After my mom died I became a wino. Not a stumbling, grizzled old bleary-eyed man, smelling of Blue Nun Rhine River wine, but a nighttime French-Bordeaux-Mouton-Cadet-swilling inebriate. It snuck up on me like a Mormon on an LDS Church mission. When I got off the subway in Marble Hill after the funeral, the first thing I did was buy a magnum of Bordeaux. I went home and immediately poured a glass. Then I had another glass, and then another. That was okay. The first day back from two weeks in hell necessitated letting loose a bit. It was the next night, and then the next that began a steady increase of the daily imbibing. It wasn’t until I went for a routine physical and bloodwork that I discovered my liver enzymes were above normal and that something was definitely awry. As with many things in life, there are scores of possibilities based on decisions we make. There were two possibilities for me, but only one choice: under doctor’s orders I had to abstain for three weeks.
My usual routine after work is to get off the subway, cross the street and enter the liquor store on Broadway and West 225th. The guys working there got to know me very well over the past few months.
“Hey, teacher!” Hector yelled. “No homework, no homework today!”
The white-haired Juan Carlo, who sits behind the plate glass every day at the Lotto machine, nodded to me. He intimidated me the first time I went in last summer: he stared at me, silently regarding me with unblinking eyes. Over time, I started talking, joking with him, and now he always gives me a smile and a nod that’s grown more pronounced and sincere.
“Mouton? The big one?” Hector asked, as if he really needed to.
I nodded. It was the same every other day when I walked in. I was a regular. I was drinking half a bottle of one of the big magnums every night, sometimes a little more. What started out as two glasses of wine, had increased to three, passed and moved to four, and on occasion would slip into a fiver. I didn’t have any control over it. If the wine was there in the house, I drank it, and while I was doing that, the enzymes in my liver were progressively kicking into high gear to fight the toxins.
After a second blood test to confirm the results and test for hepatitis or any other virus, my doctor called me and told me all the tests were negative. “How much do you drink a day?”
“Uh…”
“Do you just drink wine?” he croaked.
“Yes.”
“How much would you say?”
“I’d say three glasses, sometimes more.”
There was a pause, then, “That much?”
He told me that in order to see if it was the wine causing the elevated enzymes, I’d have to abstain for two to three weeks. When he told me this on the phone, it was a Monday night and I was on my second glass of wine. I took a sip. “Really?”
“Yes. Come back for another blood test and we’ll go from there.”
Gulp.
I decided to follow doctor’s orders, but since I had already started drinking I summarily commenced polishing off the rest of the bottle – my last for three weeks – and got a royal buzz on as fast as I could. Tuesday would begin my sobriety. Monday night was the last hurrah.
It’s been ten days, and it’s not so bad. I’ve been tempted, but I’ve been a good boy. It took all this for me to realize that I don’t need wine. I like wine, I don’t intend to stop drinking after the three weeks, but I’m not going to drink as much because I don’t need it to relax at the end of the day. I do yoga when I come home now and by early evening I feel centered, more aware of my true self. The physical and emotional habit is breaking.
I also don’t need wine to escape my feelings about my mom’s death. With or without wine, I feel the same about it – sadness and anger. I didn’t come to this realization right away. It took a morning in Central park and a conversation with a friend to see that we’re offered countless possibilities every day to create the life we want, and also that the elevated enzymes weren’t merely a physical response to the wine, but also a spiritual response to my emotions.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Underground - Part 2
This past year, commuting from West 225th Street instead of East 11th Street where I used to live (five blocks from the school where I teach), I’ve ridden the subway more times than I have in my nine years in New York. With these daily moments of travel I have a choice of how to experience my life. The more I practice living in the present moment and experiencing it is for what it is, the more I become fascinated. That doesn’t mean the ride is easy, nor is it difficult – it all depends on me.
For those who’ve never ridden the Manhattan Transit Authority’s subway, and for those who have, you don’t have to be either to understand when I say that my commute is a model of juxtaposition. Some days it becomes a discourse on sullen drudgery. It’s too early for most people. Their faces have either fallen down, chin resting on the lapel of their coats, sleeping, or they look vacantly past me so as not to make eye contact. Avoiding eye contact is a daily ocular dance. The commute is often a time when I feel the weariness of each person who hops on and off the car as if in some kind of post-apocalyptic somnambulism along the lines of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Or, I can see it as a Charlie Chaplin comedy, such as Modern Times.
If I can open my eyes, my mind, all my senses, and truly be in the moment of the now experience, I have the opportunity to take a glimpse at the beauty of what Buddhists call the samsara (the great revolving door between life and death and a reincarnated cycle of life – the game) or what I would call the inevitable dignity of living this crazy, mixed-up life of a New Yorker for which every one of us should receive an honorable mention in the race towards living (or dying, depending, again, on point of view). People in the suburbs don’t experience this kind of close-quartered stimulus en masse in their SUVs.
A Saturday: F. and I were on the 1 train going to the Met Opera. A rather rotund woman sat across from us, arms laden with shopping bags, skin on her face pushing out tightly from her skull. She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a plastic tray of six Ferrero Rocher chocolates – you know the ones: crunchy chocolate balls wrapped in gold foil. With a razor-sharp fingernail she sliced through the ribbon like a gleeful Edwina Scissorhands and opened up the ecstasy lay waiting inside.
She plucked a ripe one from the tray, unwrapped it (carefully crumpling and then discarding the foil into her purse), and took a bite. F. and I both watched. Her body jiggled with delight – truly. I’ve never seen someone enjoy chocolate more. Her mouth contorted in furtive licks and smacks of lips.
F. leaned over to me, “It’s almost pornographic.” He was right. I felt like I was watching something that should have been done in private quarters. It was like screening a porno film with one’s parents – something one simply would never do. Well, maybe you do, but I think I can speak for most by saying, “No way, José!”
She took another erotic bite. Her body seethed as the chocolate warmed every erogenous zone in her corpulent body. Disgust, awe, fear, delight, wonder. I felt it all. This woman was the epitome of the sublime moment on a subway. To top it all off, she continued with the carnage on the chocolate, devouring half of the booty before her jumping-off point at 86th Street. F. and I sighed with relief because neither of us was sure we could take much more. It was exhausting.
Sundays: My weekly respite from riding, unless I desperately want to see a movie or have tickets for a show. Otherwise, I’m embedded at home.
A Monday: I finished teaching, rode my bike from school to 14th Street and 7th Avenue and locked it on a bike rack, hightailed it down the stairs, danced with turnstile, and jumped down another set of stairs two at a time to happily find a 2 train diligently waiting for me. Without taking my backpack off I lunged through the open doors. Two people leapt in behind me as the ding-dong sound signaled the closing doors. “Please stand clear of the closing doors,” the soothing male voice exhaled. I was packed like a lemming in a shiny metal box (thank you Sting [If you know to what Police song I refer, I will send you a fruit basket.]), crammed, smashed, squashed by unknown bodies. I could smell the crisp, February air on their coats, which soon dissipated.
I usually try to take my backpack off before entering a train because it takes up enough space for one more body to fit in the car. If I were someone desperate to get on a train, I would appreciate this act of empathy. When I tried to get my backpack off, I hit the protruding belly of a red-haired, bespectacled man who regarded me squarely with disdain, even after I apologized. I stopped my fruitless attempts to free the backpack and simply left it on my back.
Peripheral vision can be a gift or curse. The man continued staring at me until he exited the car at 34th Street. I noticed that he gave me one last snarl before disappearing around a riveted green steel beam. A sublime moment. The absurdity of being pressed next to this unknown man, his reaction to me, and the beauty of his final glance could have been annoying. Perhaps a few years ago (or even the day before), I might have thought, Eat my shorts, Mr. Poopypants! Now that I’m back to writing more, I’m beginning once again, to practice looking at things in a different way.
I was reminded of a scene from Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. James believes a nasty rhino is out to get him, but when one of the bugs on the journey reminds him to look at it in a different way, he sees that it’s nothing more than a conflagration of bilious smoke and unnecessary noise.
A Tuesday: Coming home from work, a Sasquatchesque gent next to me exhaled languorously, sending a wafting smell of spearmint chewing gum with a hint of tobacco across my nose. Did I ask to smell his gum? Did I ask him to breathe heavily on my profiled face? No. I didn’t ask for any of this, but I got it. Was I mad or annoyed? At that point in the day, I only laughed inside myself. It was better than a bad case of halitosis. It was one of those awful, absurd moments that I would put under the sublime category.
A Wednesday: A voice at the end of the car heralded, “DVDs! Movies! Five dolluhs! Two for ten! Four for twenty!” I blinked, processed it, cocked my head, then thought, Five for one, four for twenty. Two times five is ten. Five times four is twenty. What kind of deal is that? I turned and looked up at the tall man next to me. What, was this Yeti week on the subway? I only needed Big Foot and an alien to show up to make my week would be complete. The guy’s head hit the ceiling with each bump of the ride. He raised a questioning brow and smiled. I laughed and shrugged.
“I got movies,” the voice sang. “I got Fool’s Gold! I got Step Up 2! I got porn!” That last one got a communal laugh from the car full of straphangers. I didn’t even know there was a Step Up 1. Perhaps society would be blessed soon with a Step Up 3. I thought that this series might be the millennial version of the Electric Boogaloo series – hooray! And porn? What kind of porn did he have?!
“Fool’s Gold, Step Up 2 and porn, get ‘em while they’re hot.”
The train rattled uptown. People’s heads bobbled back and forth. An old lady, for whom no one given up a seat, clung to a pole with both hands. Her body jiggled with each jerk of the subway car.
“I got porn!”
It wasn’t like he had other recent, insipid movies like Mad Money or How She Move. No, he had sinful celluloid pleasures on DVD – he had PORN – and people’s interests were piqued.
I looked around. The subway’s runner-up for Yeti commuter looked at me and laughed. What kind of porn guy was he? Hmm. Probably a bondage and biting fetishist. The old lady clinging to the pole? Definitely into S&M. The couple sharing the New York Times? Leather. And the gent with the ponytail? I can’t say in decent conversation.
At 96th Street, along with me, the DVD-selling muse hopped ship and peddled his wares down the platform while I hurriedly pushed my way through the masses and jumped on the waiting 1 local train to the Bronx on the opposite track.
Sublimity.
A Thursday:
A gent on the 3 train today, tan floppy hat pulled down over his eyes – the kind one might wear fishing – sat quietly, head down, as if dozing. A raising of the head, hat pushed back, eyes still closed, an impromptu flutter of lips proceeded by: “My sister, 28 years old, fainted in the street and shriveled up.” Mumblings and more indistinguishable mumblings and then: “She laid down and got bigger and bigger and blew up, blood all over the bed.”
It’s not often that one gets to simply stare, drink in, observe a person on the subway. Most riders acquire the averting eyes skill – the one in which one’s eyes first see a pock mark, the lines around the mouth, the wrinkles from a lifelong furrowed brow, the plucked eyebrows, the drooping ear lobes from laboriously dangling earrings, hatch lines on cheeks that have puckered up from one too many cigarettes, a mole, a wart, a broken nose, a cleft lip: all these a skilled subway rider can observe in two seconds before the observed eye’s find the source of the gaze.
Seeing this man’s countenance expressed sadness, loss: the heavy head, the slumping shoulders, the kneading of hands as if he was trying to wring something out from his body, something that had collected there in his digits. What was sitting there in his hands? What was giving him the waking nightmare of loss? Did he have a sister who both shriveled up and exploded? Something happened to him. Or some things. And there are probably many more things that he happened to.
A Friday: It was a long week at school. I simply wanted to sit down, read my book, get home, cook dinner, maybe watch a movie, do a little writing, and then fall unconscious into a peaceful slumber.
I’ve begun reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. There’s a lot to meditate on with what he’s saying. He writes of the ego being the thoughts and emotions that are not our true selves – our selves that are connected to our source of Being: God. The ego is the collective dysfunction of a society run amuck with setting up the binary opposition of us vs. them, me vs. you, or as Roald Dahl so eloquently states in Matilda: “I’m smart, you’re dumb, I’m big, you’re little, I’m right, you’re wrong.” Tolle writes that religion is one of the institutions in our world that has set itself up as the authority on Truth, when in fact this truth is based on the ego, and that the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, et. al, have been manipulated and misconstrued through the millennia to service the ego.
I suddenly experienced this first hand with the appearance of a pontificating evangelical Christian at 125th Street who decided to break into a apocalyptic sermon on the God, Jesus, heaven, hell, and the zillion years in the afterlife that were just the beginning of eternity.
“This might be your last trip on the subway. What if you died when you stepped out of this car? A million years is nothing. A billion. A zillion. A hundred thousand zillions and that’s not even the beginning! When you step out of this car, you might step into eternity!”
I imagined myself tripping and making a face-plant into a Calvin Klein Eternity cologne ad.
He stood right in front of me. It wasn’t as if he was simply talking to everyone on the subway at an appropriate volume. He was shouting so loudly I felt the tips of my nose and ears vibrating.
He talked about standing naked before God when you die, Jesus saying that you did a good job or that he never knew you. There was much on burning in hell. He was actually pretty adept and affective at building his manic case against sin and the devil that dwelled in all of us. I did my best to ignore him, but it was impossible, like trying to read Proust in the front row at an Iron Maiden concert.
“GOD IS A GOD OF LOVE! JESUS LOVES YOU!”
That was it. This was no curate’s egg – there was not a bit of merit in anything he said. I knew that I’d probably be tilting at windmills, but I had to say something.
“God is a god of love?” I interrupted.
The man was taken aback. I don’t think he was expecting to be engaged, or maybe he was. Most people probably didn’t want to bother to speak to him, but I’d had enough.
“Uh, yes.”
“And Jesus was the epitome of unconditional love, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why would either of them create a hell and make people burn for eternity?!”
He didn’t know what to say. I’d broken his rhythm, his cadence, and there was no going back.
My stop was quickly approaching. I had timed this right. I really didn’t want to get into a theological repartee with the guy. I just wanted to stop him for a few minutes. I wasn’t judging him. He had the right to say what he wanted to say, as did I.
Another guy next to me said, “Why don’t you leave him alone? He can say what he wants.”
“And so can I.”
“Yeah, but you’re making him look like an idiot.”
I shrugged. The doors opened. “I think he’s doing a good enough job of that without my help.” I turned to the preacher, patted him on the shoulder and said, “No hard feelings.”
“God bless you, brother,” he said.
Afterwards, I realized that perhaps my own ego of wanting to be right, to debunk this guy, was feeding into his own, and the reaction that he wanted to get from someone to satisfy his own ego had been evinced by me. On the other hand, part of me was really just trying to get the guy to quiet down so I could read!
The synchronicity of reading the passage on religion and the ego and the appearance of this man was another instance of the sublime, a moment in time that was there to offer me a chance to be present, to be aware of myself, my thoughts, my emotions, me ego.
If I always saw things in a rosy-colored pyrex measuring cup, then life wouldn’t be as rich as it is. The good with the bad, the joyful with the sad, the tireless with the exhausted. It is what it is and I just have to let it be.
I’m not perfect. I have my bad days when all of the above would have been a minor or major annoyance. But I find that the more I practice the little moments of living in the now, the less I’m apt to be that disgruntled straphanger. Instead of looking in disdain at the person who just shoved me into a little grandma, I’ll try to look at the grandma and laugh and move on towards my final destination.
My daily commute is coming to an end. I finish teaching on June 10th. Will I miss the ride? It’s a fair question, but I can’t answer that right now. Actually I can: I won’t miss it because I’ll still have the occasional ride downtown; I just won’t have it every day, which is okay by me.
This past year, commuting from West 225th has been a study, a reflection on humanity. Like I wrote previously, I’ve ridden the subway more in the past year than I have in my entire life. One day it’s a hardship for me, the next it’s as easy as swimming with the current of a river. I have a choice of how to experience my life. The more I practice living in the present moment and experiencing it is for what it is, the more I’m fascinated. I need to retain that fascination, the wonder, the awe of it all.
For those who’ve never ridden the Manhattan Transit Authority’s subway, and for those who have, you don’t have to be either to understand when I say that my commute is a model of juxtaposition. Some days it becomes a discourse on sullen drudgery. It’s too early for most people. Their faces have either fallen down, chin resting on the lapel of their coats, sleeping, or they look vacantly past me so as not to make eye contact. Avoiding eye contact is a daily ocular dance. The commute is often a time when I feel the weariness of each person who hops on and off the car as if in some kind of post-apocalyptic somnambulism along the lines of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Or, I can see it as a Charlie Chaplin comedy, such as Modern Times.
If I can open my eyes, my mind, all my senses, and truly be in the moment of the now experience, I have the opportunity to take a glimpse at the beauty of what Buddhists call the samsara (the great revolving door between life and death and a reincarnated cycle of life – the game) or what I would call the inevitable dignity of living this crazy, mixed-up life of a New Yorker for which every one of us should receive an honorable mention in the race towards living (or dying, depending, again, on point of view). People in the suburbs don’t experience this kind of close-quartered stimulus en masse in their SUVs.
A Saturday: F. and I were on the 1 train going to the Met Opera. A rather rotund woman sat across from us, arms laden with shopping bags, skin on her face pushing out tightly from her skull. She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a plastic tray of six Ferrero Rocher chocolates – you know the ones: crunchy chocolate balls wrapped in gold foil. With a razor-sharp fingernail she sliced through the ribbon like a gleeful Edwina Scissorhands and opened up the ecstasy lay waiting inside.
She plucked a ripe one from the tray, unwrapped it (carefully crumpling and then discarding the foil into her purse), and took a bite. F. and I both watched. Her body jiggled with delight – truly. I’ve never seen someone enjoy chocolate more. Her mouth contorted in furtive licks and smacks of lips.
F. leaned over to me, “It’s almost pornographic.” He was right. I felt like I was watching something that should have been done in private quarters. It was like screening a porno film with one’s parents – something one simply would never do. Well, maybe you do, but I think I can speak for most by saying, “No way, José!”
She took another erotic bite. Her body seethed as the chocolate warmed every erogenous zone in her corpulent body. Disgust, awe, fear, delight, wonder. I felt it all. This woman was the epitome of the sublime moment on a subway. To top it all off, she continued with the carnage on the chocolate, devouring half of the booty before her jumping-off point at 86th Street. F. and I sighed with relief because neither of us was sure we could take much more. It was exhausting.
Sundays: My weekly respite from riding, unless I desperately want to see a movie or have tickets for a show. Otherwise, I’m embedded at home.
A Monday: I finished teaching, rode my bike from school to 14th Street and 7th Avenue and locked it on a bike rack, hightailed it down the stairs, danced with turnstile, and jumped down another set of stairs two at a time to happily find a 2 train diligently waiting for me. Without taking my backpack off I lunged through the open doors. Two people leapt in behind me as the ding-dong sound signaled the closing doors. “Please stand clear of the closing doors,” the soothing male voice exhaled. I was packed like a lemming in a shiny metal box (thank you Sting [If you know to what Police song I refer, I will send you a fruit basket.]), crammed, smashed, squashed by unknown bodies. I could smell the crisp, February air on their coats, which soon dissipated.
I usually try to take my backpack off before entering a train because it takes up enough space for one more body to fit in the car. If I were someone desperate to get on a train, I would appreciate this act of empathy. When I tried to get my backpack off, I hit the protruding belly of a red-haired, bespectacled man who regarded me squarely with disdain, even after I apologized. I stopped my fruitless attempts to free the backpack and simply left it on my back.
Peripheral vision can be a gift or curse. The man continued staring at me until he exited the car at 34th Street. I noticed that he gave me one last snarl before disappearing around a riveted green steel beam. A sublime moment. The absurdity of being pressed next to this unknown man, his reaction to me, and the beauty of his final glance could have been annoying. Perhaps a few years ago (or even the day before), I might have thought, Eat my shorts, Mr. Poopypants! Now that I’m back to writing more, I’m beginning once again, to practice looking at things in a different way.
I was reminded of a scene from Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. James believes a nasty rhino is out to get him, but when one of the bugs on the journey reminds him to look at it in a different way, he sees that it’s nothing more than a conflagration of bilious smoke and unnecessary noise.
A Tuesday: Coming home from work, a Sasquatchesque gent next to me exhaled languorously, sending a wafting smell of spearmint chewing gum with a hint of tobacco across my nose. Did I ask to smell his gum? Did I ask him to breathe heavily on my profiled face? No. I didn’t ask for any of this, but I got it. Was I mad or annoyed? At that point in the day, I only laughed inside myself. It was better than a bad case of halitosis. It was one of those awful, absurd moments that I would put under the sublime category.
A Wednesday: A voice at the end of the car heralded, “DVDs! Movies! Five dolluhs! Two for ten! Four for twenty!” I blinked, processed it, cocked my head, then thought, Five for one, four for twenty. Two times five is ten. Five times four is twenty. What kind of deal is that? I turned and looked up at the tall man next to me. What, was this Yeti week on the subway? I only needed Big Foot and an alien to show up to make my week would be complete. The guy’s head hit the ceiling with each bump of the ride. He raised a questioning brow and smiled. I laughed and shrugged.
“I got movies,” the voice sang. “I got Fool’s Gold! I got Step Up 2! I got porn!” That last one got a communal laugh from the car full of straphangers. I didn’t even know there was a Step Up 1. Perhaps society would be blessed soon with a Step Up 3. I thought that this series might be the millennial version of the Electric Boogaloo series – hooray! And porn? What kind of porn did he have?!
“Fool’s Gold, Step Up 2 and porn, get ‘em while they’re hot.”
The train rattled uptown. People’s heads bobbled back and forth. An old lady, for whom no one given up a seat, clung to a pole with both hands. Her body jiggled with each jerk of the subway car.
“I got porn!”
It wasn’t like he had other recent, insipid movies like Mad Money or How She Move. No, he had sinful celluloid pleasures on DVD – he had PORN – and people’s interests were piqued.
I looked around. The subway’s runner-up for Yeti commuter looked at me and laughed. What kind of porn guy was he? Hmm. Probably a bondage and biting fetishist. The old lady clinging to the pole? Definitely into S&M. The couple sharing the New York Times? Leather. And the gent with the ponytail? I can’t say in decent conversation.
At 96th Street, along with me, the DVD-selling muse hopped ship and peddled his wares down the platform while I hurriedly pushed my way through the masses and jumped on the waiting 1 local train to the Bronx on the opposite track.
Sublimity.
A Thursday:
A gent on the 3 train today, tan floppy hat pulled down over his eyes – the kind one might wear fishing – sat quietly, head down, as if dozing. A raising of the head, hat pushed back, eyes still closed, an impromptu flutter of lips proceeded by: “My sister, 28 years old, fainted in the street and shriveled up.” Mumblings and more indistinguishable mumblings and then: “She laid down and got bigger and bigger and blew up, blood all over the bed.”
It’s not often that one gets to simply stare, drink in, observe a person on the subway. Most riders acquire the averting eyes skill – the one in which one’s eyes first see a pock mark, the lines around the mouth, the wrinkles from a lifelong furrowed brow, the plucked eyebrows, the drooping ear lobes from laboriously dangling earrings, hatch lines on cheeks that have puckered up from one too many cigarettes, a mole, a wart, a broken nose, a cleft lip: all these a skilled subway rider can observe in two seconds before the observed eye’s find the source of the gaze.
Seeing this man’s countenance expressed sadness, loss: the heavy head, the slumping shoulders, the kneading of hands as if he was trying to wring something out from his body, something that had collected there in his digits. What was sitting there in his hands? What was giving him the waking nightmare of loss? Did he have a sister who both shriveled up and exploded? Something happened to him. Or some things. And there are probably many more things that he happened to.
A Friday: It was a long week at school. I simply wanted to sit down, read my book, get home, cook dinner, maybe watch a movie, do a little writing, and then fall unconscious into a peaceful slumber.
I’ve begun reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. There’s a lot to meditate on with what he’s saying. He writes of the ego being the thoughts and emotions that are not our true selves – our selves that are connected to our source of Being: God. The ego is the collective dysfunction of a society run amuck with setting up the binary opposition of us vs. them, me vs. you, or as Roald Dahl so eloquently states in Matilda: “I’m smart, you’re dumb, I’m big, you’re little, I’m right, you’re wrong.” Tolle writes that religion is one of the institutions in our world that has set itself up as the authority on Truth, when in fact this truth is based on the ego, and that the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, et. al, have been manipulated and misconstrued through the millennia to service the ego.
I suddenly experienced this first hand with the appearance of a pontificating evangelical Christian at 125th Street who decided to break into a apocalyptic sermon on the God, Jesus, heaven, hell, and the zillion years in the afterlife that were just the beginning of eternity.
“This might be your last trip on the subway. What if you died when you stepped out of this car? A million years is nothing. A billion. A zillion. A hundred thousand zillions and that’s not even the beginning! When you step out of this car, you might step into eternity!”
I imagined myself tripping and making a face-plant into a Calvin Klein Eternity cologne ad.
He stood right in front of me. It wasn’t as if he was simply talking to everyone on the subway at an appropriate volume. He was shouting so loudly I felt the tips of my nose and ears vibrating.
He talked about standing naked before God when you die, Jesus saying that you did a good job or that he never knew you. There was much on burning in hell. He was actually pretty adept and affective at building his manic case against sin and the devil that dwelled in all of us. I did my best to ignore him, but it was impossible, like trying to read Proust in the front row at an Iron Maiden concert.
“GOD IS A GOD OF LOVE! JESUS LOVES YOU!”
That was it. This was no curate’s egg – there was not a bit of merit in anything he said. I knew that I’d probably be tilting at windmills, but I had to say something.
“God is a god of love?” I interrupted.
The man was taken aback. I don’t think he was expecting to be engaged, or maybe he was. Most people probably didn’t want to bother to speak to him, but I’d had enough.
“Uh, yes.”
“And Jesus was the epitome of unconditional love, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why would either of them create a hell and make people burn for eternity?!”
He didn’t know what to say. I’d broken his rhythm, his cadence, and there was no going back.
My stop was quickly approaching. I had timed this right. I really didn’t want to get into a theological repartee with the guy. I just wanted to stop him for a few minutes. I wasn’t judging him. He had the right to say what he wanted to say, as did I.
Another guy next to me said, “Why don’t you leave him alone? He can say what he wants.”
“And so can I.”
“Yeah, but you’re making him look like an idiot.”
I shrugged. The doors opened. “I think he’s doing a good enough job of that without my help.” I turned to the preacher, patted him on the shoulder and said, “No hard feelings.”
“God bless you, brother,” he said.
Afterwards, I realized that perhaps my own ego of wanting to be right, to debunk this guy, was feeding into his own, and the reaction that he wanted to get from someone to satisfy his own ego had been evinced by me. On the other hand, part of me was really just trying to get the guy to quiet down so I could read!
The synchronicity of reading the passage on religion and the ego and the appearance of this man was another instance of the sublime, a moment in time that was there to offer me a chance to be present, to be aware of myself, my thoughts, my emotions, me ego.
*****
If I always saw things in a rosy-colored pyrex measuring cup, then life wouldn’t be as rich as it is. The good with the bad, the joyful with the sad, the tireless with the exhausted. It is what it is and I just have to let it be.
I’m not perfect. I have my bad days when all of the above would have been a minor or major annoyance. But I find that the more I practice the little moments of living in the now, the less I’m apt to be that disgruntled straphanger. Instead of looking in disdain at the person who just shoved me into a little grandma, I’ll try to look at the grandma and laugh and move on towards my final destination.
My daily commute is coming to an end. I finish teaching on June 10th. Will I miss the ride? It’s a fair question, but I can’t answer that right now. Actually I can: I won’t miss it because I’ll still have the occasional ride downtown; I just won’t have it every day, which is okay by me.
This past year, commuting from West 225th has been a study, a reflection on humanity. Like I wrote previously, I’ve ridden the subway more in the past year than I have in my entire life. One day it’s a hardship for me, the next it’s as easy as swimming with the current of a river. I have a choice of how to experience my life. The more I practice living in the present moment and experiencing it is for what it is, the more I’m fascinated. I need to retain that fascination, the wonder, the awe of it all.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Underground - Part 1
There are moments of sublimity that come and go in day. As a writer, I want to see and experience each moment so that I can turn it into a phrase; I want to express it as best I can. F. once said to me, “When you look at the world as a writer, it all becomes magical and everything around us has the possibility of being turned into art.” That goes for any artist, not just writers. You can be an artist in all aspects of your life; it’s not just about writing or painting or composing music. Art is creation. You create your life every day, so in that light, we are all artists. What did I create today? What are you going to create now?
When I use the word “sublime”, rather than a classical belief in pretty perfection, or even Kant’s thought of absolute greatness not inhibited with ideas of limitations, I lean more towards the romantic notion of the combination of the grotesque and beautiful, e.g., Hugo’s hunchback ringing the bells of Notre Dame, a Dali painting, a scene from a David Lynch film. I can’t side with modernists, who believe that the sublime expresses the instability of the postmodern world. There is no instability, but neither is there stability. The sublime is a balancing act that is performed all around us, every second.
My mind gets in the way of realizing the sublime. The mind is an illusion, something that I think I am. The Cartesian belief that because I think I exist is a misnomer. I am not merely my mind. The me that connects to the source of Being is who I am. If you prefer, call this source God, the Goddess, collective conscious, the Big Kahuna, or even the Wizard of Oz. I’m not going to judge. It’s simply that God makes me think of a wizened, white-bearded man sitting on a throne, and that’s not a picture I like to envisage when praying or meditating. By calling God my Source of Being, I have no image to associate to the name. Being is my link between the sublime moments and their reflection in the bigger universe – the microcosm that reminds me of the macrocosm: so within, without.
My blocks the way – the Tao – because I’m often bustling here and there, catching the subway, dashing off to work, buying groceries, missing my mom, my family’s resistance and palpable disgust (though not spoken about anymore) of my sexuality, should I get a new pair of shoes, what am I going to do this weekend, will I have enough energy to write tonight – endless thoughts that preoccupy me and distract me from being in the now, the moment presented to me.
When I slow down my mind, turn it off in fact, and just observe the thinker, the thinker inside me shrinks away and I’m left with the moment without judgment. Everyone’s had these moments, but I think if we want more, we have to practice, as one does with an instrument, memorizing the lines of a poem, or painting. We’re throwing the monkey (the mind) a banana to distract it so we can simply be.
Life experiences can be seen with multi-facet glasses. My daily subway ride is a study and lesson on humanity, and the perfect opportunity to practice being in the moment. I’m on a train, underground, heading towards my destination. As sure as you can’t steer a train, my life for those brief, or sometimes interminable, rides is in the hands of the flow of trains, the conductor’s steady (or unsteady) hand on the throttle, and the calls from dispatchers directing trains from who knows where. There is nothing else for me to think about except being in that car and observing everything happening around me. These moments, depending on my mood and state of mind, can either be transcendent or debilitating.
There’s not much I haven’t seen underground in New York City: a corpulent woman squatting down and peeing in a long corridor underneath 14th Street; the smile of my favorite Chinese cello player on the 42nd Street 1 Train platform; rats the size of overfed Chihuahuas galumphing over the rails; a legless man rolling himself along on a board, a hand out in supplication; a blind Russian violinist playing a Mozart tune perfectly between stops (I haven’t seen him in a long time. I wonder what happened to him); a one-armed harmonica player; two young African-American boys reciting poetry by Langston Hughes to get some coins for an after-school snack. After eight years of riding underground, I could fill journal upon journal with reflections on these experiences.
Some days I laugh at the rats, some days I wretch. I never know what my reaction is going to be, but more and more I’m trying to see life as being whatever it wants to be. My job is simply to be the observer. What will I create today?
When I use the word “sublime”, rather than a classical belief in pretty perfection, or even Kant’s thought of absolute greatness not inhibited with ideas of limitations, I lean more towards the romantic notion of the combination of the grotesque and beautiful, e.g., Hugo’s hunchback ringing the bells of Notre Dame, a Dali painting, a scene from a David Lynch film. I can’t side with modernists, who believe that the sublime expresses the instability of the postmodern world. There is no instability, but neither is there stability. The sublime is a balancing act that is performed all around us, every second.
My mind gets in the way of realizing the sublime. The mind is an illusion, something that I think I am. The Cartesian belief that because I think I exist is a misnomer. I am not merely my mind. The me that connects to the source of Being is who I am. If you prefer, call this source God, the Goddess, collective conscious, the Big Kahuna, or even the Wizard of Oz. I’m not going to judge. It’s simply that God makes me think of a wizened, white-bearded man sitting on a throne, and that’s not a picture I like to envisage when praying or meditating. By calling God my Source of Being, I have no image to associate to the name. Being is my link between the sublime moments and their reflection in the bigger universe – the microcosm that reminds me of the macrocosm: so within, without.
My blocks the way – the Tao – because I’m often bustling here and there, catching the subway, dashing off to work, buying groceries, missing my mom, my family’s resistance and palpable disgust (though not spoken about anymore) of my sexuality, should I get a new pair of shoes, what am I going to do this weekend, will I have enough energy to write tonight – endless thoughts that preoccupy me and distract me from being in the now, the moment presented to me.
When I slow down my mind, turn it off in fact, and just observe the thinker, the thinker inside me shrinks away and I’m left with the moment without judgment. Everyone’s had these moments, but I think if we want more, we have to practice, as one does with an instrument, memorizing the lines of a poem, or painting. We’re throwing the monkey (the mind) a banana to distract it so we can simply be.
Life experiences can be seen with multi-facet glasses. My daily subway ride is a study and lesson on humanity, and the perfect opportunity to practice being in the moment. I’m on a train, underground, heading towards my destination. As sure as you can’t steer a train, my life for those brief, or sometimes interminable, rides is in the hands of the flow of trains, the conductor’s steady (or unsteady) hand on the throttle, and the calls from dispatchers directing trains from who knows where. There is nothing else for me to think about except being in that car and observing everything happening around me. These moments, depending on my mood and state of mind, can either be transcendent or debilitating.
There’s not much I haven’t seen underground in New York City: a corpulent woman squatting down and peeing in a long corridor underneath 14th Street; the smile of my favorite Chinese cello player on the 42nd Street 1 Train platform; rats the size of overfed Chihuahuas galumphing over the rails; a legless man rolling himself along on a board, a hand out in supplication; a blind Russian violinist playing a Mozart tune perfectly between stops (I haven’t seen him in a long time. I wonder what happened to him); a one-armed harmonica player; two young African-American boys reciting poetry by Langston Hughes to get some coins for an after-school snack. After eight years of riding underground, I could fill journal upon journal with reflections on these experiences.
Some days I laugh at the rats, some days I wretch. I never know what my reaction is going to be, but more and more I’m trying to see life as being whatever it wants to be. My job is simply to be the observer. What will I create today?
Friday, May 9, 2008
Why Am I So Angry?!
A week ago I was angry; not just mad, but angrier than a hornet trapped in a glass mason jar. Like a hornet, I was buzzing around, bouncing off the glass walls through which I could see an escape, but which kept me locked inside. I was testing the boundaries again and again, banging my head and not knowing why I was in the fit of rage I found myself in. I felt helpless. My emotions were out of control. I was seething, lashing out at everything and everyone around me. It only took a moment on a Central Park bench to ask the question – where was this anger coming from? – and then I had to wait for the question to go out to the universe, to my source of Being (God, for those who want that familiarity), for the resounding answer to return: your mom is dead and you are pissed off about it!
Last week it rained one day all day (I forget what day it was). The downpour didn’t acquiesce to the collective conscious pleading of a city that wanted it to stop so people could go on their paths without soggy Hush Puppies. It was an interminable deluge.
The next day, the weather report boded well: partly cloudy, mid 60s. That was not to be the case. I hopped off the 1 train, bounded up the stairs two at a time and emerged to a slight drizzle. I unlocked my bike, straddled the seat, and pushed off down 7th Avenue. With a growing determination, the clouds opened up and the rain beat down harder and harder. Ding dang it! As I rode east across 12th Street my pants, at first spotted dark by the occasional drop of rain, became darker and darker with each successive onslaught of sheets of rain that draped themselves across the avenues and streets I crossed.
I became angrier and angrier, as if God was doing this to me. What an ego. As if God was bombarding me with pinhead drops of rain on purpose. I raised a clenched fist and cursed at the sky. I cursed repeatedly as the anger built up inside of me. I hate getting wet. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I feel like I should embrace it and just get wet. It wasn’t like it was a freezing rain. It was quite balmy by anyone else’s perception. I fumed and cursed and got wetter and wetter and wetter. The cursing didn’t do any good. It only made me madder.
When I finally arrived at school I was a washed up sponge filled to the teeth with water. I plopped myself down in my chair in the classroom and laughed at myself. Why was I so angry? Why did I curse nature and its lord?
That day I lashed out at my students, I read emails and was consumed with anger towards people who sent them – I was a tempestuous, irascible mess. My lugubrious moans were misunderstood, and my reluctance to interact with those around me was most likely misconstrued as a bad case of indigestion.
I was to meet F. for a drink at Rue 57 after work before going to his sculpting class’s show at the Arts Students League. We sat and drank wine, dunked our Pommes Frites in ketchup, and recapitulated each other’s day. The volume of music and conversation in the restaurant rose and I couldn’t think. My senses became overloaded and F. suggested we walk to Central Park before going to the show. It was a good idea.
While we sat on a bench on Central Park South I questioned where my anger was coming from. We talked and then F. had an inspiration, the answer mentioned previously that washed over me like a soothing balm: I was angry about my mom’s death. It made sense. There was no other place from which my rage could have come. And then I remembered reading about the five stages of grief that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross cited, the definitive aspects of grieving that most, if not all, people experience. I was in the second stage: anger. I had gone through the first one, most definitely, which is denial : this isn’t happening to me!
Simply by realizing this I felt a cumbersome, twisted burden lift from my shoulders. It wasn’t only a spiritual feeling, but truly a physical one. I felt lighter. I was still angry, but the fact that I realized where it came from lessened the anger; it dissipated slightly.
I’ve worked through the anger during this past week and it is gradually going away. It is less intense than last week. I still occasionally erupt at those around me, but I’m quick to ask forgiveness, and also ask for understanding from those I attack, explaining to them that it’s not a personal, psychological raid on their being, but rather my own anger that I have to embrace, acknowledge, and then let go.
I’m working towards the acceptance of my mother’s passing. Yes, I know spiritually that she’s still with me. That’s undeniable. My dreams, my instinct, my sense of being tells me that this is true. That is the overriding umbrella of my belief system during this time of grieving. Underneath this umbrella is the anger. If Kubler-Ross is right in her research and predictions for grieving, also underneath this banner of grief will be bargaining (I promise I’ll be a better person if…), depression (I don’t care anymore), and then the final acceptance (I’m ready for whatever comes).
I want to be ready. I want that acceptance, but until then, I’ll surround myself with people I love, experience what I want to experience, and live the life I want to live every single day. It’s my reality, my life, and it’s all my choice. Thrown into this mix is the fact that my mother died on March 9th, which makes today the two-month anniversary of her death. It lives and breathes with me every day, and that’s okay. I know everything I experience is part of the bigger plan of my life. The umbrella is open. It’s raining. I’m safe underneath it.
Last week it rained one day all day (I forget what day it was). The downpour didn’t acquiesce to the collective conscious pleading of a city that wanted it to stop so people could go on their paths without soggy Hush Puppies. It was an interminable deluge.
The next day, the weather report boded well: partly cloudy, mid 60s. That was not to be the case. I hopped off the 1 train, bounded up the stairs two at a time and emerged to a slight drizzle. I unlocked my bike, straddled the seat, and pushed off down 7th Avenue. With a growing determination, the clouds opened up and the rain beat down harder and harder. Ding dang it! As I rode east across 12th Street my pants, at first spotted dark by the occasional drop of rain, became darker and darker with each successive onslaught of sheets of rain that draped themselves across the avenues and streets I crossed.
I became angrier and angrier, as if God was doing this to me. What an ego. As if God was bombarding me with pinhead drops of rain on purpose. I raised a clenched fist and cursed at the sky. I cursed repeatedly as the anger built up inside of me. I hate getting wet. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I feel like I should embrace it and just get wet. It wasn’t like it was a freezing rain. It was quite balmy by anyone else’s perception. I fumed and cursed and got wetter and wetter and wetter. The cursing didn’t do any good. It only made me madder.
When I finally arrived at school I was a washed up sponge filled to the teeth with water. I plopped myself down in my chair in the classroom and laughed at myself. Why was I so angry? Why did I curse nature and its lord?
That day I lashed out at my students, I read emails and was consumed with anger towards people who sent them – I was a tempestuous, irascible mess. My lugubrious moans were misunderstood, and my reluctance to interact with those around me was most likely misconstrued as a bad case of indigestion.
I was to meet F. for a drink at Rue 57 after work before going to his sculpting class’s show at the Arts Students League. We sat and drank wine, dunked our Pommes Frites in ketchup, and recapitulated each other’s day. The volume of music and conversation in the restaurant rose and I couldn’t think. My senses became overloaded and F. suggested we walk to Central Park before going to the show. It was a good idea.
While we sat on a bench on Central Park South I questioned where my anger was coming from. We talked and then F. had an inspiration, the answer mentioned previously that washed over me like a soothing balm: I was angry about my mom’s death. It made sense. There was no other place from which my rage could have come. And then I remembered reading about the five stages of grief that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross cited, the definitive aspects of grieving that most, if not all, people experience. I was in the second stage: anger. I had gone through the first one, most definitely, which is denial : this isn’t happening to me!
Simply by realizing this I felt a cumbersome, twisted burden lift from my shoulders. It wasn’t only a spiritual feeling, but truly a physical one. I felt lighter. I was still angry, but the fact that I realized where it came from lessened the anger; it dissipated slightly.
I’ve worked through the anger during this past week and it is gradually going away. It is less intense than last week. I still occasionally erupt at those around me, but I’m quick to ask forgiveness, and also ask for understanding from those I attack, explaining to them that it’s not a personal, psychological raid on their being, but rather my own anger that I have to embrace, acknowledge, and then let go.
I’m working towards the acceptance of my mother’s passing. Yes, I know spiritually that she’s still with me. That’s undeniable. My dreams, my instinct, my sense of being tells me that this is true. That is the overriding umbrella of my belief system during this time of grieving. Underneath this umbrella is the anger. If Kubler-Ross is right in her research and predictions for grieving, also underneath this banner of grief will be bargaining (I promise I’ll be a better person if…), depression (I don’t care anymore), and then the final acceptance (I’m ready for whatever comes).
I want to be ready. I want that acceptance, but until then, I’ll surround myself with people I love, experience what I want to experience, and live the life I want to live every single day. It’s my reality, my life, and it’s all my choice. Thrown into this mix is the fact that my mother died on March 9th, which makes today the two-month anniversary of her death. It lives and breathes with me every day, and that’s okay. I know everything I experience is part of the bigger plan of my life. The umbrella is open. It’s raining. I’m safe underneath it.
Friday, May 2, 2008
A Significant Coincidence
(I’m in the middle of writing my final reports on my students. It’s a stringent deadline, so needless to say, I haven’t had one modicum of minutes to write anything new. Such is the life of a second grade teacher. For this week’s blog entry, I decided to post an essay I wrote for a wonderfully endearing compilation of essays on the New York City subway experience called The Subway Chronicles, published by Penguin in 2006. I hope you enjoy it…Tim.)
I grew up with music. My three older sisters played piano. The youngest sister, Kathy, could play any instrument. Truly. She could pick up and play a banjo, flute, didgeridoo – you name it. She was always on the que vive for something new to play. We hated her for it. Show-off.
Before I turned six there was talk in the house that I was soon to begin lessons. I looked forward to it, but when my instruction with Mrs. Durand began I was fully frustrated. I immediately wanted my fingers to do what my mom’s and sisters’ did, but the first year of lessons was a persecution upon me and those within earshot. I couldn't play worth a tinker’s cuss; not one jot, not one tiddle.
I was home during my freshman winter break from college, playing the piano in our living room, when Mom asked me, “Do you remember that bit of psychology I used to use with you?” I didn’t, but then, as she told me, I became that six-year old boy again, the one with the cowlick, sitting on that same piano bench. In the first year I knew how bad I sounded and banged on the piano quite often. Just when I was about to give up, Mom would always chime in lightly from the kitchen: “That sounded great, Timmy. You’re getting better.” Really? I guess I should keep practicing.
Whenever I expressed my frustration verbally, threatening to quit, Mom would tell me how she felt the same way about the piano when she was learning, but was always sure to add: “It’ll give you joy throughout your life.”
I kept banging, Mom kept complimenting no matter what, and one day it clicked. I understood the piano, the music. It all made sense.
Music continues to energize my life. I get ample doses of it underground, from the ubiquitous Peruvian pan flute players to Robert Johnson-inspired blues guitar to that odd woman who plays the Theremin-sounding saw so very gracefully.
One night, coming back from a March birthday party on the Upper West Side, I hopped the downtown 1 with friends Don and Mel then transferred at 42nd Street. As we walked downstairs to the N/R line we heard the music of a violin and followed it until we were at the middle of the platform. A man played an Irish reel. St. Patty’s Day was only a few days away.
He smiled as if he knew us, and immediately after he finished his song he glided over and extended the violin and bow towards Don, nodding his head.
“Play something,” the man said.
Don laughed and said he didn’t play. Mel echoed the same response as the man once again offered the instrument.
“You?” he asked me, an Indian accent coming through a wide smile set on a russet face.
When I was thirteen and wanted a new instrument to bang on I asked my parents if I could take violin lessons. Lessons cost money. By then, my two oldest sisters were in college and one was planning on getting married. My dad was working overtime at Mobil Oil and painting houses on weekends. Mom had returned as a part-time secretary at Mobil. My parents looked at each other with raised brows. Dad shrugged his shoulders and Mom’s eyes twinkled. I knew the answer before they said it. My dad even knew a guy at work who played violin in the community orchestra. “I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
Mr. Wuertz agreed to teach me and charged us basically nothing for a lesson. I think it was ten dollars. He worked with me for three years until he died of throat cancer. I didn’t want to take lessons with anyone else. I had also stopped piano lessons at that time. I was sixteen. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I didn’t want a career in music.
My violin now rests in the uppermost regions of my closet. Occasionally, when I need something else up there I dust off the case and open the tarnished lock. The hinges simultaneously creak. The violin coughs as I pick it up. I tighten the horsehair bow and play a few measures of “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik” before putting it back to bed until next time.
“You?” the man on the platform asked again.
I told him that yes, I played, but not very well. Truly. I’m not really that good, a few squeaks here and there, but I get by.
“Please, play,” he said with more enthusiasm. “Something Irish. I cannot read music. I need to hear and I learn. Please, play.”
At first I couldn’t think of any Irish tunes, and then I remembered something I believe is called Irish Washerwoman. The man smiled while I played, watching my fingers move up and down the strings, studying each note, writing them down in his mind.
I looked around the best I could while I played the song and noticed several people watching the curiosity unfold. I don’t know any other word to describe the looks on their faces except bemused, as if they too would never expect someone to hand them a violin, but wouldn’t necessarily mind.
I finished the little ditty and returned his violin. The man thanked me. I told him how well he played. He shook his head and put up a hand. “No, no, I’m not that good,” he said, “but I believe in reincarnation and that I will play at Carnegie Hall in the next life. Right now, in this lifetime, I’m just practicing.”
There was some kind of wonderful energy on that platform. No coincidence. Perhaps it was what Jung calls a “significant coincidence,” the signs in which two people have detected a phenomenon of synchronism which reveals an unsuspected connection between man, time and space. I believe that somehow, unconsciously or consciously, the man was aware that one in our group of three knew how to play the violin.
The train pulled up and the moment passed.
Being aware of moments like this one is my life’s practice. They connect me to something larger, yet still a part of me. I feel less lonely. Riding the subway allows me the moments to connect with people, something I rarely get to do when I’m biking around the city, my mind on the destination and what I’m going to do when I get there. A friend likes to tell me that I have to throw the monkey a banana sometimes. The subway is my busy mind’s banana.
I’m only limited by my imagination.
One year and six days later, I was going home after a very long day of teaching and grad school. A little music would have been nice, but I had forgotten my iPod. I walked quickly down Broadway around 110th Street and I could hear the downtown train approaching underneath my feet. My focus was getting on that train. I ran down two steps at a time, gripping the railing, quickly thinking of all the germs that I was picking up on my hand because I had forgotten my gloves that morning.
I swiped my Metrocard, lunged through the turnstile as the train pulled up and stopped. I heard a violin, looked to my right as I stepped on the train, saw the Indian violinist and realized he was playing the same song I had taught him a year ago.
I looked out the train window as my car passed him and I was gone. I stared at the lights on the subway walls passing by the window in rapid succession to form a continuous stream of light. It felt so very sci-fi to be on a train underground, traveling hypnotically under the feet of a million souls. I threw the monkey a banana, my mind slowed down and I was totally in the moment with no future or past, just being on the train between stations as Irish Washerwoman sang in my head along with Mom’s voice: “It’ll give you joy throughout your life.”
With one breath, with one flow, you will know…synchronicity.
-The Police
-The Police
I grew up with music. My three older sisters played piano. The youngest sister, Kathy, could play any instrument. Truly. She could pick up and play a banjo, flute, didgeridoo – you name it. She was always on the que vive for something new to play. We hated her for it. Show-off.
Before I turned six there was talk in the house that I was soon to begin lessons. I looked forward to it, but when my instruction with Mrs. Durand began I was fully frustrated. I immediately wanted my fingers to do what my mom’s and sisters’ did, but the first year of lessons was a persecution upon me and those within earshot. I couldn't play worth a tinker’s cuss; not one jot, not one tiddle.
I was home during my freshman winter break from college, playing the piano in our living room, when Mom asked me, “Do you remember that bit of psychology I used to use with you?” I didn’t, but then, as she told me, I became that six-year old boy again, the one with the cowlick, sitting on that same piano bench. In the first year I knew how bad I sounded and banged on the piano quite often. Just when I was about to give up, Mom would always chime in lightly from the kitchen: “That sounded great, Timmy. You’re getting better.” Really? I guess I should keep practicing.
Whenever I expressed my frustration verbally, threatening to quit, Mom would tell me how she felt the same way about the piano when she was learning, but was always sure to add: “It’ll give you joy throughout your life.”
I kept banging, Mom kept complimenting no matter what, and one day it clicked. I understood the piano, the music. It all made sense.
Music continues to energize my life. I get ample doses of it underground, from the ubiquitous Peruvian pan flute players to Robert Johnson-inspired blues guitar to that odd woman who plays the Theremin-sounding saw so very gracefully.
One night, coming back from a March birthday party on the Upper West Side, I hopped the downtown 1 with friends Don and Mel then transferred at 42nd Street. As we walked downstairs to the N/R line we heard the music of a violin and followed it until we were at the middle of the platform. A man played an Irish reel. St. Patty’s Day was only a few days away.
He smiled as if he knew us, and immediately after he finished his song he glided over and extended the violin and bow towards Don, nodding his head.
“Play something,” the man said.
Don laughed and said he didn’t play. Mel echoed the same response as the man once again offered the instrument.
“You?” he asked me, an Indian accent coming through a wide smile set on a russet face.
When I was thirteen and wanted a new instrument to bang on I asked my parents if I could take violin lessons. Lessons cost money. By then, my two oldest sisters were in college and one was planning on getting married. My dad was working overtime at Mobil Oil and painting houses on weekends. Mom had returned as a part-time secretary at Mobil. My parents looked at each other with raised brows. Dad shrugged his shoulders and Mom’s eyes twinkled. I knew the answer before they said it. My dad even knew a guy at work who played violin in the community orchestra. “I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
Mr. Wuertz agreed to teach me and charged us basically nothing for a lesson. I think it was ten dollars. He worked with me for three years until he died of throat cancer. I didn’t want to take lessons with anyone else. I had also stopped piano lessons at that time. I was sixteen. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I didn’t want a career in music.
My violin now rests in the uppermost regions of my closet. Occasionally, when I need something else up there I dust off the case and open the tarnished lock. The hinges simultaneously creak. The violin coughs as I pick it up. I tighten the horsehair bow and play a few measures of “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik” before putting it back to bed until next time.
“You?” the man on the platform asked again.
I told him that yes, I played, but not very well. Truly. I’m not really that good, a few squeaks here and there, but I get by.
“Please, play,” he said with more enthusiasm. “Something Irish. I cannot read music. I need to hear and I learn. Please, play.”
At first I couldn’t think of any Irish tunes, and then I remembered something I believe is called Irish Washerwoman. The man smiled while I played, watching my fingers move up and down the strings, studying each note, writing them down in his mind.
I looked around the best I could while I played the song and noticed several people watching the curiosity unfold. I don’t know any other word to describe the looks on their faces except bemused, as if they too would never expect someone to hand them a violin, but wouldn’t necessarily mind.
I finished the little ditty and returned his violin. The man thanked me. I told him how well he played. He shook his head and put up a hand. “No, no, I’m not that good,” he said, “but I believe in reincarnation and that I will play at Carnegie Hall in the next life. Right now, in this lifetime, I’m just practicing.”
There was some kind of wonderful energy on that platform. No coincidence. Perhaps it was what Jung calls a “significant coincidence,” the signs in which two people have detected a phenomenon of synchronism which reveals an unsuspected connection between man, time and space. I believe that somehow, unconsciously or consciously, the man was aware that one in our group of three knew how to play the violin.
The train pulled up and the moment passed.
Being aware of moments like this one is my life’s practice. They connect me to something larger, yet still a part of me. I feel less lonely. Riding the subway allows me the moments to connect with people, something I rarely get to do when I’m biking around the city, my mind on the destination and what I’m going to do when I get there. A friend likes to tell me that I have to throw the monkey a banana sometimes. The subway is my busy mind’s banana.
I’m only limited by my imagination.
One year and six days later, I was going home after a very long day of teaching and grad school. A little music would have been nice, but I had forgotten my iPod. I walked quickly down Broadway around 110th Street and I could hear the downtown train approaching underneath my feet. My focus was getting on that train. I ran down two steps at a time, gripping the railing, quickly thinking of all the germs that I was picking up on my hand because I had forgotten my gloves that morning.
I swiped my Metrocard, lunged through the turnstile as the train pulled up and stopped. I heard a violin, looked to my right as I stepped on the train, saw the Indian violinist and realized he was playing the same song I had taught him a year ago.
I looked out the train window as my car passed him and I was gone. I stared at the lights on the subway walls passing by the window in rapid succession to form a continuous stream of light. It felt so very sci-fi to be on a train underground, traveling hypnotically under the feet of a million souls. I threw the monkey a banana, my mind slowed down and I was totally in the moment with no future or past, just being on the train between stations as Irish Washerwoman sang in my head along with Mom’s voice: “It’ll give you joy throughout your life.”
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