I saw a video of a crossing guard (I think in some official capacity) vigorously shooing all of these motorcyclists out of the crosswalk, basically telling them to back up before the light changes.1 CG (that’s crossing guard for short) is light as a feather on his feet and at one point hops up on the back of a motorcycle to bop the person driving it on the head with the orange plastic bat in his hand. The bat doesn’t seem to be very heavy, I read the bopping as insistent, caring.
CG is full of surprises. Sometimes he is in a straw hat, sometimes he is in a dress, sometimes he is wearing a wig. Sometimes he has a tiny guitar he strums. In the first video I saw, at one point he stalks toward one of the motorcyclists who has backed up of his own accord and looks like he’s about to bop him but then kisses him instead on his helmet instead.
Summer Walker’s song Insane rings through his gestures: now what you in a rush for, what you tryna meet your maker darlin? oh you runnin out of time huh? look time ain’t even real, you really need to chill, she goes on. The refrain is, why you wanna play so bad
Get out of the crosswalk so people can pass this way, he says. You do not need the additional four feet, and god help you you don’t need to be that close to the perpendicular traffic. What are you in a rush for? But he does not beseech, he bops, he is both playful and fierce. I think he wants the motorcyclists to be safe, to get to where they are going, maybe even to relax. I was enthralled with the drama and verve and props he brings to his guardianship.
CG protects the motorcyclists from themselves, is not convinced that they need to wait in the crosswalk, four feet ahead of where they would have otherwise waited, is not convinced they need to risk getting run over.
Hélène Cixous notes, “Now it happens that the junction between this miniscule side and this infinite side produces comic effects almost all the time. Which thrills me. I think that laughter is set off when we are not afraid. When we see that the immense is not overwhelming; and also, perhaps when the maternal in us can manifest itself: as the imaginary possibility of taking a mountain in one’s arms. That is to say, knowing that one can always give life, protection, care…”2
Capitalism’s pressure is immense. The urgent, frantic, breakneck speed so many of us are moving at can be so consuming that we forget we are also opting in. The rushing, when you zoom out, or when it’s disrupted, becomes absurd. CG is not overwhelmed by the immensity, is unfazed. The maternal is manifest in him.
We are just as immense, what we give, when we decide to give, is too. We might feel afraid but we don’t have to act afraid, to be afraid.3
Find me at the junction, I’ll be laughing and waiting my turn.
adrienne maree brown ‘sunday night prayers’ slide 12. His page is here. You’re welcome. ↩
Rootprints, 22 ↩
I was moved by this profile of five Americans resisting ice in their own ways, which I was led to by Mariame Kaba’s newsletter. ↩