December 16, 2010 at 2:33 am

Caltanissetta’s duomo.
by Mike
I was delirious from jet lag as I thought it, but I definitely thought it: “I wonder if these people are my guardian angels.”
Imagine:
Sitting on a bus in a place you’ve never been.
It’s dark and it’s raining hard.
Ten Sicilian men sit on the bus who don’t understand you and you don’t understand them.
You’re going to a town you weren’t planning to go.
You’re not even sure if it’s the right bus or which cardinal direction it’s heading.
You don’t have a place to sleep lined up for that night because plans changed unexpectedly.
From home this is, like, terrifying to a lot of people. Even to me, from home, I’m anxious about this kind of situation. But when I was actually physically there I could trust each person because I could see each face was the fingerprint of a life. There’s really no way to intellectualize it – you just trust people more when you can see them. They become complex, and that allows good personality traits to enter the imagination. People, I believe, are basically good, but from home it’s easy to collapse others into a stereotype, like “mafia” or “terrorist.”
Recognizing I was foreign, the men on the bus were concerned for me. They tried to get me to my train transfer in time, but en route they called and found out the last train had already left. So they called and reserved a room for me at a bed and breakfast near the Caltanissetta train station so that the next morning I could take the first train to Villalba. Oh, and they wouldn’t let me pay for the bus. ”
The proprietor at the bed and breakfast noticed my birthdate: “My son was born on September 29th as well.”
“Really!”
“And you know what?” he continued, “September 29th is Saint Michael’s Day.”
“My name is Michael!” I said.
“Yes, and St. Michael is the patron saint of Caltanissetta!”
“Whoa.” That’s some serious Lost shit. Almost enough to convert me to Catholicism.
In the book I’m reading, “Gilead” by the brilliant Marilyne Robinson, the narrator writes about his practically-perfect grandfather, “These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice because they never give you credit for the effort you’re making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice… Whatever we might say for ourselves, for our reasonableness and our good intentions, we knew they were trivial by his lights, and that made them a little bit trivial by our lights.”
That’s an important result of travel and spirituality – narrowing the gap between what you are and what you want to be. I know I still unintentionally collapse people into stereotypes, but I also know the best way to combat this is to test my beliefs and prove I was wrong.