scientifically nyc

going through old writing wondering if i might stumble across a masterpiece i was previously too immature to recognize (that's what they'll do after my death anyway, so...), and instead stumbled across a better reminder of why i write. i write to remember. many forgotten slices of my life have been replaced in the heart of me today, including this little tribute to my love affair with nyc...

(June 5, 2003: from the Starbucks series)

Just spent Saturday night hanging out with the homeless intelligentsia at my local Starbucks. The ‘bucks on Astor Place is 24-hours and has a complete culture of its own. i would even call it an ecosystem. 60% loners with wandering eyes, writers with pen and paper, geeks with macs, book readers - always on their own; 20% homeless or semi-homeless, because they quite literally live in starbucks and all know each other and have for decades; and 20% people who just want to have coffee with a friend or lover or elicit affair person or stranger.


you know which category i fit into. so, tonight i took my Learning Hebrew books to Starbucks, as i do one night a week, and spent hours talking to myself while memorizing letters and verbs and sentences and conjugations.

it's not that i didn't notice the bulging group of homeless men at the next table (they are all remarkably literate, always discussing literature and politics). it's just that we are all part of the same ecosystem in there, and i don't mind them and they don't mind me. and it's not that i didn't overhear their conversation turn to the moral character of Jews, and the global consequences of an Israel, or fail to sense the tension mounting as two camps emerged among them and dug into their trenches. it's just that i can't go moving tables just because mine is littered with Hebrew-emblazoned scrap paper and textbooks. that would be victim-complexish, and i decided many years ago that i would not perpetuate that particular cultural tendency.

anyway, they noticed me soon enough. "excuse me ma'am, you jewish?" (young black kid who likes to point at people with his umbrella and pretend to shoot them), "yes, i am", "aaa... medaberet ivrit?" (50+ year old, seemingly highly educated, homeless israeli dude who walks slowly with a cane, asking if i speak hebrew), "lo, ani lomedet ivrit" (“no, but i am learning"), "you ashkenazi?" (kevin: intense 30+/40+ irish guy, possibly homeless, definitely unemployed, who is always there, day or night, in the same corner, typing with enormous conviction on his rather nice laptop, always wearing the same clothes, always wearing the same hat, and whom people approach and treat like a Godfather, the don corleone of Astor Place. kevin remembers everything he reads and is an enormous conspiracy theorist. he starts his sentences with "i have information that..." or "i received information that..."), "yes..."

spent the next 30 minutes debating whether the holocaust was the jews’ own fault, whether jews own the IMF, and whether sephardis are truly (Kevin: "scientifically") jewish.

when three more heavily matted and somewhat less domesticated street czars come over and nodded at Kevin, i started feeling that maybe I was a very small, very female fish in an increasingly strange fishbowl. I packed up my hebrew papers, waved my bye byes, and walked the 20 feet to my apartment.

it's great to be home, but it was great to be with them, too. they made my night. and they won for new york city a little piece more of my heart.

i mean, where else is this a normal saturday night for a girl like me?

i really, really, really love this town.

last dream just now

many of us are gathered in a room. i think all of my friends from everywhere in the world are there, but the lights are down, so it's just a feeling. we are all adults, but in this room we are all children again, and awards are being handed out by our teachers.

"ilana..." there is clapping, and i can see myself from the back of my head, and my teacher approaches with a long rectangular box and opens the lid for me... "we know you always wanted a portfolio..." and inside the box there are long paper scrolls, on which are written all of the words i wrote over the next twenty years, but never recorded or published.

the handing out of awards is over, and my mother approaches the teacher. i am not there but i can see and hear everything. my mother says "tell her not to leave..." and then "...tell her to come home." my teacher says, "no, larisa. i would love to lose her." my mother says again, "tell her to come home..." and my teacher says, "no, ilana must fly. she's the moth and the flame."

que sera sera

Clara pulls up a chair next to mine, and the circle is complete again. She is a very tall woman, and remains gracious despite her years. When she dances, she opens her arms wide as if to hug the entire room.

Seated now, her fingers work quickly to fix the crumples in her dress. Then they turn in onto themselves, chipping away at each other.

Suddenly, Clara turns to meet my eyes with a precise and concentrated gaze.

Is today Wednesday? she asks.
It’s Thursday.
So tomorrow is Friday?
Yes, tomorrow is Friday.
Well then, says Clara, throwing her head back and laughing wildly, GOOD SHABBES!!, GOOD SHABBES!!

Then she stops laughing, and seems lost in thought for a moment. She turns her wide shoulders back to the others in the circle. Some are asleep, or staring blankly at the air in front of them. Others are following the flying balloons with their eyes. The most able reach for them with their feet and hands.

HEY! Clara booms into the circle over the chorus of Toombalalaika. ARE WE GOING TO THE CASINO TODAY? CAN WE GO TO THE CASINO?

The balloons fall to the ground, and a long bright orange scarf comes out. We all hold on and push it through the air together. Clara loses interest and walks away down the hall.

Leila wakes up and finds an orange scarf in her hands. She searches for an explanation.

This is Tuesday morning Dance Therapy class in the Dementia Unit of Emmy Monash. I am doing some writing for them. This is research.

Every song that plays on the stereo is plucked from our youth, danced to at endless celebrations. Those who can sing along. The others sing too, you can tell, but they do not move.

Clara comes back and wants to dance with the man on my left. He can’t stand, so she holds his hands high and sways before him.

The music changes from Jewish folksongs to old classics. I am somewhat relieved. I did not want to cry.

A new song begins. All of a sudden, from the circle there rises a chorus of voices. First three of four, then six or seven, then, I can't believe it, they are all awake, and singing…

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother
What will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?
Here's what she said to me:

Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be...

When I grew up and fell in love
I asked my sweetheart
What lies ahead?
Will we have rainbows
Day after day?
Here's what my sweetheart said:

Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be.

My eyes burn. Clara opens her arms wide.

ben's weather report

This is Ben again, known on YouTube as Elba. Ben's now made a puppet of himself (yes, striking resemblance), being really, um, himself. A thousand years ago we studied for final exams together in the UCL library. Well, I studied. Ben did what Ben does. Annoying authority figures may call it creative procrastination. I call it overflowing if understated genius.

a better friend never was

ohad. oh-had. ohadachka. o. bzik. booba. coocoo. warmth in the cold.

whiteness of my heart

what if i said yes?

Meet Hector Cardenas. He's a New York artist, and the person i thank for one of my most enlightening conversations of the last decade. A little over a month ago, Hector unravelled his latest painting in an exhibit called "What If I Said Yes?" His speech that night was shared with me, and it's so wonderful that i'm compelled to keep passing it on.

Hector's Speech
No NO NO NO.

No, defines me. Saying NO keeps me safe, I know when to say NO and it gives me a sense of self.

When I say NO to something I inhabit the territory that I’ve defined as being me.

I say NO and I draw a border. I place a fence.

I am myself when I say NO.

I defend the confines of what I believe is me by saying NO. As long as I can say NO I have the control I need in order to live in what I understand is me.

I like NOs.

I celebrate NOs.

I respect the NOs from other people.

I respect your border, your frontier your definition of who you are.

Together we go as far as our NOs allows us.

I explore the space of what I define as who I am and when I get to the end of it, when I get to the border, the fence, I feel and think NO. I act NO.

There is a reason for NOs to exist.

I live inside a fence called NO. It’s an encircling long fence.

Thanks to NOs I’ve survived, my parents said NO to colds and illness, to ignorance and pointy objects, NO to hitting someone else, NO to junk food, NO to too much tv, etc.

I inherited a bunch of NO’s.

And everything would be fine if I could just accept and live with the NO’s I got like a perfectly fitted suit.

Oh but like a curious cat the questions arise:

What is beyond NO?

Why NO?

What would happen if I jump the fence of NO?

What if I say yes?

A few days ago, I was walking to school with my daughter Valentina when she told me:

Daddy stop!

She wanted to go back. I turned and saw red fallen leaves on the sidewalk. But she wasn’t interested in the leaves, among them there was a broken dirty old one-eyed power girl doll.

What happened inside me was instantaneous, I thought NO. Valentina had taken me to my NO fence.

But in that time that exists between thinking NO and acting NO, after
feeling NO and before saying anything I asked myself the question:

What if I say yes?

What if Valentina is right?

What if she knows what she is doing?

What is she thinking?

I stopped, kept silence and observed.

That’s when she said: “Look daddy, a treasure!”

The dirty old broken one-eyed power girl doll looked everything to me except as a treasure, that was until I heard what Valentina said.

In her world there was no fence.

I was able to get into her world by saying YES to her decisions.

In her world she was going to school and suddenly she found a treasure. It is the equivalent to me finding $5000 in the street with my name on it.

In order to behave in YES mode, to say YES to someone else, I have to believe it. Otherwise comes YES with reservations, a YES with resentment. A YES with rolling eyes.

In order to have a true YES, I need to shift my faith to the YES.

That becomes the key to open someone else’s world.

I have to believe that the other person is right.

It is my choice to stay in my world with my fence of NO’s surrounding me or say YES, believe YES, and get myself into another world. In this case into Valentina’s world.

Suddenly, my fence moves a little and increases my territory. It expands with YESs and doesn’t expand with NOs

So what if I say YES? What if I believe YES?

For me is an adventure, an adventure into another world, the world of someone else. An expansion of mine.

For the person who receives the YES, YES becomes a little package of love that creates reaffirmation. Recognition and acceptance of that person’s world. And when I hear YES I feel loved. I feel that my world is recognized and accepted. I feel happy.

About a year ago, I was having a conversation with Maddalena, a friend of mine, who is here tonight, and I said that it was very easy to make someone else happy, the only thing needed for it was to say yes. This idea, I said could be applied to any circumstance, like right now for example I told Maddalena you and I are talking, you say something and I’ll say YES. Then, she said:

Oh I love the painting that Erik bought from you (Erik is also a friend of mine and Maddalena’s boyfriend at the time. Since then Maddalena has made him happier by saying YES to his marriage proposal) Maddalena continued, I would love to have a painting similar to that one.

In my mind a flurry of thoughts came and went in a fraction of a second resulting in a simple but meaningful YES. She was happy.

She probably forgot about it. We haven’t mentioned what happened that night since then. I finished the painting this summer and decided to make a big deal by giving it to her as a surprise. I thought it would be fun.

I think we are all treasure chests full of YESs and NOs, each one in different combinations, and the way we are all making that particular combination of YESs and NOs is what makes everyone of us special.

Tonight I’m saying yes to myself, with my YES’s and NO’s and I’m saying YES to you with your YES’s and NO’s

The NO’s for the comfort the YES for the adventure.

It doesn’t matter how I combined my YES’s and NO’s because that it is what makes me, me. That is what is supposed to happen.

I’ll keep my NO’s. Nothing wrong with them, but if I feel adventurous, the answer is right there at the tip of my fingers completely accessible to me. I just have to say YES. To believe YES.

And now I present to you the painting that originated that evening: YES.

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Another project, full of heart, by Hector: Hearty Shirts
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mists & mirages

Saskia resurrected this from the surreal mists and mirages of history this morning via email. I wrote this six years ago, sitting at Valeska on 2nd avenue one unusually warm evening early in the year. my computer was a large black chunky heavy thing that i threw into a dirty orange shoulder bag bursting at the seams and lugged with me to whatever exposed, inspiring corner of my mad city called my name.

Years later now, and so true all over again. More true now than ever. More true even than it was back then.

one true thing about my spirit
How is it that feelings of loss and pain are always accompanied by feelings of pure love not for a person or a situation or an idea (that has touched me and taken a room in my mind for its own visions) but for life just life And how is it that I am so taken with this love with what this love does for my soul and how that love is in fact my spirit and that as much love as there is in my spirit is as much love as I have to give And does this mean that I will always have strength to remain my better self as things fall all around me because in the falling I see love and in the debris I find hope and in the carnage I smell love's hope still fresh and looking for life?