People throng in the ill-tempered bustle outside Victoria Station, commuters dodging and weaving their way through clouds of smokers and bewildered tourists. In their midst, I see a small black boy asleep in a pushchair. Profound peace sits as lightly on the child’s sweet face as a mother’s kiss, and spotting him feels like a bright moment of grace on another grey winter’s day. Behind the pushchair stands his mother, no more than nineteen or twenty, smoking a fag, talking so animatedly to her friend that her large, gold earrings sway.
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Clairvoyance by Glamourpuss is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
4 comments:
Every time I read these posts I think of the word puddle. The way the breath on a wintry evening puddles the night air.
This one is an urban polaroid. Ahhh.
Am I out of place and out of sorts to comment on the adjective 'black'? If he were white, would the adjective 'white' be apt? And what about the mother and friend? Are such descriptors appropriate? My point, gently offered, hearkens back to a story I wrote many years ago and shared with a colleague, who happened to be a black woman. She pointed out the racial disparities in the scene I wrote and instructed me to let the scene play out naturally. Just a thought. Just one man's soft-spoken thought.
Pawlie
I take your point, and it is something I considered, but the child's beautiful face was key here, and I wanted to communicate what that face looked like.
The point about the station is that it is full of adults, workers, and this little group was different and in the middle and I wanted to get that across - London is such a melting pot and all sorts of people live side by side.
Finally, I don't believe that the adjective 'black' is as politicised here as it is in the USA, and thus my description is just that, a description rather than a statement about racial stereotyping.
Puss
Understood -- and well said. Thanks for not taking offense; did not think you would, since none was meant.
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