Tomorrow we’re taking JNH to London for a month. He’ll get his first taste of the Britishy side of his heritage – other, that is, than me, and his early encounters with his maternal grandparents. I often wonder how the two sides will play out in him, British and Dominican American. As W commented when we were in Central Park in the scorching 100 degree heat the other day, the reason he coped remarkably well could have been his Dominican blood or his British stiff upper lip. Probably a healthy combination of the two.
In other cases the two influences may pull him in opposite directions. There’s British indirectness in an attempt to avoid conflict at all costs, compared with Dominican directness that accepts conflict is a part of life. A Dominican love of food and the accompanying belief that being gordito equals healthy, compared with a British ambivalence towards food and cautious consumption for fear of getting fat. (That contrast has come up already, when relatives on his Dominican side came round and were excited how fat he’d got and I felt myself cringing thinking he was growing too big too fast, which was rather ridiculous given he was only a few weeks old). And there are traits stemming no doubt from the countries’ colonial experiences, a British gung-ho optimism - close affiliate of the stiff upper lip -compared with a Dominican tendency to pessimism.
That’s to generalize dramatically of course. In C and I’s personalities we each have elements of the other’s national stereotypes, and JNH will have a unique combination of his own – just like so many other kids here in Astoria: American, of mixed parentage. And arguably a bigger difference between C and my backgrounds than ethnicity and nationality is economic. I grew up in a terraced house near the river Thames then a leafy London suburb never worrying about not having enough money to get by (even if my parents did have stressful financial periods), where it seemed nothing was wanting. While C, moving from apartment to apartment in Washington Heights, saw his recently-immigrated Mum worrying if they would have enough to get through the week, and Dad counting on his bed each night the money he’d made from his taxi-rounds.
Being a parent resuscitates childhood. Not only by seeing through the eyes of a child again but also the vivid memories it generates of our own childhoods and the ways those influence our child-rearing.
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Downtown Hartfield, Connecticut at the weekend – you can feel the sleep. The streets are deserted and all the shops and restaurants are closed. We were there for a wedding. Which was a lot of fun, but hanging out in the town waiting for our train the next day made us keen to get back to New York asap. The town had all the characteristics of a commercial center that has known highs, and lows, and highs, and now another low. There were lots of empty office buildings with their blank-staring windows. The only places open were Subway, Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts. One of the tracks at the train station was closed. We emerged on Sunday evening at Grand Central and hooray! Life! Lots of it.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
New York missive no 74 - The American way of birth
A few days after JNH was born, M and C suggested I go for a walk around the block to have a bit of time out. I walked along to the corner, went half-way down the next street, then had to turn back again. I was amazed how, emotionally, the umbilical cord was still attached and I couldn’t leave JNH alone. Even to walk round the block! Of course since then that cord has loosened, or at least extended.
C and I left him recently with his aunt Z for a few hours while we went to see Oliver Stone’s new documentary “South of the Border” at the Angelica. (An entertaining and personal take on Latin America’s leftist leaders, Chávez, Correa, Lula, Kirchner and Lugo, but too much of a whistle-stop tour to provide much new insight. It was a stark reminder though of how right-wing the US is. Due to its misplaced continued sense of its own dominance perhaps, and the fact that it is mired in political point-scoring and inward-looking attitudes, any political progressiveness is stunted despite the election of Obama. But I digress…).
My feeling as we worked our way through the shopping throngs on West Broadway was, “wow, I have this little miracle waiting for me at home, none of you can imagine…”. Which is rather illogical given there would have been plenty of people among those crowds who have also experienced parenthood.
Then last week I ventured out for a while on my own, to teach a class on business and human rights at NYU. Again I had a strong feeling that my identity has changed. It had been bizarre enough riding the subway the first few times in November with a wedding ring on my finger. Now there I was thinking “I’m a mother.” There was a pregnant woman in the crowded N train (standing up, as most pregnant subway-riders in NYC have to do). I couldn’t resist asking her if it was her first child. She looked young and in great shape and somehow I presumed it was. “No, my third,” she replied. “Oh, I said. It’s just that I had a baby a couple of months ago...I wanted to say that you’re in for the time of your life. But I guess you are an old hand now.” “I don’t know about old hand...” she laughed, but did add that she happily left her kids all the time.
After the class one of the students, a Polish woman who has two sons of her own, walked out with me. We exchanged rants about the American Way of Birth (aha, should write something about that sometime...but have now just realized a day after posting this that Jessica Mitford already did, after her American Way of Death). She gave birth to her first son in Texas. She said that there even more than in New York, where there is something of a move back towards a natural approach to childbirth and rearing if you look hard enough, she was considered a freak for breastfeeding. In both places the rate of cesarean section is incredibly high – I think it's over 30% in the US as a whole. It is wonderful that women have the opportunity for a cesarean section when it’s medically necessary, but it is extraordinary that so many now choose to have their babies brought out of them that way. More to the point, are guided into that choice by doctors and insurance companies. And choose to feed them a manufactured product derived from what cows feed their calves. More to the point, are influenced into that choice by the formula firms. Can it be a coincidence, too, that women who have had cesareans have a harder time breastfeeding at the beginning so are more likely to go with formula? But how easy to be judgmental about how other mothers bring their children into the world and help them navigate it. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the past couple of months is that when it comes to parenting, judgment should be left aside.
C and I left him recently with his aunt Z for a few hours while we went to see Oliver Stone’s new documentary “South of the Border” at the Angelica. (An entertaining and personal take on Latin America’s leftist leaders, Chávez, Correa, Lula, Kirchner and Lugo, but too much of a whistle-stop tour to provide much new insight. It was a stark reminder though of how right-wing the US is. Due to its misplaced continued sense of its own dominance perhaps, and the fact that it is mired in political point-scoring and inward-looking attitudes, any political progressiveness is stunted despite the election of Obama. But I digress…).
My feeling as we worked our way through the shopping throngs on West Broadway was, “wow, I have this little miracle waiting for me at home, none of you can imagine…”. Which is rather illogical given there would have been plenty of people among those crowds who have also experienced parenthood.
Then last week I ventured out for a while on my own, to teach a class on business and human rights at NYU. Again I had a strong feeling that my identity has changed. It had been bizarre enough riding the subway the first few times in November with a wedding ring on my finger. Now there I was thinking “I’m a mother.” There was a pregnant woman in the crowded N train (standing up, as most pregnant subway-riders in NYC have to do). I couldn’t resist asking her if it was her first child. She looked young and in great shape and somehow I presumed it was. “No, my third,” she replied. “Oh, I said. It’s just that I had a baby a couple of months ago...I wanted to say that you’re in for the time of your life. But I guess you are an old hand now.” “I don’t know about old hand...” she laughed, but did add that she happily left her kids all the time.
After the class one of the students, a Polish woman who has two sons of her own, walked out with me. We exchanged rants about the American Way of Birth (aha, should write something about that sometime...but have now just realized a day after posting this that Jessica Mitford already did, after her American Way of Death). She gave birth to her first son in Texas. She said that there even more than in New York, where there is something of a move back towards a natural approach to childbirth and rearing if you look hard enough, she was considered a freak for breastfeeding. In both places the rate of cesarean section is incredibly high – I think it's over 30% in the US as a whole. It is wonderful that women have the opportunity for a cesarean section when it’s medically necessary, but it is extraordinary that so many now choose to have their babies brought out of them that way. More to the point, are guided into that choice by doctors and insurance companies. And choose to feed them a manufactured product derived from what cows feed their calves. More to the point, are influenced into that choice by the formula firms. Can it be a coincidence, too, that women who have had cesareans have a harder time breastfeeding at the beginning so are more likely to go with formula? But how easy to be judgmental about how other mothers bring their children into the world and help them navigate it. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the past couple of months is that when it comes to parenting, judgment should be left aside.
Monday, July 5, 2010
New York missive no 73 - Funes el memorioso
How humbling that a tiny seven-week old creature can rule two “adults” lives.
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The pear tree outside our living room had been reminding me of Borges’ short story “Funes el Memoriso” (Funes the Memorious). That’s because I remembered, or thought I remembered, that Funes’ overwhelmingly acute memory meant that he could recall the formation of the leaves on all the trees he had seen. Something about the shapes of the dense pear-tree leaves tremoring in the wind, with little white dots where the sunlight made it through, brought that story to mind. I ran through what I thought I remembered about the story.
Funes, I thought, was an old man, sitting on a bench outside in a dirt courtyard, recounting to the narrator the ways in which his perfect memory manifests itself. He can take a day to re-live a past day in his mind. Then I re-read the story to see whether my memory was true. Only partly. Funes is young, not old, though when the lights come up at the end of the story the narrator sees that despite his nineteen years his features are “more ancient than Egypt”. And he’s sitting in a darkened black room, not in a courtyard. But there was the reference to the trees. "En efecto, Funes no sólo recordaba cada hoja de cada árbol de cada monte, sino cada una de las veces que la había percibido o imaginado" (Funes didn’t only remember every leaf on every tree on every mountain, but also every time that he had seen or imagined it). Funny though, that I had remembered that detail and not some of the even more unusual ones. Like the difficulty Funes had in conceiving of a concept like "dog", given that he had trouble understanding that a dog seen in profile at 3.14pm is the same thing as a dog seen face-on at 3.15.
How selective our memories are. Yet there are so many ways that they come to participate in our present. Perhaps their imperfection is a blessing. For Funes his "perfect" memory was a constraint, crowding out any sense of abstraction, filling space with detail to leave no room for meaning. Long live forgetfulness.
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The pear tree outside our living room had been reminding me of Borges’ short story “Funes el Memoriso” (Funes the Memorious). That’s because I remembered, or thought I remembered, that Funes’ overwhelmingly acute memory meant that he could recall the formation of the leaves on all the trees he had seen. Something about the shapes of the dense pear-tree leaves tremoring in the wind, with little white dots where the sunlight made it through, brought that story to mind. I ran through what I thought I remembered about the story.
Funes, I thought, was an old man, sitting on a bench outside in a dirt courtyard, recounting to the narrator the ways in which his perfect memory manifests itself. He can take a day to re-live a past day in his mind. Then I re-read the story to see whether my memory was true. Only partly. Funes is young, not old, though when the lights come up at the end of the story the narrator sees that despite his nineteen years his features are “more ancient than Egypt”. And he’s sitting in a darkened black room, not in a courtyard. But there was the reference to the trees. "En efecto, Funes no sólo recordaba cada hoja de cada árbol de cada monte, sino cada una de las veces que la había percibido o imaginado" (Funes didn’t only remember every leaf on every tree on every mountain, but also every time that he had seen or imagined it). Funny though, that I had remembered that detail and not some of the even more unusual ones. Like the difficulty Funes had in conceiving of a concept like "dog", given that he had trouble understanding that a dog seen in profile at 3.14pm is the same thing as a dog seen face-on at 3.15.
How selective our memories are. Yet there are so many ways that they come to participate in our present. Perhaps their imperfection is a blessing. For Funes his "perfect" memory was a constraint, crowding out any sense of abstraction, filling space with detail to leave no room for meaning. Long live forgetfulness.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
New York missive no 72 - Three birth stories
For some reason I took Ariel Dorfman’s autobiography “Rumbo al Sur, Deseando El Norte" to the hospital with me when I went into labour. There it sat by my hospital bed. As if I would be putting my feet up and reading in-between contractions. I knew though, that some labours can take a long time to get underway so thought I’d have it with me just in case. Anyway, no reading was done in hospital. But by coincidence when I did finally open the book up again when we got home it happened to be at the start of chapter two when Dorfman’s mother gives birth to him, in Buenos Aires. She had been given a pain relief gas so was drugged up when he was born. In her delirious state she had the sensation that he was falling. “Doctor, se cae el nene, se cae el nene,” (the baby’s falling), were the first words he heard her say, though of course he couldn’t understand them. Dorfman sees that as a metaphor for what happens to all newborns. “Yo caía hacia la soledad y la nada, de cabeza hacia la muerte,” I was falling towards loneliness and nothing, headfirst towards death.
Another birth story popped up when M, who was here helping for two weeks after JNH’s arrival, read me a passage from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography that she had brought with her, Infidel. It describes the birth of Hirsi Ali’s mother in Somalia. “My mother, Asha, was born sometime in the early 1940’s, along with her identical twin sister, Halimo. My grandmother gave birth to them alone, under a tree. They were her third and fourth children; she was about eighteen, leading her goats and sheep to pasture when she felt the pains. She lay down and bore forth; then she cut the umbilical cords with her knife. A few hours later, she gathered together the goats and the sheep and managed to bring the herd home safely before dark, carrying her newborn twins. Nobody was impressed by the exploit; she was bringing home two more girls.”
Each birth story is different. JNH’s wasn’t as dramatic as either of those but was momentous in the way that any mother experiences the birth of her first child as momentous. My water broke, or half-broke, before I had any contractions, at home following a bowl of pasta and an afternoon snooze. C and I gathered up our bags and went to the 30th Ave subway station where a bunch of black cabs hang out under the tracks. The first driver had no idea where New York Downtown Hospital was. I said it was by Brooklyn Bridge, and he replied, “Ah yes, in Brooklyn…”(it’s on the Manhattan side, near Chinatown). Much consulting of maps and gesticulating later, all the while me concerned the rest of my water would break and contractions would kick in, and envisaging one of those New York births-in-a-taxi that only happen in films, another driver finally showed up who knew the way. More water falling just as we were about to get out of the cab and soon after, on a hospital bed and plugged into various monitors, labouring got underway. I used the monitors to vent my anger as the contractions intensified, “get me off these f***ing things”, as if roaming around the room would necessarily make the pain - which was all in my back - less intense.
I could easily have been in a dazed state like Dorfman’s mum when JNH was born. I’d wanted to give birth as naturally and drug-free as possible. But just as I was about to give in after 8 hours or so of contractions and have some IVF pain medication, I felt something change. “I think he’s coming,” I said. The doctor, who’d been elsewhere tending to more complicated patients than me checked where things were at and said yes, are you up to pushing? I pushed (accompanied by plenty of operatics – all those classes re calm breathing right out of the window), and an hour later there he was.
A tiny creature splayed on my chest like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a life-raft.
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Current mission is getting JNH to sleep properly. He loves the subway, just as C did as a child, when his mother took him for rides on the graffiti-covered A train from Washington Heights for fun, C gazing out of its windows at the dark tunnel walls. So we’ve considered putting JNH on board the N at 30th Ave in his car seat, headed to Coney Island, with a note saying “Please leave me on this train till it’s back in Astoria where my parents will collect me.”
Another birth story popped up when M, who was here helping for two weeks after JNH’s arrival, read me a passage from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography that she had brought with her, Infidel. It describes the birth of Hirsi Ali’s mother in Somalia. “My mother, Asha, was born sometime in the early 1940’s, along with her identical twin sister, Halimo. My grandmother gave birth to them alone, under a tree. They were her third and fourth children; she was about eighteen, leading her goats and sheep to pasture when she felt the pains. She lay down and bore forth; then she cut the umbilical cords with her knife. A few hours later, she gathered together the goats and the sheep and managed to bring the herd home safely before dark, carrying her newborn twins. Nobody was impressed by the exploit; she was bringing home two more girls.”
Each birth story is different. JNH’s wasn’t as dramatic as either of those but was momentous in the way that any mother experiences the birth of her first child as momentous. My water broke, or half-broke, before I had any contractions, at home following a bowl of pasta and an afternoon snooze. C and I gathered up our bags and went to the 30th Ave subway station where a bunch of black cabs hang out under the tracks. The first driver had no idea where New York Downtown Hospital was. I said it was by Brooklyn Bridge, and he replied, “Ah yes, in Brooklyn…”(it’s on the Manhattan side, near Chinatown). Much consulting of maps and gesticulating later, all the while me concerned the rest of my water would break and contractions would kick in, and envisaging one of those New York births-in-a-taxi that only happen in films, another driver finally showed up who knew the way. More water falling just as we were about to get out of the cab and soon after, on a hospital bed and plugged into various monitors, labouring got underway. I used the monitors to vent my anger as the contractions intensified, “get me off these f***ing things”, as if roaming around the room would necessarily make the pain - which was all in my back - less intense.
I could easily have been in a dazed state like Dorfman’s mum when JNH was born. I’d wanted to give birth as naturally and drug-free as possible. But just as I was about to give in after 8 hours or so of contractions and have some IVF pain medication, I felt something change. “I think he’s coming,” I said. The doctor, who’d been elsewhere tending to more complicated patients than me checked where things were at and said yes, are you up to pushing? I pushed (accompanied by plenty of operatics – all those classes re calm breathing right out of the window), and an hour later there he was.
A tiny creature splayed on my chest like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a life-raft.
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Current mission is getting JNH to sleep properly. He loves the subway, just as C did as a child, when his mother took him for rides on the graffiti-covered A train from Washington Heights for fun, C gazing out of its windows at the dark tunnel walls. So we’ve considered putting JNH on board the N at 30th Ave in his car seat, headed to Coney Island, with a note saying “Please leave me on this train till it’s back in Astoria where my parents will collect me.”
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
New York missive no 71 - Fragile sleep
Everything is so fragile, including sleep. His sleep and ours, we never know how long it will last.
The little señor JNH came into the world early in the morning on Saturday 15 May 2010 at New York Downtown Hospital. There should be a verb for “born”. “Was born” is much too passive.
He opened his eyes just a few hours later. Bewildered, awed, he took in what he could make of his surroundings, slowly opening and closing his mouth at the same time. At that point his surroundings were only whatever was within 12 inches of his face. Over the next few months and years, that radius will reach further and further away.
I’m now savouring the moments of wonder and immersed in a milk production effort. More to come...
The little señor JNH came into the world early in the morning on Saturday 15 May 2010 at New York Downtown Hospital. There should be a verb for “born”. “Was born” is much too passive.
He opened his eyes just a few hours later. Bewildered, awed, he took in what he could make of his surroundings, slowly opening and closing his mouth at the same time. At that point his surroundings were only whatever was within 12 inches of his face. Over the next few months and years, that radius will reach further and further away.
I’m now savouring the moments of wonder and immersed in a milk production effort. More to come...
Friday, May 14, 2010
New York missive no 70 - The Italian guerilla gardener
There’s a strip of gardens behind our house. Renting the third floor apartment means we don’t strictly have access to ours, though I’m sure we will be invited to invade from time to time by P and P who live downstairs. In the mornings the gardens fill with a mix of birdsongs that come through our window and call us out of sleep. But the gardens are surrounded by construction work. Every spare inch of Astoria, every foreclosed home, is soon colonized by a new identikit apartment block stretching as tall as permitted or a little bit taller and confronting the world with rows upon row of square eyes. So this morning, like many recent mornings, the birdsong was drowned at regular intervals by the growling of drills and thump of hammers. Tweet, tweet, peacefulness, grrrrrrr. Tweet, tweet chirrup. Grrrrrrrrr. Bang bang. Etc.
An elderly Italian man plants things in the garden. He’s not “a gardener” as such. Several years ago when P’s Dad, who owns the house, was living here, the man appeared on the doorstep and somehow they reached an agreement – despite P’s Greek Dad not speaking Italian and the man not speaking any Greek or English – that he could come and plant things, use part of the produce himself and leave the rest for the occupants of the house. He disappears in Winter but reappears most Summers to put in vegetables and tend to the fig tree. No-one who currently lives here knows his name - I’m looking forward to getting into the garden one day when he’s there to say hello.
It seems a dispute could be afoot though. P asked me the other day if I spoke Italian (I don’t), because of a potential misunderstanding with the garden man. P’s wife (also P) had planted some cucumbers, under little mounds. A few days later, she could swear the mounds had been meddled with. Sabotage? Then I had a dream. In it, I opened the blind in the morning to see a new fence dividing the garden length-wise in two, woman-P gardening on one side and garden-man on the other.
An elderly Italian man plants things in the garden. He’s not “a gardener” as such. Several years ago when P’s Dad, who owns the house, was living here, the man appeared on the doorstep and somehow they reached an agreement – despite P’s Greek Dad not speaking Italian and the man not speaking any Greek or English – that he could come and plant things, use part of the produce himself and leave the rest for the occupants of the house. He disappears in Winter but reappears most Summers to put in vegetables and tend to the fig tree. No-one who currently lives here knows his name - I’m looking forward to getting into the garden one day when he’s there to say hello.
It seems a dispute could be afoot though. P asked me the other day if I spoke Italian (I don’t), because of a potential misunderstanding with the garden man. P’s wife (also P) had planted some cucumbers, under little mounds. A few days later, she could swear the mounds had been meddled with. Sabotage? Then I had a dream. In it, I opened the blind in the morning to see a new fence dividing the garden length-wise in two, woman-P gardening on one side and garden-man on the other.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
New York missive no 69 - What language to write about New York?
Pregnant women here have so many sonograms that by the end of a pregnancy you have a sporadic visual history of the baby’s development in the womb. But it’s still a pretty sketchy history. The images are blotchy and blurry with dark undefined areas, let alone the dark areas between each sonogram, when who knows what’s going on in there. A hidden cauldron where a life is being made. Thankfully large amounts of mystery are retained.
As for the sonograms, you can compare them to works by different artists .
My first, at 8 weeks, was a Magritte. A simple schwoosh against a grey background. “Ceci est un poisson. Main non! C’est un embryon. À huit semaines.” Or just simply, “Ceci n’est pas un poisson.”
Then there was a Chagall, a swirly figure surrounded by floating bits.
At twenty weeks, a 3D sonogram that looked like an illustration from Grimms Fairy Tales. A cheeky, rather distorted-looking face peering out of a shadowy forest.
Then a “growth scan” last week that was a Picasso. This time he was hiding his face in his hands and the detail was hard to make out, so what we saw were bits of body at jaunty angles: ribs, a femur, a hand.
Anytime from now to three week’s time he’ll be making his entrance. He’ll shake off those paintings and become rather more real.
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At Coney Island the other day I took a picture of a mural that says, “There are over 200 languages spoken in New York City, making it the most diverse city on Earth.” A wonderful New York Times article recently said there are many more – up to 800. Many are “endangered” languages spoken by only a handful of people in the world and that may not be known by any in a few generations’ time. The article describes how the Endangered Language Alliance is seeking out and recording them, using field techniques “usually employed in exotic and remote foreign locales as it starts its research in the city’s vibrant ethnic enclaves.” Among them are Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, Garifuna, Mamuju, Aramaic, Chaldic, Bukhari, Chamorro and Irish Gaelic.
The evening that article came out, C, L and I went to “New York Stories,” four authors talking at Morgan Library about writing about New York City as part of the PEN World Voices festival. The most refreshing voice there was the Catalán writer Quim Monzó. There was a strange sense of déjà vu or repetition among what the other writers said about the city. Perhaps because they were talking about writers - as well as their own writing – who had a somewhat privileged perspective on the city (even if not all their characters did). Colm Tóibín (who we’d heard reading from his fabulous novel "Brooklyn" a few weeks back in the rather different setting of the Poisson Rouge in Bleeker Street) spoke about Henry James. Roxana Robinson about Edith Wharton. And Darryl Pinckney about Elizabeth Hardwick. Maybe it was also because they were writers in English talking about other writers in English. Monzó writes in Catalán. His refreshing perspective included a challenge to "street-name fetishism". Why, he wondered, do New York novels obsess that such-and-such event happened on "Fifth Avenue" or "the corner of 14th and Greenwich," as if to infuse the event with stolen geographical gravitas?
It made me think too much writing about New York repeats the same themes. There is the potential for a kaleidoscopic diversity of perspectives that is unrealized when the dominant writing on New York is in English. Someone with time on their hands could create a literary map of the city linking to works about it in its hundreds of languages (with English translations?!).
The following Sunday the language theme came up again at an interview with Ariel Dorfman – also a PEN World Voices event, this time down at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park. Dorfman is completely bi-lingual in Spanish and English. He gave the example of the first sentence of his autobiography "Heading South, Looking North" to illustrate the ways in which languages express life in unique ways. What you can say in one simply can’t be said, or can’t be said via the same route, in another. He wrote the memoir in English first. In English, the first sentence reads, “"I should not be here to tell this story." Meaning that had he chosen, as he initially intended to do, to stay in Chile after Pinochet’s coup rather than become an exile, he would have been killed along with fellow members of Allende’s government. When it came to translating the autobiography into Spanish he grappled for several weeks with that one opening sentence. And he realized that in Spanish, a person, a “someone”, who died in his place had to be present in the sentence. “Si estoy contando esta historia, si la puedo contar, as porque alguien, muchos años atrás en Santiago de Chile, murió en mi lugar."
Some other wonderful nuggets from that dense hour-long conversation, not all directly language-related even though language permeates them:
- The English language is going to have to become more “Latin American”, in the sense of incorporating external influences and not remaining entirely itself.
- The US has many narratives, but you can simplify them into a “dark” and a “light” narrative.
- Dorfman’s wary of questions of identity because they often become questions of exclusivity. True. You could say, “hold on, isn't his whole life and work inevitably grappling with questions of identity?” But instead he has made an entirely conscious decision to embrace a notion of humanity that rises above (or flows below) identity. One that is empowered by human rights.
- During the Q and A, a woman in the audience confessed to having a martini beforehand – surely more than one it seemed. Then she proceeded with a rambling and vulnerably star-struck question about political fiction and her own project to write about Lynndie England, the US soldier now serving time for her role in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Dorfman, while encouraging her, said that in fiction characters have to have autonomy. If you have decided in advance what you (narrator) want to say politically then the characters are not free to speak for themselves, and it’s best to avoid literature altogether.
- Dorfman cited Margaret Atwood who disagrees that writing literature “reveals” the author. Instead, she believes, people write to hide.
Back to languages and the city for a moment. The proliferation of languages can be alienating, of course. In a local Queens newspaper a Flushing resident said he wished that the Chinese language signs on the shops were also in English, because he feels disorientated in his neighbourhood. And a recent article in the Village Voice describes the chasm of misunderstanding between Chinese, Dominican and hipster residents in a Delancey building.
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I read Graham Swift’s inspiring short story “Learning to Swim” recently. In it a young boy breaks free from his silently feuding parents’ crushing competition for his love. (I seem to be drawn towards stories with parenting in them at the moment). Then when I was picking my way through tall bunches of blossom stacked outside flower stores on 28th Street on my way to work, I caught a glimpse through a shop window of a first edition of Swift's collection named after that story. Cities, with their densely-layered lives, are webs of echoes like that.
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On the crowded 1-2-3 subway platform at 42nd Street an elderly man plucked a black plastic sack out of the bottom of a bin to put his possessions in. A uniformed MTA woman who was going round emptying the bins had a go at him. “Why you stealing all my bags?” she shouted. He protested gently that he hadn’t stolen all of them. We got into the same train carriage as him, where there were lots of nurses in their green scrubs. “Can you tell me why they’re kicking the patients out of all the hospitals?” he asked the nurses. “Every hospital I pass has a sign saying, ‘Out patients’”. The nurses didn’t reply. I thought it was rather funny.
As for the sonograms, you can compare them to works by different artists .
My first, at 8 weeks, was a Magritte. A simple schwoosh against a grey background. “Ceci est un poisson. Main non! C’est un embryon. À huit semaines.” Or just simply, “Ceci n’est pas un poisson.”
Then there was a Chagall, a swirly figure surrounded by floating bits.
At twenty weeks, a 3D sonogram that looked like an illustration from Grimms Fairy Tales. A cheeky, rather distorted-looking face peering out of a shadowy forest.
Then a “growth scan” last week that was a Picasso. This time he was hiding his face in his hands and the detail was hard to make out, so what we saw were bits of body at jaunty angles: ribs, a femur, a hand.
Anytime from now to three week’s time he’ll be making his entrance. He’ll shake off those paintings and become rather more real.
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At Coney Island the other day I took a picture of a mural that says, “There are over 200 languages spoken in New York City, making it the most diverse city on Earth.” A wonderful New York Times article recently said there are many more – up to 800. Many are “endangered” languages spoken by only a handful of people in the world and that may not be known by any in a few generations’ time. The article describes how the Endangered Language Alliance is seeking out and recording them, using field techniques “usually employed in exotic and remote foreign locales as it starts its research in the city’s vibrant ethnic enclaves.” Among them are Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, Garifuna, Mamuju, Aramaic, Chaldic, Bukhari, Chamorro and Irish Gaelic.
The evening that article came out, C, L and I went to “New York Stories,” four authors talking at Morgan Library about writing about New York City as part of the PEN World Voices festival. The most refreshing voice there was the Catalán writer Quim Monzó. There was a strange sense of déjà vu or repetition among what the other writers said about the city. Perhaps because they were talking about writers - as well as their own writing – who had a somewhat privileged perspective on the city (even if not all their characters did). Colm Tóibín (who we’d heard reading from his fabulous novel "Brooklyn" a few weeks back in the rather different setting of the Poisson Rouge in Bleeker Street) spoke about Henry James. Roxana Robinson about Edith Wharton. And Darryl Pinckney about Elizabeth Hardwick. Maybe it was also because they were writers in English talking about other writers in English. Monzó writes in Catalán. His refreshing perspective included a challenge to "street-name fetishism". Why, he wondered, do New York novels obsess that such-and-such event happened on "Fifth Avenue" or "the corner of 14th and Greenwich," as if to infuse the event with stolen geographical gravitas?
It made me think too much writing about New York repeats the same themes. There is the potential for a kaleidoscopic diversity of perspectives that is unrealized when the dominant writing on New York is in English. Someone with time on their hands could create a literary map of the city linking to works about it in its hundreds of languages (with English translations?!).
The following Sunday the language theme came up again at an interview with Ariel Dorfman – also a PEN World Voices event, this time down at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park. Dorfman is completely bi-lingual in Spanish and English. He gave the example of the first sentence of his autobiography "Heading South, Looking North" to illustrate the ways in which languages express life in unique ways. What you can say in one simply can’t be said, or can’t be said via the same route, in another. He wrote the memoir in English first. In English, the first sentence reads, “"I should not be here to tell this story." Meaning that had he chosen, as he initially intended to do, to stay in Chile after Pinochet’s coup rather than become an exile, he would have been killed along with fellow members of Allende’s government. When it came to translating the autobiography into Spanish he grappled for several weeks with that one opening sentence. And he realized that in Spanish, a person, a “someone”, who died in his place had to be present in the sentence. “Si estoy contando esta historia, si la puedo contar, as porque alguien, muchos años atrás en Santiago de Chile, murió en mi lugar."
Some other wonderful nuggets from that dense hour-long conversation, not all directly language-related even though language permeates them:
- The English language is going to have to become more “Latin American”, in the sense of incorporating external influences and not remaining entirely itself.
- The US has many narratives, but you can simplify them into a “dark” and a “light” narrative.
- Dorfman’s wary of questions of identity because they often become questions of exclusivity. True. You could say, “hold on, isn't his whole life and work inevitably grappling with questions of identity?” But instead he has made an entirely conscious decision to embrace a notion of humanity that rises above (or flows below) identity. One that is empowered by human rights.
- During the Q and A, a woman in the audience confessed to having a martini beforehand – surely more than one it seemed. Then she proceeded with a rambling and vulnerably star-struck question about political fiction and her own project to write about Lynndie England, the US soldier now serving time for her role in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Dorfman, while encouraging her, said that in fiction characters have to have autonomy. If you have decided in advance what you (narrator) want to say politically then the characters are not free to speak for themselves, and it’s best to avoid literature altogether.
- Dorfman cited Margaret Atwood who disagrees that writing literature “reveals” the author. Instead, she believes, people write to hide.
Back to languages and the city for a moment. The proliferation of languages can be alienating, of course. In a local Queens newspaper a Flushing resident said he wished that the Chinese language signs on the shops were also in English, because he feels disorientated in his neighbourhood. And a recent article in the Village Voice describes the chasm of misunderstanding between Chinese, Dominican and hipster residents in a Delancey building.
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I read Graham Swift’s inspiring short story “Learning to Swim” recently. In it a young boy breaks free from his silently feuding parents’ crushing competition for his love. (I seem to be drawn towards stories with parenting in them at the moment). Then when I was picking my way through tall bunches of blossom stacked outside flower stores on 28th Street on my way to work, I caught a glimpse through a shop window of a first edition of Swift's collection named after that story. Cities, with their densely-layered lives, are webs of echoes like that.
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On the crowded 1-2-3 subway platform at 42nd Street an elderly man plucked a black plastic sack out of the bottom of a bin to put his possessions in. A uniformed MTA woman who was going round emptying the bins had a go at him. “Why you stealing all my bags?” she shouted. He protested gently that he hadn’t stolen all of them. We got into the same train carriage as him, where there were lots of nurses in their green scrubs. “Can you tell me why they’re kicking the patients out of all the hospitals?” he asked the nurses. “Every hospital I pass has a sign saying, ‘Out patients’”. The nurses didn’t reply. I thought it was rather funny.
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