Category Archives: Neighborhoods

Jun19

Belgians and Punishment at the Met

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I move amongst daggers, pendants, golden calligraphy, amulets, candlesticks, jugs, bird pins, perfume sprinklers, jewels.  The fingers of another time offer these gifts.  I’d like to lay down my Marc Jacob’s bag and pink Gucci glasses onto Fifth Avenue, surrendering my eyes to a blurred and beautiful world.  I tell my emails to stand in line, and they bunch together, hands on hips, sending each other on pretzel runs to the corner bodega while I gaze at nudes.  Unfurled and alone at the Met, I imagine myself sitting on crimson cushions, sharing goblets of wine with ghosts whose indigo stained hands rest on my knee with love.  It feels holy to breathe space around these objects.  In the sculpture garden, I toss two wishes into a sea of shiny wishes, and the collective gasp of still stone creatures warms my shoulders.

 The museum closes, and I travel from Rome to Egypt to Syria to 82nd Street.  Europeans sprinkle the museum steps and sidewalk, and I walk towards a couple leafing a map. 

An and Kristof are in New York for the last two weeks of a six month long vacation.  They come from Belgium.  Their eyes sparkle and their skin crinkles.  I am amazed by their travels and ask for details.  They tell me that first they went to Asia – China, Vietnam, and Cambodia.  Then they went to Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and then the west coast of North America.  Now they’re in New York, and they’re going to Guatemala last.  They stand close to each other.

An is a social worker who works with mentally disabled people.  She took a leave from her job to travel.  Kristof quit his job – he was a campaigner for an animal rights organization. 

Two years ago they went to Africa and last year they went to Peru, and they always dreamed of travelling for a longer time.  An’s wind band decided to go on tour to China last December.  An plays the clarinet, piano, and the trombone.  The couple knew that a friend was getting married in Tasmania in February, and they thought…let’s not fly back to Belgium from China and then leave again one month later for Australia.  So two months became three months and three months became six months, and they started to tour the world together.

An and Kristof outside the Met

I ask them how the trip has affected their relationship.  An says, “Oh, people said – six months together?  You’ll have a lot of fights and you won’t know what to say to each other any more.”  Kristof laughs, and says that their travel was a confirmation of their relationship, that it’s been an unbelievable six months.

They met at a student’s home in Belgium eight years ago. 

In the museum, An and Kristof saw statues from Greece, Egypt, and Europe.  Kristof says, “Auguste Rodin is one of An’s favorites.  We saw the Burghers of Calais, which we saw in Paris, too.  I think it’s a replica here.  I really love masks – African masks.  We saw things here that we also saw in Australia and New Zealand.  I was a little bit refusing to come to America.  The image of America is totally different than what we experienced here.  It’s unbelievable.  The west coast, the four corners, and now New York- it’s unbelievable.  The image of America is not always that great in Europe.  But together with Vietnam, it’s the best part of the trip.”

Luckily, for An and Kristof, the United States and Vietnam are no longer engaged in active combat.  I ask them what their personal impression of America was before coming here.  An thought of America as a country perpetually at war.

Kristof says, “The image of America is old, conservative, Republican.  It’s totally not the case.  Everyone helps you in the subway.  We had the totally wrong image, I confess.”

I ask them to tell me about their travels. 

Kristof shares, “Once we were making some mistakes about booking a hotel.  We realized at 9 at night we would have to sleep in the car.  We were between Yosemite and San Francisco.  We couldn’t find a motel with any vacancies.” 

An says, “First we saw an RV camp but we couldn’t find anyone who was responsible for the RV camp.  So next door was a church and there was a big parking lot, so we thought it would be ok to stay there.  There was one camper in the parking lot and the woman came out of it and started looking at our car.  I got out of the car and explained the situation.  She said, ‘This is actually the minister’s house.  The minister and his wife live here.  It’s a home.  You just have to ask if it’s ok to sleep here, and probably it will be ok, but just ask their permission.’  So we went to the house.  I was thinking – can we just leave?  We have to ask a minister?  We’re not Christian people!” 

“A woman opened the door and I explained our situation, and she said – it’s ok for me, and the minister will probably think it’s ok, too, so just park here.  So in the evening, we were taking our sleeping bags and organizing the car because it was full of stuff.”

Kristof interjects, “We were really changing clothes.”

An admits, “Yah, we were changing clothes.  It was really hot.  We were putting on shorts.  A car came, and I was like – oh shit. I put on my shorts.  There were flashing lights.  It was the police.”

“The sheriff came and said, ‘What’s going on out here.  And we explained the situation.  I said, the minister’s wife said it’s ok, and he said ‘I’m the minister.’”

“He was the sheriff and the minister.  In Belgium, that’s really something that we always thought could happen in America – that the officer of law is also the minister.  If you get a ticket, suddenly you have to go to the preacher.  We laughed a lot about that.”

Oh holy America, where in some states, the job requirements for the sheriff match the job requirements for God’s emissary.  Do we judge and punish as a country?  Then I think about guillotines and the Crusades.  Judgement and punishment does not belong only to the United States.  What about Dostoyevsky?  What about ethnic cleansing?  Just a couple of hours earlier I stood before a Roman sarcophagus from the 300s with the inscription: “If anyone shall dare to bury another person along with this one, he shall pay to the treasury three times two thousand. This is what he shall pay to the city of Portus, but he himself will endure the eternal punishment of the violator of graves.”

My parents would never speak to me like that.  Eternal punishment strikes me as harsh.  Authority?  Blech.   What is the point of Roman magistrates paroling the Elysian Fields? 

An and Kristof smile easily.  They talk easily.  I like what they wear – An wears a poofy white skirt.  I like the lines in their faces.  I like that they only planned to come to the Met for 20 minutes.  My European friend once said that Manhattan is an island off the coast of Europe.  Well, we certainly don’t wear cowboy hats in the city, and I have no desire to hang an American flag out of my 3rd floor walk up window.  But…how European are we?  Do we take naps?  Can we pick figs from trees in central park or fall in love by the Jersey Shore?   

I want to be still, yet from time to time, that preacher-sheriff appears on my liberal Jewish free to be you and me shoulder admonishing me through missing teeth that my hair is too long and my heart is beating too softly, and there is a litany of things I should to be doing – anything but what I am doing in this moment.  Surrendering to the romance and spirit of life sometimes feels like medieval Texas torture. 

On a trip to Jerusalem fifteen years ago I met a friend sitting on a couch and drinking beer from a communal refrigerator.  We spoke of love (and sex) in the ancient city.  When I left An and Kristof, this out of touch friend’s name appeared in my head.  She is from Belgium.  We haven’t been in touch in over ten years.  I emailed her when I got home, and the next day she wrote back.  These ghosts are  alive, making pottery, playing music, getting married.  My friend from Belgium spells October Oktober and has a cat named Sjimmie.

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May11

Visiting Morris

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In 1914 my great-grandfather, Morris, lived on Henry Street.  Today, I stand on his steps under the awning, avoiding the wind.  I see the Manhattan Bridge looming above, and if I were to knock down the Meyer London Public School, I could see the Williamsburg Bridge.  An old tree sits across the street.  A shop next store sells rice cookers and mops wrapped in disintegrating cellophane.  A man wearing a suit and neon green sneakers shuffles past me.  Little girls hold umbrellas, following their mothers.  One block away hipsters eat oysters and celery root pot pie.  This is Chinatown. 

Looking up at 105 Henry Street

A building permit sign is posted on the brown door of 105 Henry Street, and I worry that the building is in disrepair.  Earlier, as I walked along Allen Street towards this old building, I considered that this building could be an empty lot, an elevator building, a condemned building.  The old is so easily replaced.  As I stand before a solid brick 105, I feel relief and elation.  I move aside as a woman with a bowl cut walks out the door wearing a pale pink blouse and pleated pants. 

I tell her “My great-grandfather lived here in 1914!”  She shakes her head, not understanding.  I start to pantomime my family’s immigration story to her, and she  walks away.                              

I stand for several minutes by the building, in the rain.  At last, a redhead walks by.  He looks about my age, and wears a hat that signals coolness.  Still excited, I tell him that in 1914, my great-grandfather lived in the building where we stood.  Morris walked along this sidewalk, the dust of Lithuania still on his shoulders.  I ask the redhead to tell me about his great-grandfather.  He tells me he doesn’t know anything about his great-grandfather, and that he is in a rush.  He ambles away.  I don’t like him. 

A few minutes later, a guy walks out of the building.  I talk to him, and he talks back in fluent native English.  He hauls an orange covered laundry cart behind him.  I tell him that my great-grandfather lived in this building in 1914.  He stops.  We chat.  I ask him if he knows anything about his great-grandfathers.  He tells me no.  He has to get going, but he suggests that I wait by the door for an hour – a woman named Thea, his upstairs neighbor, will walk out of the building to stretch her legs, eventually.  Thea, he promises, is a talker.  She is old, he says.  Like 90.  She has lived in the building for over 35 years, when this used to be a Jewish neighborhood.  As he walks away, his gaggle of laundry follows behind.  We wave goodbye, and I ask him what he does.  He runs a nightclub. He just woke up. It’s 3:42 p.m.

I imagine my great-grandfather – who in 1914, worked in a factory that made trusses for male hernias – walking up the stairs to his apartment, passing the gay nightclub owner with his delicates.

This morning, I decided to come to Henry Street because I wanted to see what my great-grandfather saw when he first came to this country, back when he worked in the truss factory, before he met my great-grandmother Lena at her father’s grocer and moved to Brooklyn with her, before he moved with Lena to Ohio where he had a used furniture store and three daughters  Here, he saw the tree before me.  Here, he saw the Manhattan Bridge, probably when there was no subway rattling through the lower level.  Here, he saw wide boulevards with signs in Hebrew instead of Chinese.  On this step, he stood on a different layer of brown paint beneath my feet.  I wonder if he ever sat on the big cement arm of this porch peeling a banana he bought on Hester Street.

I stand in the wind, pondering whether to wait for Thea for the next hour. I look at the names next to the buzzers.  I see Thea’s name.  I consider buzzing her apartment. 

I decide to wait.  My sister calls.  She’s driving to Starbucks with my nephew, who my sister tries to convince to spend an afternoon in the city with me, promising ice cream on my behalf. He says he’d rather I come to his house and push him on his swing.  I tell my sister where I am –105 Henry Street, where our great-grandfather once lived.  I tell her about the truss factory.  We are amused.  Years ago, when I was still living in California, my family did a dead person ancestor tour of New York.  They visited the graves of some of our relatives.  They went to the Brooklyn house where Morris and Lena eventually lived together.  It’s now a halfway house.  They went to the house where I first lived in 1978.  They told me the neighbors still lived there, and they still had caged rabbits in the backyard.   On their tour, they never made it to 105 Henry Street.  That was my discovery. 

I say goodbye to my sister, and right away my mother calls.  She tells me about her blood work – she had some genetic testing done.  She is out on a walk.  It’s 80 degrees in Ohio.  I hang up.  50 minutes have gone by, and I no longer want to wait for Thea.  If Thea is truly 90 years old, then I would hope she has the sense to stay indoors on a cold day.  I say goodbye to the young version my young great-grandfather, and step off his stoop, leaving Chinatown.

I walk along Orchard Street where things start to look like the Lower East Side.  I pass a man who spits French into his cell phone.  I pass two vintage clothing stores that double as bars.  I pass a zipper store.  I walk along Orchard and make a left on Houston.  At Bleeker, I get on the 6 train.  I wonder how far uptown Morris got.  Did he ever go to the Met?  I stop at my library to pick up some books on reserve, I walk home to snack on a banana, and I call a friend.  We talk.  I tell her about my trip to Henry Street.  I tell her about Morris, and how he worked at a hernia truss factory for men.  She explains the difference between a hernia and a hemorrhoid.  I had them confused all day.  I had been imagining my sweet little from-the-shtetl great-grandfather making Victorian style anal plugs made of leather and steel, when truly, he was making tight male underpants to bind male groin bulges.  He did this in a factory in New York, when just seconds before that, and in another country, he milked a goat while davening. 

I love my great-grandfather, Morris. 

My great-grandfather Morris came to Ellis Island in either 1906 or 1909.  He came from Gelvan, Lithuania.  As a teenager, he left his country, his synagogue, and his bed.  He left his father, his step-mother, and the Bubbe.  He left bare feet, skinny chickens, and half-built walls.  

From 1909 to 1925, Morris and his father wrote letters thick with God, the Torah, sisters, cousins, and counts of rubles and kopecks.  From 1909 to 1925, Morris became an American living in New York, a husband to an American girl from Brooklyn, a hernia truss factory worker, a furniture shop owner, and a father to my grandmother in 1922. 

Morris’s first daughter, my grandmother, born in Brooklyn in 1922.

Morris has 24 great-grandchildren.  My sister is his first; I am his second.  While Morris was building an American life, with his Yiddish accent and his earnest attempts to read Gone with the Wind, his family in Gelvan struggled to buy bread and meat.  They were murdered in 1925 by bandits who were looking for money after learning that a “rich” cousin from America had just visited.  Morris learned of his family’s murder and the three bandit’s death sentence from a newspaper clipping sent in the mail.  He never spoke of any of this.  My grandmother found sixteen years of letters when her father died.  The letters are part of our family’s blood.  We are a family that talks to strangers and wants to know about you, the people you love, and where you began.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Washington, DC with my sister and her family, and saw my sister become friends with our Afghani driver, a former engineer.  Ahmed spent the afternoon with us in the air and space museum pushing a stroller, explaining to us that the The Kite Runner was not real, showing us photos of his children, and holding my nephew, who incidentally, had the same number of teeth as Ahmed (4).  After we left Washington, DC, Ahmed and my sister exchanged texts and phone calls.  This is normal.  Last week, in a seven minute cab ride with friends we learned how our Ghanaian cab driver met his wife 17 years ago at a Madrasah. 

I appreciate Morris’s reinvention of himself.  He didn’t come to New York to become self-actualized, as opposed to me and my quest for the meaning of my life.  He came here for a better chance of survival, and to have a family.  I think Morris could relate to Ahmed and the Ghanaian.  It doesn’t matter what you do, it matters what is in your heart.  I don’t think Morris would be any more impressed to learn that his 24 great-grandchildren are well-educated lawyers, consultants, social workers, third graders, commercial bankers, and non-profit leaders, than if he were to learn that we were  denture manufacturers, telephone operators, or hemorrhoid cream chemists.  He would only care about the things his father impressed upon him:

Long life and peace to my dear son, loving as my soul, Moishe-Joisef, who should be well.  I pray that you do the will of our Eternal One who wrote in the holy Torah that you should be fruitful and multiply.  And about a livelihood, you shouldn’t worry.  Our dear Lord, who created you on this earth, prepared a livelihood for you before you were born.  If you, my dear sweet children, will observe God’s Torah, you will always have honor and income and success. Write to me, my dear son, if you have time, regularly, to study a page of Talmud every week and at least see to it, my dear son, to study daily a little of the code of Jewish Law, because the Holy Temple was destroyed, God has nothing left but four cubits of Religious Law and it is a commandment and a duty upon me to write to you, my loving children, that you should pay reverence to the law, to serve Him with all your heart.  And then you shall be successful.  I am also asking you, my loving son, to see to it that you fulfill the commandment of God that is written in the Torah; therefore a man should leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, because it is no good for a man to be alone.  This is how King Solomon said: Find a woman – find goodness.  A lot of good luck, long life, and happiness I wish my wise son, Moishe-Joisef, who should always have the best of everything.

Long life to us all.  I believe that seeking a spiritual life and adhering to principles of honesty and kindness will continue to rain in love and livelihood.  I will now turn off this computer, sit on a pillow, and pray to cleave.  

Now, about you.  Who were your great-grandparents?  What are their names?  How did they make their livelihood?  Where did they came from?  What do you know about them?  What is your family’s immigration story?  Our ancestors stories and blood still flow inside us.  We see their trees grow.

Henry Street Tree across from Morris’s building

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Apr12

Bones

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I sit in a burgundy waiting room, defying my 30-somethingness, waiting for a purple scrubs lady to summon me for my bone density scan. I look at the women in their 60s, with their motionless hair and pantsuits. I want to think about the delicacy of my bones later.

When I am called to get the scan, I take off my metal belt holding up my jeans and I sit on a chair beside the x-ray machine. The technician asks me to put my left arm under the scanner, and to be still. I look at her wedding ring. I put my arm on the table, feeling my breath move my arm. My bones slowly appear on the computer screen. I lie on my back and she asks me to be still again. My leg twitches. She puts her hand on my left hip bone.

My bones are out from hiding. We are not designed to see our bones, and yet, that morning not only do I see my own bones, but I also hold the image of other people’s bones in my bag because someone mistakenly gave them to me. Inside a different burgundy waiting room on Park Avenue, I return the images and wonder about these people. Wrist. Tibia. Clavicle.

Later, I run along the Bridle Path around the Resevoir, where the familiar dodging of European tourists eases my mind. I think about seeing and being seen. It always feels different, depending on the onlooker.

My days are not all about tulips and running and doctors. I also read. By day, I read The Ten Faces of Innovation. (By night, I read The Discovery of Witches). Tom Kelley, the general manager of the design firm, IDEO wrote the daytime book. IDEO’s culture fosters openness, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and innovation. I get the sense that being part of IDEO would feel like being watched by someone who loves me as I am. My colleagues would look at my bones, see their intrinsic value, and encourage me to eat sardines.

In the book, Tom Kelley writes about ten roles that he has observed people playing at IDEO. Embodying these roles – such as the Anthropologist, who does field work to understand the natives, or the Director who galvanizes the players to create something powerful – stimulates new ideas, unearths possibilities, and fosters creative thinking.

I love that IDEO sees the many paths towards creating value for clients. I love reading about the culture at IDEO, not only because it brings me back to singing “ideo gloria in excelsis deo” down the halls of my all girls school every Christmas, but also because I feel inspired. As I read, I feel inspired to reach out to strangers.

I reach out to Tom Kelley. When he mentions going to Oberlin College on page 111, and then Jacobs Field on page 201, I get excited. I am from Cleveland, and I also went to Oberlin. Cleveland is not that strange, but Oberlin is a place where unexpected and quirky things happen. I had no expectation that Tom would respond to my note, but he did. He even sent me a copy of his book, which was quite open of him, considering I am a stranger. I like people and organizations open to the free flow of ideas.

Sending Tom the note takes me back to being a student at Oberlin. There, I felt freedom to learn about myself and the world as I encountered people and ideas that felt limitlessness. There, I contacted strangers I wrote papers about simply because I was curious. I emailed my first stranger while writing a paper on performance artists – Karen Finley, Annie Sprinkle, Carolee Schneeman, and Linda Montano. I contacted Annie Sprinkle because she was so bizarre, and yet, a nice Jewish girl like me. She responded to the questions in my email, and a few months later, she ended up cuddling with my best friend’s cat in my house on West College Street, performing to an overflowing college audience, and later, leading me to the craziest jobs I have ever had once I lived in San Francisco.

The next stranger I contacted in college was Sarah Schulman. It was still the 20th Century, and I dialed 411. She answered the phone, and we talked. She sounded stunned that I called her. She never did meet any of my friend’s pets, but she did inspire me. Her book, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, stunned me – she showed me how experiences that are widely loved and mainstream can be deceptively oppressive. Her politics felt exciting, and calling her – me, the 18 year old girl from Ohio talking to a New York City activist – made me feel like the world of deep thinking, angry politics, and sartorial coolness was as accessible as Sarah’s phone number.

So here I sit in New York City over fifteen years later, not quite the renegade bohemian of my 18 year old fantasies, but not too shabby, either, having learned to apply cats eyes while watching this morning’s Today Show. I sit and read The Ten Faces of Innovation. One of the ten faces is the Experience Architect, a person who creates sensory experiences for people who are interacting with products and services.

Monica Bonvicini's public toilet with one way glass sits across from London's Tate Britain.

Tom wrote about a public bathroom with a one way mirror. When you are inside the loo, you are having an intimate and private experience while seeing the world outside, and feeling like others are watching you. Imagine the performance anxiety. How does being watched transform us – the gaze of a lover, the gaze of a collaborator, the gaze of a boss, the gaze of a parent, the gaze of a stranger.

I want to dial 411 again. I want to talk to Monica Bonvicini, the artist who created the toilet with the one way mirror. I want to talk to Bjork and Isabella Rossellini. I realize this might be ridiculously improbable, but I’m willing to try. As I finish writing this, I get a call from my doctor. My bones are normal.

I think about Passover and opening the door for an imaginary Elijah to walk through and sip the wine at our table. I think about seeing and imagining. Elijah mystifies. I have been mystified into opening my door to strangers – not the kind who will give me candy with a razor blade in it – but the kind who will awe me. In Leviticus 19:34, it reads, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”

Mar2

Cops In My Apartment

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In the morning I get a call from my landlord. He asks if I have seen my neighbor lately. My neighbor? As much as I would love to live in a building in which the neighbors drink tea together on the fire escape, use each other’s q-tips, and ruminate about our lovers, I do not live in such a building. The first time I actually spoke to any neighbor in the three years since I’ve been in this building was on the day before Hurricane Irene blew through. I wanted my neighbor, the 20ish year old nasal aspiring Broadway singer with a doormat that has words such as – “Merci,”, “No Regrets,” “OMG,” and a neon pink peace symbol – to know me in case I got scared. I might have needed her to comfort me and feed me canned tuna packed in olive oil.

An ex in college could recite the Robert Frost poem, “The Mending Wall”. The poem has a line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” That line makes cry. I think that good neighbors make good neighbors. I come from a family where it’s normal to show up in each other’s driveways on the way to pick up a jar of pickles or a little cousin. We sat on each other’s porches, gave impromptu foot rubs, and fed each other prunes and Muenster cheese. We examined our days together.

When the police knocked on my door in the afternoon, like a good citizen, I answered. I learned that my neighbor’s mother was concerned about my neighbor, and had called 911. I had a gargantuan pot of soup on the stove with another hour and a half left to simmer, and books spread all over my apartment. I was getting ready for a meeting. From my hallway, the cops ask me questions. Have I seen my neighbor lately? [I have not.] Have I seen anything unusual? [No.] Have I heard anything unusual? [No.] Could they come inside my apartment to break into my neighbor’s window from my fire escape? [Um, yeah.]

Two tall cops – a man and a woman – step inside my studio. They wear powerful looking raincoats. I’ll call the man Raul, and I’ll call the lady Jackie. I like cops.

I feel like hosting them. I wished my soup were ready. I wonder if they can smell the thyme. I tell them if I had known they were coming, I would have cleaned.

I have no fences. They see me in my pink pajamas. They step over my piles of library books. They see the knocked down vitamins beside my bed and my chair covered with jeans and unopened mail. Jackie peeks at sheets of music on my table – she reads Pat Benatar lyrics. “We Belong”.

Jackie opens my window. I tell her it’s broken. When you open it, it doesn’t stay inside the window frame, and it also doesn’t stay open. I’ve been aware that it’s been broken for the past three years, but every time I tell my now deceased landlord or the repair man that I need it fixed, they tell me that they will come tomorrow, and they never come.

Jackie puts her big stick in my window to prop it up. She climbs out the window and gets on the fire escape. While she is trying to open my neighbor’s window, Raul agrees that it’s hot in my apartment. Jackie climbs back into my apartment through the window and asks for a screwdriver, which I am fresh out of. She asks for a butter knife.

I don’t know why these cops mesmerize me. I’m a liberal. But they do. Jackie works on the window with the butter knife, facing danger. Raul turns off my heat by rotating my burning valve counterclockwise, saving my dehydrated skin.

While Jackie is on the fire escape, Raul calls my new landlord, who is from Manchester, England, to see if he has a spare key to my neighbor’s apartment. I think this phone call is called “back up” – in case Jackie can’t get the window open. I’m starting to think like a cop. My landlord is new because my old landlord died two weeks ago. She was a very sweet woman. Raul, not knowing that he is speaking with the new landlord, scolds him about my broken window. While Raul is on the phone, Jackie, back from my neighbor’s apartment, crouches in my window frame, noting that the broken window is a code violation. She would like that point to be noted on the telephone. She jumps back into my apartment, knocks my cream colored Thai silk curtains off the rod, and I waive it off like it’s no big deal.

Raul tells me that until my window is fixed, I should forget where my pen is when it’s time to write the rent check. That feels thrilling. I think Raul scared my new landlord. I think my window will be fixed soon.

I’m not accustomed to having big men fix my heat. I’m not accustomed to stirring my soup while having casual conversations with hot lady cops hanging out my third floor window. I don’t have a whole lot of risk in my life. Nobody has ever stalked me. Nobody has ever stolen my gold. I stand behind the yellow line on the subway platform. I talk to my mother regularly.

When Raul and Jackie leave, they thank me, and I am sad they are leaving. We had fun. I am glad they did not find anything bad in my neighbor’s apartment. Good fences do not make good neighbors. I hope my neighbor and her mother can find peace. I thank Raul and Jackie for their help with my window and the heat. I tell them if my window doesn’t get fixed, I’ll call 911. They smile. “Call us,” Jackie says.

Feb23

A Funny Sikh in Astoria

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Walking from the Q train, then along Ditmas Avenue, I notice that I am not on the Upper East Side.  I pass a window display of Jesus and his disciples, which is above a garage where you can get a perm and a dozen red carnations.  A locked parked locked car has an ersatz pug on the dashboard.  I nearly call animal control.

I make it to the Waltz Astoria.  I sit.  The brick walls, rickety chairs, bizarre people, and microphone feel reminiscent of college, where weird people mingled as easily as the vats of improperly seasoned vegetables and tempeh that we ate.  Dreadlocked white boys gave dreadlocked white girls massages under windows.  Skinny New York appendages rested on skateboards while reading Marx.  Clusters of gay girls in black hoodies and nose rings drummed their clipped fingernails on smudged notebooks.  The air smelled of Egyptian musk, turpentine, and roasted tomatoes. 

New York is stranger and more fantastic than my weird college.  I like it that way.  When I shop at the market, I don’t look for bunches of asparagus neatly and uniformly tied together.  I look for ugly no spray apples.  When I’m out in the world, I look for ugly apple people – raw, untreated, unkempt, unmanicured, wild, unexpected, misshapen, and delicious to the core.

That is why I like Narinder when I first heard him.  He is an ugly apple.

At 7:26 p.m., I am four minutes early to meet my friend, who will be doing stand up.  There are just three of us in the room – a curly haired woman with a plunging neckline, Narinder, and me.  I ask Narinder what he is here to do.

“I’m gonna try some comedy.  And if that doesn’t work…it’s gonna be a poetry reading.”

I laugh.  I move to his table.  I start talking to him.  I ask him if I could interview him for my blog.  He asks if there was a big following.  I tell him no.  He wants to talk anyways.

His name is Narinder, and he has been doing stand up for four years.  I feel excited to talk to him, and at ease because I could see how his name was spelled in my head, having met another Narinder on a beach in Hawaii four years ago.  I asked Long Island Narinder what he likes to be funny about.

“The first thing I talked about was my high school.  And then I started talking about observational stuff, family stuff, relationships.  I think the ultimate goal of the comedian is to transcend your identity.  It’s an interesting experience.”

Considering his identity seems so obvious, that sounds pretty interesting, indeed.  I ask him why he started doing comedy, and he laughed.

“Right after 9/11 I started. I had some good material.  They say comedy is you in a struggle.”

I asked him how it feels to look like the enemy.

“It makes good comic material.  I was the emcee for an open mic.  I humanized the Sikh, because I showed that I had a sense of humor.  I only did it once or twice a year after that.  Then I was running a hedge fund.  Me and my friends started the hedge fund.  When the recession hit, it almost wiped me out.  It was the universe telling me to do stand up.”

I think of two things.  First, I am glad to have met my second person who has run a hedge fund, and I am grateful that this second person is not a white man in his 60s driving me in his Porsche SUV to a train station somewhere in the Hamptons after writing something about business on the MSNBC website while simultaneously admiring his sister’s painting in a Chelsea gallery.  It’s refreshing.  The second thing I think about is that it’s nice to feel a kinship with Narinder.  We both believe the universe talks.   

My friend, the comedian walks in. I show her my purple otter Iphone case.  We chat.  I ask Narinder what he wants to do with stand up.

“Make money.”

Are you making money?

“No, I’m loosing money.  Tonight I’m gonna lose 11 dollars.”

I lost 12 dollars, but on the up side, I had fun and I went home with 3 bottles of Perrier. 

I am glad that Narinder did not do clean corporate comedy to make more money.  I learned about corporate comedy last night.  It’s when you go to things like stockholder meetings and don’t say anything provocative, offensive, sexually charged, or profane.

The idea of censoring myself for corporate comedy aggrevates my dry skin.  I want to cure myself by listening to Prince, then Bjork while taking a hot shower and then putting on a pair of Ugg slippers with sheep fluff.  I like Narinder with his turban and hairy face.  To a lesser degree, I like flaming gay guys.  I also like foreigners and blind people.  They cannot hide their identities or their vulnerabilities.  Being around them, I feel free, like I don’t need to hide anything, either.  That’s why I love New York City still, even though you can’t see the stars.

Narinder Singh kills it on stage.  He is ridiculous.  He is the funniest guy there. 

Here’s a youtube link of Narinder that I found on the internet.  It’s not his performance from yesterday, but I still like it.  If you google him you’ll find more.  Check it out:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmAMjuPplAE

Dec10

Together Forevs

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In the crowded Union Square Holiday Shopping market, where everyone pushes ahead and smooshes into each other for a view of hand crafted jewelry and specialty salsas, Erica in the purple glasses stood still.

She was happy to talk to me.  Erica introduced me to JD and their 15 month old blue eyed daughter, Izzy Stardust.  Izzy sat in her stroller, laughing and smiling at me while sucking on a green stirrer from Starbucks.  She pulled at the zipper on my bag.  “Izzy’s been awake all morning – maybe it’s the bananas.”

What do you say when you’re first meeting someone on the street?  I reverted to – “Do you live in the city?”

Erica and JD got priced out of New York about three years ago, and have lived in Bay Ridge since.  JD told me, “It’s affordable.  The commute’s terrible.”

JD has a big beard.  I wondered what this big-bearded kind and patient looking man spends his time doing, and learned that JD is a stay at home dad and artist. 

“I’m the poppy.  Erica goes into Chelsea and works every day at a gallery.  Izzy hangs out all day with me.  We do our errands.  I do projects at home because I’m an artist, and I haven’t given that up.  I work on things that are non-toxic, and Izzy works with me.  I work with all kind of stuff – fabrics and yarn.   I make necklaces and accessories.  I use metal.  Recycled materials.  I don’t have a lot of money to go out and buy material any more.  I used to make big big big paintings, and I don’t do that anymore.  I don’t have the space. I don’t have the money.  With Izzy around, I don’t use toxic materials.  I recycle a lot.  You’d have to come out and see it.  I have it all over the walls.  Izzy helps me.  I’ll give her a piece of yarn and she sees it and I’ll put a bead on it.  I weave stuff.  She watches.  She’s pretty cool with it.  She touches objects, plays with the textures and materials.  When I finish something, she definitely knows it’s a necklace and she puts it on.  She knows what I’m doing.  We read books.  We read Dr Suess, all the Eric Carle books – very illustratey books for kids to touch and feel.  Bright Colors.  We read the Golden Books.  Frog and Toad.”

I think about my father.  When I was little, he chased me around the house with a laundry basket over his head. 

It’s so sweet to me that that JD and Izzy make art together, and sweet also that JD and Erica met each other at the Whitney Museum while volunteering there.  JD said, “We were both in previous relationships that didn’t work out.  We both dissolved our marriages respectfully, and we didn’t think getting married was necessary.”  Erica said “We met, lost contact for a year or so, and then casually started hanging out.” JD said, “So now we’re together forevs, without a contract, which is good – we like it that way.” 

 I asked how they knew they wanted to be together forever.

 Erica: “It just happened.”

 JD:  “I had a beard.  It was the facial hair.”

Have you always had a beard?

JD:  “I grew it out, and then I shaved it off in April and then she hated me.”

Erica: “He shaved it off in April and I barely talked to him for two weeks.  I called him mean names.  Izzy cried because she only knew him with a beard.” 

JD: “It was down to here [pretty far down] before.  It was insane.  I had it braided.  It’s coming back again, thank God.  Now I’m never getting rid of it ever again.  If I get rid of it, forget about it.  These two will hate me forever.” 

Erica: “I told him he’s not the man I loved….. I love you, dear.”

They kiss.

What inspires you in your art?

JD: “I look at a ton of magazines.  I look at a lot of Elle, Vogue, design magazines.  When I see an object that’s selling for $500-$2,000, I think – I can do that.  I’ve made things before.  I make stuff with my hands. I try to emulate the structure, the shapes, and colors.  I feel good once I actually craft something, and Erica will wear it out, and someone will say, ‘My God, where did you get that, can I get one, do you know the designer?’ And she’ll say, ‘He’s at home. He’s making stuff with the little one.’” 

“Erica inspires me.  What I see in the street inspires me.  That influences all the work I do.  Inspiration comes from observation every day.  Catching things that people take for granted. Paying attention.”

How have you found people who will buy your art?

JD: “It’s by accident.  The canvas is people wearing it.  Friends will come to my place, they’ll have a coffee, and I’ll say, ‘Would you mind taking one of these with you?’  They say, ‘Oh yeah, sure.’  I’ll say, ‘Just wear it out and don’t tell anyone who made it, and tell me what their real reaction is.’  And then you get the real feedback.  So far it’s all been, thank God, positive. My paintings didn’t always sell.  So the fact that people are digging the jewelry…..  It has to be out in public, it has to be tested. 

Any story that you’d like to share with me?

JD: “I don’t have any stories right now.  I do write every day, and if I had it with me I’d read it to you.  I write 10 minutes every day – poems, fiction, and so far I have 4 plays under my belt, with some things published, which is pretty cool. 

Lately I’ve been down in South America.  Erica’s father’s from Brazil. My fiction is about my memories of New York– being here for a long time, and going to South America.  We went to Rio this summer, and Izzy met her grandfather for the first time.  She had her passport before she was one. 

As we wrap up our conversation, I feel grateful.  I am grateful to live in this city where people are good, open, and creative. New York has a reputation of being full of ambition and powerful people who are rich and wear suits and shave every day, and sure that exists.  And…believers, dreamers, artists, good fathers, and good mothers live here, too.  It’s also likely not as black and white as I sometimes see it.  I have evidence that powerful people have read “The Lonely Caterpiller” to their children.

I’m going to make a plan to check out JD’s art in Bay Ridge.  Yesterday, Yoshi texted me to ask if I wanted to grab some Japanese food and keep talking.  I will keep you posted on how these random connections continue.

Dec10

The Anti-Story

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Today, the strangers spoke to me.  Three times.

One.  I was walking down 4th Avenue and I passed by two amazingly gargantuan dogs.  I know God made poodles, but these dogs were made by a God who was feeling beautifully and magestically virile.  This morning I saw carpets made in the 16th century with gold and silver thread, and those carpets and these dogs equally awed me.  I said, “Woah.” The guy walking next to me said “That’s a horse.”

Two. At the end of the night, my friend and I walked on Ludlow towards Houston, and we ran into this dolly of baguettes, which my friend believes was for the corned beef at Katz’s Deli.

 

I took this picture, and then a man in a white coat approached the dolly and said, “Excuse me.”

Three. After my friend and I parted, I walked down Houston Street on my way to the subway, and a man asked me where 4th Avenue was, and I told him.  I wondered if this was a sign that I should also walk down 4th Avenue to find a stranger who would talk with me, but then it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure of the exact location of 4th Avenue, so I carried on towards Bleeker, feeling remorseful.

These three encounters were not my vision encounters with strangers, but all day I spent time with people who are not strangers to me.  If I were alone I absolutely would have approached the woman sitting at 74th and 3rd Avenue wearing a jogging suit and a scuba mask. 

Ok, back to my vision.  I want to hear everything: family conflict and reunification, falling in love, torrid affairs, art created against all odds.  I want to hear a story. 

I realize we can’t always be saturated in meaning and story.  Sometimes I want to toss my story on a golf course in Connecticut, knowing that I will never ever return because I don’t golf or go to Connecticut.  I want cleat marks in my story.  Then again, I also want to tell it, live it, and be witnessed.  Sometimes I need my life and thoughts and story to be heard and reflected by people who know and love me.  Sometimes I just want to talk about pickles.

Dec9

Yoshi’s Not a Stranger

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New York City is full of nearly 8 million people - a few of whom are my friends - but most of whom are total strangers.  I see you not seeing me on the street, making spaghetti inside windows, and fumbling with your iphone in line.  You sing to me in Turkish restaurants, tell me about the virtues of eggplant varieties at the Union Square farmer’s market, and try to sell me lute lessons in Washington Square Park.  I love this city.  I get into random conversations with people.  Now I am starting a social experiment.  Every day, I will talk to a stranger and write about it.

On my first stranger seeking mission, I decided to go to Dumbo.  While I have lived in the city for five years, I just got to Dumbo on Tuesday.  I went again today.  At 1 p.m. I got off at High Street and found a falafel place for lunch on Henry Street where the guy at the counter told me that I have a trustworthy face. I love Mediterranean men.  After lunch, I walked towards the East River and turned onto Front Street, passing old industrial buildings where local designers sold their wares, with the bridges pressing against my nose.

As I passed by strangers on the street, I kept thinking – “Are YOU my stranger.”  I wasn’t sure this was going to work.  Who would want to talk to me?  Either one of us could be a kook.  I went into some tiny shops on Front Streetwhere I sat on an imported purple pillow and talked to a baby stuffed inside a white snowsuit.  At the end of the row of shops I saw a table of beautiful hand made jewelry, and I stopped.

I looked up and I looked down at the jewelry, and then I asked the man if he used to have a store in Manhattan.  Yes, on the Upper East Side.  I named the block.  How bizarre.  I had been in his store about four years ago.  I have a pair of garnet earrings that he made.

His name is Yoshi.  Yoshi closed his store on the Upper East Side in February 2009, after Lehman Brothers crashed and Yoshi’s sales were cut in half.  One day he was sitting in Bryant Park and saw an advertisement for “Spin”, which was sponsoring an event in Bryant Park.  Yoshi told me that if I read the New York Times, I would see that Susan Sarandon is involved with the Spin Club – where you can play table tennis with music playing and a bar serving drinks.

Yoshi is from Japan, and was a ping pong champion.  He was trained professionally, starting at age 10. He explained to me that ping pong is all about spin.  “Me and you play, you can never get a point.  I have the spin. You never can beat me.”  I will not challenge Yoshi.

After he closed his store, Yoshi started playing ping pong again.  He made friends with the strong ping pong players, and they found other places to play in Chinatown and on Roosevelt Island.  “I started playing seriously.  It was very exciting.”  He also went to the gym every day.  With ping pong, swimming, and weight lifting, he wasn’t resting and he was trying to forget about closing his shop.  “It was still in my heart.” 

 “One day I was playing in Roosevelt Island in a sports facility.  It was a very hot day.  The hallway was air conditioned, but the floor was very hard brick. It was a surface we should not have played on, but the air conditioning was great. After that, I had lightening pain in my leg.  I went to the doctor, and they said come in for scans, but I don’t like those check-ups.  I talked to my friend in Japan and he said acupuncture.  Traditional acupuncture is with needles, but this was with fingers.  This technique is famous in Japan.  I went to Japan last November and I received 4 treatments, and it was very good.  After that, no more pain.”

“After that, I needed to concentrate on working.  I knew I had to make money.  Before I had the shop on the Upper East Side, I had a shop in the East Village – on 10th Street between 1st and 2nd.  I had a shop there, then I moved to Lexington, and now I’m here.  I am self taught.  I do stone settings, wax carvings, everything.  I can teach you if you want.  The other ping pong players were lawyers and accountants.  I had to go back to my art.”

Yoshi sells beautiful, simple, unique hand crafted jewelry at his store at 145 Front Street in Brooklyn.  His website is www.yoshidesigns.com.

I decided to get part of the way home by walking on the Brooklyn Bridge.  When I noticed the Brooklyn Bridge from the bridge that I was standing on, I realized I was on the Manhattan Bridge (wrong bridge), so I turned around and got on the right bridge. Both are bridges and both look the same from below.  

Now I am home.  It’s time to play some metaphorical ping pong.