Acceptable Reasons To Cry In Public
I was very moved when I found out about Kickstarter project, Acceptable Reasons to Cry in Public, a participatory art project by “A Girl in Salt Lake City.” It was an opportunity to help curate the exhibit by taking three of the essays and posting them in public here in Portland, OR. Having grown up in a Filipino household, I was often told, "Tahan na," which means "Stop crying." I am sure my parents meant well, but this simple phrase was detrimental because I truly believed it was not acceptable to cry. I felt like I had taken a secret, balled it up and compressed it as tightly as possible, put it into a tiny box with a deadbolt and thrown into the abysses of myself, only to have raging monsters heaped on top. After twelve years of amassing monsters, I had a breakdown, and the tears came crashing out in a flood. It was not pretty, as crying seldom is; but releasing the monsters saved my life, and that helped me realize that life is beautiful. Since then, I have cried quite dexterously privately and publicly. On the east coast, I have cried in movie theaters, subways, buses, on street corners... I have cried on a ferry to Hoboken while watching the smoke emanate from what was once the Twin Towers; in Washington Square Park because I had never felt so alone in my life; and in the parking lot of Hampshire College after we dropped off my daughter for her first year as I felt my heart had been wrenched out of me. I have been in Portland a little over a year, and I have cried here, too: in the lobby of the Marriott when my brother and sister-in-law paid us a surprise visit and I realized how much I missed my family; in front of someone's house after playing with their porch cat and realized she was so old that I might never see her again; and in Whole Foods as I waited for the police to arrive after I had just been sexually assaulted and they never showed up and I had to call them so they could take the report over the phone.
On the day I posted the broadsides, it happened to be grey, bleak and cold out—conducive conditions for crying in public.
Broadside 01 Location: TriMet bus shelter on NE SandyBlvd bet. NE 43rd Ave / NE 44th Ave Bus shelters offer cover from the elements: wind, rain, snow, filthy tire-water splashes... Though if you are crying, the glass walls offer little solace and you are often left exposed.
Broadside 02 Location: park bench near playground in Grant Park Park benches hold the secrets of those who have sat upon them. They also witness the tears that are a consequence of swinging too high and sliding too fast—the calamities of childhood.
Broadside 03 Location: phone booth on SE Cesar Chavez Blvd. and Gladstone St Phone booths are a very rare sight—desolate relics of communication now replaced by mobile phones. That, in and of itself, is a sad thought. But when in use, I imagine that many conversations have involved tears.