New York missive no 68 - God and the lack of

On Monday the midwife we saw said how relieved she is that the maternity ward at St Vincent’s Hospital is probably staying open. Not only because it means the nurses there will keep their jobs, but because, she said, it’s one of the few remaining obstetrics wards in New York where childbirth is still seen as a natural process, to be celebrated, rather than an encumbrance to be dealt with as quickly as possible with the aid of cesarean deliveries and pain relief methods. Long may it last.

Oh well I spoke too soon. Just after typing that last night we turned on the news to see that the latest deal to save the hospital - with Mt Sinai Hospital - has fallen through.

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Everyone seemed to be reading about God this morning on the W train, while I was reading about Nietzsche. Not about him, exactly, but Irvin Yalom’s novel When Nietzsche Wept. It revolves around Nietzsche's fictitious treatment by the doctor Joseph Breuer in late nineteenth century Vienna, when, as Yalom describes in his note at the end, the “ticking embryo of psychotherapy” was in place. There is much discussion between the two about truth, and some about God, or the lack of. So far those discussions are driven by Nietzsche’s alluringly honest skepticism and Breurer’s battle to counter it. Breurer presents it as debilitating, even though to himself he acknowledges that he shares much of Nietzsche's beliefs and just is not brave enough to wholly embrace them. Or resists embracing them, so he can continue to pursue the semblance of a stable life. “Truth,” says Nietzsche at one point, “is arrived at through disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so!” And “Surely, you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.” The woman to my right on the train was reading the chapter of Mary Kay Ash's autobiography called “God first, family second, career third.” And the man to my left, a book called “Learning God’s ways.”

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Along the boardwalk at Brighton Beach the other weekend mothers pushed children in strollers and care-givers pushed the elderly in wheelchairs. It seems we start and end life being pushed around on wheels. Or to go even further back and forward, start and end life plugged into life-support machines – dependent.



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Well Spring is in the air but those three entries are not particularly cheery. Time for a snooze.

New York missive no 56 - Brighton Beach, Governor's Island, and tapestries

New York’s stormy this Summer. There’s a humidity that brews then explodes at intervals, drenching pedestrians.

On Saturday, C and I got to Brighton Beach just when a monsoon-like downpour hit. Thousands of people in skimpy beach clothes were sprinting off the beach (we were headed towards it in search of L), scurrying for shelter even though they were already soaked to the skin, and not sure where the shelter they were scurrying to was, and flapping sodden towels behind them.

We squashed with lots of others beneath some scaffolding where L found us. In 10 minutes there was clear sky and sunshine and bodies beach towels were re-established on the sand. A long swim in the sea made me, as it always does, a happy creature. Then a feast of food from the former Soviet union in a 80s-style cafe blaring cheesy Russian pop. Despite the strong post-Soviet influence the beach was diverse of course - a cross-section of all New York escaping the streets to get salty and sandy, and relax (for the brief period that New Yorkers are able to).

On Governor’s Island the next day for a Judy Collins concert we kept casting wary glances to the sky. It had ominously dark patches like eye bags. But no rain. The rain didn’t come till the evening when AG and I watched from our window West Village fashionistas try to protect their meager dresses (the meagerer the costlier) and shoulder-slung shopping bags from the downpour. Then another storm came in during my writing class on Wednesday. We sat round in CW’s apartment commenting on each others work to the deafening accompaniment of thunder claps.

Unlike the previous week, CW's big cats left me alone. Then, I seemed to have the appeal of a saucer of milk – they didn’t quite lap me up but did stalk around my chair and slink across my shins which was somewhat distracting and gave me the giggles. They must have smelt C’s cats on me and liked it.

During the class we briefly described elements of our “material”, i.e. the stuff we want to write about. The classes have been all about mining that material without spelling it out. So it was interesting to pause and think about what exactly that material is. Here’s what I jotted down - very much an instinctive and provisional list:

Prisons: More broadly, freedom and what it means to have or not to have it. And also injustice – in itself (because it makes me angry, hence good material), and how people deal it out and deal with it. Interested in perpetrators and victims – the power dynamics involved.

Navigation: Of places and of lives – combining maps of cities and places with the ways that people navigate themselves and each other. How people need to put markers down, choose which direction to take and what’s significant, give meaning (or a sense of direction) to things where there may be none, etc. Exploration, openness, curiosity, exposure.

Legacy: How people want to leave their mark on the world. Something that will stay behind after they die. Could be something built, something written, something painted, or a child.

Leaving: How people hurt themselves and each other by leaving – but can equally hurt themselves and each other by staying. The tension that causes.

Mental health: How vulnerable our minds make us. Responses to trauma. And how people described as ‘mad’ are often the wisest.

Nature: As a backdrop to everything. Because that’s where we come from.

Other things: The sea, snakes. Magic in ordinary things.

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Seems to be a Radiohead revival at the moment. Am in Mojo (heavy thunderclouds brewing outside) and it’s playing, and in my other early morning hangout, the Roasting Plant at 7th and Greenwich Aves it’s on all the time.

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Tapestries are assuming significance. There was my encounter with Elias Sime's beautiful tapestries early this year, and the memories they brought back of my grandmother’s (among so many other things they were part of her legacy – the mark she has left on the world). There’s CA’s search for the right big tapestry for his wall. And to zoom further out of my immediate world, the new Director of the Met, Thomas Campbell, is a tapestry guru. Can't be many of them in the world. Rebecca Mead did a captivating profile of him in last week’s New Yorker.

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As magnificent as the thunderstorms are the luminous calms that follows them. I'm about to emerge from the coffee shop into one.