In the middle of March this year, I woke up back in my apartment in Chicago at about 6:30 in the morning. I didn't know quite what had happened or why I was filled with dread.
Wendell Berry, a poet wrote:
"Out beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there."
That's what I want to say to the friend I wronged in March.
In each culture or even subculture, I suppose, there are written and un-written rules of what is a "rightdoing" and what is a "wrongdoing." When you travel between so many groups, or when you are a bit dull to subteltly (as I am), you break those rules. Perhaps, more often than not.
Sometimes, I can laugh hyterically at my "wrongdoings" and those are the good times. As a child of India and the United States, I have committed more than my fair share of these faux-pas.
However, back in the United States, the place where I am, theoretically to be in "my" culture, I am shocked at my wrongdoings; they can be silly and they can just as easily hit you with the stoney look of someone grief-stricken and at a loss for words.
As an anthropologist, I must come to recognize that I will committ them for the rest of my life; in fact, that's part of my job. And, one day Wendell Berry's poetic field will be filled with many people.
