For a week now Ive had the good fortune to be staying in a little place in the Upper West Side, NYC, while my boyfriend slogs through the final days of the 37-day-long Grand Central Station Gift Show. (Were lucky hes been invited 2 years in a row - only 75 artists are accepted out of 1500 applications!) Its a great show, but brutal, and Im navigating being sick and away from home and our Christmas traditions. But just as any travel with an open heart and mind can do, Im finding myself steeped in a magical world where the normal rules dont apply - where conversations with complete strangers can be life-changing, where the beauty of old buildings, of Christmas lights strung doggedly from high balconies, and of the darkening sky above above rush-hour traffic all slip quietly beneath our everyday defenses. In the span of just two blocks I leave the glory and shadow of The Dakota, an historical building towering over Central Park (one where Madonna allegedly once lived), to one of the thousands of sidewalks in NYC made into a tunnel of sorts with construction scaffolding. There in the dark and the grunge lay a black man, homeless, wrapped in blankets and a tarp, sleeping soundly. On his face was a soft, beatific smile, and a glow arose from that smoke that radiated upward, though the flurries of well-heeled passerby gave him scant notice. I had a sudden urge to kneel next to that man, to take his hands in mine, but I couldnt summon the words or the courage. A little bit ashamed I walked away, recalling the words of all our saints and mystics, of Jesus - those who have admonished us to remember that we never know where angels may reside. On my way out to New York, I was stunned to suddenly learn that a brilliant young man and former partner in a civil liberties project, one whom Ive never met in person, but nevertheless held dear and considered a friend, may have had a severe psychotic break down. This would explain his having disappeared two years ago. He was, hands down, one of the most well-spoken and good-hearted young people Ive ever known. He was also one of the many casualties in the arena around Wikileaks and the federal government - targeted, intimidated, harassed, and harmed, sadly, terribly, sometimes from all sides. There are too many blanks in this story for me to know or say what truly happened to him - all I know is that he needs help and help does not seem to be forthcoming. And encountering my long-lost friend as I did when he texted me out of the blue, this close to the anniversary of the terrible death of Aaron Swartz, and following on the heels of that irrevocable loss, the third anniversary of my own illness - a mystery disease that effectively brought me to my knees, I could not help but grieve for so many of us. Different lives, different impacts, overlapping work and shared hopes as high as the sky for making our world a better one; and we are all casualties on a war-torn field - caught between a government willing to stoop dangerously low in its aims, a world-changing website and its reckless founder, and the places we werent able to adorn ourselves with armor, so that our scars were exposed and opened anew. This is how I imagine it anyway. I had long suspected something terrible, when it came to my friend. It took the better part of a week for me to begin to see the shape and form of his illness, because hed become so cagey and suspicious, so afraid to reach out to anyone, that he only allowed himself to approach me at his most lucid moments. When he did I responded to him as I knew him three years ago, when I only knew him to be healthy and whole. Slowly, the state of his shattered psyche revealed itself to me, and I found myself contending with a delicate line between brilliance and madness, a broken mind trying to fly toward light and shelter, and retreating just as quickly. I carried this heavy news as I entered this widely divided city, treading quicksand myself, as stress plus travel threatened to overwhelm and drown me physically. The grief I felt for him, for me, for us, for all our most vulnerable and dispossessed, combined with the knowledge of the enormous effort and power it takes to change our world for the better - all of it banged hard against my insides, leaving me bruised and shaky. Im not one to turn my back on a friend in need - even a friend and former colleague whom Ive never met in person, or whos circumstances require far more than I can possibly offer. But the distance between us is marked by two states, too long a train ride, the cage of my physical disease - so narrow and small that just pushing on its bars sends both both and brain over a harrowing edge - and by his psyche, a moth to flame that at any sign of admitting what has happened to him, retreats into darkness and disappears. So I carried the knowledge of something terrible inside of me, as I walked under gothic-towered buildings that house our worlds richest, and I carry his need, as cashmere and leather and fur brushes brusquely past me. I try to hold it all, as I fail to work up the courage to take the hands of a man who could be mad, or could be an angel, or could be one who simply fell through our nations ever-widening cracks. I carry him, and us, as I unexpectedly make new friends in this Upper West Side neighborhood, where upon touching down and seeking the quietest corner of my favorite cafe, total strangers seem to make a point of reaching out to me - even a psychologist who helped me work through what to do for my friend. These strangers, mostly long-timers. welcome me to their city, regale me with sardonic New Yorker humor, tell tales of this areas rich and varied history, share their most favorite books with me, and cautiously, tell me how they found God. Familiar faces say hello each morning on my walk over here, this neighborhood friendlier than the famed-for-being-friendly Portland! And of course, everybody and their cousin and their cousins friend loves Griffin:). My partner is bone-tired and this worries me a little, and Im concerned about going home to a house that might make me unthinkably sick again, and I dream of getting on trains and finding a certain building in another state, where my friend has admitted hes hiding. I also dream of me and Marianne, my amazing friend who has survived a debilitating disease that attacks her joints and bones, and in a simpler world, I see us snapping our fingers and being physically whole again. I fantasize for just a moment that every Congressperson, every Republican, every person who is incapable of even attempting to empathize with the disabled and vulnerable, having my disease or hers - for just a few weeks or a month - long enough to break their hearts open, long enough to make everyone look at the world with new eyes, and and with minds determined to make a world that offers more safety and room for all of us. And you know what? I believe in this, this world of which I dream. I BELIEVE in this. I live and breathe its possibility - I chew on dreams of paradigm shifts and nonviolent revolution. I think about what can help take us into a future we can all believe in. I know, without doubt, that this much and more is possible, because and not despite of the fact that were human. Crazy fallible and flawed as we are, beset by pettiness, arrogance, greed and fear, I still believe in us, and I will fight for us, day in and day out, for as long as I shall live. When I arrived at the cafe this morning there was Roberta, the tall and gangly elderly woman with the childlike smile who lives all alone on the Upper East Side, and who walks across the park each morning to get her favorite coffee. She and I sat next to each other the other day, and after striking up a conversation, she surprised me with an all-encompassing pass to the Natural History Museum. Later, upon leaving after working by phone on this piece, pausing every few minutes to get my brain back online, in walked Jessica, a solid-looking woman in her eighties, whos been in the same house here for 50 years! She has 1/4 inch thick glasses, and behind them are eyes always crinkled from smiling, and the other day she described to me how you used to not be able to walk down Columbus, between the 50s and 80s, it was so crime-ridden and scary. She said all this, not with any tone of distaste, but rather with a tone of both adventure and forgiveness. When she walked in today, she looked creaky, and I could tell she was hurting. I offered her my table as I got up, and she suddenly asked which way I was going, in the event I could drop her mail in the mailbox one block up, for she couldnt possibly make it that far (100 feet up) in this weather. Oh goodness, of course! I said, and she was grateful, then embarrassed, then said I shouldnt be asking you this! I shook my head no and said, Im honored you did, and I was. As I left the cafe Ive been going to for less than a week, the voices of a few people sang out Goodbye Tangerine! And I walked out into the rain smiling, knowing that at the end of it all, were big enough, and deep enough to carry everything, when we let ourselves be. And I have such great hopes for us.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 18:23:39 +0000
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