Finches and Turtles and Shit

Yesterday, a conversation took place between: me, a white girl educated in Iowa, 34; a Vietnamese girl educated in New York City, 24; a black girl educated in central Illinois, 21.  I mentioned the Galapagos Islands. 

The 21 year old goes, "Where?" 
"The Galapagos Islands, " I say. "Where Charles Darwin did his thing.  They're out in... the middle of nowhere off South America." 
"Yeah?" 
"Yeah." 
"I've never heard of this." 
The 24 year old speaks up, "You've never heard of DARWIN?" 
"I've heard of, like, Darwinism, but-"
And the 24 year old proceeds to lose her shit.  She cannot believe that somebody hasn't heard of Charles Darwin and evolution and it's the basis of all science and we're right on the edge of her saying, "How could you not know that?" when I intervene. 

"Hey, 21 Year Old, you went to school in Illinois, right?" 
"Yeah." 
"Yeah.  OK, I lived in southern Illinois for three years.  This was a period in time when the Illinois education system was going real hard on intelligent design and avoiding the theory of evolution." 
"Yeah, intelligent design, we talked about that. They didn't want to talk about world religions or anything, either, is that, that's part of it?" 
"Yep.  That's the one.  Illinois schools are..." 
"They're crazy, but my mom," (21 year old's mother was a college professor.  21 year old has expressed her privilege in this while also talking about the very real situation that her family was homeless for a few years), "says that it's way better than, like, she teaches in Georgia now and it's like, why?  Why even have a school?" 
I turn to the 24 year old, "I used to go to the best schools in the country.  Yes, in Iowa.  I watched them slide, as I was attending them.  Today, the best schools in the country are in New York.  I get it, you had a good education.  Not everyone did." 

I talk briefly about evolution and discover that the 21 year old knows more than she thought she did, she just didn't know a lot of the details and terms.  The 24 year old drops out of the conversation as the 21 year old and I go on to discuss bias in education and how damaging that can be when the emphasis is on testing for rote retention rather than on information synthesis- making the connections between a wide variety of ideas.   

And I recognise one of the ways I've changed.  At 24, I would have been the 24 year old, too, judging this poor dumb girl for her lack of schooling.  But I recognise in the 21 year old a maturity and ability to process information that goes beyond her lack of shared factual knowledge.  If she wanted to, she could look up the facts and be informed and go about her life.  In reality, she's much more interested in exploring our conversation from a perspective of, "Why is your experience different from mine, and how did that happen?"  The 24 year old, focusing solely on the collection of knowledge, has missed the point, the opportunity to actually share and teach and talk about why something matters. 

The irony here is that the 24 year old wants to be an educator.  The 21 year old wants to be an artist.  I... still don't know who I am, so let's worry about what I want to be later. 

Half of the Time We're Gone But We Don't Know Where

I started an Instagram account when I moved to New York.  It may be one of the weirder New York Instagrams out there, because it tends to focus on the very specific and unusual museums I work for.  How many people go to New York and photograph beekeeping, cemeteries, hills, trees, ships and 19th century history?  If I do a subject breakdown, museums, architecture, cemeteries and parks lead the way.  

It's a very, very interesting perspective on the city, because it tends not to show the city.  I don't have a single photograph in Times Square, the Chrysler building, the Flatiron building, or a lot of the other visuals people think of in the city.  Aside from a part of the skyline, I don't have World Trade One.  I intended it as a way to show New York to the people back in Iowa, but it still shows me in very specific and obvious ways.  

I'm the only one who went to this New York.  

And Just Like That Its Over

And now, almost as quickly as I decided to come, it's time to leave.  By September, I'll be in Denver.  

A friend asked me, once, about the state capitol building in my hometown, "Do you think it's attractive or ugly?"

"I don't really think anything of it.  I live here, it just... is."

I still can't get used to walking down the street and seeing the Chrysler building.  When I was 16, I went to Montana and thought, "There are people wake up every morning and see the mountains?"  

I'm going to be one of them, but I'll never have to worry that I'll take them for granted.  I'll figure it out.  I figured New York out, which really means I can do anything I want.  

And there's a million things I haven't done.  

Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Please

The New York City subway is not the oldest, cleanest, most on time, or largest in the world.  By some metrics, it doesn't even hold the top spot in US subway systems.  It is not superlative, except in one regard: there are always trains running.

It is accurate that they may not be the most convenient combination of trains, or running at a reasonable interval, but every hour of the day, every day of the year, the system is at work.  This is, of course, also the underlying reason the system frequently doesn't work.

To ride the subway is to learn the territory.  Train direction is designated by borough, stations are tied to streets and landmarks.  Sort of.  There are six stations across three boroughs with Broadway in the name:  none of them refer to Midtown's theatre district.  Only one of the five lines running through three separate Canal Street stations is convenient to tourist-centric Chinatown.

Demographics are tied to geography- Asians get off at Chambers and Bowery in Manhattan.  Indians at Jackson Heights in Queens.  Now that baseball season has begun, the 7 train is full of Mets fans.  Hipsters get on and off at Williamsburg.  Russians near Coney Island.  Elderly white people wearing clogs and dragging enormous suitcases going north on the A/C are invariably going the wrong way to JFK.  The weirdest looking people on the trains are generally on the West Side- rich people with more money than sense who live in Chelsea. 

Geography aside, it's also a cultural experience.  Panhandling on the train is illegal and varied.  Performers are common on the 4/5 and M.  Talented performers appear on nearly any line between 14th street and Columbus Circle.  People on the J/Z are typically mentally ill or religious.  The most successful panhandlers, without exception, are churro women.  What they're doing is also illegal, and most frequently prosecuted, but they bring their churro cart on the train, or stand in the stations.  They say nothing, but people buy churros from them. 

When open gangway cars get introduced in the next couple years, this means that the entire train will have the dubious honour of hearing musical performances, donation requests and appeals to praise Jesus for the entire length of the train, rather than merely the few minutes between stations.  Maybe it will stop tourists from giving, when they finally realise that every one hears this multiple times every day- it's not unique, and the people with the most talent are probably the least in need of help. 

After learning the subway, it's possible to learn about the rest of the city. 

If You See Something, Say Something

I tend to see New York by accident.  The very first thing I did when I came to New York was visit Houdini's grave.  It's one of the few times I planned to go, went and saw exactly what I intended to see.

I've wandered into the main public library and stumbled across Winnie the Pooh and a special exhibit of Jefferson's copy of the Declaration of Independence.  Both times I've visited Met museums it's been because I was wandering around a park and had to go to the bathroom.  I didn't see the Statue of Liberty until I was on a train down in Brooklyn to go see an apartment and happened to see it out the window.  The first time I saw Ellis Island, I was on Governor's Island and briefly assumed it was a casino in New Jersey until I Googled it.  I went to Coney Island because I was looking for a wrecked submarine (which I never found because I walked in exactly the wrong direction for ten blocks and the sun went down).  I ate a Nathan's hot dog and considered the irony.

I would say that this is something that happens because I live here, and then I remember days in Toronto by myself were spent similarly.  I'd get lost and wind up someplace I didn't intend to be but relatively glad I went.

I find this funny because when I was married, I would plan itineraries and follow them to the letter, whether I was with the ex-husband or the ex-nephews.  We rarely got lost.  I don't remember much from those trips.

Regardless, every time I go out, I wonder how I would plan an itinerary for this city.  I see Reddit posts of tourists saying. "Where should I go that aren't the usual places," and New Yorkers write back, "What is that even supposed to mean?"  But I know.  I see those same Facebook posts directed at non-New Yorkers, "I'm going to New York, what should I see?" and you hear the same places, "9-11, Statue of Liberty, The Met, Central Park."  These are "the usual places," and maybe people should see them.  I've seen several of them.  The only thing that was absolutely disenchanting so far was the Brooklyn Bridge.  Don't go up there.  Just don't.

Where to start to see New York?  The museum I work for has a slogan, "Where New York Begins."  They're nearly right, but you have to understand a lot about New York before that means anything.  OK, so, we can't start with the distant past without dealing with the present.  Same with starting with Trinity Church, it's a part of New York's history, but you have to grapple with New York as it exists today to get there.

The first thing you have to see is the New York subway.

"The Steerage of To-day"

I've been reading about passenger liners. Someone asked me at work the other day what happened to them all, and the answer is, they got scrapped. None of those 19-teens liners are still around because most of them were pressed in to service in WWI and many sunk. The rest were mostly scrapped when their lifespans ran out in the early-mid 30s. They weren't worth maintaining when Americans didn't have the money to sail. The SS Aquitania (a sister ship of the Lusitania) was the last, scrapped in 1950.

But I'm still fascinated with this persisting idea that the passengers in steerage are basically impoverished ragamuffins kept in squalid conditions. That simply doesn't hold true. Compare an experience on third class to a plane ticket in coach. In coach, you sit in the back of the plane, you get no leg room, you get practically no complimentary anything, there are a lot of you back there and you're not allowed up in first class after you go through the curtain. When you go through airport security, you probably haven't got the money to pay extra to avoid all the screenings like rich people in business and first class do. It's not inhumane, it's just cheap.

Same with steerage. They had dormitory style accommodations on most ships, separated by gender. Many liners even asked third class passengers to bring their own food. White Star Line (Think Titanic, not Lusitania) differed in this because they advertised themselves as the most luxurious line, so they offered cabins and a dining room to steerage passengers. Fancy. Shit.

Second class? By and large, they were employees of first class passengers or related to the crew or shipping company in some way. This is literally business class on a modern airplane.

I could, if I wanted to, still book a transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton, the return trip Titanic never took, on a Cunard ship (White Star Line was absorbed by Cunard in the 1940s). It would cost me a little more than $1000 for a tiny, windowless cabin on the Queen Mary 2- the cheapest option. The crossing would take a week- the same length as Titanic's crossing. The Queen Mary offers the same kind of amenities as your typical Holiday Inn, except meals are included, and, like the White Star Line before it, stresses that this experience is luxurious compared to other liners.

For nearly $20,000 (twice as much money as I've ever had access to in my entire life), I could get a two floor suite with exclusive access to special lounges, dining rooms, and other amenities. That's first class. OK?

The price of a third class ticket to go from New York to Southampton was $36.25. A waiter in Manhattan was making $8 a week (that same waiter might be making $13 an hour now), suggesting that to purchase that ticket today would cost at least $600. That's roughly the same as a Carnival cruise from New York to Bermuda.

Most of us are third class passengers. Most of us don't believe we're also second class citizens.

Progression

"You're tearing it up on that guitar."

"Huh?"

I've never held a guitar before.  I don't know the strings, the chords.  Five minutes ago, he handed me one of his acoustics and told me to play.  I've worked out the first three notes to Happy Birthday.  

"The fingering," he says.  "Most people don't put enough pressure on the string to change the note.  You're figuring it out and you've never done this before."  

A year ago, I didn't want to come to New York.  I've spent the last nine months figuring it out.  Now I have the opportunity to leave and I'm not ready.  

"If you stay here, and you fight and you fight and you get what you came here to do, will that have been worth it?  This is all there is, right?  So why not?"  

I spent three years learning a promise is no good if keeping it hurts.  I'm keeping two promises right now:  find out what you can do; I don't run, I walk away from what's unsustainable.  

Well, It's Groundhog Day... Again

Five years ago, home sick from work, I watched Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day.  My marriage had begun the long slide to over, though I didn't know it yet.  I had forgiven my husband, determined that I would stay with him, and convinced that this would all be a memory someday, even though it had been three months and no significant change had taken place yet.  But it would.

And, as Bill Murray turned on to the railroad tracks, he said something that stuck in my head for years.  "You make choices, and you live with them."  It became my mantra.  Every time something went poorly, every time my husband failed in that role, I thought, "You make choices, and you live with them."

I have watched Groundhog Day every single Groundhog Day since.  This year, I heard the quote with different ears.  I had forgotten its origin, because I hadn't even thought it myself for a while, and instantly thought, "But, this is when he thinks nothing he does matters.  The whole point of this movie is that by the end of it, he's learned how to make a positive difference in the lives of basically every single person in Punxsutawney.  Phil literally doesn't have to live with his choices in his situation, all he has to do is work on himself."

Oh.

I read today that Bill Murray thought the movie should be a psychological drama and fell out with Harold Ramis for years when he made it a comedy.  Oddly, I think this is the reason the movie works.  Phil Conners is definitely in a psychological drama.  Everyone around him is in a comedy that has very little to do with his own personal situation.  That's exactly how it works in real life, too.

It continues to surprise me how long its taken me to figure out how bad my marriage was.

Unknowable Certainties

Sometimes, you're going about your life, minding your own business, when suddenly you remember something unfathomable: "I will die someday."  This knowledge briefly collapses your sense of reality and certainty in anything. 

I live in New York. 

Most people, it seems, do not abruptly change the course of their entire lives on a whim. 

"Take risks," he says to me, about the way I eat. 
"I do," I say.  "I make big ones.  I'm with you, aren't I?"
"I'm a risk?"
"You were.  I don't think that now, but yeah, you were a huge risk."

Not liking rye bread feels like a small thing in the face of trusting someone when experience tells me not to. 

Things The Nursing Home Will Never Believe

The second half of 2017 will be remembered as the time I sat on the pier looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge, wondering if my cyborg magician/musician boyfriend was going to get rabies or not.  And that wasn't the weirdest thing that happened to me.