Christmas 2007

I had grander ideas for holiday greenery, but ah well... she'll have to do. Somehow I'm not much for pomp and circumstance this year - not in a bah-humbug way, more in a spare and quiet sort of way.

Happy holidays to you and yours... peace on earth. No joke.

A Tree Grows in the Bronx

Regarding the previous post, I should say that metaphor is metaphor, and life is life. A metaphor is not, strictly speaking, an equation. There are ways in which sitting with a dying friend is very much like and in no way like writing a book. I won't weigh the difficulties of each, it's too much apples and oranges...

J. is on the West Coast for two weeks, sitting with his post-octogenarian father who's just had a heart attack and stroke (recovering slowly, but yes, recovering), and also visiting with an old friend who is in the late stages of liver cancer. Both men are weighing in at less than 130 lbs. J. calls every night, and I sit with him - my friend - as he sits with his father and his friend.

I've stayed in the city, for work reasons and also because of stormy/wintry weather. In lighting out for the country, there are both the challenge of getting there through snow & sleet, and, once there, getting out (have not yet invested in the snow-blower). I am not proud of my damsel-in-distress anxieties, but for now, this is me.

Some news: we have a tree! A lone tree, dormant of course, planted a week ago just outside the building. D. the landlord asked the city for it - part of Mayor Bloomberg's MillionTreesNYC initiative. Go, Mike!

I should say, though, that it took, oh, about a year from the time of the initial request. In an earlier post, I wrote about city time vs. country time, i.e. fast vs. slow, especially when it comes to change. But here in the Bronx, at least, change takes its sweet time. One year for a tree! And literally, it's the only tree on the street. I just made an online request for another one, a few blocks down. This is going to be fun - let's start counting the days until it arrives...

In other good/slow news: there is a stretch of hilly "grass" around the corner, the slope underneath the highway. The "grass" there is 5-feet high, and it's become a thriving garbage dump. The pup and I walk by there every day, twice a day, plug our noses and whince (wait, what am I saying, the pup loves it of course, chicken bones and cat poop galore). For the first time in a year, there is a crew out there today weed-whacking, raking, and cleaning. Huzzah!

The little things, my friends. It's Christmas time, and we who celebrate in the Judeo-Christian tradition await the miraculous arrival of Emmanuel, God with us. This tree - I swear, you have to know this block and this part of the city I suppose to not think I'm a loon - is, feels like, (heck, in child-like wonder I'm claiming it as) something very close to a miracle.

Me in The Lion's Den

A long stretch in the city, and an even longer stretch away from this blog (and draft 3 of my novel as well). I'm not sure what other writers mean - really mean - when they refer to "writer's block," and I'm not sure if that's what I have. I do know that what Annie Dillard said about being master of your work - you are either master or slave - is true. Here is a quote I come back to, over and over:

I do not so much write a book as sit with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

This tender process can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.

A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the doors to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, 'Simba!'

That fear and dread are a regular part of the writing life is something people don't like to talk about so much. A dying friend, indeed. But it's that sympathy, along with a trance-like drive, pushing forth from deeper levels of consciousness and intellect than what you engage in your regular life - your life of society (urban, suburban, rural) and problem-solving and grocery shopping and bill-paying - it's that concoction of positive (and dare I say mystical) forces that completes the brew. It's a ridiculously impossible balance to maintain, let alone deepen and fortify. And when fear and dread win the day, paralysis ensues.

But enough of that. We get up off the mat. Things are not looking good in draft 3, the disorders seem awfully terminal. Fear and dread. But here is Dillard again, on writing as process, on the work of writing as life:

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all of your intelligence. It is life at its most free.

And a good word from Melanie Rae Thon:

The blank page is a mysterious place where we learn through joy to pay attention.

In a recent interview, artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel was asked which he would choose, painting or filmmaking, if he could only do one. He answered (I paraphrase): "Painting. I paint outside most of the time. I paint alone. Painting is pure freedom."

Ultimately, I am in there with the lion by my own doing. The blank page is the artist's privilege - a glorious, terrible gift.

Campaign Trail - Part One

The political report from the city: we went to see Obama speak at The Apollo in Harlem. A packed house of very enthusiastic supporters; and a pretty mixed crowd (meaning black and white; we were among very few Asians). The production side of things was a bit bizarre - but maybe that's because everything about campaigning and PR is bizarre to me.

You could see and feel the complexity of Obama's positioning in "the black community" (which in itself is a complex and slippery grouping). The first half of the program was heavy on "traditional black community" figures, including the Harlem Gospel Choir (a serious mis-step, I think. The holy-rolling pentecostal evangelism - basically 30 mins of church - was not appreciated by the majority of this audience, black or white or miscellaneous). You could feel how this part of the program - entirely too long - was intended to make a kind of "traditional Harlem" community happy; but it was clear that a much more heterogeneous/ecumenical spirit had filled the room, and so it all felt awkward. It wasn't until after 9pm that things started to really warm up...

...which was when surprise guest Cornel West showed up! As always, West was eloquent and convincing. If you were on the fence before hearing him, you were knocked flat by the time he was done. In particular, he spoke to Obama's character and passion and judgment (West is no dummy, he knows the key words for the next 11 months), his place in history, and the bogus "rhetoric of experience" that's getting tossed around in favor of Hillary. I wish the campaign would bring West on the road everywhere: he's brilliant and inspiring, and he's a terrific showman - he knows how to talk to people and entertain them without dumbing down. I think he knew that he needed to be an antidote to the anti-intellectualism of the Harlem Gospel Choir; and he was.

Just when we thought we'd come to the end of the line - the energy was high, this was surely the moment of Obama's arrival - one more surprise guest took the stage: Chris Rock, who was hilarious as always. His line (speaking to black folk in particular) about "If Obama does win and you weren't down with it, won't you be embarrassed? What was I thinking voting for that white lady?" has gotten lots of media play. It was a good move: West got our blood pumping, Chris Rock deflated the tension and got us relaxed.

Obama himself was predictably impressive. Calm, confident, clear (and very tall). He has a way of conveying intense passion and easy-goingness all at once. When he raises his voice to make a point, he does so with control, and a kind of gravity (an anti-Howard Dean). He also allows humor in to the mix. This is no small feat - in fact, it's no feat at all, I sense it's his real character/personality. Overall, he seemed to me both determined and exhausted - and very serious about this campaign.

The climax of his message (for me), was when he spoke about why he's running. "I never expected to be here," he said, which is another way of saying, "This isn't a long-calculated career move for me," which is another way of saying, "Hillary Clinton is running because she's a politician, and this is what's next for her." This is all campaign lingo, over-simplification to some degree, but I think it's going to be a strong message from the Obama campaign. He's running because of the "fierce urgency of now" (MLK), because he wants to serve/lead and sees a pressing need to serve/lead. "The only way we can win is if we stop worrying primarily about losing." Another jab at Hillary's disingenuous political maneuverings - another way of looking at her supposed "experience," i.e. that her primary strength is in campaigning, obfuscating, deal-making, winning; not leading.

The (Heart is a Lonely) Hunter

I'm writing about hunting here, but it seemed a good excuse to plug Carson McCullers' novel - which, besides being a great work, has one of the best titles for a literary work ever. It (the title) somehow captures the feel of a pop-song and very dark poetry all at once.

It's hunting season in the country. PA hunters are serious about their guns, and serious about their game. It's survival of the fittest, in absolute terms. I'm scrambling to make sure my pup is protected: C. the Postmistress tells me that the hunters in our area are notorious for shooting dogs. They will shoot whatever moves in their line of sight, and they won't feel bad about it. Apparently, if your dog does not have the wilderness savvy to protect himself, he doesn't deserve to live. Many have been shot, and they pretty much just get left for dead. There is also a legendary story about an old woman who got shot while hanging her clothes outside. She was wearing white gloves, and the hunter mistook her hands for a deer's tail.

Eek.

So the pup will be wearing a reflective orange safety vest from now on.

The law prohibits hunting on Sundays (because of God, I guess). And the immediate acreage around my house is "Posted," meaning it's private property where hunting is prohibited. Still, you hear the gunshots as if they are right there. I think one of the neighbors set up a shooting range for target practice.

I don't know what to say. Is hunting cruel? Barbaric? Or is it - as one of the Republican candidates said in the YouTube debates last night (was it Ron Paul?), boasting about getting his first hunting license at age 9 - "an important American family tradition." The right to bear arms. Interesting that John McCain, the candidate with the most direct experience with horrific violence, is the only one who does not own a gun (but don't get me started about what an asinine question that was).

It seems to me a classic example of "A Divided America," i.e. the challenges of a society which is both democratic and highly-diverse. For some, guns may well represent a cherished family tradition; for others, it's nothing but death and destruction. Not surprisingly, I'd come down on the side of gun control laws; if the tradition is really that cherished, then having to get a license or take an exam or go through some other qualification process is a small inconvenience to incur - especially when the larger benefit is enjoying a truly free, democratic, and safe society. For gun-lovers to make a claim on full license to do whatever and whenever with their guns is just plain anachronistic - what they want is secession, what they want is not to have to participate in a complex, pluralistic society. Do libertarians really not see the chaos that would ensue if government did disappear?

At any rate, gun control is not likely to go over any time soon in this neck o' the woods. It reminds me that I am a visitor here - for now, anyway - definitely not a true resident. (I in fact still vote in NY.) The same goes for the Bronx, really. Not quite at home in either place. A woman with no country...

The heart is a lonely hunter. Yup.

The Case For Obama Is The Case For Everything

I’m all wound up about the race for the Democratic presidential nominee and am going to have to detour from city-country musings for a moment or two.

I’ve kept a distance from most media in the last few months, sorting out some things in my head and via observation/experience. Catching up on a few periodicals today, it’s weird to read analyses which articulate almost exactly what I’ve been thinking and saying ever since Obama joined the race. This is not to say that I am prescient or of particular high intelligence in any way; but rather to throw an “Amen” into the ring, affirming that something is happening in world politics and American leadership – that this is indeed a critical moment in history, of which we post baby-boomer, liberal-leaners in particular are a part – whether we like it, or acknowledge it, or not.

My draw to Obama, from the beginning, has been directly related to his biography. Meaning, my judgment of his leadership ability has everything to do with his person – how is this person shaped, what makes this person tick, what does this person most hate and most respect, with what inner capacities and outer strengths will this person approach the world’s greatest challenges and assets. In other words, HOW does this person think, not strictly WHAT does he think; and how does he understand his job vis-à-vis the individuals and groups over which he has power and influence. What a person thinks and does changes over time, in shifting circumstances – more so than ever in an increasingly complex world. But how a person thinks and acts is more deeply ingrained - a more fixed measure of character, effectiveness, and potential pitfalls as a leader.

All this is apparently getting some air time in the media now. Two recent articles about Obama – one in the New Yorker, and one in the NY Times Mag – speak to the strength of his experience as a human being. (“Experience” is the key word here, since Hillary is touting it as her advantage.) “[Obama] presents himself in all his cultural hybridity – African and American and Asian, black and white, infused with all-American hopefulness and with the reserve that comes of living on the receiving end of power.” Says Anthony Lake, one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors and former national-security adviser to Bill Clinton: “He has the kind of mind that works its way through complexities by listening and giving some edge of legitimacy to various points of view before he comes down on his, and that point of view embraces complexity.” Lake was first impressed “not so much by Obama’s policy prescriptions as by his temperament and intellectual habits.”

Complexities. Hybridity. Hopefulness and reserve. Something is happening. We are being asked to choose the long view over the short view. We are being asked to rediscover both our wild idealism and our belief in honest-to-goodness front-door problem-solving. “The security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people,” i.e. “what’s good for others is good for us, there is no contradiction between idealism and realism” (this, incidentally, is a traditional African belief – ubuntu).

Obama is committed to truthfulness, but he’s not stupid. He may be a little naïve, but not completely naïve; and a little naïve is I think exactly what a visionary leader must be. I think that Obama is savvy enough to know the difference between truth and self-sabotage; he is in for sustainability, not suicide, but he wants to do it with substantive conviction at the core. [See an earlier post which references Obama and sincerity.]

Here’s a thought that will surely get me lynched among traditional feminists and grassroots activists: when it comes to distribution of power, I have always believed in a democratic republic, as opposed to a pure democracy: some are fit to rule, some are fit to empower. I am not in favor of tyranny of the masses. This opinion is directly related to the above notion that biography is everything, that what drives us and shapes us as individuals is everything about how we lead (and you can be a perfectly admirable human without being the right person for broad-based leadership at a particular moment). Obama’s edge, I think, is that he stands on firmer personal ground than Hillary does; he has less to lose. As a woman, Hillary has to be reactive. She has to play to and against certain expectations. Her supposed “tough-mindedness” is more about crafting perceptions than it is about true leadership. Obama is less trapped in this way. He is freer to speak candidly, to lead transparently.

This is not to say that there is no woman out there who could lead in this candid, free, transparent way; but Hillary, I feel, is not that woman. She is the sort of powerful woman who has had to play the accomplished-woman game throughout her entire career in order to get to where she is; she is shaped and driven by these experiences and will approach a presidency in the same way, with “inspired cynicism.” She will cover her ass, she will look over her shoulder, she will rule her staff with an iron fist, she will act the part she must act in order to maintain her power base, she will manipulate and revise truth and position hubby Bill and do everything she has always had to do – with supreme skill and discipline – in order to keep what she’s got and continue building her “career” in politics. (Let me say here that I would not lay blame on Hillary for her path or her tactics; she has done something remarkable in a world wholly unfriendly to her success. I just don’t think her particular psyche vis-a-vis power management is the best thing for the world right now, not from the seat of the presidency.) Obama, on the other hand, for better or for worse, has more latitude to approach his presidency with an attitude and an ambition of true public service, fundamental changes for the greater good – and I believe that he does. He can use “soft power” without being accused of weak femininity. Simply put, I believe that Obama is strategizing his campaign, doggedly pursuing election, in order to pursue his public service vision; Hillary, on the other hand, is strategizing her campaign in order to get elected. To quote the character Josh Liman from my favorite prime-time drama, The West Wing (who is about to jump ship from the [Senator John] Hoynes campaign for the Jed Bartlet campaign): "Senator, I don't know what we're for. I don't know what we're for, I don't know what we're against. Except that we seem to be for winning, and against anyone else winning."

All this to say that there are some who will be more effective and fearless at the level of the US Presidency – who have less to lose, fewer personal agendas, less social baggage (Obama for his part has plenty of social baggage, but, as he’s demonstrated through his two memoirs, he’s pretty darn self-aware about all of it and has effectively channeled lessons learned into public service passions). NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg – the epitome of the unpolitical politician, who approaches his job with a genuine interest in effectiveness and change and public good, because he’s really got nothing much at stake personally – is a good example.

These presidential primaries are posing to us Democrats a fundamental question about what we fear and what we hope for. More than terrorism itself, what I fear is the voting public’s giving in to (short-term) fear: “This is Obama’s problem in a nutshell. Democratic voters seem to be torn between the hope of reshaping a frightening world and the fear of being terribly vulnerable to that world.”

Friends, there is much to be afraid of. Some threats are more obvious, more in our faces – and much of this has to do with media manipulation by a regime which has effectively used their version of the world order – scare tactics – to control us and push forward a childishly categorical and boys’ club-based, narrow-minded agenda. Let’s be more afraid of a world in which deception is the norm for the American presidency; where we expect little from our leaders as far as courage and vision; where fear and self-preservation translate into bullying force which ultimately only intensifies the threat of catastrophic violence. Obama is trying to do something new, something different; he is the post baby-boomer voice – finally – who is saying, Ok, time to get up off the mat, enough post-Vietnam cynicism. We can go that route – Iraq being our Vietnam, we are halfway there – or we can try something different. The fact that Obama is also friendly with corporate leaders, believes in free-market capitalism, raises money from the wealthy, is a student of history and an admirer of select “old guard” American and world political figures – all this should serve as reassurance that he’s not just some over-idealistic arrogant kid, throwing the baby out with the bath water. He’s shaped by no one thing, and he’s shaping something real, something truly contemporary; something based in deeply-held values and heterogeneous experience, working its way out via the political realm, expressing itself through power structures. C’mon, folks. Being brave and being self-interested truly are one in the same here.

Obama '08. Yeah.

Thanksgiving 2007

I looked at my pup the other day and saw a kind of melancholy in his eyes. He'd been sleeping an awful lot, too - more than usual. I confess that I generally speak to my dog in complete sentences, not in puppy-baby-talk or single-word commands. So I cocked my head inquisitively and looked him in the eye and asked, pretty seriously: "Holidays gettin' to ya?"

I was talking to my mother a few days ago, as we were all (my family, that is) settling into whatever plans we'd decided on (this year, it was every man/woman/child for itself - each of us not up to traveling or hosting, for various reasons), and she said to me, "I can't understand why people get so anxious around holiday times. I don't see what the big deal is, whether you get together or don't get together." I think this may be a generational/cultural sort of thing, and I tried to explain to her that her family is the kind that always gets together, their sense of family is so strong, so unquestioned, that she always knows there's somewhere to go. Her problem is that she's often pulled in so many directions that she'd just assume stay home by herself and not be troubled by all the hooplah. In contrast, there are people (many of whom I know personally) whose families are so fragmented and estranged, that holidays are a time when you become acutely aware of how disconnected you are, of the absence of that unquestioned together-ness that once characterized the majority of families... but no longer.

As for me, I seem to be somewhere in the middle. My family would have me, certainly, if I had nowhere else to go. And while we do manage to maintain our relations and semi-regular correspondences - as best we can through some rocky times - we are ourselves rather fragmented these days, and it would be a forced sort of thing for all of us. I have a couple of friends in the city who fall into the category of disconnected-from-family, and who reach out for a casual non-family/urban-type anti-Thanksgiving. For them, I am thankful, and I try to make sure to spend time with them at some point around the holidays; they are and have been my crucial pseudo-family over the years. And then there are the close friends who have large family/extended family gatherings and who always offer me a place at their table (it's a toss-up whether these would be more or less awkward than Thanksgiving with my own family - depends on the specific circumstances from year to year, I guess).

This year, J. and I and the pup are in the country (J.'s family is similar to mine in its semi-together-fragmentedness, and so the forces saw fit to give us time together). We spent our Thursday more or less how we always spend our time here - cooking, eating, working, studying, playing, resting. I am thankful. Yes, I am thankful. The stripping away of typical traditions is, on the one hand, a little sad; but then again, in their stead is a kind of bare-bones gratitude that is perhaps even closer to the original spirit of the holiday than the holiday traditions themselves: for shelter and warmth, for love and friendship, for work and rest, for freedom and choice... I am thankful.

And, of course, for all of you, too - dear friends and fellow pilgrims in this strange and ever-challenging modern world of brokenness, evolution, art, commerce, loneliness, and love. Hope you had a good one.

Thanksgiving Anti-Turkey Meal: Suckling Pig, Sauteed Swiss Chard, Beans n Rice

First Snow, and Rilke on Ambition

The snow is falling fast here this morning - it's lovely. About a foot I'd say. Should taper off this afternoon. The wood pile is almost all stacked in the shed (yesterday's labor), and the new furnace is humming along. We discovered a mystery electrical cord emerging from the crawl space in the basement and realized that it's heating tape for the kitchen and bathroom pipes - the ones that froze last winter. C. the Postmistress told me about heating tape - you attach it to your pipes, plug it in, and it (safely) heats the pipes when temps fall below freezing. I was planning on researching and trying to install, so what a relief - one of those gifts from above - that it's already done. My second winter, and I'm just a little more prepared, which is a good thing.

So winter is officially here, and in the quiet of the world going dormant, laying itself down to sleep, I have been reading Rilke's early poems and some biography. The poet's realm was that of the soul, the deep inner life. In Robert Bly's intro to his translations of selected poems, he writes:

When I first read Rilke in my twenties, I felt a deep shock upon realizing the amount of introversion he had achieved, and the adult attention he paid to inner states. From the pragmatist or objectivist point of view, Rilke goes too far in this attention; he goes over the line. The American, in Latin America or North America, is willing to accept some introversion, but when it goes this far, he may dismiss the whole thing as solipsism, or as an evasion of political responsibility... Rilke knows what Tolstoy knows in The Death of Ivan Ilych: that our day-to-day life, with its patterns and familiar objects, can become a husk that blocks anything fresh from coming in. Before the industrial revolution brought its various creature comforts, it is conceivable that the shocks of winter cold, sudden poverties, plague, brutal invasions, abrupt unexplainable deaths, regularly broke the husk. In our time the husk is strong, and Rilke turns to look at it.

Here in the country, in solitude, I find that the husk falls away. The soul, the spirit, unfolds:

I want to unfold.
I don't want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

The spareness and the stillness of a country road, farmlands minding their own seasons and work in good time, big sky, snow falling... the slow, deep work of fruitfulness that is born of nature, as opposed to human-driven competition or ambition. And yet Rilke, like Donald Hall, has a very clear idea of his ambition:

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing,
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst....

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

Calmly. As Denise Levertov reminded us, "Much happens when we're not there." And much happens when we do nothing. We unfold... and we hear things. We may even hear the snow falling.

Recoiling & Progress

“I pray that my progress has been more than recoiling with satiation and disgust from one style to another, a series of rebuffs." -Robert Lowell

There's a certain soggy, cold, autumn-turning-winter sort of day in the country which reminds me of rural New England in November. Which is a funny/odd reminder of what drove me to the city in the first place.

I went to boarding school in New England from 9th through 12th grades. My parents had this grand idea - somewhat typical immigrant dream - about their elite-educated children, ivy league and would-be Supreme Court Justices or renowned scholars. I was a morose pre-teen of the suburbs, so they figured it could only do me good to send me off. So off I went. They were strange and lonely years, my introduction to class-and race-consciousness and social alienation on a whole new level. I am grateful for the education, a real love of learning got under my skin during those years; and it is ultimately unbecoming, I realize, to complain about an expensive education. At any rate, when those four years were up, I was more than game for something different - for the big city, for a place where there were many more people in general, and many more people who looked more like me.

So this funny/odd reminder makes me wonder if something else got under my skin during those years, despite my abrupt flight to the city: a certain comfort in solitude, the building up of inner resources in the face of an unwelcoming external world; the beginnings - or perhaps the second bloom (the first being a mostly lonely childhood) - of some breed of vocation for quiet and apartness. It's a simplistic but not wholly untrue paradigm for artistic evolution, I suppose - turning one's basic sense of alienation into a creative state. I learned a preference for quiet over noise, for intimacy over crowds, during those years - as a way of survival.

In my memories, both childhood and boarding school are perpetual autumn. When I conjure up those times, I see and feel only a soggy cold, or a crisp cool; silence or the barely audible rustle of the wind, the crunch of leaves under my feet; gray-ness, muted greens and browns, or rays of light shooting through tops of towering trees in a private forest. I try to recall spring and summer, and I see images, but I see them from without, as if observing another body, another being. For many years during my young adulthood I remember thinking and feeling a kind of animosity toward spring and summer; as if thaw, germination, bloom, brightness, and warmth had nothing whatever to do with me, and I bore them, awaited their passing, like a shrill marching band blasting through. Over the last decade or so, this has slowly begun to change, especially as I've taken up gardening in earnest and learned to love spring and summer on their own terms - for their work of fruitfulness, for their own warm stillness, for the ways in which they open their arms for all manner of living creature to emerge and get busy and propagate (yes, even the BUGS).

In two weeks, it will be one full year, a cycle of seasons, since this city-country journey began (since I closed the deal on the house and spent my first night). Ironically, I will be spending that anniversary weekend with my family in the suburbs. I'm sure it will be an interesting and useful "pause" as I launch into the next four seasons of city-country life, and city-country tales.

Poem for a Quiet Morning / a Quiet Life

Much happens when we're not there.
Many trees, not only that famous one, over and over,
fall in the forest. We don't see, but something sees,
or someone, a different kind of someone,
a different molecular model, or entities
not made of molecules anyway; or nothing, no one:
but something has taken place, taken space,
been present, absent,*
returned. Much moves in and out of open windows
when our attention is somewhere else,
just as our souls move in and out of our bodies sometimes.
Everyone used to know this,
but for a hundred years or more
we've been losing our memories, moulting, shedding,
like animals or plants that are not well...
And though it may have nothing at all to do with us,
and though we can't fathom its designs,
nevertheless our condition thereby changes:
cells shift, a rustling barely audible as of tarlatan
flickers through closed books, one or two leaves
fall, and when we read them we can perceive,
if we are truthful, that we are not dreaming,
not dreaming but once more witnessing.

-Denise Levertov, from "Window-Blind"

*This line should be indented, blogger's formatting not cooperating.

Only Let Me Be...

Dear God,

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.
Let me be gay
Let me be sad
Let me be cold
Let me be warm
Let me be hungry, have too much to eat
Let me be ragged or well dressed
Let me be sincere, be deceitful
Let me be truthful
Let me be a liar
Let me be honorable and let me sin
Only let me be something every blessed minute.
And when I sleep, let me dream all the time,
so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

-Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Listening to the last of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn on my way out to the country today, the above passage struck me. It reminded me, I think, of why this crazy life of extremes – often disorienting (and very inefficient) – of city and country.

By the time of the above passage, it’s 1917, and Francie is 15 years old. She has been forced to quit school – her only joy – to work a full-time office job (pretending to be 17) and be the primary bread-winner for her family. She’s known poverty and hunger her whole life, her beloved father died a drunkard, and her proud mother loves her brother better than her. So much day-to-day struggle, and yet still, she says: Let me be hungry, have too much to eat / Let me be ragged or well dressed. Not: Let me be stable, let me be secure, let me be middle-of-the-road. Let me be something.

War has just been declared, and upon learning this, Francie is having a kind of visionary moment – of seeing herself in history, of recognizing the profundity of her existence in that moment. She is a young woman, hungry for life and love and beauty, reading for the first time that the world is officially on fire. She consciously seizes the moment, tries to capture it – by taking the time to notice every detail about herself and her environment, and then sealing some things in an envelope (a lock of hair, a penny, a Whitman poem, the news clipping about the war). She writes her name, her age, and the date on the envelope and imagines herself opening it in 50 years. I don’t want to remember, she says. I want to live. I don’t want to reminisce, I want to re-live.

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man
Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine...

(from "Leaves of Grass")

Francie’s spirit is clearly that of a romantic – Emersonian, Whitmanesque, Proustian. At such a young age, she understands something that only a young person who has had a very short youth could understand: that the passage of time is an utter tragedy. And that every moment we are alive on this earth is a miracle worth bottling for eternity (in Francie’s case, sealing in an envelope) - a living phenomenon bursting with beauty and possibility. On some level, Francie, who at 15 is both still a child and more adult than most adults, understands her mortality.


Let me be something.
Let me share the silence of first snow with no one but the doe
Let me wake to the sound of city garbage trucks and car alarms
Let me burn the wood I’ve chopped and stacked, and warm my hands by the fire
Let me rebel against urban radiators, strip naked and open all the windows in January
Let me see and hear no one but God for days
Let me see and hear all the peoples of the world in a subway car
Let me smell the sweetness of grass and damp tree bark
Let me smell the smells of the street - fancy downtown bakeries, Puerto Rican oxtails, urine, and all
Let the stars show me how black is the night sky
Let the city lights own the skyline and the heavens
Let me till the earth and bring forth fruits
Let an orchid grow in the Bronx.
Let me be something.

The Rustle of Autumn

More richly and more recklessly,
Leaves, leaves, give tongue and whirl away,
Fill yesterday's cup of bitterness
With the sadness of today.

Impulse, enchantment, beauty!
Let's dissolve in September wind
And enter the rustle of autumn.
Be still, or go out of your mind!

-From "Autumn," by Boris Pasternak

I spent part of the country weekend with the Russians - Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova. Random? Even more so: after a day of Russian poetry, I sat down to watch OLD SCHOOL - an adult(ish) frat movie starring Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Luke Wilson.

A strange stretch in the country. Quiet and unbothered, yet work-ful. Not particularly restful. If I were to oversimplify the city-country dichotomy, I would say city=intellect, country=body. Lawn & yard, cooking, cleaning, laundry, hauling fire wood, climbing the hill with the dog, car maintenance... in the country, I mysteriously turn into a farm woman. The Russians were I guess a mini-antidote to all that. (OLD SCHOOL a mini-antidote to the Russians.)

The physical work is how we get ready for the change of seasons, I suppose. Putting away summer things, getting out sweaters and wool socks and space heaters, the last mowing of the season, the final harvest of lettuce and spinach, raking the leaves and covering the garden with them...and changing the clocks, of course. We enter the dark of winter. Everything smells of burning wood (hair, clothes, dog).

I am not sure if I have quite yet entered the rustle of autumn. Be still, or go out of your mind! We are facing translation issues here, I would imagine. And yet, the sentiment speaks to me - be still, be still. The chores will always be there. More richly, and more recklessly...

Homecoming

Nighttime temps dipped into the high 20’s last night here in the country. The furnace installers were here all day yesterday, back again today to finish up. Had to make do with space heaters and the wood-burning stove. I’ve got enough wood in the shed for a couple weeks but will need to stock up soon. To chop, or to buy: that is the question.

Between October travel and awaiting furnace parts, it’s been a month since I’ve been here. Driving out, I noticed both the slowness and steadiness of change. Two of the boats that were for sale along the roadside all summer are still there, the third is gone – sold or carted in for the winter. Pretty much every real estate for sale sign is still up. The “Cuban Sandwiches” billboard is still there, though no Cuban sandwiches have been sighted in at least a year. There is a new traffic light by the Citgo, where once there was a blinking yellow light. The deer are out, too close to the road, in groups of three and four. There is a new soup self-service area at the General Store, and the coffee shop in S-burg has expanded to include some organic groceries. C. the Postmistress has put her garden to bed with piles of grass clippings, and across the way are about six cows new to the neighborhood.

(In the city, after a month's passing, 1/3 of the apartments in the building would have turned over, advertisements at every bus station and in every subway car would be different, people you know would be now divorced, pregnant, and/or dead, stores would be filled with product lines for the next nearest holiday (chocolate Easter eggs in early-February)).

I arrive at my house - every time, but especially this time - braced for whatever calamity may have befallen. This time, most everything (thankfully) in its place. The wheelbarrow knocked over, a small tree fallen into the backyard, the grass long but not too long, medusa-like sugar snap peas (no actual peas) toppling over their supports, unidentified feces in the front yard. Inside, a few fly carcasses on the windowsills, spider webs and cobwebs of course (Happy Halloween). Leftovers in the fridge grown fuzzy as newborn chicks. No phone messages.

The transition from city to country is always something – something to be undergone. Energy ringing, mind racing as mental space is created, and thoughts – real ones and garbagey ones – migrate from crowded spaces into more open ones, look around the metaphorical room to see if there’s anyone to talk to or good food at the buffet table; then either plant themselves somewhere strategic or go along their merry way. It takes some time to settle in. This time, even more intense after the long absence. During the summer, a long sit on the porch, or ceiling-staring from the couch will do it. But in the cold, sans furnace, the ringing turns in on itself, seeps into the skin and blood and fat, becomes, I think, physiological.

Somewhat defenselessly, I made a fire and ate. And ate. And ate some more. The pup stared accusingly, but oh well. The body needed something, and I gave it. It would take more time for the mind to find its breath and air, but time – here in the country – I got. There is the generosity of slowness, of knowing inaction and waiting not as laziness, not as poor productivity, but as tending to the aliveness of body and soul. Paying attention. Letting. The pup rolled around in the front yard feces, his greatest indulgent joy (qua pup), and I thought: Let him. Just let him.

Let's Try This...

Yes, there need to be orchids in the Bronx, one way or another. I'll think of these as distant cousins to Ella (RIP)- the lovely phalaenopsis who inspired this blog (for those of you just joining).

City Mouse, Country Mouse

Finally, the rain and the cool are here. A wet blanket, yes, but autumn, at last. We will grow accustomed to the constant hiss and ping of apartment radiators for the next six months - and hollering at each other to be heard.

Still here in the city, awaiting the arrival of furnace parts in the country so that we can have heat there. The propane guys came and dismantled the thing two weeks ago, slapped a big red sticker on it - DANGER! DO NOT OPERATE! Apparently the burners are cracked, we'd probably been inhaling carbon monoxide. Terrific. We may head out for the weekend anyway, make the best of the wood-burning stove and a space heater.

With the rain and the cool comes a drop in air pressure; which means out come the mice. The other day I saw SIX in a span of an hour. Caught three of 'em in glue traps (ew, I know, very inhumane), the others continue to scurry behind the walls. Are you grossed out? Yeah, me too. But I seem to be calming down a bit. We live with mice, this is the reality. They're so small that plugging up holes won't do much good, there will always be a nook or a cranny to squeeze through. And I remind myself that they come because this is a hoppin' place to be... we cook a lot, the smells are yummy, surely the little guys pick us over the bachelor across the hall whose kitchen is spotless, barely used. Look, as long as they stay out of my bed, my food cabinets, and my shoes, they can scurry at will; we are reasonable people...

Too bad the pup isn't much of a mouse-catcher. Poor guy is ill the last couple days, probably something nasty he ate off the street. Woke us up in the middle o' the night last night wimpering like I've not heard in years. Didn't make it out fast enough, unfortunately (good thing the carpet is brown). Between this and his recent Lyme Disease diagnosis (no symptoms, though, thankfully), my kid is weathering the tough stuff of city and country life.

And speaking of tough stuff... my plants have been victims of vandelism. Someone - who? why? - decided to come along and violate the pansies and lavendar on the stoop. What I mean is, they were found completely dug up and left for dead, as if someone had actually grabbed them by their tops, yanked them out of their soil, then turned the pots on their heads. This was no accidental knocking over. What for? is all I can think. Rage against attempts at beauty? Rage against us outsider-newcomers? Nothin' better to do? Anyway, I brought them upstairs and put them back together, put the pansies back out (I dare you, try it again). Getting chilly for the lavendar, so I'll keep her inside for now. J. the Super was indignant, too; he says, "We need a camera out here, man," meaning a security camera, which is ridiculous of course, though I appreciate the sentiment.

This country mouse is looking forward to some time in the country soon; there's a guy down the street selling "I HEART BX" t-shirts; maybe we'll buy them on our way out.

The Wire

"The Wire" is the sort of show that draws die-hards or none at all. It's hard to be luke-warm about it. It's also (in my experience) a bit of a slow burn; you give it the whole season or likely you move on. As creator David Simon has said, it's conceived as a novel - a near-epic one, I'd say - not a short story. (Reasonable comparisons: Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, THE GODFATHER.)

There's probably little I can say that hasn't already been said. There is a budding "scholarship" developing about the show's evolution (and now denouement, as the final season, Season Five, has wrapped and will air in 2008). You know the phenomenon has fully "broken," arrived on the arts and culture scene, when The Profile shows up in The New Yorker (and lo and behold, see the Oct. 22 issue).

I've never in my life paid for cable, so I've seen "The Wire" - Seasons One, Two, and Three (eagerly awaiting the release of Season Four next month) - on DVD. I've watched each season three times. This may sound obsessive, but really, it's more a testament to the nature of the beast; it's a novel, remember (or a series of novels, really), conceived with the idea of depicting the life of an inner city, in all its complexity. From its inception, five seasons were envisioned, each delving into a different aspect of city life (though not as compartmentalized as that sounds). "We were always planning to move further and further out, to build a whole city," Simon says. Academic courses can (and will) surely be designed around it - sociology, criminology, anthropology, urban planning, media arts, screenwriting (the dialogue!), literature - you name it, and TV dramas will forever struggle to measure up to its standards.

What makes it different from a novel, though, is its hyper-realism. Simon has said that he writes/directs for the people who appear in the show, not the "general reader" (the show is apparently very popular in poor black neighborhoods of West Baltimore, circulated on bootleg DVDs). Simon is my hero in this way; he has stayed true to the audience he cares about, but has succeeded in sucking in viewers far beyond that, like myself (viewership is appropriately modest, by HBO "hit" standards; the show has been vulnerable to cancellation at the end of each season, but will survive through the end). He is also a phenomenon and an inspiration of local-ness, in a world of increasing global "flattening" (Thomas Friedman, etc.): a former Baltimore Sun crime reporter, Simon has created and evolved "The Wire" without ever leaving Baltimore - physically, psychically, intellectually, morally. Everything that appears in the show, including many of the minor actors and extras, are Baltimore-based and Baltimore-grown - sometimes as composites of multiple issues or characters, but always based in actualities (his writing partner and co-creator, Ed Burns, is a former Baltimore homicide detective).

"The Wire" is, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, a significant part of my life. I see my own city differently as a result, I trust it as a semi-comprehensive urban education. Following "The Wire" is like learning a new language and culture, it's immersive. It's also a kind of true music - the language of the streets, the drug trade, police culture - melodic and dissonant at once, perhaps even more "authentic" than rap or hip-hop, because it lacks the posturing, the glam, the beat-box stylization. It's people talking and hustling and living; and it really gets under your skin the way music does. It's also high literature in its deft weaving of irony, comedy, tragedy, plot convergences, and complexity of character - its insistence on a universal humanity, our motivations and survival mechanisms uncannily parallel, whether we are a cop or a drug dealer or a politician or a mother.

I am not easily drawn to violence-oriented media, but there is really nothing gratuitous in "The Wire" (save just a bit of nudity and sex that struck me as cheap eye candy; but hey, life is sex is life, and at the end of the day, "The Wire" is on HBO, not PBS). The thing is equally serious about its form as its content, and not a word or a character or a storyline is wasted.

At the risk of sounding overly didactic... my feeling is that the difference between art and mere entertainment (something can achieve both, surely) is that art changes you, your engagement with it evolves you in some way. So I'm trying to think about how "The Wire" has changed me. Its brilliance is that it is somehow both hopeful and despairing - not sequentially, i.e. a despairing story is told but then in the end there is hope (a conventional arc); but simultaneously. Artistically, Simon is like a Cubist, showing the forces in motion all at the same time, on a single plane, mirroring and refracting one another (the "business" of drug-dealing like the "business" of politics like the "business" of law enforcement like the "business" of media). The ways in which the ugliness of city life - its corrupt leaders and mercenary criminals, the repeating loop of corruption-breeding-crime and 'round she goes - is pretty hopeless, and Simon and Burns soften not the message. People with consciences usually lose; an impersonal system, i.e. institutions which have replaced/displaced any humanism that may have birthed the institutions in the first place, prevail. There is no one person or institution to blame, which is in itself a kind of hopelessness, because without demons and enemies, how to fix the problem?

So where's the hope? I suppose it's something like this: each character is driven by a powerful instinct to survive and, in their own (compromised) ways, flourish. How they go about it is of course questionable on all levels, but with negative forces bearing down on just about everyone, any moral judgment you might be tempted to make becomes dizzyingly complicated. It's that instinct to survive that persists across the board - black, white, poor, rich, old, young, powerful, powerless, gay, straight - and the show's writers and actors and directors do an amazing job of "teaching" the viewer to admire and root for that instinct. Horrible horrible things happen to these characters, and they do horrible horrible things to one another; and yet there is no one whose demise you really want to see (perhaps there are a few minor characters who are portrayed flatly, in order to advance plot; this we forgive). And so, I suppose "The Wire" is indeed teaching me, growing in me, a new impulse: to root for people, and to see people, divorced from the institutions which shape and confine and bear down. And to recognize that, while following your conscience may very well get you nowhere in terms of results, the instinct to fight the losing battle (a la Chris McCandless!) is one you can - you must - preserve. It's a spiritual message, really, worthy of Dr. King. And in that sense, watching "The Wire" is empowering in the face of a city life that feels paralyzing in its complexity and incomprehensibility.

Boy, it sounds kind of cheesy as I read over what I've written. I guess you have to have experienced the grit of the show to appreciate the incongruousness of the above analysis relative to what you're actually watching. Let me just say that when a certain heartless drug-dealer (who has betrayed his best friend/partner in one too many ways), for whom I have no natural or logical reason to care, gets his in an episode at the end of Season Three, I was physically wrecked by the time the credits rolled. I was completely outside myself - devastated, appalled, incredulous - looking around the room for...for... something to hit, and a shoulder to cry on, at the same time. Changed. Man, that's good TV. Will I weep for every drug dealer who gets his from now on? 'Course not. But I think I have slightly different eyes now...

And, to the degree that I continue to grapple with how one lives a life worth living as a participating citizen of the world's leading (though waning) capitalist power, "The Wire," which Simon has said is about how "raw, unencumbered capitalism" devalues human beings, is a pretty solid and unflinching education, a useful touchstone, in what that looks like in everyday urban life - for the powerful and powerless alike.

Into the Wire

Yesterday's post about the complexity of city life, and the trappings of living in a market-driven capitalist society, has me thinking about two very different works of media - both, I think, worth your while.

INTO THE WILD, Sean Penn's film adaptation of Jon Krakauer's book, seems to be doing well. It opened wide in NYC and features an impressive cast (Hal Holbrook, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden) - led by a relatively unknown youngin, Emile Hirsch (well-known if you're a 16 year-old girl, I suppose). The popularity of it in the city reminds me of another film, INTO GREAT SILENCE - a 162-minute documentary featuring nothing much more than continuous footage of life in a Carthusian monastery, hushed and minimal - which played at Film Forum for an extended run. (Get me out of here, we city folk seem to be saying with our movie choices.)

I've not read Krakauer's book, but I understand the film stays fairly close to it. Armed with Tolstoy, Thoreau, Jack London, a field guide to plants and berries, a hunting rifle, and a bag of rice, the real-life kid in question (who's just graduated from college and is filled with anger towards his stern and business-oriented father) eschews materialism, careerism, the "false self" - and lights out for the road. Eventually, the Alaskan wild calls, and he answers. He survives nearly four months, and then, two years after his initial flight from mainstream comforts, Chris's corpse is found by moose hunters in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness.

I knew I wanted to see this movie; I knew it would resonate somehow. The urge to get out, and away, is something I suppose many of us can relate to. The call of solitude, of freedom, of the inner search for a true self and a true vocation via the outward journey (which starts out away but evolves into towards)... it's a narrative as familiar to the American soul as, well, bootstraps capitalism. It's what prompted regular ole me (about whom Sean Penn will not be making a film) to light out for the country.

I haven't read any of the reviews or commentaries, but my initial response to the film (and Chris McCandless's story, as it's portrayed) is that it's both a celebration and a cautionary tale of youthful conceptions of freedom - glory and limitations. Not unlike (ironically) the founding American promise of economic freedom via unbridled market competition, the vision is intoxicating in its pure individualism. Ultimately, though, what young McCandless discovers is that his complete abandonment of community and connectedness - the human experiences of love, fidelity, and even forgiveness - limit both his joy and his ability to survive.

"Youthful" and "young" are interesting terms for me here. In another era, my 35 years would be considered fairly advanced; these days, 35 (especially in the city, especially if you are childless) seems to be the new 25. And my partner-in-life is a generation older than I, so I often get accused of "youthful naivete." Yet: 1) when I look around, I recognize (somewhat alarmingly) that my peers have begun running the world, and 2) even I could see what was coming, as Chris M. rejected offer after offer of love and community along his path. We are not islands, we are not that strong; nature showed Chris McCandless, tragically, who was boss in the battle between one man and the universe. But his burning need/determination to find out first-hand, without mediators, without authorial interpretation (i.e. distortion), without fear - is perhaps what defines his "youth," and what we (romantics) celebrate as the life we ought to preserve and cultivate, no matter our chronological age or experience. When we light out for solitude, when we create space between ourselves and society, we are claiming the truth of present aliveness, of direct communion of our very own souls with every miracle of existence (a la Emerson) - other people's opinions and layers of interpretation and pre-canned analyses be damned. Maybe this is the fundamental truth of the romantic temperament: to rather be foolish than half-living.

A story like INTO THE WILD also, I think, gets under the skin of middle class city-dwellers, in that it pokes and prods at our soft spots, the places where we are not sure of our fundamental resourcefulness, our ability to survive - having accustomed ourselves to the life of 24-hour convenience. Without money, food, or shelter (or Amazon.com), how would we fare? Have we lost touch completely with that most basic human trait, i.e. instinct? What does a person really need, and how far are we from knowing the difference between need and want? Asceticism is, remember, a practice which cultivates (ultimately) spiritual bloom - not, as we often think, a holy emptiness. Who is really suffering - the man with many goods, or the man with none - is the question Chris McCandless posed to himself and the world; and he did so, I think, purely and effectively (sacrificing his own life for the sake of the question). It's a question that is not so abstract, and anything but irrelevant at this cultural moment.

It's true that courage comes easier to the young, because the young have less to lose. But many a 21 year-old in 1990 were buying in to corporate jobs and predictability, so Chris McCandless still certainly emerges as a young man of great courage. Kudos, too, to Mr. Penn for honoring Chris McCandless's remarkableness, and for enlarging his life's burning question for the big screen.

I didn't get to my second media-of-note - "The Wire"(the title of this post is not a typo) - in this post; so stay tuned.

That Thing We Don't Talk About (Here I Go Again)...

(I am realizing that this blog is, on some level, a repository for daily hand-wringing over the trappings of capitalism and how not to self-destruct as an individual in its wake. See here for an earlier post on "that thing we don't talk about.")

77 degrees today. Disturbing. Clipped an article yesterday from the NY Times about CRAG - Carbon Rationing Action Group - in England. Folks coming together as a cooperative to mind their carbon footprints, calculating auto emissions and heat usage, etc. The focus is lifestyle adjustment, as opposed to fancy new technology or carbon credits. Use less, plain and simple. A few pages later, however, Thomas Friedman used his column to tell us that what you do as an individual in your own daily life makes little difference; you have to get involved in policy. He cited NYC's en masse shift from Crown Victoria taxis to hybrids - and Mayor Bloomberg's requirement that all taxis be hybrids or other low-emission vehicles, minimum 30 mpgs, within five years. This is how real change happens, Friedman argues. Elect the right folk who will lead the charge and push for standards.

Of course, we know that we need both/and.

One thing for certain about city living is that the density and diversity of the population creates so many layers of complexity, so many moving parts and concealed corners, that getting involved - in anything - becomes a very serious research project. The world is globalized, and everything is interconnected, yes, no matter where you live, city or country; but those webs become so much more tangled, tendrils exponentially multiplied, in the day-to-day of urban life. The bigger the city, the more complex, and the harder to tease out the "facts" you need to act responsibly. The simple reality of hyper-pluralism in the media - information overload - is a great challenge in itself.

This is starting to sound like an excuse, I know - for doing nothing. I'm just saying that I empathize with any city-dwellers who struggle with paralysis in the face of the world-on-fire. And can see how the CRAG movement and others like it are catching on, how people would be attracted to the micro-level of social change; because it is comprehensible, there is a reasonable linearity to the cause and effect of the action. There is a longing for a recovery of that direct relationship - the tangible impact of one's actions on the world in which one lives and, beyond that, a return to some semblance of a two-way relationship with the natural world. (Tomorrow I'll post about Into the Wild, which I saw last night - speaking of the trappings of capitalism.)

When I lived in a smaller city, I felt the difference palpably. There were two major newspapers, and two culture weeklies, which everyone read; people knew the names of all the city council members and what areas they focused on. Friends who worked in city government actually did make a difference, i.e. what they did from 9 to 5 on a daily basis moved forward progressive changes in city policies, and they felt very good about their work. The flow chart from citizen to politician to policy change to policy implementation was comprehensible to the average person. Here in NYC, you must be a municipal government expert to understand the inner workings; for instance, it is customary (and pretty much necessary) for a nonprofit to engage a city lobbyist in order to successfuly navigate the labrynthine grants process and receive city funding (and the little guys who can't afford such assistance lose out).

If you are someone who thinks and cares about such things - and I think most people do - it is not an easy time to live in the world and do no harm. When I go to the polls, Iraq and causes for war around the globe will certainly be on my mind. But in the day to day, having been born an American and (so far) maintaining that identity, it does seem to me that, like it or not, our primary role in the global community (if we are not, say Nobel Laureates or UN Assemblymembers), or at least the role with the largest ripple effects, is as consumers. We are what we buy (which of course includes what we eat). Insofar as wars are related to oil, other natural resources, the hegemony of American media & entertainment values; and insofar as we are in the position to choose what/how much we use, which corporations we keep in business, which economic and cultural values we actively or passively propagate... we are responsible.

And so, contrary to Mr. Friedman, I think that there is nothing more directly linear in cause & effect, no more powerful act... than to mind our consumer footprints. The good news about this is that it's not complicated, meaning it's daily and it's right in front of our noses. The bad news is that it's effortful and often inconvenient (but is that really bad news?). You can vote for whomever you like, but then proceed to work against the values that individual represents by continuing to support the economic interests which drive the ugliness. I think many liberals do this. Let's, um, quit that. Let's at least try.

Go CRAGs!

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The Reading List: There are so many these days. The ones that come to mind are Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver) and The Omnivore's Dilemma (Michael Pollan). If anyone can recall the article/blog that was in the NY Times maybe a year ago by a guy who put his NYC family on a radically green program for a year, let me know.

Also, I've been subscribing to this e-list but don't know a whole lot about it: www.smallplanetinstitute.org. What intrigues me is one of their values - "Evolve capitalism to support the social good" - and their notion of "Thin Democracy -- the dangerous idea that elections plus a market economy are enough."

The Little Ones (& Their Moms)

Back in the city, and it's sweltering. Well, it's 75 degrees anyway, and it looks like it will stay this way through next week. This is the time of year when NYC landlords are obliged to turn on the heat (and usually, we need it). Ours was turned on yesterday (for those of you who've never lived here, NYC apartment bulding heating systems are rarely controllable from apartment-to-apartment; when it's on, it's ON; when it's off, it's OFF), and when I came home in the late afternoon, the place was steaming hot, even with the windows open and ceiling fan going. Our neighbor H. said he had his A/C running. I climbed out onto the fire escape and people-watched for a little while, just to get some air and check on the little ones (i.e. the plants). It's past mid-October, and the arugula plants are stunted because it's too warm. Bizarre.

Keep at it, Al G. Nobel Prize well-deserved.

Here's something I can't quite figure: the herbs are going like gangbusters. I guess the warmth does them good, but still, here they are, way too big and overcrowded for their pots, often under-watered, no plant food, and sitting in a tiny west-facing windowsill in a room with little air circulation. But they just keep growing.

I got them from a nice little farm stand at Union Square, which begs the question of what Mr. NJ Orchid Guy had claimed, i.e. it's all about the original grower, the plant's journey from seed to seedling. You teachers and parents out there may agree, something along the lines of "the importance of early childhood development." Although my mother, Queen of Long-Living, Flourishing Orchids, picks hers up on sale at the Home Depot - usually the dregs, the half-dead throwaways.

Speaking of mom, it's inevitable, I suppose, that this blog would drift into the topic of parenting and family. Nurture and growth, environment, what it means to flourish (oneself) and to help other living things along. I am, after all, une femme d'une certaine age.

Urban motherhood is truly its own Olympic sport these days. The modern moms that I know well are urban or suburban (or both, i.e. living suburban and working urban). Some work full-time outside the home, some work part-time; I can't say that I know very many (under the age of 45) who stay home full-time. Even the majority of the moms of these moms have worked most of their lives outside the home at least part-time.

Career and fertility are prime urban mom issues for the educated/upper-middle class. All springing from the basic generational shift to "family planning," a.k.a when-you-want-it/how-you-want-it baby making. Child-bearing age stretches further and further out toward and beyond 40 (even despite the medical warnings); in the country and the middle states - the reddish/pinkish states - moms are younger (though probably not by much these days). Moms of color all around are younger, too, across social classes. I remember observing (with some discomfort) the prevalence of twins in my former Brooklyn neighborhood (a white/affluent one): older moms, multiple births, good bet of course that these were in-vitro.

Lots of stories to tell and observations to be made about city and country when it comes to family. For me, it's mostly observational, not being a mom myself. I'm keeping an eye particularly on C. & T., whom I've known since we were all in our twenties (I was present when T. proposed to C., got down on one knee - mostly as a joke - at a coffee shop late one night after we'd all gone to a music concert). T. grew up in the midwest and spent all his summers farming. He's also lived in remote parts of the Southwest, as a bachelor. He's definitely an outdoors sort of guy, and has lived in the city now (came in the 80's as a professional musician) about 20 years. With three small children, lower-middle class incomes and a lot of debt, C. & T. are now seriously considering moving back to the midwest, buying a farm, settling out there. But they're pretty torn, they've been living a culture-rich city life for so long now. And they have an adopted son, who is Puerto Rican (they are white), so they are concerned about racial and cultural homogeneity, and overwhelming political conservatism. It will be interesting to witness their process; they'll go out to see a farm for sale over Thanksgiving.

Man, it's hot. Pup's tongue is hanging out and everything. Wonder how the local farmers are doing, whose livelihoods in fact depend on the weather. The arugula and spinach this season perhaps a little wilty, the tomatoes and peppers still coming.

Aurevoir, Merci or "Tous Les Deux"

Forget re-entry shock, I am having exit shock. It took a full three hours – including four very unpleasant airport personnel, a complete re-packing of one bag and partial repacking of another (who knew mustard was a liquid?), the obligatory purchase of a Ziploc bag for dix centimes to protect the planet from my toothpaste and face cream – to get from the first security check-point to the flight gate at aeroport Charles de Gaulle. International travel these days can really suck, man. There’s no other way to say it.

One of the unpleasant four made some comment about “You may do whatever you like in your country, but here…”, as I tried to explain that my ticket was an e-ticket, and thus I was not required to present anything but my passport. Or so I was told. That single your-country-sucks comment set my mood for the entire rest-of-check-in experience, which was doomed, really, once this homme mechant blackballed me, i.e. marked my boarding pass so that at every checkpoint I was singled out for a full bag-and-person search.

I am pooped. I hate the French, and they hate me. We used to be so close, like this. What happened?

“We don’t hate Americans, not at all,” our new friend Pierre assures us. It’s our last night in Paris, and we start talking to Pierre at a sidewalk café, over whiskey and chocolate cake. He is here alone, in town visiting family. He lives in LA, he tells us, with his American wife and daughter. “This time, now, between America and France, it is too bad. But it is just a short time compared to so many years of love affair between these two countries. George Bush has made war against everybody and offended his friends, especially the French. But most French people, they love the Americans, they do not hate them, not at all. We hope that after George Bush, we can repair again our friendship with America.”

We believe Pierre, he seems like an earnest fellow. He tells us that life as a French American, an American Frenchman, is an interesting one. He feels he is able to see the strengths and weaknesses of both nations, both cultures. Somewhat apologetically, he offers his opinions on American weakness, including the fact that only 8% of Americans have passports. Often, he says, he feels unwelcome by Americans he meets who have never left the country, who know little of the world outside the U.S. – especially during travels in the middle states and the South, far from large cities. He concedes that the French can be the same way, especially in rural areas and the South of France.

We are city people, the three of us, sitting here on rue T. in Paris, eating and drinking and talking. We are exchanging stories of travel and mixed cultures (Pierre’s wife is Korean American) and business. We are the fortunate homeless – without a single place to call home, a place where we feel at home. On this night in Paris, sitting at these café tables and sharing our tales, we are, in fact, home. We are privileged in this way, we have chosen it mostly, and we are not complaining; Pierre seems especially happy to be living a life of constant “interest,” as he puts it.

I would guess that the majority of the passported 8% are city-dwellers. Many of them are perhaps immigrants to start. Pierre’s viewpoint is a particular one, and one that I might easily share, given my own life experiences. But: are those of us who move about the world necessarily more broad-minded, more sympathique, in any way wiser than those who stay put?

I was so hoppin-mad at those four airport personnel this morning. Something about that kind of petulance, that staunch soldierly-ness in all of them… indeed, I judge it as a kind of ignorance – a lack of diplomatic ability, of connection-making as opposed to enemy-making, of a penchant for effectiveness coupled with humane-ness. These folk were working strictly by principle.

How does one learn this kind of diplomacy, this wisdom of both/and on the planet? I recall now one of the first pieces of presidential biography that alerted me to George W. Bush’s ineptness for the job: he had limited exposure to foreign countries before taking the office of the Presidency of the United States. We also hear from close advisors and his current biographer Robert Draper that he is the sort of man of surrounds himself with a Circle of the Like-Minded, people who agree with him (or at least pretend to).

At any rate, despite passport demographics, I doubt this is a city-country issue; in the same way that the Blue State/Red State divide is not so simple as it appears. Certainly, you can move about as a sophisticate in a big city like New York completely cloistered and provincial, and you can open your mind and spirit to the multiplicity of the universe as a shopkeeper in Springfield (pick your state) or a Kentucky farmer.

Both/And is, I think, a kind of disposition. Some people got it and some people don’t, and I don’t know that there’s a formula for how you get it or develop it or lose it. It’s related to comfort zones and fear and opportunity and education and marginal-ness; I think on some level it is related to experiences of difficulty or suffering, which spawn empathy, along with the nurturing of the imagination (my plug for arts in education). And yes, travel is good, too. These days, it seems to me, in a world of violent face-off sectarianism, a gifted Both/And kind of leadership (and citizenry) is the only peaceful, progressive, healthful way forward. We need our friends and our love affairs, our "interest," our wisdom, our humane-ness.

(And now, I relinquish my butter knife.)

Les Orchidees

An orchid shop on rue T. in Paris (by night).

An Orchid Grows in Beaune (Part 2)

So last night, it all sort of caught up to us. You can’t really escape your life, the realities of your how’s and why’s – not even on vacation. Over dinner (Thai food, a decided break from the rich cuisine Bourgignone), we got into a bit of a melee over matters of money, personal and global. Being in France, we of course notice a different attitude toward the world and one’s place in it, toward values which we Americans take for granted, toward globalism and capitalism and international politics, and the notions of profit and progress in general. A Tunisian shopkeeper in Paris – well-spoken in English – had engaged us in a late-night discussion about French complacency v. Chinese industriousness. The Chinese, he argued, are willing to do what is necessary to progress, to move forward economically. More and more, they are being brought in to foreign countries to build and produce; they are seen as the best bang for the buck, they are willing to move and adjust to a new culture. The French, on the other hand, are staid, aloof, nostalgic. They love all things of the past, they are not interested in participating in the future, the way the future is going. They will – they are – falling behind.

At dinner, J. argues for free-market capitalism and globalism. It’s what there is, it’s the only path of innovation and progress. Competition is the driving force of humanity; laziness looms as our downfall. I am here, he argues, enjoying this vacation, these experiences, because a multi-national corporation has offered me credit, at an interest rate I couldn’t refuse. Company X competed for my business and got it. The credit market makes the world go ‘round.

Yes, yes, we are all complicit… but still…it’s predatory, I argue. I have been snookered by credit card companies before. With this particular card, I made three different phone calls to three different customer service agents, documenting the terms over and over, presenting each one with different scenarios, to make sure I fully understood the terms. This, after receiving in the mail a 10-page document (tiny print) describing, supposedly, terms and changes in terms and disclosures. “You need a f*&%ing PhD in economics to understand all this,” I said at the time. I was mad then, and I’m mad now, talking about it. (I am gesticulating and spitting and the madame Thailandaise keeps coming over and smiling and asking if we are all right, as if I am going to murder J. in cold blood with a butter knife at any moment.) I am an educated, middle-class, fairly critical thinker, and there’s no WAY I am going to understand the terms of a credit card document. And the folks defaulting in the sub-prime mortgage market, they also got snookered; their lenders knew damn well that a critical mass would default, that they were borrowing beyond their means and it would catch up to them. The structures of the lending packages were designed with that percentage of default built in, part of the business plan; or else they never would have offered them so freely. Health insurance terms are similar: people profiting off of other people’s vulnerability and limited means – not incidentally, but by design. (At this moment especially, as a foreigner in a land where I speak the language not-quite-fluently, I recognize how vulnerable to fine print are those in the US without fluent English-language skills.) This is progress? This is the American ideal? Capitalism in all its glory? Corporate profit momentum and get-up-n-go towards what exactly?

(Grotesquely, it occurs to me sometimes that George W. Bush does in fact intend for us all to put food on our families.)

Ok, so what’re you gonna do about it? J. challenges (holding his own butter knife). This is his way. If you don’t like something, fix it.

No, I think. It’s too big, and I’m too tired. Corporate message and consumer hegemony honestly wear me out. (I once had something like a panic attack – short of breath, dizziness, emotional surge – standing at the foot of the Great Wall of Utensils at Bed, Bath & Beyond. What was I looking for? A spatula maybe? Whatever it was, there was a Great Wall of them, all over-priced, and none of which really fit what I needed). Maybe I can get up the gumption to holler at customer service people on the phone now and again (poor Indian souls, earning their wage, they don’t know what's got me all riled up), but then what? Class action suit? Economic literacy courses? Nah. I’m moving to France, like John Berger and R. Crumb. Or Canada. I’m leaving the city, the States, the whole damn thing. Am I just lazy? Well…

No, I don’t think that’s it, quite. Generational malaise? Likely. Too old to be a Deanie Baby, too young for a Baby Boomer. I want to make a difference, but a real one, which somehow to me means a small one. It’s all I can really envision, in the face of so much I cannot get a grip on.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
--Annie Dillard

The day is always his who works in it with serenity and great aims.
--Emerson

I’ll keep up with the news. I’ll go to the polls. I’m donating. I will live a minimal-footprint life in the country. I will recycle and drive a gas-efficient car and grow droopy plants in the Bronx. I will always aim to be kind. Boy, it’s not much to speak of, is it.

An Orchid Grows in Beaune (Part 1)

Four or five of them, actually. The moth orchid has plentiful blossoms, the others have gone dormant. I look up from the breakfast table and notice them only after I’ve had my croissant et café noir. Prior to that there has been much else to observe here in the 200 year-old breakfast room of Mme. Rousseau.

I found Mme. Rousseau and her hotel bon marché in a couple of different guide books. Beaune is an expensive tourist town, and hers is the best bargain around. For 40E a night, you (and your traveling partner) get a lovely country room, spacious and furnished with family antiques (sans douche – if you’d like a shower, it’s 3E extra), which opens onto a courtyard jardin; along with le petit dejeuner – a homemade croissant, a large carafe du café, une tartine avec beurre et confiture – served cheerfully each morning by Mme herself, who I would guess has somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 years behind her. Mme is cheerful, yes, but taciturn. She’s got a definite twinkle in her eye; you can tell she’s got a story.

The house may be older than 200 years, but it’s been in la famille Rousseau for that long. Mme’s parents started up the hotel 50 years ago, and she’s continued it, along with a large garden, voluminous houseplants, at least two cats, and beaucoup des oiseaux – cooing and chirping upstairs. The paint and wallpaper are peeling here and there, but all the appliances are new and top-notch. And Mme seems quite adept with technology; I made my reservation by email and found directions on her Web site.

Of course I scope out all of her plants. In the courtyard she is growing mostly potted flowers, and I marvel at the mixture of sun-and-shade-lovers: hollyhock and begonias, dahlias and a number of foliage plants. She’s also growing a lemon tree – incroyable! – in the center, out of an old tin pale.

We are here in Burgundy – wine country – for two days, after three days in Paris. City and country, country and city. I was so happy to see the orchids; travel fatigue had begun to set in, I’d been away from my writing brain for too long. Seeing those plants made me perk up and reminded me of something… something basic about living things and their environments, their ability to adapt (or not), the work of nurture and health, seasons of bloom and dormancy. Modern life seems to crowd out these basic ideas, squeezes them out of one’s bloodstream in favor of always-on entertainment and ambition and consumption. It’s a daily endeavor to dwell in a different kind of space.

I don’t know why we’re here exactly. No good reason, really, unless you believe in travel for travel’s sake (which I do less and less). We made the plans a while back, not very well-considered, and beyond our means (i.e. borrowed credit). At this moment, seeing the world from a non-American perspective, I can think of a hundred better reasons for spending this money – Presidential underdogs, Burma, family needs. Somehow, though, it seemed worthwhile at the time.

Alors... we are here, we are pilgrims of the planet, we are drinking it in, so to speak. We are ingesting and processing the gifts of exploration, of stimuli etrangers; and we are eating quite well, of course...

(This post to be continued...)