Shared spaces
A space occupied by a body or a voice does not preclude my own. It warms it for me, or for anyone else who enters.
In the mornings, and sometimes the afternoons, I hear him coming from a block or more away. His voice is clear as glass, crystal-bright, warm and rich and belted loud, completely uninhibited. His bicycle has an ordinary black frame. It’s likely been rebuilt and mended over the years, perhaps with many former lives reaching back decades. He rides at a slowing speed, pulling everything around him to his pace, like the air has changed to hold his voice.
From the other end of the block, his sung phrases lift and fall, swell and shrink back again, and when he passes me nothing changes. He keeps singing, the palm-gentle stroke of his voice warming me. I don’t hear him every day, and that keeps his presence bright. It was a pleasant surprise the first time I heard him, just another moment of warm joy at the public nature of life in Shanghai. The second time, I felt a bubble of delight at the idea that someone could move through the world that way, not just once but often. I can imagine the stares he would get in Canada. A man riding his bike down the street, alone, singing at an operatic pitch and cadence. I’ve never dared to sing aloud in public, even when I was in a choir and our music teacher took me aside to give me his version of the confidence talk. That’s partly because of a real dearth of self-confidence, and partly because western societal norms don’t make much room for public exploration of one’s noisier talents and pleasures.
Here, I see other ways to hold each other’s space. A space occupied by a body or a voice does not preclude my own. It warms it for me, or for anyone else who enters. The parks here are incredible not because they’re spacious, but because they’re full. Playgrounds and pagodas, benches with board games underway, interlaced paths of bikes and scooters and people. They’re alive with the intimacies of everyday life. They’re part of a communal home. If you don’t have a yard or a balcony or any other private outdoor space, you use the public ones, and you use them the same way people use private spaces in Canada. Men and women do qi gong and tai chi, all slow limbs under the tall plane trees. A lone woman sets up a Bluetooth speaker and practices ballroom dance steps. We walk past her. T and S like to push the stroller these days, and I hold it with a single finger to keep them from running it into anyone. Older people occupy the benches, and they smile at us as we pass. S runs into the middle of a badminton match, just two people batting a birdie across open concrete, and they pause while I run to shepherd him back out. They smile at us. We’re not in their way. We’re sharing space.
Even when he isn’t there, the singing cyclist’s voice makes space for me. The length of our block is brighter this week, now that workers have come to cut the crowns from the plane trees to get ready for winter. Walking home from the park, I look up at the open air and the cool light. I fill my lungs.
It was the kids’ third birthday this past week. We took them to the zoo. They’re still talking about the monkeys. We blew up a couple dozen balloons and bought some playdoh and had lots of messy fun.
The air quality has been terrible, the weather crisp and cool. We try not to go out too much when the AQI gets too high, but it’s hard to stay inside when it’s so pleasant outside. When the number dips down out of the red, we go for our short neighbourhood walks. D and I went downtown for a year-end party and were delighted by the Shanghai nighttime light show.
