I am at a dim sum restaurant. I am the only non-Asian person here. I have American Gods on the table. I have ordered taro and pumpkin in coconut milk with rice for lunch. Later I am going to see Angles and Demons at a small independent theatre nearby. What a miraculous thing such choice. Along the street here, just in one block, there is a Starbucks, a dim sum place, a modern Thai restaurant, a Korean bakery, a bar and pizza place, a theatre, a shop that sells lingerie that makes Victoria Secret look prudish, a small grocery store and a bank on the corner. Why did I choose the dim sum? Good question. Walking back from the bank I passed the pizza place and the bakery and then the Thai restaurant. As I passed the dim sum window I noticed the wall inside. Yellow stripes, tan relief, coordinated table cloths, bright, sunny, warm looking. My feet chose for me; when I got to the door I went in.

Sometimes there are more choices than can be easily negotiated, especially in a place as big and diverse as Vancouver. Sometimes, when the stakes are not particularly high, I can just let bits of my body make the decisions my mind cannot (or will not) order. It was the same for the menu. Most items on the menu I have never had. My eye snagged on the pumpkin and taro. I kept looking at the menu but when I returned to the pumpkin dish there was something, like a little settling in my stomach and so I bought pumpkin and taro in coconut milk. I ordered from the woman who smiled broadly every time she looked at anyone and whose face settled into calmer lines when her eyes drifted between her patrons. As she returned to the kitchen with my order, I picked up American Gods.

When I got to “Old gods, here in this new land without gods” I stopped reading, replaced my bookmark and put the book on the table again.

The biggest choice we seem to have is what we will allow ourselves to see, what we will allow ourselves to be guided by. I have no argument with Gaiman. I like his work, in particular the graphic novels of his about the Sandman. He is a man of faith in many ways but his faith seems to be in human acts of imagination and narrative. And of course he is right to have faith in narrative as, really, faith is narrative. It is the human mind seeking to understand the pattern in what they see by the rules of narrative inherent in our humanness. For me narrative is the left wing of the bird that is us. The right wing is, of course, our tool maker’s mind, our desire for empirical evidence.

It was some dimly perceived narrative logic that made my feet choose the yellow dim sum; it was my empirical mind that recognized that such a choice wasn’t earth shattering and so allowed it to go forward.

What was Gaiman’s choice when he wrote that line? Because of course the land was not empty of gods. There were, and are, thousands of them. Dozens for each tribe and at least 500 tribes. And those were just the ones that were at the time of the European invasion. He made a choice about the line but what was choosing? His left wing or his right? Did he simply follow the cultural line which is to pretend at some deeply unconscious level that the People were not people and so it was not an attempt at genocide? Was it just a common blindness, that there is no Indian problem because our history books lead us to believe that they ceased to exists once the Indian wars were won? Or perhaps, to give him the benefit of doubt, a sly reminder that even our gods choose blindness. Our gods choose what to see and based on what they choose, the now is constructed.

My food arrives and she of the smile warns me happily that the soup is very hot. Careful, careful, she says as she backs away. I spoon some taro into the rice bowl with a little sauce. I blow and once I taste it I realize I won’t be a life long fan. Could use some lemon grass I decide. I eat slowly and look around, careful not to snag my eyes on other faces. Don’t want to be rude and don’t want to disturb my silence. I realize, as I spoon more sauce onto my rice, that the soup is much the same colour as the walls and the table cloths. A pale yellowish orange. So it was the color, I decide, that made my feet come in. And my eye choose pumpkin and taro soup.

It’s a summer’s day. The first one we’ve had this year. It is actually hot in the cars; dogs loll on the sidewalk. Stores put out water bowls for canine passers-by. Babies are uncovered and women’s arms are bare. I don’t know what my feet are telling me, but I probably don’t need to know.

I don’t finish my soup. I pay and smile broadly at the woman who has earned the tip I leave on the table. I take a last look at the walls and realize that the strips look like a glyph for the sun. So maybe I will know. I have eaten my lunch inside the sun. I smile at that and leave. I want to get some soy milk before the movie starts.