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| Time is strange in New York.
Watches run faster, and so do the people,
Up the moving stairs
And down again
To the moving trains
With decreasingly moving beggers.
And seasons kill trees
Before your eyes,
And motivations, wardrobes, and journeys,
All gone before your eyes
Have a chance to watch.
In a city of millions
I am rarely surprised
To see the same strangers on the subway
The same long-haired smoker outside my work
The same protester with his yellow protest poster.
And at the same time
I am constantly amazed
At the rudeness,
Obliviousness,
And acceptance that time is fleeting,
That work is consuming,
And that eating is unaffordable.
My time is so strange in New York.
This time I'll do a bit more.
Winter is coming again,
But this time I'm buying fleece.
I hope it snows
Warm snow
This year.
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| By that, of course, I mean that, having no toaster oven, I put a bagel in the conventional oven on 200 degrees, took a shower, and left the house for the Bronx Target. I remembered my bagel 15 minutes out the door, and, despite years of Jewish guilt, bought another everything bagel at "Nussbaum & Wu" down the street. Barring the fact that this bagel store's name seems to be a premonition of my future entrepreneurship, the purchase was more to quench my desire for my forgotten meal than to reject the Harris family moral that equates retroactive self denial with a greatened sense of materialistic value. You see, growing up, if I ever lost or ruined something I got as a present, I had to buy the replacement with my own money. Today that "value" translated into feeling guilty for the effortless replacement of a bagel which, at the time, was still "toasting" (quite comfortably, I might add) in my not-so-toaster oven. This guilt lasted approximately 3 minutes, or precisely until the replacement bagel touched my tongue. I guess that's the good thing about not being 12. Buying a new bagel isn't quite as consequential to my pocket book.
The best part of this story is not the fact that I found a Target within a half hour subway ride from my house, or that I bought a long-desired pair of New Balance shoes on the way back. The very best part is that when I rushed back to my oven to retrieve my ruined bagel, it wasn't actually ruined at all, but perfectly warm and toasty. I lathered my bagel in lox schmear, mimicking my earlier-purchased meal, and chowed down, as if the whole incident were intentional to begin with (I am NOT stubborn - at all).
And the bagel was perfectly fine! At least that's what I told myself until, half way through my attempt to disprove the errs of my forgetfulness, the snack became unbearably chewy.
I wish I had a toaster oven.
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| The following is a relayed dramatization based on a real conversation between the author and the CanonIR5000.
Marc (making copies): Yeah, you like that?
CanonIR5000: (confirmatory copying sounds)
Marc: You like making those double-sided copies?
CanonIR5000: (confirmatory copying sounds)
Marc: You're a copy machine who knows who's boss, don't you?
CanonIR5000: (spits out copies, masochistically)
Marc: You want more? Do you want more? Do you?!
CanonIR5000: (silence)
Marc: You'll get more later. | | |
| Like a blizzard it consumes you. It's frozen in time and blown around in your mind, swallowing everything in its path. The fiery sting of the bitter cold, made beautiful by the crunching of the iced streets, a layer of rich and creamy icing on a dark asphalt cake. Playing in the ice, waiting one week for rain to replace the snow, for tears to replace the cold inside. It's a yearning only fit for the masochistic. The desire for the memory of pain, for that feeling of being soaked without a jacket. Living life knowing, but not feeling, that pain, and then it comes and pours down on you, a defrosted blizzard of love after a weekend of chilled icing. A layer of rich and creamy jetlag on a dark birthday cake. The footprints echo in steps gone by, each passing print an indication of a journey to the present, soon erased by the delicate of snowfall of the natural progression of time.
bring Me a moment of bliss to reinstate the pain of loves lost, memories gone, and life's consuming blizzard
i'm ready
i need it
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| I had an epiphany the other day...
What is identity based on? With all the transitions in my life recently, I feel I'm constantly struggling to define and pursue my various identities. My Zionist upbringing has allotted me a strong "Jewish identity" and the desire to throw around that phrase as if I really know what it means. I identify as American, with constant reminders embedded within the daily media and less regular special events that surround me. I suppose I identify with others in my age group - there's no escaping the common cultural understandings of a generation who can type faster than they can formulate words to justify that technical aptitude.
And maybe that's really what it's about. Common cultural understandings. I can relate to those with whom I share partial identities. I can look at a Jew and think "that's me." I can go watch Family Guy and understand the deep (and often common-knowledge-surpassing) cultural references spliced together to form that weak narrative. And as a member of Generation <insert letter here>, I can take comfort interrupting a physically distant friend's lecture with insignificant, lewd texts. It's something special to relate to others, and I truly believe that's what fuels human existence.
That brings us to the epiphany. From all that I've formulated in my increasingly unstimulated mind, personal identity is not reactionary. That is to say, I'm not American because people everywhere hate Americans so we gotta stick together. Maybe that intensifies personal identity and resurfaces forgotten identities. But person identity should not be created as a way to fight anti-identity. "X" cannot alone be defined as "not Y." Furthermore, "X" needs to be able to exist in a world where "Y" is not a constant oppressive force.
Let's relate this to sexual identity. What do gay people have in common? What do straight people have in common? What do transgender people have in common? Sexuality is not a value system. The deep and significant qualities embedded within the person I end up loving is more telling of my identity than simply the gender of that person. To claim that simple commonalities exist among those that love an entire gender seems a bit strange. Do we relate better to people who are like us - probably. But is sexual preference inherently a ground for friendship and community - I hope not.
Expanding the "gay community" into the "queer" community further demonstrates this artificiality. Maybe men who love men have things in common, but what is the inherent similarity in "men who mostly love men" and "women who mostly love women"? Isn't that actually the most different it can get? Can they relate at all?
Yes. They relate. They relate politically through common oppression. Because the world isn't specific in their discrimination of "not straight" people, a community is born. A valid community, with bonds of similar "not straight"ness. The same thing is true with the term "Asian-American" that, some argue, began as a political reaction to American blindness to the separate and unique Asian cultures. If they are seen as all the same, they must band together to fight for the rights of this oppression-created group. I feel that sexuality has followed the same pattern.
The idea that sexuality could become an identity seems completely political and not very personal. At least not to me. I completely recognize the importance of political identity and the joining of people who strive to achieve common goals. But to be labeled "gay" or "queer" in today's society really means that one subscribes to a set of personal values, not ideological ones. My sexuality does not reflect my values, since sexuality is not a value system.
Last night I went with Rebecca to Rutgers to hear a panel on "Homosexuality in Judaism." It was very interesting, but got me thinking that the main difference between the panelists was not their sexuality, but their Jewish identity markers (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist). Jewish identity is personal, sexual identity is political. At least the way I relate to it. Seeing the panelists up their agree and disagree made me feel proud to have certain identities, and defensive about taking on others. When the emcee of the event (a Jewish female student) was getting flak for putting on the event, she was defensive about being thought of as a lesbian. The people around her confused political identity and personal identity. Because she politically believes in "queer rights" (all grouped together for that one) and education, some people assumed she needed to have some personal sexual identity related to it. She was a Lesbian to them and was ascribed all the "values" associated with it.
This is the danger of accepting sexual identity as anything but political and artificial. Any "man who loves men" or "woman who loves women" is automatically put into a box with others who, aside from a politically forced similarity, possibly have nothing in common.
Words are words, and they don't always accurately express passions and assertions. So how about this...
Right now I am feeling:
- sad that people are still oppressed and discriminated against for something that is really as simple as who they decide to pursue love with
- happy that various groups have banded together to fight this oppression
- sad that people are forced into a personal identity that should remain voluntarily political
- happy that I have a forum for expressing myself in writing
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