To Belong To Something

The cars form a neon ocean. Each of us a drop, together forming something bigger. I would photograph the freeway from above, blurring all the cars so that they blended together, all of us indistinguishable. Going to work. Getting through the week. Sitting in traffic. I pass an old worn out, dirty shoe that lives on the concrete wall of a freeway medium. I pass it everyday. Everyday I anticipate it being there and it always is. I wonder about that shoe-how did it end up where it shouldnt be? Who discarded it here where it ended up stuck and alone-purposeless? 

One day I saw a rat scurry across all the lanes. I panicked, I wanted to stop my car, get out and become a rat crossing guard, guide it safely across the freeway, but I would be guiding it to nowhere. There was nothing on the other side of where it was going. The rat and the shoe, somehow lost in a dangerous place, alone. How can anything thrive in an environment that offers nothing for it? I think about that shoe, that rat. 

They become pieces I pick up, pieces I collect against my will. I didnt want to own these pieces, but they are now apart of me. 

The city doesnt feel natural. People picking through garbage, suits absorbed in their phones, graffiti yelling at you. Walking down streets lined with places to spend money in, places that exist to put money in someone elses pocket. We are keeping one another alive, right? My money is leaving me to go to them, this is to belong to humanity? I think this as I walk past a man camped out on a bus bench, his shopping cart of found, discarded items next to him. A woman asleep under the awning of an unopened textile company. I walk past the copy shop, with the girl with the white eyeliner. I walk past the ramen place, the tattooed, tired team of people, their eyes puffy, faces bloated like they had been out all night drinking, serving greasy, steaming, noodle dishes. The coffee shop with the bored barista, her glare as bitter as the drip coffee she dispenses into cardboard cups. 

And our hotel. This is where I am traveling to, where I belong on the street. As an hourly employee I am not allowed to enter through the front doors, the doors guests and salaried employees walk through. I open the valet gate just enough so I can squeeze through, and make my way through the parking lot, past the guests cars that are worth more than a year of my work, my time, my life, past the dumpsters, their sour smell, to the alley, the back door. One of the line chefs is leaning against the brick wall, smoking. Angel, whose job it is to wash away the filth, is releasing powerful streams of water from a hose, the murky water a river flowing into the street. 

I say hello to these people, I ask them how they are, what their kids names are, what they like to do, their favorite things, and I mean it- I want to know them. Backdoor employees share camaraderie in a way the front door employees do not. Youll never see a front door employee bring a meal they prepared from home to share with their co-workers, they may throw down their company card for a lunch now and then, but that comes with conditions. Front door employees are fighting another fight, one they deem more crucial than someone elses fight, but one they instigate daily. Front door employees are out to be the biggest fish in the pond-the higher their title the more they become their title and only their title- there becomes nothing to ask, nothing else to know. Fighting to be the most important in a room thats actually quite small and insignificant. The invisible back door employees are the reason the room exists in the first place, but if you asked a front door employee the backdoors should be thanking them, they are the reason they exist. So which is it? And does it even matter? If you need one another, why isnt everyone walking through the same door? 

I want to ask everyone if they feel like they belong. No matter the role, do they feel like they belong to something. 

I remember graduating college armed with my Sociology degree-I was ready to belong to the world. Do I belong?