Notes from New York
The first time I tried circus I was not a fan. I felt weak, inadequate, old. I think I was in my late 30s? Early 40s? I gave it up quickly.
The second time I tried circus it took a few weeks before it really took, and when it did, it wasn’t the endorphin rush, or the quick ramping up of my strength and skill set (though that is also quite a rush, to go from not being able to climb at all to shimmying halfway the silks). The moment it latched into my heart was in a quiet flexibility class, led by a tightwire artist. These were small classes, and I think there were only two or three students there this night. We sat straddled out in a semicircle, stretching hamstrings and calves, arches and ankles, and listening as the teacher answered questions about her career. She had recently come back from a gig on a cruise ship, she said, and though cruises are one of the few reliable sources of income for aerialists, and she’d done several, she’d decided she wasn’t going to go back. “I decided it just wasn’t aligned with my values,” she said.
This statement, delivered frankly and without apology. laced straight into me like an electric shock. It wasn’t aligned with her values. Who said that? To strangers? With a straight face in the 21st century? What had happened to me, that I found this so unusual? That I had lost touch with the ability to speak of values without shame? I remember it still. I remember thinking in that moment that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
***
This past week I went to New York, for work. I was only there three days, and had very little down time. I didn’t really get to see my friends, or got to Stonewall, or do anything I might have done on my own, if my own values were charting the course. But as I snatched a bit of leisure here and there I was bowled over, and over and over, by the beauty of the city, shimmering in the summer heat. I sat on a ledge in Bryant Park and watched, entranced, as hundreds of people lolled on the lawn in the evening light, the sky pink over the Hudson in the distance. I walked into Grand Central and nearly wept beneath its vaulted canopy. I perched on a rock in Central Park and watched small birds take the cutest baths in a tiny stream that trickled across the boulder’s ridge. I took the J train and clattering over the Williamsburg bridge was consumed not by nostalgia exactly, but by some cocktail of gratitude and longing.
I lived in New York for five years, twenty-five years ago, and in seven apartments over that span of time (typical?). The last two of them were in Williamsburg, not far from the bridge, from 1993 to 1995, in a second-floor walkup I shared with my friend Caroline at South 1st and Keap, across the street from a drug rehab and a car wash. I had the front three rooms and Caroline the rear; it cost what, $800 a month? Total? We could see traffic backups on the BQE from our kitchen window, and an endless stream of stray cats wandered in and out, from the roof of the garage next door. Most of my friends from Manhattan were scared to come to visit. I felt so adult; it was glorious.
In 1995 I packed up a U-Haul outside that apartment and drove to Chicago, and have been here ever since, in four apartments in twenty-four years. And, obviously, Brooklyn has capitall -C Changed. That’s not news, I know. And actually it is boring. But, I had a half an hour to kill last week so I hopped off the J at Marcy on my way back to midtown and walked over the BQE and up Rodney to South 1st just to check in with the 90s.
My old building looks exactly the same. But the car wash and drug rehab have been replaced by a gleaming glass tower; tenants can watch the traffic jam on the BQE from their balconies. The bodega on the corner where I bought cat food and Czech beer and where Santana was cool with holding onto your keys for a house guest looks … not terribly different, though it for sure did not say "organic" in 1994.
But the bodega across the street, which I’m pretty sure only sold drugs, and maybe bleach, looks like this:
And the whole stretch of Keap south from the Lorimer L stop, which I would race-walk with my Gerber in my fist coming home from a late-night gig, looks pretty well, you know.
This is an old story, and like I said, one that I sort of have a hard time getting worked up about 25 years later, now that I’ve lived through it too many times. The flashy highrises don’t even really make me angry any more, though I do find them depressing in their gaudy display. What didn’t depress me, what I found beautiful, was that of course the bones of the city, that ones that are off the market, do not change. The streets have not changed their names. The L still stops at Lorimer and then you have to take that long, weird walk to transfer to the G. The pocket parks that flank the BQE are the same, though perhaps littered with fewer needles. The kids swinging on the swings, the mamas fanning themselves, the old men playing dominoes: same samey same. So beautiful.
I’ve been back to New York many times since 1995 and I’m not always so emotional. Sometimes it’s a big, expensive, full-of-itself city. But sometimes, like this time, the past reaches up and rips off my pants, leaving me surprised and vulnerable, both defensive and flush with desire. I’ve been reading Darcey Steinke’s Flash Count Diary -- which is a wonderful and elliptical meditation on menopause and age and sex and identity and killer whales and other things. This line, which I read earlier that same morning lying in bed, rattled around in my head as I traversed the city: “Since I’ve stopped my struggle to be beautiful, I am overtaken by beauty more often.”
Later, Steinke observes -- of her 56-year-old self -- that all her other selves are still nested inside: 6, and 14, and 22, and 34 and so forth and so on. Russian dolls, like the show -- also about the endless iterating lives of women and of New York.
I don’t know where it’s all going but I do know that as I get older, and more women and more cities get stuffed inside, it’s becoming both easier and more urgent to feel their bones, their tendons, their values.
***
I’ve been working for the past three or four years on a book project with my friend Nance Klehm, someone who I respect immensely, in no small part because she carries her values with her wherever she goes, brandishing them in self protection if necessary. After a long and very twisty road the book is finally done and, well, it is beautiful. The Soil Keepers: Interviews With Pracitioners on the Ground Beneath our Feet is a collection of 42 interviews Nance conducted over many years with people who work with the soil. Geologists, farmers, artists, hydrologists, composters, environmental activists -- they’re all here, framed by five of Nance’s wise and wickedly funny essays, all edited by me and made pretty by my friend Sheila Sachs. You can buy a copy directly from Nance here, and know that every cent of your purchase is going to help support an independent thinker and artist, and that you now own possibly the only book out there that has a drawing of mouse poop on the cover.
***
One thing I did do while in NYC was go visit Millicent at the soup kitchen she works at, in a less-gentrified corner of Bed-Stuy. As I walked into the building, with its familiar perfume of less-washed people and oft-washed floor I was, once again, suffused with gratitude. I was so happy to be there -- not in midtown, not at a fancy restaurant, not in a hotel. She gave me a tour and I had some shrimp scampi made by one of the cooks, who used to sell drugs but now cooks a fine pasta, and I stuck around for a bit for the class she was doing with the nutritionist, on diabetes and sugar, and how to cook without a lot of it.
Here’s a recipe for cantaloupe granita, which Millicent was Google-translating into Spanish when I got there. It may help you keep your cool in this blazing heat.
1 very ripe cantaloupe (the softer = the sweeter), cut into chunks
Juice of 1 lime
¼ cup sugar or honey
Blend everything together. Pour into a baking dish and put in the freezer. Every 30 minutes, scrape the top layer with a fork. Repeat the scraping process until it is all shaved, at least 2 hours. You can eat right away, or store in a container with a lid in the freezer.
You can also substitute watermelon or honeydew or strawberries or any mixture of fruit.