New York 2012

New York has to be among the most fascinating urban complexes of the planet. For me, New York has always meant Manhattan. My grandparents lived on West 44th Street near Times Square. I was with them when World War II ended, and, when everyone threw every piece of paper they had out their windows in celebration, I remember walking through virtual tunnels in Bryant Park that stretched over my toddler’s head. Upon a different occasion, I remember what seemed like the endless Queen Mary as she sailed by while we waited for the ferry in Hoboken to come into the city. I remember the Washington Market with saw dust on the floor that occupied a whole city block. In Junior High School days, we were introduced to a wonderful French restaurant on West 49th Street, the Champlain, on a class trip with our French teacher, Mr. Hamlin. I often went back to the Champlain in my high school years because, from the age of 14 on, they would serve me a glass of white burgundy with my meal. I still search for this special place even though the entire block was demolished many, many years ago for a high rise belonging to the Rockefeller Center. Then too there was the mysterious beauty of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral to which my grandmother was the first to take me. I had a truly eye-opening period later on when I attended summer school at New York University with classes in modern philosophy (the Pragmatists, the Existentialists, the Positivists, etc.) and art history. Over the years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History and Planetarium, the Cloisters and the Frick have become favourites. My first encounters with Hinduism came through visits to the Ramakrishna Center on East 94th Street. I have known the city through winter blizzards and sub-freezing temperatures when we were required to hole up in a high rise flat and through pre-AC sultry heat waves when everyone sat on their doorsteps for some relief. The Metropolitan Opera house (Carmen, La Boheme, Porgy and Bess) and Broadway (Wish You Were Here – my first musical and with a swimming pool on the stage; Cabaret; Ingrid Bergman; Barbra Streisand; Eleanor Powell; etc.) continue to filter through my memory. And the eeriness of the city two days after 911, the stunned shock of virtually everyone, the spontaneous hugs and sobs with strangers are all there too. The city’s awesomeness and centeredness have always held a most special place in my heart.

So the thrill of a week in Manhattan where we stayed in ‘the Sunrise Room’ thanks to the generosity of Drew was heaven. We had completed my birthday celebrations in Rhode Island, and the next day Shirley took us to the Kingston train station. I had messed up on the time, and we reached the city an hour early – which was fine. A delicious meal (as always) was prepared that evening by Drew at Dan’s. Drew’s equally delicious biscotti were served as well and then with Dana, Jean-Anne, Edwin, etc. we went to Santa’s Party House for an evening of dancing to house music. The volume was too much for Richard who kept his hands over his ears even with the ear plugs that Dana had furnished us, so he and I had to leave early, but it was still summer with a marvellous, old-fashioned New York evening, and we enjoyed a walk through a Lafayette Street fair and back to Drew’s apartment on East 21st Street.

The next day Freeman took us to lunch at Café Arte on West 73rd Street. That evening, again at Dan’s, Drew barbecued the maize/corn we had brought from Rhode Island and then served us blowfish (pufferfish). The next day, I had lunch with Fred at Café Loup. And before dinner at Vassili and Benito’s that evening in the Olympic Tower, Richard and I saw the works of Frank Moore at the Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library at Washington Square. From Vassili’s, James Colias drove us back to Drew’s, and we somehow managed to miss the torrential downpours that evening and night. We had a late breakfast with Vassili the next day after Tom Farrell had visited us and discussed our precarious financial situation. That did not deter us from shopping at Lord and Taylor’s after breakfast. We walked from Rockefeller to the Leslie/Lohman Museum for the public opening of Del LaGrace Volcano: A Mid-Career Retrospective.

Thursday was our medical day. We had check-ups. My leaking heart valves have gotten worse; I have a hernia; and I have a vitamin D deficiency. Richard is developing plaques in a neck artery. Later we had an audio check-up for Richard, and I agreed to a new hearing aid for him. We briefly dropped in later at Peter and David’s on our way to meet Chickie and Paul at the Red Cat on 10th Avenue. The next day, we collected Richard’s hearing aid and then visited the Metropolitan Museum to see the Andy Warhol exhibition as well as the Greco-Roman statuary. We walked from there to Le Veau d’Or to have dinner with Drew and Freeman. Biscotti laden, we next went to Michael Feinstein’s for a show with the fabulous Marilyn Maye. She could easily be, at age 84, the last of the old-style cabaret performers. We walked back after an after-show party in Marilyn’s suite – this being our latest night this time in New York.

Saturday was my 55th high school reunion in Maplewood. We got there early for Fred’s explanation of the mural paintings in the Town Hall depicting Maplewood’s history. The reunion itself was in a large tent at Fred and Sue’s – the tent coming in handy as it rained hard at one point. There were many former classmates – too many to connect with them all. But it was fun to see again my good friend Bob Fresh from school days. He now lives in Geneva, but we reminisced over our trips into New York to purchase tropical fish on Nassau Street. Chickie organised the food for both the evening dinner and the next day’s brunch. I think school reunions are the only times we are now together with so many people exactly the same age. With most of us no longer having our parents, apart from siblings and maybe cousins, school friends and colleagues are now the people we have known longer than anyone else. They become special and meaningful contacts in our autumn years.

Our last night in New York, we had dinner with Drew and Dan at a luscious non-Indian Indian restaurant, the Tamarind, on East 22nd Street. The next day, Joe fetched us from the train station. We have since had dinner with Charlie and Suzette one evening and with Lise, Joe, Mary and Kate another. And Richard has already managed to lose his new hearing aid. It fell out, and we have not been able to find it. We have pulled out more invasive weeds at Canonchet Farm which has not helped my hernia, but we are still basking in the lovely time we spent in the Big Apple as well as the beauty of the Rhode Island coast even with it now being autumn and the wondrous summer but another memory.

Overall, September on the US East Coast was a terrific summer’s month. For the most part, Richard and I were too busy to focus on it, but the culmination coincided with our final days in Manhattan. Of course New York is not just Manhattan – its most well-known part; New York is New York. But then too Manhattan is virtually a world itself.

I have noticed that a lot of my updates are really for me myself so that eventually I might be able to keep track of experiences and memories. I tend not to evaluate in written terms what I record – especially under the accelerated tempo of life it seems increasingly to become and without the possibility of indulgence in the reflection and introspection that are necessary (at least at some points) for a proper evaluation. Yes, there are opportunities when one has to evaluate almost instantly – or gamble, but other than these all evaluations ought be done with the time and space for gentle and reasoned negotiations. Politics is but the play out of conflicting evaluations by different parties. War is the break-down of a true ‘play out’ but rooted in the same frictional scenario. Politics, however disagreeable, has to be the preferred alternative of the two. Worst of course is when war and politics combine, but our needed goal remains a complete emancipation of politics from war and terrorism.

In my Dear Middle East letter, I wish to explain that the West created Israel because, in the full impact realisation of the holocaust, we thought at the time we were doing the right thing. But now, having done that, we are obligated to defend the Israeli state we created. We may, as it turns out, have done the wrong thing, but having done it, we cannot un-do it. How then can we resolve the situation? Given the setup that was created, in error or not, how do we now all move forward? As much as we might wish to disown the creation of Israel, and even if the present Jewish identity is not an ethnic derivation, it is natural for most traditions to want a geological connection with their place of origin, their homeland – ethnic as well as cultural. In a sane and balanced world, this too has to be allowed. Maybe not in its present form, but a solution that transcends the individual wants, that coordinates and works out optimally the most natural flowing – this is what we seek. In the East, this has been known as the Tao. In more Western terms, this natural flowing of things is what we mean, I believe, by nature/Nature.

The this, that or neither of religion – the this, not this or neither this and not this – has a logicity. It makes sense, whereas the fourth consideration does not, but this structural simplicity could also explain the very lure of the Abrahamic. This last is outside the graph; it does not make sense, and that could be its actual appeal. But in whatever form or in its multiplicity of forms, it appears to be the source of our most insolvable problems. As a pagan, I can respect the dharmic longing for release as well as the secular indifference to spiritual enchantment, but it becomes more difficult to respect that which intrinsically disrespects and opposes the position in which I choose to stand. Half the world is in various senses outside the graph. Do we then just disintegrate as a split world? Or does one faction conquer and subdue the rest? Or is there a third possibility?

These are the questions I am facing as the American election process grinds on in its hopelessness. One continues to worship all the same. In fact, one could even be having the most blissful of shamanic experiences, but you still pick up the plastic bag embedded in the ambiance and carry it away. It can be as simple as that.