It was serendipity. It was a Saturday morning and Dr. D. and I thought we’d check out an exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum. At the door was a table where tickets were being given out for “Mr. Joy,” a one-person play that had started just a couple of minutes before we arrived. We could still see it. Did we want to go? We knew nothing about it, but sure. Let’s see it. Good decision. Fortuitous timing. An unexpected knockout experience.
“Mr. Joy” is produced by Arts Emerson and written by Daniel Beaty. The play’s eight characters were played by Debra Watson. We met them on a Harlem street in front of a shoe repair shop owned by Mr. Joy, a Chinese immigrant. One by one they told their stories and the story of Mr. Joy’s influence in their lives. The missing piece was Mr. Joy himself who was not at his customary place in his customary outfit; he was in the hospital, the victim of a vicious attack. The people in the neighborhood felt his absence. Each of them had come to him with their needs and each had a story they shared with him.
The play’s power lies in great part in the diversity of its characters, all knit together through a single person who went about his days simply interacting one at a time with the people who came to him, whoever they were. Mr. Joy was a quiet and unassuming man who would have been surprised to see that he was a central figure in the neighborhood.
I was thinking about that as I walked around my Boston neighborhood where, as in my Cambridge neighborhood a few years ago, I regularly notice how people do not look at each other as they pass on the street. Even on a very small street . Even when no one else is on the street. A few years ago when Dr. D. and I spent a few days in Philadelphia, we were astounded at the number of smiles and hellos we got and we tried to bring that little friendliness to Boston….to no avail. So I was thinking about that and about Mr. Joy when I came to a bench across the street from my building. It’s a bench where, years ago, a man named Richard Harmon, used to sit and hand out treats to the passing dogs. He seemed to live on the street and I can only imagine what percentage of the small change he had went to making friends with the dogs. It clearly brought pleasure to him and to the dogs, too, who tugged at their leashes as they neared him. When Richard died, the neighborhood dog owners had a plaque put on his bench and, next to it, a small metal can they continue to keep filled with treats in his memory.
Yesterday as I was walking I saw that the bench had a sign on it and a picture of a dog. “Treats donated in memory of Maxine,” the sign said, “RIP, Sweet girl.”
Today my tai chi instructor said that, in addition to tai chi practices that are done alone, there are also those done with another person. Those, he noted, are being done less frequently.