Adventures in New York

True to form, here I sit in the morning, with the coffee and the love of words and the silence.  I have just returned from adventure.

The shift back from travel is something I think we all know.  You come back to your life.  To the memory of how your world talks to you when you are not anonymous anymore.  And how the tick of the clock feels different again when you have your own work to do.  And how things like ‘We might miss the subway’ are different conversations when compared to how you all feel about ‘We must once again remember our year-long goals’. 

Last week I went to New York City.  And life lately, New York or otherwise, has been rapid change and movement for me.  As before stated, God and life are changing me, and it’s drawing me back the old things that I used to wonder about and long for a long time ago.  This is a happy thing in my life.   

My friend Arianne asks the question, ‘What is the shape of my life?’ every once in a while, just to keep track of herself in such a busy, changing world.  I have always found this inspiring.  It’s so many elements of good reflection all at once, and I think too many people in this world DON’T ask this question and their lives become very surprisingly tepid and dull.  The thing is, no one ever said that staring that question down wouldn’t sometimes be uncomfortable and undeniably difficult.  Good rich life never is a total walk in the park.  There are things to fight for and pay attention to.  ‘The shape of my life’ question can draw this out.  

My favorite people in this world, even if they’re not like me at all, are the ones who don’t, as Robert Frost so artfully puts it, go around things.  They go through them.  So I have begun to see that the ‘shape of my life’ question, even if it has to, for a time, match pace with the difficult things of life, is a totally worth it thing to note and consider. 

Going to New York added to the process of sorting out this shape.  It was not the answer to the question in totality.  But it set me apart from the day to day and opened up the world again.  And that is the beauty of travel.   

New York City.  With a best friend.  It was wonderful.  We had great hosts, we had the charm of just enough mystery and possibility in such a large place, and we had the time to find out about it.  I discovered again that I like travel.  On some other level I didn’t know before.  When you travel you don’t wait for things to happen to you….’you go out and happen to things’. 

I don’t remember who said that, but I’ve always liked it.  And it’s the subtle difference in the way you carry yourself….even at home, when adventure means instead that you go to work a little early sometimes and watch the sunrise from the classroom window instead. All this of course to stay inspired about the early morning when the grading. Absolutely. Must. Get. Done.  Which is right about now in the quarter.

I like travel because while it’s nice to be known, it is also nice to be anonymous.  To introduce yourself to different sorts of people, or instead pass them by and only smile.  To feel the happiness of that being your own set apart ‘just enough’ kind of interaction is sometimes just lovely. 

Humanity is a big giant mess sometimes.  I think it’s safe to say I believe that literally all of the time.  And I include myself in that statement.  The world is a mess in need of lots of grace.  Jessica is a mess in need of lots of grace.  Travel, for me, affords thoughtfulness about that sort of condition in our world. But it also affords the ability to step towards it.  And also away.

I came back from the trip to New York with a deep appreciation for the things of the world that are varied.  Everyone is varied in New York City.  You can’t even find the same pair of SHOES on people as you walk down the street.  And why are the shoes the thing to talk about?  Well, it’s the thing I looked at.  I couldn’t look at eyes in such a big place.  I was too overwhelmed. 

And how interesting anyway.  Shoes in New York did not disappoint.  I found again, that when we turned around to once again return to the Midwest, the external processor side of me came back. Which is very much the me that is me that is me.  I talk to people.  Lots of people.  About lots of things.  To clam up and stare at shoes was noticeable.  It wasn’t always like anxiety, but there it did feel like I breathed in and out in a different way.   After three days of deep observation about a very interesting place, I once again needed the change.

I came back too grateful that I could have done such a wonderful thing.  Going to New York City (mostly on a whim) is really going to be unheard of later in life.  This kind of travel was lovely and memorable because it was spontaneous and free.  And I was glad be healthy enough to walk all of those miles through city streets and up and down subways stairs, and to pause and look around and see.  And then to be swept up with the chaos of humanity that you always find in New York.  Which took us to the next good thing. 

Once I figured out the spacing of such a huge, grandiose city, I felt seamless again.  And very small.  Numbers that are big, like a million (which I have never been able to fathom at all), felt a little more believable and real. 

The spacing is what bothered me though. Because at first, for a time, it felt like there was no room to breathe.  I know what it is.  The subways take you down under the ground and buildings.  And then the moment when you resurface on the sidewalk in some new place, it is once again so large that your breath catches in your throat.  And you blink and you begin again.  

I have grown up in farmland and valleys.  And I have traveled more than anything to mountains and big wide spaces.  The views of a horizontal place have brought me to some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.  And so, to be caught up in vertical perspectives really did take my breath away. And cause, at least at the top of buildings, for a time, some nausea.  But I was careful to hide this.  You want to be pegged as a tourist in about 5 seconds flat. Not 2.  Call it the terrible pride of my life, but in some cases, I would also maintain that this is called survival.

And this is why, despite eyes being so terribly interesting always, I only looked at shoes.

I felt that in New York City, I played a part.  Clearly not someone from that place, and not trying to make it so.  We say the word ‘bag’ once, and we’re done for as far as accents go.  Or trying to blend in any possible way.  But why care to blend?  They know where we are from. It was even discussed at Starbucks when we ordered coffee.  Minnesotans and their novel approach to vowels. 

I still felt like myself, and I knew what I was up to in these places.  And where I would want to pause. But it was not my city.  When I have gone to D.C. I have truly felt that what those people say there is true.  It belongs to the nation.  There is space there, and it’s old timey and intentional and active.  And it’s got ideas about things.  And of course you could say all of this and even much more about New York.  But it wasn’t my place. 

On some level, I think New York is not like D.C. because its history is so wide and big too.  You’ve got decisive battles happening nearby, mass immigration and the constructs of a global society in every corner of some of these neighborhoods.  You’ve got a history of tension between Europeans and Native Americans….yes, I did think about this with sadness when I first took a step onto Manhattan Island.  And on and on and on. 

Because yes, also true to form, this is mostly inevitable in the life of a history teacher.  You go somewhere and think about the world 400 years ago before anything else. And then get both sad and starry-eyed all at the same time.

Overall, there is a pulse in New York City that is not your own.  You adapt to it, because it belongs to other people too.  Many other people.  I liked it, but I knew I wasn’t from there.  And some part of traveling always looks for commonalities that make the world a little bit familiar and small.  Even amidst the skyscrapers.

Marie and Paul maintain that no one is from there, and that it’s a city full of people who, if they are native to New York, don’t talk about it very much at all. And if they aren’t from there, they are making their own place as they try to ‘make it’ there.  I heard this and found it to be kind of sad.  I wanted such an artful place to feel like it belongs to someone. 

Marie said too that when she was in New York during 9/11 this year, she didn’t feel that she understood it at all.  That there were people sitting by her on the subways and passing her on the streets who knew something from that day that she would never know.  That’s the moment where you find space in New York.  It’s breathing room of a different kind.

One of the days we were there was fast and big and loud.  The other day was winding and small and literary.  Could that be any better?  On both days, I sometimes chose to sit and be very still, probably as juxtaposition to everything else which was fast and moving around us.  Friday in New York meant crowds.  Flags and ice skates and the plaza and Rock Center.  Blue views and skyscrapers.  The subways, where the world shook and the machines screeched, and no one seemed to care. 

The too, the Financial District.  Modern Art.  (Art snobs!)  Brisk walks.  9/11.  Security checks.  The study of names on slate.  Thoughts of 3,000 lives.  A long talk with Ariane on a bench.  About big things like planes crashing.  About our lifetime friendship.  About change.  About why it still, shockingly, felt peaceful there.  And how heart wrenching it was to see ‘and her unborn child’ etched into the memorial behind the name of a woman on a plane.  Everything was too big to elicit tears from me.  Until that moment by that name. 

And small things like how good it felt to see trees planted in the middle of the city.  (I was in need of some greenery.)  How perfect the October weather could be.  Gratitude for life.  That it had become, despite the ravaged history and mass death 12 years ago, a place of peace.   We moved on then.  To the study of a 17^th century church cemetery.  (I was momentarily alone in my fascination with this, but Ariane gave me the time.)  It was, more recently in 2001, the place of rest for triage units who uncovered bodies in the rubble. 

Here I wondered about the world when Washington and his contemporaries were here instead.  Then, a fatigue so heavy it felt like 5 bad days of teaching in a row hit us with a vengeance. (Really though we had just been going, non-stop in Manhattan for 10 hours.)  A necessary 4 pm caffeine jolt.   Mojitos and Cajun fries.  Greek food.  White wine.  Brick walled restaurants with open window fronts.  Stepping out for this lovely phone call from home.    Times Square at night.

Truly.  Wow. 

And then there was Saturday, which was literary.  And my heart and mind opened up and I felt like if I could, I would both walk and wonder about everything and take pen to paper and write.  About everything.  Every single thing.  All day long. 

 Thankfully the grandiosity of New York did afford both things.  On Saturday we walked.  But not as briskly.  We got lost for an hour in the Strand bookstore.  And then it was the park.  Grand pianos being played outside.  In. The. Park.  (Amazing.)  Pigeons and children digging in the mud and planting gardens and Hamlet performances and fountains where quiet people were reading their books.  Tall trees that knew things from a long time ago when they were planted by other people in another time.  The Friends apartment.  Greenwich Village.  Old streets.  Haphazard, yet intentional home design.  The Cornelia Street Café.  Hot coffee, mimosas, blueberry muffins and omelettes.  Time to sit and gaze.  Clean lines everywhere, even in simple things like the water glass.  And everyone seemed to have a dog out with them, usually so small that they fit in a bag that was taken along and intended to carry them to brunch.

Truly, (let me be honest, save for the small dogs, which I tend to not understand) it could not have gotten more picturesque.

And then ‘Saturday, later’ meant more walking, and the NYC Public Library.  Here I thought of men of the Gilded Age.  Because that’s who seemed to really be investing in the look of the building.  I saw their names there, lined up so carefully and so elaborately on this big slab of a wall.  And I thought about how fast life goes and how short it is to live here in this world. Those men proudly walked through that hallway 150 years ago, and then we all blinked and it was 2013.  That’s how it felt to be there. 

But it didn’t feel futile or sad.  It felt like New York from another time, and a place for books, which always feels happy to me.  I always feel a kinship with people who read.  The look of that building too reminded me of D.C. and how it feels to be there.  There was a quote on the wall, just one there on its own, which talked about the education of people.  And it reminded me of why I was a teacher.  

Last of all, there was Central Park.  This place is intentional.  And I thought of the man who made the place and felt gratitude for how he thought about space.  In one of those hypothetical ‘who would you invite to dinner from history’ questions, that guy would be on the list.  There is a quiet brilliance to Central Park which I believe many people in the world have enjoyed to their core for a long time.  Ariane and I sat there for over 3 hours. 

And sometimes we were silent and we just saw the leaves and the skyscrapers and the families walking by on such a perfect day.  And other times we talked about our lives.  We laughed about old things and discussed new current change and what remains consistent all of the time anyway, despite what is new.  And then we ambled, which, let me tell you, after the brisk walks through Manhattan, was a really great thing.

I also felt that we did a case study, really without knowing it, of this little stretch of the sidewalk at the edge off the park near the Upper West Side.  We sat there because we wanted to, and had the time after ambling from where we had come from before.  And this little stretch of sidewalk said a lot to us. 

What I saw there was the late afternoon hour where families came home from the park.  But not families that we would have someday.  Upper West Side families.  With strollers that looked like they were from the future.  And kids who would grow up and walk to school on these sidewalks in the city.  They were headed for the posh apartments a few streets away.  And their outlet for kids and play and ‘getting out the crazy’ was, of all places, Central Park. 

Many of them were speaking different languages, and had this bored, altered tone that I think did not necessarily mean they were bored at all.  It meant they were not middle class.  The common thing I saw in them was that look of parents who love love love their children.  There is, I think, a universal look that becomes specific in the end to your own child.  But that’s where the commonalities would end.  We tried not to stare but it was very fascinating.     

And now, I am back. 

To my life, and the things that filled it before we left for this trip.  It has been a busy week, and a good one.  This whole change of life I keep talking about means that I am thinking about timing and where to put the weight of certain parts of the day, and how to ‘keep the soul aloft’ in it all.  I have been inspired by the mix of colors on the trees and the first flakes of snow.  I’ve been inspired by the fact that now, finally now, the students I teach are beginning to look me in the eye and trust me and smile and say something back when I say hi to them.  That, I know, takes time.  But that really helps me for the rest of the job that is shockingly clerical and time sensitive.  And sometimes not as fun. 

I’ve been inspired by conversation, sometimes late into the night about things in life that matter most.  That my drive in to school is just close enough but just far enough away.  By my family and how this year I found such deep friendship with Chris and Vanessa and by how much I love their little girl.  Yesterday she looked at a picture of me in a book, then turned in this sudden surprise and looked up at me.  Recognition!  And it was this almost unbelievable reaction from a little 8 month old person of, ‘I know that this is you’.  We laughed and she laughed and clapped her hands, and it told me again that she is so interesting already.  She is going to be this lovely little spitfire as she gets older. 

Watch out, world.  And get excited.

I’ll close with this.  Today it is Picture Day at school, and this will mean that I casually reassure people that it will all turn out great, that the real natural self and smile is best, always, and that if their mom asked them to check in with a teacher about their hair (usually this comes from the 7^th grade boys), yes I can confirm that things look right.  Cheers to witnessing that part of middle school and the fact that it is also Friday.