a lot of other things... that they can pay their medical bills easily. But, do you really truly envy them their designer shoes? Really? Such shoes wouldn't last a moment in the real world. I don't envy them their shoes, though I once did. What I really envy/love/want is the serenity of beautiful lands and well-maintained property.
Best, Elizabeth M. Burke
I'd long ago heard that Lewiston, Maine was the "armpit" of Maine, resounding of all the odd stinks one could smell. Nowadays, to be sure, Lewiston does NOT stink. The river is actually so incredibly beautiful, and I'd do a lot to live by its momentaries.
I didn't grow up in Lewiston, but rather in the most highly taxed area of Maine (at that time, Falmouth, Maine), along the waterfront, though my parents struggled to stay there, since my father earned a USM professor's wage, which just got our initial family of 4 kids through. My father sometimes did things to help us get through I know he's not proud of.
Falmouth was street-wise proud, meaning I didn't grow up surrounded by garbage littering my daily vision of life. I remember and profoundly hang on to memories of a childhood of being able to run through woods, along the ocean, along clean streets... memories that nature at least was safe, even if at times my home life wasn't. Nature pulled me through so many hard times, I can't count.
I have lived in many places... various town and communities in California, in Madison, Wisconsin, and in various neighborhoods of both New York City and Boston, and also all along the Cumberland County coast of Maine, and also in Farmington, Maine. The worst place I've ever lived, the most ugly, the least interesting has certainly been Lewiston, Maine.
Lewiston could be a nice place to live. Money is not required. I've had a low-income most of my life, but so far having a low income has not meant living with trash every foot or so, or with people staggering down the street at night yelling out obscenities.
In Lewiston, I lived in a neighborhood that was frequently inundated with people who yelled out loud--swearing and screaming. One night I ran out and confronted a group of such people... men and women... swearing at the top of their lungs. I said to them, "There are kids living here. Stop swearing... I won't put up with this. Not in my neighborhood." They yelled back... "This is Lewiston!" As if Lewiston were, by its very genetic make-up, loud, vulgar, and ugly and I was entirely off the mark in making my demand from some peace and quiet.
Well, apparently I was off the mark, since I got nowhere. Whatever it is I believe isn't something a lot of people in Lewiston either do believe, or perhaps can afford to believe. I am not sure. I don't believe, however, that by virtue of living in Lewiston, one necessarily has to swear and yell at ten o'clock at night. I have met many very kind and considerate people in Lewiston, people who care about their daily quality of living.
Assuredly, cleaning up in front of your house, or even choosing to pick up trash on your block won't pay your doctor's bills, or get your kids to college. However, a sense of personal dignity does help every child. Every child is a question, and the best kind of questions are always, "what if?" What if my child felt okay about herself or himself? What if my child didn't have to worry about how I, as a parent, am doing? What if my child felt that his/her home was some good memory? What if my child had a good foundation?
I believe that home life, a neighborhood life, and a sense of place are critically important. Race, sexual orientation, religious orientation--these are not critical. Good manners and interpersonal care are.
On a different but related topic, I believe that "art" is about beauty. There is enough ugliness in our lives. Art that we continue to value is somehow unerringly, if inexplicably so, beautiful. Jenny Holtzer may have pronounced "truths", but her work is not visually, nor even verbally beautiful. It is just educated propoganda. It may be words we should consider, but the work itself is not art. :Paul Klee, Pieter Saanredam, Islamic architecture (and if there are specific architects whose names I should know, please forgive me for not being able to name them here), well, these are just a small few of the artists or styles I personally find very beautiful. Others love Renoir, or African masks, or... the list goes on. Some love beetles, or the wonderful magnificent order of chemistry and the models we've created for chemical interactions/bonds.
What is consistent, however, is that the search for meaning for each of us individually is an individual search for what for each of us is beautiful. We are not trying to live in ugliness, trash, chaos, and therefore we are not trying to live in despair. We work very very hard to keep ourselves from chaos, ugliness, and trash.
This is work--day in and day out.
If we want more beauty in our lives, we are asked by our innermost selves to create it. To create beauty, as the best defense against despair.
I came from a ravaged home, but I do have many many good memories of the place where I grew up, and those memories are sustaining. They have been critical to my sense of some kind of "self." A self is a place to go... a place one wants to go. I have spent years pondering what this so-called "sense of self" was, as I have spent years wondering what exactly was the "spiritual" self. Lots of words, without good definitions.
A sense of self is a sense of what one wants to be--in relationship to other people, to nature, and to the very concept of life on Earth. It is mostly a sense of being okay with with the biggest concerns of life, as Paul Tillich has said--the fundamental issues. If one is ethically and morally okay, and also concerned with all life on Earth, that is a sense of self one can be in, whatever else one is--professionally, etc.
It is akin to a spiritual self--a self one feels one could go to the grave with--that one has owned up to one's sins, tried to repair, tried to improve, tried to mature and also worked to nourish.
A spiritual self is not some communing with stars, or palm reading. It is a moral and ethical self. A consciousness about one's own limitations and a struggle with those limitations, combined with one's particular paths of endeavor in life.
There is absolutely no reason that the low income people can't have beauty. All that is required is to get off our butts and clean up and make beautiful our surroundings. We cannot expect others to clean up after our own garbage. We create our garbage. We should clean it up. It is not the responsibility of the City of Lewiston to do more than what we pay taxes for--to pick up the garbage as we have agreed to the city ordinances. We have agreed our garbage should go in receptacles, and we have agreed to separate out our recyclable goods from our non-recyclable goods. We agreed on this. Our taxes pay for our own agreements, as a community. Not our private problems.
What is really beautiful, and what the rich pay for, more often than not, are those moments when we can contemplate our surroundings, know peace, and learn more about what is different and fascinating: bugs, grass, wind, other people, microbes, etc. In short, we envy the rich their moments of peace and beauty. Sure, we might also envy them for a lot of other things... that they can pay their medical bills easily. But, do you really truly envy them their designer shoes? Really? Such shoes wouldn't last a moment in the real world. I don't envy them their shoes, though I once did. What I really envy/love/want is the serenity of beautiful lands and well-maintained property.
Best, Elizabeth M. Burke
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