And The Sun Will Respect...

 

Check it: One of my favorite theologians sings one of my favorite Peter, Paul & Mary* songs!  Makes me want to march on Washington and/or get hauled off to jail and/or sing along.  Good stuff.


*I know, I know, this is a Dylan song.  But PP&M's three-part harmonies make their version... transcendent.  Gives me chills every time.  See for yourself.

Little Notes of Little Import

Riverside Park

I recently received a wedding invitation for two friends...who I didn't even realize were dating.  Strange.  Pretty sure that is a wedding I shouldn't have been invited to.

Last week, a co-worker handed me (virtually. over email) a pile of work, saying "You are the only one I trust to do this."  Well...thanks?  But me thinks the worst kind of compliment is one that comes attached to extra work.  Boo.

Speaking of avoiding work (weren't we?) my friend JJ introduced me to #WhatShouldWeCallMe, and I love it so much.  If you like gif's and captions, you will love it.  If you don't love gif's and captions, you may still love it.  Bottom line: you will probably love it.

On a related theme, here's another tumblr of pictures and captions - Humans of New York.  I only recently stumbled upon it and clearly I've been missing out.  It's wonderful and lovely.  I lost 45 minutes of my life to it on my first visit - so be warned and only have a look when time permits.

Washington Square Park

As long as I'm directing you to other sites, please do check out this gem over at The Onion - "Anxiety-Ridden Man Rightly Ashamed Of Every Single Thing He Does."  It's funny because...it's true.  I'll admit that my thoughts do trend the same worried way on occasion.  Anyone else want to own up to their social anxiety and insecurity??

On a recent trip to a piano bar, I discovered that one of the Saturday night piano players was none other than the gal who conducted the all-accordion orchestra I saw back in December.  What a small world (and what a fun, strange life she must live!)


A couple of weeks ago, my apartment's toilet broke.  We put in a call to the Super, but then I jerry-rigged it with some jewelry wire and felt like Lady MacGyver.  Pretty, pretty proud of myself.  (Good thing me and my jewelry wire were on the scene, too, because our Super has yet to stop by for permanent repairs.  Sheesh.)

I woke up this morning - after a fitful night's sleep, which has unfortunately become my new normal - with a Tori Amos song stuck in my head.  I can't remember hearing this song recently; can't remember the last time I really listened to Tori (college?).  Where did it come from?  The mind is a weird and wonderful thing.

I got called for jury duty next month and I'm unreasonably excited about it.  I haven't served at all in New York, but back in Boston I was on the jury of a murder trial.  It was all-at-once fascinating and horrible and awesome and gut-wrenching.  If I get put on a trial this time around, I'll get another educational & up-close look at our justice system.  If not, I still get to sit in a room (that is not my cubicle) with free wi-fi, surrounded by people (who are not my co-workers) in a building (that is not my office) for a day.  Win-win!

Fueling Addictions 
(Or, Deep Thoughts About Coffee)

There is too much coffee in my life.

There is never enough coffee in my life.

It's in this tension that I daily live.

To Yourself, Again

Looking down W. 44th Street

Back in December, a friend and I went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at Discovery - Times Square.  "More than a museum" is their tag-line, and the first part of the exhibit was definitely more of an experience than your typical museum set-up.

We arrived at the time appointed on our tickets and were ushered into a small black room.  The door closed behind us; the lights dimmed.  Written on the surrounding black walls in white lettering was a quote from the Book of Genesis - in Hebrew on one wall and in English on another.  The quotes were alternatively lit by a spotlight as a recording of a woman's voice read first the Hebrew and then the English translation.  The verse was Genesis 12:1:

"The Lord had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.'"

That word "go" in the Hebrew is "lech lecha" which I've talked about before.  "Lech" is the command - go!  And "lecha" means "to yourself."  Go to yourself.  It's a funny construction, and not used very often in the Bible.  I know of only two occasions - here, when Abraham is called to leave behind the known for the unknown.  And later in the book of Genesis, when Abraham is called to - essentially - sacrifice his earthly hope for the future and trust in God instead.

Go to yourself.  What does that mean?  I've been wondering ever since I learned the Hebrew.  Go to yourself.  And why does this phrase keep cropping up in my life?  I've been wondering that, too.

After a few minutes in the small black room, a different set of doors opened and we were herded into a space that was supposed to invoke Qumran and the Dead Sea: stones on the floor, large clay pots on pedestals, screens showing video footage of Israel, and an actor (dressed like every archaeologist I've ever seen in the movies) posed upon a big rock, ready to tell us more.

From there we moved into a third space, a long gallery filled with objects on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority.  Beyond that lay the star of the show - small shards of the Dead Sea Scrolls, displayed under magnifying glass.

As we wandered through the exhibit, we got farther and farther from the small black room where we started.  But for a long time, over the muffled conversations of my fellow exhibit-goers, I could still hear that recorded voice reading the Genesis quote.  "Lech lecha"...."lech lecha"..."lech lecha."

And I thought, "I hear you.  I promise I hear you."

* * *

Except I then promptly forgot about it, until recently.  Until Tuesday evening, actually, when - after our regularly-scheduled Hebrew class - my teacher asked her semi-regular questions: "When are you going back to school?  And when are you going to Israel?"

This time, though, it wasn't a passing comment, it wasn't idly or teasingly spoken.  "No seriously, when are you going?"  She followed it up with kind words about what she see's in me, offered to reach out to her contacts in Israel, wanted to press me on the issue.  "Think about it."

So I'm thinking about it.  I'm thinking about how it felt to leave an inter-faith service a few weeks ago - walking slowly out into the drizzly evening, knowing (deep in my knower) that there was something there, something about engaging in that subject, in that dialogue, that runs my motor.  I'm thinking about grad school - it didn't seem "right" five years ago, but maybe something's changed?  I'm thinking about how this dialogue - Jews & Christians learning together, studying shared texts together, drawing parallels and finding commonalities while not glossing over differences - always strikes me as the most beautiful sort of poetry.  I'm thinking about how often I've thought about this, how I can't seem to escape it (and I have tried).

I'm thinking about all that, and the driving conundrum behind it: lech lecha - what it means to go to myself and how then shall I do it?

Shoulder to the Boulder 

“Being surrounded by creative people and 

knowing that you’re all in it together, and

you’re putting on a show, you’re all 

pushing this huge boulder together – 

every Saturday 

you do something that you’re scared to do – 

I think I will miss that feeling.”

-Kristen Wiig, discussing what
she'll miss about SNL

Those are some of the things I love most about Improv - the camaraderie, the teamwork, the group mind.  Plus, following the fear and saying "yes" to what scares you.

It's so fun.  Take an Improv class already!

Sincerely,

The Boss of You

D.S.F. Twenty-Twelve

The Dachshund Spring Fiesta is held each year in Washington Square Park on the last Saturday of April.  Dozens and dozens of dachshunds convene on the square for a friendly meet-and-greet.  Some wear costumes.  Some come dressed just as God made 'em.  It's an overly-adorable good time (even for me - the creeper who shows up without a dog).

The Fiesta-ivities start at noon, but this past Saturday I was caught up in a very important project (i.e. sitting around, drinking coffee) and couldn't get down to the park until after 2pm.  So I missed most of the party, but still got to spy on some cute pups.

(Apologies for the crappy phone pics - my camera batteries died the minute I got to the park.  Let's pretend the water-color-esque quality of these shots was a legitimate artistic choice.)

Dachshunds, as a breed, seem to be deeply distrustful of - and angry about - skateboards.  The dogs erupted into a chorus of yips each time a skateboarder (and there are a lot in Washington Square Park) got too close to their group.

One dachshund owner, explaining to the teen above why he was having a hard time winning over her pet, said, "They don't like skateboards because the boards are like cars, coming right at 'em!"  That may be true; I'm no expert on dachshund neuroses.  But I think it's also possible that, given the striking shape similarity a dachshund bears to a skateboard, the dogs may fear the boards because they believe them to be cyborg competitors.  (Maybe?) (No?)

In any case, I'm glad that the Spring Fiesta (and it's autumnal counterpart, Dachtoberfest) exist.  I think it's important for dachshunds to be able to gather together, to unionize against skateboards, to socialize, and to see that - in spite of their freakish proportions - they are not alone in this world.

That's important for all of us, no?  To find others whose weirdness matches ours.  Amen.

(Click here for DSF photos from a prior year.)

 

To Be Blessed? 

“The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog”

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by your up-ended skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other
dogs can smell it

Notes:

1)  Tulips are having their last hurrah in the Conservatory Garden - check 'em out before they're gone!

2)  Tulips remind me of the Netherlands.  Today is Queens Day there.  Happy Queens Day, Dutchies!

3) April is National Poetry Month.  April 30th (today) is the last day of National Poetry Month.  It's been real, y'all.

Here There Be Lions   

Here We Go Again

My office is in the midst of a large-scale move.  Every closet and filing cabinet and desk drawer needs to be sorted through and cleaned out and packed up - it's thrilling work! (Actually... it kinda is.  I love throwing stuff away.)

Yesterday, as I was boxing up binders in the supply room, two co-workers stumbled upon a radio (a radio! remember those?) in the back of a closet. They plugged it in to see if it still worked (it did) and messed with the tuner to find a station.  All of a sudden, Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" came blaring into the supply room.  It was a nice (loud) break from the beige-ness of a workday.

And, man.  That has to be one of few songs about being alone that makes you want to do fist-pumps and herkies, am I right?

Now, some questions/comments about that video:

1) The song is about striking out again on your own.  So what's with the girl in every scene?  Is she a metaphor for something (like the lead singer's adventurous spirit)?

2) If not a metaphor, are we to assume that she is the girl that he broke up with, right before striking out again on his own?

3) Do you think he broke up with her because of her flagrant disregard for motor vehicle safety? (Wear a seat belt, lady!)

4) Do you think he broke up with her because of her annoying habit of looking directly at the camera and lip-syncing his lyrics?

5) Do you think he broke up with her because their identical hair-styles challenged him in a way that he wasn't comfortable being challenged?

6) Or do you think he broke up with her because she was having an inappropriate physical relationship with the hood of his car?

Let's all take some time to ponder this over the weekend and meet back up here on Monday morning to see if we've come up with any answers.

Together in Greeneland

Once upon a time, on a train to Vienna

There was an article a couple of months ago in The Guardian, a brief tribute by author/former bishop Richard Holloway to his literary hero, Graham Greene.  Writes Holloway: "I loved him then and love him now because his art deals with the spiritual loser's lust for redemption."

Greene is a favorite of mine, as well.  His dark-but-beautiful romance The End of the Affair is one I've read several times. (Fair warning: the book is wonderful but the movie is rubbish.  Yes, it has Ralph Fiennes, but they've changed the ending and ruined the whole darn thing.  In my little opinion.)  Greene - a journalist as well as a novelist - was not a one-note wonder.  Our Man In Havana is absurd and hilarious.  The Power & The Glory is a little heart-breaking.  Monsignor Quixote is a modern fable and homage to Cervantes' classic novel. The Third Man is a tale of murder and mystery.  The Quiet American makes you think and wonder about things.

Disparate though the tones and genres of Greene's work may be, there is a unifying theme that runs throughout: most of his characters seem to wrestle with God in one way or another.  And it's this wrestling, the questioning, the searching, that I find so beautiful, that makes me want to read everything he's ever written.

The rest of that brief Guardian piece sums it up quite nicely:

"Being a broken man himself, Greene knew how to probe the pain and romance of faith and its failed practitioners better than anyone else. Even those of us who never ended up in a prison in Mexico waiting for execution, like the whisky priest in The Power and the Glory, knew what his self-disgust felt like. We knew what Greene was on about when he described the sadness of missing happiness by seconds at an appointed place. A little more self-discipline and maybe our tormented hearts would have ceased tormenting yet. But we also knew somewhere inside that it was our failures that kept us human.

Being a priesthood themselves, great writers understand this better than most. Tennessee Williams knew that if he’d exorcised his demons he’d have destroyed his angels as well. And the poet Ian Crichton Smith understood that “from our weakness only are we kind.” Greene would have agreed with them both. There was human solidarity in weakness, fellowship in failure. That’s why the spoiled priest in his greatest novel was overwhelmed with compassion for other losers. When you looked at other men and women, “you could always begin to feel pity. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.” And that had to include self-hatred. In Greeneland, in the end, everyone is forgiven because everyone is understood."

Hey There

Chrysler Building, from a distance

Inky

Lower East Side

There was a toner spill at work yesterday.  It was a big deal, if you wanna know.  Turquoise splotch on the carpet, an associate covered in the stuff, and excited chatter that lasted for at least 15-20 minutes.  "Oh no, what happened!?" "Did you see what happened?" "I thought you were supposed to shake the cartridge!" "Is the machine broken?" "What's going on?" "It was an accident!" "That's a special cartridge." "I have a presentation due." "Where's the nearest color printer?" "Look at the carpet."  "Uh-oh, who made the mess?"  "That's hilarious." "You're not supposed to shake the cartridge."

On and on and on, my co-workers went about the toner spill.  They weren't mad or annoyed - people seemed really very energized by the whole thing.

My first thought was that we must have a pretty boring office, if a toner spill can make this big of a splash (bam!) in the ol' routine.  And that's not untrue.  It is a pretty boring office (sorry, folks!)

But after reading an article about tattoos on Slate, I wonder if there's something even beyond routine boredom at play in the Great Toner Shake-up.  The author of the article, Simon Doonan, presents a somewhat tongue-in-cheek hypothesis about why people get tattoos these days:

"Here is my theory: Tattooing is no longer just tattooing. It’s a culturally sanctioned form of delicate cutting. Participants, i.e. everyone on Earth apart from me, are seeking an antidote to the numbed feelings and detachment that result from their idiotically screen-centered lives. If you look at Facebook, play video games and online Scrabble, and/or scour Slate 24 hours a day, you will eventually reach a freaky plateau of desensitized unreality. You will crave the enlivening, awakening, back-to-reality release which comes from the jabbing pain of a tattoo needle. Before you know it you will be begging some dude with a pierced tongue and a shaky hand to emblazon your chest with rutting unicorns and a lunar landscape."

It's a sweeping generalization, and a facetious one at that, so obviously it doesn't adequately capture everyone's motivation for getting a tattoo.  But I think he makes an interesting point about lives that are lived ever more virtually and "screen-centered."

I don't have a tattoo, but I can relate to feeling that craving for an "enlivening, awakening, back-to-reality" experience.  I spend precious few moments away from my computer and/or phone: while running in the park, or at the gym, or...in the dentist's chair. (Really had to stretch for that last one.)  There are so few situations these days when I am really, truly unplugged from the virtual world and 100% present in the real one.

We spend hours a day 'pinning' cute craft ideas, but how much time do we actually spend making something real with our hands?  We skim through friends' 140-character quips, but how much time do we actually spend looking into their eyes, hearing their words, and letting ourselves be changed by them?  Jobs where you "push paper" - never very stimulating to begin with - have lost even their sense of tactile productivity; instead of paper we now just push buttons, moving virtual files around a virtual work environment.

Which brings me back to the Great Toner Shake-Up.  Maybe it was so exciting for people partially because it was real - something really happened.  Someone used his hands, shook a cartridge, turned the floor turquoise.  None of this happened on a screen, it happened in reality.  Our workplace was physically altered (i.e. the carpet is now blue).  "What happened?"  Something happened.  And it awoke us to the toner-mess of a moment, out of our desensitized detachment.

Didn't mean for this to be an anti-technology manifesto.  I'm not about to smash my computer screen or cancel my smart phone contract.  Just wanted to remind myself to take more frequent breaks from the "freaky plateau," and revel in reality of life lived in the moment (messes and all).

Show Me...The Way?

(Source: Thx Thx Thx)

Have you ever read The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron?

I've tried - at least twice, maybe three times - to get through it, but I always end up quitting somewhere around chapter 4.

[Note: This should not be taken as a reflection on the book's goodness, so much as it is a statement on my quitter-tude. I really did like the parts I read, just never pushed on through to the end.]

Lately this book keeps popping up everywhere - in Facebook statuses, and the mouths of friends, in articles, and that blog post pictured above.

You know how sometimes things (or persons) (or ideas) (or metaphorical unicorns*) just keep appearing - over and over and everywhere - until you're like, "All righty, I got it!  I see you, already, I see you!"

So, hey, The Artist's Way?  I see you already.  Maybe I'll dust off my old copy soon and give you another go.  Maybe.  But right now - rest assured - I see you.


*I have no idea.

The Going Gets

Somewhere in Chinatown/Lower East Side

Real talk?  April has been rough.  

I thought it might a sweet-relief, breath-of-fresh-air sort of month (especially after the worry-fest that was March).  And to be fair - nothing particularly terrible or badly out-of-the-ordinary has happened to me.  Really - it's just been more of the same.  And we've talked the same-old, same-old to death, haven't we?  Nothing new there.  (But somehow it still has the power to break my heart on a daily basis.)

April has been the sort of month where I find myself hiding from the simple question, "How are you?"  I don't know how to answer.  Because truthfully, I am fine.  But also, I am really not fine.  Fine and not fine.  Both, at the same time.

Partly, I think I'm recovering, still overwhelmed by what's behind me.  March was no picnic; I scraped and scrambled my way through, aided by the wings of other's prayers.  And partly, I'm just overwhelmed by what's before me - the future: a giant question mark.  Certain things are in my control, but I feel direction-less.  And certain things are out of my control, and that powerless-ness is maddening, frightening.

I was reading a blog today - interesting thoughts on a drastically different topic than this one at hand - and a quote stood out to me (and not just because it was in all caps) (ok, maybe because it was in all caps):

"HOPE HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE CAN SEE A PATH FORWARD."

I sat with that for awhile, and it seemed true.

A little while later I was reading an interview with Anne Lamott, in which she referenced an E.L. Doctorow quote on writing:

"It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

I sat with that for awhile, too, and it also seemed true.  And related.

So here is my wish, my prayer for the rest of rough-going April:  just enough light to see the next step on the path.  I'll let go of the desire to know how the story ends, if You'll shed just a little light on the next plot point.  Show me just the next foothold, just a headlight's beam worth of vision, just the next step forward that ushers in just a little hope.  And we'll take it from there.

Mon Chapeau

Fifth Avenue

I impulse-bought a hat this weekend.

Is that redundant?  Are hats ever well-planned, carefully-researched purchases?

In my experience, they are not.  I rarely set out to buy a hat.  I usually stumble upon them.  Or maybe, they find me.  I will be in a store - not looking for a hat - and then all of a sudden a hat will catch my eye and I'll know.  I'll know the way you know about a good melon.  (Name that movie!)

Speaking of Meg Ryan movies (hint), there's a scene in You've Got Mail where Ryan's character says:

"Once I read a story about a butterfly in the subway, and today - I saw one. It got on at 42nd and off at 59th where, I assume, it was going to Bloomingdale's to buy a hat that will turn out to be a mistake. As almost all hats are."

Cute, though I respectfully disagree.  My hat purchases are impulsive but rarely are they mistakes.  Plus, hats are very cost-effective because they go with everything:  Taking a walk in the park?  Wear a hat!  Making spaghetti?  More fun with a hat on!  Stalking someone?  Your hat doubles as a disguise!

I plan to wear my new hat while writing at the kitchen table, on trips to Brighton Beach this summer, and whenever I feel like pretending to be Lady Mary Crawley.

Hats: the possibilities are endless, the regrets are few.

**This message brought to you by Milliners for a Better Tomorrow.**

Novel Skills

Central Park

"Let me underscore the obvious here: 

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. 

Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps." 

- From And the Winner Isn't... 
Ann Patchett, NY Times
  

Author Ann Patchett wrote this Op Ed in reaction to the Pulitzer Prize committee's failure to award a prize for fiction this year.  I don't really have anything to say about that.

But I am mulling over her point, highlighted above, about the benefits of reading fiction.  Interesting, no?  Over the past few years, I've noticed in myself an increasing inability "to be quiet and alone."  I attributed it partially to too much time spent on social-networking sites.  Now I wonder if the antidote isn't a two-pronged solution: less of the Facebook and more of the other kind of books - that wonderful & wide world of fiction.

Can somebody recommend me a book I can go get lost in - quiet and alone - for a bit?

Yom HaShoah

GTS Chapel

Wednesday night I attended an interfaith service, in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, at General Theological Seminary in Chelsea.

The service was conducted by GTS faculty & students along with Jewish clergy members.  Acolytes lit eleven taper candles in the middle of the chapel - six candles for the 6 million Jews who perished, and five candles representing the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  We sang some songs (mostly psalms), did some responsive reading.  A rabbi gave a short homily, and then a survivor told his story, which sounded like a movie - narrow escapes, falsified papers, the French resistance.  But the horror was real.  The service ended with Kaddish, and a recitation of the names of each of the camps, as the chapel bells tolled.

I visited Auschwitz, a couple of years ago, on my trip to Eastern Europe.  Though I took tons of pictures in Budapest, Vienna, Krakow - I took very few pictures while at Auschwitz.  Maybe three, total.  I knew then that I wouldn't really want to look at pictures of the camp later; wouldn't care to show them to others.

On the one hand, it's too ugly a thing to photograph - the site of such systemic destruction and death.  On the other hand, it wasn't actually ugly enough - that area of Poland is quite lovely; the day I visited was all expansive blue skies and autumn leaves and fresh air.  You have to squint very hard in your heart to imagine how a setting so pastoral could have been - once upon a time, in the not-so-distant past - so perverse.

Photographs won't serve the purpose.  You have to remember in other ways.

I'm glad GTS gives space and time to gather in remembrance.  And I thought it rather meaningful to remember in an interfaith context.

At the back of the bulletin for the service were some quotations that I also found meaningful - thoughts on interconnectedness and interdependence.  Thoughts on how we need each other:

"There is not one survivor who did not find support and help among fellow prisoners.  No one could have survived on his own physical and mental strength." 

- Anna Pawelcynska, Values & Violence in Auschwitz: A Sociological Analysis

"The truth is...they survived because they were carried by someone, someone who cared for them as much, or almost as much for themselves." 

- Richard Glazar, Treblinka survivor

"Everyone who returned knows that without others, she would not have come back.  By others, we mean those members of our group who hold you up, or carry you when you can no longer walk, those who help you hold fast when you are at the end of your rope." 

- Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz survivor