Two Italian Boys

First, I don't know for sure they are Italian. Or how old they are. They could be 15, they could be 25.

But I thought I recognized a certain Italian fierceness in the way his mother walked ahead of him as he lagged behind, that first boy. It was on the corner of Sixth Ave and West 8th, near Go Sushi, and I had seen them before. (I might have glanced quickly away, in pity.) This time I really looked.
His mother had a head of perfectly curled and blow-dried gray hair and she was about 5'2" in her stocking feet; compact of body, in a belted black dress and sensible walking shoes. She was leaning forward, at a tilt, as she towed her son through the waves of summer heat that roiled up from the sticky asphalt. He, not in any kind of hurry, let his too-large head dangle this way and that as he surveyed the crowd, his protruding eyeballs taking in everything he would never get to eat or drink or touch or kiss. His body had more angles than I could count at a glance- crooked back, twisted hips, knees knocking together. He shambled behind her, fierce tugboat that she was, secure in the knowledge that she was taking him someplace safe and known. Which she was. She truly was. He was her son, and she would take care of him if it killed her. I felt a sudden stab of envy for their bond. This was unconditional love, right in the dead center of Greenwich Village.
The second boy/man I spotted a few days later, in the early evening. I was returning slowly home along West 4th Street, thinking of nothing at all, when they rushed past, the dark-haired boy and his companion, who seemed to be his sister. It was only a glimpse, but I almost fainted. His complexion was a perfect pale porcelain, his features like a Greek statue's. He was laughing at something he had just said, looking back to his companion, and his thick dark hair was plastered back like an actor in a Bertolucci film set in the 1920's. He seemed unaware of his otherworldly beauty in his animation; he wasn't posing for anyone. But as I passed on, I wondered: Quasimodo boy, or Bertolucci boy: who will suffer more in this life?
Which one will be told he has been loved for himself, for who he is, and actually believe it?
Or, even better- just know, without needing to be told.

Dog Days in NYC or Zen and the Art of Fridge Defrosting

Okay, I said to myself yesterday, it's time to man-up and....defrost the icebox, the under-the-counter half-size object we so gaily refer to as "the refrigerator," evoking visions of a vast Eurostyle appliance, a Sub-zero thingie (why does anyone need something colder than zero degrees? ) bursting with organic watercress and runny French cheeses.... Mais non, ma petite fridge (as we so lovingly call her chez nous) she is full only of 7 kinds of moutarde and 3 or so varieties of berry jam, as well as some VERY ancienne unsalted butter. All of which will survive lack of refrigeration for 24 hours. (And anyway a little mold is good for you once in a while, n'est-ce pas?)

So here's my (soon to be patented) technique:
1- Turn off freezer control. Take a deep breath. Do not turn back now. Commit.
2- Jam clean bath towel into iced-over freezer compartment. (Trust me.)
3- Put large plastic bowl (on top of protective layer of garbage bags) against fridge to protect the charmingly warped oak floors from becoming more charming.
4- Put end of towel neatly into plastic bowl so melting water runs from freezer along towel to bowl. (Osmosis, don'cha know.)
5- Pour self a glass of wine (color optional).
6- Occasionally wring out towel. Surf Web. Watch Jon Stewart on YouTube.
7. Take bath.
8- Repeat 5, 6 and 7 until asleep or otherwise immobile.

If you are an AMATEUR in a HURRY, you can speed things up by using a hair dryer.

But WHY?

Slow down, cowgirl. Enjoy.

Savor the (drippy) hours. It's summer in New York City.

Poodles Goes All Spiritual On You

I've been working hard lately, trying to bring to fruition a creative project. This has meant isolation from friends, late nights, bad food, tons of self-doubt....To try to pull myself back to some semblance of a healthy center I treated myself to a yoga workshop on a recent Friday night. I felt so good afterwards that I lingered at the yoga center's bookshop, reluctant to return to my self-imposed domestic pressure chamber.

My gaze fell upon a book by Jack Kornfield, "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry"- which was exactly what I needed, when I needed it. I have been reading it steadily and slowly since that night, reluctant to come to the end. It is the only book on the pursuit of spirituality/wholeness I have ever read that manages to quote the writers Rumi, Emily Dickinson and Rilke, Helen Keller and Albert Camus...and make all their ideas and thoughts seem like one seamless whole.

It would be foolish to attempt to oversimplify or summarize this powerful book, but I will include one of my favorite quotes here. When I first read it, I almost literally heard the chime of a bell ringing a true note:

A man's life is nothing but an extended trek through the detours of art to recapture those one or two moments when his heart first opened.

Albert Camus


I am hoping I will finish my writing project with a deeper understanding, less ego, and more compassion for myself and others. Most importantly, I want to continue on the path this book has given me signposts to follow. I believe I will be able to.

And all the best roads lead home, don't they?

A Journalist? Moi?

Happily, the answer is yes- sort of. The monthly neighborhood newspaper called WestView ("the new voice of the West Village") has invited me to be a columnist, and is publishing my saga of growing up in Greenwich Village in a series of regular columns. It's called "Sex and Sinclair Lewis: Tales From A Greenwich Village Girlhood" and so far my work has appeared in their February issue, and currently can be read online in their March issue under my nom de plume, Barbara Riddle.
You can find it at westviewnews.org
I couldn't be happier- their main readership lives on the very streets, alleys and mews (mewses?) that I roamed as a 7- to 12-year-old, glorying in the wild freedom we had before cell phones could track kids 24/7.

Of course, such an adolescence is not generic to West Villagers.....I just happened to have had the good fortune to land here. Oddly, we kids actually knew at the time that we were living in the best of all possible (American)worlds. I totally missed out on that suburban-anomie-alienation thing, and didn't have a clue about the adult misery described in "The Feminine Mystique", since my mom had always worked and enjoyed it. No alcohol-soaked bridge games for her. (Although she could expound at length on unreliable younger-actor-boyfriend woes....)

The other night at a dinner gathering, we went around the table citing favorite movies. I mentioned "400 Blows" by Francois Truffaut- any readers out there have special films dealing with adolescence they'd like to mention? I also adore
"A Thousand Clowns", with Jason Robards. If you haven't seen it, rent it NOW. It is more timely than ever.

A Slushy New York Night With Campbell Scott

So if you're a Manhattanite & you can't get any friends to see a play called The Atheist (by Irish-born Ronan Noone), what do you do? You buckle up and go by yourself. Even if there's a foot of slush everywhere between you and the theater.
Criminy, where else in America can you actually WALK to see a play & actor of this quality? It's not even a fifteen-minute walk to get there from my apartment, and most of the sidewalks are clear even if the corners require strategic leaping and feinting through deep icy mush.

Campbell, you may not know it, but you and I have a date. Lookin' good, I think, hair just the right length & fake shade of red, blue eyes peeping over my new scarf with the blue and mustard circle pattern...The play is caustic & biting, a tale of a journalist gone bad (in search of his mother's love?), not searingly original but I love the telegraphic language & musical phrasing, and Campbell Scott is brilliant. Infused with energy I drift home, wishing I could discuss it over a pint with someone.
I pass the faux army surplus Marc Jacobs store on Bleecker Street and see that there are people shopping (wtf??) at 10 pm at night. Yikes. Further on, I enter a deli to buy seltzer to mix with my pomegranate juice at home. A very wet & cold Irish wolfhound puppy befriends me as his owner buys peanut butter. His wagging tail endangers the potato chip racks for 3 feet all around. I swear the dog is smiling. Do we deserve such good will from the animal kingdom?

"Be careful, don't fall...stay warm," says the Pakistani store owner as he carefully gives me my one cent change from the three dollars I handed him. As I push open the door the Guatemalan man wrapping roses in the little tented foyer just beside the entrance looks up and smiles at me. "Have a good night," he says. "You too," I mumble. (Yeah, right. He is going to be standing there in the cold for a few more hours long after I am home in bed.)
A block from my apartment, I pass the nursing home and see that an old woman is being wheeled out on a gurney by two ET's, into an ambulance. She is wearing an oxygen mask and her naked body is barely covered by a white bedsheet. One of the ET's tries to cover her shoulder, but the sheet keeps slipping off to reveal her pale, cold flesh. They don't have an extra blanket to spare? I am wearing a down jacket, scarf & gloves and she is practically naked in the middle of the street.

Just another night in the big city, eh, boys and girls? My emotions are swirling and I can't feel my feet anymore. Or maybe it's my heart that's numb. I keep walking. Should I have taken off my jacket and put it over the ailing woman? She was almost inside the ambulance....

I arrive home finally, and am soon secure in the warm cocoon of my pre-Campbell Scott existence. Was it as good for him as it was for me?

Somehow, I don't think he's going to call me in the morning.

Oh Joy: November 4, 2008

Oh personal joy....

New York joy....

American joy....

Japanese, Egyptian, French, Swedish, Australian, Polish, African joy....

Global joy....

Celestial joy....

Here Tell Your Anguish

Fall is a time of melancholy reflection in New England, and the 2008 election season has put many of us over the top, obsessing over the possibility that our candidate, the young man who offers us healing and hope, will be vanquished by the old forces of fear and greed. What can one do besides give money and time to his campaign? Not having formal ties to any external belief system, praying is just not an option for me.

Lately it has become almost impossible to think about anything else. So much is at stake. Correction: EVERYTHING we care about is at stake. In my opinion, this is nothing less than a referendum on our understanding of what it is to be human. I was beginning to bore and irritate my friends with my outbursts. (As in, "Yes, Nader is a great man, I respect his accomplishments, but he's not friggin' ever going to be President and if he siphons off enough votes to wreck this for the Democrats you and all his misguided supporters will be partly to blame for untold suffering and maybe the end of the world..." You see what I mean. I was getting a little worked up. )

So I decided to escape from New York City to the Gulf coast of Florida for a week, to see if a change of scenery would calm me down. My plan was to do some writing, walk, bike and swim, watch the last Obama/McCain debate with friends and return refreshed and feisty.

In a city where most drive, even short distances, I had the sidewalks mostly to myself and the anoles, tiny dinosaur-shaped lizards who constantly dart like rush hour commuters between bushes and across the pavement, somehow projecting an air of cameraderie. (Or maybe it's just their Manhattan energy that I like...)

The third time I passed the window of the Christian Science Reading Room in downtown St. Petersburg, I paused and allowed my gaze to fully rest on the sign in the window. (Ah, the advantages of being on foot when all the world is otherwise whizzing by.) The first two times I had noticed it and hurried on, self-conscious to be seen reading religious slogans in the window of a storefront "church."

Droplets of sweat trickling down my back, a strange feeling of peace invaded my body. "Here Tell Your Anguish"- the sign wasn't promising to fix me, it was just assuming that to be human is both to feel anguish and also the need to "tell" it.

A devout agnostic/humanitarian, I found those words and that thought powerful and comforting. They had a hypnotic cadence that was mystifying to me. There was an intriguing mind behind those words.

Returning home, I simply typed them into Google Search, and Eureka! the author appeared to be Charles Lamb (1775-1834), renowned English essayist. (I'm telling you, essays rule.)
And if anyone has the right to expound on anguish, it's Mr. Lamb: his beloved older sister killed their mother in a fit of temporary insanity, and he took care of his sister the rest of his life. His novella of unrequited love ("Rosamund Gray") is now on my must-read list. (Note: in several other Google entries, the quote is also attributed to Thomas Moore, in the hymn, "Come Ye Disconsolate". But I am still happy I was first sent to Charles Lamb.)

There was more gold in my first excursion: a whole series of references to the appearance of "anguish" in quotes from various writers. Here's a killer:

"The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder."
Virginia Woolf, from "A Room of One's Own"

Words were beginning to soothe me.
To some problems, there are no solutions, divine or otherwise.

But to put our feelings into words- that makes us fully human. Our unique task, and our unique privilege.

To finish, I offer a cherished quote from a tattered piece of newsprint (brown with age) that I carry in my wallet-
it's taken from a poem by W.H. Auden, who manages to stumble his way to the sublime more often than not:

"Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives."


Is this thought comforting?
Yes.

Mission accomplished.