New York missive no 37 - New Year, reflections on light, 40 before 40

Loosely connected reflections on light.

It’s midday, well just after, on New Year’s day 2009. It’s a bitingly cold but bright blue-skyed day with people stuffing their hands deep down into their jacket pockets and with burst balloons tangled up in tree branches. I’m in the Hungarian café, before heading to a Montclair gathering at JB’s.

I’ve just emerged from the Cathedral of St John the Divine across the street. It’s fully exposed and open again, free from the scaffolding and temporary walls that had blocked sections off for repairs from a fire in 2001. Now it feels whole, totally different. Going inside is like walking into a living creature. A whale’s belly? Yet instead of chaos and clutter there’s ordered beauty, enhanced today by shafts of winter sun shining through the stained glass windows and scattering rainbows across stone columns. Further enhanced no doubt by my slightly fragile champagne-hungover state.

(An East Asian woman next to me is taking photographs of the cakes she’s ordered. Two big ones - too difficult to choose between them I guess).

On the North side of the Cathedral there’s a place for cremated priests, in stacks of square marble-fronted cremation boxes. There, an African American priest asked if I could help him find his friend, Thomas Andrew Moneymaker. The priest was partially sighted so couldn’t find Thomas in the book that indicates who is where. “He was cremated,” he said. “I’d never be cremated.” He said the reason his friend wanted to be cremated was that his body had disintegrated. I turned the pages to the M's. There were three Moneymakers.

(The woman eating the cakes has gone already, leaving two halves of them uneaten, and grinning and saying “happy new year” before setting off in her bright yellow jacket).

The first Moneymaker was a woman. “No that’s his mother,” the priest said with a trace of impatience. Then another man. And then Thomas Andrew, died 1998, box 80c. We found the box - the priest called out, put his hands up to it and stayed still in front of it for a while.

On light and religion still, in October I watched the pattern of Diwali in Madurai, a town spun like a web around the massive Meenakshi temple in its midst, in Western Tamil Nadu. Sunday 26 October was preparation. Divali being a festival of wealth as well as light, the streets were in a consumer-frenzy, shoulder-to-shoulder elbow-to-elbow with people buying and selling clothes, sweets, toys, washing machines. On quieter street corners women sat stitching together chains of white jasmine flowers to hang in women’s hair the next day. Early morning on Monday 27 I went into the cavernous temple where the scene was totally different, quietly respectful, a time for religion. Families wearing the festive clothes bought the day before circulated and greeted each other. For a while I sat watching and listening by the “Golden Lotus tank” – which as it sounds is a swimming-pool-like tank (rimmed by red and white garish painted checks), with a big gold lotus plant in the middle. There were layers of sound, from furthest to nearest: the clatter of fire-crackers echoing round the streets outside; a repetitive chant like this _ __ _ / _ __ _ / _ __ _, short note-long note-short note on and on drowsing the air; caws from crows hanging about in the towering gopurams (towers) whose intricate multicoloured sculptures were sadly wrapped up in wooden scaffolding interwoven with straw while I was there, making them look like enormous haystacks ; the chatter of families and groups of friends circling the tank; the jangle of toe bells; and the brushing of bare feet on dusty stone. The quiet, harmless side of religion that is so often drowned out by violence.

In that day’s Hindu newspaper was a column on the “practice of meditation”. It described meditation as “stopping the wheel of thoughts in the mind by coming out of the habit of brooding on trifles. When the mind keeps flitting from one thought to another, the whole strength is lost.” Something to keep in mind this year, for which my main resolution is calmness. (Calmness, along with curiosity, openness and honesty were four principles that I decided a while ago are the ones I live my life by, or at least try to). Anyway, the thinking is that with the calmness, all the other plans and projects and the things on my list of “40 before 40”, drawn up in a South London pub with Gita the night before I turned 30, will either be easier to make happen, or will be less troublesome if I don’t.

So in that spirit of openness, here are the 40 things. Many are intentionally unquantifiable to make them easier (“more of this”, “more of that”)...

Stop smoking
Write children’s stories
Write novel
Get the above published (not the smoking bit)
Find Latin lover / sensible man to settle down with [If I was allowed to update this, which would be cheating, I'd change that rather narrow and prescriptive entry to "love"]
Speak Spanish more
Climb some mountains
Have 1 or 2 children
Get thinner and fitter
Live in cities by the sea e.g. Bombay, Lima, Caracas (close enough), Istanbul
Play flute well enough to be in a band
Dance salsa really well (and generally dance a lot)
Work in prisons / with prisoners / ex-offenders
Write poems that make a difference
Wherever I live know the place inside out
Keep childish
Expose injustices (through words, work, etc)
Be kinder to the environment
Build an eco-house
Swim in the sea
Document life in diaries and pictures
Drink less coffee (but not give up)
Be more vegetarian
More music
Cook delicious things
Meet and talk with hundreds of people, of different ages, from different places
Do things well, “with love” as Das [owner of Rasa restaurants in London] would say
Lean about cemeteries
Learn about and make maps
Make something that lasts
Sail lots
Learn and speak Portuguese
Work for human rights
Write letters
Ask questions, be open, listen
Keep reading all kinds of things
Don’t fret re things I wish I was doing; either do them or stop worrying
Spend time in open spaces
Make people laugh and smile.

Well, embarrassingly childish and/or highfalutin a lot of them but there they are.

When I extracted myself from the quiet spot beside the Golden Lotus Tank I meandered through the temple’s labyrinthine intestines lined with Gods and sparkle and encountered the temple elephant. Tourist touts outside the previous day had been urging me in to see the elephant doing its rounds and I’d resisted, so was happy to stumble across him like that. His forehead was decorated with white paint and people were queuing to have him tap their heads gently with his trunk, a diwali blessing.

The peaceful rhythms of the morning were broken in the afternoon when the syncopated tirade of firecrackers sped to a raucous frenzy. Groups of kids spiraled laughing from doorways. By early evening the narrow streets were piled high with the crackers’ paper remnants and festivity rubbish, with the occasional cow perched on rummaging on top.

That night as the train I took from Madurai to Cochin wound through the dark countryside small splashes of coloured fireworks sprung up from hidden villages. As magnificent, if not more so, than the $50,000 display that Ra and I had chanced upon at Fisherman’s Cove hotel outside Chennai, financed by a group of corporate executives clearly not yet affected by the financial crisis.

Manhattan's 109th Street has its own coloured lights dynamic going on. In the build up to Christmas people strung fairy lights between the trees, until one day they all disappeared and we had notes delivered, telling residents not to do that (no reason given). But that hasn’t stopped creative light-decoration, in fact it seems to have provoked it: strands of coloured bulbs wrap around porch columns and twist about the fire-escapes, looking like weird sea creatures floating in the air as you walk down the street. Twinkling lopsided stars lurk behind the bars of basement windows.

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I found perhaps my favourite sculpture the other day, at the end of a walk on a cold Sunday morning across West 109th Street, through Central Park and out the other side to Spanish Harlem and the East River. The statue’s in Thomas Jefferson Park, at 112th Street on the East edge of Manhattan. It’s called El Arbol de Esperanza and was designed by Brower Hatcher, though is way better (says me) than any of the sculptures that are photographed on his website. It’s a tree, with a dalek-like trunk, and then a round clump of woven metal branches like a birdsnest on top, filled with coloured ceramic sea animals, birds and toys made by local children.

New York missive no 36 - Alain de Botton on love

I finally met LF, from whom I’m subletting the apartment while she lives in California. She was as I imagined, feisty, fun and centre of her own universe. In she came like a whirlwind, with her (necessarily, I imagine) calm boyfriend in her wake. She went straight into her bedroom. “Brrrr, winter in New York! Where’s my blue puffa jacket?” Oh-oh. I had never seen a blue puffa jacket in that room but automatically felt guilty. She went through the few coats hanging up in the closet. No blue puffa jacket. I attempted to distract her as she searched by starting a conversation but to no avail. “I know it was here before,” she said. Then a little accusingly, “perhaps your friend A packed it away when he was living here?” Big black sacks were tugged down from on high and rummaged through. Then “Yes! Got it.” Relief, mine as much as hers. Panic over. Now she could say hello.

We chatted by the bookshelves – she ran through my books, lugged over in batches in heavy suitcases from London, and then the ones of hers that I’d pulled out of boxes when I first moved in, to fill up the glaringly empty black Ikea shelf-space. One of hers was Alain de Botton’s “Essays in Love”. “Anyone who is ever in a relationship or about to get into one has to read that book,” she said. I didn’t mention that one of her diaries, found up in the boxes along with the books, had also provided some insight on that subject – at least along the lines of reminding me that us 30-something year-old single women share startlingly similar experiences and emotions. It gave me the sense of belonging to a club, albeit a not particularly exclusive one. (Ok I shouldn’t have. But what are diaries for if not to be read by people who don’t have permission to?).

I remembered how GV had interviewed de Botton for the unsubtly-named magazine “SLANT” (tagline “Think Differently”) that we’d produced at journalism school. The first half of her article was skewed with adulation. “He walks into the room, a tall, captivating figure...”… “I gaze into his dark eyes as he considers my questions”…and suchlike. Looking at the picture on the book jacket I couldn’t quite see what she had been getting at. I read the book though, in bed a couple of nights and then on the plane on the way to Switzerland for Christmas. It's essentially a moment-by-moment account of the narrator’s relationship with a woman called Chloe, interspersed with philosophical musings and references that analyse their reactions to each other in microscopic detail. Its voice is very much de Botton's – that of a young (at the time it was published) Cambridge-graduate-confident-he-has-all-the-answers, even if when they constitute new questions. When he mentions in passing that Chloe said one of his problems is thinking too much, I wasn’t surprised. "Relax, Alain (even though yes I know the narrator isn’t meant to be you)…Revel in the moment for what it is! Stop looking for coherent meanings where there’s no such thing to be found", I felt like saying on regular occasions. That said, there are endless observations that ring true. Though the bits I related to were not those that a young LF had underlined in blue biro and annotated in the margins…perhaps our experiences and emotions are not that similar after all. Anyway, a few of the obvious but important remarks I liked were:

“The possibility of an alternative love life is a reminder that the life we are leading is only one of a myriad of possible lives: and it is perhaps the impossibility of leading them all that plunges us into sadness.”

“There is no transcendental point from which we may observe the past, it is always constructed in the present, and changed along with its movements. Nor do we look at the past for its own sake, we do so rather in order to help us explain the present.”

And re wars and relationships: “…an ingredient that might just…save both states and couples from intolerance…[is] a sense of humour.”

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In the end neither the former potato-farmer nor the former-marine doula was appointed, because JH’s baby arrived early. Then just a few weeks into his life the baby landed the role of Jesus in the nativity play at Judson Memorial Church, on the south side of Washington Square (near which, incidentally, I’ve discovered a cosy Belgian bar, Vol de Nuit). Where will he go from Messiah-hood?

New York missive no 35 - Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 60

Today is the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Here's a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, who was instrumental in drafting the Declaration:

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

New York missive no 34 - Reading worlds

How do we read our worlds? On the way back from the paintings of Fulton Fish Market I stopped at the big Borders store on W 34th and 7th (in fact all Borders stores are temptingly, dangerously big. They are brothels of titles, book-jackets and reviewers’ blurbs). I emerged with three books. One was "Up in the Old Hotel", a collection of Joseph Mitchell's writing for the New Yorker. Why? Because the fish market exhibition included a section on him, with photographs of him, articles by him, and articles about him, about his life as a Southerner documenting New York and its people in permanent flux, capturing precious fragments as he went and preserving them for posterity. Another was Michael Pollan’s "Omnivore’s Dilemma", a Natural History of Four Meals. Because when I’d mentioned my own book idea to Si, she recommended it for the way Pollan skilfully serves up the stories behind what’s on our plates. The third was Thoreau’s "Walden". Because one of our Development Director candidates had previously worked at the Thoreau Society and he managed to weave Thoreau’s ideas on the economy into his interview answers – when the book confronted me from its shelf as I headed to the checkout I read that as a message to read it. So people and places I’d encountered had planted signposts in my mind that I unconsciously carried about till I had the opportunity to follow them.

There are layers of reading. From snippets communicating moments, epitomised by Twitter. To the chattering and chewing over news that gathers in the blogosphere and on sites like Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, which offer the service of sifting and framing information for a certain type of reader – for you – creating the illusion of reader-empowerment but in the process moulding you more into that certain type of reader. To “news”, loud and clear but often meaningless, packaged by agendas (today I skim-read a commentary by George Monbiot - discovered while perusing a certain ex’s Facebook page - about the extent to which “news” on climate change is suffused with lies, and about the way in which we choose to read the news we want to be real). To long, investigative articles, an endangered species and all the more noble for it though as a journalist-at-heart I would say that: articles that probe deep, calm, and objectively (yeah right) into a moment, situation or person and by telling it reveal certain universalities though never labelling them as such. To books. Always books. They survive because sometimes we need to be engrossed. We need to be carried along for more than a minute without distraction. Have non-fiction interpret the world for us. Have fiction express it. Last night Ch and I heard Toni Morrison reading from her new book "A Mercy" and answering questions. Listening to her was like hearing a hundred lives in one.

New York missive no 33 - Zarela's, and Chelsea art

In New York stories just present themselves, there’s no need to invent them. I arrived at my writing class last Thursday, as always a little late, to find everyone in mid conversation about the teacher’s selection of a Doula (his wife’s due to give birth on the day of our 4 Dec class). Two have made the final shortlist: a 6’1’’ tall former marine, and a Norwegian former potato farmer. What made them decide to become Doulas? What skills from their former professions do they apply in their new one?

Sleeping patterns are a bit skewed this weekend. Mexican food at Zarela’s in midtown East on Friday night with Si and A. The restaurant’s namesake moved to New York with her two young twins after a failed marriage in Texas and opened it with $20,000 of savings to bring good, regional Mexican dishes to Manhattan and beyond – she succeeded. Somehow it was 3am by the time I got to bed, then was up again at 6 to head into the office for our last 2 interviews with candidates for the Dakar-based Francophone Africa post. After a gym work-out to sweat out the sleepiness met S to gallery-hop along W21 and 22 Streets in Chelsea where every second building’s been converted into an airy space for contemporary art, and the buildings in-between into apartments only crazy people can afford or shops like Comme des Garcons, that only crazy people can afford. Then girly natter over beer and broccoli soup at La Graine cafe. S has moved out of her Weehawken Street box room now (to move in with her soon-to-be-husband, which makes sense), but the others are still hanging on in there…ok yes I was just a bit crazy to have moved out when I did. Then homewards for what I thought would be a nap before a Saturday night out but turned out to be an epic 13 hour slumber…

This morning made progress buying an amusing collection of items that Ra wants me to send to Chennai (he'd forgotten to put the order in before I left for India). A certain variety of Old Spice High Endurance Deodorant; a Mr Clean magic eraser (?!); Paul Mitchell's Instant Moisture Daily Shampoo to, apparently, zap the damage done by the Tamil Nadu humidity. And now heading to South Street Seaport. Given the Fulton fish market's no longer there, we're going to get a taste for it vicariously through the rosy prism of a reminiscent art exhibition.

New York missive no 32 - Obamapolitains

This weekend marked a year since I moved to NYC. On Saturday night I found myself sipping pink and lethal Obamapolitains at an Obama victory party, hosted by a Columbia professor in her spacious apartment overlooking Central Park. The apartment, which had taken 14 years of moving and shaking to get hold of, inspired almost as much conversation as the election. Though not quite. The sitting room was packed with campaigners and supporters, old and young. Some had quit their jobs and spent the past six months working twenty-hour days rallying support for Obama in Republican corners of Pennsylvania. When I asked one of them whether he’d be going back to his former job with a small veterans' non-profit he said no, he feels with this experience he can take on something bigger (and better paid!) now. There were kids for whom politics suddenly meant more than talking heads on TV. There were a couple of English girls fresh from university who’d come over to help out, figuring it would be more fun than frittering away their money in London bars while looking for jobs. There were a few guests who quietly confessed to “only” having voted. My trip to the Philly suburbs on election day to help get out the vote just about qualified me for my first, if not my second, Obamapolitain.

I felt it was late enough by then not to be accused, rightly, of foreign meddling, got the train down with K and other NY volunteers, and spent the day navigating up to front doors with a Lebanon-born New York psychologist between luminous Halloween decorations (blow-up pumpkins, frankensteins, shiny skeletons) that competed for attention with the Obama-Biden, McCain-Palin signs.

The end of this year has also finally brought some kind of closure to the Tigger-Eeyore pendulum that had continued swinging in my mind a little too long. That analogy's a bit unfair. Eeyore had (has!) plenty of dynamism that escapes in unexpected ways. And Tigger wasn't (isn't!) immune to melancholy. Anyway, time spent in Chennai with the T and a short phone conversation with the E in which much I'd planned to say wasn't said, plus a failed attempt at purging feelings by writing a short story about them (never a good idea - long live healthy detachment from creative subjects) have stilled that pendulum. What remarkably remains are two treasured friendships. Onwards...

New York missive no 31 - Obama wins

Well there’s a lot to say about the past four weeks, during which I’ve found myself in London, Kyiv, Delhi, Chennai, Madurai, Kochi, New York, Connecticut, Philadelphia and Washington DC. Just a bit to be absorbed and described. I’ll start with Tuesday, the event shared with millions of others.

During the Democratic primaries one of the comments that used to annoy me was people saying they were going to vote for Clinton because “America’s not ready for Barack Obama”. And is America not ready because you’re not? I felt like asking (and sometimes did). Well, America was ready.

In a previous entry I said it can be dangerous to focus on “America” as a whole, projecting a single idea of what the country represents and in doing so brushing aside the experiences of those who don’t share the same idea. Yet in the last few days that sense of shared purpose has worked in an overwhelmingly positive way. Because, I guess, the idea of "America" that the majority chose to revive is one where every individual counts, regardless of background and beliefs.

Race didn’t feature as much as it might in the minute-to-minute struggle of the campaign. It’s now that the enormity of having a black President of the United States is sinking in. Beyond that message though, there’s the change Obama will bring in his approach to politics: listening carefully to all voices and through to the common purpose, and hopefully solutions, that lie beneath them; remaining calm, consistent and level-headed in the midst of tumultuous events; and strengthening the political process by bringing people back in.

Now off to see Man on Wire about Philippe Petit who tightrope-walked between the twin towers. "Nothing is impossible," says one of the people interviewed in the trailer.