Revisiting New York and...

This is an etching I bought by Philippe Lejeune because it reminded me of the view I saw as a child.

Lejeune told me this is the 1940s photograph by Andreas Feininger that inspired him. 
Turns out the photo IS the view I saw from our apartment building.

The fog sits heavily atop the New York skyline — so thick it smudges out the crisp linear edges of the skyscrapers outlining the sky.  And now the rain is coming down heavily.  I didn’t expect it.  It’s not a horrible rain but it is steady and does put a damper on things as I haven’t thought to bring any raingear.  The bus I'm on is stuck in traffic, inching along the crowded side streets.  A police car with siren and flashing lights comes up alongside our crawling bus and tries to squeeze through the tight line of cars — every vehicle's fighting for a foot or two of progress.

Since my last visit things have changed: now the sidewalk hot-dog stands have LED advertising displays and falafel is dispensed from miniaturized Airstream lookalikes with shiny aluminum exteriors and a snug little stand-up cabin space for the guy inside the cart shelling out warm pita pockets filled with crispy falafel balls all dressed in shredded lettuce, parsley, and tahini sauce.

My mother always said, “Stand on any street corner in Manhattan and within fifteen minutes you will see every fashion trend that ever was walk by.” Our bus has been stopped at a light for fifty seconds and I have seen four skirt-lengths — mid-calf, below the knee, above the knee, and thigh-high — walk by. Mother was right.

The book that spawned the
actual museum in Istanbul.

The young woman sitting next to me is speaking in a foreign language on her cell phone.  Sticking out of her bag was a rolled-up poster with only one word visible — “INNOCENCE” — and I knew she must have been to The Museum of Innocence and that it was likely she was Turkish.  When she confirmed what I suspected, I said I was second-generation Armenian and she asked from where?

“Diyarbakir — though the Armenians won’t say that's Turkey.”

“Turkey doesn’t consider it Turkish either,” she agreed and added quietly, “Kurdish.”  Yes, I nod in acknowledgement — the Kurds — another group persecuted by the Turks (though certainly not by this nice young graduate student studying anthropology at SUNY-Binghamton).

How is it that on this bus of 54 passengers I am next to the one person who is Turkish?  Is it a test?  Is it testing my lack of forgiveness?  I am found wanting.

The bus is making its way along Boulevard East (after the assassination, renamed Kennedy Boulevard) and I pass Liberty Place and 849 Gladdon Hall where I spent the first 4 ½ years of my life.  We are getting close to the small park on the cliffs facing the west side of Manhattan where Aaron Burr fought a tragic duel with Alexander Hamilton and killed him.

Hamilton Park in Weehawken
http://www.youdontknowjersey.com

I am shocked to look down the steep drop of 47^th St in West New York where way down on the Hudson River’s edge are substantial apartment complexes of two-tone brick and gabled roofs. It is a stunning view and Manhattan seems a stone’s throw away.  As a child I saw that view and imagined the Empire State Building was my next door neighbor.  We pass building after building — The Camelot, The Shakespeare, The Carla Nicole — here and there are some brick single-family homes interspersed among the high rises.

At home our mail is delivered by car to each block with the postal workers getting out to hand-deliver the mail house-to-house.  Here up north the mail carriers are wheeling their mail carts door-to-door to each apartment building with its many individual mailboxes and signs outside that say No Loitering Allowed. 

It isn’t just the mail delivery or the imposing skyscrapers that make life here different, it’s the sounds all around you.  In the short time since arriving, just on this bus I’ve heard French, German, Spanish, Yiddish, Arabic, and — what sounds to be Romanian or Czech (turns out it was Portuguese).  Everywhere are people who are speaking a variety of languages and bringing with them the sensibilities of their culture — it is far from homogeneous!  It IS the mosaic of life in the US.  I never saw it as a melting pot because that would mean a merging, a disintegration and loss of identity but a mosaic — everyone retains their identity and distinctly represents a different cultural position, even while wearing oversized, prominently branded Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses.  The bus is driving down Broad Avenue, Maple Avenue, Elm Avenue — all very American-sounding but the store signs for the drycleaners, grocery, and dance studio are subtitled in Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese.

I like this array of cultures, I appreciate the diversity on display. I love NOT knowing what I’ll come across next.

Short Term 12

Maui Film Festival poster 

Simply put, this is a tremendously moving film.  It made me think, laugh, cry, and left me pondering the horrible damage done to some in childhood and how that damage impacts individuals for years and years to come — in ways both bad and good. 


Short Term 12 is a wrenching look at life inside a juvenile therapeutic facility staffed by twenty-somethings Grace (winningly played by Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr — playing the boyfriend you ALWAYS wanted to have*) who are exactly right for their jobs.  Close in age to their charges, they understand, relate, support, and yet hold firm to the structure the residential facility insists on to keep everyone safe.  

New to the line staff of counselors is Nate, a real newbie who blunders in the usual egocentric ways of a collegiate do-gooder with little understanding or empathy for those he has come to assist.  The team accepts his ineptitude and (to our vicarious relief) works with him to grow into his role.

At times, our earnest Grace chafes at the bureaucracy and when one newcomer's case story hits too close to home, Grace oversteps the boundaries and let's her protective maternal self burst out of line and leap to Jayden’s rescue with surprising results.

Different elements struck me throughout the film as we are drawn into the troubled worlds of each adolescent — Luis, Sammy, Jayden, and Marcus who is poised to age-out of the residence as he turns 18.  Trying to avoid his impending release and desperately acting out, Marcus is soothingly settled by Mason who allows him to perform the rap he's written (overlooking the "cussing") that rips your heart out and leaves Mason speechless.

After coming to terms with his impending departure, Marcus asks to have his head shaved and — seeing no apparent downside — Grace and Mason oblige.  As his tightly knit curls are shorn and his buzz-cut head is revealed, also revealed is the reason for this stripping away.

In the darkened theatre I had a visceral reaction to Marcus' wish.   My daughter recently declared her intention to shave her head.  At first, I could not fathom why anyone would choose to strip away a mane of lovely, long, wavy, beautiful hair but as she talked and educated me about her feelings — as well as issues related to femininity, hiding, emotional cleansing — I began to actually listen and hear why this was as important to her as it was to Marcus.

Like peeling back the layers of a large and bulbous onion, this film not only shows us an inner view of the kids and their issues, but slowly, painfully exposes why Mason and Grace are doing the jobs they are doing.

Air streaming past her face, dissolving her anxiety and anger in the wind — Grace manages her emotions by furiously biking through the night — and Short Term 12 glides us through the chaos of damaged psyches as this motley crew of adolescents and young adults struggles to overcome the past and move forward as a family.

*John Gallagher also plays another boyfriend you always wanted to have — Jim Harper on The Newsroom.

I Think It's Time for Poetry

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins  

This book actually belongs
with the poem below.

I ask them to take a poem   

and hold it up to the light   

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem   

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room   

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski   

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope   

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose   

to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. 

This past Christmas my son gave me a surprising gift, Mary Oliver  New and Selected Poems Volume One.  Oliver is winner of The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Award — clearly a heavyweight.  It was a thoughtful gift but what really amazed me was that inside this volume was a poem my therapist had given me as a nod to the big changes I was making in my life at that time.  I share it with you — 

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice— 

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do— 

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver from Dream Work  1986

And just this week as I got on the subway, there before me was another nudge to poetry.  A poster in the subway — a joint effort of the Metropolitan Transit Authority called Poetry in Motion:

An excerpt from a March 27th, 2012 press release

 

 Poetry in Motion Is Back

Back by popular demand, poems are returning to the subway after a four-year hiatus. We have joined with the Poetry Society of America to restore Poetry in Motion, the popular program that brought thought-provoking poems and poetry excerpts to the subway between 1992 and 2008...

For those of you not lucky enough to step into a subway car and be confronted with lush poetry on beautifully designed There is a beauty to poetry that makes one pause and reflect and think more deeply about what's on the surface as well as what's hidden below.  Even if poetry isn't your thing, you owe it to yourself to read Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States, who writes so simply and beautifully that his words and the images they create take your breath away as evidenced by this gem. 

On the Death of a Next Door Neighbor

So much younger and with a tall, young son

in the house above ours on a hill,

it seemed that death had blundered once again.




Was it poor directions, the blurring rain,

or the too-small numerals on the mailbox

that sent his dark car up the wrong winding driveway?




Surely, it was me he was looking for -

overripe, childless, gaudy with appetite,

the one who should be ghosting over the rooftops

...

if only death had consulted his cracked leather map,

then bent to wipe the fog

from the windshield with an empty sleeve.

Billy Collins 

from Ballistics, 2008

So if you want to see the missing stanzas from "On the Death of a Next Door Neighbor," or if a poster prompts you (or me) to read the poems of Tracy K Smith or if a transition in your life calls out for more of Mary Oliver — do what you need to do — get ye to a bookstore or library for more of these riches.