I was biking in the German Village district of Columbus when around the corner she walked by with plastic bags hanging from her hands, the fruit of a grocery visit. She had the sweet & innocent smile you see on the lips of college students and vacationers but what immediately struck me was her obvious Germanness, the unmistakable nose and eyes of my childhood friend’s Deutsch family. That there still might be a German in German Village warmed my heart in its quaintness and rarity. It’s ironic that multiculturalism will eventually strip us of everything distinctive. Her Germanness and the fact that she was living close enough to walk to market made her seem a sort of re-enactor of a lost time before the invention of the automobile and the Village's gentrification via well-heeled homosexuals. I almost wanted to take a picture, like I would at Colonial Williamsburg.
There’s a fetching humbleness in it although paradoxically it's often tinged with ethnic pride. There's an odd thrill when a label is proven true - like seeing a rude Frenchman, an expressive Italian, or a garrulous Irishman - as if God intended it and it's evidence of His handiwork. The thrill might simply due to the fact that we'd be boring if we were all alike. Why else do men find a woman's breasts, so accidental to the sex act, so entrancing? We were born to honor the other and ultimately the ultimate Other - He without flesh or gender.
But today so often we hew to the advertising line that urges us towards sameness. We are told we should re-create ourselves in the image of some magazine-gloss and deny our heritage and creatureliness like Michael Jackson did with his tragic attempts to obliterate himself.
The German girl reminded me of the loyal state bird of Ohio, the cardinal, who stays year round. Cardinals could go south during the winter and enjoy the better weather but instead obey God and the Peterson Field Guide.
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